Wonder Boys (25 page)

Deborah ignored him, took the chair next to her brother, and then waited, chin raised, with an air of long-suffering patience, while we all came to terms with the discovery that she had shed the unfortunate purple dress, along with her tights and shoes, and come down to the table barefoot, wearing only her bathrobe. It was a nice bathrobe, though—we all agreed about that—heavy and brightly colored and patterned with chevrons, as if it had been made from an old-fashioned trader’s blanket.

“It’s Alvin’s,” she informed us, with an exaggerated wince as she pronounced the name of her most recent ex-husband. “I figured if he can’t be with us, right? At least his bathrobe could.”

“That’s sweet,” said Philly.

“Hi, everyone,” said Marie, emerging at last from the kitchen, cheeks puffed out, her thin yellow hair afly. She was carrying a silver plate on which sat a small stack of matzohs, and another, larger plate on which they were piled high. As she rounded the table you could see her taking in both that Emily and I were sitting next to each other in apparent amity, and that her other sister-in-law had made an interesting choice of festival apparel, but she said nothing, and only smiled a little wearily at Irv. She set the big plate of matzohs on the table between Emily and Deborah, and the smaller silver one in front of Irv. As she did so she laid a hand on his cheek and planted a sympathetic peck on his high forehead. Then she sat down beside Philly. Only the seat opposite Irv remained empty now.

“What’s the holdup?” Irv called into the kitchen. “Come on, Irene. James is getting restless, here.”

“Not really,” said James.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Irene swept into the living room, looking even more flustered than Marie, her face red, her forehead shining. She was wrapped, as on all special family occasions, in one of a number of flowing garments she had made for herself, according to her own design, drawing her inspiration, as far as I could determine, from the caftan, the muumuu, and possibly from certain episodes of
Star Trek
. “I was just having a little problem getting the Seder plate arranged. The one we bought in Mexico last winter.” She carried the broad, painted earthenware plate to the table and started to set it down in front of Irv, beside the matzohs, then stopped and stood frowning at it, shaking her head. It was a pretty thing, decorated with green vines and yellow flowers and dark blue undulations, and loaded up with the usual ritual foodstuffs. “I’ve got the
moror
, and the parsley, the
charoses
, the bone, the egg … Damn it, I can never remember what this sixth little circle is for.”

“What sixth circle?” said Irv, his tone implying that the problem for which she had been holding up the Seder was not only minor but would probably turn out, in the light of his impatient logic, to be nonexistent. “The horseradish, the parsley, the
charoses
, the shank bone, the egg. That’s five.”

“See for yourself,” she said, setting the plate before him.

Irv counted off on his fingers the items that had been set into five of the plate’s six round indentations, mumbling over again to himself the list of items he’d just enunciated.

“Bone, egg, and, uh … Oh!” He snapped his fingers. “Matzoh! It’s for the matzoh,” he declared.

“The matzoh.” Irene slapped him on the side of his head. “The
matzoh
won’t fit in there, Irv. That’s ridiculous. What am I supposed to do, crumble it up? And look at
that
. Read that word there.” She pointed to the Hebrew word painted in blue characters on the bottom of the empty compartment. “That doesn’t say matzoh!”

Emily sat forward, leaning across me, and craned her neck to read the inscription. Her left breast brushed against my arm. She was so close to me that I could hear the creaking of her jeans.

“It says, ‘Cazart,’” she offered.

“Chaz-art,” Irene tried. “Chazrat.”

“Chazrat?” Irv was incredulous. “What chazrat? Look, it says ‘matzoh.’ That’s supposed to be a
mem
,” He rolled his eyes and looked disgusted. “Mexicans,” he said.

“It
doesn’t
say matzoh.”

“Maybe it’s for the salt water,” Philly suggested.

“Maybe it’s an ashtray,” said Deborah.

“Maybe it’s not really a Seder plate,” I said, trying to remember if we didn’t engage in this same dispute every year. “Maybe it’s supposed to be for some other, similar holiday.”

“I think it’s
chazeret
,” said Marie quietly.

“
Chaz
er
et
?” we said.

Marie nodded.

“Some kind of vegetable, maybe?” She said this as if she were dredging up some fragmentary and poorly learned bit of Jewish knowledge upon which any of us would be able to improve, but I could see that she knew precisely what she was talking about, and had done all along. Marie was scrupulous about not outshining the various born and lifelong Jews among us. “Some kind of
bitter
vegetable, I think?”

“That’s what the
moror
is, dear,” said Irene with placid condescension. “Bitter herbs.”

“I know, but I think the
chazeret
is supposed to be something bitter, too. Maybe something like watercress?”

“Put some watercress, Irene,” said Irv, at once, deferring, as was generally wise in such matters, to his daughter-in-law’s erudition.

“
Watercress
? Why would I have watercress?”

“For the
chazeret
.” He looked annoyed, as if she were being obtuse. “There’s plenty of it growing around the pond.”

“I’m not going out to the pond, Irving, at
night
, in
that
mud, to harvest any
watercress
. You can forget about that.”

“Or maybe endive?” suggested Marie.

“How about some radicchio?” said James, deciding to brave the waters of Warshavian ritual dispute.

“Radicchio!” cried Irene.

“I know,” said Emily, with a little smile. “Why don’t you put some kimchee?”

Everyone laughed at that, and an evil red rank-smelling dollop of kimchee was fetched from its sealed lead containment unit in the refrigerator. It seemed to me that things had gotten off to a very good start. Then I remembered that it didn’t matter what kind of a start things got off to, that I was not going to be a part of this family much longer, and that the news I had come to impart to Emily would annihilate in an instant all the promising starts and family happiness in the world.

“Shall we begin?” said Irv. “James? Will you hand me the Haggadahs?”

He pointed to the sideboard behind us and James reached around for the stack of little booklets, which Irv then passed around. They were the same ones he always used, cheap little giveaway jobs, heavy on the English, that were emblazoned throughout with the name of a defunct brand of coffee. He pulled his eyeglasses from their plastic sleeve in the pocket of his shirt, cleared his throat, and then we set about once again to commemorate the start of a long trip across a small desert by an ill-behaved rabble of former slaves. Irv started by reading the short opening prayer that invoked in fairly conventional and politically somewhat outmoded terms the Almighty; the family, friendship, and the sense of thanksgiving; and the spirits of liberty, justice, and democracy. James turned to me, looking panicked, and I showed him the trick with Jewish books, flipping his Haggadah to what he’d thought to be its conclusion and opening it to page 1. Then I bowed my head, and listened, and looked over the top of my eyeglasses around the table. Everyone else was reading along with Irv, except for Deborah, who was not even looking at the Haggadah in her hands. I caught her eye and she stared back at me for a moment, levelly and without expression, then looked at Emily. Then she dropped her eyes to her book.

“Now we pour the first cup of wine,” Irv said, when he’d concluded the opening prayer. “There are four,” he told James.

“Look out!” said Philly. “James already had his four
beers
.”

“He doesn’t have to drink all four glasses,” said Irene, looking concerned. “You don’t have to drink them all, James.”

I turned to James.

“Maybe you should take it easy,” I said.

“Mr. Role Model,” said Deborah. She looked at James. “You wanna make sure you follow this guy’s example, that’s for sure.”

“Deb,” said Emily in a tone of gentle warning, and as we raised our cups, and Irv read the blessing over the wine, I felt so grateful for this intervention by my wife on my behalf that tears almost came to my eyes. Could she really have decided to forgive me? And was I really going to throw away such unearned forgiveness, such grace? The heavy wine was hot and salty in my throat. James, I saw, drank down his whole glass.

“All right,” said Irv. He pushed back his chair and got up from the table. “Now I wash my hands.”

“I’d like to wash my hands, too,” said Marie.

This appeared to irritate Deborah.

“Isn’t it usually just Daddy who washes his hands?” she said, with mock innocence.

“Anyone can wash their hands,” said Irv.

“Yes, we
all
could,” said Marie, as if trying to get up a game of charades.

“Why
shouldn’t
she wash her hands?” Irene said, waving a dismissive hand toward Deborah.

“Maybe you should wash
yours
,” Philly said. He winked. “I’m not sure you got all the cow pie off them.”

“Fuck you,” said Deborah. “I hate it when you wink at me.

“May I wash mine?” said James.

“Certainly you may,” said Irene, watching with a broad smile as James got up and followed Irv and Marie into the kitchen. We heard the stream of water ringing against the stainless steel sink. The smile died. “You’re such a pleasant person to be around, Deborah.”

“Yeah,” said Philly. “What’s your problem?”

Deborah glanced at me, and I felt a cheesy smile congeal on my lips.

“Okay, then, fine,” she said, leaping from her chair, and for a moment I thought the meal was going to be ended before it had even begun. “I’m going to wash my fucking hands, too.”

Emily looked at me and rolled her eyes, as if her sister were only being her usual impossible self. I nodded, and this moment of private derision, of silent laughter between us, made my heart seize. When the hand washers had returned from their ablutions we proceeded with the dipping of the parsley into the salt water, reading in turn from our booklets about the recollection, thereby, of Jewish hope, Jewish tears, and ancient Near Eastern fashions in hors d’oeuvres. Then Irv reached for the middle matzoh of the three stacked on the silver plate, broke it in two, and wrapped it in a napkin.

“Now,” he said, turning so quickly to James, who’d been watching this procedure with dazed fascination, that the young man jumped.

“What?” he said.

“This is called the
afikomen
,” said Irv, tapping the little bundle. His bushy white eyebrows knotted over his nose. “Don’t you try to steal it, now.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said James, eyes wide.

“You’re
supposed
to, buddy,” I told him. “Take it easy. You hide it, and then Irv here has to ransom it back.”‘

“There might be a little money in it for you, if you’re interested.” Irv set the little bundle beside his plate, slid it a couple of inches toward James, and humorously cleared his throat. “Now,” he said, and took up his Haggadah again, and we all turned the page, and I saw a look of unreasoning panic enter the young man’s eyes. He’d been marking it all along with a fearful thumb, and now it was here. He blanched and looked at me to save him. I clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Go to it.”

“I can’t read this part in Hebrew.”

“That’s okay. We know.”

“Take your time,” said Irene. “Take a deep breath.”

He inhaled, and exhaled, and then, as he started in on that old rigged four-part quiz we’d all heard Philly reel off, in weary Hebrew, so many times before—asking Irv why, on this night that commemorated a strange assortment of emergencies and miracles, he ate crackers, horseradish, and parsley and sat slumped against a crocheted orange throw pillow—the Warshaws left off their arguments, and their wry asides, and their shifting around in their chairs. Instead they just sat, motionless, listening, while James picked his way carefully through the passage, in his clear, high corrupted-altar-boy voice, as though his Haggadah were an instruction manual and there was some complicated machine there in the living room that we were all trying to assemble.

“That was very nice, James,” said Irene, when he finished.

His cheeks colored, and he smiled at her as though he were in love.

“Mr. Warshaw?” he said. His voice came out sounding strangled with emotion.

“Irv.”

“Irv? Could I—No.”

“What James? What is it?”

“Could I have a pillow so I can, uh, recline, too?”

“Get him a pillow,” Irv said.

Deborah got up and went to one of the two pushed-aside sofas, which were all but buried in throw pillows. In the cushions and bolsters that littered the house one could read, as in the strata of metamorphic rock, the handicraft fads of the Warshaw daughters—the eras of needlepoint, rug hooking, tie-dye, crochet. She brought back a cushion embroidered with a green-skinned Peter Frampton with taxi yellow curls and tucked it in behind James’s back.

“Here you go, handsome,” she said, patting his cheek and bringing up a deep flush of color.

Dutifully Irv set about answering the Four Questions. He looked around the table, at which sat three native Koreans, a converted Baptist, a badly lapsed Methodist, and a Catholic of questionable but tormented stripe, lifted his Haggadah, and began, unironically, “Once we were slaves in Egypt…” James Leer sat with his eyes fixed on Irv’s gesticulating right hand, his head not quite motionless on his neck, listening to the remainder of Irv’s response with the universal bogus solemnity of drunken young men trying to pay attention to something that is making no impression at all. After this we read in turn about the Four Sons, those poor ill-assorted siblings, one self-righteous, one dull-witted, one an asshole, one infantile—try to guess which one fell to me—who year after year got criticized and compared with one another in a way that I supposed had provided a useful example to Jewish parents for centuries. Next came the long retelling of the sad, operatic, but as far as I could see typical history of the Jews in Egypt, from the miraculous feats of Joseph to the slaying of Hebrew babies. Generally it was somewhere around this point that I began to engage in a little Passover reclining of my own. I sat back, closed my eyes, and felt myself drifting, abandoned and alone, in a little wicker basket on a broad muddy river, in the shadow of the murmuring bulrushes. Egypt was the expanse of lapis lazuli passing overhead, the grunt of a crocodile, the wind-chime laughter of a princess and her handmaids playing on the shore. I felt a sharp pain in my left side and my eyes snapped open. James had jabbed me in the ribs.