“Everything’s okay, except for this one baby in the NICU that I can’t stop thinking about,” she said.

Yaakov measured out his coffee. “Because?”

“Because,” she said as she wrapped up her sandwich in plastic wrap, “my heart breaks every time I take care of him. He’s an Arab baby with a genetic disease — something really rare and terrible.”

Yaakov turned to face Marissa. “Sounds very hard,” he said. He kept his voice gentle as he probed. “But it wouldn’t be the first. And you usually stay pretty steady.”

Marissa smiled wanly. “You’re right, I usually do. But this is a tough one. The baby has an autosomal recessive disorder that affects feeding, breathing — everything you need to stay alive. It also affects his whole skeletal system. You should see his legs, his arms… they’re all distorted. The actual bones are deformed. The minute he was born, the family realized what was happening. These things run in families, especially families who have a habit of marrying close cousins.”

She deposited the sandwich in her pocketbook and grabbed the waiting thermos. “Yaakov, the mother hasn’t come even once to see her baby. We keep calling her cell, and she never answers. That’s what kills me. It’s your baby. How could you?”

Yaakov winced. “Whew,” was all he could say.

“Yeah,” Marissa agreed. “Not the type of thing that happens in your job, huh?”

Yaakov sipped his coffee slowly. “Nope. Definitely not happening in the programming world.”

“Well,” Marissa said slowly, “the truth is that you can find people who avoid responsibility wherever you go, in any job. That crazy all-nighter project you did last month, when the American team messed up and told you to fix everything by the morning — that was intense. But it’s not like the NICU, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah,” Yaakov agreed. “No one’s crying, no one’s dying.”

It sounded cute — almost like a jingle — but it wasn’t funny. Crying and dying were part of Marissa’s daily reality.

“Thanks for the empathy,” she said. “I’d better leave now. I hope this baby makes it through my shift — he’s starting to deteriorate already, I noticed it earlier this week.”

She pulled on her jacket and headed to the door. Then, just before leaving, she turned around. “Yaakov, did you ever see a dead body?” she asked. “That’s what I keep seeing in my mind — the way the limbs change color when oxygen stops coming, how they go gray and sort of shrink into themselves and you just know they can’t be revived anymore. Programmers don’t have to see these things.”

Yaakov had finished his coffee and was pulling his tallis bag down from the shelf. But at her comment, he froze.

Marissa’s eyes traveled to his maimed hand. She bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that,” she blurted out. “Please, Yaakov, I’m really sorry.”

She ran down to the bus stop, cringing all the way.

No one’s crying, no one’s dying.

“SO if you want to sound professional, the key is to work with sevenths and ninths, and keep it all very subtle,” Lazer said. “You never want an obvious, easy chord. That’s for amateurs.”

Shloimy sat on the edge of the couch, guitar in position. He had brought the keyboard into the living room — it was much more spacious than his bedroom — and Lazer’s fingers were poised and ready.

Wait, what was that on the coffee table? One of the kids — probably Simi — had begged Mommy to print out that article Babbi Weiss sent them about Tatty’s kollel, and she had then drawn emphatic circles and exclamation marks with green highlighter around Tatty’s name every time it appeared.

Shloimy grabbed the article and slipped it behind one of the couch cushions. He hoped Lazer hadn’t noticed. That was the last thing he needed, having to talk to his savvy new friend about his father the rosh kollel.

“Listen,” Lazer said. “I’m going to move from a C major to an F.” He played the chords — clear, intuitive, uncomplicated.

“Now let’s change the C to a C-seventh,” he said. “You hear how it’s less defined, it holds more possibilities?” He played it again, this time breaking down the fingering slowly. “That’s the beauty of a seventh. It has this hint of something coming afterward, so it sort of pulls you along to the next chord.”

Shloimy listened carefully. Lazer was right.

“Let’s play ‘HaMalach,’ you know, the one with the words of the Chazon Ish,” Lazer suggested. “And when we get to the second part, we’re going to use as many sevenths as we can. Follow me.”

He began the intro to the simple, beautiful melody. Shloimy joined in, picking softly on his guitar while listening for Lazer’s instructions.

For all the song’s beauty, it usually left him feeling cold and detached. The words reminded him of his father: They described a man residing here on earth among mortals, but because of all the Torah he’s learned, he’s more like an angel living an elevated existence.

Tatty, as far as he knew, rarely felt pulled to the pleasures of this world. He lived in a world of seforim and hespekim and shiurim. Barbecues and burgers didn’t speak to him. Sports didn’t pull him. Even music was something he did just to be yotzei zemiros. It was special to have a father like that, but Shloimy often felt very distant from him.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt pulled to his Gemara. Maybe back in seventh grade, or early in eighth grade, learning had been fulfilling. Now, a year into high school, it was just hard. So many hours of focusing and listening, trying to stay positive when he felt like he was drowning…. Did Tatty, treading along with the angels up there in his lofty heights, have any idea how difficult Shloimy found yeshivah?

Lazer had reached the end of song’s first part. He launched into the chorus and began to call out chords. “E-minor seventh, then A-major seventh! D-minor seventh, G-major seventh, C — now A-major seventh again!”

Shloimy slid his left hand quickly and neatly from chord to chord, picking rhythmically with his right hand as Lazer played the melody in the higher register. Deep in his stomach, he felt an actual quiver as the supple transitions transformed the familiar song. This was a whole different sound — nuanced and multilayered and throbbing with feeling.

The second time around, Lazer didn’t have to call out the chords. Shloimy knew what to do. Together they wove through the melody, adding subtle depth and emotion with each measure.

“Whew,” Shloimy breathed when they brought the song to a close. “That was next-level.”

Lazer nodded in satisfaction. “You learn fast.”

Shloimy flushed at the compliment. Then he looked at the clock. “We should probably wrap things up,” he said. “Last time we came late to second seder, and the mashgiach wasn’t happy. If we leave in five minutes, we can get back to yeshivah on time.”

Lazer shrugged and removed an MP3 from his pocket. He placed it on the coffee table. “Actually, I brought something that I thought you might want to hear. Not exactly like ‘HaMalach.’ This one is not so — hmm, well, let’s say it’s not so yeshivish. But if you liked what we did there with the sevenths, you’re going to love this.”

Shloimy pictured his mother’s anxious face during last week’s music session. She hadn’t said anything out loud, but he didn’t need words to feel her disapproval. What would she think if he came late again?

Then again, she was out shopping now with the girls, and she always said the stores got crazy when the cold weather hit. He definitely had time to listen to Lazer’s new song without her discovering them.

“Okay, Lazer,” he said. “Let me hear.”

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1038)