It was Emily’s job to start the Passover ceremony. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” she said, and everyone at the table cooed, and then they all started talking at once. After all that work assigning places, none of them were sitting where they were supposed to, except for Doran, the black cloud at the other end of the table, the threatening weather Emily felt compelled to watch. This man was linked to the family, and in an indelible way, that much was clear, but nobody would explain the nature of the connection.
Finally, Papa Moshe, her grandfather, at the head of the table, stood. “Let’s hurry up so we can eat,” he said, then sat again.
“We still have blessings to make,” said Auntie Mackie, Jonah’s grandmother, who must have arrived while Emily had been spying on Sonja and Doran.
“I’d like to bless the candles,” said Blima.
“I want to bless the candles,” said Sonja.
“I want to bless the wine,” said Mackie. “And then we’ll see who remembers the most Hebrew. I’m not even Jewish and I can keep up.”
“You’re not Jewish?” asked Emily. Another broken connection. Her grandfather avoided her questioning look.
He turned to Doran instead. “Have you been to a Seder recently, Doran?”
Emily was aware of movement from the far side of the room, Doran shaking his head. “Not like this,” he said after a moment. “I only came when Ayala was around, and this, I imagine, will be different.”
“Well, this is an opportunity.” Moshe leaned back. “The idea of the Seder is that the community gets together once a year to tell the story of the Exodus. We’ve all heard the story too many times. It’s nice to have someone new to tell it to.”
“I like exodus stories,” said Doran, and Emily saw shadows contracting along the length of the table, her grandmother and great-aunt sitting up in their chairs.
Emily remembered that he’d had an exodus too. He’d left Russia. She’d love to hear that story now. Because who had he been running from? He wasn’t a Jew.
“And I like the idea of communal remembering too,” said Doran.
“Maybe history is best forgotten,” said Blima, “so I say we do the short version. Doran, in the real Seder, we read from the Haggadahs, bless some things, drink some wine, take turns telling the story and we don’t eat before ten o’clock. We prefer to get the formalities out of the way as quickly as possible here, this year especially.”
“I’ll get the story started,” said Sonja. “In the Seder, we tell the story of when the Jews passed over.”
“You have to say from where to where,” said Mackie.
“From Egypt to Israel,” said Sonja. “Even the goyim know that part. And it took eight days.”
“It took forty years,” said Mackie.
“Oh, that’s right. And in all that time, Doran, the Jews found the only country in the Middle East that had no oil.”
“Mr. Baruch.” Jonah bent to fill Doran’s wineglass again. He was looking right at Emily, his eyes flashing in the candlelight. “If you ever attend another Seder, please don’t tell them what happened at ours.”
There was a creak from the head of the table, and eventually, a soft “but this is just fine.”
“Let me set the scene for you,” said Moshe. “We start in Egypt. The Jews are making the pyramids. They’re slaves, and the pharaoh is a terrible master. He tortures them. One day, he goes too far. He says that the first-born Jewish boys will all be killed, for some sort of punishment, I don’t remember what.” He poured himself another glass of wine, then refilled Emily’s glass as well. “Then there’s a whole business where a woman has a baby and sends him down the river because he’s the first-born son. We all know that part.”
Emily heard a moan of wood on wood from the head of the table, Doran shifting in his seat.
“One day when the pharaoh got to be too bad, Moses demanded that he let the Jews go free. The pharaoh said, ‘fine then, see if I care.’ He said that because God had given Moses certain miracles to play with, and he had already called down plagues on the Egyptians. It was raining fire, so, you know, the pharaoh thought he didn’t have that many choices. But now this pharaoh was a mercurial man. As soon as things were back to normal, he went back on his word. He ordered the Egyptian soldiers to go go go and they chased the Jews right to the bank of the Red Sea, where they were trapped. But then, instead of going around, or swimming through, Moses parted the waters. The Jews walked. And where they went, nobody could follow. Because God was watching. He closed up the waters as soon as the tribe was safe, and all the pharaoh’s army was drowned.”
Nobody said anything. They were left with a silence that settled uncomfortably over the table. Then Emily struggled to sit up. She remembered what this night was for. Passover was about remembering, Doran was right, and she could use the ceremony to get information. There was a secret here. She’d heard her grandmother admit it. “Our family had an exodus too,” she said.
“Yes,” Blima said softly.
“We came here from Russia.”
“My mother and father and I, we crossed the ocean. We had to leave in the middle of the night.”
“And so did you, Doran,” said Emily.
“Yes,” said Doran. “But that was later. And I came alone.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about the Seder story at all,” said Sonja. “Maybe we should talk about our own personal exodus.”
Emily sat forward. They’d abandoned the ceremony altogether. Anything could happen now. She could find out anything she wanted. “What was it like coming over?” she asked.
“Well, nobody parted the water for us,” said Blima. “It was a difficult crossing.”
“Our mother would have expected Dad to part the ocean,” Sonja said.
“Our mother went through an ordeal.”
“You always stick up for her.”
“Oliv a shulum. May she rest in peace.”
“No. Let’s be honest. I’m not going to kid myself. I remember what she was like.”
“What was she like?” said Emily.
“She had episodes,” said Sonja.
“What?”
“She would go up to live in the attic and Dad would have to take the door off its hinges. With screwdrivers. He had to use tools. Except when she came out, it was worse. In that ratty nightgown, hair everywhere. I was mortified. Everyone was embarrassed. Nobody knew where to look. And when I talk to Blima, it’s like it never happened.”
“Wait,” said Emily. “I’m trying to understand this…” Her great-grandmother had smiled all the time. She’d hummed. She’d hugged people.
“So she retired upstairs sometimes,” said Blima. “Nobody minded. Nobody even noticed.”
“Retired,” said Sonja. “Dad used to have to carry her to the dock. All those nights, like it was the most normal thing in the world. He would take her out in that crazy boat, William’s moving dock. She wore the same old see-through nightgown. And she was so pale herself. You could almost see her organs working, her heart beating under her ribs. And sometimes her nose would drip. Everyone could see it. They only pretended not to.”
“I never saw this,” whispered Doran. “This was Ayala?”
“It always happened right after you left,” said Sonja. “But clearly my sister doesn’t remember.”
“You don’t know,” said Blima, picking up her glass, spinning it to make spots of light dance. “You don’t remember when it was really bad. You were too little then. And you weren’t even there for our move. Our father pretended that everything was normal, but she was getting stranger and stranger.”
Everyone was quiet now, listening intently but pretending to be absorbed in feeling the cutlery and the napkins and the texture of the tabletop—Moshe, Doran, Mackie, Jonah. And Emily too. She picked up her wineglass. She didn’t want to miss a syllable, a nuance. She needed to know everything.
“I was with her on the train,” Blima was saying, “when a man came into our compartment, when she talked to him in a whisper, then said we had to get off, because that man had been Elijah the Prophet.”
Emily sat up in her chair. She remembered that story.
“Our father was asleep, and it was just me and our mother, and her eyes were shining. I was afraid. And that’s when she started talking, this whole story about Elijah. He was with us. He’d followed the whole way. From our town to the boat, in the guise of good weather, the wind that blew us to Canada. She saw him when she was on the deck and he was disguised as a cloud, or one time as a breeze that touched her cheek just so. A man in tight pants. And I knew it wasn’t true. But I didn’t know what to do. I was little and the only one awake.”
“I don’t understand,” said Emily. But of course that story was scary. She’d never thought about it in terms of veracity before, of verifiability. Of sanity. Elijah the Prophet hadn’t led her family to Canada. Of course that hadn’t happened. Of course it wasn’t true.
“You never told me this,” said Sonja.
“And then I was the one who had to take care of you, and our father, and listen to her creaks and footsteps in the night. To tell her moods. To make sure she was all right.”
Sonja raised her hand. “If she was—”
“If I can forgive her,” said Blima, stopping her sister mid-sentence, “then so can you.”
“Well,” said Sonja. “Do you feel better?”
“Yes,” said Blima. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Well that’s the point of Passover,” said Sonja raising her glass. “Drink. Get it all out in the open.”
“That’s not true though,” said Emily. “That can’t be true. Right?”
“Sure it is, lovie,” said Blima. “Why do you think we start drinking at noon, in this family?”
“How about everyone else?” Sonja asked. “Does anyone else feel the need to be unburdened?”
A wave passed over the table, everyone looking to the head. And from the head of the table, nothing, just silence, just crackling air.
“Why did the family come to Canada?” asked Emily. But nobody answered. “I mean, why here? How did they find Treasure Island.” Again, no response.
So she’d change tack. She had lots of questions. She could wear them down, for sure. “Are we related to Papa William?” she asked. “Jonah said we’re not, and Mackie just said that they’re not even Jewish.”
“We’re just family friends,” Sonja said, playing with the stem of her glass.
“So how did our families connect?” Because if they weren’t biologically related, then there had to be a moment of connection. Maybe she could use that in her thesis. “How did you meet?”
“We were introduced,” said Blima. “Who introduced you?” Emily sat up, looking for something to write with, because this would be great. A connecting vertex. The dot that connected all the lines.
“It was one of the guests,” said Blima. “He went wandering off our property all the time, and Papa William had to rescue him and bring him back to the lodge. The guest introduced us, and we were like family after that.”
“Do you remember the person’s name?”
But then Blima ended the conversation by standing noisily, helping Jonah to serve the meal. Emily supposed she didn’t remember. It had been a long time ago.