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anky lit two matches, waited for them to turn black, shook out the flames and crushed the ashes onto the hard-boiled eggs in the waiting bowl. The children watched closely and then began to fight over who would get the blackest egg.

“I need the biggest one, because I’m the saddest!” said Eliyahu.

“No, I’m much sadder than you, give me the big one!” insisted Nechumi.

“Don’t make me laugh, kinderlach, it’s Erev Tishah B’Av,” said Yanky. “And just like it’s a mitzvah to be sad about the burned Beis Hamikdash, it’s also a mitzvah to be mevater. So I think, Eliyahu and Nechumi, we should let Bentzi choose first.”

Four-year-old Bentzi solemnly selected an egg. Subdued, Eliyahu and Nechumi took theirs. Yanky gazed at his children — so sweet, pure, and innocent.

After the Seudah Hamafsekes, he picked up his Kinnos, took Eliyahu’s hand, and went out to the beis medrash. Raizele cleared the table and put the remaining food away — the children could eat it tomorrow — and as the house darkened, she felt the anguished mood of Tishah B’Av settle over her.

Where was her life going?

“With Tatty, it’s easy,” a smiling Yanky had told her a few weeks ago. “Whenever he seems to notice that something’s not quite right with me and looks like he wants to talk about it, I just share a good question one of the bochurim asked me, and then I go into a long explanation of how I answered, with lots of bren. That always throws him off the scent. Then he gets drawn into a whole discussion about the Torah I’m preparing for the next few days, and forgets all about whatever he wanted to say to me.”

It was true. Just put a beautiful svara in front of her shver, and he’d dive joyfully in, forgetting any other agenda.

But she couldn’t be thrown off the scent so easily. She could see through Yanky better than his father could, and Torah chiddushim couldn’t buy her off. She saw that Yanky’s battery was running low.

And she was afraid.

How long could he go on living this way, with no true connection to anything he was doing? How many more Shabbosim would he put on a shtreimel and a kapoteh, go out to daven, come home and preside over the family seudah, and then go out to the Rebbe’s tish? How many more days would he lay tefillin, wrap himself in a tallis and recite every word of Shacharis from Mah Tovu to Aleinu Leshabei’ach, when his heart was frozen and impenetrable to the meaning of those words?

How long could he keep up this playacting in a role that demanded so much? He was a good actor, her husband. She was sure that right now, during Kinnos, his face wore the same expression as the rest of the mispallelim. He looked focused and intent on his lamentations over the Shechinah’s sorrow. No one would guess a thing.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 765)