The girls race into the house to see their cousins, and Rivi is left isolated in the middle of the kitchen, already sure that this meal is going to be slow torment. Suri is chopping vegetables for a salad, and Rivi knows that she’s heard every word of Rivi’s exchange with Atara. Great.

She tries. She really does. “Can I take care of the red onion?” she ventures, moving to stand beside Suri.

Suri gives her a sharp look. “I’m fine.”

“No, let me—” She reaches for it. Suri snatches it away.

“I don’t need your help for everything,” she says coolly, and Rivi stumbles back, unbalanced by the pointed comment. “By the way, I told Avi that we’ll dip into our savings to cover our mortgage. We’re fine.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Truth be told, Rivi was happy to help Ezra’s brother and her kids’ beloved cousins, regardless of her dislike for Suri. “We’ve had some rough times, too. When I was in law school, Ezra and I barely made rent some months. We had to count on family.” Ezra’s family, because Abba never had much except for that brief, strange summer after Rivi’s bas mitzvah. “It’s not… I’d like to pay it forward. Really.”

“Wow. How generous of you.” Suri’s voice is acid. “Would you like your thanks in a formal letter or should I just grovel right here?”

Rivi takes the onion, shoves it onto the cutting board, and starts slicing it into rings. Her jaw is locked together so tightly that a crowbar couldn’t part it. “I don’t want anything from you.”

“You want me to owe you. To forever know that you provided for me.”

“I’m not—”

“No.” Suri lays her knife down and turns, hard gray eyes glinting under her perfectly styled brown sheitel. “You want to play hero. To make sure that I always remember how you saved me. I might not have much right now,” she says, defiant, “but I do have self-respect.”

“This really wasn’t about you or me,” Rivi spits out. The onion is too thickly cut, too sloppy, and she can’t gather the presence of mind to make it more precise. Another thing of Suri’s that she’s ruined. “It was just between Ezra and Avi. Ezra wanted to help Avi.”

“Ezra loves helping people,” Suri agrees, and Rivi thinks that Suri might have thawed a tiny bit before she continues. “Did he make that kugel you just threw out?” It’s intensely judgmental, as though Rivi had done the wrong thing by bringing it, and the wrong thing by discarding it.

“No,” Rivi says, defensive. “I did. I do some of the cooking for Shabbos.”

“And Ezra does the rest?” Suri takes her onions, turns her knife sideways and slits them in half. Rivi is beginning to regret standing so close to Suri while they’re both holding knives. “You know, you’re so convinced that you’re so important. That you’re this big deal that we should all revere. And maybe Ezra buys it. I guess he doesn’t have a choice. The world revolves around Rivi, and us lesser mortals must stand and applaud.”

“What? When have I ever said anything that made you think that—? Suri, can’t we just move on from this?” A headache is building at her sinuses. Rivi squeezes her hand around her knife. “For our family’s sake. We can’t be like this forever. I came here tonight to try to make peace.”

“Oh, I thought you came here to poison Atara’s daughter,” Suri says, and she barks out a harsh little laugh. “Don’t act like you’re so invested in the family. Like you’re the one who’s trying. You put in minimal effort, then strut around as though you’ve done it all. Do you think we don’t know that Ma made you come here? That Ma was the one who asked us all to come? Because chas v’shalom that you’d ever make any real effort.”

Suri cuts pickles with savage irritation. “You didn’t come here to make peace. To apologize or reach out to any of us. You came here because it’s inconvenient that I’m upset, and you’d rather pretend that nothing ever happened than fix it.”

Maybe that’s true, but Rivi is long past feeling sorry about a slip of the tongue. She’s been punished enough, has endured enough of Suri’s obnoxious comments. So yes, she would prefer to sweep it under the rug. This is such a stupid, pointless fight, like they’re 15 and squabbling over high school drama.

“You know what?” Rivi sets her knife down. “You’re right. I don’t need to make any real effort.” She twists around and stalks from the room. “Shira! Blimi!” Atara looks up at her, her eyes dispassionately judgmental. “It’s time to go.”

“We just got here!” Shira protests. “I wanna have Kiddush!”

The men choose that moment, Rivi frozen near the door, to return from shul.

“Good Shabbos!” Ezra says cheerfully, but his smile fades as soon as he catches sight of Rivi’s face. “What’s going on?”

Rivi puts aside the fact that he’s still angry with her — everyone is angry with her — and forces a wan smile. “I’m not feeling well, actually. I’m thinking about heading home to lie down. But you enjoy the meal.”

She makes for the door in a rush, Ezra right behind her. “Rivi,” he says through his teeth. Rivi turns. Ezra’s eyes are flashing, his face a mask of frustration, and she wants to sob. This is a mess, and she’s….

She’s not sorry about Suri, who’s dragging out this stupid conflict for weeks. She’s not even sorry about Boyd, because she has the right to make her own decisions about her workload. But she’s sorry for this, for the way that her gentle, eternally selfless husband stands opposite her with something hard and unhappy in his stare, and she thinks, I’ve ruined you. I’ve taken something good and I’ve ruined it.

She blinks away wetness in her eyes before it dares to become tears. “I would really appreciate it if you stayed,” Ezra says, his voice tense.

And there is no other answer, not when her marriage feels like it’s wobbling on stilts, dragging out in opposite directions and on the verge of crashing painfully to the ground. “Okay,” she says, her voice small, and she follows him inside, subdued.

She is quiet, defeated, and Suri and Atara are a united front. They murmur to each other during Shalom Aleichem while the men sing, chatter about some shared Pilates class as they head to the kitchen to wash, and Rivi is a ghost, floating indistinctly somewhere above the chair beside Ezra. Even her 13-year-old, Meir, must notice her nebulous presence because he looks at her with a flash of uncertainty before he’s distracted by a fight between two of Suri’s boys over their seats.

It is a relief to sit dully after washing, to eat challah and spoon on garlic dip and stay silent, silent. It is more challenging when the soup course begins and she is obligated, by dint of her gender and status as a guest, to slink into the kitchen to offer her assistance.

Atara only says, “Suri, you find out what everyone wants. Rivi can bring out the bowls,” as though she can only be trusted with that. Rivi takes bowls in, doing her best to ignore their conversation as it drifts to a Mommy and Me class at the gym.

“It’s such a great experience,” Suri gushes. “I really feel like I’ve been bonding with Simcha. It’s so hard to give him that quality time without it.”

“At my parenting class, they say that each kid needs at least one hour a week. Like, a full hour of undivided attention,” Atara informs her. She finishes ladling out the last bowl, passes it to Rivi, and moves into the dining room with her. “They just want to see that you can put them ahead of all distractions, you know? Even if it’s just for an hour.”

“Oh, for sure. Wednesday mornings, I take Yeshaya out for muffins and cocoa before school. It’s so important.” Suri turns to Rivi, her eyes challenging. “How do you do it, Rivi? You have so little time.”

Rivi is floating, is a faint being in an ether plane, is not going to allow herself to be pulled down to Earth.

“Right, Rivi, it must be so tough for you,” Atara says breezily. “Kids crave a mother’s love, you know?”

Rivi hasn’t had a mother’s love since she was a toddler, but she drifts in the wind, allows the words to blow past her. Atara gestures at her own children, flicking soup at Suri’s kids. Rivi takes pride from her distant vantage point in noting that Meir and Shimmy aren’t joining in, only sedately eating while Shira and Blimi giggle.

“I’m sure Ezra does his best.” Suri sounds smug, and it’s like a needle in the drifting balloon that is Rivi right now, and pops it so violently that she is too loud, too aggressive when she responds.

“You’re the last person I’d take parenting advice from,” Rivi snarls, gesturing at Suri’s kids. They fall silent, wide-eyed, and Meir looks alarmed. Ezra shakes his head, but Rivi is so tired of stopping the words, of dissociating, of trailing after Suri and smiling through her insults. “But I’m sure your Mommy and Me class is fabulous. Just a whole bunch of women schmoozing while pretending that they’re there for their kids.”

Suri gasps. Avi clears his throat. Rivi is on solid ground again, incandescently furious and whole, and she says, mock-sweetly, “Maybe I’ll join sometime.”

Then she storms out of the house. She stands on the porch, breathing hard, and tries to calculate if she can bentsh while her seat is in view through the window. She needs out, to escape this miserable place—

“Rivi!” Ezra is behind her, and he looks just as angry as she feels. “Rivi, can’t we just have one meal without you provoking her?”

“I provoked her?!” Rivi says disbelievingly. “You heard the way they talked to me. It’s all the time.” She clenches her fists, and she turns on him, unwilling to make peace again. “And you could have my back, you know. You could say something when they pile on the insults.”

Ezra’s light eyes are dark with frustration, pits of blackness in the night. “I did have your back. You think Ma doesn’t talk to me about… I defend you all the time! I covered for you after you completely lost it at the getaway, I backed you up when you were wrong, but there’s only so much I can do when you just don’t stop. When you can’t make it through a single meal with Suri without you blowing up at her.”

Rivi bristles at the unfairness of it all. “You didn’t hear how she was speaking to me before you got here. She’s looking for reasons to get me worked up. She wants this.” Nothing makes Suri happier than seeing Rivi coming apart at the seams. Nothing makes her feel more justified.

Ezra just stares at her, his face unconvinced. “You’re a good lawyer,” he says, and it sounds like a condemnation from him right now. “I know that you can keep your cool in the courtroom just fine. So why can’t you manage it with Suri?”

He waits. He’s a rebbi, and he can wait out reluctant boys until they blurt out honest responses. But Rivi is cold and shivering and lost, and she has no answer for him.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 919)