Lily had to tear herself away when her watch beeped. And when she was home and spooning mac and cheese onto the kids’ plates, she was still thinking about all she had read, and what she might do with it.
She hasn’t figured that part out yet. The temple members now side-stepping and singing “Respect”—Vashti’s ballad, of course—will perform basically the same spiel their corollaries performed at a synagogue in California last year, based on the summer of 1967. Ruth had already adapted it a little, and Lily adapted it a little more, writing in a few new lines and one new character, daughter to the wicked minister Haman, who according to one of the rabbi’s books may have accidentally dropped a bucket of feces on her father’s head while he was parading Mordecai around Susa. Lily is proud of the ditty she rearranged for this particular moment: Well, here’s some poop on you / You’re gonna choke on it, too / You’re gonna lose that smile. But mostly she left the script Susan handed her intact and kept what she read in the rabbi’s office for herself. For now.
When Esther enters, after Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love,” the audience whistles and hoots. Vashti has been disposed of, Haman has received his opening boos; now the real show begins. The crowd is boisterous due to the many Tom Collinses that Lily poured from pitchers as people streamed in. As Esther sings her rendition of “Different Drum,” Lily scans the sea of glinting tin groggers and plastic cups. Adam and June and Rosie are in the third row: Rosie on her knees, her dress so bright it could be seen from space, June on Adam’s lap. The girls hold not only groggers but also fairy wands from their personal collections, which they insist Esther would want, and gawk in dazzled adoration up at the “real” Esther, a recent college graduate named Blossom Cohen who bops and swishes and flips her long hair as the congregation—many of whom have known her since she was an infant—shimmies along with her. The congregation imagines she is like her name, cheerful and innocent. But Lily has watched Blossom sneak out of rehearsal to smoke weed, and heard her confide to Haman’s wife that she’s pretty sure she has HPV and may never find anyone to marry her. Never mind that Haman’s wife is being played by a thirtysomething woman whom everyone knows has been twice left by fiancés. The girl, like a girl, does not think of the woman. I’m adulting! Lily heard her say once as the two headed off to smoke, and it took Lily a moment to realize that she wasn’t talking about the vape in her hand but the fact that she was acting in a Purim spiel.
Now Blossom, aka Esther, parades around the stage with a bunch of other maidens singing their rendition of “Piece of My Heart” as Ahasuerus—hands on his hips, fake eyebrows sternly furrowed—pretends to hem and haw. Which one will he choose? June and Rosie point and shout. Adam’s mouth is open, his absorption in the show so replete that when a rogue stage light cuts across him the old scar on his cheek looks alive. Last week he was promoted to regional director for East Africa, the step up he’s been waiting for, and the depth of his relief, the palpable weight of it in his body, in their apartment, has been a shock; Lily understands now how scared he was before. “Esther!” cry June and Rosie, waving their wands at Blossom. Of course. Lily has indoctrinated them, there is that, but also: if he doesn’t choose Esther, how will they come to be? As if on cue, in the opposite wing across the stage, Lily’s Vashti winks at Lily and Lily winks back, thinking for the space of the wink of Vira, then finding herself once again swept up in the joy of the thing. She helps one of the unchosen maidens change into her raggedy fasting-Hebrew costume, sings along to Haman’s “Purple Haze” (Excuse me while I kill some Jews!), and accepts a glass of wine handed to her by Haman’s wife, who has smuggled a bottle backstage.
Then something flickers toward the back of the audience. Not a cup or a grogger. Not something anyone else would notice. But Lily notices. It’s Vivian Barr’s red hair. It’s Vivian Barr, sitting at the very end of the very last row.
Lily draws back into the wing. She is conscious suddenly that she is tipsy, conscious that Haman is repeating a verse and that the sound system is crackling. What is Vivian Barr doing here? She has no idea that Lily is directing the spiel. The last contact they had came through a courier: a tiny sewing kit Vivian Barr sent after Lily’s visit.
Lily inches forward to peek again at her mother’s old friend. She sits somewhat stiffly, not rocking or clapping, no drink or grogger in her hand. A stranger here. And perhaps warier than another stranger might be, Lily thinks, remembering how Vivian Barr said your father, you know about Lily’s father being Jewish, and how her voice had changed when Lily asked why she hadn’t reached out to Ruth. Do I look like I need company?
And yet, Lily thinks. She’s here.
And here is Esther again, too, entering the king’s chambers without his permission, winging her hippie skirt like a flamenco dancer. And here comes Haman, leering, and dopey Ahasuerus, looking confused, and then, in another Lily addition, Mordecai leaping out for a moment to remind the audience to keep drinking, for it’s been commanded that they be so drunk by the end of the spiel that they can’t tell the difference between him and Haman. “Good or bad!” he cries. “Cunning or true!
