"Think of how my father feels, when he sees his youngest son going on a path that looks a lot like the one Yerachmiel took"
"Gut voch,” said Yanky, as he put the phone to his ear.
“We talked about that more than enough on Shabbos, no?”
“Well, yes, you do have what for.”
Those were the three sentences Raizele heard, and after that came a long silence on Yanky’s part. The person on the other end went into a lengthy speech, and Raizele went to put the children to bed. Bentzy went straight to sleep, while the two bigger boys launched a series of evasive tactics: Just one more chapter, okay? No? So half a chapter, then, okay? I’m not tired yet. Can’t I relax on the couch for a while, until I feel sleepy? I just want to sit and watch you in the kitchen, Ima, until the cake is ready. Oh, it’s not a cake? You’re making a casserole for tomorrow? Oh….
Raizele laughed inside, thinking that she might literally have to pick up Eliyahu and Nachumi and plop them down in their beds.
After a few more firm noes, they submitted and went to bed, and half a minute after the light was out, they were asleep.
Yanky had just gotten off the phone. “Are they all asleep?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want them to hear.”
She crept over to their door and listened for three sets of steady breathing.
“They’re asleep,” she told Yanky. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Meir.” Yanky sat down at the kitchen table with his head between his hands. His cell phone rang, and he silenced it without even checking who the caller was.
“You sounded a bit tense,” Raizele said. “What was that about ‘you do have what for’?”
“He apologized for the way he spoke to me on Shabbos. He said he was tired, and he spoke without thinking, he didn’t mean to hurt me, and so on. All right, so we’re past that. But then he got to the main point.”
“Which was?”
Yanky sighed. “So, Meir acknowledges that I have the right to go wherever in the world I choose, to go to any shul that’s right for me, and listen to any rav whose Torah speaks to me. But… he asked me to think of Tatty.”
“Only Tatty? What about Mommy? Doesn’t she matter?”
“She does, of course she does. But mainly it’s my father.”
“Why mainly your father?”
“Because Tatty suffered a terrible loss 20 years ago — a talmid who was very precious to him, under similar circumstances. He was as bright as me or even more so, Meir says, and Tatty loved him like a son.”
“You mean Yerachmiel Poiker?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not thinking of running away anywhere.” I hope.
“I’m not — but think of how my father feels, when he sees his youngest son going on a path that looks a lot like the one Yerachmiel took. Feeling trapped and restless, starting to look elsewhere….”
Raizele spoke crisply. “I hope you told Meir to leave you alone and stop inventing problems.”
