The Becker Girls didn’tneeda man at the table; they’d done just fine on their own for years, and Hannah would be the first to go on a rant about the patriarchal nature of Orthodoxy. But none of them particularly enjoyed leading the Seder or possessed any singing talents, and it should’ve been nice finally having a new face at the ritualistic Passover dinner. Of course, when they finally got one, his strongest attempt at engaging with the Haggadah was to make jokes about which Becker girl was which of the four sons. (He settled on Ari being the wicked one, which she couldn’t really argue with.)
It was impossible not to compare Judah to Evan, to know that he’d make a beautiful, clear kiddush versus Evan’s rushed mumble of a blessing, and he certainly wouldn’t pop a piece of matzo in his mouth before he was supposed to or roll his eyes every time Hannah or their mom noted something in the story they hadn’t discussed before. And now that she’d had a private, in-person performance, she couldn’t stop thinking about how much more beautiful each one would be from Judah’s honeyed tongue, how much harmony he’d probably add to every song of Hallel, and how he’d be the only one at the table who could actually reach all the notes of her father’s favorite Pesach song, “Ani v’lo Malakh,” which they valiantly attempted every year, only for all of their voices to crack.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she missed the moment they finished “Dayenu” and moved on to what was technically the most important part of the Seder—discussing the three vital Pesach items on the table—until Hannah elbowed her to get her attention. She straightened up and joined in just in time to glance at the roasted shank bone on the Seder plate, meant to symbolize the Pesach sacrifices of yore.
They went through the matzo and then the maror, complete with the generational joke they’d never been able to forcethemselves to shake off, pointing to their mother instead of the bitter herbs, despite its obvious misogynistic undertones. Their father had simply thought it too hilarious when witnessing his own father-in-law doing it at Seders before any of the girls were even born. Of course, once Evan got the joke, he laughed uproariously, which made Ari want to quit it for good.
Judah might’ve snorted, but he never would’ve taken it as an opening to be rude to her mother.
Stop. Fucking. Thinking about Judah.
But she couldn’t, because when the singing came a couple of paragraphs later, she couldn’t stop imagining him joining in. And when they blessed and drank the second cup of wine, she wondered if he drank each cup all the way down to the dregs and what he was like when he got progressively inebriated.
“Thank God that’s over,” Evan muttered, standing up for Rachtzah, the next portion of the Seder, as the rest of them finished their wine. “Dayenu, am I right?” he joked to Dana with an elbow in her arm.
She giggled, and Ari and Hannah rolled their eyes at each other as they lined up for ritual handwashing at the sink. At least there was a limit to how annoying Evan could be about washing his hands, though he did insist on talking to Dana between washing and blessing the matzo, when everyone else was silent.
Their mom’s sigh was so heavy as she got up to make the blessings that Ari could only assume she was as sick of Evan’s shit as they were, though she’d never say it. No Jewish mother expected to have three unmarried daughters at their ages, and though, to her credit, she never pressured them about bringing a nice boy home or giving her grandbabies, Ari was sure she’d expected Sedarim to look very different at this point in her life.
It was at that moment, as they were chewing their cardboard-esque shmura matzo, that Evan surprised them all. “Cindy, I’ll handle Maror and Korekh.” Her mom opened her mouth to thankhim, but before she could get a word out, Evan managed to ruin his one kind deed of the entire night. “Don’t worry, I’ll go very light on the maror. I know you ladies have delicate palates.”
If Ari didn’t love her big sister deep down, that was the point at which she would’ve stomped on Evan’s foot with a vengeance, and unlike her first meeting with Judah, it wouldn’t have been an accident. “Actually, I like alotof maror—we all do. Thanks,” she bit out.
Next to her, Hannah smirked as Evan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Still, he silently served heaps of grated horseradish on romaine lettuce, though he piled on way too much of the haroset Hannah and Ari had made earlier with wine, apples, and nuts, as if they needed excess sweetness to balance it out.
A zing of spicy bitterness shot straight to Ari’s nasal passages, but she chowed down like a champ, although she could feel her face turning red and see the same happening to Hannah’s. (Dana got the tiniest scraping and an “Evan knows best,” even though she had the highest heat tolerance of any of them.) No matter—the pain felt good, and when she saw a wicked tilt to Evan’s smile as he assembled sandwiches for them out of the same ingredients between two pieces of matzo, she knew he was piling on even more, delighting in seeing her sweat.
“Next year,” Hannah murmured into her ear as they passed the sandwiches along until everyone had one, “I don’t care if we’re still single—I would sooner hire a date for this than have Evan be the man of the table again. You think Judah Klein will be available?”
Ari snorted. “I don’t think we could afford him, especially his Pesach rate.”
“Probably not,” Hannah conceded, wrapping a strand of pink hair around her finger. “How cool would that be, though?”
Now that she’d been given permission to imagine it again, Ari couldn’t resist, and she was grateful that her face was already flushed from the spicy horseradish. It would certainly be something: Tohave him next to her, pouring her wine and making the korekh sandwiches for the whole family as thoughtfully as he made her dinner. To have him knowledgeably and skillfully lead the Seder so her mother could take a break. To have his gorgeous voice fill a room that hadn’t really felt full since her father died. To hear him tell her she looked beautiful in her new flowered dress. To crash into bed with him afterward, his arm curled around her waist the way it had been during the storm, keeping her safe and anchored. To know he’d be there when she woke up in the morning, smiling into the back of her neck.
Crap.Crap. Howdid she get an actual crush on Judah Klein?
Andwhydid she tell him they should hook up with other people?
There’s no way he will, she thought as Dana passed her the bowl of hard-boiled eggs they’d prepared earlier that day, their customary first course of Shulchan Orech. She cracked the shell against the table and set to peeling it with her grass-green-painted fingernails.Just because he jumped into bed with me doesn’t mean he’s suddenly the kind of guy who does that.And he’d sounded happy that she’d called, hadn’t he? Said it was nice? He certainly hadn’t been upset to hear from her.
Two more nights.In two nights, the first days of Pesach would be over and they’d be able to use phones again, and he would call. He’d be thinking of her, and he would call, and then she would see how she felt, and maybe she would say something. Or maybe he would say something. The point was, maybe something would be said, and they’d agree they weren’t quite finished with each other, because in her heart of hearts, Ari wasn’t ready to call “Dayenu” just yet.
Chapter Seventeen
“Mincha! Mincha!”
Judah looked up from his Rummikub tiles and glanced at his watch as people started gathering for afternoon services. “Oh, wow, I didn’t realize how late it was.”
“Me neither,” said Mira, a pleased smile on her face. “I was just about to win too.”
“No, you weren’t,” he said with a grin as he set out his final tiles and flipped his board. “Good game.”
They put it away and headed through the open doors of the large auditorium serving as the synagogue. Judah sighed as he took a seat in the back of the men’s section, relieved to have a little time and space to himself. Not that Mira was bad company; he just hadn’t planned to spend quitesomuch time with her. But the Winklers had invited him to their Seder and seated him next to Mira, and then he saw her at kiddush the next morning; before he knew it, they were spending the entire next afternoon together.
Sure, he’d had some thoughts of Ari—when he spotted a couple of kids playing with Lego, when he overheard a girl complaining about high heels, when he saw a woman reading a romance novel he recognized from her apartment—but every time his mind threatened to stray too far, there was Mira, complimenting his davening or admiring the food.
It was a little awkward to see passersby glancing at them with smiles on their faces, as if they were watching a love connection happen before their eyes. There didn’t seem to be a single person at the program who didn’t know Judah was available—the number of times he’d heard “I have the perfect girl for you” so far was wellinto the double digits—and Mira’s uncovered hair and ringless finger easily marked her too. At least when they were together, no one approached him about a granddaughter or niece he simplymustmeet.
