If I Stay

chapter 15



4:57 A.M.

I can’t stop thinking about “Waiting for Vengeance.” It’s been years since I’ve listened to or thought of that song, but after Gramps left my bedside, I’ve been singing it to myself over and over. Dad wrote the song ages ago, but now it feels like he wrote it yesterday. Like he wrote it from wherever he is. Like there’s a secret message in it for me. How else to explain those lyrics? I’m not choosing. But I’m running out of fight.
What does it mean? Is it supposed to be some kind of instruction? Some clue about what my parents would choose for me if they could? I try to think about it from their perspectives. I know they’d want to be with me, for us all to be together again eventually. But I have no idea if that even happens after you die, and if it does, it’ll happen whether I go this morning or in seventy years. What would they want for me now? As soon as I pose the question, I can see Mom’s pissed-off expression. She’d be livid with me for even contemplating anything but staying. But Dad, he understood what it meant to run out of fight. Maybe, like Gramps, he’d understand why I don’t think I can stay.
I’m singing the song, as if buried within its lyrics are instructions, a musical road map to where I’m supposed to go and how to get there.
I’m singing and concentrating and singing and thinking so hard that I barely register Willow’s return to the ICU, barely notice that she’s talking to the grumpy nurse, barely recognize the steely determination in her tone.
Had I been paying attention, I might have realized that Willow was lobbying for Adam to be able to visit me. Had I been paying attention, I might have somehow got away before Willow was—as always—successful.
I don’t want to see him now. I mean, of course I do. I ache to. But I know that if I see him, I’m going to lose the last wisp of peacefulness that Gramps gave me when he told me that it was okay to go. I’m trying to summon the courage to do what I have to do. And Adam will complicate things. I try to stand up to get away, but something has happened to me since I went back into surgery. I no longer have the strength to move. It takes all my effort to sit upright in my chair. I can’t run away; all I can do is hide. I curl my knees into my chest and close my eyes.
I hear Nurse Ramirez talking to Willow. “I’ll take him over,” she says. And for once, the grumpy nurse doesn’t order her back to her own patients.
“That was a pretty boneheaded move you pulled earlier,” I hear her tell Adam.
“I know,” Adam answers. His voice is a throaty whisper, the way it gets after a particularly scream-y concert. “I was desperate.”
“No, you were romantic,” she tells him.
“I was idiotic. They said she was doing better before. That she’d come off the ventilator. That she was getting stronger. But after I came in here that she got worse. They said her heart stopped on the operating table . . .” Adam trails off.
“And they got it started. She had a perforated bowel that was slowly leaking bile into her abdomen and it threw her organs out of whack. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it had nothing to do with you. We caught it and fixed it and that’s what matters.”
“But she was doing better,” Adam whispers. He sounds so young and vulnerable, like Teddy used to sound when he got the stomach flu. “And then I came in and she almost died.” His voice chokes into a sob. The sound of it wakes me up like a bucket of ice water dropped down my shirt. Adam thinks that he did this to me? No! That’s beyond absurd. He’s so wrong.
“And I almost stayed in Puerto Rico to marry a fat SOB,” the nurse snaps. “But I di’int. And I have a different life now. Almost don’t matter. You got to deal with the situation at hand. And she’s still here.” She whips the privacy curtain around my bed. “In you go,” she tells Adam.
I force my head up and my eyes open. Adam. God, even in this state, he is beautiful. His eyes are dipping with fatigue. He’s sprouting stubble, enough of it that if we were to make out, it would make my chin raw. He is wearing his typical band uniform of a T-shirt, skinny pegged pants, and Converse, with Gramps’s plaid scarf draped over his shoulders.
When he first sees me, he blanches, like I’m some hideous Creature from the Black Lagoon. I do look pretty bad, hooked back up to the ventilator and a dozen other tubes, the dressing from my latest surgery seeping blood. But after a moment, Adam exhales loudly and then he’s just Adam again. He searches around, like he’s dropped something and then finds what he’s looking for: my hand.
“Jesus, Mia, your hands are freezing.” He squats down, takes my right hand into his, and careful to not bump into my tubes and wires, draws his mouth to them, blowing warm air into the shelter he’s created. “You and your crazy hands.” Adam is always amazed at how even in middle of summer, even after the sweatiest of encounters, my hands stay cold. I tell him it’s bad circulation but he doesn’t buy it because my feet are usually warm. He says I have bionic hands, that this is why I’m such a good cello player.
I watch him warm my hands as he has done a thousand times before. I think of the first time he did it, at school, sitting on the lawn, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I also remember the first time he did it in front of my parents. We were all sitting on the porch on Christmas Eve, drinking cider. It was freezing outside. Adam grabbed my hands and blew on them. Teddy giggled. Mom and Dad didn’t say anything, just exchanged a quick look, something private that passed between them and then Mom smiled ruefully at us.
I wonder if I tried, if I could feel him touching me. If I were to lie down on top of myself in the bed, would I become one with my body again? Would I feel him then? If I reached out my ghostly hand to his, would he feel me? Would he warm the hands he cannot see?
Adam drops my hand and steps forward to look at me. He is standing so close that I can almost smell him and I’m overpowered by the need to touch him. It’s basic, primal, and all-consuming the way a baby needs its mother’s breast. Even though I know, if we touch, a new tug-of-war—one that will be even more painful than the quiet one Adam and I have been waging these past few months—will begin.
Adam is mumbling something now. In a low voice. Over and over he is saying: please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Finally, he stops and looks at my face. “Please, Mia,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”
I’d never expected to fall in love. I was never the kind of girl who had crushes on rock stars or fantasies about marrying Brad Pitt. I sort of vaguely knew that one day I’d probably have boyfriends (in college, if Kim’s prediction was anything to go by) and get married. I wasn’t totally immune to the charms of the opposite sex, but I wasn’t one of those romantic, swoony girls who had pink fluffy daydreams about falling in love.
Even as I was falling in love—full throttle, intense, can’t-erase-that-goofy-smile love—I didn’t really register what was happening. When I was with Adam, at least after those first few awkward weeks, I felt so good that I didn’t bother thinking about what was going on with me, with us. It just felt normal and right, like slipping into a hot bubble bath. Which isn’t to say we didn’t fight. We argued over lots of stuff: him not being nice enough to Kim, me being antisocial at shows, how fast he drove, how I stole the covers. I got upset because he never wrote any songs about me. He claimed he wasn’t good with sappy love songs: “If you want a song, you’ll have to cheat on me or something,” he said, knowing full well that wasn’t going to happen.
This past fall, though, Adam and I started to have a different kind of fight. It wasn’t even a fight, really. We didn’t shout. We barely even argued, but a snake of tension quietly slithered into our lives. And it seemed like it all started with my Juilliard audition.
“So did you knock them dead?” Adam asked me when I got back. “They gonna let you in with a full scholarship?”
I had a feeling that they were going to let me in, at least—even before I told Professor Christie about the one judge’s “long time since we’ve had an Oregon country girl” comment, even before she hyperventilated because she was so convinced this was a tacit promise of admission. Something had happened to my playing in that audition; I had broken through some invisible barrier and could finally play the pieces like I heard them being played in my head, and the result had been something transcendent: the mental and physical, the technical and emotional sides of my abilities all finally blending. Then, on the drive home, as Gramps and I were approaching the California-Oregon border, I just had this sudden flash—a vision of me lugging a cello through New York City. And it was like I knew, and that certainty planted itself in my belly like a warm secret. I’m not the kind of person who’s prone to premonitions or overconfidence, so I suspected that there was more to my flash than magical thinking.
“I did okay,” I told Adam, and as I said it, I realized that I’d just straight-out lied to him for the first time, and that this was different from all the lying by omission I’d been doing before.
I had neglected to tell Adam that I was applying to Juilliard in the first place, which was actually harder than it sounded. Before I sent in my application, I had to practice every spare moment with Professor Christie to fine-tune the Shostakovich concerto and the two Bach suites. When Adam asked me why I was so busy, I gave purposely vague excuses about learning tough new pieces. I justified this to myself because it was technically true. And then Professor Christie arranged for me to have a recording session at the university so I could submit a high-quality CD to Juilliard. I had to be at the studio at seven in the morning on a Sunday and the night before I’d pretended to be feeling out of sorts and told Adam he probably shouldn’t stay over. I’d justified that fib, too. I was feeling out of sorts because I was so nervous. So, it wasn’t a real lie. And besides, I thought, there was no point in making a big fuss about it. I hadn’t told Kim, either, so it wasn’t like Adam was getting special deception treatment.
But after I told him I’d only done okay at the audition, I had the feeling that I was wading into quicksand, and that if I took one more step, there’d be no extricating myself and I’d sink until I suffocated. So I took a deep breath and heaved myself back onto solid ground. “Actually, that’s not true,” I told Adam. “I did really well. I played better than I ever have in my life. It was like I was possessed.”
Adam’s first reaction was to smile with pride. “I wish I could’ve seen that.” But then his eyes clouded over and his lips fell into a frown. “Why’d you downplay it?” he asked. “Why didn’t you call me after the audition to brag?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, this is great news,” Adam said, trying to mask his hurt. “We should be celebrating.”
“Okay, let’s celebrate,” I said, with a forced gaiety. “We can go to Portland Saturday. Go to the Japanese Gardens and go out for dinner at Beau Thai.”
Adam grimaced. “I can’t. We’re playing in Olympia and Seattle this weekend. Minitour. Remember? I’d love for you to come, but I don’t know if that’s really a celebration for you. But I’ll be back Sunday late afternoon. I can meet you in Portland Sunday night if you want.”
“I can’t. I’m playing in a string quartet at some professor’s house. What about next weekend?”
Adam looked pained. “We’re in the studio the next couple weekends, but we can go out during the week somewhere. Around here. To the Mexican place?”
“Sure. The Mexican place,” I said.
Two minutes before, I hadn’t even wanted to celebrate, but now I was feeling dejected and insulted at being relegated to a midweek dinner at the same place we always went to.
When Adam graduated from high school last spring and moved out of his parents’ place and into the House of Rock, I hadn’t expected much to change. He’d still live nearby. We’d still see each other all the time. I’d miss our little powwows in the music wing, but I would also be relieved to have our relationship out from under the microscope of high school.
But things had changed when Adam moved into the House of Rock and started college, though not for the reasons I’d thought they would. At the beginning of the fall, just as Adam was getting used to college life, things suddenly started heating up with Shooting Star. The band was offered a record deal with a medium-size label based in Seattle and now were busy in the studio recording. They were also playing more shows, to larger and larger crowds, almost every weekend. Things were so hectic that Adam had dropped half his course load and was going to college part-time, and if things kept up at this rate, he was thinking of dropping out altogether. “There are no second chances,” he told me.
I was genuinely excited for him. I knew that Shooting Star was something special, more than just a college-town band. I hadn’t minded Adam’s increasing absences, especially since he made it so clear how much he minded them. But somehow, the prospect of Juilliard made things different—somehow it made me mind. Which didn’t make any sense at all because if anything, it should have leveled the field. Now I had something exciting happening, too.
“We can go to Portland in a few weeks,” Adam promised. “When all the holiday lights are up.”
“Okay,” I said sullenly.
Adam sighed. “Things are getting complicated, aren’t they?”
“Yeah. Our schedules are too busy,” I said.
“That’s not what I meant,” Adam said, turning my face toward his so I was looking at him in the eye.
“I know that’s not what you meant,” I replied, but then a lump lodged itself in my throat and I couldn’t talk anymore.
We tried to defuse the tension, to talk about it without really talking about it, to joke-ify it. “You know I read in US News and World Report that Willamette University has a good music program,” Adam told me. “It’s in Salem, which is apparently getting hipper by the moment.”
“According to who? The governor?” I replied.
“Liz found some good stuff at a vintage-clothing store there. And you know, once the vintage places come in, the hipsters aren’t far behind.”
“You forget, I’m not a hipster,” I reminded him. “But speaking of, maybe Shooting Star should move to New York. I mean, it’s the heart of the punk scene. The Ramones. Blondie.” My tone was frothy and flirtatious, an Oscar-worthy performance.
“That was thirty years ago,” Adam said. “And even if I wanted to move to New York, there’s no way the rest of the band would.” He stared mournfully at his shoes and I recognized the joking part of the conversation had ended. My stomach lurched, an appetizer before the full portion of heartache I had a feeling was going to be served at some point soon.
Adam and I had never been the kind of couple to talk about the future, about where our relationship was going, but with things suddenly so unclear, we avoided talking about anything that was happening more than a few weeks away, and this made our conversations as stilted and awkward as they’d been in those early weeks together before we’d found our groove. One afternoon in the fall, I spotted a beautiful 1930s silk gown in the vintage store where Dad bought his suits and I almost pointed it out to Adam and asked if he thought I should wear that to the prom, but prom was in June and maybe Adam would be on tour in June or maybe I’d be too busy getting ready for Juilliard, so I didn’t say anything. Not long after that, Adam was complaining about his decrepit guitar, saying he wanted to get a vintage Gibson SG, and I offered to get it for him for his birthday. But then he said that those guitars cost thousands of dollars, and besides his birthday wasn’t until September, and the way he said September, it was like a judge issuing a prison sentence.
A few weeks ago, we went to a New Year’s Eve party together. Adam got drunk, and when midnight came, he kissed me hard. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll spend New Year’s with me next year,” he whispered into my ear.
I was about to explain that even if I did go to Juilliard, I’d be home for Christmas and New Year’s, but then I realized that wasn’t the point. So I promised him because I wanted it to be true as much as he did. And I kissed him back so hard, like I was trying to merge our bodies through our lips.
On New Year’s Day, I came home to find the rest of my family gathered in the kitchen with Henry, Willow, and the baby. Dad was making breakfast: smoked-salmon hash, his specialty.
Henry shook his head when he saw me. “Look at the kids today. Seems like just yesterday that stumbling home at eight o’clock felt early. Now I’d kill just to be able to sleep until eight.”
“We didn’t even make it till midnight,” Willow admitted, bouncing the baby on her lap. “Good thing, because this little lady decided to start her new year at five-thirty.”
“I stayed up till midnight!” Teddy yelled. “I saw the ball drop on TV at twelve. It’s in New York, you know? If you move there, will you take me to see it drop in real life?” he asked.
“Sure, Teddy,” I said feigning enthusiasm. The idea of me going to New York was seeming more and more real, and though this generally filled me with a nervous, if conflicted, excitement, the image of me and Teddy hanging out together on New Year’s Eve left me feeling unbearably lonely.
Mom looked at me, eyebrows arched. “It’s New Year’s Day, so I won’t give you shit for coming in at this hour. But if you’re hungover, you’re grounded.”
“I’m not. I had one beer. I’m just tired.”
“Just tired, is it? You sure?” Mom grabbed ahold of my wrist and turned me toward her. When she saw my stricken expression, she tilted her head to the side as if to say, You okay? I shrugged and bit my lip to keep from losing it. Mom nodded. She handed me a cup of coffee and led me to the table. She put down a plate of hash and a thick slice of sourdough bread, and even though I couldn’t imagine being hungry, my mouth watered and my stomach rumbled and I was suddenly ravenous. I ate silently, Mom watching me all the while. After everyone was done, Mom sent the rest of them into the living room to watch the Rose Parade on TV.
“Everyone out,” she ordered. “Mia and I will do the washing up.”
As soon as everyone was gone, Mom turned to me and I just fell against her, crying and releasing all of the tension and uncertainty of the last few weeks. She stood there silently, letting me blubber all over her sweater. When I stopped, she held out the sponge. “You wash. I’ll dry. We’ll talk. I always find it calming. The warm water, the soap.”
Mom picked up the dish towel and we went to work. And I told her about Adam and me. “It was like we had this perfect year and a half,” I said. “So perfect that I never even thought about the future. About it taking us in different directions.”
Mom’s smile was both sad and knowing. “I thought about it.”
I turned to her. She was staring straight out the window, watching a couple of sparrows bathe in a puddle. “I remember last year when Adam came over for Christmas Eve. I told your father that you’d fallen in love too soon.”
“I know, I know. What does a dumb kid know about love?”
Mom stopped drying a skillet. “That’s not what I meant. The opposite, really. You and Adam never struck me as a ‘high-school’ relationship,” Mom said making quote marks with her hands. “It was nothing like the drunken roll in the back of some guy’s Chevy that passed for a relationship when I was in high school. You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.” She sighed. “But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.”
That made me smile and made the pit in my stomach soften a little. “Tell me about it,” I said. “Though if we weren’t both musicians, we could go to college together and be fine.”
“That’s a cop-out, Mia,” Mom countered. “All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony. I don’t have to tell you that.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“And come on, music brought you two together. That’s what your father and I always thought. You were both in love with music and then you fell in love with each other. It was a little like that for your dad and me. I didn’t play but I listened. Luckily, I was a little older when we met.”
I’d never told Mom about what Adam had said that night after the Yo-Yo Ma concert, when I’d asked him Why me? How the music was totally a part of it. “Yeah, but now I feel like it’s music that’s going to pull us apart.”
Mom shook her head. “That’s bullshit. Music can’t do that. Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.” She turned to face me. “Adam’s not trying to stop you going to Juilliard, is he?”
“No more than I’m trying to get him to move to New York. And it’s all ridiculous anyway. I might not even go.”
“No, you might not. But you’re going somewhere. I think we all get that. And the same is true for Adam.”
“At least he can go somewhere while still living here.”
Mom shrugged. “Maybe. For now anyhow.”
I put my face in my hands and shook my head. “What am I going to do?” I lamented. “I feel like I’m caught in a tug-of-war.”
Mom shot me a sympathetic grimace. “I don’t know. But I do know that if you want to stay and be with him, I’d support that, though maybe I’m only saying that because I don’t think you’d be able to turn down Juilliard. But I’d understand if you chose love, Adam love, over music love. Either way you win. And either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love’s a bitch.”
Adam and I talked about it once more after that. We were at House of Rock, sitting on his futon. He was riffing about on his acoustic guitar.
“I might not get in,” I told him. “I might wind up at school here, with you. In a way, I hope I don’t get accepted so I don’t have to choose.”
“If you get in, the choice is already made, isn’t it?” Adam asked.
It was. I would go. It didn’t mean I’d stop loving Adam or that we’d break up, but Mom and Adam were both right. I wouldn’t turn down Juilliard.
Adam was silent for a minute, plinking away at his guitar so loud that I almost missed it when he said, “I don’t want to be the guy who doesn’t want you to go. If the tables were turned, you’d let me go.”
“I kind of already have. In a way, you’re already gone. To your own Juilliard,” I said.
“I know,” Adam said quietly. “But I’m still here. And I’m still crazy in love with you.”
“Me, too,” I said. And then we stopped talking for a while as Adam strummed an unfamiliar melody. I asked him what he was playing.
“I’m calling it ‘The Girlfriend’s-Going-to-Juilliard-Leaving-My-Punk-Heart-in-Shreds Blues,’” he said, singing the title in an exaggeratedly twangy voice. Then he smiled that goofy shy smile that I felt like came from the truest part of him. “I’m kidding.”
“Good,” I said.
“Sort of,” he added.