She was living the Israel dream. So why was she so miserable?

Shelly looks like a dream. Her makeup, those orchids, the dress. Mimi drinks in the details — rose bowers and crinkled velvet tablecloths, delicate champagne flutes, and a huge ice sculpture she knew her cousin had insisted on but wouldn’t notice.

It’s when Aunt Pearl waves and blows Mimi a kiss after the first dance that the tears she’s been forcing back erupt. She switches the webcam off and cries until a sodden pile of tissues, streaked black and beige and pink, forms around her feet.

She’s forgotten about the boiler again, and sobs some more as the water runs from cold to freezing.

Careful not to wake up Dovid, Mimi covers her head with the quilt and cries herself to sleep while her family dances at a wedding thousands of miles away.

Crying out the equivalent of Lake Erie would make her head ache upon trying to get up before Dovid leaves.

“I’m fine seeing myself off, I told you, Mim.”

She hopes her eyes don’t look as bad as they feel.

“Did you see the salad I left you?”

“I did, I did.” He lifts the bag. “Thanks so much! What time did the wedding end?”

“I didn’t stay on till then, it got too late.” It isn’t a lie, Mimi thinks.

“I hope it was okay that I went to sleep after the chuppah? I need my head about me with Rafi.”

Mimi assures him that his learning means far more to her than his attendance at remote weddings. She drops the smile as soon as she locks the door, and ignores the shopping she’d planned for the morning as she crawls back into bed.

A malaise creeps behind Mimi all week. She tries to ignore it, hoping she’s not coming down with something as they make plans for a trip up north. She’s excited to go away with Dovid before the cold hits. She remembers the winter in seminary — strep, a sinus infection, and bronchitis. The freezing cold tiles shocking any remnants of sleep away if she wasn’t careful to stick her feet into the fuzzy slippers she brought from home. Icy drafts seeping under doors and around window frames.

But a good instant coffee or shoko and the soft cashmere scarf Mimi’s mom had sent had chased the chill away. Not to mention Rebbetzin Benisch’s chicken soup. And the lessons, the lessons. Mimi smiles at the thought. Chicken soup, long Friday night meals.

They could probably get a space heater; she’d ask Dovid about it when they got back.

Mimi looks at the hills of Tzfas spread out beneath her and thinks suddenly of Edmund Hillary. She wonders what he was thinking as he looked up from the South Col on Mount Everest and saw how much he had left to climb. Did he regret then having come so far? Or was his determination to make history enough to push him further upward?

A sudden gust whips hair across her face. She should have come in a scarf. Or a sheitel pulled back into a ponytail, but she isn’t that kind of girl.