At the head of the table, a man nearing the end of his middle years sat in starched shirtsleeves; a dark grey sport-coat hung on the back of his chair. One square cufflink glittered gold as he picked up a sprig of parsley from the plate before him.
“Why do we eat parsley on Passover?” he asked.
One of his children from the extreme other end of the table chirped: “It reminds us of spring!”
“Very good. And why do we wash our hands—without the blessing—before eating the parsley?”
Another voice: “It encourages us to ask questions.”
“That’s right,” said the father. “Rabbi Sherman was saying last week: ‘The Seder is a transformative experience. We begin the Seder as slaves and we end the Seder free.’”
About halfway down the table, sitting in a chair set between the chandelier and one of the heavy-curtained windows, the correct answers thumped unbidden inside someone’s head:
Because it’s customary to begin a Greco-Roman symposium by rinsing your hands and eating green vegetables.
Because, in the northern hemisphere, parsley is often the first green vegetable this early in spring.
Not everyone foregoes saying the blessing on washing the hands.
A woman in her mid-twenties; a guest of the eldest son. She had told her friend two weeks before about her plans falling through. In truth, she did not have enough money to get back to Pittsburgh, nor to take the extra two days off from work. But also she was curious about his parents. About how he, and they, lived. Now, having seen—silk sofa cushions, prints and paintings framed on the walls—half of her wanted to retch; the other half felt like a pebble among pearls. Gerry, sitting next to her, did not have a job to take two days off from. That thought came unbidden as well, but she swatted it flat like a moth.
Except these thoughts must have rippled the surface of her face, because Gerry murmured: “What’s on your mind?” So, walking toward the kitchen to wash their hands, they chattered back and forth about parsley and hand-washing. She left her finances unstated.
Gerry splashed water on his hands with the silver cup, then filled it; Gina did the same.
While she was giving the cup to the next person, her attention was diverted over her shoulder by the sound of Gerry greeting the brown-skinned woman by the stove: “Comment allez-vous, Madeline?” She was dressed stylishly: bright, button-down shirt, slim, dark jeans, short hair treated with gel to lie flat. A denim apron covered her from shoulder to knee.
Madeline was answering: “M’ap viv, mesi.”
And he: “Vous êtes très vif. Je vois.”
Back at the table, one of the uncles noted: “You speak French with…?”
“With Madeline? I try to.”
“Madeline speaks Kreyol, not French!” said one of Gerry’s younger brothers.
“Crayola isn’t a language,” said a cousin.
The mother at the head of the table said, loudly but without severity: “All right. We need to get moving so Madeline can get home tonight.”
The dad lifted the middle matzoh and broke it, sliding the larger piece into a...
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