You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

Quickly I shut my laptop, where I’d been watching old videos of Arjun’s performances with the New Delhi symphony. “No. I’m not.”

“You want me to keep speaking to you? Do this with me, and I will. I can’t promise that we’ll be close again, but one day I’m sure I’ll forgive you. But if you don’t take the test, Adina, you are dead to me.”

“You can’t be serious.”

But she was. Then came the three words that would characterize our relationship from that point forward: “You owe me.”

Sister guilt runs deep. I gave in, and for the next two years we stayed out of each other’s way. We were polite but brusque. No more late-night talks or inside jokes or entire conversations communicated only with our eyes. By trying to keep her here, I’d pushed her further away.

I have been holding out for that one day when she might forgive me, and it has been the loneliest time of my life.

Eight

Tovah

“I WANT TO GO HOME.” Adina taps her nails on her viola case, the security blanket I just now realize she brought with her. “Tovah, can you take me?”

“I can do that,” I say. My parents look as shocked as I feel, but at least they’ve stopped blasting her with questions.

“Take your time,” Aba says. “Come home when you’re ready.”

Naturally, the elevator stops at every single floor on our way down to the lobby. I open my mouth a dozen times but have no idea what to say. I’m sorry is too trivial. Even the H

ebrew version, ani miztaeret, which has always felt full of more emotion to me, doesn’t fit. The ride is silent, except for the jazz piped in through the speakers. The soundtrack to getting bad news.

When we get in the car, Adina tucks her case between her knees and says, “I’m going to viola. Drop me off at Arjun’s.”

“Are you serious?” I assumed she’d have canceled her lesson.

It’s started to rain, fat drops spitting against the windshield. I turn on the wipers.

Adi is a statue. Somehow that makes her words sharp as scalpels. “I want my fucking normal life, okay? Can’t you let me have that right now?”

This shuts me up for the rest of the drive. Pound-pound-pound goes the rain. Drowning us.

“Do you want me to pick you up after?” I ask. “Or I could wait for you?”

“I’ll take the bus home.” She opens the car door, and I realize she forgot to buckle her seat belt.

Nine

Adina

APPARENTLY I HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW to play the viola. I fuck up my beloved Debussy prelude for the eighteenth time in a row. I have ogre fingers that cannot find the right notes. The piece is meant to be played très calme et doucement expressif: calmly and gently expressive. There is no gentleness in me today.

“Try again.” Arjun flips the sheet music back to the beginning. He taps a pen on the music stand with staccato clangs. “From this measure.”

The prelude starts quiet, gets loud.

Crescendo.

The conversation at the clinic rings in my ears, warring with my prelude.

Decrescendo.

Soon there will be sessions and experimental medication and research studies. I might never be independent again.

Crescendo.