by Гейл Форман
When Dad turned on the sprinkler for Teddy and the baby, everyone else decided to run through it. We left it on so long that the brown grass turned into a big slippery puddle and I wondered if the governor himself might come and tell us off. Adam tackled me and we laughed and squirmed around on the lawn. It was so hot, I didn’t bother changing into dry clothes, just kept dousing myself whenever I got too sweaty. By the end of the day, my sundress was stiff. Teddy had taken his shirt off and had streaked himself with mud. Dad said he looked like one of the boys from Lord of the Flies.
When it started to get dark, most people left to catch the fireworks display at the university or to see a band called Oswald Five-0 play in town. A handful of people, including Adam, Kim, Willow, and Henry, stayed. When it cooled off, Dad lit a campfire on the lawn, and we roasted marshmallows. Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.
At one point, Dad and Adam stopped playing and I caught them whispering about something. Then they went inside, to get more beer, they claimed. But when they returned they were carrying my cello.
“Oh, no, I’m not giving a concert,” I said.
“We don’t want you to,” Dad said. “We want you to play with us.”
“No way,” I said. Adam had occasionally tried to get me to “jam” with him and I always refused. Lately he’d started joking about us playing air-guitar-air-cello duets, which was about as far as I was willing to go.
“Why not, Mia?” Kim said. “Are you such a classical-music snob?”
“It’s not that,” I said, suddenly feeling panicked. “It’s just that the two styles don’t fit together.”
“Says who?” Mom asked, her eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, who knew you were such a musical segregationist?” Henry joked.
Willow rolled her eyes at Henry and turned to me. “Pretty please,” she said as she rocked the baby to sleep in her lap. “I never get to hear you play anymore.”
“C’mon, Mee,” Henry said. “You’re among family.”
“Totally,” Kim said.
Adam took my hand and caressed the inside of my wrist with his fingers. “Do it for me. I really want to play with you. Just once.”
I was about to shake my head, to reaffirm that my cello had no place among the jamming guitars, no place in the punk-rock world. But then I looked out at Mom, who was smirking at me, as if issuing a challenge, and Dad, who was tapping on his pipe, pretending to be nonchalant so as not to apply any pressure, and Teddy, who was jumping up and down — though I think it was because he was hopped up on marshmallows, not because he had any desire to hear me play — and Kim and Willow and Henry all peering at me like this really mattered, and Adam, looking as awed and proud as he always did when he listened to me play. And I was a little scared of falling on my face, of not blending, of making bad music. But everyone was looking at me so intently, wanting me to join in so much, and I realized that sounding bad wasn’t the worst thing in the world that could happen.
So I played. And even though you wouldn’t think it, the cello didn’t sound half bad with all those guitars. In fact, it sounded pretty amazing.
7:16 A.M
It’s morning. And inside the hospital, there’s a different kind of dawn, a rustling of covers, a clearing of the eyes. In some ways, the hospital never goes to sleep. The lights stay on and the nurses stay awake, but even though it’s still dark outside, you can tell that things are waking up. The doctors are back, yanking on my eyelids, shining their lights at me, frowning as they scribble notes in my chart as though I’ve let them down.
I don’t care anymore. I’m tired of this all, and it will be over soon. The social worker is back on duty again, too. It looks like the night’s sleep had little impact on her. Her eyes are still heavy, her hair a kinky mess. She reads my chart and listens to updates from the nurses on my bumpy night, which seems to make her even more tired. The nurse with the blue-black skin is also back. She greeted me by telling me how glad she was to see me this morning, how she’d been thinking about me last night, hoping I’d be here. Then she noticed the bloodstain on my blanket and tsked tsked before hustling off to get me a new one.
After Kim left, there haven’t been any more visitors. I guess Willow has run out of people to lobby me with. I wonder if this deciding business is something that all the nurses are aware of. Nurse Ramirez sure knew about it. And I think the nurse with me now knows it, too, judging by how congratulatory she’s acting that I made it through the night. And Willow seems like she knows it, too, with the way she’s been marching everyone through here. I like these nurses so much. I hope they will not take my decision personally.
I am so tired now that I can barely blink my eyes. It’s all just a matter of time, and part of me wonders why I’m delaying the inevitable. But I know why. I’m waiting for Adam to come back. Though it seems like he has been gone for an eternity, it’s probably only been an hour. And he asked me to wait, so I will. That’s the least I can do for him.
My eyes are closed so I hear him before I see him. I hear the raspy, quick rushes of his lungs. He is panting like he just ran a marathon. Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I’d bottle and wear as perfume if I could. I open my eyes. Adam has closed his. But the lids are puffy and pink, so I know what he’s been doing. Is that why he went away? To cry without my seeing?
He doesn’t so much sit in the chair as fall into it, like clothes heaped onto the floor at the end of a long day. He covers his face with his hands and takes deep breaths to steady himself. After a minute, he drops his hands into his lap. “Just listen,” he says with a voice that sounds like shrapnel.
I open my eyes wide now. I sit up as much as I can. And I listen.
“Stay.” With that one word, Adam’s voice catches, but he swallows the emotion and pushes forward. “There’s no word for what happened to you. There’s no good side of it. But there is something to live for. And I’m not talking about me. It’s just. . I don’t know. Maybe I’m talking shit. I know I’m in shock. I know I haven’t digested what happened to your parents, to Teddy. . ” When he says Teddy, his voice cracks and an avalanche of tears tumbles down his face. And I think: I love you.
I hear him take gulpfuls of air to steady himself. And then he continues: “All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean, I know that your life is fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I’m not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can’t wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me.
“If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would just be too painful, that maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”
Then it is Adam who lets go. His sobs burst like fists pounding against tender flesh.
I close my eyes. I cover my ears. I cannot watch this. I cannot hear this.
But then, it is no longer Adam that I hear. It’s that sound, the low moan that in an instant takes flight and turns into something sweet. It’s the cello. Adam has placed headphones over my lifeless ears and is laying an iPod down on my chest. He’s apologizing, saying that he knows this isn’t my favorite but it was the best he could do. He turns up the volume so I can hea
r the music floating across the morning air. Then he takes my hand.
It is Yo-Yo Ma. Playing Andante con poco e moto rubato. The low piano plays almost as if in warning. In comes the cello, like a heart bleeding. And it’s like something inside of me implodes.
I am sitting around the breakfast table with my family, drinking hot coffee, laughing at Teddy’s chocolate-chip mustache. The snow is blowing outside.
I am visiting a cemetery. Three graves under a tree on a hill overlooking the river.
I am lying with Adam, my head on his chest, on a sandy bank next to the river.
I am hearing people say the word orphan and realize that they’re talking about me.
I am walking through New York City with Kim, the skyscrapers casting shadows on our faces.
I am holding Teddy on my lap, tickling him as he giggles so hard he keels over.
I am sitting with my cello, the one Mom and Dad gave me after my first recital. My fingers caress the wood and the pegs, which time and touch have worn smooth. My bow is poised over the strings now. I am looking at my hand, waiting to start playing.
I am looking at my hand, being held by Adam’s hand.
Yo-Yo Ma continues to play, and it’s like the piano and cello are being poured into my body, the same way that the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take it anymore. Until I cannot be like this one second longer.
There is a blinding flash, a pain that rips through me for one searing instant, a silent scream from my broken body. For the first time, I can sense how fully agonizing staying will be.
But then I feel Adam’s hand. Not sense it, but feel it. I’m not sitting huddled in the chair anymore. I’m lying on my back in the hospital bed, one again with my body.
Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I’m feeling things at last. I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill. But I’m also feeling all that I have in my life, which includes what I have lost, as well as the great unknown of what life might still bring me. And it’s all too much. The feelings pile up, threatening to crack my chest wide open. The only way to survive them is to concentrate on Adam’s hand. Grasping mine.
And suddenly I just need to hold his hand more than I’ve ever needed anything in this world. Not just be held by it, but hold it back. I aim every remaining ounce of energy into my right hand. I’m weak, and this is so hard. It’s the hardest thing I will ever have to do. I summon all the love I have ever felt, I summon all the strength that Gran and Gramps and Kim and the nurses and Willow have given me. I summon all the breath that Mom, Dad, and Teddy would fill me with if they could. I summon all my own strength, focus it like a laser beam into the fingers and palm of my right hand. I picture my hand stroking Teddy’s hair, grasping a bow poised above my cello, interlaced with Adam’s.
And then I squeeze.
I slump back, spent, unsure of whether I just did what I did. Of what it means. If it registered. If it matters.
But then I feel Adam’s grip tighten, so that the grasp of his hand feels like it is holding my entire body. Like it could lift me up right out of this bed. And then I hear the sharp intake of his breath followed by the sound of his voice. It’s the first time today I can truly hear him.
“Mia?” he asks.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several people came together in a short amount of time to make If I Stay possible. It starts with Gillian Aldrich, who started crying (in a good way) when I told her about my idea. This proved to be quite a good motivator to get started.
Tamara Glenny, Eliza Griswold, Kim Sevcik, and Sean Smith took time out of their hectic schedules to read early drafts and offer much-needed encouragement. For their enduring generosity and friendship, I love and thank them. Some people help you keep your head straight; Marjorie Ingall helps me keep my heart straight, and for that I love and thank her. Thank you also to Jana and Moshe Banin.
Sarah Burnes is my agent in the truest sense of the word, harnessing her formidable intelligence, insight, passion, and warmth to shepherd the words that I write to the people who should read them. She and the superb Courtney Gatewood and Stephanie Cabot have made miracles happen where this book is concerned.
When I first met with the team at Penguin, I felt like I was sitting down with family. My extraordinary editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, has lavished Mia and her family (not to mention me) with the careful attention and love you’d hope to get from a relative. She is “Julie-special.” Don Weisberg put both heart and muscle into this book, and the editorial, sales, marketing, publicity, and design people have all gone above and beyond, and for that I want to individually thank: Heather Alexander, Scottie Bowditch, Leigh Butler, Mary-Margaret Callahan, Lisa DeGroff, Erin Dempsey, Jackie Engel, Felicia Frazier, Kristin Gilson, Annie Hurwitz, Ras Shahn Johnson-Baker, Deborah Kaplan, Eileen Kreit, Kimberly Lauber, Rosanne Lauer, Stephanie Owens Lurie, Barbara Marcus, Casey McIntrye, Steve Meltzer, Shanta Newlin, Mary Raymond, Emily Romero, Holly Ruck, Jana Singer, Laurence Tucci, Allison Verost, Allan Winebarger, Courtney Wood, Heather Wood, and Lisa Yoskowitz. And finally a huge thank you to the field reps who worked so hard on behalf of this book. (Phew).
Music is a huge part of this story, and I drew a lot of inspiration from Yo-Yo Ma — whose own work informs much of Mia’s story — and from Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, whose song “Falling Slowly” I probably listened to more than two hundred times while working on the book.
Thanks to my Oregon contingent: Greg and Diane Rios, who have been our compatriots through all this. John and Peg Christie, whose grace, dignity, and generosity continue to move me. Jennifer Larson, M.D., an old friend and, as luck would have it an emergency room doctor, who enlightened me about Glasgow Coma Scales, among other medical details.
My parents — Lee and Ruth Forman — and my siblings — Tamar Schamhart and Greg Forman — are my cheerleaders and most steadfast fans, who ignore my failings (professional ones, anyhow) and celebrate my successes as if they were their own (which they are). Thank you also to Karen Forman, Robert Schamhart, and Detta Tucker.
I didn’t immediately recognize how much of this book is about the way parents transform their lives for their children. Willa Tucker teaches me this lesson every day and is occasionally forgiving when I am too absorbed playing make-believe in my head to play make-believe with her.
Without my husband, Nick Tucker, none of this would be. I owe him everything.
Finally, my deepest thanks go to R.D.T.J., who inspire me in so many ways and who show me every single day that there is such a thing as immortality.
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