Elvissa Did Not Become A Rabbi

Elvissa rhymes with Louisa, and her hobby through childhood and youth was New York City. She moved there in the 1980s, not looking for a career or love. If you had asked Elvissa what drew her to New York, she would have come up with nothing better than an image of a penthouse with diamond studded skyscrapers in the background.

She grew up in a subdivision on the edge of a small industrial city on the West Virginia side of the Ohio River. Everything in her life was new: house, high school, family church. Her friends were from corporate transfer families, newly moved in. The handful of native West Virginians she knew had no interest in their regional heritage.

Elvissa's mother Annie Jo had grown up on a mountaintop and was the first of her family to attend college, but they never visited, and she rarely spoke of them. Elvissa learned early that transplants can thrive if they are put in an auspicious location and are hearty and full of life force. A trick from her mother was to hold back a private place, something just your own. Annie Jo's quirk, her hobby, was Elvis Presley. She kept a closet in the spare bedroom full of memorabilia, and she named her son Edward Elvis and her daughter Elvissa.

Elvissa, too, kept a cult. She collected Statues of Liberty and maps of the New York City subway system. She was elected junior varsity cheerleader, class secretary, homecoming princess. She was active at church and liked to read. She learned from books how to be protected when she had sex, which she only did with one boyfriend in high school and two at college. Like her mother, she had dark honey good looks and a musical voice. It smooths things in life when you can walk into a room and people are glad to see you.

At college in Pennsylvania, Elvissa joined a sorority full of girls who were blonde, pretty and involved in service to a local nursing home. The thing that distinguished Elvissa from the others was only that she came from West Virginia, which is not nearly as exotic to Pennsylvanians as to New Yorkers.

After graduation, Elvissa told her boyfriend she was going to New York, and he assumed she meant for the summer. He said it would be good for them to be apart for a few months and test their love. It never occurred to him that Elvissa might love New York more than she loved him and his entry level management position with IBM.

The easy jobs to get in New York that year were in social service. After Elvissa had settled into an apartment with her roommate's cousin, she went to a private employment agency run by a heavyset woman named Gertrude Stein. "No relation,"  said Miss Stein, glaring into Elvissa's Kappa Kappa hello-spirit smile. "No relation at all to the Lesbian writer, who I am told was extremely lazy, whereas I built this agency up from nothing with my own bare hands. The problem with young women today is that you don't know the meaning of hard work, and you don't know how to sell yourselves."

Miss Stein predicted that Elvissa had no chance of getting a job without her help. Since Elvissa had come to the agency precisely to get help, she smiled and said, "I guess you're right! Just tell me what to do first!"

Miss Stein saw she had a winner. "You've got a pretty face," said Miss Stein, "use it! Smile at them! Be pleasant! Carry yourself with pride! Don't be afraid to use your figure to your advantage. I don't mean blouses cut down to here, I just mean, don't hide it." She began to smack her palm on her desk. "Tell them your good qualities! Don't hide yourself behind a wet blanket!"

Elvissa took a bus to the West Side Community Center, which was on the ground floor of a mixed income housing project, walking distance from where she was living. The Program Coordinator at West Side, Lorelei Lopatkin, was about the same age as Miss Stein and like Miss Stein had a faintly European turn of phrase, not quite an accent. Miss Lopatkin, however, wore a blouse with deep décolletage. She spoke from the beginning as if it were settled that Elvissa was hired. "You see, my dear, it's a lovely, low key position. You have only to think up some games for the Puerto Rican children and then help them with their homework." She made tea for Elvissa, asked how long she had been in New York. "The Day Clients, of course," said Miss Lopatkin, "are the Sixty Plus Club. Some of them are younger if they are on disability or out of work, but we never check ages. We have a fine, intellectually stimulating group of Day Clients. Such gorgeous, self-motivated people, I can't tell you. What we do is, we give them their heads! Like a fine race horse, do you understand? This is, for them, the best therapy of all that they should organize everything for themselves."

After Elvissa had worked at the Center for only a few days, she noticed that Miss Lopatkin didn't leave her office. She smoked cigarettes and drank tea and talked on the telephone. The Sixty-Plussers came in to drink tea with her. She liked Elvissa to sit down too. "You are young now, dear," she said, "but you won't always be. You must learn to conserve energy. You don't have to do everything at once!"

But that was exactly what Elvissa wanted to do. She loved the West Side Center which seemed like all of New York rolled into one. There were people of all ages and all colors and all income levels taking sewing lessons, exercise classes, and singing classes. The little Puerto Rican kids, most of whom were actually from Ecuador and the Dominican Republic, were so much fun that she could never could remember to feel sorry for them. And the Sixty-Plussers didn't seem old to her. True, a few of them had canes or walkers, but mostly the Center was a club for them. Tiny, elderly Martin read the large type edition of The New York Times and knew tremendous amounts about history and politics. He kept trying to convince Elvissa to be a Communist.

"These are the last days of Capitalism, sweetheart," he said. "Mark my words."

"Leave her alone," said the equally tiny and elderly Mr. Bernstein. "She's a lady!" Mr. Bernstein wore a three piece suit and a little black skull cap and spent time on the pay phone with his stock broker.

The women made a special pet of Elvissa. They sat in the small lounge with a view of the front door and the Day Care playground. "You speak so clearly," said Lois, who had white bangs and was married to Martin the Communist.

Lois's friend, Rose, had black hair and a large, theatrical voice. "My God you're right," said Rose. "Her voice is like bells ringing. And do you see her hair? Have you ever seen hair like that, which I know is natural. It's natural, isn't it, pumpkin?"

"Mine was that color when I was that age," said Ruthie, the nervous one who wore tight jeans and high heels.

"Well it isn't anymore," said Rose.

"Shh!" said Lois. "Don't be mean."

"I'm realistic. Ruthie knows, don't you, Ruthie?"

"You're only as old as you feel," said Ruthie.

Elvissa said, "I always wanted dark hair. My favorite fairy tales were about the dark haired heroines."

"So articulate, too," said Lois. "I am a retired school teacher, so I have experience. Few young people articulate their words today."

"Now, pumpkin," said Rose, "Tell us again where in the South are you from?"

"Well, not really the South, West Virginia."

"I had a cousin," said Ruthie, "a branch of the family that moved to Richmond and sold shoes, and I'm told they did very well. I never went there myself."

"Richmond is in Virginia. Where I lived was in West Virginia, right across the river from Ohio."

"I guess that's why you don't have a southern accent," said Lois. "Just between you and me, I've never liked what I call lazy lips, that drawl they have."

"She's a college graduate," said Ruthie. "I had to drop out and work."

"You aren't married, are you, Ellie?"said Rose. "I want you to meet my nephew, my niece's son."

Lois said, "She'll find plenty of boys on her own. I think you should put her in the musical."

The Sixty Plus Club was in the middle of a production of Fiddler on the Roof, but Rose, who was directing as well as acting, thought Elvissa would make everyone look old. So Elvissa happily typed up corrections in their script, made production schedules, put up posters.

Miss Lopatkin said, "Ellie, you must remember! It is most therapeutic if they do it all themselves!"

She loved the production, especially the man who was playing Tevye and never never seemed to get out of character. He let his beard grow long, and he wore a vest all the time and would throw his arms in the air in the middle of a card game and sing "Ya Ya Ya Ya Ya! If I was a ri-ich man!"

Within a month, Elvissa knew half a dozen Yiddish words and was embarrassed that she had ever asked Lois why Mr. Bernstein wore the little black hat. One morning, she was at the file cabinet behind the door in the office and overhead the women talking outside the door.

Ruthie said, "Ellie is such a nice girl. She's Jewish?"

"Of course not," said Rose, "don't be an idiot."

Lois said, "You don't have to be Jewish to be a nice girl."

"It's just too bad. It's a shame. She's such a nice girl."

Ellie thought it was a shame too, that she didn't have the long dark hair, that she wasn't Jewish.

****

After work, she did the things that can only be done in New York. She went to poetry readings in church basements and to free concerts by Julliard students. She went to the museums that were free or pay-what-you-will, and she sat in Central Park and listened to the steel drum bands. If some slick or unsavory or mentally unbalanced man approached her with lewd propositions, she took him as part of the entertainment and shook her head no, learning to smile less or more depending on how long she wanted the entertainment to last.

Inspired by Fiddler, she took an acting class at a drama studio over the Orange Julius on Broadway. For one of the first assignments, the class was to observe a person unlike yourself and mimic the walk and the gestures. The next morning, on the way to work, she followed a woman who walked slowly but with grace. She had slightly bowed legs and a wonderful stick carved with the head of an ibis. She wore her hair in a chignon that was equal parts black and white, and she was dressed in a white blouse with colored embroidery, black skirt, and black leather single-strapped shoes in excellent repair.

The woman unlocked the dark gates of a small corset shop. The window was full of nylons in boxes and garter belts and brassières. That evening, Ellie saw her again in the bright summer evening, on a bench on the island in the middle of Broadway. Her feet dangled and she talked to a friend. Her head tipped, her hands seemed to be swirling paint in the air.

Ellie hurried home and practiced in front of the mirror, learning to walk as if you carried an old burden. She set up pillows on the bed so she could practice dangling her legs. She crossed her ankles as the corset seller did and worked on the fluid gesture that begins with the palms out, slides into a shrug and rolled eyes.

She loved imitating the corset shop lady; she loved her acting class; she loved Martin and Lois and the story of their courtship as idealistic young Communists. She loved Mr. Bernstein, who still thought she was Jewish and told her to light candles on Friday night. She adored the production of Fiddler, which was at once wildly sentimental and profoundly true. She felt on the verge of understanding something important.

****

Her boyfriend came to visit. It was the end of summer, and she realized as soon as she saw him that letting him come was a mistake. He seemed physically a stranger to her, his sweat and his breath foreign. But she was the one who had changed, making broad gestures with her hands. He felt the difference, but to him, it was an erotic stimulus. He made little hissing noises and said, "Where have you been all my life?" and put his hands on her waist. He was eager to see New York, wanted to go first class all the way, didn't care to eat sausage sandwiches and sugared nuts from street vendors. He overspent, and for the first time in her life, she made love because she felt it had been paid for in advance. When she told him she had decided to stay in New York, his first response was that it would be a while before he could get a transfer.

Ellie said, "I don't think you understand. I don't want to marry you. I want to live in New York. By myself. Not with you."

He accused her of having fallen in love with someone else. She said it was the city she loved. He didn't believe her. She explained about sitting on the steps of the Museum of Natural History and watching a man twist balloons into elephants and giraffes. Her boyfriend did not get the point. He went around with his eyes looking bruised.

The last thing he said to her was, "I can't stand it that you love somebody better than me. I wish I was the kind of guy--" and then he smacked his fist into the palm of his hand and stalked off to his flight gate.

He called and wrote and sent flowers and telegrams. He believed that you can have what you want if you are enterprising. He got her father to plead his case. Her father hinted at a concern about narcotics or cocaine. He put her mother on the phone.

She forestalled her mother by saying, "Mom, when you first went away from home, did you fit in?"

Annie Jo laughed. "Why, you know the answer to that, honey! I had to learn everything from scratch. Your dad and his family taught me everything I know."

"You made yourself fit."

"After a while I did."

"Well," said Ellie, "I'm making myself fit here."

To ensure that her boyfriend got the point, she started dating Rose's grand-nephew, but it was actually an acquaintance of his that she ended up marrying. Robert Lipitz was a medical resident at New York Hospital. He was so exhausted from studying and his rotations through the hospital that he fell asleep in movies and on benches in museums. She loved this about him. She also loved his mother Barbara and his father Irwin, a dermatologist, who said medical residencies were summer camp today compared to when he did it.

Barbara jumped in and cried, "Irwin! It's a trick of memory! You're remembering the good old days!"

"The good old days!" cried Irwin. "You call that the good old days!"

Ellie would meet Robert on his midnight break at an all-night coffee shop. He came with stubbly cheeks, white coat spattered with brownish dots of she dared not ask what. He told tales of failed suicides with bone-pierced lungs and livers, alleged perpetrators whose shoulder muscles had been torn apart by police artillery.

The first time they ordered burgers, she was still ignorant and was horrified to see his Special arrive with bacon and cheese. "Oh," she cried, "they made a mistake, Robert! Do you want to trade? I've got a plain one...."

He looked blank. "No, I confess. I knew it was an artery-clogger."

"Oh," said Ellie. "I guess you're not religious then. I mean, observant."

Robert made a choking sound as he bit into dinner. "You thought I kept kosher? You thought I was kosher? My mother would, pardon the expression, plotz. She rebelled against all of that stuff a lot time ago. I think maybe in her family the grandparents rebelled."

"Does that mean they --you-- don't believe in the Jewish faith?"

Robert looked toward heaven. "My mom and her entire family are atheists. My dad believes in Israel. He goes to temple on the High Holy Days. Reform temple."

"It's complicated, then," said Ellie. "I'm glad. What about you?"

The waitress brought his chocolate egg cream. "I was in a temple once. No, I'm joking. I was bar mitzvah'd. I'm glad I was bar mitzvah'd. Even my mother wanted me to do that, but I haven't been back since. It's a lot of hoo-hah."

She adored the Lipitz family gatherings. They tried to explain Judaism and politics to her. Irwin was a louder, hairier version of Robert, and Barbara dressed like a beatnik. Barbara and Irwin had monumental arguments about the State of Israel, which Irwin supported financially and emotionally, and Barbara insisted was a religious theocracy, anti-feminist, no different from the Ayatollah Khomeini's theocracy in Iran or the one Ronald Reagan was trying to establish in the United States.

Ellie loved the way they argued and the way Robert pronounced consonants in the middle of a word. She was entranced by how he said "Chinese" with an "s" sound at the end instead of a "z." She loved the dark silky hair on his arms and chest, and his high forehead with receding hair. She wanted to make herself sharp and smart like his mother, and when they moved in together, she argued more and stated her opinions more directly.

They got married almost at once because they had a chance at a cheap hospital-owned apartment with a little terrace. Robert's mother found a left-wing rabbi who was delighted to perform the ceremony without any details like a conversion. His name was Rabbi Stein, no relation to either Gertrude, and Ellie liked him enormously. He was divorced with teen-age children and had been a part of the Civil Rights movement. He had a small beard and gave her books on Judaism as the religion of liberation.

Ellie liked Rabbi Stein's version of Judaism so much that she decided to convert. When she told the Day Clients at the Center, they stared at her as if a tree had sprouted from her forehead. Rose in particular, who was still a little miffed about the great-nephew, said, "And why would a person like yourself want to become a Jew?"

Lois, knitting a red sweater for a grandchild, said, "She's doing it for the boy, of course. He's a Jewish boy, right, Ellie?"

Rose said, "Marry a Jewish boy if you love him, I understand that. But why be such a masochist as convert?"

"I don't know," said Ellie. "I'm sort of attracted to -- the religion."

This caused such an unusual silence that she felt she had broken some kind of taboo. Ruthie crossed and recrossed her slim legs in tight jeans and finally said, "I hope you aren't going to cut off your gorgeous hair and put on a shmata."

"It's going to be a reform conversion," said Ellie.

Rose shook out her New York Times Living Section and made a harumphing noise. "I hope you don't expect people to think you're Jewish."

"Rose!" said Lois. "This is a happy thing! She wants to be close to her husband and his family. You should give her best wishes."

"Mazel tov," said Rose from behind the newspaper.

Miss Lopatkin was less interested in the conversion and more in talking about marriage. "Let's order in lunch," she said. "One thing I know is Jewish men. I married three of them." The children in the after-school program, of course, had always assumed that Ellie, like the other white ladies they knew, was already Jewish.

****

Robert heard of an interesting fellowship in Columbus, Ohio. Something large and dark crossed Ellie's sky. "Columbus?" she said. "But I just got to New York!"

"And I've never lived anyplace else!" said Robert, trying to be humorous. "Okay, okay," he added. "We'll stay another year."

She could tell that Robert, like her old boyfriend, thought that her love affair with New York was a passing phase. There was no question that he thought her Jewishness was. He said things like, "Are you still studying with the Hipster Rabbi? Did he tell you to buy me one of the furry black hats?"

Ellie, always amiable to the best of her ability, smiled and kissed his forehead, but meanwhile she inquired of Rabbi Stein which practices were most crucial, should you decide to practice. Rabbi Stein pointed out the downsides of Judaism and Jewish practice for a convert with a recalcitrant spouse. He interpreted old things for today. "The business with not picking up the wheat you drop in the field, and not harvesting the corners of the field," he said, "this was an early social service program you understand: the widows and orphans were supposed to come and take the leftovers."

She loved Judaism for its cleverness, for being Rabbi Stein's religion, for being the underlying tradition of the Lipitzes and the Sixty Plus Club, for being associated with New York. She loved the way the whole structure did not hang from a single hook. In the religion she grew up in, you either accepted it all -- Mary getting pregnant without sex, Jesus coming back to life -- or you didn't, in which case you went to Hell. Rabbi Stein's Judaism, on the other hand, had a lot of give-and-take, exegesis and storytelling, the explaining of texts by rabbis and scholars and then texts explaining the explanations all the way to Rabbi Stein explaining to Ellie.

Robert perceived her experiments with Judaism as simple nuttiness. As a second year resident, he was busier than ever, so she had plenty of nights to read and attend services while he was on call at the hospital. He didn't mind Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, although he didn't care to fast himself, but he was appalled when she purchased some bundles of branches at the Korean grocery and built a little succoth on their terrace. The beginning of the end was when he borrowed a friend's cottage in the Catskills for the week-end, and Ellie told him she had been trying not to travel on Friday night or Saturday.

Robert said, "You're joking, aren't you? About not traveling on Shabbos?"

She looked out the window at the view of high rises and a slice of East River and Queens. "I want to see what it feels like."

"You can't!" said Robert. "There is no possible way you can know what it feels like. You're about as Jewish as a pork chop!"

He went away without her and was miserable, and Ellie was miserable in New York. On Saturday afternoon, she borrowed a car from another resident and drove to the Catskills to join him, but got lost and didn't find the cabin till almost midnight. They had a tearful and sensual reunion, but she had arrived so late that Robert didn't realize she had broken the Sabbath for him, and she didn't say anything. Thus she did not tell the one thing that might have saved their future together, whether out of perversity or pride, or because she wanted him to think she was really Jewish.

It became clearer and clearer that Ellie was choosing Judaism over Robert. He stormed around the living room, waving his arms, seeming to fill three times the space he usually did. She felt vaguely that her own mother would have found a way to please him and keep kosher as well, but she was still a beginner in life, and not clear about what she really wanted. Through his rages, she kept a coolly insufferable little smile on her lips, and Robert accepted a fellowship in Denver.

She said, as direct and clear as was possible for her, "Oh, Robert, let's stay in New York and learn to be Jews together!"

AI already know how to be a Jew," said Robert sadly. "I don't have to learn."

****

Telling Robert's parents about the separation was hard: Irwin puffed up, and Barbara shouted, "It's my fault. I should have got a judge for your wedding. If I hadn't introduced you to that hypocritical son-of-a-bitch Stein you wouldn't have gone crazy with this atavistic religious bull shit!"

"Maybe she'll change her mind," said Irwin. "Maybe she'll change her mind and go to Denver."

They all cried: Irwin, Barbara, Robert, and Ellie, and Ellie loved them all more than she ever had. She saw Robert off at the airport, and thought for a while that she might change her mind and go with him. But Rose, who was directing Hello Dolly at the Center, had a small stroke, and Ellie took over until she could get back on her feet. Then there were complaints about the quality of Miss Lopatkin's energy expenditure at work, so she took early retirement, and the Director gave Ellie the job. By that time, months had passed and Robert had met a formerly Lutheran nurse who hated everything associated with religious ritual.

The hardest thing of all was how to tell her own mother and father, which she didn't do until after Hello Dolly and the promotion and the nurse. She made a special trip home late in October. She rented a car, drove down slowly, thought about what to tell them and how.

She started with the ham at dinner. "It looks great," she said, "but I'm becoming more of a vegetarian. The way animals are treated, in the meat factories. You know."

Her mother gave her a bright little smile. "I thought maybe you weren't eating pork because you were becoming Jewish."

"Well," she said, "to tell the truth, it's both things. I've gotten more interested in -- Judaism. I converted. You knew that, didn't you?"

Her mother kept the little bright smile. "We wondered when we saw that rabbi at your wedding."

Her father wiped his mouth and stared over her head out the window. The light fell on the semi-abstract design of pink and gray flowers on the plates. The light fell on the little explosion lines etched at the corners of her parents' eyes and mouths.

Her mother said, "I hope you aren't going to church on Sunday to try and convert people."

"Oh, no! That's one of the things I really like about Judaism -- they believe other religions are fine for other people!"

Her father cleared his throat. "I'm not prejudiced, but that's a little weird, if you ask me, to think there's a whole raft of right religions. How can you take a religion seriously if you don't believe it's the best one?"

"It is the best one, for Jews."

Her mother burst out, ""But, honey, why would you want to reject Jesus?"

"It's not rejection! They think -- we think -- he's a great teacher. We just don't think he's the -- " and her mouth stuck between Redeemer and Savior, and in the end, she couldn't say the Baptist words at all: "We just don't think he's moshiach."

They all three seemed to stare at the foreign word, as if it had landed resoundingly on the table as firm and pink as the ham.

Finally, Annie Jo said, "Messiah?"

Ellie nodded.

Her father said, "Well I'm no theologian. I just try and do what the Bible says. That's enough for me."

Her mother said, "But why do you have to change? I mean, it's one thing for Robert and his family -- ."

"We think the world of Robert and his people," said Ed.

"Oh yes! We think the world of Robert, but I don't understand why you have to change."

"Mom, you left your family and changed!"

Her father snorted. "Annie Jo had to change. When Annie Jo went to college, she thought a flush toilet was something to wash your feet in."

Annie Jo had grown up with teasing from brothers far more cruel than her husband. "Ed, you always get that wrong," she said. "I thought that little spring of water was for the dogs to drink from."

Ellie had heard the exchange before. Both her parents chuckled over it and smiled into one another's eyes. "But Mom, you gave up your family. I have to tell you another change too. Robert and I are separated."

"These things happen to the best of families," said Ed. "Are you going to get back together?"

"We're definitely separated. He's in Denver, and I stayed in New York."

Ed shook his head. "You should go out there and try to talk to him, you should try to work it out. After you went to all that trouble to become Jewish."

"It's not a misunderstanding. We're getting a divorce."

Her father glanced at her mother. "Young people need to think things over sometimes. Your mother went back home for a while, after we first got married."

This was news, that Annie Jo had ever gone back to the Critchfields.

Annie Jo said, "I always knew I'd come back."

Her father reached over and grasped her mother's hand. Ellie felt tears in her own eyes.

"Robert and I got married too soon," she said. "Before I was sure who I was."

"Well," said her father. "If you're really getting a divorce, then you don't have to stay Jewish."

"But I want to. I think I'm more interested in being Jewish than Robert. I might even go back to school and become something like, I don't know, a rabbi."

Annie Jo frowned and clenched her hands. "I just think you're just embarrassed," she said. "By us."

"It doesn't have anything to do with you. You don't have to reject one thing because you're drawn to something else."

"Then why," said Annie Jo, drawing herself up, pulling her shoulders high so that they disappeared into her hair, "Then why, if you're not embarrassed, did you stop using your own name?"

"Now honey," said Ed to Annie Jo. "She just took her husband's name. There's nothing wrong with Lipitz for a last name --"

"I don't mean her last name! I mean why do they all call her that nickname like her name was Ellen instead of her real name?"

Her father said, "Maybe in New York your old boy Elvis Presley isn't quite the thing, if you know what I mean."

"Are you ashamed of what I named you?" asked Annie Jo. "Does being Jewish mean you have to give up the name I gave you?"

Elvissa was shocked by how angry she suddenly was. "Why did you name me after an entertainer anyhow? Why didn't you give me a real name if you wanted me to keep the name you gave me? Why didn't you name us after someone of the Critchfields? Why didn't you take us to visit the Critchfields?"

"Well, those Critchfields -- " said her father.

"I should have," said Annie Jo. "I wish I had. There's nothing wrong with my family, they're just good old country people."

"You can still take me," she said, surprising herself, and wondering if this was what she wanted, why she took extra vacation days.

****

And that was how it came about that Elvissa spent the rest of her vacation driving through West Virginia with her mother meeting the Critchfields. But that's another story. The end of this story is that Elvissa went back to New York and continued to meet with Rabbi Stein, who asked her to call him Mike, a nickname for Myron. Elvissa never became a rabbi, but she did marry Rabbi Stein. She continued to work at the West Side Center, and she had two children, and her children knew New York as that most commonplace of wonders, home. And Elvissa always took them to West Virginia in the summer, to visit her family and the Critchfields.

From time to time Elvissa Mackey Lipitz Stein had a dream in which she and her husband and children, and his children by his first wife, and her parents and her brother, all went up on Critchfields Mountain and celebrated an open-air Seder under a pink sky. The Critchfields were there and the Lipitzes and all the Steins and Mackeys. Elvissa would wake from the dream with a satisfied feeling that everything fit together. She never remembered exactly how it fit, but she was left with profound conviction that someday she would.

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