Shuey wanted in. He wanted in badly. But Henny didn’t. They had five children to feed, she reminded him

Henny Portman pretended to be busy when her husband came in. If she looked too eager, he wouldn’t share — and from the way he’d walked up the driveway, as if he were carrying an invisible package, she could tell that he had something on his mind.

She positioned herself facing the sink, her back to him.

“Hey, what’s doing, Hen?” He sounded relaxed. He was puttering around the fridge, and she heard the thunk of the pickle jar being removed.

She turned off the faucet and came to sit down with him.

“What’s doing? How was the meeting?”

“Actually,” he said as he started to slice the pickles, “actually, it was sort of interesting.”

She straightened the Three Rivers Banking pad on the kitchen table, keeping herself busy so that he wouldn’t stop talking. “Like, the superstar of Three-Star Kosher snacks is considering a shift?” She tried to keep her voice light, as if this were a casual conversation when it was anything but. Parnassah was serious business, the unseen backdrop to every other conversation.

“Oh, this would be more than a shift, it would be more like a sharp turn,” Shuey said, and Henny realized that he was gathering his courage to continue.

She smiled, unsure of what to say.

Unmentioned, but clearly remembered by both of them was that time, not so long ago, when Raffi Katz had come to visit. Back then Shuey was still connected enough to the music industry that it was normal to have people drop in at all hours: composers, arrangers, young singers. They had kept a guitar in the playroom, and on many nights Henny had put her children to sleep to the sounds of jamming.

But as younger singers took the place Shuey had once occupied, the visitors grew fewer and the jamming sessions less frequent. Portman’s house wasn’t the hub it had once been. Eventually, they had moved, then moved again. Sometimes, when Henny took the kids to the pediatrician in their old neighborhood, she passed that house. She usually didn’t look at it, but once, she had parked nearby and just stared at it for a long time.

Raffi had arrived bearing a business proposition. He didn’t come out and say that Shuey’s career had dried up, though it had been three years since the last album, the only concert that winter had been a Chanukah high school gig, and weddings had been replaced by bar mitzvahs. But he did gently point out that what with the costs of paying tuition alone, a larger income could always help. No one complains about having too much, he’d quipped, ha, ha.

Shuey agreed. Raffi, a bochur who worked doing sound for high-end chasunahs at night, had a concept: He thought that personal recording studios would be the next big thing in Lakewood, and he was ready to jump in. He just needed Shuey Portman’s name to make it work, the legitimacy of being associated with a real singer, someone the kids had heard of.

Back then, Shuey was doing sales for Henny’s brother Shimon —a job he hated, but one that helped them get by as Shuey waited for the break that would propel him back into the music industry. He traveled often, so he would only be able to take Raffi’s job offer if he let go of the sales job. Raffi Katz, who looked like he hadn’t gotten a haircut in six months and wore shirts two sizes too small, had fire in his eyes as he leaned over the table and told Shuey, “In or out, brother. You can keep selling off-brand toys and traveling to Chicago every week, or you can join me and actually cash in on your name and reputation, plus you get to stay in the industry. If you stay warm, Shuey, you can get hot again.”

Then, pleased with the phrase, Raffi Katz — who was not poetically inclined — leaned back and said it again, slowly. “If you stay warm, you can get hot again.”

There was no money, though, not at the beginning. It would take a few months for it to get off the ground, Raffi conceded. But once it did…

Shuey wanted in. He wanted in badly. But Henny didn’t. They had five children to feed, she reminded him. Malka was getting older, and soon they would have to think of her shidduchim, of making a chasunah.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 788)