Just One Day(63)

“Oh, it’s already cooking,” Grandma says.
“What time did you put in?”
“Don’t you worry. I got a nice recipe from the paper.”
“How long has it been in?” Mom peeks in the oven. “It’s not that big. It shouldn’t take longer than three hours. And you have to cover it in foil. Also you have the heat way up. Brisket’s meant to slow-cook. We’re starting the Seder at five? When did it go in?”
“Never you mind.”
“It’ll be like leather.”
“Do I tell you how to cook in your kitchen?”
“Yes. All the time. But I don’t listen. And we’ve dodged many a case of food poisoning because of it.”
“Enough of your smart mouth.”
“I think I’ll go change,” I announce. But neither one is paying attention to me anymore.
I go into the spare room and find Dad hiding in there, looking wistfully at a golf shirt. “What are the chances I can escape for a round?”
“You’d have to throw down some plagues at the Pharaoh first.” I look out the window to the silver-blue strip of sea.
He puts the golf shirt back in the suitcase. How quickly we all give in to her. This Seder means nothing to him. Dad’s not even Jewish, though he celebrates all the holidays with Mom. Grandma was supposedly furious when Mom got engaged to him, though after Grandpa died, she took up with Phil, who’s not Jewish, either.
“I was just kidding,” I say, even though I wasn’t. “Why don’t you just go?”
Dad shakes his head. “Your mom needs backup.”
I scoff, as if Mom needs anything from anyone.
Dad changes the subject. “We saw Melanie last weekend.”
“Oh, really?”
“Her band had a gig in Philadelphia, so she made a rare appearance.”
She’s in a band now? So she can become Mel 4.0—and I’m supposed to stay reliably me? I smile tightly at my dad, pretending like I know this.
“Frank, I can’t find my Seder plate,” Grandma calls. “I had it out for a polish.”
“Just visualize the last place you had it,” Dad says. Then he gives me a little shrug and heads off to help. After the Seder plate is located, he helps Grandma get down serving bowls, and then I hear Mom tell him to keep Phil company, so he sits and watches the basketball with napping Phil. So much for golf. I go out onto the balcony and listen to the competing sounds of Mom and Grandma’s bickering and the game on the TV. My life feels so small it itches, like a too-tight wool sweater.
“I’m going for a walk,” I announce, even though there’s no one on the balcony but me. I put on my shoes and slip out the door and walk down to the beach. I take off my shoes and run up and down the shore. The rhythmic beat of my feet on the wet sand seems to churn something out of me, pushing it through the sweat on my sticky skin. After a while, I stop and sit down and look out over the water. On the other side is Europe. Somewhere over there is him. And somewhere over there, a different version of me.
_ _ _
When I get back, Mom tells me to shower and set the table. At five, we sit down, settling in for a long night of reenacting the Jews’ escape from slavery in ancient Egypt, which is supposed to be an act of liberation, but somehow with Mom and Grandma glowering at each other, it always winds up feeling just like more oppression. At least the adults can get drunk. You have to down, like, four glasses of wine during the night. I, of course, get grape juice, in my own crystal carafe. At least I usually do. This time when I go to drink my first sip of juice after the first blessing, I almost choke. It’s wine. I think it’s a mistake, except Grandma catches my eye and winks.
The Seder carries on as usual. Mom, who, in every other part of her life, is respectful, assumes the mantle of rebellious teenager. When Grandma reads the part about the Jews wandering through the desert for forty years, Mom cracks it’s because Moses was a man who refused to ask directions. When the talk to turns to Israel, Mom harps on about politics, even though she knows this gets Grandma crazy. When we eat matzo-ball soup, they argue about the cholesterol content of matzo balls.
Dad knows enough to keep quiet. And Phil plays with his hearing aids and dozes in and out of consciousness. I refill my “juice” glass many, many times.
After two hours, we get to the brisket, which means we get to stop talking about Exodus for a while, which is a relief, even if the brisket isn’t. It’s so dry it looks like beef jerky and tastes charred. I move it around my plate, while Grandma chitchats about her bridge club and the cruise she and Phil are taking. Then she asks about our annual summer trip to Rehoboth Beach, which she usually comes up for a portion of.
“What else do you have planned for the summer?” she asks me casually.
It’s a throwaway question, really. Along the lines of how are you? Or what’s new? I’m about to say, “Oh, this and that,” when Mom interrupts to say that I’m working in a lab. Then she tells Grandma all about it. A research lab at a pharmaceutical company. Apparently, I accepted the position just today.
It’s not like I didn’t know she would do this. It’s not like she hasn’t done this my entire life. It’s not like I haven’t let her.
The fury that fills me feels hot and cold, liquid and metal, coating my insides like a second skeleton, one stronger than my own. Maybe this is what allows me to say, “I’m not working in a lab this summer.”
“Well, it’s too late,” Mom snaps back. “I already called Dr. Baumgartner to decline his offer. If you’d had a preference, you had three weeks to make it known.”