Exodus
Brooke Lewis
“Next year in Jerusalem would be great if it means I don’t have to cook a meal for thirty people,” said Nicole, slipping her feet out of her toe-crushing black heels and placing her earrings on the dressing table in front of her as she sat down. “Or maybe the Messiah could help me with the washing up. It was very kind of your mother to lend me her silver cutlery and best china. I just wish she’d told me beforehand that none of it could go in the dishwasher.”
“Well, at least Passover happens only once a year,” was David’s optimistic response. “Why don’t you get into bed if you’re so tired? I’m lonely here all by myself.”
Nicole looked at her husband and smiled, silently berating him for resting his head on the dress cushions and not removing the bedspread before he slipped under the covers. They’d spent a lot of money doing up the house and she wanted to keep it looking nice, just like the interior designer had left it, but David couldn’t understand that the embroidery on the bedspread and six cushions (which she arranged perfectly every morning) were too delicate for sleeping on. She was always reminding him that they had a lovely duvet underneath, but he still insisted on throwing himself on top of it all each night, leaving his clothes in a pile on the floor.
She pulled her thick dark hair into a tight ponytail on top of her head. She liked the way it made her look, as though she’d had a face lift: all the skin was tight on her face that, at thirty-eight, seemed to loosen in steady correlation to the number of anti-aging creams accumulating on her dressing table. She ignored David’s remark, as she did every time he questioned why it took her so long to get ready for bed. In fifteen years of marriage, he still hadn’t commented on the fact that he’d never seen her without her makeup on. It always made her laugh to think that he didn’t know she’d named their daughter after the lipstick she was wearing for the birth: Coral Crush. He’d walked out of the room to go and tell their parents that their first grandchild was a girl, and Nicole had taken the opportunity to reapply. With the baby in one arm and the lipstick in the other, she had decided that the tiny pink creature they had created deserved a colorful name. By the time David came back, parents and in-laws in tow, she had put the lipstick back in her handbag. When he came over to the bed to look at them both she had whispered to him, “What do you think of Coral?” He had loved it immediately, but had never asked where it came from. Perhaps he had thought she just liked the name.
She studied herself again in the mirror, looking for any changes that could have taken place in the previous twenty-four hours. Then, as she did every night, she began her ritual with her skin, using cotton to wipe away traces of the day’s makeup before applying a thin level of concealer under her eyes and around her mouth. She always found it odd that the tiny crevices she filled in so painstakingly were referred to in the magazines she read as “laughter lines,” as if one could appear younger by becoming more unhappy, smiling less. Next came a light dusting of bronzer to maintain the tan she had acquired on their recent visit to the house in Spain. Not bad, she thought to herself. Not bad for being nearly forty and waking up at six in the morning to start the chicken soup and to peel the potatoes for the Seder.
Then Nicole started on her eyes. Not wanting to take off all her makeup at once and leave her face bare in case David saw, she cleansed her right eye first, leaving the left fully rimmed and shaded. She began to reapply with a black kohl pencil to bring out their color, which reminded her of the strong coffee she drank all day out of thin white china mugs. She liked to tap on the handle of the mug with her nails, which she painted the color of dark, metallic scabs. Sometimes, at the florist’s where she worked a few days a week, the tapping would be the only sound she’d hear for hours at a time.
After applying the eyeliner, she opened the gold container that held her palette of browns and soft pinks. She spent five minutes blending them into the contours of her eyelid, and then applied two coats of mascara before repeating the whole process on her left eye. She surveyed herself in the mirror once more, correcting a slight smudge on her upper eyelid, then stood up, slipped out of her dress, and pulled the bedspread and cushions out from underneath David before settling in under the duvet.
“It’s going to be murder at work tomorrow,” she began. “Everyone’s going to be coming in to order flowers to say thank you for tonight’s dinner. We’ve ordered fifty extra orchids. They’re absolutely divine. You know, the tall single ones in glass vases. Every wife, mother, and mother-in-law in North West London will have one by tomorrow.”
Her husband looked up at her briefly over the cover of his gadget magazine. He’d been poring over the same issue for a week now, scribbling notes alongside the columns and circling prices and technical specifications. She couldn’t remember what product he was considering buying—some new kind of personal organizer, maybe? Something else to make his life simpler and hers more difficult when she called to ask what time he’d be home from work.
“Orchids, eh? But I thought you liked lilies? That’s what I ordered for you. Oh—sorry. It was meant to be a surprise.”
“I do, I love lilies, especially when you buy them for me.”
It was true. She did love the pink and white flowers he bought her every Friday. They went well with the curtains in the living room, providing a little tropical oasis among the dark wood and off-white upholstery. But she loved orchids, too. They were so simple and clean. The lilies sprayed pollen everywhere and drooped after a few days, but an orchid just stayed straight and upright. She knew they were meant to bloom again each spring, but she’d never met anyone who’d kept theirs long enough to find out. She really should treat herself to one, she thought—she’d been dropping hints to David for months now, but they didn’t seem to have worked. Tomorrow she would buy herself a thank you present, she decided, and the thought instantly cheered her up. She forgave David for his awful mother with her horrible hand-washable cutlery and snide comments about how food must just be different these days. She even forgave his gadget magazine and the way he’d asked if her dress was meant to look like that. She edged over to his side of the bed and laid her head on his chest, picking up the remote and switching on the TV at the same time.
“Hey, it’s Passover! You know, ‘Why is this night different from all other nights?’ and all? Do we really need to watch TV?” asked David, removing his glasses and putting down his magazine as if pre-empting her response.
“It’s the same as what you’ve been doing for the last half hour! This night is different from all other nights because our ancestors escaped from bondage in Egypt and I cooked a four-course meal for your family. And anyway, I want to watch the repeat of Pop Idol. It’s the semi-final.”
“Do we have to watch that boring crap again, Nic? They’re just a bunch of talentless brats trying to be famous for the sake of it. You’ll have forgotten their names in a couple of months, and probably their songs, too.”
“I know that. I just love watching their faces as they listen to the applause. It’s like all their dreams have come true… or something like that anyway.”
David snorted in either exasperation or disbelief, she wasn’t sure which, and went back to his magazine. Nicole placed her head back on his chest and was quickly absorbed by the dual lulls of his heartbeat and the TV program. She hated being the last person in the house awake and always made a conscious effort to fall asleep before David. Tonight though, his breathing began to deepen almost instantly. Family dinners were exhausting, she knew. She felt his body twitch as it adjusted from the stresses of the day to its newfound relaxation. She gently removed the magazine from his hand, took off his glasses, and switched off the lamp before resuming her position. His only response was to hold her slightly closer for a moment before sleep took him over and he was no longer aware of her. She lay there, wondering what he was dreaming of, enjoying the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek. It reminded her of being at sea. In that case, David was her raft—a raft on the sea of her own thoughts—and the idea made her cling to him more tightly.
After half an hour, the program ended, but she was still awake and realized that it was going to be one of those nights. Tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep knowing that David was already unconscious and that the kitchen was still full of unwashed dishes and saucepans. She stepped out of bed and, shivering, threw on a tracksuit, then checked her makeup and went downstairs to make a cup of chamomile tea and survey the damage after the night’s festivities. Yes, it was just as bad as she thought it would be. The white tablecloth was spattered with red wine and soup stains, which seemed to be daring her to leave them in that state overnight. Well, she thought as she filled the kettle, she’d have to wash it all up tomorrow before work, she didn’t have the head for it now.
Why is this night different from all other nights? For some reason, the question had kept asking itself in her mind ever since David had mentioned it. It was the question that the youngest child at the Passover Seder asks the rest of the guests every year. She remembered the pride she’d felt as the baby sister when she got to stand up and sing the ancient words to the rest of her family. She’d always count the pages left in the Haggadah, the Passover prayer book, until it was her time to sing. She’d heard and said the words so many times, she realized, pouring the boiling water into a mug, that she repeated them year after year without ever really thinking about them.
Passover meant cooking and eating and drinking and singing songs in Hebrew that she didn’t understand. Tonight may be different from all other nights, but it was the same as Seder night was last year and the same as it would be next year. To think about it as commemorating an actual event seemed strange to Nicole. The weeks of preparation—of buying the chicken and the wine and the different kinds of matzo, of washing the linen and inviting the guests and setting the table and remembering the vegetarians—had nothing to do with the Jews being freed from Egypt in the middle of the night before their bread had had a chance to rise. That was the story she remembered being told as a child, but it wasn’t why she carried on making the Seder each year. It was just what you did: following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother.
She hadn’t seen her parents tonight—they’d gone to her sister-in-law’s house for Seder. Did Mandy feel about her mother they way she felt about David’s? Would Coral’s husband one day feel that Nicole was a judgmental old cow? Probably, she decided and laughed into the midnight silence. She imagined herself in twenty years’ time. Would she be a grandmother by then? She hoped that she magically wouldn’t be old enough. Maybe by then someone will have invented something that would allow her daughter to get older but freeze Nicole at forty-five, a different kind of Passover miracle, more amazing than the parting of the Red Sea.
Why is this night different from all other nights? She sipped her tea and thought of Coral singing the words that evening. At thirteen, standing up in public (at that age, even family counted as public, Nicole knew) and performing was not what she had wanted to do, but she had done it because she knew how much it meant to Nicole. She had stood there, arms folded over her uncomfortable new breasts, shifting from one foot to another, occasionally pulling at her skirt or tucking her hair behind an ear. But she had sung the words loudly and well, only looking up at the end, shyly, to see the pride in Nicole’s eyes and the tear on her cheek. She had looked away quickly, of course, not wanting to be seen enjoying the approval of her mother, which she was now too old to need. But the moment had been there, however briefly, and Nicole knew they had both felt it.
Coral was getting prettier by the day. Nicole had been so afraid that puberty would destroy her daughter’s long-limbed elegance and drowsy brown eyes framed by gently curling lashes, but the requisite skin blemishes and sudden growth spurts hadn’t lessened her beauty and would be over soon, allowing Coral finally to feel at ease in her own body. Maybe soon she’d stop wearing the baggy black clothes she’d adopted in what seemed to be an effort to disappear completely and wear some of the clothes that Nicole had bought for her recently, which showed off her curves. Only yesterday, when David and Nicole were leaving the house to go out for dinner and saying goodbye to Coral, he had slid a hand around Nicole’s waist and whispered, “Look what we made. Can you believe that?”
They had both turned around to face Coral waving at them from the bedroom window of the large, comfortable house they had recently bought and decorated.
“This is all I’ve ever wanted, you know,” he’d said, as Coral stopped waving and instead began to roll her eyes in a gesture for them to leave.
“Me, too,” she’d replied.
This was all she had ever wanted. The husband, the kid, the house, the garden, the cars, the holidays. All her dreams had come true. She was happy. Yes, it had been difficult when Coral started senior school a couple of years ago, but then she’d got the job at the florist’s and now she didn’t mind as much that Coral didn’t need her to pick her up from school or make her a snack in the afternoon. At least her daughter still talked to her. That was more than she could say for most of her friends with kids the same age. Yes, Coral still came home every day and told Nicole what she’d been up to at school, who wasn’t speaking to whom and why, which boyfriends had been dumped and which forgiven. Coral, despite the frequent temper tantrums and occasional confidence crises, seemed as happy and well-adjusted as a thirteen-year-old girl with pimples and a 32A bra could be. She and David had done a good job.
Why is this night different from all other nights? Sitting down at the table, she saw that Coral had left the Haggadah open at exactly that page, clearly losing interest in the service after her moment in the spotlight. She glanced at it, thinking how many years it must have been since she’d last sung those words herself. Now, she realized, her job was to sing the other part of the song, the answers to the child’s questions: because we are commemorating our liberty, our freedom from slavery in Egypt. Freedom. She thought of how she felt occasionally when working at the florist’s, as though she would explode if she spent another second looking at flowers or listening to rumors.
But I really am free, she thought to herself. Working at the florist’s is hardly slave labor, and I’m hardly a slave. She often reminded herself that they didn’t need her salary, that she was just working for fun now so that she could see her friends when they popped in during the day to buy pretty little notepads or birthday cards. She’d regularly wondered how the shop even stayed in business with its clientele coming in more for the diversion than the products on the shelves. But, she reminded herself, she enjoyed it. She liked hearing the latest news and discussing which colors and colorists could best cover up gray hair. David hadn’t even wanted her to get the job, but she had gone ahead with it anyway and she could quit any time she wanted. I’m not exactly building pyramids, she thought. Noone’s making me do anything I don’t want to do. I could walk out that door right now if I wanted and no one could stop me.
To prove her point, Nicole headed for the front door. She resisted the urge to grab her car keys and instead put on a coat and started walking along the street, hoping the exercise would help her sleep when she got back. Kinsgley Way, Northway, Southway, Middleway, Meadway. The Goldsteins (divorced), the Weinbergs (back together), the Greens (remarried), the Segals (kid rehabbing for thousands of pounds a week). She wished she didn’t know any of it, but she did. She couldn’t get lost if she tried. She concentrated on the rhythm of her steps on the pavement and the feel of the breeze on her skin. Spring was her favorite time of year. The trees that lined the streets she walked were covered in delicate pink blossoms that fragranced the air around her and fluttered to the ground like warm snow. It’s the closest thing to manna that she would see falling from the sky, she knew.
Nicole kept walking. She wished there was somewhere she could go that wouldn’t be familiar, a place where she didn’t know who lived in every house and exactly what state their marriage was in, somewhere she couldn’t identify the owners of the cars by reading their personalized license plates. She felt jealous of the Jews who fled Egypt and the way they must have felt when they set out on their adventure: the road ahead uncertain, every step a leap of faith for the God they had almost stopped believing in. She pictured them escaping into the darkness, the Sphinx behind them, and the sweltering, pitch-black desert ahead. That’s what freedom is, she thought as she walked—the unknown.
It was only when Nicole reached up to remove a stray blossom petal from her cheek that she realized how close to tears she was. What was her problem? She already lived in the Promised Land, and she hadn’t had to spend forty years in the wilderness to get there. In Hampstead Garden Suburb there was no desert, no angry Pharaoh, no pestilence or hail or blood in the rivers; just hedges and big houses and expensive silver cars. She found herself on Hampstead Heath among the trees and the bushes, and she was running and running until her face was covered with sweat and snot and tears, with mascara and blusher and eye shadow, with concealer and kohl and petals. “It’s not fucking different from all other nights!” she shouted. “It’s exactly the same! It’s exactly the same…” She sat down on a bench to catch her breath and thought she could still hear her voice reverberating in the trees.
Why is this night different from all other nights? Because I just went crazy and I have no idea why, Nicole answered to herself.
She wished she hadn’t given up smoking. She would have killed for a cigarette. Instead, she settled for picking the nail polish off her nails. She was having them done tomorrow anyway. So what if every night was the same? That’s what family was about, wasn’t it? Yes, that was what she’d always wanted—a wonderful husband and a wonderful daughter, both of whom were currently at home sleeping in their wonderful house, oblivious to the fact that their mother and wife was behaving like a madwoman, running about on the heath like some kind of werewolf. What had come over her? She stood up, wiped her eyes, and walked back to the house, inhaling deeply and wishing that nicotine instead of spring were in the air.
She walked in the front door and knew immediately that she had to wash the dishes. What had she been thinking? She couldn’t leave them until tomorrow. She’d never be able to sleep. But first there were two things she had to do. She tiptoed upstairs and sat down at her dressing table, only switching on the lamp so as not to wake David. She removed all the streaks and smudges, touched up her concealer and eyeliner, and applied a coat of mascara. Then she kissed David as he slept and stole out into the hallway. She entered Coral’s room despite the new KEEP OUT—THAT MEANS YOU, MOM AND DAD sign on the door. It was so rare that she had a chance to watch her daughter sleeping now that she was up all hours of the night talking on the phone and rearranging the posters on her wall. She stood in the doorway, amazed to see that Coral still sucked her thumb even though she’d sworn she’d given it up. It made the same sound as when Coral used to breast feed, and produced the same blissfully calm expression on her face.
Nicole approached her daughter and sat down on the edge of her bed, stroking a hand against her cheek. She noticed that Coral’s lashes looked even more luscious than usual. She leaned in close and squinted in the gray light. Coral was sleeping in a full coat of mascara. Enough for tonight, she told herself. You can ask her about it tomorrow. She probably just forgot to take it off. Nicole rose gently from the bed and padded downstairs to do the washing up.
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