“You’re always trying to help,” Chana snaps. “You’re so convinced that we need help.” Her voice rises, hoarse and frustrated and defensive

Eliezer is trapped. Back against the wall, no escape to either side, trapped. There is no graceful way to escape this situation, no weak link that might spare him. He’s traveled for three hours to make it here, and he wonders if he will ever make it home.

For now, he is forced to smile and nod as his sister’s next-door neighbor talks his ear off. “And she told me that Hillel had no other options, and I said absolutely not,” the man says, smacking his lips as he speaks. “I said I know Rabbi Hartman from Ohr Gershon, and I said I know he’ll be at his nephew’s bar mitzvah next week, and he owes me a favor.”

He takes a drink of seltzer and another step forward, far too close to Eliezer. “I said, I put him and his family up for the last bar mitzvah two years ago, and we were instant friends, weren’t we?”

Eliezer finds a smile, stiff and a little unpleasant. It’s a tactic to put distance between them. “I’m afraid I’m not very involved in mesivta admissions,” he says. Very is doing a significant amount of work in that sentence. “I’m happy to put in a good word for your cousin’s son, though.”

“You’re a good man, Eliyahu Hartman,” the man says, clapping him on the shoulder. Unbidden, Eliezer’s eyes flicker to the other side of the drinks table, where Naftali is lingering. There had been a time when they’d both be amused at the people Eliezer attracts at events like these, when Naftali would be the one to disengage him from the awkward conversation. Family events have always been the one place where Eliezer and Naftali have leaned on each other for support, two brothers on semi-equal footing.

Not this time. Eliezer turns away from Naftali deliberately, and he manages to extract himself from the seltzer-drinking neighbor on his own. Naftali hasn’t looked in his direction once.