He closes his eyes, as though trying to retrieve the memory. “It was a small venue, but the energy in there was immense. The guitar was crunchy and the feedback squealed, but no one cared. Cobain was so raw. That’s really the best word I can think of to describe it. Raw. I doubt any of us there could hear the next day. The guys were so young, too. Not much older than I was. And they had such long hair. I didn’t cut my hair for two years after that because I wanted to be just like them. Eventually my mom had to force me into a barbershop.”
I laugh. “You realize the ticket you gave me is probably worth a few hundred dollars, right?”
“Easily. But I couldn’t ever sell it.” He smiles. “When you have kids, you hope they’ll like some of the same things you do, but of course you want them to be their own people too. I like to think you and your sister have a little of both: your own passions, and some of mine and your mom’s, too.”
“I guess we do.” I try to picture a future in which I introduce Nirvana to a child of mine. It’s too blurry, too distant.
“It’s a shame you and Adi aren’t closer,” he continues. “When we learned we were having twins, your mom was so excited. Because she doesn’t have siblings, she thought you two would each have an automatic best friend. But I suppose these things wax and wane. Neither of us can understand what your sister’s going through, and I know she’ll reach out when she needs you, and she will need you, Tov.”
“Yeah. Maybe,” I say, but I can’t imagine the girl who so shamelessly embarrassed me in front of my boyfriend reaching out to me about anything.
“I can still remember bringing you two home from the hospital. How your mom and I set you down in the cribs and just stared at each other, like, what do we do now?” He laughs, but it’s a sad, hollow laugh. Nostalgic Aba is a little too much for me to handle. “Hard to believe those little babies are eighteen now. This time next year, you’ll probably be flying home to visit us on break.”
“If I get in,” I add quickly, stomach clenching. It’s still just out of reach, no matter how badly some days I want to grab it and hold it tight. Erase some uncertainty from my life. “I’ll be at least thirty by the time I actually start working as a surgeon.” Thirty. What will be happening to Adina when I’m thirty, when I’ve finished med school and internship and residency? What about my mother?
“It’ll be worth it.”
I take in my father’s khaki pants and practical Eddie Bauer button-down. His eyes are half-closed, his knuckles tapping out the bass line on his desk. I used to love looking at old pictures of Aba, who in his twenties rocked a shaggy beard and chin-length hair and plaid flannel shirts. In those pictures, he looks so cool. He doesn’t look like someone’s dad. Sometimes when I’m doing homework at my desk, I glance up at the Nirvana ticket on my wall and try to picture him at a show, screaming every lyric, lost in a mosh pit.
After her stint in the Israeli army, Ima moved to the Pacific Northwest for college. She and Aba went to the same small liberal arts school, and they met at a Jewish Student Association–sponsored Purim party, which some non-Jews call the Jewish Halloween, though the only thing it has in common with the American holiday is that we wear costumes. Really, it commemorates Queen Esther of Persia, who in biblical times foiled a plot to exterminate the Jewish people.
Aba showed up to the party as Adam and Eve—he toted around a Barbie doll with strategically placed leaves—and Ima was dressed in all black as Charlie Chaplin. She stayed silent and in character the entire night, but she scribbled her number on a napkin, and when Aba called her the next morning, he was thrilled to hear her voice for the first time. They talked for two hours.
When he tells the story, it sounds like he fell in love with her during that first phone call.
If I get into Johns Hopkins, I won’t be leaving behind just Ima and Adina. Somehow I’ve never thought about what my departure would mean for Aba. He always seems so solid, so we’ll get through anything. This crack in his armor makes me wonder if he thinks we might not.
“I’ve always preferred live albums,” Aba says. “They’re a bit of a surprise, because the song never sounds the way it does in your head. Never the way it’s perfectly recorded, you know? Cobain doesn’t quite hit the note, or the solo gets extended. . . .”
“I know what you mean,” I say, but I’m not really listening to the crunchy chords. Maybe my diagnosis wasn’t the lucky one. In my life I’ll have to watch my mother die, and then my sister. At the very end, Aba and I will take care of them. And when they’re gone, we’ll have to somehow take care of each other.
I have to live with this forever too.
The last song on the record ends and the audience starts clapping. After the applause fades, I get up, move the needle, and start the album over.
Twenty-three
Adina
THE GUY I LOST MY virginity to is sitting across the coffee table from me, dipping a celery stick into hummus, acting like this isn’t one of the most uncomfortable moments of his life.
Eitan looks good. Better, even, than before, with suntanned skin and hair past his ears and more freckles than I remember. I haven’t seen him in two years, and he’s here for a few weeks visiting his parents. The Mizrahis live east of Seattle on Mercer Island, in a house a story larger and filled with more expensive things than ours. A tabby cat named Kugel pushes his pink nose into my knee, and I brush my fingers through his fur. He purrs as he figure-eights around my legs.
“Eitan has something exciting to share,” Tamar says, scooping up Kugel and placing him on her lap. I frown. I wanted to keep petting him.
“I guess I’ll come right out and say it, then. I’m engaged!” Eitan says, looking anywhere but at me as Ima wraps him in a hug.
“I remember when you were in diapers,” she says. “And now old enough to be married?” His cheeks redden, but he’s still smiling. “I can’t believe it.”
Aba pats his shoulder. “Mazel tov.”
It takes me too long to react in a socially acceptable way. Someone I dated—slept with—is now engaged. It makes me feel at once both ancient and infantile.
“That’s great,” I say, but everyone else is talking so loudly that my words dissolve in the air.
“Tell us about her,” Ima urges. “Is she Israeli?”
“American. She grew up in Dallas. She’s teaching English over there too. Her name is Sarah.” He pronounces it the Hebrew way, though, Suh-rah instead of Sair-uh. A slight difference, but I hear it. “I have some pictures,” he continues, pulling out his phone and tapping the screen a few times. Sarah has blond waves and a small forehead and too many teeth for her mouth.