“This isn’t about a medical issue. Or am I not allowed to talk to you about something that’s not related to Chesed Tzirel?”

The local bagel store was so packed that Ayala and Naftali had to squeeze into a table behind the door to drink their iced coffees.

“What’s everyone doing here on a busy Friday morning?” she grumbled.

“Same as what we’re doing here, no?” her husband replied.

Ayala wasn’t so sure about that. She knew why she was here: because yesterday, Naftali had asked her if she had time to discuss a question one of the avreichim in his kollel had asked him, and she — stirring the scrambled eggs for dinner with one hand and jotting down a note about a chesed client with the other (deliver wheelchair to Strassman, being released after Shabbos) — had replied, “What’s his medical issue?”

Naftali had blinked several times.  “Um, this isn’t about a medical issue. Or am I not allowed to talk to you about something that’s not related to Chesed Tzirel?”

The rub was that Naftali had smiled in a way that told her he was genuinely joking; he hadn’t been trying to make her feel guilty. So, of course, Ayala had spent the next few hours berating herself over what a horrible wife she was, and she’d stayed up until three a.m. cooking for Shabbos just so she could brightly and casually suggest this morning that they go out for coffee together.

Were all the other wives in the bagel store also there to prove that they weren’t neglecting their husbands and families for their work — even when they so obviously were?