Marissa pointed to her lips; she had washed already and couldn’t answer.

The girls grudgingly washed, sat down, and helped themselves to carrot sticks. But their attitudes remained sour.

“I hate to tell you this, Elisheva, but I can’t look at you in this dress anymore,” Tamar said. “You need something new.”

“What’s wrong with my dress?” Elisheva whined. “Ima, do you hear her?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Tamar said. “But you wear it, like, almost every week. And the styles changed since you bought it. Those big elastic waists are out. I’m sure we could find you something more up-to-date. A cardigan and slip dress, maybe? We should go tomorrow afternoon, when Ima’s at work.”

Elisheva was simultaneously miffed and intrigued by this offer. “Ma, would you let Tamar take me shopping?” she asked.

Marissa couldn’t deny the hopeful note in her voice, the way her freckled nose seemed to perk up with anticipation.

“You know, girls, it’s Shabbos now,” she said. “Why don’t we talk about this after Havdalah? I think Abba’s up to Yedid Nefesh.”

Determinedly, she turned her face to Yaakov. But not before noticing Tamar’s smirk.

“Come, Yosef Shalom,” Yaakov offered, pushing his chair out a bit.

Yosef Shalom obligingly climbed into his father’s lap. Marissa exhaled as Yaakov’s voice filled their living room with the honeyed words of Yedid Nefesh. This was what Rebbetzin Grossinger had been describing — the peace, the intensity, the singularity of focus.

No one she knew could sing like Yaakov. No one could match the pure notes of his Kah Ribon on Friday nights, the Sephardic trills and plaintive klezmer phrases of his Shabbos morning Dror Yikra medley. But Yaakov seemed most himself during this brooding time, the last meal of Shabbos. It was as if his neshamah was clutching the last moments of serenity before the gloom of the week descended, and the coexistence of the peace and the darkness perfectly matched his own conflicted persona.

The girls giggled over something, but Marissa ignored them. Instead, she focused on her oneg Shabbos. Rarely during the week did Yaakov uncoil from his tension the way he did now. Eyes closed, he sang, holding his little boy on his lap, Yosef Shalom’s five plump fingers entwined over Yaakov’s three.

The two dead stumps on his father’s hand didn’t bother Yosef Shalom. The girls might avert their eyes from Yaakov’s hand, Marissa knew, but Yosef Shalom had no problem holding it tight. This angular man with his shadowed eyes and supple voice was the only father he’d ever known — a whole man despite the missing fingers.

W

hen the DSL line rang at 7:45 Sunday morning, Perri knew who it was before the caller ID helpfully proclaimed, “Weiss, Marvin.”

Chaim was home from shul, so she handed him the phone.

“It’s your father,” she said.

Then she returned to the counter, where she was making sandwiches for the kids.

Chaim put the phone on speaker and got to work preparing his coffee.

“Hi, Chaim, gut voch, how was Shabbos?”

“Beautiful,” Chaim said. “How was yours?”

“Really nice. Mindy and Yehuda were here with the chevreh, and the Felds came for the daytime seudah.”

“Nice,” Chaim said as he poured the boiling water into his mug.

“How’s the weather in Yerushalayim? Here it poured the whole Friday night.”

“We haven’t seen rain in months,” Chaim said. “It’s pretty hot.”

“I hear,” Tatty said. Then, “Chaim, tell me. When’s your next shiur in the kollel?”

“My next shiur?” Chaim echoed. “I usually give shiur on Wednesdays. Why?”

He slipped into a chair at the kitchen table where the girls and Dovid were eating cornflakes, and took a careful sip of the coffee. Too hot.

“I was thinking,” Tatty said, “I was thinking of sending a photographer next time you give shiur, to get some nice shots. Of you, of the oilam.”

Chaim remained silent. He looked at Perri, eyebrows raised, and shrugged.

Tatty bulldozed on. “You know Mendlowitz from the bungalow colony, right? So his son started working for one of those frum publications, I think it’s distributed in Lakewood, maybe Monsey too. I was thinking that he could probably get in an item about the kollel. A picture of you giving shiur, a picture of the oilam, a few paragraphs about the learning. Get the word out, you know?”

Chaim mumbled something unintelligible, turned off the speakerphone, and brought the phone to his ear. Perri got back to the sandwiches, tying them up in bags and slipping them into the girls’ knapsacks along with their water bottles.

“Bye, girls!” she said as Simi and Miriam left. “Good luck on your test, Miriam!”

Where was Yechezkel, she wondered. Was he still searching for his missing shoe? She headed to his room to check.

By the time she located the shoe, convinced Yechezkel to eat a muffin, and sent him and Dovid off to cheder, Chaim was at his shtender with a sefer. She usually didn’t disturb him when he was learning, but then again, her father-in-law didn’t usually send photographers to do impromptu photo shoots of her husband.

“What was that all about?” she asked Chaim.

“I’m not sure,” he said uneasily. “Sounds like my father wants to do some publicity campaign for the kollel.”

Perri studied her husband for a second — the still-blond beard, the sensitive face, the shoulders bent in submission to his father across the ocean.

“He probably wants to start growing it,” she said. “It’s only 12 guys now. Probably not enough for your father. You know him, he always thinks big.”

“I know,” Chaim said. His shoulders seemed even more deflated. “My father — he sees the kollel like one of his business projects. Something he can make bigger and better.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” Perri asked.

She didn’t think it a bad thing for her husband’s kollel to be bigger and a lot more prestigious. She wouldn’t mind if it could have its own space one day. It was hard to even answer the standard list of questions — what does your husband do? Oh, a rosh kollel? Where? — knowing the answer to the last was a convoluted, “In the ezras nashim of the Shaar Menachem shul that Yeshivah Ketanah Zichron Ahron Shmuel rents out.” Someone assertive (okay, maybe a bit aggressive) making it his business to actually grow the kollel didn’t sound so bad to her.

“I don’t know.” Chaim shrugged. “Is it a good thing?”

“Look,” she said tartly, “if you don’t want him to send a photographer, you can tell him.”

“Right,” Chaim said. He closed his eyes briefly, then turned back to the Gemara on his shtender.

“So will you?” Perri asked.

She immediately regretted the question. Chaim wouldn’t stand up for himself; she knew that and he knew it too. As distasteful as a photo shoot might feel to him, there was no question that he’d bend his shoulders and will, and let Tatty have his way.

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1033)