9. HOW IS THIS NIGHT DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHER NIGHTS?

When Solitaire first encounters this provocative question, a question posed not just once but four times during the Passover Seder, she is instantly electrified by its portentous but mysteriously elusive meaning.  She has been thinking about it ever since.

THE SEDER

Em’s daughter, Aviva, his eldest child, arrives on Thursday, three days after Em’s death.  Solitaire wishes she had come sooner, but Wednesday is Passover and Aviva and her husband, David, both practicing Jews, wish, naturally, to spend the Seder together in Seattle with their two sons. 

Solitaire, too, has a Seder, but it is a very different affair altogether.  In the first place, those present at this dinner – a small gaggle of goyim and non-observant Jews (Em’s sons) – have only the most elementary notion of what to do or eat or say or sing, let alone how to say or sing it in Hebrew, because the paterfamilias, the only knowledgeable Jew in the Tucson branch of Em’s family – namely Em – is now dead.

Em described himself as spiritual but non-religious.  Still, one of his grandfathers had been a Rabbi and both his parents were Russian-Jewish emigrees from stetls in Minsk.  Em had attended Yeshiva in Flatbush, where his mother taught Hebrew.  So he certainly knew the rituals and the language but failed to pass much of it on to his children, a dereliction he acknowledged, but half-heartedly defended.  Where, in a place like Djakarta, he asked, would he find a Rabbi to teach Zach the Hebrew responses with which to make his Bar Mitzvah?  Later, however, he admitted it was lack of conviction, not location, that had deterred him from his paternal duty, a malaise based on an aversion to rules, especially those founded on what he deemed false or outdated premises.    Any form of extremism, especially religiosity, he said, gave him the shudders.

But who does not love Passover?

It is the quintessential Great Escape drama, the nail-biter that has everything:  the unseen but all-powerful Yaweh;  the towering prophet, despotic pharaoh; enslaved Israelites; ten plagues – frogs, blood; boils, lice, locusts, hail, sick cattle, wild beasts, darkness and, finally and most horrendously, the murder of every firstborn child in the land, except for the Israelites whose houses, marked with a bloody X, are “passed over.”

Plague of blood 

As though this weren’t enough, as the song “Dayenu” says, we have Moses (who looks amazingly like Charlton Heston) parting the Red Sea,

drowning Pharaoh’s army, leading his people safely across the Sinai for forty years, keeping them alive on manna,

and keeping them from killing each other with ten rules of social etiquette that preceded Emily Post by over two millennia.



Any feast that celebrates these events had better be worthy of the name – and it is!  The fact that each guest is supposed to quaff four goblets of Manischevitz wine in a “reclining” position adds an undeniable existential edge to the proceedings --actually, anyone who can drink Manischevitz in any position is at risk – though of course, these days, people are far more likely to be reclining with a high-priced, big-bodied cab or Pinot Noir or who knows what or whom.   

Finally, that the hero of the evening should turn out to be a large unleavened, unsalted, tasteless  cracker called a matzah is a stroke of genius that makes this charming and moving celebration truly irresistible.

Solitaire remembers the previous Passover; Em, seriously ill by that time, nevertheless leads the Seder, singing in his weak but still melodious baritone, reading from the Haggadah in fluent Hebrew. 

            “Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha’olam borei pri hagafen…”

       (Blessed are Thou, Adonai our God, Creator of the Universe, Creator of the     Fruit of the Vine…)

It is the muscular, musical language that Em so loves.

    “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.”

   Zach’s little girls, Lily and Marsha, are wearing their best dresses with pink sashes and their dark eyes are alight with excitement.  Lily finds the Afikoman (a matzah halved and hidden); Marsha, the youngest, reads the answers to the question, "How is this night different from all other nights?"  Solitaire is as let down as ever by the responses, which sound to her as illuminating as a grocery list.
            On all other nights we may eat chametz and matzah, but on this night, only  matzah.

            On all other nights we eat many vegetables, but on this night, only maror.

On all other nights we don’t dip even once, but on this night, we dip once.

On all other nights we eat and drink sitting up or reclining, but on this night, we all recline.

It is a warm night. The dining room windows are open and they can hear the sounds of the palms and the small Laotian temple bells Solitaire and Em acquired on a long-ago visit to Vientiane.  When the children open the door for Elijah the candles flicker in the wind, the flames wavering in the reflection of six silver goblets on the sideboard until, at last, they gutter and go out, and Em, exhausted, goes to bed.

Rising unsteadily on atrophied legs, he proclaims:

“L’Shana Ha’Ba-a B’yerushalayim!”

Next year in Jerusalem!  Perhaps it is true.  Who can say?  Everyone at this table knows that Em’s chair will be empty next year.  Everyone except Em.  And Solitaire.

If that was a sad Seder, this one is disastrous.  No one feels like going through with it, but they do anyway, mostly for the sake of the girls.  By dint of  The 30 Minute Seder, which Solitaire has either uploaded or downloaded from the Internet, they manage to muddle through the evening, but joylessly.

AVIVA

The moment Aviva arrives, Solitaire feels better.  She has an air of calm assurance and generosity of spirit that act as a balm on Solitaire’s troubled soul.  Tall and strong-boned with fair coloring, she has a warm smile and exuberant ash-blonde curls that she vainly attempts to tame with clips and scarves and various sorts of elasticized hair bands. She is a published poet, book critic, and a born organizer.  When Aviva and her family come to visit, she plans their daily itineraries, scheduling every minute as though this were the official visit of a congressional delegation.   Solitaire does not mind.  She sees this as a combination of diplomat's daughter and elder-sister syndrome,  as well as the tactic of a woman who takes seriously the responsibility of steering three large, energetic, willful men through life.  She is a Jewish mother in the best sense of the word.

THE TREE OF UNDYING LOVE

The family has decided to plant a tree for Em.  At a nursery on the eastern edge of town, they drive in a large golf cart past flats of marigolds and periwinkles – the few annuals that will survive the Tucson summer-- through prickly allees of barrel cactus and jumping cholla, gnarly coils of night-blooming cereus, past perfumed acres of candy-colored roses with names like “Peace” and “Tiffany” and “Barbra Streisand” (?), then strike deep into the herbaceous hinterlands, through root-balled and gunny-sacked groves of grapefruit and tangerines, purple shrubs of mountain laurel and Texas Rangers, until at last they reach the trees – dusty gums and ash, mesquite and acacias, peppers and jacarandas, cypress and willow and, yes, here it is – a weeping myrtle, the tree of Aphrodite and an ancient Greek symbol, so Solitaire has read, of eternal love. 

Solitaire has seen these myrtles on the University campus, where they have an impressive collection of old specimen trees.  An Austro-Asian exotic, it towers over its smaller bushier cousin, the bottle brush, its long fronds, tipped with whorls of scarlet flowers, trailing to the ground.  Em’s children buy it as a gift and arrange to have it delivered the following morning.  The tree man drags the myrtle out into the path and ties a “Sold” sign on it.  A gusty wind kicks up as they are leaving; Solitaire looks back as they jolt off in the cart and sees the tree, isolated from its brethren and standing alone, its long fronds drooping, swinging disconsolately in the eddying dust.

THE HEAVENLY HEIGHTS REVISITED

On the way home Aviva and Solitaire stop at the mortuary to say goodbye to Em.

As they pull up in front, Solitaire recalls a joke she heard on the radio about a sign outside the Agnostics’ Funeral Home which reads:  “Remains to be seen.” 

Wriggles and Mrs. Wriggles are not in evidence, but Wally is expecting them and leads them to a small antechamber off the conference room where Em is waiting for them.   A scarlet blanket is pulled up to the third button of his blue shirt and his arms are folded across his chest.  She would like to know if Em’s nether half is naked beneath the blanket (she still worries that he is cold), but is too timid to ask. 

Em may be just another corpse on a gurney, but to Solitaire he looks like the statue of a knight on a catafalque.  He is beautiful, his aspect youthful, his skin taut, his brow smooth, unworried.  Solitaire knows, because Wally has told her, that unless there is to be a “viewing,” the deceased are not embalmed before burning.  So if it is not embalming fluid or Botox that plumps up his veins and fleshes out his cheeks, then what is it?  Death?  The absence of care,  surcease of pain, the flight of the soul?  Or is it merely the miracle of gravity? 

Aviva bids farewell to her father.  In the final days of his life, she telephoned each evening to read him a poem.  “Goodbye, Daddy,” she says and kisses him on the forehead.  From a chair across the room, Solitaire watches this small tableau.  In profile, Em’s head is like that on a Roman coin.

Then it is her turn.  She bends down to him; his eyelids seem sealed shut – thank God!  Were they not, she would be tempted to look beneath those lids and what she might glimpse there is too terrifying to contemplate.  Close up, she sees that the purplish hematoma on his temple (acquired in hospital when he was dropped on his head by an inept aide) has been cosmeticized and lightly powdered.  His hair is neatly cut and brushed, his mustache trimmed; his cheeks, clean-shaven, are smooth as a baby’s bum.  With tentative fingers, she starts to stroke his cheek, and recoils.  Look at me, he seems to say, but not too closely ... and for God’s sake, don’t touch!  His skin is damp and unresilient with a jaundiced pallor like a pale cheddar overlaid on marble. When she kisses his lips for the last time, they are waxen and oh, so cold.

MELODY and MOJO

It is nearly five o’clock when Solitaire and Aviva return home on that April afternoon; the wind has abated; the late spring air is balmy and the white oleanders and blue plumbago bend in the breeze.  A neighbor, a pretty young woman in her mid-twenties, comes wheeling down her driveway on a bicycle, holding a sturdy, barrel-chested brown dog on a lead.  With a cheery wave, she steps on the pedal and rides off down the street, the dog trotting purposefully along beside her.  What a picture they make!  The girl, so glowing with refulgent good health, cheeks rosy, the short sleeves of her sun dress slipping off her golden shoulders, the skirt gathered up into her lap, exposing a length of calf and sandaled foot, her blonde hair billowing back beneath a wide brimmed straw hat from whose crown a red grosgrain ribbon floats gaily out behind her like a pennant from a spar.

 How Solitaire envies her!  So young, so vibrant, so full of life!  And she, Solitaire, so bereft, so drained, so sated with sickness and death.  How she yearns at that moment to be twenty-five again; to have the chance, with Em, to live life over and to do it right this time; to have life’s promise, with its myriad divergent roads, traveled and untraveled, lying all before them.  How glorious to contemplate!  How splendid!  She is nearly sick with envy of this girl.

But things are rarely what they seem.  As events are later related to her, the young woman, Melody, and her dog, Mojo, have scarcely rounded the corner and disappeared from Solitaire’s view when they encounter an elderly woman and her aged maltese, Carlito, making their way cautiously along the sidewalk.  Mojo, who proves to be not only sturdy and purposeful, but supremely strong and aggressive, wrenches out of his collar, leaps on the maltese and, lifting him in his jaws, mauls him to the point of death.

He is on the verge of breaking Carlito’s neck when Melody succeeds in collaring her dog – a pit bull/boxer mix, as it turns out -- and, jumping back on her bike, drags him up the street.   Well, okay; she has taken the only course open to her at that point, which is to get her dog out of the way – and then, of course, to return to the scene of the mugging and do whatever she can to rectify the situation.  The problem is that Melody does not return, not then or ever. The tale quickly makes its way round Solitaire’s small neighborhood – how Mrs. O’Reilly was left to deal with Carlito, hanging like a bloodied rag in the arms of his mistress, and how a fortuitous passerby drove them to a veterinary clinic where, dozens of stitches and thousands of dollars later, Carlito is patched together and miraculously survives.  A happy ending.  But when Mrs. O’Reilly, encouraged by the neighbors, arrives at Melody’s door to appraise her of the outcome and cost of her dog’s actions, she comes face to face with Melody’s husband (“or whatever”) who tells her to “clear off!”  Intimidated, Mrs. O’Reilly immediately backs down, refusing to press charges or even report the incident.

Solitaire’s heart goes out to the old lady and her little dog.  Still, it must be conceded that oral history is notoriously dodgy and maybe this story, passed along second or third hand, possibly losing or gaining ground with each telling, is in itself false or faulty, or at least unreliable.  Who can say?  Perception is all and, in the long run, perhaps the facts do not matter.

In Solitaire’s inner eye, nothing can ever deface her initial vision of the young beauty and her noble dog … “for ever panting, for ever young.” Like the maidens loth and lovers bold on Keats’s Grecian urn, they will remain as youthfully emblematic as when she first saw them -- forever innocent, forever beautiful, forever cycling, round and round against a cloudless sky, a sky as blue as Em’s shirt, on that perfect April afternoon.

                        “When old age shall this generation waste,

                              Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

                         Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

                        ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all

                              Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’”           

POSTSCRIPT

Solitaire is still thinking about the Seder question:  "How is this night different from all other nights?"

She is sure there must be more to this than meets the eye.  At last, she decides this is a form of Zen Judaism and that the question is in fact a kind of koan – deceptively simple and deeply profound.  She is, however, no closer to the answer.