What was causing the ominous rumbling in her marriage?

Suddenly, Etti thought of earthquakes.

Which made no sense whatsoever — she had her feet firmly planted on the ground of her succah. She glanced around the table to make sure no one was looking at her, closed her eyes, and drew some air in through her nose. The smell of pine and bamboo, the whisper of wind on paper chains. She opened her eyes. The atmosphere was right.

Her childhood phobia. The mortal fear caused by some story her little ears had overheard, the years of never walking past a building without wondering if its foundations were safe.

Which made it very funny that Shua’s actual line of work was earthquakes. She looked across the table at her husband. Her sons, Meir, Bentzi, and Nachi were clustered around him, laughing at her brother-in-law Chaim, who was clearly at the end of a joke Etti had missed.

The company was right, too. Her sister Shaina was off somewhere, probably feeding the baby. Her nephew Kivi sat on Chaim’s lap. And Ma sat to her left, pretending not to doze.

There wasn’t much left of the tablescape by now, but she’d used the napkin rings that now sat in a pile next to the pretty flower arrangement Ma had ordered.

Etti looked down at her untouched orange chocolate mousse. Even her traditional first-night-of-Succos dessert was right.

She put her hands under the table and clenched them over her knees. Something felt off, a niggling tension.

She forced her attention back to the table, pushed back her chair, and started stacking parfait cups into neat stacks, collecting the mini spoons in her other hand.

Etti watched as Shua leaned too far back in his chair and stuck his thumbs into his belt.

“What does a Yekkeh say when he gets into his brand-new A8?”

He paused. “Ashirah laHashem bechayai-yai-yai-i...”

An old Pirchei London song. So old, no one was going to get it.

“Azamrah l’Elokai be-Audi-i-i-…”

So many things depend on perfect timing.

Etti often counted the seconds from the end of a punchline till the laughter. Two to three seconds was the sweet spot — one second meant everyone had seen the punchline coming. By four she knew it was way over everyone’s heads and they preferred to laugh rather than sound stupid.

Two… everyone besides Ma cracked up.

Shua beamed, Etti wiped a chocolate orange mousse smudge on a napkin.

Then Kivi screamed.