“Listen, when the doctor comes, I want you to call me. I want to speak to him or her. Okay, Ma? Don’t forget”

AN ambulance raced by Ayala as she walked out of Bracha’s building, and the siren echoed inside her head as she rapidly dialed her mother.

No need to panic, Zev had said, but Ayala knew that this was exactly what her mother was doing right now. And her brother would be no help; he’d amble into the hospital, hear from some nurse that everything’s fine, ribs heal themselves, and then tell Ma to quit her worrying and just go home and relax. As if it were possible to shut off anxiety like a water tap.

Not that she could blame Zev; he’d been affected just as much as she had by growing up one of two siblings — two onlies, only boy, only girl — to two older parents. They’d just each reacted differently.

“I don’t get it. Would you rather not have been born?” the teenage Ayala would ask, when her little brother would complain yet again about having parents old enough to be grandparents, and why couldn’t they be young and normal instead of having dinner conversations about colonoscopies? “Hashem chose to only give them children in their mid-forties. It’s not their fault!”

Of course, that would shut Zev up because there was no response to such an argument — as Ayala well knew. It was the line she’d repeat to herself, each time she found herself feeling jealous of her friends’ mothers, who knew the right clothing stores to shop in (for their daughters and for themselves), could hum along with the current songs (unlike her parents, who still thought that trendy music meant the Rabbi’s Sons), and were cute and active and fun to talk to.

Maybe it had been the guilt over her own resentment that had made her so quick to nip Zev’s in the bud? Whatever the case, now, from her older and more empathetic vantage point, Ayala could appreciate that she, too, had played a role in shaping Zev’s character, and that she had not been the safe, understanding sounding board he’d needed.

You can’t be everything to everyone, someone’s voice — Naftali’s? Bracha’s? — said inside her head, as her mother’s phone went to voice mail and, biting her lip, she hung up and dialed again.

Pick up, Ma. Pick up.