Chapter 4
4
The thing about hosting a Passover seder year after year is that it becomes predictable. A few thousand years of doing the same thing the same way the same night of the year will do that.
At this point, Ezra and his siblings have found enough similarities from year to year to make bingo cards.
Those were great, while they lasted. For a fantastic four years, they pooled thirty bucks and bought a cake for whoever won once the holiday was over and they could all eat leavened desserts again. The cake was always too big for one person anyway, so it was a win-win—until Mom caught Becca surreptitiously filling her card out under the table. After a lecture that lasted well past dessert, they’d agreed that Friedman Family Seder Bingo would be retired.
Thus, the Friedman Family Seder Drinking Game was born. The rules range from ritual (Someone picks an inappropriate sing-along tune for listing the parts of the seder? Drink ) to scholarly (Debate about why the Haggadah contradicts itself and can’t decide if matzah is the bread of affliction or the bread of freedom? Drink ) to conversational (Any of the three of them are asked when they’re getting married? Double drink ). Rules have been removed due to lack of use (“Any cis man outside the immediate Friedman family helps with dishes in any way, shape, or form”) or way too much use despite alarming specificity (“Ezra is misgendered by a well-meaning but clueless relative over the age of seventy”).
It’s probably not any subtler than the bingo cards, but at least the lack of props makes it harder for Mom, over her own glass of wine, to do much more than give them the Disappointed Eyebrows.
Having an actual rabbi at the table means they blow through some of the more obscure rules earlier in the evening, and Ezra is pleasantly tipsy by the time they’re halfway through maggid. Becca has had to kick him twice under the table for tilting into Jonathan’s side when something makes him laugh too hard, muttering, “Oh my God, you lightweight ” under her breath. Jonathan clearly picked up on what was going on the second time Aaron knocked back a glass of wine when Dad and Rabbi Isaac got caught in a frenzy of vigorous “debate,” which was more like an enthusiastic series of agreements at an escalating volume. After that, he starts subtly playing along.
Which is, Ezra thinks, just unfair, because off-limits men should not be attractive, funny, and willing to casually join informal drinking games.
He mentions this to Becca when they go into the kitchen to “choose another white wine” and also subtly chug down a glass of water each.
“Please,” she says. “Like that’s ever stopped you.”
Ezra finishes his water, considers the glass, and then refills it at the sink. “I’m making better life choices.”
“Maybe stop looking like you’re trying to play footsie with him, then,” Becca says. She plucks his glass from his hand, pours half of it into hers, and downs it in one gulp. “Also, can we talk about how cranky Aaron looks about being across from Dad? Line of fire.”
“Better him than me,” Ezra says, though he’d found it a little weird that Aaron ended up there instead of Rabbi Isaac, ostensibly the guest of honor. But Judy had taken the seat next to Mom, and Rabbi Isaac the seat next to Judy, and Aaron and Jonathan had exchanged five seconds of not-it eye contact before Aaron caved and took the seat at the head of the table, opposite Dad. Ezra refills his glass again. “It’s his lot in life as the firstborn.”
Becca nods, solemn. “We’ll send him a fruit basket,” she says, and pulls a bottle of moscato out of the fridge. “All right, let’s go before someone restarts the Great Matzah Debate.”
They slip back into the dining room, Becca depositing the bottle in the center of the table and Ezra meeting Aaron’s How dare you abandon me glare with an apologetic widening of his eyes as he takes his seat again. Aaron rolls his in response.
“Now that everyone’s back,” Dad says, leveling a look at Ezra and Becca that has You’re not nearly as cute as you think you are written all over it before opening his Haggadah again. “Ezra, why don’t you pick up for us with Arami Oved Avi on page—”
“Actually,” Mom says. “There’s something I’d like to say before we go any further.”
Something in her voice—a steady steel—slices through the room. Out of the corner of his eye, Ezra catches Becca’s eyebrows shoot up, and the immediate, apprehensive look Aaron darts across the table toward Dad. For all they joke that Mom runs the family, major meals are usually Dad’s domain. He has systems; he likes to play stage director, to make sure all the good beats of the story get their due time without anyone ending up hangry.
Dad tucks a napkin into his Haggadah to mark his page and sets it down on his plate with a gentle tap of paper on porcelain. “Of course,” he says, like it’s perfectly normal for them to go off script mid-seder.
Mom opens her mouth, and then pauses. She glances at Judy, who glances back, and they exchange a long, searching sort of look, the kind of look that speaks volumes of intimacy, untranslatable to everyone.
Everyone but Ezra.
After a moment that lasts an eternity, Mom extends a hand.
Not to Dad.
After a heartbeat of hesitation, Judy puts her hand into Mom’s. They lace their fingers together.
Oh, Ezra thinks. Oh. Fuck.
“Um,” Becca says. “Hi. What the fuck?”
“Language,” their parents say together. Becca’s mouth drops open. Ezra reaches over and puts a hand on her leg under the table, digging his fingers into the meat of her thigh.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ezra catches Jonathan using everyone’s preoccupation with Mom and Judy to subtly pick up the bottle of moscato and refill his wineglass to the top.
“Bobbi,” Dad says, voice carefully calm. “What’s going on?”
Mom and Judy exchange another look. By some silent agreement, Judy speaks first. “Leo,” she says, and then breaks off, looking across the table. “Isaac,” she adds. “I—we—love you both very much. And we know this is going to be hard for you to hear.”
Becca’s hand clamps down on Ezra’s. Across the table, Aaron looks like he’s rapidly putting puzzle pieces together and getting increasingly alarmed as the picture starts to match the box.
“And—it’s been so hard to find the right time to tell you this,” Mom says. She looks at Judy, and if she were anyone else, Ezra would take out his phone to snap a picture of the literal stars in her eyes, shining with open affection. “But this whole seder is about freedom, and redemption, so we thought— I thought—”
“We’ve been in love for two years,” Judy interrupts. Rabbi Isaac, who had just picked up his glass of water, drops it with a clatter. “We want to get married.”
—
No one ends up eating dinner.
Ezra attempts—valiantly, in his opinion, though there’s enough alcohol in his system that he can admit it’s probably not nearly as smooth as he’d like to think—to cut the yelling off at the outset. There was probably never a chance of that working, especially when Judy’s announcement is greeted by not one but two yelps of “What the fuck ?” from opposite sides of the table, Becca and Aaron chorusing with the kind of synchronicity Ezra historically sees from them only when they’re ganging up on him .
To absolutely no one’s surprise, that doesn’t set a precedent for a calm, rational discussion, and everything goes to shit from there. Dad and Rabbi Isaac start talking over each other immediately, each attempting to take control of the conversation, attempting to talk to his own wife, attempting to talk to the other’s wife. Mom keeps looking around the room with wide eyes, as though she can’t imagine why everyone’s reacting the way they are and yammering about living her truth and the importance our family puts on openness and respect . Ezra catches and pointedly ignores the back me up looks she repeatedly sends his way; the fourth time, he gives up and snaps “Do not drag my queer ass into this” so dryly that Jonathan, next to him, chokes on his water and has to be thumped on the back by Aaron.
Judy puts the final nail in the coffin of any chance at a calm discussion by bursting into tears. After that, Dad kicks everyone whose marriage isn’t actively going to hell out of the dining room without ceremony, and Ezra leaps on the opportunity to take Sappho on a loop around the block, leaving Aaron, Becca, and Jonathan standing in an awkward semicircle in the living room.
At least the night air is crisp enough to sober him slightly. Ezra’s phone is going wild, but it’s all in the group chat with his siblings, so he silences it and shoves it back into his pocket. He briefly considers texting Nina, or maybe his new roommates—if they thought his small-world Jonathan message was fun, he thinks, this’ll delight them —and decides against it.
Mostly because he is absolutely not sober enough to walk the dog and text at the same time.
No one is left in the living room when he gets back. Ezra pauses by the dining room long enough to hear Judy shout, “Do not bring your mother into this, Isaac!” then hastily retreats to his bedroom, clicking his tongue at Sappho to follow him.
To his surprise, Aaron is on the floor of his room, a bottle of slivovitz in one hand and his phone in the other. He’s abandoned his tie and his shoes. “Yo,” he says, when Ezra slips in and closes the door behind him.
“Hi,” Ezra says. “Don’t you have your own room?”
“Your rug’s comfier, I always floor-drink here.” He lets out an oof as Sappho flops down against his stomach. “Jesus. She weighs a ton.”
“Shush, you’ll give her a complex.” Ezra makes kissy noises at her until she rolls back up to her feet and trots across the room to him as he takes a seat against the side of the bed. “Where’s Becca?”
Aaron takes a drink straight from the bottle, coughs, and gestures toward the door. “She said something about screaming into the void.”
“Great. Don’t suppose you stuck around the dining room to hear how things were going?”
“I bailed when I heard Judy bring up her and the rabbi’s dead kid. The phrase ‘emotional competency’ was used.”
“Hard yikes, ” Ezra says, just as Becca slips into the room.
“Please tell me you have alcohol,” she says by way of greeting, shutting the door behind her. Aaron holds up the bottle of plum brandy, and Becca groans, slumping back against the carpet. “Fucking gross, I hate this holiday so much. Why couldn’t Mom make her marriage-ruining announcements on Purim?”
Aaron rolls his eyes and passes the bottle over, leaning up against the side of Ezra’s bed. Becca unscrews the cap and takes a straight swig, then chokes. “Oh my God,” she croaks. “That’s a hate crime.”
“No kidding,” Ezra says. “Give it here.”
Becca hands it over. The yelling from the dining room is audible through the closed door. “Where did Jonathan go? Are we terrible people for not inviting him to come be weird and drunk with us? I kind of feel like we’re terrible people.”
“We’re good, he bailed right out of this madhouse,” Aaron says. Ezra takes a sip of the slivovitz and promptly coughs as it burns its way down into his chest. “I saw him calling an Uber when I went to steal this.”
“Oh, well,” Ezra wheezes, trying to clear brandy out of his lungs. Aaron plucks the bottle out of his hand and takes another, much smoother sip. “At least we’re not bad hosts.”
“This is ridiculous,” Becca says. “Like—this is ridiculous, right? Do you think it’s a prank? Maybe the four of them are in some kind of weird open-relationship wife-swap kind of thing, and this is their way of easing us into it.”
Aaron squints at her. “By having Mom say she had an affair? And then descending into a screaming hellscape?”
“Ew,” Ezra says, taking the bottle back from Aaron. If they’re going to sit here and have this conversation during the one week a year when they can’t escape to IHOP to drown their feelings in pancakes and chemical syrup, he’s not going to be any more sober than is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the slivovitz doesn’t get any better with repeat exposure. “You’re the one who’s with them the most,” he says to Aaron. “You really didn’t have any idea this was going on?”
“Obviously not,” Aaron says, with remarkable disdain for a guy who probably hasn’t spent more than an hour out of earshot of one or both of their parents for five years. “First of all, I’d tell Dad. Second of all, I’d tell you .”
“Please,” Becca snorts. “You’d tell Ezra before you’d tell Dad, and then make Ezra tell Dad for you.”
Aaron sticks his tongue out at her but doesn’t argue. For a funeral director, Aaron avoids conversations that require any kind of emotional intimacy with an impressive level of skill. He often seems to forget that emotions exist.
Somewhere in the house, a door slams hard enough to rattle the walls, and they flinch in unison. Ezra passes the bottle back to Aaron as they fall quiet, reluctantly listening. The yelling seems to have stopped, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There’s a thick expectation to the quiet that feels more like it’s the eye of a hurricane than the passing of a storm.
Becca breaks the silence, her voice, uncharacteristically, very small. “What do we do ?”
Ezra looks over at her. She’s drawn her knees up to her chest, her arms looped around them as she worries at the skin between her thumb and forefinger, a nervous tic that Ezra and Aaron share. He reaches over and takes her hand before she can start digging her nails in, lacing their fingers together. The sugar in the alcohol is settling unpleasantly, but he can’t tell if the stirrings in his gut are coming from his liver or his psyche.
“Probably nothing tonight.” Approximately nothing good will come of them trying to wrangle any order out of this kind of chaos. Ezra’s spent enough of his life trying to wrestle his parents and siblings into a baseline of Can’t we all just get along?, at least for major family events—he knows when not to bother.
He wonders if it’s worth seeing if there’s any dinner left to salvage, but decides he’s not actually sure his stomach can take it. Instead, he stretches a toe across the rug and nudges Aaron’s leg, because Aaron’s gone from looking like he’s hoping to find the presence of God somewhere in the slivovitz bottle to mindlessly scrolling through his phone. “Hey. What about you? You okay?”
Aaron looks up. “What? Yes. I mean.” He scrubs a hand over his beard. “I’m—well—”
“Oh my God,” Becca says. “Spit it out.”
Aaron shoots her a sour look but puts his phone down. “Not to make this shit about work, but Mom does, like, half the shit that keeps Friedman’s running on the back end, and I can’t imagine her showing up after chag ready to dive back into the office, and now I’m realizing how fucked me and Dad are going to be.”
Ezra blinks. “Oh,” he says. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Aaron agrees. “Which, you know, sure, but am I supposed to take all this as a resignation letter?” He winces. “Which I wouldn’t even know what to do with, because Mom handles half the paperwork for personnel.”
“Yikes,” Becca says. Aaron shoots her a hopeful look, and she flings her hands up. “Absolutely not,” she says. “I have my practicum, and even if I didn’t, I am not cut out for the funeral business. Hire a temp.”
“Right, because we’re just brimming with people who want to hop into a family funeral home with a fresh round of HBO-level drama. Yeah, I’ll type that ‘help wanted’ ad job listing right up.”
A horrible thought starts percolating in the back of Ezra’s head.
He doesn’t like it. He really doesn’t like it.
“If I happened to have some time opening up in my schedule,” he says, hating every word as it comes out of his mouth, “what kind of work are we talking about?”