The Middlesteins by Jami Attenberg

thinking it was something everyone
     did, and not realizing that it wasn’t until it didn’t matter anymore anyway. As an
     adult, Robin found herself behaving exactly the same as her mother without even knowing
     it, always alone at meals, eating, reading, alone, while Benny married young and his
     doting wife, at home with the kids, had a hot, non-fast-food-related meal on the table
     every night. In the end it was not the worst thing that had happened to them in their
     lives. “It could have been much, much worse,” Benny said to his sister at their mother’s
     funeral, and she could not argue. “They could have starved us,” said Robin. “They
     could have beat us,” said Benny. It was a game they could play for hours.
    The day Edie dined alone with her McRib sandwich was the one-year anniversary of the
     Mount St. Helens eruption. It had made the front page, even though it happened in
     another state. Tragedy ripens in memory. Fifty-seven people had died. They believed
     that the mountain was their friend. They didn’t want to leave their homes behind.
     Who would they be without their homes?
    What fools , thought Edie. I’d run like hell if I could.

Exodus
    A fter thirteen successful years of rejecting Judaism—this included no High Holidays with her parents, no bar
     mitzvahs of distant relations, no hanging out at the Hillel House in college, no Purim,
     no Passover, no Shabbat, no nothing except for Hanukkah at her brother’s house, which
     got a pass because gifts were exchanged, and also because her niece and nephew, both
     of whom she was fond of, had always enjoyed that holiday so much—Robin wasn’t exactly
     sure how she had ended up at this crowded seder, but there she was, in her trim blue
     dress, holding her I-guess-he’s-my-boyfriend’s hand in his parents’ living room in
     Northbrook, Illinois. She had instinctively grabbed it, because otherwise she thought
     she might have been swept away in the crowd of people. She wasn’t trying to be cute
     or affectionate; she was just trying to save her life.
     
    * * *
    “I don’t get why you hate it so much,” he had said.
    This was a few weeks before Passover, when he had first asked her to come with him,
     to eat a good meal, to relax, to meet his family. It was important to him. She could
     tell this because he wasn’t letting it drop, and, up until recently, he had been letting
     everything drop all the time with her. They drank when she wanted to drink; they had
     sex when she wanted to have sex. The sex, by the way, was the best both had had in
     their lives, the true notion of coupling finally revealed to the two of them at least
     physically, the way they curled up into each other, sweaty, salty, lustful messes,
     alternating their dialogue between dirty and dizzyingly sweet talk. But out of the
     bed they didn’t talk about their future together; they spoke mainly about her sick
     mother, her asshole dad, how her day had been, sometimes how his day had been, and
     that was it. Occasionally she said something like, “My parents are so crazy I swear
     they’re going to drive me to therapy,” and he would say, “Do you feel like you want
     to go to therapy?” and she would say, “Are you saying I need therapy?” and he would
     raise his hands in the air and walk away rather than answer that question, no fool was he. She was completely running the show. But when she said
     no to the dinner, that it wasn’t her scene, he jerked back his head, his soft, blond,
     fuzzy, gentle head, and gave her a fixed look.
    “Me and Judaism, we don’t get along,” she said.
    “It’s a family dinner,” he said. “With just a touch of Jew.”
    “Please,” she said. “Don’t make me.”
    “I’m the one saying please,” he said. “You’re the one saying no.”
    She crushed herself into a ball on his couch, knees up, arms around her legs, head
     against her knees.
    “Why is this so hard for you, to just say yes? It’s a dinner, a