Shloimy suddenly realized this was the type of song a Bais Nachum boy wasn’t supposed to be listening to

Was that the phone ringing?

Tamar looked up from her math homework. At school, she complained loudly about algebra, just like all the other girls. She couldn’t admit aloud that there was something actually cool about the way you utilized every math function in your arsenal to isolate that X and discover its identity. That would be extremely socially off. At school, you had to hate math, dread it.

But at home… she felt a real zing of satisfaction as she filled neat columns with her bubbly script, narrowing down the options until finally arriving at the solution. Mystery solved.

The phone was still ringing. And ringing. Why couldn’t anyone answer?

Oh, right — because there was no one available to answer except for Tamar. Ima was at work, Abba was working in his office with the door closed, Elisheva at a friend.

She sighed and got up from her chair.

“Hello?” she offered.

“Hello, err, shalom,” a very American, male voice said. “Is, um, is it okay to speak English?”

“Sure.” Tamar rolled her eyes at this faceless, clueless man. For real???? Her parents still sounded like immigrants off the boat when they tried speaking Hebrew. “We all know English here.”

“That’s good to hear. Have I reached the Markowitz family? Originally from New Jersey?”

“My father’s from New Jersey,” Tamar said cautiously.

“Your father is Jake?”