When I’m finally downstairs with the double stroller, lunches and blankies packed, and rain streaming down the plastic stroller cover, my phone bleeps. I ignore it. I know it’s Nechama, with her morning round of peace talks, and it’s too early in the day for me to get worked up. Day Four since the dinner, and the 480th reconciliation attempt by Sister Bear.

“I need five coffees in a row,” I announce as soon as I walk into the office.

Adina looks up. “You won’t even have one. There’s no milk.”

“No milk?! Why didn’t you text me to buy?”

“I did. You didn’t answer.”

Amazing. No coffee, and I now owe Nechama seven brachos for being choshed bichsheirim. Absolutely amazing. I flick on my screen and wait for Outlook to load. My phone bleeps. A text from Malkie. I hope you realize you were really nasty and we should all be annoyed at you, not the other way around.

Great, so everyone’s ganged up against me. This is one great day. My brain screams for caffeine.

“Where are you off to?” Adina asks. “I have a hundred questions for you.”

“Milk,” I tell her. “I’ll do it fast.”

“Hey, wait, Shayna! I want to order a cellphone case. Can I use your Prime account?”

“Yeah, no problem. Go to my desk, I should be signed in there.”

My phone bleeps again on my way out. I turn off my ringer.

“Should we go into the chandelier?”

“Uh, how would you go into a chandelier, excuse my ignorance?”

Mendy waves something in the air, but from my position under the sink, I can’t see what he’s holding. I try to picture Nechama — or any of my sisters or friends — changing the water filter. I bet none of them know a wrench from pliers, but I’ve mastered many carpentry skills throughout the years I’ve been married to a guy with “two left hands,” as he proudly introduces himself.

“The $50 prizes,” Mendy explains. “We’re getting early-bird triple value, remember?”

A Chinese auction book, ah. “Uh, well, okay. Whatever.”

I watch him bend in the corner of a page. His fingers are strategically sandwiched between pages, and he flips back and forth like he’s analyzing stocks.

“Or maybe we should just do the split-the-pot and then a few tickets in the grand prize? It’s $10,000 cash. ’Cuz really, we could always buy a chandelier or whatever we want if we win that money. But maybe not, because if we win money, we’ll never actually buy stuff we don’t really need, right? Like, would we actually blow ten grand on a trip to Europe?”

Seriously. Does it really matter which prize we don’t win? I bang the wrench down on the floor and shift into a squatting position. Mendy’s eyebrows dance.

“This thing is leaking,” I tell him.

“What?” He bends in more corners, rearranging his fingers to bookmark different pages. He’s not even looking at me.

“This filter. It’s leaking and I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.”

“I told you to call a plumber.”

A plumber, seriously. Is there a single person on this planet who calls a plumber to install a dumb sink filter? Maybe we should call an electrician to change that hallway bulb. I sigh loudly.

“Look, Shayna,” Mendy says, “you know I have two left hands. Why don’t you call Nechama? Maybe Izzy could come over and do it.”

Call Nechama. Ha.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because — just because, okay?”

He shrugs and walks out of the kitchen. So what if the sink is leaking. So what?

Shayna, please. Could you answer your phone? Look, let’s talk, put this behind us. I’m not sure what happened at the dinner, but you were obviously hurt, and if I or one of us did something wrong, we’ll apologize. Or maybe you were just in a bad mood? Sheva is very upset and I really think you should make up with her and with everyone. Please call me ba—

The voice mail is deleted before Nechama’s finished talking.

“What’s the matter?” Mendy asks.

I look up. “I didn’t see you come in.”

He shrugs. “I just came in a minute ago. Why are you so upset?”

I drop my phone onto the counter and grind my teeth. What should I tell him? That I feel like an idiot for flying off the handle and now I’m embarrassed to talk to my sisters, and really, this is all his fault because if he’d only treat me the way a husband is meant to treat a wife, I would never have gotten upset in the first place?

He looks at me expectantly. I twist my lips and cough. “The filter is still leaking,” I mutter. “Just saying.”

“Hey, Shayna. Did my cell phone case ship?” Adina asks.

I look up from my spreadsheet. “Huh? Which case? What are you talking about?”

“My order! Remember you said I could use your Prime account?”

“Oh, oh, right. One second, I’ll check.”

I log onto Amazon and search my recent orders. “Okay, sweetheart. You ordered this to my address. Looks like it was delivered to my house. I don’t remember seeing a package, but I’ll look for it when I get home.”

Adina sighs. “Oh, shucks. It better not be lost.”

“Know what? I’ll call my neighbor and ask her to check if she sees it.”

I wait on the phone while my neighbor searches our front porch. “Nope,” I report back to Adina. “There’s no package anywhere. You want to dispute the charge?”

“Forget the charge, I really need that case. Like for tomorrow night.”

“Goodness, why’s that case so special?”

Adina comes over to my screen. “It’s very cool.” She opens the Amazon page and enlarges the image. “Look, it has this piece you pull out so it can stand on a table. And it also has this magnetic disk that attaches to a car dashboard. I’m driving to a wedding in Far Rockaway tomorrow night, and I need my phone to hang so I can follow Waze.”

“Oooh, I know what this is. My sister has such a thing.”

“Seriously?! Can you ask her if I can borrow it for one night?”

Ouch. Not quite.

For a strange second I’m tempted to spill the whole stupid story. It’s driving me so crazy; I need to get it off my chest. But of course I can’t do that. It’s probably lashon hara, or maybe not, because it’s about me. Anyway, Adina doesn’t know my sisters. She would never get it.

I replay the dinner in my mind again and cringe when I hear my voice betraying me with all its dramatics. Where is that Ctrl-Z  when I need it so badly?

The strangest sight greets me when I walk into the kitchen for my morning coffee.

A cheese Danish.

“Good morning, merry sunshine!” Mendy sings.

“Good morning,” I stammer. “What is this?”

“A Danish?”

“Yeah, I see that. How did it get here?”

“Ovitz’s Bakery. Two dollars. I put it in a bag, paid, brought it home.”

“For me?”

He beams. I don’t understand what’s going on here.

“Th-thank you.”

When he’s out of the house, I sit down with my coffee.

And that’s when I notice his note.

“It’s really cool,” Mendy says. “I love how I can just put my phone down on my desk while I FaceTime. And it’s so practical in the car. Like I can actually keep both my hands on the steering wheel while I follow Waze.”

My head wobbles in what’s supposed to look like a nod. I crack a pomegranate in half and coax seeds into a bowl.

“How did you think of this?” Mendy asks. “You know anyone who has such a thing? The guys in the office went gaga over it. They’re all ordering it now.”

Wobble-nod. A pom seed bounces away. Mendy pops it into his mouth.

He’s so happy with his new toy, genuinely happy. I have to ask Adina how much I owe her. Ten dollars? Fifteen?

“Thank you, Shayna.”

I look up, startled.

Mendy blushes. “This… really means a lot to me.”

My stomach contracts. I don’t deserve this. This is a mistake. It’s Adina’s order. I never thought of buying anything for Mendy. He’s so happy — I made him happy — and I never meant it, it’s just so crooked. Even the Danish this morning had a bad aftertaste.

“Anyway, the guys in the office say they’re bringing their wives along to Kosherfest this year. They’ll stick around and help in our booth a bit, and then go around tasting stuff and collecting souvenirs.”

I tilt my head. Where is this going?

“The ladies love it. It’s a very interesting experience.”

He’s rewarding me. He’s so happy that he wants to make me happy too. My stomach is a total mess. “Okay,” I say slowly.

He thumbs the cell phone stand out and props his phone on the counter. “You should really come, Shayna. You could use a break. I’m going to be very busy there, so maybe invite your sisters for company. It’s so their type of thing.”

I stare at his screen, watch him tap on random apps. He looks up and I meet his eyes. A thousand excuses fly through my brain. My sisters are busy, I’m busy, I don’t have patience, I’m not wasting a sick day on sampling sushi.

Mendy looks at me expectantly. He’s waiting for an answer, waiting to see my enthusiasm. He wants to make me happy, he’s so… sincere.

“So?” he asks. “What do you think?”

What do I think? I think of Sheva getting a dessert plate from her husband. I think of Nechama, of the jokes she shares with her husband of just a few months. And I think of Mendy, who doesn’t care.

Doesn’t care?

“That sounds… so nice,” I stammer.

Mendy grins. “You’ll love it, you’ll see.”

I know I will. He’s right, this is straight up our alley for me and my sisters. If only we would be on speaking terms. I look into the bowl as more seeds rain down. Mendy scoops some into his hand.

I don’t know how this happened. I made him happy by accident, and here he’s trying to make me happy back, and, and—

I need to connect with him now. On purpose.

White skin claws around a cluster of seeds. I peel it off slowly and start picking at the fruit.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” I say at last.

Mendy looks up sharply. I press my lips together and take a deep breath. And finally, I blurt, “I’m in a huge fight with my sisters.”

His expression shifts: puzzlement, concern.

Care.

I let the look fill me. “Just saying.”

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 569)