He looked up sharply. “Huh? A rent commitment? What in the world are you talking about?”

“Right, that’s what I thought….”

She told him about her conversation with Yehudis.

Amram pushed away the soup with the celery knob grated the way he’d told her and leaned his elbows on the table. “Someone,” he said slowly, “is playing games with us.”

“I don’t know,” Leebie intoned. “Why would Sruly be under this impression? His parents wouldn’t tell him we’re going to support them if they know we’re not.”

“Right, that’s exactly my point. Do they know that we’re not? I have a feeling they really do think we’re paying the rent.”

Leebie frowned. “What are you thinking?”

“What am I thinking?” He pressed his lips together tightly, reached for a napkin, and started transforming it into a bird. When he started with his origami skills, Leebie knew his thoughts were racing somewhere, usually not to a desirable place.

Amram pressed down a final fold and planted his little pelican on his placement. “You don’t have to think much,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious. Someone misinformed them.”      “Someone… Who?” she asked weakly.

“You know who.”

She did know, quite clearly. There was only one person who’d transmitted messages between the Herzogs and the Manns before the shidduch happened. Leebie had never liked the idea of Ita Kratz acting as shadchan for her daughter’s shidduch and had only cooperated because, well, she’d made a phenomenal suggestion.

Misinformed? Grossly.

A wave of dread rolled through her stomach as the realization sank in. This couldn’t be happening. The Manns “aren’t demanding anything,” Ita had assured her, and whoa, the relief she’d felt at hearing those words.

The tension of the past few years, which Leebie had been so glad to be relieved of, was startled awake.

Support hadn’t been a thing when Dovid had been in shidduchim. Naturally; they had the boy. The Herzogs had never demanded anything from a shidduch, and the fact that Baila’s parents generously offered to support the couple was a sweet bonus.

But then Yehudis entered the parshah, and Amram declared that they couldn’t offer money. That’s when support became a Thing.

Leebie had seen it as the death knell of Yehudis’s shidduch chances. Devastated, she’d called her big sister Miriam for advice. Miriam had been silent at first, and then she’d said, quietly, “Look, Leebie. I get him. When my Chanie gets married, we’re going to start supporting our third couple, and the truth is… I have no idea how. It’s… it’s killing us.” Her voice sounded battered, and worry crept up Leebie’s throat. But then Miriam let out a sigh and said, “But what can we do? In today’s day and age, if you don’t offer to pay the couple’s rent, it puts you out of the shidduchim game. This is how the system works. You need to explain it to Amram.”

Amram being Amram, Leebie knew that explaining wouldn’t get her anywhere. “If society is crazy, doesn’t mean we need to be crazy along with them,” he countered with irritating logic.

Leebie’s gaze rested on the napkin bird on the table. Over time, she’d grudgingly learned to respect his position. Because the truth was… he was right. They really couldn’t afford it. Amram couldn’t bring himself to offer money he didn’t have, and, he always reminded her, Rikki would enter shidduchim as soon as Yehudis got married, and if he supported one daughter, he’d need to support the others as well. “You tell me,” he challenged her. “Are we capable of paying two couples’ rents in addition to our regular expenses?”

Probably not, she had to admit. Miriam’s broken voice haunted her.  And then she started hearing stories, mainly gossip at Akeres. About a family who was being torn apart because of an unsustainable support commitment. Another, where a choshuv yungerman, who’d been known as a top learner as a bochur, “lifetime” material, started working a year after his wedding, and the mechutanim weren’t on speaking terms. Those stories spooked her.

And yet, if it were up to Leebie, she would’ve done it anyway, capable or not, just to see Yehudis engaged. Instead, they were passed up on shidduch after shidduch, because Amram refused to budge on his no-support stance.

When the Mann shidduch came up, Amram had been all but triumphant. “See?” he’d said exultantly. “There still are some quality people out there who don’t value a girl by her parents’ finances.”

Well, she saw it now. And no doubt, Amram did, too.

The question was, what now?

Shaya came into the kitchen and headed to the pantry to hunt for cookies. Leebie observed Amram talking to him, but she couldn’t process what he was saying. Distantly, she heard Dassi and Chananya shrieking, and she knew she was supposed to go put them to sleep. But her limbs felt heavy, and she couldn’t think of standing up.

When Shaya left, she turned to Amram. Her mouth was dry, and she could barely bring out her voice. “What do I tell Yehudis? She’s waiting for an answer.”

“Yehudis knows the answer,” he snapped. “And it’s not her job to break the news to Sruly.” He drew in a long breath, tapped his napkin pelican so it flipped over. “I’m so angry now, I feel like—” He squashed the innocent bird in his palm, so it was clear exactly what he felt like.

Leebie bit her fingertip. “I’m trying to remember. Maybe we said something to the Manns at some point? We discussed who’s paying what for the actual wedding. And all the apartment shopping. We divided the renovation costs….”

She paused as she noticed Amram’s eyes narrow. “Waaait,” he said slowly. “I think… Okay, I know what it was. Before Yehudis’s last date, when we spoke with the Manns, I brought it up. I remember now, I wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page. So I asked Shaul Mann if the shadchan had spoken to him about support….”

“And he said…?”

“He said yes. Which I took as, yes, I’m okay with it. But looks like he’d meant… something else.”

They were quiet for a stretch, processing the situation, until Amram pushed his chair back. “Listen, Leebie,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Ita. She deceived the Manns. She deceived us. I’m going to call her right now and make her clean up this mess she created.”

Leebie blinked. “Uh, no! No, Amram. Don’t call her. It’ll just… backfire. I know Ita well, I know how to talk to her. Leave this to me.”

He frowned. “I don’t know. I really want to give her a piece of my mind.”

And I don’t want you to give her a piece of your mind.

“I’ll talk to her and let you know what she says,” Leebie said with forced confidence. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Just—”

She stopped short as Rikki trudged into the kitchen, her pony all over the place and clutching her cell phone.

“Ma, are we going to the heim this Shabbos?”

“Yes, why?”

Her face fell in a sulky pout. “Uch. Whatever.”

Then she pressed a button on her phone, returning to her call, and stalked out of the kitchen.

F

raidy Blau was in the back room of the nursery with a lineup of cribs, piercing gun positioned on the ear of a baby in Madelyn’s arms, when Leebie entered.

Déjà vu…

Leebie smiled to herself. This had been her in a previous life, her first “job” at Akeres. She would come down with her earring options twice a week, take down the mothers’ choices, and gently affix the tiny jewels on the baby girls’ ears.

Sometimes Leebie still stopped in when Fraidy showed up, to help soothe the poor babies. Ach, the cruelty, to make innocent newborns suffer for earthly beauty….

But today, she barely registered the howling. She marched right over to Ita, who was keeping track of the moving cribs, and coughed. “I need to talk to you,” she said, coldly.

“So talk.”

Leebie lowered her voice to a hiss. “Privately.”

Ita’s eyes performed a graceful little dance. “Oh, oh oh…” She thought for a moment, handed her clipboard to Annie, the nurse who was assisting Madelyn, with instructions, and motioned Leebie to follow her into her tiny office.

“Here we go,” she said, spreading her arms invitingly. “A private meeting.” She settled into her swivel chair and folded her arms. “How can I help you?”

“You can help me,” Leebie started, her teeth dangerously close to gritting, “by offering an explanation about the rent you told the Manns we committed to.”

If Leebie expected Ita to act surprised, the head nurse surprised her with a sweet, direct, and completely blithe smile. “Sure, what about it?”

“What about it?” Leebie exploded. “That was an outright lie! We never agreed to support the couple. How did you take the liberty to tell them that?”

“Ooh, calm down, Leebie. It’s not good for you to get all worked up like that. You know what stress does to people. I mean, look at me, ha ha. Where do you think I got all this extra weight from? Stress eating, nothing else. So I’m telling you, if you feel like the stress is getting to you, take a deep breath, like this….” She closed her eyes and proceeded to draw in a long, slow breath.

Leebie lost it. “Ita!”

Ita winked and punctured the air with her finger. “Exactly not like that. But anyway, you were asking about the rent. Well, I didn’t exactly tell them you’re going to pay the rent, that’s not how it went.”

“But?”

“But nothing. Remember I asked you if you plan on helping the couple?”

Did she remember? Something, maybe, very vaguely. “I think I told you we help out here and there, in various ways. I told you… yes, I remember what I told you. That we give our couple money before Yamim Tovim, that I shop for clothes for my grandson….”

“Uh-huh. That’s right. You said that. And I repeated that to Mr. Mann. I told him clearly that you didn’t make any formal commitments, but you’ll give as much as you’re able. That’s true, isn’t it?”

“That’s not what I told you. And the Manns understood from you that we’re helping with the rent.”

“Is that my issue? He asked me about rent, I told him straight out that I wasn’t sure, like, who knows, maybe you’d give half?”

It was as though the air had been sucked from Leebie’s lungs. She tried to inhale — take a deep breath, like this — but everything in the room was spinning.

Ita stood up and rolled her chair under her desk. “I need to go back to those babies. Anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”

Leebie stared at her blankly, breathing heavily.

“Take care, then,” Ita said sunnily. She held up her sunflower-ringed hand in a wave. “Feel free to make yourself a coffee.”

When she left, Leebie closed the door and sank into the chair Ita had abandoned. Her thoughts whizzed through her head wildly. Faces — Ita, Amram, Mr. Mann, Sruly. Then numbers, a whole jumble of numbers. Rent, mileage points, paychecks.

As though prophetic, her phone buzzed. A text from Amram. Did you talk to her?

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 922)