She looked out the window, biting her lower lip and willing Faigy Korman to stay home. Know your place, Penina thought fiercely. Your husband is a balebos, she thought, okay, he’s The Balebos, but still. You don’t have to come to these kinds of things. When we have a dinner, then you can be a mechuteneste, but not tonight.

She knew, at that moment, that Faigy Korman would come. Of course she would. That’s how these things went. And Penina Wasser shrugged and went to prepare a fruit platter.

The bell rang moments later, the first car of bochurim having arrived, and a minute after that, it rang again. The party was on.

Noach Perensky burst into the kitchen and got busy helping right away. “Rebbetzin, can I bring out the drinks? Oh, wow,” he stopped by the large foil pans of sesame chicken and sniffed appreciatively. “This is amazing. Rebbetzin… you know just what the oilem wants.”

The bell rang again and Sholom went back to the door. He grabbed Kalman’s hand as he walked and she knew it was to cover up his own nerves.

She heard his greeting but she couldn’t make out the words — the edge in his voice was audible.

“Penina, look what a choshuve guest,” he called out. She stopped slicing cantaloupes, put down the knife and went to wash her hands.

Faigy Korman was carrying a large box of chocolates like it was a baby, both arms under the wide box. “Just a little something,” she said, and Penina accepted it from her, saying, “You really didn’t have to, it’s an honor that you came. It’s very special for us.”

She put down the chocolates in the kitchen and turned to take Faigy Korman’s coat. She turned to see her guest studying the moldings in the foyer, and Penina faltered. Was that it? Would Avi Korman cut funding to the yeshivah because she had a rich cousin?

“Let me help you,” Faigy Korman followed her back into the kitchen. “Can I do the fruits for you? Oh, wow, did you really make all this food yourself? I would have sent it over from Heshy’s, silly me that I didn’t think of that….”

Penina wished she would just sit down. It would be a long night.

“Mommy,” Kalman came tearing in to the kitchen, having totally forgotten her rule about not running at all in this house, “Mommy, Tatty has bochurim who surprised him, they drove in from…from….” Kalman wavered, having forgotten from where.

Penina put down the knife down again, her mind racing. Who’d come? Most of the boys in yeshivah lived in Lakewood, and a few in Brooklyn. Harrari and Walter lived in Queens and Jacobs lived in Monsey. They’d all been planning to come.

Two boys lived in Detroit, Lorb and Wagner, but there was no way they had come.

She washed her hands and stepped out of the kitchen to see Lorb and Wagner, dripping wet and exhausted and proud and happy, her husband looking as if he’d just uncovered a buried treasure in the sandbox, the other bochurim starting a little circle and dancing with the new arrivals.

“Wow,” she came out, “this is incredible, you boys drove in special for this?”

Quiet Chesky Lorb, who learned with her husband privately every night, for whom Sholom had secretly arranged a Skype reading evaluation one day by lunch on her laptop, whom Sholom had thought to make gabbai and then convinced the boy that he would be able to read the words and nothing would happen if he stammered a bit, had gotten in a car and driven all day to be here. Wagner was more of a surprise, she thought — it was probably Lorb’s idea.

“This is incredible,” she said. “How long did it take you?”

“It normally takes ten hours,” Lorb said, “but Wags did it in about eight, he ripped.”

Wagner blushed with pleasure, even as Sholom shook his head good-naturedly and said, “That’s great timing, but you have to careful, your parents trusted you with the car….”

Jacobs had a cousin who did it in seven hours once and Tishler said Lorb was dreaming — that was impossible — but he understood why someone who lived in Detroit would drive as fast as he could to get out of there, and Lorb punched him on the arm and it was like yeshivah suddenly. And all at once, Penina Wasser was thrilled that Faigy Korman was there to see it, to see what her Sholom had done.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 809)