Chapter 7 Redemption Song
Redemption Song
In every generation, you should feel as though you personally left Egypt.
—Haggadah
On Passover, Dan and Melanie hosted the first night, Dan’s brother Steve and his wife Andrea the second. Divide and conquer, Dan said. You don’t have to be so grim, Melanie told him. I’m not grim at all, he said. I just want to get it over with.
Passover was weighty for Dan, and for his brother too. It had been terrible for them, growing up. Their father, Irving, had been a survivor, and he’d ruined the holiday for everyone because it meant so much to him.
Irving had always been difficult, but on Pesach he spread misery, accusing Dan and Steve of misbehavior, fighting with their mother, finding fault with everything.
More than once, Irving had left the table with a migraine—hinting darkly that they, the children, were the cause.
Steve, the firstborn, had pushed back hardest, demanding, What did we do?
Wide-eyed, Dan had watched. Of course, as adults, the brothers knew they had not been the cause of anything.
Their dad was long gone, and they had long forgiven him, but they had a hard time celebrating.
With seders looming, Dan became punctilious; Steve grew anxious and called often.
“Just double-checking,” Steve said. “We’re bringing salad?”
“Right,” said Dan.
“And sponge cake?”
“No, unfortunately. No can do.”
“They’re vegan again?” Steve was talking about Dan’s daughter, Phoebe, and her boyfriend, Wyatt.
“Yup.”
“Shit. What will you feed them?”
“No idea.”
“You can’t use tofu. Or seitan. No tempeh!”
“I am aware of that.” Dan didn’t need his brother to spell it out—or rub it in.
Dan and Melanie talked of nothing else. Soy, corn, wheat, rice, peanuts, legumes, were all prohibited on Pesach.
What did that leave vegans? As for the seder plate—this holiday was not plant-based.
What would they use for the roasted egg?
A baked potato? And what about the shank bone? Some kind of radish?
“Please, please don’t be so negative,” Melanie told Dan as they took stock at the kitchen table.
“We have five days to get ready.”
“So, we’ll make it work! Nobody has allergies.
Nobody’s sick. Nobody’s in pain.” Melanie didn’t say, Remember how fortunate we are, but Dan could hear it.
He had grown up hectored about poor children starving, and now he was married to a gastroenterologist. “We’ll figure it out!
” Melanie said. “There are lots of vegan seders. Some people use sunflower seeds.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. I think they…”
“Sprinkle them over the tablecloth?”
“Dan.”
“And what about this mess?” Dan gestured at the bags of groceries covering the kitchen counters, the clock radio and toaster oven, the standing mixer no one used.
Stacks of bills and tax forms swamped the kitchen island; the recycling bin was overflowing.
Meanwhile, a newly purchased case of matzo sat on the floor.
“It’s a process. It’s going to happen. It is all going to happen,” Melanie intoned.
Dan stood on a footstool to pull down the shoebox where he kept his Icelandic chocolate.
“I’m going to make moussaka,” Melanie said.
“You think you can cook in here?” Dan demanded as he nibbled a grainy chocolate bar.
“I cook here all the time.”
“We’d better clear the decks.”
“Don’t worry,” Melanie assured him. “I’m on call tomorrow but we can start this weekend.”
Something in her tone just maddened Dan, because every day she said, We’ll start this weekend—and this weekend the kids would be here!
Why couldn’t she see? The house was sinking.
They were going under, drowning in groceries and paperwork.
“Not this weekend. Now.” Dan jumped off his stool, threw down his chocolate, and started unplugging small appliances.
He swept up bills and heaped them on the kitchen table.
“I had those in separate piles for a reason,” Melanie said.
“Pile them elsewhere.” Dan shook out a black garbage bag and started tossing cottage cheese, yogurts, hummus.
“Wait!”
“Yeah, we’re done waiting. Waiting is the problem.” Opening the produce drawers, he deep-sixed dimpled grapefruits and bendy celery and perfectly good potatoes along with sprouting onions.
“Stop!” Melanie had seen Dan manic about Pesach, but this was the worst he’d ever been. “Don’t throw away good food.”
Dan shouldered a load and hauled it outside to the trash. Then he heated a kettle of water and pulled out the grotty refrigerator shelves. He tilted each into the sink for cleansing with boiling water. “Dry these,” he ordered. “Please.”
Melanie began drying the glass shelves with paper towel so that they were not only clean but sparkling—but, as soon as she turned her back, Dan opened the lower cabinets. Pans clattered. Lids crashed.
Melanie spun around. “What are you doing?”
“Purging.” Dan opened a new trash bag and tossed all of Melanie’s empty cottage cheese containers.
“Dan, I need those!”
“Nope. No, you don’t.”
Melanie knew Pesach was hard for him. She had grown up in LA, with Hebrew School and Camp Ramah—singing Debbie Friedman in a circle.
Dan was from Boston where everything was small and cold.
Where, at their father’s insistence, Dan and his brother had attended an Orthodox day school called Maimonides.
At this school, which he described as excellent but dreary, Dan had studied Talmud every day, so when it came to food and Shabbat and holidays, he knew all the things you could do wrong.
It wasn’t his fault that his religion was all rules.
But where did it say you couldn’t keep your cottage cheese containers?
Melanie tried an I statement, as she had learned in counseling. “I feel threatened when you throw away my stuff.”
“I feel great,” said Dan.
By morning, the counters were bare. Dan had left Melanie the coffee maker. That was all. The fridge was antiseptic with nothing in it. Not even a carrot.
The freezer was empty. No frozen waffles, no frosty bags of bagels.
No chicken pieces, pizza, or ice cream. Nothing.
Melanie checked the cabinets. All crackers, cereal, and baking supplies were gone.
Even the salt and the vanilla. Dan had purged everything, not just perishables.
They had no pasta now or peanut butter or canned soup.
Oh, but I bet he kept one thing, she thought. She stood on the stool to open the cabinet above the fridge—but Dan’s chocolate was nowhere to be found.
It was as if they had died and stagers had arrived to prep the house for sale. The sink was sparkling. The kitchen was as clean and beautiful as a 1970s kitchen in a 1920s Tudor 3 br 2⒈／⒉ Bath could be.
Melanie felt erased. She donned her white coat embroidered Melanie Rubinstein M.D. and wondered, Who is she?
She carried her travel mug of coffee to the driveway and saw stacks and stacks of trash bags—but what was that? Visitors had come in the night to claw open plastic and feast on chicken nuggets. Frozen waffles and smashed yogurt containers littered the front yard.
Melanie ran through the minefield of debris, jumped into her Subaru, and slammed the door.
What was wrong with Dan? It wasn’t like he kept kosher the rest of the year.
He was dormant and then, suddenly, Krakatoa!
She wanted to scream. Yes, you had a difficult childhood, but do you have to traumatize everybody else too?
Haven’t you heard of food banks? Instead, she texted Racoons. fix it.
—
He apologized. That night when Melanie returned, the debris was gone, and two shiny metal garbage cans stood in front of the garage. Even as she stepped from the car, Dan opened the front door. “I’m sorry I went postal. I’m not trying to threaten you. I’m just doing what has to be done.”
“But that’s just it. You don’t have to do any of this.”
“You want to bury yourself in frozen food?”
She sighed and walked past him to the kitchen. Then she said, “I’m nervous too.”
The truth was, they dreaded Phoebe’s arrival.
Their daughter, once so directed, then so fragile, was now busking full-time with her boyfriend.
Once they had worried Phoebe had given up on music, never to play her violin again.
Now music was all she did. Melanie and Dan had been proactive.
They had been supportive. They had spoken gently and harshly to their daughter.
We want you to be happy, Melanie said. We’ve already paid your tuition, Dan put in.
Then Melanie made him stop. I’m gonna kill him, Dan said of Phoebe’s boyfriend, and Melanie said, It’s not just him. It’s her.
“I have nothing against Wyatt,” Dan said now.
“I know,” said Melanie.
“I’d just like to understand what he is thinking.”
“But remember,” Melanie warned.
They had made a pact. There would be no confrontations. No recriminations. No harping on what they had told Phoebe already. As for Wyatt—Dan would not attack.
No, he was not even thinking of murdering the kid. He continued his great purge instead, emptying dresser drawers and storage bins, filling bags for Big Brother Big Sister.
Melanie sat downstairs and meditated. She popped in her earbuds to lose herself in surf and breaking waves. Then she gave up and listened to Dan stomping through the bedrooms.
She found him in Phoebe’s room, bagging stuffed animals. Melanie said, “Those aren’t even yours.”
“She’s fine with it.” Dan flashed his phone.
Declutteringnow he had texted Phoebe.
Go dad! she’d texted back.
“Does she know you’re taking all her animals?” Melanie whipped out her own phone and called her daughter. “Phoebe, he’s bagging every single one.”
“So now other kids can play with them,” Phoebe said, amused.
“He’s got Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile!”
“Mom, I’m twenty-two.”
“All right,” said Melanie, because at least she’d warned her. Then she said, “Dad’s crazed.”
“He’s just doing what he should have done ten years ago!”