The store was pretty quiet this morning; she could still hear them talking, even with a full aisle of detergent and bleach between them.

“You don’t think he’s impressive enough the way he is?” Mommy sounded insulted, maybe even hurt. “He’s such a masmid, so serious about his learning. And he gives a shiur, doesn’t he?”

“I heard the shiur,” came Motti’s grudging answer. “You know, I stopped in the kollel this morning, when you were swimming in the hotel pool.”

“And?”

“And… well, I was thinking, I wanted to record Chaim in action, maybe post the shiurim on one of those sites, promote them on WhatsApp. But… it just wasn’t so — alive.”

The voices were trailing away now. Guiltily, Perri crept into the next aisle, to keep listening.

“….never expected this,” she heard Mommy saying. “He was never this superstar valedictorian type. He barely got out his pshetl at the bar mitzvah, remember?”

“I do, now that you remind me,” Tatty said darkly. “He was so nervous, he could barely open his mouth. I always thought, a few years of kollel, a few years in Eretz Yisrael, and then he would come home, join the business, and be a regular Toiradig balabos.”

“Isn’t life surprising? Our Chaim.” There was wonder, maybe even admiration, in Mommy’s voice. Perri felt like giving her a hug. Instead, she hunkered behind the tower of cereal boxes shielding her from her in-laws. “We never thought he would fall in love with learning like that, and just want to keep on going forever.”

“Yeah, but if he’s really such a serious learner, he should become something. Back when we met with Reb Mattis, he said Chaim is a lifer, a star. He promised us.”

Perri didn’t need to listen to the rest to know Tatty felt disappointed, maybe even betrayed. The slight, hesitant Chaim who delivered a chaburah this morning — he didn’t have the charisma, the backbone, the magnetism of a star. The best PR guy still wouldn’t be able to catapult him to the mizrach vant of the Torah world, or even to his father’s personal dais. The roshei yeshivah in Bnei Brak would shake his hand, listen politely to his description of the kollel, wish him well, and promptly forget all about him.

She stood woodenly alongside the cereal boxes, waiting until her in-law’s voices drifted far, far away. Then, leaving the shopping cart behind, she walked out of the supermarket and into the gray day.

Was her husband not a Something?

AT

the edge of the blackness, a phone was merrily ringing. Or was it? Yaakov was pretty sure he’d heard Marissa’s phone. He shifted in his bed and squinted at the clock on the night table. It was three twenty-seven a.m.

Where was Marissa? She was working the morning shift tomorrow; she needed her sleep.

He weighed whether to go look for her. Then he heard a voice coming from the living room. It was Marissa’s voice, and it was coming and going in some sort of rhythm: a question, a pause, another question, a pause, a long string of sentences, a soft laugh….

What in the world?

A few minutes later, Marissa slipped quietly into the room, clutching her phone.

“Hi,” Yaakov said pointedly.

“Oh!” She startled. “I’m sorry, Yaakov. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Right. But who woke you?”

Marissa stood there for a moment. In the dark, Yaakov couldn’t read her face. Then he heard her sigh.

“I meant to tell you about it, but it sort of happened faster than I realized.”

“About what?”

“It’s — not a long story, but not super-short. Something in between. Do you want to come to the kitchen, have something hot, and I’ll tell you the whole thing?”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later, they were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table, mugs of cinnamon tea before them. Just outside the window, the night was thick with darkness, but in the glare of the bulb over the table, Marissa looked very awake: her eyes were alight and her face slightly flushed.

“So last week, I met this woman, a local therapist. She works with a lot of young American marrieds and mothers, and she says they need more help than they’re getting.”

Yaakov nodded.

“She’s a real doer, a solutionizer, you know the type? She’s opening up a support group with all kinds of services, and one of the big things she wanted to do was have an advice hotline for mothers of newborns.”

“Ah,” he said. It was starting to come together.

“So she found me — she said a friend of hers had a preemie last year and remembered me from the NICU.” There was definite pride there in Marissa’s uplifted chin and determined mouth.

“And, let me guess, she asked you to man the hotline,” Yaakov took over the narrative. “And you said yes. And that’s why your phone just rang at an ungodly hour.”

Marissa nodded. She picked up her mug, then set it down. “You’re upset?”

Yaakov watched the wisp of steam rise from his mug. Then he stole another look at his wife. She looked… defensive, maybe?

“I don’t love being woken up in the middle of the night,” he said calmly. “But I can handle it. I don’t need that much sleep. It’s more you that I’m worried about. You work hard — really hard. On your feet for so many hours. All those fragile babies and worried parents. Are you sure you can give up your nights for this?

“And also,” he added, “do these worried moms really need to speak to you so desperately in the middle of the night? Can’t they wait until the morning?”

Marissa squared her shoulders. “You don’t understand, Yaakov. These mothers — they’re so confused, so insecure. They’re almost babies themselves. When you’re up in the middle of the night with a crying baby or a baby with fever or a baby who’s vomiting across the room, you feel so alone. So helpless. Having someone to call — it really makes such a difference!”

“I hear that.” Yaakov took a long sip of the cinnamon tea. “Especially someone like you, with professional experience. All that training. All those hours taking care of tiny babies.”

Marissa nodded. “But it’s not just that,” she confided in a sudden rush of words. “This Adina, the woman who organized the whole thing, she told me that when you get involved in chesed, it gives you more energy. And I really see how it’s true. I’ve already done a few of these calls, and for sure the women who called in feel so much better — they tell me that I’m saving them! — but it also does something for me. It feels right.

“Remember, Yaakov, when Elisheva was born and Tamar was so little, and I was so overwhelmed dealing with them both?”

Yaakov nodded. He did have some vague memories of the time — Elisheva’s reedy wails throughout the day and night, Tamar’s perpetually runny nose, that time Tamar threw a building block at Elisheva and left a red mark on her little arm….

“And remember how Geveret Rosental from upstairs used to take Tamar to her house for a few hours every afternoon so I could rest? Yaakov, when I told my mom and Kimberly about it, they refused to believe that she was doing this every day, for free. They could not imagine how, why, a neighbor would take this baby and feed her, bathe her, send her home all cozy and clean and ready for bed, without taking a penny. She even trimmed Tamar’s fingernails! Tamar never let me do that.”

Yaakov smiled. “A miracle.”

“I remember thinking back then — there were so many things that were really hard, harder than I could have imagined, about this whole lifestyle we picked. But the Rosentals, that chesed — that’s what I wanted to be part of.”

Yaakov looked again at his wife: the stubborn set of her shoulders, the flushed face. She was proud, he realized. Proud of what she was doing, proud to be able to help.

“I hear you,” he said. “I see what you mean.”

“So you’re okay with me doing this hotline? I’m going to figure out some way to make sure you don’t get woken up.”

He shrugged. “You want to do it. And you have the qualifications to do it. And you say it’s a good feeling for you. I mean, I wish it wouldn’t come at the expense of your sleep. But I know better than to tell you what to do or not to do. I know who I married.”

The tension finally went out of Marissa. “Thanks, Yaakov. I appreciate it.”

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1046)