Within six months, Bram had married Yael and moved them into their own flat. Within another year, he’d cobbled together the funds to buy a broken-down old barge on the Nieuwe Prinsengracht. Daniel stayed in the squat, eventually getting a lease for it and then buying it from the city government for a pittance. Unlike Bram, who went on to fix up his boat, floorboard by floorboard, until it was the “Bauhaus on the Gracht,” Daniel left the flat in its state of anarchist disrepair and rented it out. He got almost nothing for it. “But nothing is enough to live like a king in Southeast Asia,” Bram used to say. So that’s where Daniel stayed, riding the ups and down of the Asian economy with a series of business ventures that mostly went nowhere.
“Your ma called,” Daniel continues. “Told me you were back. Said you might need a place to stay. I told her you needed to come get your shit out of my attic.”
“So I have shit in the attic?” I ask him, stretching out from the too-short sofa and trying to digest my surprise. Yael called Daniel? For me?
“Everyone has shit in the attic,” Daniel says, laughing a huskier, smokier version of Bram’s laugh. “When can you come over?”
We arrange for me to come over the next day. Daniel texts me the address, though that’s hardly necessary. I know his flat better than I know him. I know the stuck-in-time furniture—the zebra-striped egg chair, the 1950s lamps that Bram used to find at flea markets and rewire. I even know the smell, patchouli and hash. “It’s how this place has smelled for twenty years,” Bram would say when he and I would visit the flat together to fix a faucet or deliver keys to a new tenant. When I was younger, the lively multi-ethnic area where Daniel lived, right across from the treasures of the Albert Cuyp street market, seemed like another country from the quiet outer canal where we lived.
Over the years, the neighborhood has changed. The once working-class cafés around the market now serve things with truffles, and in the market, alongside the stalls hawking fish and cheese, there are designer boutiques. The houses have smartened up, too. You can see them through picture windows, the sparkling kitchens, the expensive clean-lined furniture.
Not Daniel’s place, though. As his neighbors renovated and upgraded, his flat dug into its time warp. I suspect that’s still the case, especially after he warns me that the buzzer doesn’t work and instructs me to call upon arrival so he can throw down the keys. So I’m caught a little off guard when he opens the door to the flat and I’m ushered into a lounge, all wide-plank bamboo floors, sage-colored walls, low, modern sofas. I look around the room. It’s unrecognizable, except for the egg chair, and even that’s been reupholstered.
“Little man,” Daniel says, though I am not little at all, a few fingers taller than him. I look at Daniel. His reddish hair is maybe a little shot through with gray, the smile lines cut a little deeper, but otherwise he’s the same.
“Little uncle,” I joke back, patting him on the head as I hand him back the keys. I walk around. “You’ve done something to the place,” I say, tapping a finger to my chin.
Daniel laughs. “Oh. I’m only halfway there, but that’s halfway farther than no way.”
“True enough.”
“I’ve got big plans. Actual plans. Where are my plans?” Out the window, there’s the roar of a jet rumbling through the clouds. Daniel watches it, then he resumes his search, spinning around peering at the crowded bookshelves. “It’s a little slow going because I’m doing the work myself, though I can afford to hire it out, but it just seemed like I should do it this way.”
>“What else do you remember?” I ask hesitantly. “About Naomi.” She was another unmentionable when I was growing up.
“She sang,” Yael says quietly. “All the time. At the Seders too. So there was lots of singing at the Seders—before. And people. When I was a child, we had a full house. Not after. Then it was just us. . . .” She trails off. “It wasn’t as joyful.”
“So tonight, there will be singing,” Paul says. “Someone get my guitar.”
“Oh, no. Not the guitar,” Matthew jokes.
“I like the guitar,” Lucas says.
“Me, too,” Kelsey says. “Reminds me of when we met.” Her and Paul’s eyes meet and tell a quiet story, the way Yael and Bram’s used to, and I feel a longing pull at me.
“Shall we sit down?” Kelsey asks, gesturing to the table. We take our seats.
“I know I railroaded you into this again, but Yael, would you mind being the leader?” Paul asks. “I’ve been studying up since last year and I’ll chime in, but I feel you’re better qualified. Otherwise we can ask Sister Karenna to do it.”
“What? I do it?” Sister Karenna jerks up.
“She’s a little deaf,” Declan whispers to me.
“You don’t have to do anything, Sister, but relax,” Kelsey says in a loud voice.
“I’ll do it,” Yael tells Paul. “If you help.”
“We’ll tag-team it,” Paul says, winking at me.
But Yael hardly seems like she needs the help. She says an opening prayer over the wine in a clear strong voice, as if she’s done this every year. Then she turns to Paul. “Maybe you might explain the point of the Seder.”
“Sure.” Paul clears his throat and starts a long meandering explanation about how a Seder is meant to commemorate the Jews’ exodus from Egypt, their escape from slavery and their return to the Promised Land, the miracles that ensued to make this happen. “Though this happened thousands of years ago, Jews today retell the story every year to rejoice in the triumphant history, to remember it. But here’s why I wanted to jump on the bandwagon. Because it’s not just a retelling or a celebration of history. It’s also a reminder of the price and the privilege of liberation.” He turns to Yael. “That sound right?”
She nods. “It’s a story we repeat because it’s a history we want to see repeated,” she says.
The Seder continues. We say blessings over the matzo, we eat the vegetables in salt water, and then the bitter herbs. Kelsey serves soup. “Not matzo ball, mulligatawny,” she says. “I hope lentils are okay.”
While we’re eating our soup, Paul suggests that since the point of the Seder is to retell a story of liberation, we all take a turn and talk about a time in our lives when we escaped some sort of oppression. “Or escaped anything really.” He goes first, talking about his life as it used to be, drinking, drugs, aimless and sad before he found God, and then found Kelsey and then found meaning.