You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “A few minutes. This building’s ancient. They really need to fix it up.” There’s something unfamiliar in Arjun’s eyes, and they won’t meet mine.

  That look makes something inside me snap. I want this to be a relationship. And in relationships, I think, you are supposed to talk about things that upset you.

  “Who is she?” I demand again, inching closer to him. Heat radiates off his body. I soften my voice. “Please. I deserve to know.”

  He sighs, dropping his basket to the elevator floor in front of us, putting up a barrier. “Becca and I dated for a little while last year, but it didn’t work out, and she wanted to get coffee to catch up.”

  “You’re not getting back together or anything, are you?”

  “No. We’re not. We were just talking.” There’s a sharp edge to his words.

  Our voices echo in this small space where we are stuck between floors, stuck between together and apart.

  “I hate that you and I can’t ‘just talk’ in public like that.”

  “You know why we can’t. You said you understood. I’ve worked hard to build my reputation here, and even a rumor about us could ruin it.” He gives the side of the elevator a light kick. “Why isn’t it working yet?” he grumbles. He takes out his cell and curses under his breath. “No service.”

  “Why didn’t you answer my messages earlier?”

  Another deep sigh, and he props an arm against the elevator wall. “You’re starting to worry me. You text me constantly, and I work, and I can’t always respond right away like you apparently need me to. And then you follow me? I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but I don’t like it.”

  “I had to see you. I—I’m really scared.” I bite the inside of my cheek. “I think I’m starting to show symptoms.”

  “Adi,” he says, an eyebrow quirking like he thinks I am making this up to mess with him. Half true, perhaps.

  “I’m serious. When it first happened to my mother, she was clumsy all the time, and that’s how I’ve been feeling. You know how she hit her head on New Year’s Eve? I dropped my viola, and now it has this crack, and I’ve never been careless with it—you know that about me. And my moods are all over the place. Also—I’ve been hearing things, seeing things out of the corner of my eye that I’m pretty sure aren’t real. Hallucinations, delusions. My mother has them.” I’m bending the truth now, seeing how far it will stretch before it snaps. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Have you talked to your parents?” His words become gentler, though his face is still anger and hard angles.

  I shake my head. “You’re the first person I’ve said it out loud to. It’s—” I force my voice up an octave so it’ll crack with just the right amount of emotion to get to him. “It’s really hard to say, and I’m terrified I won’t be able to play viola, and that’s the most important thing to me—you know that. . . . What happens when I don’t have that anymore? Who am I without it?” Tears trickle down my cheeks.

  Finally, his features soften, all his earlier rage turning into sympathy. I used to want him to want me because of me, but if pity is the only way to tether him to me right now, I will settle for it. At least it means he cares for me.

  “Come here,” he says, shoeing the laundry basket out of our way. He holds his arms out, and I collapse into them, able to breathe more deeply with his warmth around me. I grip the fabric of his shirt, hanging on tight. He feels bigger than I remember, his arms able to hold more of me. He strokes my hair, uses a finger to catch my tears. “I’m sorry, Adina.”

  When I lift my face from his chest, I put my lips to his neck and inhale him, rosin and soap and laundry detergent. I kiss the hollow of his throat until it rumbles with a groan. Then I move higher, bringing my mouth to his, biting down on his lower lip the way he likes.

  By the time we reach the first floor, I realize I hadn’t even noticed the elevator had started moving again.

  A jazz singer croons through Arjun’s speakers. Two wineglasses sit on the coffee table in front of us. Earlier we cooked dinner together, as much as boiling water for pasta and tossing arugula in oil and vinegar can be considered cooking. His refrigerator barely had anything in it—the arugula was wilted but I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t have pasta sauce, so we just sprinkled shredded cheddar on top of it. One day we will go grocery shopping together, and I will make sure he is well stocked. He probably didn’t have time to go earlier and didn’t know I’d be here. Though I guess he had time to have coffee with Becca.

  This cozy Friday night feels like a regular couple activity, but Arjun has been relatively quiet. It’s turned me into a chatterbox. I have peppered him with as many questions as I can think of, more questions about his life in India and classical music and minute details about his family members.

  “Why did you stop performing?” I ask him now. I’m wearing one of his collared shirts with the top few buttons undone. It stops at my thighs. We had sex earlier, and while it was good, if rushed—he always makes sure it is good for me—that cannot be the only language we speak anymore.

  “It’s nothing dramatic.” He sips his wine and focuses on the ruby liquid as he answers my question. When he speaks again, his voice is weary, as though he is exhausted by my interrogations. But I don’t understand it. I want to savor this adult conversation with my adult boyfriend. I want him to be so fascinated by me that he asks me questions too, but he has barely sent any my way.

  “I still want to know,” I urge as gently as I can. It must bring up bad memories. Maybe it’s similar to how my mother doesn’t talk about Israel and her life there.

  He sighs. “I’d been playing since I was very young, and it started to feel monotonous. This might sound arrogant, but a lot of the challenge was gone for me. I began to dread performances because it felt like I was spitting out music I’d committed to memory long ago. There was no excitement left for me.”

  “Why haven’t you ever told me that?”

  “How can it possibly inspire my students? I gave up, but you should go for it?” He shakes his head. “My parents couldn’t understand why I’d give it up, but I wanted out of everything. Out of that life, out of the symphony. I had a cousin in the States, so I moved here. I couldn’t be entirely away from the music, so I started teaching.”

  “Do you ever want to go back? To performing?”

  “Sometimes. I can enjoy playing simply for pleasure now. There’s no pressure. And I love teaching.”

  I draw a quarter note on his knee with a fingertip. “You’re very good at it.”

  He shifts his leg away from me, and my hand plummets to the couch. “Thank you.” Then he rises and picks up our wineglasses. “So . . . you’re okay now?”

  “What do you mean?” My heart flutters into overdrive.

  “You’re okay to go home? It seems as though you’ve calmed down. You’ll talk to your doctor about what’s going on with the clumsiness and the—hallucinations.” He trips over the word. It is always a difficult one to say.

  “Yes, but . . . I was kind of hoping I could stay over tonight.” Like we’re a real couple, I don’t say. He cannot be ready to banish me. I have never spent the night here, and I want to wake up next to him so badly. His face the first thing I see, his body the first thing I touch.

  Another tremendous sigh, as though I am asking him to let me paint his walls neon yellow as opposed to sharing a bed for eight hours. “I really don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “Why not? Tomorrow’s Saturday. You don’t have students on Saturday. And I can tell my parents I’m spending the night at a friend’s house. Easy.”

  I want to spend the night, but I also need him to say that he thinks about one day going public with our relationship. I want him to say that he’s falling for me. I want him to say he will visit me in college. All the time.

  I used to think I’d be satisfied with only the physical pieces of him, but I crave something deeper now. Love is gradual. A few more nights like this, and I know h
e will feel it too.

  Perhaps he senses how deep that need is for me, or he realizes I have shattered all his potential excuses, because he says, “All right. You can stay. Just tonight, though, okay?”

  I grin at him.

  After we clean up and decide it’s time for bed, I use the bathroom connected to his room. It is very small—in fact, the whole apartment is, but it has never bothered me. I don’t need a lot of space. I open the drawers and cabinets and examine everything. My honeysuckle body lotion could fit right there, next to his aftershave, and I could line up my tubes of lipstick to the left of his Tylenol and cough syrup. I use his toothbrush, squeeze a pinky-nail-size amount of minty green onto it.

  If I had allowed myself to continue to mope about my result, I might not be here. I might not have decided that I needed Arjun in my life not simply as a hookup or a fling, like I’ve had before, but as the real thing.

  I’ve been in his bed more than a dozen times, but tonight when I slip between the sheets, it feels different. Foreign, but in a very good way. I’ve only ever shared a bed with Tovah. She used to accuse me of touching her with my cold feet and hogging the bedcovers, which I insisted I never did. Arjun’s sheets are too thin; at home I sleep with several extra blankets because I am always cold. But I imagine his body heat will make up for that.

  He switches off the lamp, sinking the room into darkness, but he stays on the other side of the bed. I assumed he would arrange himself next to me, drape an arm across my stomach, plant a kiss between my shoulder blades.

  But none of that happens. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek in frustration. Perhaps I have one more way to keep myself in control long enough for him to realize he is falling for me. One last secret to reveal.

  “I’ve decided something,” I say, and he must be nearing sleep because he gives a slightly muffled “Mm?”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of research about what’s going to happen to me when I—when I develop Huntington’s.” The when, the tangibility of it, trips on my tongue. “I have a plan.”

  “That’s good,” he says sleepily. “I’m so glad to hear that.”

  I smile. It is good. Then I choose my words carefully. “I won’t let this thing hold me back. I’ll go to conservatory, and I’ll do whatever I can to become a soloist as soon as possible.” Even though my hands quake when I play. “I’m going to travel, too. With you, hopefully. Until the symptoms start. And then, well, that will be it. I will be done. With . . . living.”

  It is the first time I’ve uttered my plan aloud. There is a poetry to it, a quiet sadness that lives inside all my favorite concertos and preludes.

  For a while he doesn’t speak, and I wonder if he’s fallen asleep. But then he says, “Adina—” and I shift to face him, putting a finger to his lips. He draws in a deep breath.

  “I don’t want to say anything else about it. Not tonight, okay? I just want to enjoy this with you.”

  He nods in the darkness and finally pulls me tight against him, his chest against my back. My bones and muscles melt victoriously into his touch.

  The next time I see him, I will insist our relationship cannot stay a secret any longer. I will tell him I’ve fallen so hard that spending these past three days without him was like living without oxygen. Without music. On vacations from school we’ll go to Israel and India and anywhere else we want. We’ll eat falafel and dunk bread in neon curries and paint ourselves with mud from the Dead Sea. We’ll listen to symphonies in all the world capitals. And someday, even just for a short time, I’ll be up on that stage, knowing that when my performance is over, he will be waiting for me.

  Twenty-eight

  Tovah

  ADINA CREEPS INSIDE THE HOUSE with the grace of a cat. One of Ima’s knitted scarves, a maroon that matches the flush on her cheeks, is loose around her neck. Her hair, as usual, is long and wild. Beautiful.

  I sip a vanilla protein shake as she tiptoes from the hall to the kitchen, unaware I’m watching her. Waiting to catch her and interrogate her.

  I quit track—which I joined only to put it on my JHU application—the day after my rejection, but I can’t seem to give up running entirely. I won’t allow my muscles to atrophy. My internal clock wakes me up early, even on Saturday mornings. Most exercise is prohibited on Shabbat unless it relaxes you. These days, running is one of the few things that does.

  “Are you just now getting home?” I ask.

  Adina jumps, startled by my voice. “Good morning to you, too.”

  She pours herself a glass of orange juice, and we do an awkward dance in the kitchen for a few seconds as we try to get out of each other’s way. Then she sits at the table across from me. Casually. Like staying out all night is something she does all the time.

  “Were you with that guy?” I ask. “Your mysterious boyfriend?”

  Adina shrugs. Takes a sip of juice.

  She was. She was with a guy the whole night. On Shabbat.

  “Did you have sex with him?” The word isn’t frightening anymore. After all, Zack and I are on the precipice of it.

  “I have been for a while.”

  “Oh,” I say softly.

  He’s not my first, she said before her audition trip. I assumed she meant first boyfriend. First kiss. Not the first everything else.

  I guess I thought, even after everything we’ve done to each other, that she’d tell me when the first everything else happened. I can’t believe I missed it. That I have no idea who it was or when it was, if it was good and if she felt different afterward.

  “It isn’t a big deal,” she says, unwinding the scarf and fluffing her hair.

  My sister looks calm. Relaxed. Happy. Is it because of the sex? Maybe she should be having as much sex as she wants. Why shouldn’t she?

  If I’d tested positive instead of my sister, there’d be no Zack. I’m sure of that. There’d be none of these Adina mind games. Would I have been as heartbroken over Johns Hopkins? I planned so much for both outcomes, but none of this is what I expected. At all.

  Adina is the person I’m going to have to take care of the rest of my life. We’ll always be tied together like this. Every day of my life, I’ll face this nightmare of my supreme genetic luck. Over and over and over.

  I force myself to drink a third of the protein shake; if I don’t, I’ll feel miserable my entire run. Adina smiles at something on her phone, draws a design on her glass with a fingertip, hums something off-key under her breath. God, she really is happy. Evil eyes glint on her wrist.

  “You’ve been wearing the bracelet every day too, right?” I say, searching for some common ground between us. Like after everything we’ve been through, maybe all we have in common is a piece of jewelry.

  “Oh.” Her eyes dart from her bracelet to mine. “The bracelets from savtah.”

  “Yeah.” I take a closer look at hers. The bracelets are nearly identical. The beads on hers are larger, a deeper blue. I haven’t noticed before.

  “Well, mine belonged to savtah,” Adina says, and when I raise my brows in confusion, she continues: “Ima only had one actual heirloom. She found yours online and told me not to tell you. I guess yours does look a little cheap.”

  “What are you—,” I start, shaking my head, not sure if she’s telling the truth or merely trying to hurt me. “You—you’ve been skipping school,” I wind up firing back at her, fighting for leverage in this conversation. “Your teachers have been asking me where you are.” To be fair, it was only one teacher we have in common, Ms. Hawkins, who teaches both regular gov and my AP US Government class. She mentioned to me yesterday that she hadn’t seen Adina in more than a week and calls to my parents had gone unanswered.

  “Why does it matter? I’m going to Peabody next year anyway.”

  A pause. I blink at her.

  “You’re . . .” The words dissolve on my lips. She’s strapped me to an operating table and cut out my tongue. “Peabody, as in the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins? You’re going to Baltimore?�
��

  Her lips twist into a strange smile. She drags the scalpel from my mouth to my heart. “Yes. I am. My acceptances arrived yesterday. I got in everywhere I auditioned, but it was an easy choice. Baltimore was incredible when I was there, Tovah. I loved it. All the old architecture, and how artsy it is, and the cute little neighborhoods . . . There’s so much history there, you know?”

  Of course I fucking know.

  “And the Peabody campus is much prettier than Johns Hopkins. JHU looks like any old college campus, but Peabody is like something out of a movie.”

  Any old college campus. How dare she make it sound ordinary.

  She continues to babble about Baltimore. My Baltimore. She’ll walk those cobblestone streets and absorb all the energy of a brand-new place. Maybe she deserves exactly that. Surely she does. She tested positive, so she gets everything else she wants, and I get indecision and confusion and choices, choices, choices.

  “I was supposed to be there,” I say hollowly, as though I had some claim to it. I wasn’t good enough. Adina knows it. I know it. The entire city of Baltimore knows it.

  “You didn’t get in.” She finishes her juice and gets up, leaving her empty glass on the table. “Hey, since you’re the expert, do you think I should take any classes at Johns Hopkins my freshman year?”

  I’m so numb, I can’t even feel her scalpel anymore. Peabody students are allowed to take classes on the Hopkins campus, but I can’t imagine what kinds of courses would interest Adina.

  I shrug like I don’t care, though there are few things I care about more at the moment.

  She stands. “I’ll figure it out later, I guess. I’m going back to sleep.”

  I wash out her glass and place it in the dishwasher so our parents don’t have to deal with it later. Typical careless Adina. Then I roll the evil-eye bracelet off my wrist and slip it into my pocket.

  Suddenly it seems like I’m the one struggling more than she is. I’m the one stuck deciding where to go to school. I’m the one suffocating beneath all this guilt. I’m the one who can’t figure out how the hell to be happy with my own result.