Henny Portman wasn’t going to play a part in a skit that wasn’t faithful to reality

T

he loneliness came hard and fast, like a car approaching in the left lane that suddenly starts honking.

It was often quiet in the Portman house at night. The kids preferred to study at their friends’ homes, and Shuey and Henny didn’t have long, meandering DMCs anymore. But home was still home.

There was noise and conversation and the familiar gurgle of pipes, the groan of cars coming around the poorly planned street with the too-sharp curve a hundred feet from their front porch, the phone ringing for Malka until past midnight.

Sometimes there was even fun. One night just a few weeks ago, Malka had been bored, so she had taken down the Boggle game and circulated around the house looking for people to play with her.

Shuey had gingerly agreed, and then Meshulam came home from night seder and joined and they had a real game. The kids were nudging Henny to join, and Shuey could see that she wanted to play, but something was holding her back. It was as if taking part in the game would be a tacit announcement that she was fine, fine with all of it, fine with Shuey’s lack of ambition, fine with the fact that their oldest was 17 and would need to go to seminary and get married and they still lived in a rented house, fine that it appeared the years of plenty had been a long time ago, back in 2006 and 2007, and were never coming back.

Playing games together was something that happy, functional families did, gentle teasing and light banter and the mother bringing out a bowl of perfectly buttered popcorn — delicious, but not so overdone it made you feel sick. It was for the type of families who had serious discussions about buying in Schneller — enough with living out of suitcases in hotels every time we go to Israel, don’t you think?

In short, Henny Portman wasn’t going to play a part in a skit that wasn’t faithful to reality, while her husband, sitting at the table running the pencil through his hair and wondering how to spell “similar” and if he actually had a seven-letter word, thought that the skit itself created reality.

It turned out that he was misspelling it, and he ended up being forced to use both “net” and “ten” to remain competitive, and lost badly — but it had been a game, a pleasant half hour spent at the kitchen table with family, even without popcorn.

Now, Shuey stood at the edge of a cracked parking lot in Modena, New York, hearing no sound other than the whisper of a light breeze moving across the parking lot, hovering between two metal garbage cans and a cracked lamppost. The hotel building, a cheerful red brick by day, now seemed black — a frightening, hulking monument to failed dreams.

He was homesick.

Avi Korman was back in his cozy Lakewood house. Shuey was pretty sure he’d seen a pool out back, and he wondered if Korman was doing laps or just relaxing, thinking about how much they’d accomplished over the past few days.

Rabbi Wasser had been back and forth all week, trying to set up his own family in Modena, but he was in Lakewood tonight — also happily surrounded by noise and shuls and groceries and cars.

The beds had arrived, and someone had to be on hand, and Shuey knew that this was precisely his job. Rabbi Wasser was preparing shiurim on Gittin, and Avi Korman — who’d given his credit card to pay for the beds — wasn’t standing around directing people where to set them up. This was Shuey’s work. The gashmiyus, as Rabbi Wasser liked to say.

Earlier in the day, Shuey had driven to Target and bought six shower curtains. At one point, he’d texted Henny a picture of the choices on display, asking her if she thought Waffle Weaver or Broken Stripe was the way to go. The text hadn’t gone through, and when the red “X” popped up, he felt a twinge of relief, happy he hadn’t asked after all. He deleted it and chose by himself, feeling strange as he swiped Avi Korman’s credit card, like he was playing a game.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 791)