{"id":49132,"date":"2013-03-25T10:57:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-25T14:57:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=49132"},"modified":"2013-03-25T11:42:55","modified_gmt":"2013-03-25T15:42:55","slug":"elijah-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/03\/25\/elijah-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"Elijah Returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Passover-Matzoh\"<\/a>A holiday\u2019s most assiduously followed rituals occur, usually, before the holiday itself: preparing the customary meal, shopping for the requisite gifts, configuring the most acceptable seating arrangements. So much must happen before the sun goes down and the first three stars appear in the sky.<\/p>\n

During the month preceding Passover, my father spends several hours planning, revising, and rerevising his remarks for our family\u2019s seder. It\u2019s a tradition that began a few years ago, when his father, deaf and grumpy with age, decided to pass on the task of leading the premeal service. An attorney familiar with speaking in courtrooms, my father is meticulous with his preparations\u2014offhand-seeming um<\/em>s and you know<\/em>s are carefully drafted; a stopwatch ticks as he practices his commentary. Generally his seders have been regarded as both witty and efficient, observing all the rituals while getting us quickly to the meal.<\/p>\n

But last year didn\u2019t go so seamlessly. As the holiday approached, he was nervous because, for the first time since their divorce, my mother had decided to host the seder. As she has no immediate family in Minneapolis (except her devoted, sympathetic son), this meant fourteen of her former in-laws would convene in her home\u2014a home she shared with her new husband, Kevin, a Catholic from North Dakota whose existence my father was uneasy about.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not quite sure how to handle it,\u201d he said to me the week before the seder. \u201cI don\u2019t want to come off like I\u2019m marching into their home and putting myself in charge of everything while my entire family\u2014which is, of course, still her family, too\u2014eats up all her food. And I sense Kevin isn\u2019t totally comfortable with me yet. But at the same time I do have to lead this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were in his living room on a weekend afternoon, copies of the five or six haggadot<\/em> from which he appropriates his service splayed on the coffee table. My parents have remained close since splitting up\u2014they live just two blocks apart, and occasionally walk my mother\u2019s dog together or go out for dinner; every year, in the middle of June, they commemorate their broken anniversary. Their marriage ended because, when he was forty-one, after eighteen years together, my father came to understand that he was gay; although this realization necessitated that he leave my mother, it failed to eradicate two decades of intimacy between them.<\/p>\n

But now, in his home, as he surmised that Kevin wasn\u2019t yet comfortable with him, I sensed, too, that my father wasn\u2019t absolutely comfortable with Kevin. Until Kevin\u2019s appearance on stage, my father had retained his status as the Most Important Man in my mother\u2019s life\u2014he was her confidant, her closest friend. When she remarried, though, he was usurped (\u201cIt totally reverses things, yeah,\u201d he\u2019d said on the weekend of the wedding); he was still adapting to his new, less influential role. It was strange not to be able to call her whenever he wanted, not to be able to ring her doorbell unannounced. Yet, at the same time, much of my father\u2019s leftover guilt about having abandoned my mother had dissipated when she remarried.<\/p>\n

I set down the haggadah<\/em> I\u2019d been leafing through.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a delicate situation,\u201d I said, quite sagaciously.<\/p>\n

My father nodded and, after setting his stopwatch ticking, began rehearsing his spiel.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

My mother, too, was unsure if she was comfortable hosting the seder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure I\u2019m comfortable hosting the seder,\u201d she said, two days before it.<\/p>\n

Her kitchen is a many-windowed room on her house\u2019s second floor that gets good sun all day. Most years at this time she would have been ridding the kitchen of hametz, packaging unopened boxes of cereal and Stoned Wheat Thins for a foodshelf. But because of Kevin this year was different. Instead of throwing everything out or giving it away, she was making do by feeding me as much starch as she could. Dutifully I ate whatever was set in front of me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said. She paused for a moment, waving her hand over the toaster to check its heat. Her hair, which had always been uniformly black, was just beginning to show a few gray strands, a couple of which were caught in the fluff of her navy blue bathrobe. \u201cI\u2019m just not sure it feels right. It\u2019s so silly!\u201d The toaster chimed quietly, indicating its cycle was finished; careful not to burn her fingers she maneuvered half a bagel onto a plate and began to butter it. Her dog, Z, disobediently watched. \u201cI know I\u2019m part of the family, but it will be so strange seeing everyone. It\u2019s been so long. I\u2019m just not sure that hosting was a good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

She set the half-bagel in front of me, along with a gently used paper napkin.<\/p>\n

Along with my father and his brothers, my mother is the fourth beneficiary of my paternal grandparents\u2019 will. (I was moved when I heard this; it indicated, in some objective way, that she was still part of the Ross family. Financial inheritance as familial proof.) But she\u2019s ambivalent regarding her status in the clan: while she\u2019s appreciative of how open her former in-laws have been, the family serves as a constant reminder of a life she used to possess, and which was abruptly and unfairly taken from her. The prospect of having these reminders in her home was, understandably, both exciting and upsetting.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell I\u2019m sure Dad would be happy to take over. Or Francie,\u201d I said. \u201cThey understand the situation. Everyone understands. But you\u2019d have to let them know today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t seem right. That would be such a burden to dump on someone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo then host it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. I should. But I feel like I\u2019m stealing it from one of them. But that\u2019s not it, either. It\u2019s just\u2014it\u2019s difficult. I want to host it. I do<\/i>. But I don\u2019t know how I\u2019m going to feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

At Passover we are obliged to retell the story of the Jews\u2019 exodus from Egypt. To save the chosen people, God turned water to blood and made frogs fall from the sky; He threw Egypt into interminable darkness and killed all its first-born sons. The holiday is a celebration of our peoples\u2019 freedom, but also a reminder that freedom isn\u2019t happiness\u2014after fleeing the Pharaoh the Jews spent forty years wandering in the desert eating manna. Resonances: freedom, for the Jews, has of course included the Inquisition, countless pogroms, and the Holocaust, among other persecutions. Perseverance, then, becomes the theme. We celebrate, maybe, not because of happiness, but in spite of hardship. We set an extra place at the table, for the prophet Elijah, in spite of the fact that we know he will not come.<\/p>\n

Among the seder\u2019s other guests would be my uncles, Jacob and Daniel; some years ago Jacob\u2019s wife\u2014perhaps with reason, perhaps not\u2014accused Daniel of hitting on her, causing a thus-far-intractable rift between the brothers; Daniel maintained his innocence, while Jacob was obliged to side with his spouse; the seder would be their first meeting in months. At this point the original conflict served as a MacGuffin, a main storyline on which my uncles heaped subplot upon subplot of accusation and vindication. Their children, my cousins, had taken their obligatory sides and become standoffish, acting painfully polite with each other. The whole affair had done much to damage the family\u2019s structural integrity. Also, since the previous Passover, my grandfather, Paul, had become blind in one eye; he\u2019d had a pacemaker installed in his chest to correct an irregular heartbeat; he developed, spontaneously, an allergy to the sun. Maybe as a reaction, he\u2019d become preoccupied with preparing for his death; at family gatherings, he was intent on divesting himself of all his worldly possessions, and brought bags full of his belongings to distribute.<\/p>\n

What can be done about any this I of course don\u2019t know\u2014my grandfather is mortal; given their personalities, my uncles\u2019 feud is unlikely ever to be reconciled. But it doesn\u2019t take much imagination to intuit that every seder table, along with its eggs and shanks of lamb, is laid out with similar stories of families disrupted. We don\u2019t really need a new Tolstoy; the old one suffices just fine.<\/p>\n

Yet unhappy families are families nonetheless, and at least there can be some solace in this. For ours, convening at the Jewish holidays isn\u2019t an obligation, but something looked forward to by all: a salve. There is no reassurance, no forgiveness from an order higher than each other. Quarrels may not be resolved, but for the length of the meal they\u2019re tolerated. Despite our grudges, everyone shows up. And that, it seems, isn\u2019t nothing.<\/p>\n

*<\/center><\/p>\n

My grandparents were the first to arrive. I relieved them of their half dozen grocery bags (my grandmother, too, avidly divests herself of possessions), which were filled with Saul Bellow novels, innumerable spatulas and whisks, a small metal statuette of either Don Quixote or Don Juan, apples, old magazines, new magazines; one of the bags was filled with more grocery bags; all of this they would distribute to family members using tactics predicated on slyness and guilt. My cheeks soggy with their kisses, I led them upstairs to the unit of the quad-plex where my mother and Kevin live.<\/p>\n

Soon thereafter the rest of the Rosses showed up: a burst of perfume and chatter and much stomping of shoes. One set of cousins brought a silver platter of chocolate-covered matzoh, the other set brought apologies. Kevin greeted everyone at the door and promptly poured them wine, as my mother had assigned him to do while she was busy overseeing various soups and meats in the kitchen. A clean, bald man in his early fifties, Kevin is an agricultural engineer and subscribes to a magazine called Wheat Life<\/i>. He is quiet and reserved, and seemed not to know what to do with the surfeit of enthusiasm my family\u2014shriekers, all\u2014directed his way, as if he\u2019d been handed a lamp without a bulb and told to turn it on. As more people entered, Z, an enthusiastic hostess, huffed enthusiastically at crotches and feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cObama\u2019s no good for Israel,\u201d said Uncle Jake, as usual, a few minutes after taking off his coat. \u201cThey\u2019ve got Iran breathing down their neck and the last thing they need is an American president telling them what not to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho cares?\u201d said Uncle Dan. \u201cAnd anyway that\u2019s bull.\u201d<\/p>\n

They missed arguing together, I knew.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t bull; it was bull; it wasn\u2019t; it was. They stepped nearer each other with each jibe, smiling. Their wives were both at home and so they, my uncles, were more easily able to put aside their spat.<\/p>\n

Once again the doorbell rang: my father, in his Passover bowtie\u2014the one with the frogs. It had been in his notes, I knew, to show up slightly later than the others.<\/p>\n

As he had the other guests, Kevin greeted him with a glass of wine. They\u2019d met maybe a half dozen times, at family meals in neutral locations. A manageable but unignorable tension informed their interactions. The only thing they had in common was knowing what it was like to be married to my mom\u2014perhaps, too, they shared an affinity for each other\u2019s willingness not <\/i>to discuss this. Neither wanted to offend the other, yet like it or not they were engaged in a rivalry, and treated each other with exaggerated politeness. My father handed Kevin the bottle of wine he\u2019d brought, and then tried to shake his hand. Kevin wedged the bottle between his elbow and his ribs and eagerly clasped my father\u2019s palm. During their handshake, a vigorous affair, the bottle fell. Kevin made a reactive gesture to catch it, but missed. My father\u2019s face brightened in surprise. The bottle landed on an oriental carpet, and remained intact.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Mr. Kevin, for opening up your place to us,\u201d my father said. \u201cWe\u2019ll do our best not to give you more than you bargained for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin nodded, and both were visibly relieved to have made it through their first exchange. With a low-voiced \u201cExcuse me,\u201d my father made his way toward the kitchen and, on a pretense I don\u2019t recall, I followed.<\/p>\n

Something in the matzoh ball soup was confusing my mother; she looked down into the pot as if it contained a tricky crossword clue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe woman of the briny deep,\u201d my father said. \u201cEverything smells terrific. As if that\u2019s any surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother, visibly startled, looked up from the stove.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the matzoh balls won\u2019t float,\u201d she said, shaking her head. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it. Hi.\u201d<\/p>\n

They embraced, kissing cheeks. Their eyeglasses clicked against each other. My parents are the same height\u2014five-five\u2014and the architecture of their bodies hasn\u2019t changed for as long as I can remember. Whenever they hold each other like this, it\u2019s a bit as if they\u2019re stepping into one of my memory\u2019s molds of them, some mental bronze casting come to life. While I don\u2019t think I harbor notions anymore that my parents should get back together, whenever they\u2019re in the same room\u2014an increasingly infrequent thing\u2014it strikes me as overwhelmingly natural. My mother\u2019s husband serves a necessary purpose, but in my mind he will always be adjunct. I admit to sentimentality, but wonder, too, if any child (who\u2019d grown up, as I had, with attentive, collaborative parents) could avoid this notion. As always, they held their pose for longer than etiquette dictated. My mother\u2019s thumbs made indents on the back of my father\u2019s shirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad you decided to host. I hope it wasn\u2019t too much all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHolidays are hard,\u201d my mother said. \u201cBut no. I\u2019m glad, too. It\u2019s good to see everyone. Everyone\u2019s the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd following that thought, you continue to look wonderful,\u201d said my father. \u201cIt\u2019s a pleasure to be over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you,\u201d my mother said.<\/p>\n

A cousin entered the kitchen and asked, without looking up from his phone, where the bathroom was. In unison, my parents and I pointed in the same direction.<\/p>\n

Soon the seder began according to venerated tradition: everyone wondered where to sit, wanting not to be the first to sit, waiting for someone else to sit, please. My father surveyed the room, and likely saw what I did: his family, his ex-wife and her husband and her dog, candles, tablecloth, a table set with symbols, everything familiar from an earlier incarnation of his life. It seemed to please him; he smiled briefly. He looked down at the paper in his hands and, with rehearsed impromptu, began to speak.<\/p>\n

We washed our hands. We drank some wine, then some more. We recounted how the Jews escaped the tyranny of the Egyptians so they could wander freely in the desert. The soup was served, and then the meal. Conversations broke out about how good the brisket was, and how good the chicken. Uncle Dan said he\u2019d voted for Obama because of his heart, but this time around would probably vote the other way because of his wallet. Uncle Jake said he would have to see who was more supportive of Israel. Heart, wallet, Israel, Iran. But then it became evident that my uncles\u2019 larger disagreement was beginning to suffuse this minor one; they became louder, deriding Obama, deriding each other, until theirs was the only talk at the dinner table. My grandmother, a diminutive but influential woman, touched one of them on the arm, and they quieted down sullenly. Conversation didn\u2019t easily spring up again; many knives scraped many plates. My mother urged everyone to get seconds, but received only silence in return; rebuked, she went into the kitchen. The buzzing sound from one end of the table was my grandfather, asleep. Throughout the meal my father kept trying to speak with Kevin (he\u2019d memorized a couple conversational prompts), or maybe Kevin kept trying to speak with him, but they never seemed to get past a couple runs of sentences before looking wordlessly down at their food. And this was how it all progressed. And this was how it would all keep going. No, this night wasn\u2019t much different, after all. When I realized my mother had been absent for nearly ten minutes, I excused myself to look for her.<\/p>\n

She was at the kitchen table, petting her dog, staring out the window. On the street below a bicyclist coasted by, lit now and now and now when he went under streetlamps.<\/p>\n

\u201cZ\u2019s been away from the table for a while,\u201d I said. \u201cShe\u2019s missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just a little overwhelming for her, all the people. Wasn\u2019t it, Z?\u201d<\/p>\n

Our conversation was part of another tradition, wherein my mother and I communicated our sentiments through the medium of her dog. This charade could only go on for so long, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs everything okay?\u201d<\/p>\n

She wiped her eyes with the Kleenex in her hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fine,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll be out in a minute. I just needed a breather.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, it\u2019s nothing. I feel so stupid. I\u2019m fine. Really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything tastes great,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone\u2019s having a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know. Thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

She began to cry\u2014a silent activity, betrayed only because her glasses\u2019 lenses fogged up.<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d I said. \u201cAll right.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it was then, it was just about then, when the doorbell rang. As my mother and I returned to the dining room we saw Kevin, curious, open the door. A very short man in a long striped Turkish robe, rather like a muumuu, was in the entryway, holding a thin stack of index cards. He had on a beard that seemed to be made of white cotton balls; aside from this characteristic, he looked very much like my grandmother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am the prophet Elijah,\u201d the visitor read from an index card, \u201cHere to share with you your feast.\u201d He switched to his next card. \u201cI have been gone four thousand years\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThree thousand!\u201d shouted one of my uncles.<\/p>\n

Elijah peered at his index card. \u201cIt says four thousand. Are you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n

My uncle, clapping his hands together, once, said he was sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have been gone three thousand years, but decided to return for this one night of celebration\u201d\u2014another index card was turned\u2014\u201cof the Jews\u2019 liberation from Egypt.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Elijah took his seat\u2014not the one we\u2019d set for him, but my grandmother\u2019s spot\u2014there was a moment of silence, though a different kind of silence than had been prevalent before. Nothing so dramatic as uncle embracing uncle occurred, but in this moment all rancor and fatigue, I saw, was wiped from their faces, as they watched Elijah carefully tuck the fabric of his robe beneath his small, matronly rear before sitting down. My parents, too, were focused on Elijah, and Kevin, and my cousins, who looked up, finally, from their phones. Everyone\u2019s face seemed comprised primarily of smiling cheek. My mother sat down at her place and Z settled at her feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have heard from afar,\u201d Elijah said, \u201cthat it is time for dessert.\u201d<\/p>\n

Max Ross\u2019s writing has appeared in the<\/em>\u00a0New York Times<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>Tablet Magazine<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>American Short Fiction, <\/em>The New Orleans Review,\u00a0and on the\u00a0<\/em>New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

&nbsp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A holiday\u2019s most assiduously followed rituals occur, usually, before the holiday itself: preparing the customary meal, shopping for the requisite gifts, configuring the most acceptable seating arrangements. So much must happen before the sun goes down and the first three stars appear in the sky. During the month preceding Passover, my father spends several hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":504,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[10448,7317,7048,1786,10447,10446],"class_list":["post-49132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-elijah","tag-judaism","tag-passover","tag-religion","tag-ritual","tag-seder"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nElijah Returns by Max Ross<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 25, 2013 \u2013 A holiday\u2019s most assiduously followed rituals occur, usually, before the holiday itself: preparing the customary meal, shopping for the requisite gifts,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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