HERACLITUS WAS RIGHT. NO sooner is a position established than it erodes. The solid earth under our feet melts into water, evaporates into air, and is consumed in fire. I moved from one family to another. I saw the former family dissolve behind me and went on to the next with the doggedness of a peasant uprooted by a volcano, who insists on making his new home in the shadow of another active volcano.
My father, hearty all his life, died of a heart attack at fifty-nine, not on the broad stripe of beach he loved so well, but in his insurance office, in his suit. My mother spent a year in Arizona to be near a sister, a year in Switzerland to be near Evelyn, then came and settled in an apartment near us. She was tentative about visiting, anxious not to intrude, but needlessly, for we all loved her, and when she appeared, like a fairy godmother she cooked and ironed and helped with homework—my burdens were her pleasures. She died last year, a peace-loving woman who believed in doing good and not straining the brain over the fine points or ambiguities. Painlessly and unambiguously, her heart stopped and she was gone—no more of her chicken soup, the children’s shirts are creased. I try. Phil eats the soup, puts on the shirts, says Grandma did it better. I don’t mind, but Vivian is offended for me. “Mommy is an orphan now,” she tells Phil. “You shouldn’t say mean things to her.” “It’s okay, Vivie, I know I don’t iron as well as Grandma did.” She puts her arms around me, not quite nine years old, long thin arms. “Do you mind very much being an orphan?” “Well, sometimes.” “I don’t want you and Daddy to die. I would mind a lot.” I promise not to die till she’s much older, and I take the liberty of promising the same for Victor, who’s at his studio. “Even if they did, Viv,” says Phil, trying to smooth out his shirt by hand, “you’d probably only feel bad at first. Then you’d get used to it.” “Oh no! How could I get used to that?” “Phil, for the moment let’s just say we won’t die, okay?” He skulks out of the room with dissatisfied steps, heels down heavily in protest, so that his shoes are always down at heel. The second of four is an awkward position. His standards are severe. He is troubled by injustice, by white lies and compromises, troubled by the demands of teachers for neatness and coherence, troubled by his long gangly body, and by the contentment of others, which he calls complacency. His recent, man’s voice is gruff: perhaps he feels kind words would sound incongruous in so gruff a voice. He approves of his father, whom he resembles: I imagine Victor had that troubled intensity as a boy of fourteen and a half, but Victor also had his painting to absorb the excess. Phil regards me, however, as a frivolous character. Flighty. Airy. A luftmensch, as my father called people who had no life insurance. That is because I run the house in a haphazard manner and go out at odd hours to rehearse and do concerts. Phil likes to see me safely drab around the house in his old corduroy pants and no makeup. He looks askance when I dress up in scarves and earrings and colored tights, making up for the years of drabness he cannot remember. When I go twice a year to meet his teachers he says, “Don’t put feathers in your ears. Wear something normal.” “Come into my closet. Do you want to pick it out?” I shouldn’t. I’m the mother. Victor talks to him in his room sometimes, in the evenings. As I pass the closed door, Phil’s rumbling voice sounds aggrieved, while Victor’s better-tempered tones undulate in waves of limitless, loving patience. Then late at night in bed, Victor tells me what Phil has on his mind. I appreciate his telling me but I resent getting my information secondhand.
“To think,” I have murmured to Victor in bed, “that this was a boy who actually baked apple pies. He started making his own lunch when he was ten! Vivie and Alan will never make their own lunch, I can tell. He was so nice,” I grumble. “Remember he used to creep into our bed because he was afraid of the dark? He used to bring me bouquets of dandelions in the park. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they were a weed.” He was a ruddy, easygoing boy, a boy who could be trusted to take care of his younger brother and sister, a bit of a clown—his imitations of a pixilated neighbor talking to her basset hound were wickedly accurate—a boy who left quaintly spelled notes for me in odd places (the breadbox: “Please bye bread”), a boy who made amazing, Gaudi-like constructions out of pieces of metal and rubber that plumbers left behind—friends would save old washers and doorknobs and scraps of tubing for Phil. And his apple pies were splendid, only someone had to light the oven; he was afraid to strike a match.
“All that was before puberty,” says Victor. “It will pass. Don’t fret. Would you scratch my back? No, lower. Higher. Left. Ah.”
Still, I worry that he is lost to me. I have no skill with the taciturn. Althea’s adolescence is full of drama too, but above all, communicative. She likes to drag us through her every phase.
“At least suggest that he wash his hair. Those boys with long hair don’t realize it has to be taken care of.”
Beneath my anxiety is guilt. He was born during a bad time, his first few years spent under a cloud. I was the cloud. I had paralysis of the will, a casualty of a way of life. But I recovered and determined I would not get that way again. I do not want Phil to be a casualty, permanently shadowed though the cloud is gone.
The family from the dormitory dissolved, after graduation, into good friends. I shared an apartment with Gaby until she married Don, who was becoming an orthopedic surgeon. I was bothered by her marriage; I found Don too proper. I wanted to see Gaby become a dancer, and how many proper doctors’ wives are dancers? But she made her choices. She got happy children, happy husband, happy happy—what Nina had wanted. Nina did not marry.
Esther was married twice, briefly and disastrously. Once to the boy who made her wait so long for her first view of the ocean and told her about the Polar Bear Club. The first time he beat her up she moved into our dingy apartment in the East Twenties for three weeks, sleeping on a cot near Althea’s crib. The second time, the summer she was twenty-six and seven weeks pregnant, she lost the baby and Ralph was taken to the hospital to be detoxified. She also lost her job in the production department of a publishing house because she couldn’t concentrate. Driving back from visiting Ralph in the hospital, she hit a truck on the dark wet road. The truckdriver was unhurt, fortunately. Esther suffered whiplash and a shoulder injury, spit out a couple of teeth, and almost lost the sight in her left eye.
“Enough, enough!” she said. “I’m tired. I’m going home.”
“Home! Don’t you do it. You’ve said often enough it was no home for you.” I had a sickening premonition of Esther taking up needlepoint and cats, lying on a chaise in her green bathrobe, rising only to powder her nose. “You’ll be sorry. Please, Esther, you can move in with us again if you like.” I was offering her the same cot in the same small room with two babies now, a cluttered household, and my own sour fog, but even so, it was better than home. Her mother had lapsed into premature senility and didn’t recognize the members of her family. There was a young nurse who she decided was her only daughter. When Esther visited she had to introduce herself, again and again. “She won’t even know you anyway. What do you hope to gain?”
“Oh, she knows, she knows.” She paced our drab living room, smoking passionately, while Phil nursed on my lap and Althea banged the piano. “She knows who everyone is, she knows exactly what she’s saying, believe me.”
“Esther. Even the doctors say it’s an illness. The brain cells deteriorate.”
“Brain cells my foot. She’s saying what she’s felt all along, only now she has the excuse of being sick. Who am I and what am I doing in that house? That was always her message to me. Nothing has really changed.”
“All the more reason not to go, then.” I shivered inside, for I harbored those feelings too, in secret. Who are these two babies and what are they doing in my house? What am I doing?
“The hell with it. It’s a place to relax. Nothing ever changes there, just like those Greeks said in Philosophy 101.”
She went. She sat talking to her mother, who was having a lucid spell and seemed to recognize her despite her bound-up shoulder and the black patch over her left eye. In a moment of weakness, yearning for commiseration, Esther confided a little about her recent sufferings. Her mother was attentive; for once her twitching hands fell still. Esther waited, tremulous.
Her mother looked up, her eyes cloudy. “But are you happy?” she asked.
“What!”
“Are you happy, dear?” her mother crooned in a soft singsong. “Because if you’re happy, then I’m happy too.”
Esther flew back to New York. She began seeing a therapist. She began proceedings for a divorce. She had a bridge made to replace the teeth knocked out in the accident. She got a job in a shelter for emotionally disturbed children and enrolled in social work school. And for a while she did seem happy. For a much longer while, though, she was cured of her yearning for commiseration.
Victor’s family dissolved too. His mother, Edith, died of bone cancer in 1972. His father, Paul, is still alive but cannot remember how many children we have or their names—Althea, Phil, Alan, Vivian. He cannot always remember how many children he has or their names, Victor and Lily. He lives in a well-appointed nursing home in Westchester—carpeting and beautifully upholstered furniture and large steel elevators decorated with colorful notices of discussion groups and hootenannies. Lily found it and Victor objected: his father was not going to end his days in an institution—he would live with us if Lily could no longer handle him. Paul was wandering through Scarsdale’s rusticities, leaving the door unlocked, gas jets on, bathtub running. And Lily said sensibly, in her smoky voice, But he wants to go there. Come and see it. He likes the idea, Vic. Lily was right. He sings and eats and strolls, and on the days when he can remember the sequence of cards, plays cards. He likes it more than he likes us, it appears. Victor was hurt at first. Unparented. Did he spend four unwilling years in college to please this man who barely remembers him, he muttered in bed, who, when we visit, keeps us waiting till he finishes sticking tiles in a mosaic ashtray? Oh, there was a time a few years ago, before the walls of Paul’s blood vessels got so thick, when he would try to put on a good show. We could see him forcing energy into the lax muscles of his face, straining for the amenities of greeting, casting around for the proper gambits of conversation, so visibly relieved when he found them, so bereft when he exhausted them. We came prepared to entertain him but he wanted to entertain us, as he had done in the days of his health, with a gracious wit. Then after a while he stopped trying. He lost interest in everything except his own maintenance. He retired from being a father, grandfather, adult, as he had retired from being a lawyer. We watched it happen, and Victor came home and drank Jack Daniel’s in bed, glared at television, and made love fast, without talking. Then he got used to it.
Amid all this decay here we stand, enjoying our heyday. We are six, flourishing; like the amaryllis the children grow almost as we look at them—tall, lanky children except for Althea, who is small like my mother and perfectly made. Yet she too takes up a great deal of space: her voice carries, her pronouncements are assured. No major defects. The only profound scare was when the pediatrician, after listening intently and for a very long time to Vivian’s three-year-old heart, put her back on my knee and told me she had an “innocent murmur.” Innocent because it occurs in early childhood, then vanishes. A peculiarity of the heartbeat. “Of no consequence at all”—in his fatherly way, flat honest eyes peering over bifocals, veined hand dangling a rag doll at her. “Now don’t go worrying—I see already you’re as pale as a ghost.” She could play ball, skate, ski, whatever she liked—a perfectly healthy child. Okay, I nodded. Only arrhythmic. Come to me my syncopated baby. That was how she spoke, too, in an innocent murmur. I did what he said, didn’t go worrying. Each year when we visit him for camp shots I plan to ask if it is gone yet, that innocent murmur, but I forget—his office is so crowded, he bustles so heartily through the routine examinations.
We are fortunate and we know it, but not being believers we do not know where to address our thanks. Awkwardly, we address them to the void, to some rich source in the void.
It is August and the camp bus has arrived safely once more, bringing Alan and Vivian home from the Quaker wilderness where they slept all summer in open wooden cabins, fed pigs and goats, swam in a freezing lake and partook of a Utopian communal spirit. The literature of this camp is mired by virtuous platitudes in hip language, but it is a magical place. On visitors’ day the faces we meet on the stony paths are luminous. That is because they have the Inner Light, Alan tells us. Vivie says it is simply that everyone acts nice to each other.
I am in the kitchen with the two open trunks and Alan, who is eating Mallomars and drinking Coke. The Quaker camp’s food is virtuous too, and he comes home starved for junk. With thumb and index finger, touching as little of the fabric as I can, I lift clothes from the trunk and drop them into the washing machine. Clinging to some items are twigs, dry leaves, small clumps of Vermont soil. They say the European immigrants, our forefathers, brought over clumps of soil to kiss, but I throw these relics in the garbage. A pungent smell slowly fills the kitchen—dark earth and greenery mingled with children’s unwashed clothing. I open the window wider. Alan is describing the various levels of achievement in woodsmanship.
“The highest thing you can do is if you stay out alone in the woods for four days or maybe a week, I don’t remember, and you have to hunt and skin and cook your own food—and all you have is the basic equipment, what you can carry on your back.”
“I hope you didn’t try that. I wonder what they cook.”
“I guess squirrel. You don’t have to worry. Only one person in the whole history of the camp ever did it. Vivie did well this year. She got her first Woodswoman plaque.”
“That’s great. Terrific.”
As he pauses to eat I listen to Vivie’s song, coming from the shower in a pure soprano. She ran to the shower with glee, like a Bedouin to an oasis. In camp they had showers once a week, cold, three minutes long. I listen, because against the background of splashing water like vivid Romantic orchestration, comes the exultant, rising melody from Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. Her voice always perfectly on key, the mystery of where she learned that melody, the pleasure of having them back, all suddenly swell in me—an instant of joy. The next instant I notice a caterpillar crawling in the T-shirt I’m holding.
“Alan, please remove this since you’re so woodsy.”
He laughs at me and lets it creep around on his palm.
“That song she’s singing. Where did she learn that?”
“‘Simple Gifts.’ That was one of our songs.”
“It’s from Aaron Copland. Appalachian Spring. A ballet by a famous American composer.”
He is immune to pedantry. “It’s just a song. ‘Simple Gifts.’“
Copland did use folk melodies, I remember. “Wait a minute.” I brush off my hands and go to rummage in my studio. The ancient record jacket of Appalachian Spring says, “Its simple beauty and fullness of heart lie partly in the use of Pennsylvania Dutch and Shaker tunes.” It mentions “Simple Gifts.”
“You’re right,” I tell him, back in the kitchen. “An old Shaker tune.”
“Of course I’m right, Ma. You should always believe me. But it’s Quaker.” He puts the caterpillar outside on the window ledge. “Maybe it’ll find its way to the park.”
“Shaker, but what’s the difference.”
“There is a difference.” He starts to explain it to me, a fine theological or maybe historical difference; but in the middle of the explanation Vivian enters, a blue and white striped towel wrapped around her like a sarong, her long dark hair hidden under a white turbaned towel, leaving bare and incredibly lovely her wide-boned face with its satiny, pre-acne complexion burnished by the sun, a face with the look of unearthly purity certain children’s faces have between nine and eleven—you have to catch it, it passes fast. I tell them how that is one of my favorite melodies yet I never knew it was a song that could be sung. Of course they don’t appreciate my wonder at this serendipity. Vivie plunges her wrinkled-clean hands into the filthy trunk, hunting for her Woodswoman plaque, which she shows me and I admire.
“Would you sing me the song?”
They shrug. Sure, if it’s so important. Alan plays the piano. He has played by ear since the age of four, like me. “It kills me that you can do that,” says Vivian. “How do you do it?”
“I don’t know. I just do.” That is true. She thinks he won’t tell her the secret, but it cannot be told.
They sing. Vivie knows how to deliver; she sings the words as if she understands what they mean, and who knows, perhaps she does:
’Tis a gift to be simple
’Tis a gift to be free
’Tis a gift to come round
Where we want to be.
And when we find ourselves
In the place that is right
We will be in the valley
Of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend
We shall not be ashamed.
To turn and to turn
Will be our delight
Till by turning, turning
We come round right.
It is like hearing the music of the spheres, for which Nina strained her ears in college on those early morning Pythagorean walks. That these two could be Victor’s and my children seems a miracle. The first two I recognize—subtle, urban souls. But these, close and alike, one conceived as an afterthought and one an accident, are simply gifts; their own gifts are simple too—grace and temperance and mildness. I want to possess the song, clutch it to me and drink it in, in a way I would not presume to possess them. I ask them to teach me the words and they do, as we disentangle grass from the dirty clothes and get the first load of wash spinning. They teach me willingly, yet puzzled about why just another camp song should mean so much, why I should want to keep them, their voices, close by in the kitchen after two months of absence.
Later on I play the record for them so they can hear what Copland makes of the melody, what swirls of embellishment, what silvery, streaky qualities he gives it. Alan is interested and listens, but Vivie is not. Vivie goes to sit on Victor’s lap, hugging her Woodswoman plaque.
And the next minute it is approaching April and guess who is arriving this time? Evelyn! From Switzerland. Since Mother and Daddy are both dead it must be me, my family, she wants to see. Unless her banker husband is sending her to transact secret business with rich celebrities. No, I doubt that he would use Evelyn for such missions. The children are excited, especially the younger ones. They have seen Evelyn only a few times but I have told them Evelyn stories—the sunflower, the lost kite, the sand woman we made and I kicked in. (Not that she fancied herself Princess of the Beach; that I have told no one.) The advent of the real Evelyn is like a mythical character coming to life.
Alan says we must do something special. He reminds me she is arriving just around Passover. Spring springs and with it Evelyn, a sprite. We should have a Seder, he says. A Seder? I thought Alan had given his soul to the Quakers. The Inner Light. “You used to make them when Grandma was alive.” “I did it for her. The season wouldn’t seem natural to her without one.” “I know. Last year was the first time we didn’t have one. It didn’t seem natural.” “I didn’t think you cared. All right, if you care that much, we’ll do it.” We’ll do it right. It shall be a huge feast. Althea, faithful scullery maid, will be called in to dip her capable hands in matzo meal and roll balls. We will have our friends. Evelyn can look everyone over, as she did once before, years ago, when she came to Columbia to hear me play Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet with the Chamber Music Society. “Gabrielle’s family and Nina are not even Jewish,” says Althea. “Do you invite them to a Seder?” “By all means. You’re supposed to have outsiders at a Seder—it’s a tradition.” Who knows, this might even be true. “Maybe I should ask Darryl to come, then.” Darryl is her boyfriend of physics fame. “Sure, ask him if you like.” “But do you think people would think it’s odd to invite a black person to a Seder?” “I’m quite sure no one would gasp, Althea, if that’s what you’re worried about.” “But the Haggadah says all those terrible things about Egyptians. It might make him feel uncomfortable.”
Often I wish my mother, who didn’t worry about the finer points, were around. My mother would be appalled at Althea’s having a black boyfriend, but once she got over being appalled, which she would in due time, having inspected Darryl, she would say: What’s all this fuss? You want him there? Then invite him. So I say that too.
“I don’t know if I remember how to do it,” says Victor. “It’s been a couple of years.” “I can ask George to do it. He’s from a family of rabbis, you know.” “No, never mind, I’ll manage.” I knew any suggestion of George filling his shoes would bring him round.
I have offered Evelyn a bed in the large room Althea and Vivian share, but she stays in a hotel. She is careful not to interfere, to maintain privacy. It is clear that though I am the main object of her visit, she has other interests too. What they are she doesn’t say, just disappears. But when she is with us she is one of us. She talks to the children as if she has known them forever; she is one of those people who can talk to children, who remember. She and Victor seem to appreciate each other. It strikes me that she and Victor are alike in some ways. They have little small talk. They speak the truth, their versions of it, directly, without elaboration or justification. They see by their own lights and are unaffected by trends of interpretation, cultural weather.
When we are alone together I feel a touch of that old harmony. We could be in the bedroom downstairs at the brown house again, whispering secrets late at night.
“You were such a good swimmer, Lydia. Weren’t you ever afraid of the waves?”
“No. I was a little afraid up on the dunes, though. That height.”
Evelyn smiles. Her smile is Vivian’s, wise, wide, full of marvel. We are walking, Sunday morning, on the broad mall down in Riverside Park. All around us, groups are playing volleyball on the grass; sweaty joggers pass by, roller skaters, bicyclists—some are little children learning to ride, wobbling, with a parent chasing behind, every few seconds gripping the back of the seat to steady it, shouting encouragement in Spanish and English and French. On our left is the river. Whatever muck lurks beneath, the surface is sparkling cleanly in the sun. An early spring. Cherry blossoms are in premature bloom, their so brief life, and I am glad Evelyn has come in time to catch it. I point them out like a proud landowner; she nods and smiles at their beauty. Then I think, how can this compare to her Alps? Nothing I have to offer could make her stay. That family is over.
Evelyn and I speak in shorthand, eulogizing. Evelyn does not make statements with subjects and predicates. She gives fragments—the missing pieces are inside her.
“Those stringbeans,” she says, “at the brown house.”
“Born in the soil.” I laugh.
“Grew up in the sun. Remember Mother with that knife? She took it so seriously.”
“Yes, the zucchini.”
“Cut so it doesn’t hurt.”
“I never liked zucchini. I ate them so I wouldn’t hurt her feelings. She was so proud. Seven ways of cooking zucchini.”
“Remember when I lost that dragon kite?”
“Oh Lord, Evelyn. I thought you’d never shut up about it.”
“A man came along ...”
“You were always afraid of getting lost.”
“The blue slipper on the umbrella.”
“Sometimes when I said we were lost we weren’t really. I just wanted to ...”
“I know. Sometimes when I cried I wasn’t really crying, either. I figured I’d let you ...”
“I didn’t know that. I thought you ...”
“I know. I mean, I knew you didn’t know. That was part of ...”
“Oh Evelyn.” We link arms.
Oh Evelyn, why did you go so far? Princess of the Beach. Now landlocked.
“That sand woman,” says Evelyn.
“Remember how I knocked her in? God, I was a little sadist, wasn’t I?” Evelyn doesn’t answer. There are so many things I want to know, but to talk with her of the present feels strange. The past is more comfortable. Still ...
“How are you up in your Alps, Evelyn? Are you happy?”
She smiles. “It’s beautiful.”
“I imagine Rene is very busy. What do you do with yourself?”
She shrugs and brushes her hair off her neck. So warm for this time of year. Our necks are damp. “There are things to do. I have some friends. In the winters I ski. Do you go skiing?”
“No. Not enough time.”
Why no children, I want to know. She had a miscarriage, a bloody rush to the hospital, but that shouldn’t ... Did they take it all out and no one told me? What about work? Isn’t there anything she wanted to do with a passion? I can’t ask those things. Those are the kinds of things Evelyn would tell the sunflower. She was the closest person to me once, and I don’t understand her at all. I don’t understand how to be without doing.
“When they used to leave us alone,” she says.
“Yes, in their bed.”
“Then I was scared.” She laughs. “You too.”
“I shouldn’t have been. I was eleven.”
“Oh Lydia. You’re still setting standards.”
What do you do in New York when you’re not with me? Is it a man? Or the change of flat city streets? Fancy shops? Museums? I don’t care, I’d just like to know.
“That time you played the ‘Trout’ at Columbia,” she says. “You were wonderful.”
“We had that pizza after. So many of us, they had to push tables together.”
“Daddy talked about the concert all the way home. He couldn’t get over it. Anchovies, was it?”
“Sausages. But he used to tease me about the piano lessons. Remember? My little Paderewski. It really irked me.”
“I know,” says Evelyn. “But he was very proud. That George. You were sleeping with him, weren’t you?”
“How could you tell? You were only seventeen.”
“I don’t know. I could tell.”
“Do you think Mother and Daddy knew?”
“No. I liked Victor better, though.”
“So did I. George will be at the Seder.”
“Oh. You don’t still ... ? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask ...”
“Oh no. It’s all forgotten. We’re friends, that’s all.”
“Yes,” says Evelyn. “Sometimes that’s easier.”
What on earth does she mean? Some love affair? Or with Rene, nothing? I have seen Rene several times. A solid, portly, courtly banker, master of four languages and fifteen years older than Evelyn. In his early fifties now. He collects objets d’art. Perhaps she is one. He treats her adoringly. Dotingly, in a way that seems to preclude any grownup passion she might return. He has traveled everywhere and seen everything and talks well. After his visits, lying in bed, I try to figure out who he is, for he gives little indication. He uses the passive voice, and the pronoun “one,” like an Englishman. Victor reminds me that he’s a banker. “So? What is that supposed to mean?” “The mind of a banker,” says Victor, “—it’s so simple, Lyd, why can’t you see?—is on money.” But I am always looking for something else in him, what Evelyn sees. Victor says security, ease. “Plus, well, he’s a cultivated man, better than your average American banker. Sweetheart, your knee seems to be somewhere in my liver. Would you mind?” “Sorry. Do you like her?” “Sure I like her.” “Would you like her, I mean?” He pauses, visualizing. “She’s a little airy for my tastes.” “Phil thinks I’m airy.” “Hah! What does he know about women, a mere boy.” Victor sees into things and I suppose he is right about Rene. But why? What made her run for cover so early? I study her profile against the passing trees.
“You were always so busy with so many things,” says Evelyn, “and I ...”
“You what?”
“I didn’t know how to care about things.”
This time I am silent, waiting.
“Maybe,” she gropes, “because you did so much, it left me ...”
“Don’t say it left you nothing to do, Evelyn. There are plenty of things to go around.”
“I Wasn’t going to. I was going to say it left me free to ... As if you would do it for me.”
She is persuasive in her fuzziness. I am almost ready to agree. Then I think, Nonsense, Evelyn. You have a poetic vision, but life is not a poem, balanced. “I don’t think so. I guess it’s just our different natures.”
She sighs. “I guess so.”
“Why don’t you adopt a child?” I say on impulse. “There are so many needy children.”
“It’s such a big job. Maybe I wouldn’t love it enough. And then ... you have so many.”
“Jesus, Evelyn, what does that have to do with it?”
“Don’t get angry. Look at that man, Lydia! He’s riding a unicycle. Isn’t that fantastic!”
Why haven’t you come more often? It’s easier for you than for me: rich, free. You should be a happy woman. I think all this.
“Lydie.” She squeezes my arm. “I’m not unhappy, you know. I wish you could understand.”
The night of the Seder arrives. It will be a crowd—the six of us and Evelyn; Nina; George; Gabrielle and Don with their children: Roger, a freshman at Amherst, and Cynthia, who is fourteen. (Esther is not here: she is a social worker in Washington. Darryl is not coming after all; his parents had tickets to Ain’t Misbehavin’. I asked George if he would like to bring Elinor, the biofeedback woman he mentioned two months ago, but he said, Alas, she is a thing of the past.) Even so, the preparations have not been burdensome. Evelyn rolled up her sleeves—in a kitchen she is down-to-earth and competent. Althea was indispensable with her lists, crisply issuing directions. Victor helped, and even the little ones. Little ones—they laugh at me. Eleven and nine.
Phil walks around examining critically. “Why do you need so much matzo piled up here? It’s really cruddy stuff.”
“That’s the bread of affliction, kiddo,” says Victor, patting his shoulder. “It’s not supposed to be any good.”
“And the lettuce. Do you have to ruin it, drenching it in this salty gook?”
“Bitter herbs. Because it was bitter, being slaves.”
“You have thirteen at the table. It’s unlucky. She should have talked Darryl into coming.”
“That’s okay,” says Victor. “We have Elijah. He makes fourteen. There’s even a glass of wine for him. Hey, Lyd, aren’t we supposed to leave the door open for Elijah?”
“I think in a New York apartment we could get a special dispensation.”
We gather. Victor performs in English, gallantly. He goes to hide the matzo for the children to find later on. He says blessings as if he meant them. He looks around benevolently at the crowd, winking handsomely at Cynthia, who is overweight and has acne. He always makes a point of flirting with Cynthia. Watching him, I remember our first real talk, in a bar twenty years ago. He said I could get to love him and I have. He said he would be a painter, he said he saw in me great potential for arrogance, he said we were the same. He was coercive, but everything he said turned out to be the truth.
Vivian, the youngest, asks the four questions. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” She puts down the book and raises her eyes shyly. “Because this night we have Aunt Evelyn with us.”
Evelyn, alongside her, draws in a quick breath, hugs Vivie close, and says, “Oh love!” Then she hides her face in her hands for a second.
Victor reads the story of the four sons, one wise, one contrary, one simple, and one who does not even know how to ask a question. When the wise son asks the meaning of the Passover he is told all, down to the last detail. The simple son gets a simple, serviceable explanation. And the son who does not even know how to ask a question is given an even simpler account. Each according to his needs. All but the contrary son. In older editions, I remember, he is called the wicked son.
Victor reads: “‘The contrary son asks: “What is the meaning of this service to you?” Saying you, he excludes himself, and because he excludes himself from the group, he denies a basic principle. You may therefore tell him plainly: “Because of what the Eternal did for me when I came forth from Egypt, I do this.” For me and not for him; had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.’”
I cannot look in Phil’s direction, but across the table, Victor’s eyes and mine meet.
“I have to pause a moment to editorialize. That’s what the old rabbis did, you know,” says Victor, placing the book face down. He frowns, strokes his beard in an unctuous, rabbinical manner so that the children laugh. “This seems a little harsh, doesn’t it? A little vindictive. Those old Jews were tough guys, very fussy. Chosen, not chosen, who’s to say? I’ll tell you what. At this Seder, in this house, kids, everyone is redeemed whether he likes it or not. No one is excluded.”
Victor invites the company to spill a drop of wine for each of the ten plagues God sent down on the Egyptians. Everyone spills, uproarious; the tablecloth is spattered red. And for each plague they bang a fist on the table. What rejoicing at the oppressors’ destruction; it has always made me cringe. Blood. Frogs. Vermin. Beasts. Murrain. (“Murrain? What’s murrain?” Vivian asks every year. “Cattle disease, same as last time,” Phil reminds her.) Boils. (“Ugh!” Alan starts a wave of scratching.) Hail. Locusts. Darkness. (Evelyn glances at me. She remembers I turned on the light after I thought she was asleep.) Slaying of the firstborn.
Don looks dubious. What vengeful people, he may be thinking. How un-Christian indeed. He is too polite to say it, of course. Perhaps it is simply all the spilling and banging and scratching that distresses him. His own well-bred children, Roger and Cynthia, whose ancestors were never slaves, are having a fine time, joining the horseplay with the rest. Gabrielle, at peace with herself at last, looks on benignly. Nina and George look nostalgic, he for his youth, she for the youth she did not have. Maybe they will go back to her apartment afterwards and make love. They had a brief summer affair towards the end of college, and from time to time they revive it, pointlessly, Nina tells me. But it does cheer them up. I can’t imagine how it feels, what is called casual sex. Nina says it’s not really so casual, with her and George. They are very fond of each other. “Maybe you should get married,” I once quipped. “Married! We can’t take each other that seriously.”
We sing “Dayenu,” enumerating God’s miracles, among which are blood, vermin, boils, locusts, and so on. Had he merely delivered us—enough! But he delivered us and castigated them. The deliverance, the manna, the Sabbath—all that would have been enough. But he gave us the commandments, the temple, the land of Israel. Enough! Enough! The table is full and rowdy. Is this also a song of fullness of heart? Darkness? Hail? Slaying of the firstborn? Forty years in the desert? Thank you so much for the deliverance. But enough. A little too much, maybe.
“Next year in Jerusalem,” Victor concludes, having skipped the boring, holier parts.
“Next year a senior,” cries Althea. “Thank God.”
“Next year in Paris,” murmurs Gabrielle.
“Next year the ski trip,” says Vivian. “I’ll be in fifth grade.”
“Still the ski trip? It’s ten months away. That’s a long time, Vivie.”
“That’s why I said next year the ski trip.”
She will not rest content until the school’s chartered bus whisks her off at dawn with the other fifth and sixth-graders, to somewhere north, three hours out of the city. The ski trip is a hallowed tradition; the children come back at night exhausted and windburned, their noses running. Some stay home and cough for a few days. Then they talk about it for a month. This February was Alan’s first time. He spared Vivie no detail of the day’s joys—the bumpy, tortuous, singing bus ride, the chair lifts, the hot chocolate, the ever-more-difficult hills. He tortured her with details, in the name of brotherly love. Vivie regained her good spirits after a week or so, but her ardor for the ski trip, marinating in envy, lies simmering beneath. Next year. I only hope she does not break a leg.
Althea and Evelyn and I bring on the feast, and some time after the last macaroon has been consumed, after the kids have found the hidden matzo and been rewarded, after Elijah has been and gone and the sated company, sprawled on pillows on the floor, begins to think of rising and heading home, Alan announces that at camp to end a celebration they would join hands and do a simple dance while they sang “Simple Gifts.”
“Dance?” says Don. “I don’t think I can move.”
But Gabrielle charms away his inertia and Alan prevails. The dance is so simple, hardly more than a stately, circular parade breaking every few bars into revolving couples, that even Phil agrees to do it. Alan plays the song for us and those who know the words sing. It happens that Nina knows the words from her childhood spent in Sunday school. George knows the words from singing in an amateur group of political activists and pacifists. Roger knows the words from the Amherst chorus. Gabrielle knows the words from having written a college paper on Martha Graham’s choreography for Appalachian Spring. It astonishes me that so many people have known for a long time what I only lately learned. Dancing in a stately parade around the disorderly, wine-sprinkled table, we repeat the verses till by the end everyone knows the words.
’Tis a gift to be simple
’Tis a gift to be free
’Tis a gift to come round
Where we want to be.
And when we find ourselves
In the place that is right
We will be in the valley
Of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
To bow and to bend
We shall not be ashamed.
To turn and to turn
Will be our delight
Till by turning, turning
We come round right.
“I don’t know if I like all this talk about bowing and bending,” says Don. George tells him genially, “Ah, shut up and keep singing.” He looks a bit startled but obeys. And so they all go home. Our Seder may not have been faithful to the letter; we even had dry wine instead of sweet. Nonetheless Elijah came and drank.
“I’m going to become a Quaker when I’m older,” says Alan, clearing the table.
Victor, aproned at the sink, looks over his shoulder at me. We telegraph: That would be odd, wouldn’t it, but we don’t need to think about it now, do we? Plenty of time.
“That’s nice, dear.”
“Yuk, how could you sit through all those silent meetings?” says Vivie. “They are so boring.”
“How would you know? You hardly ever came.”
“Well, what’s it your business?”
“Kids, please, it’s late,” says Victor. “We’re all tired.”
“But it’s true. She hardly ever came. The counselors used to go looking for her.”
“I can be silent alone,” says Vivie.
“Yeah, it’s not hard when you’re sleeping in your bunk.”
“Oh, don’t bicker. We had such a nice time. Quakers are peaceful, Alan.”
“I might decide to have a bar mitzvah anyway,” he adds.
Evelyn and Althea giggle. Even Phil grins.
“That’s nice, dear.” Plenty of time for that one too. Obviously what he likes is ceremony. Having things. The Seder was his idea.
“Good night,” I say to Vivie, tucking her in. “Sweet dreams, sweet Vivian.”
“I’m going to dream about the ski trip.” And pulls the covers over her head. How can she breathe that way?