"As long as I consider him my rav, I can’t go against what he says — and he put his signature on a letter against Gemara learning for women”

“No, don’t say it,” Chaya pleads. She picks up the garbage bag on her way out and touches the mezuzah with the other hand.

“I will say it,” Moishy says.

“Please don’t,” she says, crossing the threshold. He’s right behind her, heading out to second seder. She puts the garbage down next to the wall, opens her handbag and takes out her key.

“Did they land yet?” he asks, picking up the bag she put down. “Let me take this.”

“Yes, they landed,” she says, locking the door, stroking the nameplate she made herself. “Shpinder,” it says. She follows him down half a flight.

Weissbrod’s kids are screaming, as usual.

Moishy is saying something. “What? I can’t hear you,” Chaya says. She bends down to pick up an empty potato chip bag someone dropped on the stairs, running her hand over a broken tile on the wall as she reaches down.

“You heard me,” he says. He won’t let her pretend. “I want to move to Neve Tzinobarim. How do you feel about that?”

They go down another flight in the old, rundown building and she’s still quiet. It takes time for her to confess the truth.

“I don’t want to move there.”

•••

“Okay, that’s one hesped off the roster at my levayah,” Chaya greets Nechami from her seat on the bus to Beit Shemesh.

People are getting on at every stop. The driver waits patiently for them all to climb in. To pull out their bus cards. To figure out how to fold their strollers.

Nechami smiles into her phone. “Good afternoon to you, too.”

“No, I meant it for real. I said ‘no’ to Moishy. I told him I didn’t want to move there. Now nobody will be able to say at my levayah that I always put my husband first.”