G

lancing at his wife’s pale face and the flush on Mutty’s cheeks, Abe broke the silence.

“C’mon kids, it’s been a great, long day, and there’s school tomorrow. Everybody say after brachos, and then we’re all going upstairs for pajama and sleep time. Mutty,” he said, casting a meaningful glance at his son, “why don’t you help Mama with the dishes?”

“I’ll help, too,” Artie said, his voice unusually grim.

Annie blinked, like someone coming out of a deep trance. “Kisses, everyone,” she announced, standing up to give each of the children a tight hug. After the usual delays, demands for just one more drink, and a second hug and kiss for Ruchele, the children trooped upstairs, and Annie sat down heavily at the table.

“Mutty?” Her voice was a question, perhaps a plea.

Artie broke in. “Did Ruchele say you’re going to be a soldier? Are you crazy, or am I? You’re not… not….”

Mutty ignored him and turned to his mother. “Mama, I want to enlist.” The words came out in a rush. “I want to serve my country. I want to train as a combat medic before I start med school. But I won’t do anything without your permission.” His cheeks grew even pinker. “And I won’t go without your blessing.”

Artie jumped up and planted himself in front of Mutty. “Her blessing?! Why in the world do you need a blessing to go to some crazy war in some crazy country that has nothing to do with us? They’re starting to send soldiers back in body bags, Mutty. Are you nuts?”

“Nothing to do with us? You want to see all of Asia go Commie, like China and Russia?” Mutty, too, stood up, and his voice grew higher, louder. “The Communists have nukes, Artie, nukes! You want your kids to live in bomb shelters and die breathing in atomic fallout? If we had stopped Hitler earlier, if we hadn’t waited around for Pearl Harbor, think how many lives would have been saved!”

“Boys, please stop it.” It was Annie’s voice, the gentle voice that had read both these grown men bedtime stories and soothed them when they’d fallen off bicycles or failed a test. A voice they listened to, respected, and loved.

They both sat down silently.

“Artie, sweetie, please. I want to hear what Mutty has to say.” And once again she said the one-word question that held so much meaning.

“Mutty?”

M

utty took a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm. Okay, Plan A — discuss this quietly and privately with Mama, give her all the speeches he’d prepared — had failed. Plan B — pretend that nothing had changed, that Ruchele was all mixed up, and give up his dream — that, too, he realized now, in an instant’s searing thought, was just not possible. He needed to do this.

Plan C? He would speak out his heart to Mama and daven that Hashem give him the words.

“Mama, this isn’t something I decided on yesterday. It’s been growing in me for a while, maybe years. But I think… I think it was on Purim that I realized this is what I want.” His voice grew lower, almost a whisper, like someone speaking from a place deep inside. “Mama, I keep thinking about the masks we wear. All my life, I think, I’ve been wearing a mask. I’m the straight-A student, the boy all the kids like and the teachers like and everybody likes. But Mama, I want to know who I really am, when things are hard, when I have to face the real world.”

A

nnie listened silently as Mutty repeated the arguments he’d made to Abe. Vietnam? He might not be assigned there; US troops were routinely stationed at bases all over the world. And even if he was shipped to Southeast Asia, America was just sending advisors, not ground troops. He might very well finish his one-year enlistment without ever seeing combat. And if he did… well, most soldiers came out stronger and better. Just look at Abie.

Annie started. What did Abie have to do with this? “Dad? Does he know what you’re planning?”

“Yes.”

“And what does he think?”

“He said it’s okay with him, but it’s your decision.”

My decision.

Mutty continued to speak, describing the Communist threat to the free world, bringing examples from China and Korea and East Germany, and the frightening six days when JFK stared down Russia during the Cuban Missile Crisis. When Artie tried to interrupt, Annie gently motioned to him to stay quiet.

Finally, the speech — part history lesson, part political polemic, and part just an emotional plea of a son to a mother — wound down, ending in two words.

“Mama? Please?”

Other than the slow drip-drip-drip of a faucet Abe had promised to fix later that night, and the ticking of the kitchen’s wall clock, the room was absolutely quiet. Even as Artie stood up and began viciously scrubbing a pot, Annie and Mutty sat, wrapped in a deep silence that seemed to surround and consume both of them.

Annie placed her hand softly on the small bump of her growing baby. She’d found herself doing that often in the past week, making soothing gestures, perhaps trying to make up for the less-than-warm welcome she’d given this child.

But now, she realized, she was asking this new little soul, perhaps learning with a malach at this very moment, to soothe and comfort her.

My decision.

She sighed. “I’m very tired, Mutty. I’m going upstairs. We’ll talk tomorrow. And boys,” she said, with a ghost of a smile, “try not to argue too loud. I’m going to sleep.”

T

he tissue paper the gown was wrapped in rustled softly as Marjorie carefully lifted the garment from its box. Giggling, she held it up in front of her and then shrugged herself into the blue gown, which cascaded down her body, reaching past her knees. Her face grew thoughtful as she removed another package from the box and placed the graduation cap on her head. She tried putting it straight on her hair, pushed it backward, and then tilted it to the right. There! The perfect angle.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror in her room in the Freed Hotel. What was this all about — the cap and gown, the tassel hanging gaily from one side? Why was she feeling — she had to admit it — so moved by what was just a stupid custom from centuries ago? She shook her head back and forth, and the tassel tickled her cheek, bringing on still another attack of giggles.

In this cap and gown she looked so… respectable. Successful. Academic.

So not Marjorie.

She was still staring at her reflection, half serious, half laughing, when there was a knock at the door and Perele Schwartz walked in.

“Marjorie! Darling! Just look at you! We are all so proud of you.” She placed her hands on the blue-clad shoulders, planted a kiss on Marjorie’s cheek, and looked at her shrewdly. “I hope you are as proud of yourself as we are.”

“Well… yeah, I guess I am.”

As one of the youngest of the hotel’s boarders, Perele had taken upon herself the job of distributing the mail every day. “Here’s a letter for you, Marjorie,” she said, handing her a stained envelope bearing its 8-cent airmail stamp.

Marjorie stared at the postmark and hastily put the letter on her small desk.

“You’ll come to the graduation, right, Mrs. S.?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Well, I’m off to give the Levys their weekly aerogram from their son. Take care of yourself, my dear.”

Marjorie gave a quick glance at the letter. “Don’t worry, Mrs. S. I’ll be taking good care of myself.”

S

he did not sleep.

Annie found Abe sitting at the small desk in a corner of their bedroom, reading through patients’ files. He jumped up when she entered.

“Well?”

“Well what?” Her voice was icy. She sat down wearily in her rocking chair.

“Mutty told you?” he asked, handing her a blanket she’d crocheted especially for the rocker.

“Yes, he told me. When did you find out?”

“He mentioned it on the way home from the reunion. But I didn’t take him very seriously. I thought it was just a passing phase.”

“The reunion. Yes, that reunion.” The frigid tone melted beneath a burst of fierce, heated fury. “Abe, how could you? You schlepped him to that reunion, filled his head with war stories. Since he was little, he’s heard about how great it was to be in the army, how many heroes you met—”

“Annie—”

Relentlessly she continued, ignoring the interruption. “You put this into his head, and now you make me the one who has to decide if my child will go to war.” Finally the tears came, a flood of anger and fear and hurt surging from her eyes, from her heart. “How could you have done this to our son, Abe?”

“I… darling—”

“Don’t ‘darling’ me, Abe.”

She reached her hand out to the night table for a tissue, but the box was empty. Silently, Abe handed her his handkerchief.

Perhaps it was the gesture, or maybe the lost look on her husband’s usually confident and smiling face. When she spoke again, there was no anger, only a profound despair.

“Abie,” she said, “what are we going to do?”

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 869)