“How’s the Trails End bonfire planning coming along, Chava?” Tehila asked, coming into the office Chava shared with Shifra. “My kids are dying to go to it. ‘Our neighborhood is so nebby, we never do anything.’ ” She did a very good imitation of a preteen.

Chava looked up from the report she was reviewing and laughed. “Tell your kids to come as my honored guests. Shuey’s on the committee.”

“What?” Shifra asked. “I thought it wasn’t happening this year. I heard everyone was doing private ones now.”

“What? Why?” Tehila leaned against the wall, getting herself comfortable.

“I don’t know. That’s what my sister-in-law was telling me. Some drama with the little kids and the older ones. The little kids said the big kids were mean or something. So the parents are all making little fires.”

Chava’s stomach dropped. Shuey could be bossy sometimes, but mean? Everyone’s making little fires?

“So sad,” Chava heard Tehila say from beneath a fog. “Trails End always had these great fires, and I loved how organized they were.”

“I know. And such a great learning experience for the boys, I always said. It was like the last holdout, the one bonfire in the world that was not taken over by askanim making sure things run on schedule. I was so sad for my nieces and nephews. They had this great thing. But if everyone is making little fires now, it’s basically over. That’s how it goes.”

“So what are you going to do, Chava?” Tehila asked. “Are you making a fire on your own? Joining a neighbor? Doesn’t your Shuey always get involved?”

“But it’s not true.” Chava shrugged. “We are still doing the big fire. Shuey is in charge this year. Maybe there will be smaller ones for some of the younger kids, but I’m sure the bonfire isn’t over. You know Shuey, he’s very capable, I’m sure it’ll be a hit.”

“Okay, well you would definitely know better,” Shifra said. “Forget it, could be it was Malky who told me that, not Tamar. You know Malky, she lives on Algonquin, not in Trails End.” She stood up from her desk and picked up her water bottle. “I’ll be right back,” she said, and Tehila left with her. Chava shook her head, hard, then went back to her reports.

“DO you think it’s true?” Chava asked Eliezer that night when he came home from Maariv. “I heard Leah telling Shuey that the Sternbergs were making a fire, but they’re one family, they have such little kids. Do you think people are planning to make their own fires? They can’t do that, Shuey will be devastated.”

“And their kids are annoyed that Shuey is doing it.” Eliezer went to the sink and filled up a glass.

“You can’t always be so hard on him, Eliezer. He’s your son! He has to be your first priority, not the neighbor’s kids.”

“He is my first priority. But my priority is not to cushion him and jump in to save him all the time. The kid is a bulldozer, I’ve always said that,” he said, waving a glass at her, offering her a drink.

“And what am I doing wrong, exactly?” she asked, accepting a glass. “Sending him to his room doesn’t help. If he stays there, which he doesn’t, he just destroys things. We need to keep him occupied.”

It was an old fight; Chava already knew what Eliezer would answer.

“If you allowed him to face the consequences of his actions,” Eliezer said, draining his glass, “he might finally get the message.”

Chava picked at a scab near her elbow. “I’d rather he not get into those situations in the first place. Why should we let him end up in pain, instead of just guiding him to do the right thing in the first place—”

“So good, you can play a game with him on Shabbos afternoon. But there’s more to his life than Shabbos afternoon. And weren’t we having this conversation — yesterday — about Shuey bothering the girls and you not knowing what to do?”

“But this is different,” Chava said. She scowled at her scab — who gets scabs at her age? — and kept picking at it. “All kids are mean to their siblings, and all mothers don’t know what to do. He’ll grow out of it.”

“And you know that — how?”

“Oh sure, Eliezer. You and your siblings were just angels.”

“No, but we weren’t left to grow out of it, either.”

“Well, good, so you come home earlier, and you deal with it!”

She saw Eliezer look at his watch, and she knew he was wondering if they were in for the long haul. He woke up for an early morning shiur and didn’t like to go to bed late.

“Is that what this is about? You’re changing topics and talking about my schedule now?”

That was also a fight they’d had before. “Okay, no. But, Eliezer, Shuey has friends, he’s not a social misfit.” He did have friends, and they came over often enough, even if Chava was nervous when they were around. She’d never admit it, not even to Eliezer, but she was concerned about how they played. It sounded like Shuey was bossy, and she sometimes wondered why they came back. It was a horrible thing to think about your own child.

“So then what are you worried about, Chava? Some of the younger families want to make their own fire, it makes sense.”

“But what if it is Shuey? What if they really are upset that he’s running it?” Her scab was finally loose, and Chava gave a satisfying pull. A small drop of blood welled up. “I asked him when he told me that he was doing it — it’s always been the seventh graders, not sixth — but he said Shragi Feivelson and Dovid Goldberg invited him.”

“What are you worried about, Chava?” Eliezer exhaled loudly. He was running of patience, she could tell.

She pressed a tissue over her newly exposed cut. “You know how Lag B’omer is so good for Shuey. He’s busy for weeks, he feels big, important, running out every night to gather wood and put it in the right pile, whatever they do there. Last year, the boys let him tag along when they went for lighter fluid. He’s such a hard worker, remember I told you how Baila Silver was so impressed?”

“And?”

“I’m worried. I know he can be bossy — bossy, not a bulldozer — and if the fire is a flop this year… I just don’t want him to get hurt.”

“Wouldn’t be the worst thing, if he learned that people don’t like to be pushed around,” Eliezer said. He left the kitchen. “I’m going up. Good night.”

“Good night,” Chava muttered. She sat at the table a few more minutes. Eliezer was wrong. It would be the worst thing. For all his bluster, Shuey felt things deeply, and what if this broke him? Lesser things had broken bigger people.

Play to their strengths, the experts said, and you’ll mitigate countless issues. This was Shuey’s strength. She had to bolster it.

But as the days passed, Chava was less and less sure. Shuey grew more defiant, and — dare she say it — slightly aggressive about his fire. He told Mindy she could only collect small sticks because she was a baby, and he threw the larger sticks she’d gathered into the woods behind the dead end. He called Benny Levy a weirdo for suggesting he bring his keyboard to play at the bonfire. He talked about barring the fifth graders from coming entirely because they were getting on his nerves. Not that he could do that, this was a neighborhood fire, but Chava didn’t like how it sounded.

And she didn’t have to dig too hard to discover the source of his angst. By now she’d heard of three private bonfires in Trails End — private, with guests — and kids were collecting for their own backyards.

“Yeah, our fire is too big for the babies,” she’d heard Shuey saying on the phone the other night, his tone all false bravado. “Maybe we should make the chalk line farther back so the mothers won’t be nervous.”

But it wasn’t about the chalk line, Chava knew. And she knew Shuey knew it, too.

Lag B’omer was on Monday night that year, and she told Shuey she’d drive the boys to pick up lighter fluid on Sunday.

“Who’s coming with?” she asked as they headed out to the car together. It was a tradition, a big trip to Target, all the boys debating the merits of the various brands. Over the years, she’d heard stories from other mothers, and she knew to do a big shop while the boys read the fine print on each package.

“No one.”

“Huh?” Were things so bad then? But on Shabbos, Shuey’d had a couple of friends over, and they’d been talking about the bonfire.

“It’s stupid,” Shuey said. “Why do we need the whole neighborhood picking out lighter fluid? We’ll just get what we always get, and that’s it.”

“Okay,” Chava said slowly, unsure if she should do anything else. She snapped the baby’s car seat into the base and moved to her own seat. “It’ll just be us, then!” she said with false cheer of her own.

They met the Ehrmans in the lighter fluid aisle.

Shoshana looked away and tried to hurry her son, but Chava would have none of it. She and Shoshana were adults. They could have this conversation.

“Hey, Shoshana, how are you? Looks like we’re here on the same errand!”

Shoshana’s smile was pained.

Chava moved closer, so they were standing next to each other. Lowering her voice, she asked, “Can you explain all this to me? What happened this year?”

Shoshana didn’t answer, and Chava rushed in to fill the silence. “I mean, I’d heard that some people were making smaller fires, and it made sense, but there’s something going on with the dead-end fire, and no one told me about it.”

Shoshana twisted the strap of her purse, her eyes darting. Maybe it was unfair to put her on the spot like this, Chava thought. She and Shoshana had never had anything much to do with each other.

“Look,” she continued, resolving to make it easier for the poor woman. “It obviously has something to do with Shuey, but no one has brought up anything to me. I’m sure if I understood the issue, I could work with him to resolve it?”

“It’s not— I don’t think— it’s— it’s nothing. The dead-end fire was just getting too big. And the scheduling and logistics were, like, too much. So a couple of us decided to just do a small block thing. I’m sure the bonfire will be gorgeous. Hatzlachah to Shuey, he was made for this.” She flashed a quick smile and called her son to the next aisle.

Chava was left standing in the aisle, staring at shelves of charcoal. She turned to where Shuey was, saw the drooping of his shoulders, and she knew it was bad.

Shuey was made for this. It would be terrible if it was taken away from him. She could just envision the meltdown he’d have tomorrow night if his fire wasn’t well attended.

But this wasn’t about her, it was about her son. Being alienated by the neighborhood like this? Having no one show up at the fire? That would be so traumatic. Who knows what kind of long-term effect it would have on him? He had so much potential!

Chava wheeled her cart down the aisles, throwing in laundry detergent and diapers and tissues and cereal, and thought. Should she invite her sister? Chava had been telling Aliza about the bonfire for years, maybe she would come. Aliza knew how hard Shuey could be sometimes; she’d tried to help Chava manage over the years, with suggestions for charts and activities that could keep him going.

Or maybe she could tell Menachem or the girls to invite their classes? It was kind of a neighborhood pact not to do that, there were so many families already without the whole city converging on their bonfire. But this year was going to be different anyway, with all the little fires. Maybe that was the thing to do.

“NO”Aliza said.

“Ugh, I wish we lived closer.” Chava placed the shirt she’d just folded onto Mindy’s pile.

“It’s not only that, Chava.”

“What?”

“You know I love Shuey. And I want this to work out for him. But I don’t think our coming would do anything. He doesn’t want us, he wants the neighborhood.”

“Yeah. Anyway, he might get upset, like he thinks we’re babying him if you show up.” Chava folded a pair of tights and threw it across the room. “But I can’t think what to do for him! Tomorrow was going to be his big day. He’ll be so upset.” And she would have to deal with the aftermath.

“Moooooommmmmmmmy!” Chava heard Leah screaming from the other room. “Get Shuey away from here!”

Chava winced. “Look, I’d love to schmooze more, but I better run to the kids.” Shuey was taking this hard, she’d known he would. He was lashing out now because of his own pain. She couldn’t let Shuey take this further, and not just because he was taking it out on his siblings.

Because she knew — as everyone in the world knew — what happens to boys in pain. They just get into more trouble.

“You go away!” Shuey was saying when Chava walked into the den. “It’s not your room, I can do whatever I want.”

“What’s happening?”

“Ma! I’m trying to read, and Shuey is just bothering me. He’s sitting over my shoulder and reading my book out loud, and when I asked him nicely he ignored me and — uch, Shuey, you’re so mean! Stop it!” Leah swatted Shuey’s hand away from where he was dangling his tzitzis near her ear.

“Shuey, come here,” Chava said, her voice soft, almost pleading.

Shuey shrugged.

“Come on, Shuey. You have a big day tomorrow. I want you going to sleep now.”

“Oh yeah, big, big day,” Leah said. “Why aren’t you out there now, setting up?”

“It’s done!” Shuey screamed. “I did it myself, I don’t need anyone to help me, they just get in the way, doing it all wrong.”

Chava felt herself go still, heart pumping wildly.

“Yourself?” she breathed. “What about Shragi and Dovid?”

“They’re babies, okay! They don’t know what they’re doing, they only got picked because they go to Ohr Meir. They don’t know how to set anything up.”

“You’re so weird, Shuey, you—” Leah started, but Chava held up a hand.

“They didn’t show up?” she asked.

“They left in the middle. They said they don’t care, I could do it myself. And I did! It’s all done. I don’t need a bunch of babies helping me! They can go to the baby fires.”

Chava closed her eyes. This was it, the aftermath had already begun.

Chava’s brain raced as she shepherded everyone off to bed. Somehow this had escalated without her, and Shuey had managed to alienate everybody including the seventh graders. How? Why? And most important: How could she have prevented it?

She just smiled at Menachem when he asked her where the floss was, realizing only later that he hadn’t actually flossed. Help. That kid had more cavities than she had fingers and toes.

She stood in the hallway, staring at nothing, as Leah said good night to her, once, twice, three times, before shaking her head in disgust and walking into her room.

“Oh, good night, Leah! I love you, sleep well,” she finally responded. If it was Leah who was stupid enough to tell Shuey about the other fires, boy, would that girl hear about it.

She went down to sweep the floor and wipe the counters after the kids’ midnight snack, racking her brains for an idea. Should she call some mothers? She could handle the embarrassment if it meant Shuey wouldn’t have to face public humiliation. Or she could buy ices, rent a cotton candy machine, make this the biggest and best fire Trails End had ever seen. The boys would come despite themselves.

Especially now, when he was feeling so low, Shuey needed the fire. It was more crucial than ever that he feel important again. It would give him that chiyus that spilled over to the rest of his life. He’d ride on it for weeks, years, reliving that time when he had made the bonfire happen.

Or… the opposite. Because as high as he could go was as low as he could crash. And crashing, Chava knew, was dangerous.

Chava searched for the phone, finally finding it underneath the sweatshirt Leah had left on the couch. It was at times like these that Chava wondered if it was time to go back to the old wall phones. Imagine, a phone that stayed in one place! She was about to dial when Eliezer walked in.

“You think he’s too big to fail, that’s the problem,” Eliezer said from his perch at the kitchen sink. “You want to bail him out. You know how many people were more furious about the bailout than about the failure? Not the investors, of course. This is a lesson he needs to learn. Better now than later.”

“What are you saying?”

“It’s just a bonfire, now. Shuey’s done whatever he’s done, and if there’s a fallout, he’s the only one who will feel it. Another time, the stakes may be higher. Let it go, Chava. And if you’re right, and no one shows up, well, we’re his parents. We’re here. And we love him.”

The bonfire was a flop. People showed up, fine — one or two families who hadn’t heard about the smaller fires, the seventh graders who basically stood around watching as Shuey worked up a sweat trying to get the bonfire going. But there was no music, the boy Shuey had put in charge of that ended up at a neighbor, and nobody stayed. Leah took the baby to a friend’s shebang, and after about an hour, even Menachem and Mindy ran off to find friends in some backyard.

Two hours in, the fire was going strong, but only Shuey and Chava were there. Eliezer would be there later. Chava watched her son, staring listlessly into the flames, and her heart broke. She skewered a hot dog from where Shuey had set them up and walked over the fire to roast it. When it was ready, she handed it over.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing toward the fire and the empty street. The chalk line was unbroken.

“I wanted to do it myself,” he told her as he took it from her.

“And are you happy?”

Shuey shrugged and looked away. Chava swallowed, then leaned over and put her arms around him. Shuey squirmed.

“That must be really, really hard,” she said, and Shuey slumped, giving in to his tears.

They stood that way for a while, Chava not daring to break the silence. This was what Eliezer meant, then.

Too soon, it seemed, the spell was over. Shuey skewered some marshmallows and roasted them. Chava watched as he slowly blew out the fire on the marshmallows, and then walked to the street. Was he leaving?

But from the corner of her eye, Chava saw Shuey stop. She turned. Leah was standing in the street, baby carriage in front of her. How long had she been there? She didn’t want Leah — anyone — to see Shuey shamed like this. Forever and ever, he’d know that his sister had seen him at his lowest.

Except Shuey was walking toward his sister, a shaky smile on his face, and skewer in hand. Chava had to strain, but without music, she was able to hear her kids.

“I didn’t burn them, they’re just a little gray, how you like them,” Shuey said, holding out the olive branch.

Leah took the marshmallow and met his eye. “Thank you, Shuey. And the fire, it’s wow, gorgeous.”  

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 841)