People can spend weeks maintaining a polite, respectful distance, and in a span of a moment, are suddenly sharing their deepest secrets

"That was nice,” Faigy Korman said brightly. “It must feel good to see an investment pay off that quickly.”

She realized her husband was feeling down, but she misunderstood why.

“Mrs. Wasser is a doll,” she continued. “Do you know she runs a busy office, Hirsch from the medical billing, and she still goes in to Brooklyn sometimes? She’s the gantze macher of the business and they won’t let her leave, they don’t care that she moved to Modena. I can’t imagine, she has little kids and also helps with the yeshivah, she prepared the seudah for them Erev Yom Kippur. Really very special. And the spread she put out? It was elegant and the boys enjoyed too, Dovi didn’t touch my supper tonight and he couldn’t get enough of her sesame chicken. Incredible couple, the Wassers.

“Avi,” she said as she turned to face her husband, “you really found a star, you have great instincts. I don’t know how you sensed it, but you did.”

She beamed at him, and even though he smiled back, he looked tired. Something was bothering him, but she couldn’t imagine what. The pouring rain had done a job on his Shabbos hat, but he wasn’t the type to get bent out of shape about something like that. The Simchas Beis Hashoeivah of his yeshivah — his yeshivah, the one he had brought into being, funded, and hired a rosh yeshivah for — had been beautiful and festive. Faigy had thought the rosh yeshivah’s speech was very nice, the part that she was able to follow, something about zeman simchaseinu. The boys singing and playing were heavenly, better than the kumzitz choirs at chasunahs, she had told Penina Wasser. Each of the boys had come over to thank not just Avi, but her, and best of all, her Dovi had looked so comfortable and happy with his friends.

She wanted to ask what was wrong, but then Avi would say, “Who says something is wrong?” or else, “Why does something always have to be wrong?”

He was sitting on the couch, his face concealed by a magazine that he would normally never even pick up, ostensibly reading an article about “Six Affordable Ways to Transform your Living Room.” She got it. He didn’t want to talk.

Okay. Marriage, she had heard in a shiur, meant not only communicating, but also knowing when silence sends a stronger message.

She could do this. He would speak when he was ready.