“I know,” I keep telling him. “In a few minutes.” I find it’s all I have to say. I usually jump in whenever there is something I have learned in school about the part of the Haggadah we are up to, but like my mom and Aunty Steph, who both have brought copious handwritten notes and commentaries on the text but have so far not said a single dvar Torah, I don’t feel like contributing tonight.

“Okay, Maxie, you’re up,” my dad says finally.

Max smiles and stands on his chair. He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.

“Go on, Maxie-pie,” my mom coaxes.

Still nothing comes out. A confused look crosses his face. He’s forgotten the words.

“Mah nishtanah, ha-lailah hazeh,” I prompt with the opening question, “Why is tonight different from all other nights?”

“I said I was doing it myself!”

“Okay, sorry,” I say, but it’s too late. His face has turned red, and he stamps his foot on his chair.

“Myself!” he shouts. Then his face crumples, and he bursts into tears, leaping off the chair and crawling underneath it, where he pulls himself into a ball and wails.

“I knew I should have napped him this afternoon if he was going to stay up tonight,” my mother snaps, her tone of voice suggesting that she had thought it was a good idea but we had told her otherwise.

When it’s finally time to wash and have matzah, Max refuses to come. I pass him a piece of matzah under his chair. But when he wants my mother to serve his chicken soup under the chair too, she hauls him out, scoops him up, kicking and screaming, and carries him up to bed. When she doesn’t come back down after ten minutes, my dad goes to check on her. “They’re both fast asleep in Max’s bed,” he reports with a sigh.

Me, my dad, and Aunty Steph carry on as best as we can. At one part of the seder, we invite all who are hungry to eat with us. But I can’t imagine even some stranger wandering the street would be tempted to join our gathering. Outside, a storm starts, and every time the wind blows the branch of a tree against the window, Aunty Steph looks toward the door expectantly, until she realizes it was just the wind. My grandfather’s Elijah cup, sparkling and filled with wine in the center of the table, remains untouched. Neither Shmuel Yosef nor Elijah have decided to join our seder. Who could blame them?

In school, everyone always brags about how long into the night their seders go. “We didn’t finish until after one a.m.!” someone will say. “Ha! We were singing until two in the morning!” someone else will say back. This year, we are done by 10:30 p.m. I bet Honey’s seder isn’t even up to the meal yet. They are too busy belting out the Passover songs in a dozen different keys.