Chapter 7 Redemption Song #3
“We can do it,” Wyatt volunteered.
But Phoebe looked at the kitchen and said, “In the morning.” And the two of them hightailed it upstairs.
“Did you have to pick a fight?” said Melanie.
“Don’t start.” Dan locked himself in the bathroom. As for Melanie, she sank onto the couch and closed her eyes. She could not imagine enduring another seder the next day.
—
Dan decided not to go. He felt lousy in the morning, and nobody had cleaned the kitchen. The kids were playing bluegrass in the living room instead.
He tried to eat matzo and jam in the dining room, but Melanie hovered over him.
“I figure we’ll bring the vegan seder plate tonight,” said Melanie. “No reason for them to reinvent the wheel.”
“And I’ll stay here,” Dan said.
“No, Dan!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sick.”
“You are not.”
“I have a headache.” Dan spoke over fiddling and thumping.
“Dan. You only have one brother.”
“I know how many brothers I have.”
“You were hangry.”
Dan’s matzo cracked down the middle. “Hangry?” He abhorred Melanie’s reductionism. “Don’t start diagnosing me.”
“Don’t start issuing ultimatums.”
“I’m feeling sick. That’s all.”
“So now you’re diagnosing yourself.”
“You know what?” Dan shouted. The music stopped, and suddenly he had no cover. He lowered his voice and said, “Do not tell me what I should and shouldn’t do or say.”
He was not going. He was not doing anything. But that afternoon, Phoebe approached and said, “Can we take a walk?”
“Just us?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He knew that Phoebe was trying to manage him.
She was going to tell him to calm down. To forgive.
To lighten up. He knew it was a ruse—but a walk alone?
Time with his only child? He had no pride.
He jumped at the chance. Of course, he had an ulterior motive too.
No lecturing, he reminded himself. No harping.
But he would influence his daughter if he could.
Tell her, ever so subtly, to get her shit together.
He strolled with Phoebe past old Tudors and brick colonials and swing sets and daffodils to the old elementary school playground, where she sat on a swing. “Listen,” he began, but she interrupted.
“Dad, can you come with us tonight?”
He shot her a look.
“It’s so fun at their seder.”
Dan was hurt by the implied contrast. “Nobody’s stopping you from going.”
“I mean, our seder is fun too!” This wasn’t strictly true, so Phoebe added, “In a different way! It’s hard to do the first one when everybody’s so tired from getting ready.”
He sat on the swing next to hers and admitted, “I was exhausted.”
“You didn’t have to yell at Uncle Steve.”
“I was defending you!” he said.
“From what?” Phoebe asked, oblivious, supremely confident.
From being judged, Dan thought. From hearing you’re a slacker. From my brother’s double standard—pointing out that you can’t earn a living when he spent years thinking he could be a poet—but Dan said simply, “I was tired. We all were. End of story.”
“But now you’re rested.”
“I am not rested.”
“Dad, your work is done.” She pushed off with her feet and pumped her legs because she was still a little girl. “You don’t have to do anything at their house.”
“I’ll see how I feel.”
“Okay!”
“Just tell me you aren’t going to elope with Wyatt to New Mexico.”
“What’s in New Mexico?”
“I don’t know, just for example. You know what I mean.”
“Nobody’s eloping. We don’t believe in marriage.”
Great, he thought, you’ll just sleep together with three kids on one mattress in your van. “Phoebe, I want you to have a good life—and by the way, there is nothing wrong with money.”
“So, you and Uncle Steve agree,” Phoebe said maddeningly.
“Leave him out of it! I’m talking about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you would finish senior year. You’re so close!”
“Stop.” She slowed the swing with her feet.
Don’t come on too strong, he reminded himself. All he said was, “I don’t want you to be poor.”
“I won’t be,” she told him, and this was the problem. At the end of the day, she knew that he and Melanie would support her. She could deny it, and he could pretend otherwise, but this wasn’t life or death; it was success or aimlessness.
“You’re not thinking long term,” he said.
She smiled at him. “You’re such an actuary!”
What could he do? She was in love, she was happy, and she knew everything. “Well, you can finish your degree later,” he murmured, mostly to himself.
“That’s what I’ve been telling you.”
“If you don’t get totally sidetracked.”
“I’m not sidetracked at all!”
Yeah, right, he thought. What he said was, “Look, I’m not going to argue with you. It’s just that—”
“Could you come tonight?”
And this was the whole trouble. He could not say no to her.
“Please?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“Yay,” Phoebe cheered softly.
—
Dan drove, and Melanie carried the seder plate.
Phoebe and Wyatt sat in back with a bowl of fruit salad between them.
When they arrived, Dan handed Steve a case of Bartenura Moscato which was kosher, sparkling, and sweet.
Melanie and Phoebe and Wyatt were all taking off their shoes because Andrea had a no shoes rule, but they looked up to see Steve accept this inexpensive offering. “I love this stuff.”
Dan said, “I know.”
Steve’s house was small, and the seder table extended from the dining room into the living room.
The extension was a wobbly card table for the kids, but white tablecloths covered the whole thing.
Once you sat down, it was hard to get up because the space was so tight.
Only Andrea could maneuver at the head of the table where she served the soup and led the singing.
While Dan was non-practicing Orthodox, Steve was egalitarian, which meant Andrea did everything.
She had compiled her own Haggadah with readings from Emma Lazarus to Emma Goldman.
At Andrea’s table, you never knew what would turn up.
An orange for oppressed humans. A tomato for migrant farmers.
A banana for refugees. It was like Melanie’s childhood seders where everybody took a moment to write a postcard on behalf of Soviet Jews.
Cousin Wendy was there with her wife, Jill, and Nate had invited his girlfriend, Mackenzie.
Instead of taking turns, everybody read together. Instead of moving everyone along, Andrea stopped to ask deep questions. “What is freedom? What is it, Nate?”
“Um,” he said.
“Is it doing whatever you want?”
The seventeen-year-old knew better than to say yes.
“What is it? Other people? Dan?”
Dan shifted in his chair because he hated off-road Judaism. The unscripted seder. The personal connection. Although he felt oppressed by the old rituals, he preferred them, which was why he brought his own Haggadah.
“I’m not letting you off the hook,” said Andrea.
Dan sighed and said, “Freedom means making choices that are sustainable.”
“Great!”
“That’s beautiful,” said Cousin Wendy. Doubtless she thought Dan’s sustainable choices involved the ecosystem. In fact, he had been thinking of his daughter.
“Anybody else?” Andrea said.
Jill said, “Freedom is being true to who you are.”
Mackenzie was raising her hand as if she were at school. “Mom,” said Nate. “Call on Mackenzie.”
“Go for it,” Andrea said.
“Freedom is telling the truth.”
“Wonderful!” Andrea declared. “We have great definitions of freedom, but what is Redemption? Who wants to take a stab at that one? Zach?” She looked down the table at her older son.
“Being saved from sin, error, or evil,” he said immediately.
“He’s reading that off his phone,” Nate reported.
“Okay, who’s doing the saving?” Andrea pressed on.
“In what context?” Steve asked.
Andrea said, “You tell me.”
“In the Haggadah it’s God,” said Steve.
“Okay, it can be God,” Andrea said.
“No, Steve’s right,” Dan said. “It is God, literally.” He read aloud. “And the Eternal brought us forth from Egypt: not an angel, not a Seraph, not a messenger; but the most Holy, blessed be He, in His own glory.”
Look at you, thought Melanie. Rallying to support your brother.
“I, myself and not a messenger,” Dan read.
“And who else saved the Israelites?” Andrea asked.
“Themselves,” said Jill, who wore a kippah from Nate’s Bar Mitzvah.
“Say more!”
“They were the ones they were waiting for—with Miriam and Moses.”
“Perfect! Turn to page twenty-three.”
When Israel was in Egypt’s land. / Let my people go. / Oppressed so hard they could not stand. / Let my people go.
Everyone was singing except for Dan, who wasn’t feeling it, as the kids would say. And Steve, who stood for a moment and then disappeared into the living room.
“Is he okay?” asked Melanie.
“It’s his back,” said Andrea, as everyone began the chorus. Go down, Moses. Waaaay down in Egypt laaaand. Tell old Pharaoh…“He can’t sit so long.”
Phoebe said, “I feel weird singing this, because it’s like cultural appropriation.”
Wendy looked hurt. “We always sing ‘Go Down Moses.’ ”
“I know but.”
Jill said, “Where’s Moses from, anyway? The Torah. So who’s appropriating who?”
“Whom!” Steve corrected from the next room.
Go down, Moses. Waaay down in Egypt laaand. Wyatt and Zach and Nate were bellowing and pounding merrily, and suddenly the card table collapsed.
“Nooo!”
“Get paper towels.”
“Pull it up from underneath. Wait! Grab the plates!”
The vegan seder plate was drenched in wine and everybody was bumping into chairs and trying to clean up and laughing—but Dan used the opportunity to slip away. He stepped into the living room where Steve was lying on the floor.
Dan sat on the couch and watched Steve prone on his back, lifting his legs slowly so his muscles wouldn’t seize.
“Dad wouldn’t have lasted two minutes in there,” Steve said as he looked up at the ceiling.
“No kidding.”
“Remember the…” said Steve.
“Yeah.”
Steve didn’t need to say it. They had been just ten and eight when their father had heart pain at the seder.
Their mother wanted to call an ambulance.
Their dad said no. She said, You need to go to the hospital!
Their dad said, Put down the phone. They fought until Irving had to lie on the couch.
Then, finally, Jeanne convinced him to get into the car and she drove him to the hospital while Dan and Steve waited at home, wondering if their dad would come back.
They sat on the couch and then they went to their rooms and then they waited on the stairs.
They ate nothing, although the kitchen was full of food. They didn’t even take a sip of water.
Their parents did come back, late that night, and Irving announced the pain was nothing. Only palpitations. He also said, It’s lucky we didn’t have guests.
“Remember how Mom said, Go to sleep now?” Steve said.
Dan nodded. It was the middle of the night, and the two of them were wondering if it had all been a dream, when their dad commanded, “Come here.”
“Irving,” Jeanne protested.
He ignored her. “Sit down,” he ordered Dan and Steve. And so, they sat at the table while their dad bent over his Haggadah, finishing the seder. The food was cold, and they weren’t hungry. Their dad was chanting furiously.
“Give me a hand,” said Steve.
Dan pulled him gently into a sitting position.
People were calling from the next room. Dan? Steve? But Steve noticed the case of Moscato still sitting on the coffee table, and he told Dan, “Grab the corkscrew.”
“Hey, where are you taking that?” Melanie asked, as Dan stole the corkscrew and two glasses from the table. “Where are you going?” But the kids were singing again. Rocka my Soul in the Bosom of Abraham.
In the living room, Steve uncorked a bottle. “Cheers.”
The brothers sat on the couch to sip their wine as the seder continued in the next room. There were readings from Hannah Senesh and Primo Levi and Yehuda Amichai. They could hear Cousin Wendy playing her guitar.
“Musical instruments at the seder!” Dan said. Needless to say, he and Steve had not grown up with that. They had grown up reading from the Haggadah while their dad corrected them.
Tight-lipped, Jeanne would clear the dishes as the seder dragged on and Irving would say, Can you wait?
Please? Then Jeanne had to put off the dishes until the very end, which meant she stayed up late cleaning.
Irving would stay up too, because he had trouble sleeping, but of course he didn’t help.
He sat in his chair reading the paper because he followed the news religiously.
Not sports, not arts, but politics, and Israel, and wars, and famines. Tragedies.
“What would Dad say if he were here?” Dan asked.
Irving would not have done well with rowdy kids and collapsing tables. He had not condoned loud singing. He had not condoned a lot of things. That was why he had those palpitations, although the heart attack that killed him came years later.
Holding his glass, Steve stood to contemplate the entryway littered with shoes. “You know what Dad would say. Look at that mess.”
And why are you taking off your shoes to have a seder in your socks?
Dan added silently. What kind of thing is that?
And who is that young man? Who is that luftmensch with Phoebe?
But then Irving would not have recognized Phoebe either.
He had not lived to see his grandchildren, and they, in turn, had no idea what he had been about.
Sometimes Dan thought that was a good thing.
Other times he wished his father had lived to see and hear all this.
The kids’ joy, their ignorance, their sheer volume.
They were bellowing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
“Come sing with us!” Andrea called from the dining room.
“Soon!” Steve answered.
Dan and Steve were sidelined—but they would make their comeback. They would return for dinner, and more singing. They who had not suffered compared to other people. They who had grown up free.