“That’s okay,” Estee interrupted him. “I’m not going to schmooze in the den. I’m going to head back upstairs, rest, and daven in the room.” Yonah raised his eyebrows. “Oh. You sure?”

AT their second sheva brachos, the one that Estee’s mother’s best friends had made in the party room at a fancy restaurant, Estee’s uncle Elisha had emceed. His little snippets between each speech — and there had been a lot of them — were more memorable than the speeches themselves.

One, in particular, was playing through Yonah Rosen’s mind as he drove like an insane person down the highway, his wife sitting in huffy silence next to him.

“If you’re good at life,” Elisha had said, raising a half-full glass, “then you’ll be good at marriage. That’s it. So Yonah and Estee, we’re not that worried about you. At least, I’m not. My sister, on the other hand…”

And everyone had laughed as Estee’s mother made an “oh, stop,” gesture at her little brother. Apparently, it was no secret that the kallah’s mother had suffered worse pre-wedding jitters than the kallah herself.

But as Yonah sped down the turnpike, he kind of blamed Elisha for his melancholy mood right now. Yonah Rosen was good at life. Always had been.

So why, exactly, was his wife not speaking to him right now? And why did they leave for Boston an hour and a half later than planned? He was Yonah Rosen, time manager extraordinaire.

Of course, in all of his extraordinariness in his bochur days, he’d never had to take into account locating his Shabbos tallis, taking out the garbage, burning his hand on his wife’s curling iron (why did it look exactly the same both when it was on and off?), and slicing fruits and vegetables for the trip (chips and cookies were so much faster.)

Okay, and he had been up late, reading. But still. He hadn’t gone to bed before midnight once in all his dirah days. And now here they were, hours late on a Friday.

“Next time,” Yonah said through gritted teeth, “we’re driving up Thursday night and I’ll do Friday seder over the phone.”

“Or,” Estee said, her voice thin, “you could just keep track of your things and then we won’t be running all over like crazy people, looking for them, when we should be on our way already.”

Yonah bit his tongue hard and looked at the throbbing blister on his thumb. That’s when he remembered another gem from Uncle Elisha. “Most of the time, shetikah is the only answer. Employ it. Like, a lot.”

“I’m writing these down,” his wife Chani had called out at that point, and everyone had cracked up.

This one’s for you, Elisha, Yonah thought grimly. This one’s for you.