A Cup for Elijah

The paled and ancient yellow linen is perfectly smooth, lineless—still warmed from the iron and the shaking care of her withered fingers. Ilsa smoothes down the fold and tucks the napkin gently under her fork, and then she shuffles off to check the oven and her lasagna.

Outside, the rain is settling over pavement and window in fine and downy curtains. The clatter it makes on her roof is a welcome sound. She smiles to herself. It will be good for her tomatoes. It's been so long since they had a good soak.

Hot pads, there they are. She pulls open the creaking oven door and lifts out the glass dish. It's from a box, this one. Heat and eat. She doesn't cook much these days. Too much work, and walking down to the fire station to bring her leftovers to the boys isn't as easy as it used to be. Her joints act up sometimes. Making such forays into an occasional thing was the better choice.

The lasagna is steaming and in the microwave her frozen peas have defrosted and bleep at her impatiently. Ilsa removes them, spoons out a measure onto her plate, and rolls the bag up and puts the rest into the freezer with a resigned sort of air. Things come in enormous portions these days. It takes such work to eat them all by herself before frost burn sets in and she has to toss them out.

And she's always had trouble minding how much food she makes. Seventy-four years old, and more than fifty of those years living alone, and she cooks for a family. It limits the shopping trips and the effort, of course, but it still makes her inexplicably sad.

She fixes up her plate, laying her food out in tiny, neat portions. Pasta, peas, and half of a piece of white bread. And she trundles out to her dining room table and lays it all on the table. Then it's back to the kitchen for something to drink. A nice tall glass of lukewarm water, filled from the tap.

And then Ilsa stands on her toes and reaches, fumbling for the cabinet shelf above her head. There's a silver cup there, now resting cradled in her hands, burnished with age. She rubs at it tenderly with the hem of her cardigan.

Remember, Ilsa. Always remember, my baby. Be so good to it.

She brings it and her water to the table. The latter she sets beside her plate, and the former, that she places at the table end opposite her, right before the empty placemat there and close at hand to the unopened bottle of wine that she dusts the age from every week.

She goes back. Lowers herself into her chair, stiffly. The space across from her and its lonely cup looks barren, but it always has and she doesn't mind. There's a resolution about it, deep in her bones, to keep her ritual, night after night. Year after year. A cup for Elijah, just as the seder says.

And Mother.

A cup for him, we must always leave him a cup and a chair and some wine, she would hiss, with that hitched and damaged breath, the wide and sparkling eyes that weren't ever quite right. Kos Eliyahu. He'll be coming back for us, you know. He'll save us, and he'll tell us why this happened, and we must be ready for him, my baby, and welcome him so he can drink it. Quickly, go check the door.

And Ilsa, eight, nine, ten years old, would do that. Mutti, he's not here.

Mother's long exhale was soft and frightening. Father would be at the head of the table and scrutinizing his plate, and Helene would look on with an infant's sweet stare and not understand. As time went on and Mother's coughs came harder, and her screaming at night echoed louder, Kurt Meisner said less and less at the dinner table, but only cried wordlessly as his wife poured the wine into Elijah's cup, singing and scratching at the numbers that marched across her forearm like she could claw them out.

And he'll come soon, my baby. He'll bring us happiness, just as we've been promised! Don't cry, Ilsa, stop crying. When he comes to make us new you won't have to be sad any longer.

Father died sixteen years after Mother did. And Ilsa, closing in on thirty, stayed in their tiny home as she always had and continued to make telephone calls selling vacuum cleaners. And she sewed quilts for soldiers far across the seas. She still does. Her latest one is draped over the arm of her favorite chair in the living room, the usual affair of clippings of old clothes and blankets and towels, which the young ladies of the synagogue down the street bring to her door. They say they like her ministry. Sweet dears. She brews coffee and always makes sure there are lemon cakes for them when they arrive.

Ah, but this is such bland lasagna. She tries a little pepper. These box vegetarian versions were terrible, supposedly worse than the original, but Mother became so adamant about kosher once she joined them in America. And if there's one thing about Ilsa, it's that she doesn't like to change her habits. Even if she's not a pious Jew. Even if setting out an empty cup every night makes no sense.

Because change was leaving their home when she was six, and she hadn't the time to find her favorite doll, or the new shoes her uncle had bought her. Change was the black and oily smoke of the train station, and how her mother screamed when they took her away, and Father didn't look back but only insisted that he was a gentile and that made Ilsa and Helene gentiles too.

Ilsa dabs at her mouth with the napkin. She scrapes up the last bits of food by way of awkward fork and scoots her chair back to stand. It's almost eight o'clock now, and that means the dancing show is about to start, the one with those celebrities that she doesn't know of. It's fine enough to watch while she sews, though.

And it's like every other night, as she scrubs at her plate under very hot water and foam, thinking of tomorrow and if she'll take the bus to her senior yoga class or if she'll walk, and she hums a little. So normal, so quiet and lonely and normal, that when her doorbell rings, jarring and sudden, that she drops the plate into the sink with a clatter and freezes in place.

It rings again. Ilsa frowns and wipes her hands off on the dish towel. Eight o'clock is not an ordinary time for anyone to come calling, particularly when the few people she does know always call before visiting. And Helene and her children and their children never visit, particularly not at night. Curious and somewhat wary, she twists off the tap and goes to the door.

It takes a little effort to work the deadbolt. And the silly frame is stuck with the humid weather. From the other side, a hand the color of dark coffee pushes to help her, and Ilsa squints out into the night at the young lady shivering there on her mat, who peeks at her with liquid eyes under a row of bangs.

"Ma'am—ma'am, can I use your phone? My cell's outta juice an' I g-gotta…"

There are sticky black trails of mascara, running down her cheeks, and blood at the corner of one nostril. Ilsa lets her in without even considering her options, and shows her to the kitchen phone. The girl stands dripping on her linoleum clutching the receiver like it's a lifeline, and sniffles and bleeds while Ilsa idles restlessly in the background.

"Morgan, girl, it's Marissa. You gotta help me, he's beating on me again an' he says—he don't want me keeping the baby, an' I'm sorry 'cause you were right and he don't want to talk. Look, I'm at some old lady's house an' my phone's dead, I'll call you again in the morning. Why can't you pick up your goddamn phone, girl? I'll call you later, can you let Momma know I called you when you get this message?"

She hangs up. Ilsa realizes that she's been staring, transfixed somehow on the glint of silver in the girl's—Marissa's—eyebrow, the star tattooed on her shoulder, the smallest, gentlest swell of a growing motherhood under her sodden tank top. She holds out a tissue box, for her bloody nose, but Marissa only makes a faint noise, almost a sob, and closes her eyes.

"Ma'am, I'm so sorry, I don't mean—"

Her knees are shaking. Ilsa realizes that she's near collapse. She takes the girl by the elbow and leads her into the dining room and sets her down on a chair, has her take sips of water.

"I'll get you a towel," she murmurs, and Marissa mumbles something. Her forearms are scraped like she's been thrown against the ground, her neck mottled with old bruises. Ilsa prays without words and goes to the closet, and returns with a towel that she drapes over her guest's shoulders. "Do you need help? Here, I can call nine-eleven, or…"

"Ma'am, I can't afford a hospital," Marissa says, looking ill. "M'sorry. I'll leave. M'sorry."

"No, no. Let me know what I can do—" Ilsa doesn't want to panic, but this girl is falling apart. She pours a little wine for her, places it in her quivering hands. The Elijah Cup glints in the lamplight as Marissa tilts it back and sips, and again. A few more swallows and some long and silent moments, and there's a flush of color creeping back into her brown cheeks, and her ragged inhales even out. Ilsa takes her hand.

"I'm Ilsa," she tells her. "Ilsa Meisner. Marissa?"

"Marissa Holden." She sets down the cup and paws at her face, smearing mascara and tears and blood. When Ilsa offers her tissues again, she takes a fistful and shoves it up against her nose. Her voice is muffled as she speaks again. "My boyfriend, he says he's gonna kill me if I tell anyone, but I can't stay with him no more. I ain't his bitch, I'm a woman. M'sorry, ma'am, I shouldna cussed. But he can't tell me to get rid of this baby, 'cause I want this baby an' I don't want him hitting me."

Ilsa nods, slowly. It's a bit disorienting, this vibrant stranger and the strength behind her terror. "I know someone you can call, if you want. She's from my synagogue. She helps—she helps girls like you, I think."

"Synagogue? You Jewish or somethin', ma'am?" Marissa blows her nose noisily, with a wince. Ilsa can't help but feel a fond sort of amusement, somehow.

"I am."

"I thought Jewish people had those menorah-things in their houses all over or something."

"Mine only comes out for Hanukkah." Ilsa smiles at her, faintly. Marissa's fingers are tracing over the sides of the silver vessel she holds, the embossed symbols.

"S'a pretty cup."

"It's the Elijah cup." Ilsa hands her another tissue. "You shouldn't have too much to drink. For the baby."

Marissa bobs her head. "I know, ma'am. I'm not drinkin' or smoking anymore. None of that."

That makes her wiser than most other young people out in the world, Ilsa supposes. She lets herself study Marissa's haggard, weary face as the other woman helps herself to more water. The lines of her proud and battered lips.

How beautiful you are, she wants to say. But instead she asks Marissa if she'd like some dry clothes and sets off to unearth a pair of sweatpants and a sweater from her cedar chest. When she returns, the girl has her head buried in her arms and her little body is wracked with heaving sobs.

Ilsa sets the clothing on the sofa and goes to sit beside her. She lays her bony fingers over Marissa's youthful arm and thinks about this person, this person that she hardly knows anything of, except that she is wounded, dark, and lovely.

Marissa chokes a bit and raises her head. Her nose and mouth are streaming, her eyes red.

"Don't be too good to me, ma'am," she rasps. "I didn't do nothing to deserve it."

But Ilsa only clucks her tongue at her, tightening her grip ever-so-slightly. And she touches Marissa's cheek, waveringly, and then she rests her palm against the side of Elijah's cup, the cup of the coming salvation.

"Let me tell you, my dear," she murmurs, "about how things can be made new. And would you like something to eat?"