Elvissa and the Rabbi
First Published in Kimera: Journal of Fine Writing
(N. 1316 Hollis Street, Spokane, WA 99201), Volume 5, Fall 2000, p. 24.Also Published in
Appalachian Gateway: An Anthology of Contemporary Stories and Poetry
(University of Tennessee Press 2013).In the Mountains of America
Mercury House, San Francisco, 1994Out of the Mountains: Appalachian Short Stories
Ohio University Press, 2010.By Meredith Sue Willis
Elvissa rhymes with Louisa, and her hobby was New York City. If you had asked her why New York, she would have smiled and shrugged and maybe described a view overlooking all the lights of the city. She was raised in West Virginia near the Ohio River in a suburb where everything was new: houses, high school, church. Her friends were mostly the children of corporate families from all over the country, and the handful of native West Virginians she knew had no interest in where they came from.
Elvissa's mother, however, had grown up in Webster County and was the first of her family to attend college. She rarely spoke of her past and almost never visited her family, so Elvissa learned that transplants can thrive if they are put in an auspicious location and are hearty and full of life force. She learned another thing from her mother, the importance of having something private, something just your own. Her mother's 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.
So, like her mother, Elvissa kept a cult. She collected Statues of Liberty and maps of the New York City subway system and postcards of the New York skyline. Except for this oddity, she seemed to be perfectly matched to her life: 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 enjoy looking at you.
She went to college in Ohio where she joined a sorority full of girls who were blonde, pretty and did service at a local nursing home. The only thing that distinguished Elvissa from the others was that she came from West Virginia, which is not nearly as exotic to Ohioans as it is to, say, 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 brand new management position with IBM.
This was the 1980's, and since everyone was going into business, the easiest jobs to get were in social service. Elvissa moved into an apartment with the cousin of one of her sorority sisters, and then 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!"
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 from Miss Stein's to the West Side Community Center, which was on the ground floor of a mixed income housing project, walking distance from where the apartment where she was staying. 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 would be 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 during the school year."
She made tea for Elvissa and went on explaining.
"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 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."Elvissa 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 Mexico 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 that old. 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 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. I have experience in this area. 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. I'm from West Virginia, actually, I grew up 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 that drawl they have."
"You aren't married, are you, Ellie?"said Rose. "I want you to meet 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, thought Elvissa would make everyone look old. So Elvissa happily typed up new scripts with corrections and cuts, made production schedules, designed the poster and carried the posters to the local boutiques and bodegas.
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 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 walking by.
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 and free concerts by Julliard students. She went to the museums that were pay-what-you-will, and she sat in Central Park and listened to the steel drum bands. If some 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 and even a pink Merry Widow corset. 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 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 turned up, 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 didn't seem to have learned she wasn't Jewish: he always reminded 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 and so 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. 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 understand. He hung his head, and his eyes looked 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 enough. He asked her father to plead his case, and her father called and talked about the weather and everyone's health, and then reported on an article he'd read about the use of cocaine in New York. Finally he wondered if something might be influencing her judgement. And before she could process what he was saying, 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 his friend Robert Lipitz, a medical resident at New York Hospital, that she ended up marrying. Robert was so exhausted from 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, "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 enough to be 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? 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 reform temple on the High Holy Days.""It's complicated, then," said Ellie. "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. 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 something between a beatnik and an upscale hippy. 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 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 Ellie converting. 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 a black hat?'
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: 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 multiple interpretations; this rabbi said but that rabbi said something different; there was exegesis and storytelling, the explaining of texts by scholars and then texts explaining the explanations all the way to Rabbi Stein explaining to Ellie.
Robert perceived her experiments with Judaism as 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 directly and clearly as possible, "Oh, Robert, let's stay in New York and learn to be Jews together!"
"I 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 the 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 this time, months had passed and Robert had met a formerly Lutheran nurse who hated everything associated with religion.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– we 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. 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, what I don't understand is why you would want to reject Jesus."
"It's not rejection! He was 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 Christian 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."
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 you all were dirty for having dogs in the house and that little spring of water was for the dogs to drink from."
Ellie had heard this exchange before. Both her parents chuckled and smiled into one another's eyes. "But Mom, you gave up your family. And 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, "Well, I 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."
Her father said, "If you're really getting a divorce, then you don't have to stay Jewish."
"No, I think I'm more interested in being Jewish than I am in being married. 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, "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 as popular as back home. "
"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 the anger that came over her. "Why did you name me after Elvis Presley 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 some 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 relatives. But that's another story. The end of this story is that Elvissa went back to New York and continued to study with Rabbi Stein, who asked her to call him Mike, a nickname for Myron, and she asked him to call her Elvissa, and explained why. She never became a rabbi, but she did marry Rabbi Mike Stein. She continued to work at the West Side Center, and she had two children, and her children grew up knowing New York as that most commonplace of wonders, home. And Elvissa took them to West Virginia every summer.
From time to time Elvissa Mackey Lipitz Stein has a dream in which she and her husband and children, and his children by his first wife, and the first wife and her husband and Elvissa's parents and her brother, and a whole crowd of Steins and Mackeys, all go up on Critchfield Mountain to celebrate an open-air meal under a pink sky. Sometimes it's a Seder, and sometimes it's a vegetarian Easter feast. The Lipitzes are there, and crowds of people she knows, and everyone talks, but it comes out as music instead of words. Elvissa always wakes from the dream with a gratifying sense that everything fits together. She never remembers exactly how it fits, but she has a profound conviction that it does, that it can, that the most important thing in the world is this belief.
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