“I met someone and stopped to talk,” she answered brusquely. “And Shaya’s playing with friends.”

Two not-outright lies. She’d met and spoken to Tolner, and the other kids in Shaya’s art class would surely turn into friends.

Amram would normally have insisted on a more detailed explanation, but right then, he thankfully had more pressing things on his mind. “We need to clean up the garage,” he declared. “It’s a mess since the wedding.”

That’s right. It was. And they did. Yehudis had stored all her kallah shopping stuff in there until her apartment was ready, and now the place looked like a war zone.

But she was too tired. She’d barely slept the previous night — for no reason, but her body never needed a reason to keep her up — and she’d so badly wanted to relax and look at Yehudis’s wedding pictures, which she’d gotten over a week ago and still hadn’t had a chance to do.

Amram didn’t wait for her. He went down to the garage, and two minutes later, was back upstairs, holding a cracked helmet and an old schoolbag and announcing, “I’m throwing these out. We don’t need extra junk in the house.”

So much for relaxing. She felt something stir in her chest, an ugly creature flapping irritably. The Leebie of Akeres, who handled every situation with calm control, felt like a stranger to her. She was like a little girl now, meekly following Amram’s final word. If he decided they were cleaning up the garage that night, they were going to clean up the garage that night.

She was stewing inside, but surprisingly, once she started, Leebie got into the program. There was something satisfying about organizing an overturned storage room.

The satisfaction lasted all of ten minutes.

“I can’t believe we still own this,” Amram said, holding up their old Shabbos tablecloth. “Didn’t I tell you to throw it out when we extended our table? It’s full of stains, and we aren’t downsizing our table before we turn eighty. Why did you put it away in storage? You like hoarding junk? I don’t get it, Leebie. It’s impossible to keep this garage clean if we never get rid of stuff.”

It was a tablecloth. They didn’t use it. He could throw it away.

He could throw it away without a 15-minute lecture on the importance of throwing it away and everything else I’ve done wrong in my life.

Leebie banged a can of carpet spray onto a shelf. “I’m going to get Shaya,” she said abruptly. “He needs to go to sleep.”

Which, by all accounts, definitely was not a lie.

It

had been another sleepless night, another night of watching the hours tick by, waiting for Melatonin to do its magic, then giving up, turning on the light, and picking up a book.

She’d almost called in sick the next morning. Then again, if she called in sick every time she missed a night’s sleep, she would rarely show up to work.

But once she arrived at Akeres, the fatigue disappeared, and she entered hostess mode fully alert.

A quick look at the day’s schedule confirmed that there were going to be many new arrivals that afternoon. She’d need to sit down with Tziporah to divide the welcoming list. Until then, she should really get her office work out of the way, because she wouldn’t be able to touch her keyboard once check-in began.

Perl was on the phone when Leebie came into the office. Leebie started going through her emails, then moved along to the nurses’ day and night shift schedules, then nursery supplies stock. It was excruciatingly boring, but by the time she headed down to the lobby for the first of that day’s arrivals, she was pleased to have gotten all that work out of the way and be free to focus on the new mommies and babies.

Her workday was nearly over; she was doing a quick briefing with Ita during her final round of the nursery — when Amram called.

“Hi, Amram, what’s up?”

“Something huge, actually.”

There was a mysterious lilt in his voice. Leebie waved to Ita apologetically and hurried out of the nursery.

“Guess what? Shaya’s rebbi just called me — Shaya won! He did the most Mishnayos hours in Iyar! Isn’t that incredible?”

Leebie paused in front of the fish tank wall that separated the hallway from one of the lounges. It truly was incredible — and bewildering at the same time. How was it that a kid who couldn’t advance from Sock A to Sock B when he was getting ready in the morning was able to devote so many hours to optional learning?

Still, the news was heartwarming, and Leebie smiled at a bright blue fish that swam up to her. “Baruch Hashem,” she murmured. “It really is.”

“So I had this idea,” Amram continued. “I need to be at Grunners’ soon, for a jelly ring production. I want to take all the kids along for a tour, in honor of Shaya. What do you say to that? Think you can join us after work? We’ll be there until seven-ish.”

For a moment, Leebie considered it. Amram was always describing the interesting details of food production he witnessed in his mashgiach capacity, and she’d probably enjoy seeing how jelly rings were made and packaged. She could almost smell the hot chocolate as it coated the candy, something like Hershey’s Chocolate World.

But at the same moment, Socks A and B jumbled in her mind, and the memory of that morning hit her sharply. She’d woken Shaya, woken him again, then a third and fourth time. She’d snapped at him, “It’s late. Your bus is coming in nine minutes. You better hurry and get dressed in a jiffy.”

She’d yelled his name from the kitchen a dozen times after that. “Shaya? Where are you up to? Are you coming? Shaya! Hurry up!”

Two minutes before he had to leave, she stormed into his room and found him wearing one sock — and reading a comic.

Okay, she didn’t want to replay the moment that followed. She closed her eyes tightly to block the memory.

Shaya had made the bus, yes. But Leebie had felt anything but victorious.

“Hmm?” Amram asked. “Do you want to come?”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’m… busy at work. Shavuos is in less than a week, and I have to make sure all the Yom Tov arrangements are complete. I’ll be home late, so go without me.”

Abandoning the fish tank, she marched to the end of the hallway, waved her necklace key on the pad near the lounge door, then changed her mind and turned back down the hallway toward the elevators.

So nice. The kids would pile into Amram’s minivan, bouncing with excitement for this unexpected major trip. He’d pass back snacks, play a kids’ story, smile as he wended his way through the late afternoon traffic.

Best Tatty of the Year.

It made no sense. He dictated every move of their lives, but somehow, when it came to the sweeter moments of parenting, he always came out ahead. He always managed to win them over with all his wild ideas. While she…

She always failed.

It was 3:15, and she was due in the kitchen for dinner inspection, but her feet propelled her out to the garden. Maybe she’d catch that woman — Steinman? Steinberg? — and find out if the heating pad had helped her with her back pain.

And later, after she determined that dinner prep was under control, she’d sit in the office, address any work that could possibly need to be addressed, Shavuos related or otherwise. Nobody would accuse her of shirking her duties.

The Steinman/Steinberg woman wasn’t out in the garden. There was a cluster of women sitting around in a circle of zero-gravity chairs, involved in some feisty debate. Leebie heard an outburst of laughter, then watched one woman shoot to her feet — as though she was a teen in camp — and proclaim some fiery opinion.

She smiled. This was her pride. More than the five-star food, more than Akeres’s luxurious amenities and 24-hour nursing care, watching these women at the most overwhelming times in their lives forget their pain and fatigue, forget every last worry, and sink into this delightful alternate universe — it was the most gratifying scene imaginable.

But then, over the echo of rolling laughter and chirping birds, another sound reached her ears: crying.

Her antennae shot up. She squinted at her surroundings, until her eyes landed on a figure leaning her head on a tree in a secluded corner.

Delicately, Leebie inched over to her. When she was standing a few feet away, she stopped walking and the woman turned around.

“I’m sorry,” Leebie said. “I don’t mean to pry or anything. Just… do you want to tell me what’s wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

The woman sniffled and swiped at her eyes self-consciously.

“My daughter,” she whispered, swallowing another sob. “She’s making me feel so guilty for being here.”

Aha. That. Leebie was too familiar with the situation. Kids feeling like their mothers abandoned them when a new baby came. Leebie had her whole comfort speech ready for those mothers. How the kids were just fine. They only did this to their mothers on the phone but were perfectly content the rest of the time. They were home with their tatties, or staying with close family, and it was a temporary arrangement, a week or so, nothing more. They would bounce back and wouldn’t be left with any permanent scars.

But before offering her voice of reason, Leebie knew what this woman really needed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

The woman nodded.

And under the gentle afternoon sun, they strolled through the garden.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 918)