Everyone was solemn.
Sarah was not. She put her napkin in her lap, ready to eat even though the service did not allow for it until page twenty-seven. She would not sit up straight in her seat. She would not page through her Haggadah. She spooned a bite of charoset onto her plate and scooped it up with a piece of matzoh, which she washed down with a generous sip of wine. Copious amounts of wine were in order if Sarah was expected to get through this Seder.
“Sarah, what are you doing?” Sylvia asked. Alan continued with the service, unruffled, giving it his full attention. He was Sylvia’s devoted rabbi, the Moses to her God, fully committed to the task at hand.
“Are we not up to this part?” Sarah stage-whispered back to her mother. Sylvia shook her head and Sarah couldn’t help but giggle. How many glasses of wine had she had? She couldn’t recall.
Joe furrowed his brow. Was he kidding? He wanted her to take this Seder more seriously? He wasn’t even Jewish. You aren’t even Jewish! she telegraphed with her eyes. But apparently Joe wanted to please Sylvia, just like everyone else.
Sarah put her head back down into her Haggadah.
The table was set with the traditional trappings of a Passover Seder—the matzoh, the Seder plate, and the glass that would later be filled with wine for Elijah.
When Sarah was a little girl, she had no idea that the wineglass was a symbol. She truly believed that the prophet was coming to visit, that he would redeem the Golds, as God had promised Moses. It wasn’t until high school that she realized that it was her father who quickly downed the wine when the family was up at the buffet dinner.
Sarah was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice that Alan had handed over the reins to Joe, who was now reading from the Haggadah. He was reading in English, not Hebrew, but still, that he was reading at all broke Sarah’s train of thought. And he was taking the whole thing so very seriously. There he was, holding his Haggadah with both hands, like a little child, reading the passage:
This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Passover. This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves; next year we will be free people.
Joe had been coming to family Seders since he was young, but Sarah wasn’t at all aware that he’d been paying such close attention. Alan held up the matzoh and handed it to Joe, who then broke the middle piece.
“Bravo!” Valentina said. She clapped as if Joe were a five-year-old just learning to read.
Alan then asked the Boyfriend’s father to continue reading the next passage.
Under the table, Sarah texted Joe: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?
He texted back: I THOUGHT YOU’D BE HAPPY?
They looked up at each other and Joe smiled. He didn’t show a mouthful of teeth, so Sarah knew he was being sincere.
Thirty-One
“The Four Questions,” the Boyfriend’s father announced.
And with that, a memory: a Passover table filled with distant cousins, people Sarah barely knew. Old women wearing wigs who pinched her cheeks, who left her with bright-pink lipstick stains all over her face. Men wearing brown pants and wide ties who asked if she knew who they were (she did not). Cousins who were just a few years older than she was who wore miniskirts and tight sweaters, and had their hair teased high. They looked like adults. Sarah still very much felt like a child. Her placement at the “kiddie table” with Becca saw to that. Gideon got to sit with the adults.
Sarah had been attending Hebrew school for two years, preparing for her Bat Mitzvah. But she couldn’t retain anything. She couldn’t understand how to read Hebrew (even with constant tutoring from Gideon) and she kept forgetting to read right to left. It didn’t matter anyway, Sarah couldn’t remember any of the Hebrew characters or how to incorporate the vowels, which hovered around the letters like Morse code. She hated attending classes. She would humiliate herself by opening the textbook from the left side, not the right, seemingly the only person in the class who made this error week after week. The teacher was mean and called on her all the time—just for the pleasure of humiliating her.
Before the Seder, Sarah had told her mother that she couldn’t recite the Four Questions. She begged her to let Gideon do it instead, as he always had.
No.
“Come by me, bubbala,” her grandfather said. “I want to hear you sing.”
Sarah froze. She tried to read the Hebrew text, but the characters all danced around each other, merging into one. In a panic, she attempted to read the English phonetic transliteration of the Hebrew words, but still couldn’t seem to figure out how to pronounce each word.
With everyone’s eyes on her, Sarah looked up to her mother. Sylvia looked back at her and smiled. She wanted so badly for Sarah to be able to do it. Perhaps if she wanted it badly enough, it would come to be?
Sarah’s eyes teared up. She looked up at her mother to explain, but then Becca began to sing. Slowly, at first, but then with confidence. She knew the entire song, all Four Questions, and with her perfect voice she sang it perfectly. As if there were any other way.
Sarah was eleven.
Becca was eight.
How was her sister able to read the questions? Had she been paying attention all those evenings when Gideon tutored Sarah? Or had she simply memorized them, after hearing them read aloud year after year? Sarah was never sure.
The following week, Sarah stopped going to Hebrew school. Her mother would still drop her off for classes, but Sarah would hide out for their duration at the pizza place down the street from their temple. And Becca took over the duties of the Four Questions.
* * *
“You’re up, kiddo,” Alan said to Becca.
“Actually,” the Boyfriend’s mother’s said, “Henry is younger than Rebecca.”
“He is?” Sylvia asked.
“Oh, I thought I mentioned that,” Becca said, almost under her breath.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Alan said. “Let’s continue with the service.”
But no one wanted to continue with the service. All anyone wanted to do was find out how old, exactly, Henry was.
Sarah’s cell phone buzzed in her lap. Joe’s text: JAILBAIT?!
Sarah pressed her lips together so as not to laugh. She looked to Henry, who was poised to start the Four Questions.
“So, how old are you?” Valentina blurted out.
Henry had already decided that he did not like this woman. Who was she, anyway, and what was she doing here? As far as he could tell, Becca’s sister was dating her son. Sylvia had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t like Joe, so why was his mother invited?
And that nonsense with the video chat with the jail. Jail! Her husband was in jail! Could it get any more blue?
“I’m twenty,” Henry said to Valentina. They locked eyes and Henry dared her to challenge him again.
“A college man,” Alan said. “Rebecca just graduated, so there’s barely a difference, is there?”
“Yeah, twenty’s not that much younger than twenty-two,” Sarah piped in, trying to salvage the situation. She could see Becca’s cheeks burning and wanted to help her sister out. “What school are you attending?”
“I’m not going to college,” he said.
Henry wondered why it had been so important for him to get up to speed on everyone at the table—Sarah’s in fashion, Alan’s in medicine, Sylvia does charity work—but no one had taken the time to find out anything about his life.
Sarah could feel the heat coming off Sylvia’s body all the way down the table.
“Oh, that’s cool,” Sarah said on reflex. Not because she thought it was, but because she didn’t know exactly what to say.
“My Joey didn’t go to college,” Valentina said, putting her hands all over Joe. “And look at how good he turned out! As long as you work hard, you can own your own business one day, like my Joey.”
“
I’m not working right now,” Henry said. He said it very matter-of-factly, without embarrassment, without shame. As if this were a perfectly acceptable thing to say, without qualification. As if twenty-year-olds everywhere neither worked nor attended school. As if he didn’t need to explain what it was he did all day.
And because he was a Rothschild, he didn’t.
Thirty-Two
Sylvia liked to get what she wanted. Preschool, for example. Even though she was a little relieved to be out of Manhattan where it wasn’t unheard of to hire a coach for preschool admission, she still enrolled her children in the most prestigious nursery school she could find. Summercrest Country Day School was the most expensive in the area, for one, and the curriculum (Alan had balked at the word) was unparalleled. The children were taught piano when they turned three. They studied the Impressionists in art class. They planted vegetables and herbs in the teaching garden. They learned how to play chess. Gideon had been a huge success at Summercrest. His teachers fawned all over him.
He’s already learned his letters and numbers.
He is so interested in reading!
He is the best-behaved child in our class.
Things were different with Sarah. She wouldn’t leave her mother’s side. She had to be dragged into the classroom, kicking and screaming, until a teacher could pry her off her mother’s body. Once they got her into class, Sarah cried hysterically for the first half hour, until she could be distracted by arts-and-crafts time.
After her first year of nursery school, Sylvia expected that Sarah would be placed in the same pre-K class as her brother. All of the parents at school knew that Miss Mindy was the best teacher; they fought to have their children placed in her class. Not Sylvia. She didn’t have to. Her daughter was a legacy. Which was why Sylvia wasn’t anxious when she received the class assignments in the mail. Which was why she was shocked to learn that Sarah had been placed in Miss Darlene’s class.
“Miss Darlene is where the dumb kids go,” she told the director of the school the following morning.
“There are no dumb kids at this school,” the director said, closing the door behind Sylvia so that the other mothers wouldn’t hear their conversation.
“Everyone knows that the gifted children go to Miss Mindy’s class.”
“That’s not really true,” the director said carefully. “I thought that Sarah would be a better fit with Miss Darlene. She loves arts-and-crafts time, and Miss Darlene does a lot of her lessons through art.”
“Why isn’t she a good fit for Miss Mindy?” Sylvia demanded. “Gideon was a good fit for Miss Mindy.”
“Every child is different,” the director explained.
“I have three children,” Sylvia said. “You don’t have to tell me that children are different. I know that.”
The director didn’t respond. After all, what could she say? She very well couldn’t convince Sylvia that Miss Darlene’s class wasn’t for the “dumb” kids any more than she could explain why Gideon and Sarah were different. Sylvia knew they were different—she had to know, didn’t she?—but she remained firm, fingering the three-carat diamond studs in her ears, her jaw set. Sylvia’s mouth was smiling, but her eyes were not.
After ten minutes of silence, when the director couldn’t take any more of Sylvia’s glare, she agreed to move Sarah into Miss Mindy’s class.
* * *
“The importance of charity work cannot be overstated,” Sylvia said from her end of the table. Sylvia was trying to bail Henry out, but Sarah knew that it was already too late for that. Sylvia never stopped fighting, though. She never did. That was one thing that Sarah knew about her mother. Sarah would have been surprised if Sylvia hadn’t tried to intervene on Henry’s behalf.
Sylvia had committed herself to the idea of Henry. He was a Rothschild, after all, and Sarah knew that this was, for some reason, important to her mother. Sylvia had decided that Henry was right for Becca, and she wasn’t going to let anything, least of all a little setback like the fact that he appeared to be a lazy dilettante, change her mind.
“He does not do charity work,” Henry’s mother said, a hint of disgust in her voice. “He does not do anything.”
“Henry’s figuring things out right now,” his father quickly explained.
“A gap year,” Alan said. “I took one of those between college and medical school. Let’s continue with the Seder, shall we?”
“It is not a gap year,” Henry’s mother said, her accent becoming more and more pronounced.
Henry did not look at his mother. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t look at her. This was happening with increasing frequency as of late.
“Let’s just give the boy some space, all right, Ursella?” Edmond said. “And we don’t have to discuss this here.”
“He is not boy,” she said. “He is man.”
Everyone was sitting up in their seats, watching this unfold. Sarah could see Sylvia’s mind racing, thinking of ways to quash this—to bring it back to the elevated holiday meal it had been before all this Henry talk began. Sarah looked at Becca, but she was still looking at Henry.
“Ursella—” Edmond said, only to get cut off.
The doorbell rang, seemingly on cue.
Elijah showed up after all.
The third question:
On all other nights, we don’t dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice.
Thirty-Three
And there he was. Standing right there, at the Gold family front door.
“Look who’s here!” Sylvia cried out, throwing her arms around him.
Sarah joined the crowd to catch a glimpse of the prophet in the entryway, he whose presence signals the coming of the Messiah.
Gideon was home.
“I didn’t know you were coming!” Sylvia cried, clutching her son as if he were a dream that might slip away. “You should have told us!”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said, moving past her to hug Alan, and then Sarah, and then Becca.
Everything about him looked overgrown. His hair was too long, his beard unshaven. Even his fingernails looked like they could use a good snipping. But Gideon looked extra handsome when he was scruffy like this, and he knew the effect it had on the ladies. Sarah wondered if there were any ladies out in Sri Lanka working for Doctors Without Borders. She didn’t have to think about it for long.
As Gideon made his way inside, he beckoned beyond the door to a woman who was waiting to be invited in.
“Everyone,” Gideon announced, “this is Malika.” And then after a suitable pause he added, “My fiancée.”
The group erupted into cheers and calls of “Mazel tov.” Gideon and Malika were enveloped in warm hugs.
“Wow,” Sarah whispered to Joe. “It’s going to be a double wedding, just like the Brady girls.”
“Be nice,” Joe whispered back.
“That was me being nice.”
No one said the obvious—like that Gideon had shown up without telling anyone. Or that Gideon was engaged and hadn’t told his family. Or (and this was the part that Sarah thought would stop Sylvia in her tracks) that Malika was black.
“Do you speak English?” Valentina asked Malika slowly and loudly.
“Well, yes, I should hope so!” Malika replied in a thick English accent. “It would be pretty hard to get around London if I didn’t!”
“A Brit!” Valentina said, flipping her hand back as if she were Vinnie Barbarino. “Very fancy.”
“Have you started the Seder yet?” Gideon asked. “We were supposed to get in this afternoon, but our flights were delayed.”
“Not really,” Alan said. “And we’d be delighted to start it over now that you’re here.”
“Should I call the warden?” Valentina asked.
“Warden?” Gideon said.
“I think I need to lie down for a minute,” Sylvia said, and then slipped out of the room.
* * *
There was just something about Gideon. It wasn’t t
he way he walked, or the way he spoke, or the way he carried himself. It was all of those things put together; the sum of his parts. He was considered classically handsome by most, with his chiseled face and his thick brown hair. Tall, dark, and handsome. Like a 1950s movie star. He paid very little attention to his appearance. He would go weeks without shaving, without having his hair cut, and there was something about this apathy that made women go wild. The way women felt about him was inversely related to how he felt about them. The less he cared about a woman, the more she went crazy for him. It was almost as if he’d planned it that way. But the truth was, he never really cared that much about any of them. Not since the first one that had broken his heart.
And now here he was, engaged to be married. There was something in his face, a softness Sarah detected that had never been there before, that made her think this one could actually stick. Forget about the ring on Malika’s finger. It was the look on Gideon’s face that told Sarah that this girl could actually be The One.
Malika, of course, wasn’t a girl. She was a woman. A grown woman who had gone through just as much training as Gideon to become a doctor, a woman who had seen just as many awful things in Sri Lanka as Gideon, a woman who was hoping to join Sarah’s family. And she had a soft face, a kind face. It was the sort of face you wanted to tell all of your secrets to.
* * *
Malika wore her hair in a tight bun. There was no electricity in the tents at their base camp, so she couldn’t iron her hair out straight, the way she would normally do if she were meeting the family of a white boyfriend. And she thought Gideon would find her frivolous if she’d insisted on stopping at a hair salon on the way (were there any black hair salons in the suburbs of Connecticut?), or if she’d tried to primp in the airport bathroom once they’d landed. Plus, Gideon had told her that his family wasn’t like that. They were the serious type, the sort who didn’t care about appearances. But now, looking at his sister, with her getup straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine, she knew Gideon had been wrong.
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