“There are a few,” Rivky volunteers. “At least four or five RSVP’d, but we’re still waiting for more mothers. Chana is my sister-in-law.” She lays a proprietary hand on Chana’s arm. “It took five girls before we finally got Ari at Ohr Gershon.”

“Well, Mindy wanted to go to Ohr Gershon,” Chana reminds her. “Remember that day in second grade when she climbed onto the wrong bus? Somehow, she made it inside and all the way to Eliezer’s office in the mesivta building without anyone stopping her.” Mindy is 11 now and hates that story with Mommy, it’s so embarrassing! disdain, but Chana pulls it out whenever she’s in a crowd of strangers.

It always does the trick. “Why was she so determined to go to a yeshivah?” one of the women asks with interest. “Because of her uncle?”

Chana shakes her head. “Because she saw the boys get off the bus the day before with dollar bills.” The women laugh. “I had to explain to her how it works: the girls get an excess of doughnuts and cookies in school, and the boys get an unreasonable amount of money. It’s how it’s been since I was a kid a thousand years ago.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t be a day over 30,” the other first-grade mother says playfully.

Chana winks at her. “I like you.” Maybe she can just be one of those wisecracking, brilliant old ladies at this dinner. Forty-one is basically 80 to the other guests. “I’m Chana Hartman. My skincare trick is that I stay out of the sun at all times.”

“Fraidy Koenig,” the other woman says. Rivky looks absolutely thrilled, simultaneously smug and genuinely happy that Chana is making a friend. Chana arches her eyebrows at her and then returns to Fraidy, who is saying, “I spend all my time in the sun. It isn’t looking good for me. I’m a gym teacher.”

“I’m an accountant,” Chana offers. “It’s like being a gym teacher except that I’m herding numbers instead of students and it’s actually nothing like being a gym teacher.”

Fraidy wrinkles her nose. “No numbers for me. That’s my husband’s thing. He’s an actuary.” She snaps her fingers. “Wait, are we the math-education couples in reverse? Is your husband a rebbi at Ohr Gershon?”

Chana opens her mouth to respond, but Rivky cuts her off before the first word is out of her mouth. “No, Chana’s husband has an Amazon business. He was crazy busy selling masks a while ago.”

“That must’ve been very lucrative,” Fraidy says, but Chana isn’t listening anymore. She stares at Rivky, stricken at the ease with which she’d chimed in. Nothing that Rivky had said had been untrue, but it burns, somehow, how swiftly she’d jumped in. Chas v’shalom that anyone should know that Naftali is a bus driver. What will it look like here, at the principal’s house? What will all these new parents think of the school if the menahel’s brother drives the bus?

She makes an excuse and drifts away from the women. The room feels too hot suddenly, and the expectations of the women around her claustrophobic. She had been worried that she wouldn’t fit in because of her age, because of her dry humor or her clothes. She hadn’t thought about Naftali as a factor until Rivky had rushed in to make it clear exactly what a factor he might be.

The patio door in the kitchen is open halfway to let in more air, and Chana slides the screen door over and steps outside. It’s cool but not uncomfortable, though she wishes that she’d brought her coat with her. The stars are gleaming bright. A grey-streaked creature that she dearly hopes is a cat moves on the far end of the yard, racing away from her just as Fraidy would have with a little more information.

It only takes a few minutes before Rivky joins her, a scarf wrapped around her shoulders. “I think I’m going to have everyone sit soon,” she says. “If you’re ready to come back in.”

Chana twists around — why? she wants to cry out, but she already knows the morass of shame that traps them — and stares at Rivky.

“I thought you’d appreciate it,” Rivky says.

“Appreciate you pretending that my husband isn’t going to be driving some of those women’s sons to school next year?” Chana’s voice feels like acid, burning away at a relationship that has been strong since middle school. She can’t dilute it, not when it still scalds her. “Appreciate you hiding him away like a family secret?”

“Chana, your son is going to be in Ohr Gershon next year,” Rivky says reasonably. She’s always been the sensible one, the truth-teller Chana had appreciated even when she didn’t like her very much. “Naftali can’t be a bus driver then. Ari can’t be the bus driver’s son to his classmates. You have to know that.”

“It’s his job. I’m not ashamed of it.”

“Chana.” Rivky says it with a shake of her head, with the smile that says how could you not be? “Of course you are. Isn’t that why you were so nervous about coming here today?”

“No, that was about… my age… and…” She can’t think of more excuses, more proof that it isn’t about Naftali. “I’m not ashamed,” she says again, and it sounds weak even to her own ears.

“I’m ashamed,” Rivky says plainly. “I’m ashamed that Eliezer offered him the job in the first place. I don’t think it reflects well on Eliezer that this is where he put his brother, either. We’ve talked about it. There are other options. He can give Naftali other options. But after today…” She says it significantly, like something happened today. Chana wonders uneasily what she doesn’t know. “He needs to go back to school and train for something serious, Chana.”

It isn’t that simple. “He was never a student like Eliezer.”

“It’s a different time now,” Rivky says, confident in it. “This is my job, remember? He definitely had an undiagnosed learning disorder. It’s something we can deal with now. It’ll give him a better job. He’s stuck in a rut. You need to help him. If not for his sake, then for Ari’s. Imagine him being able to sit and learn with Ari one day.”

Chana looks at her with a new lump in her throat. She hasn’t thought about Ari learning, about their tiny, serious genius sitting down with Mishnayos in a few years and then Gemara, and with no one to help him get through it.

Rivky presses forward. “Imagine him being someone you can all be proud of.”

“We’re proud now,” Chana says, but it stings the back of her throat like rising tears, like the hopelessness that she’s been warding off for a long time. “There are other things in life that are important, and Naftali’s got them all.” He’s a good, patient man, the kind of person who notices anyone in need and doesn’t hesitate to help. He is full of love and life, and his job is just the thing he does, not the person he is.

“I’d better head back inside,” Rivky says, shivering. “I’ll save you a seat?”

Chana doesn’t answer. She doesn’t go back in, either. She ducks around the side of the house, tripping over an exposed root in the dark, and finds her car parked in front of Rivky’s house. She doesn’t want to go back inside, to pretend to fit in when she’s beginning to feel like she never will. Instead, she drives the 15 minutes back home and returns to her husband.

He’s sitting on the couch when she comes in. He is holding open one of the girls’ books, but his eyes are blank and he looks just as lost as he had when he’d first gotten home tonight.

“What happened?” Chana asks, and Naftali tells her about a conversation with Eliezer gone wrong, about the boys who’d overheard them, about rumors spreading like wildfire through the school about the Hartman brothers.

There is so much pain in his retelling, so much grief at the sidelong glances he’d gotten from the boys on the bus, at the hostile silence he’d gotten from the troublemaker he adores, and Chana aches for him. This isn’t a good time to talk to him about going back to school.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a bus driver,” she says.

“Maybe if my brother weren’t the menahel,” Naftali says quietly. “The pity is the worst part.” He shuts his eyes for a moment. “It’s like being a freshman again when Eliezer was a senior. The way each rebbe would look at me with so much hope… and then, within a week or two, they’d realize the truth. The same expression on their faces every time. I thought I was done with—” He stops, taking a long, slow breath. “I’ll never be done with that expression, will I?”

He turns to Chana, his eyes beseeching, as though she can somehow fix this tangled mess. This isn’t a good time to talk to him about going back to school. She knows that. But there is never going to be a good time.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says. Naftali looks toward her like a lifeline. “There are programs you can do — classes you can attend — I think you could find something else. Something more.”

The light in Naftali’s eyes dims. “You want me to go back to school?” He shakes his head. “You know what school was like for me. I told you.”

“I know,” she says, her voice calming. “I know. But—”

“I hated school.” Naftali’s voice rises. “I thought you… I thought you were okay with this. I thought you understood what school took out of me.”

Chana nods. “I see what this is taking out of you, too,” she says imploringly. “I see how tired you are. I keep thinking about—” Ari, but it’s cruel to bring him up now, to imply that there is shame lingering in her heart. “I just want you to have something more.”

“Something more?” Naftali shifts out of reach. The book in his hands falls to the floor with a loud bang, but neither of them moves. “I’m not cut out for something more. I’m not cut out for school.” There is grief glimmering in his eyes, defeat like Chana’s never seen before. “Why can’t I be enough for anyone?”

He stands abruptly, and Chana says his name. He doesn’t answer, walks away from her with long strides, his hands shaking, and he climbs upstairs without turning back.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 954)