• ••

First some pudding. A layer of crème pâtissier. Then a layer of fruit, prettily arranged, encased in clear gelatin.

Yaffa’le’s spirit is rising. She’ll make him a cake, a fabulous cake. She’ll write something on it — a pasuk, or a brachah.

“I’m making a cake in honor of my husband’s shiur,” she says to herself elegantly, with a refined smile.

She pictures Dudi’s family. You see? It’s my zechus — that’s right, I’m the one who convinced him to schedule a proper learning seder. You hear that, shvigger?

In the baking supplies shop, she searches the shelves for clear gelatin. She doesn’t see it anywhere. There’s only one person working, and she’s busy at the checkout counter with a long line of customers. Yaffa’le takes out her phone, and a bit timidly, she dials her sister-in-law Shifra, who’s sure to know every corner of this shop.

“Go to the aisle with the cookie cutters,” Shifra guides her. “There’s a little nook behind it with shelves, and you’ll find all the different gelatins there. And by the way, I get a five percent discount there. You can use it, just put the purchase on my club card.”

To Yaffa’le’s disappointment, she doesn’t get a chance to casually slip in the fact that Dudi is starting a daily Gemara shiur. Not just a Daf Yomi shiur in the neighborhood shul, but real in-depth learning with a chavrusa. Somebody here needs to start appreciating Dudi. And her. It’s about time they realized they’re not just a pair of revelers with no values.

“Somebody here’s getting excited,” Moriah teases her in an online chat. For the past hour, Yaffa’le has been sending her progress reports on all the preparations for the grand baking project.

“Don’t forget to send your mother-in-law a picture of the cake!” her friend Chani texts her, with assorted smileys.

“The only way I can send her anything is by carrier pigeon,” Yaffa informs them.

Browsing among the shelves, she inspects a colored rolling pin with different-sized disks to mount on the handles, producing a sheet of dough exactly the desired thickness. A nice toy, price tag too high.

“Now we’ll go home,” she explains to Avital. “We’re going to bake a cake. A beautiful cake for Abba, because he’s going to learn Torah. Did you learn the song about Torah in gan?” And you can stop giving me your dirty looks, shvigger.

Arriving home, they open the door with cold hands. Yaffa’le turns the heating on before they even take off their coats. A minute later, a ringtone fills the apartment. Who’d be calling on the landline? It’s Shifra. Yaffa’le has noticed that her sister-in-law seems to have placed a quiet, insistent ban on her mobile phone. On the rare occasions when she calls, usually just to convey some technical information, she always calls their home number.

“If you’d like, I can send you some real vanilla bean paste,” Shifra offers. “For the crème pâtissier.”

“Oh, that would be great. Thanks!” Yaffa’le smiles into the receiver. It feels good to be so simple and down to earth, two sisters-in-law who live in the same town, discussing a cake one of them is making.

When Dudi comes home, the base layer of dough is baked and spread with the vanilla cream.

“Something smells good,” he says.

“Doesn’t it?” Yaffa’le boasts. She cuts orange and clementine sections into small slices and arranges them symmetrically over the cream.

“A cake? What’s the occasion?”

“Your new Gemara shiur,” she says proudly. “Who’s your chavrusa, by the way?”

Maybe there’s no particular reason why he doesn’t answer. Maybe he just didn’t hear her because he went to hang up his coat. She has no misgivings, no suspicions, as she continues arranging the fruit atop the rich cream. She stops in the middle to snap a picture. She sends it to her friends under the heading, “Progress!”

• ••

“Beigel? Your mother’s friend’s son who ran away to Germany?” She looks at him in disbelief.

“That’s the one.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“No. Just no.”

Leftover bits of citrus fruit are oozing juice onto the counter. She feels like the village idiot. So naïve. Here she is, shopping and planning and telling the whole world about his new shiur. And all that time, Dudi’s plan was to get friendly with that… that Beigel? To bring him here, to their house? Or to go to him? Every day?

“You don’t want me to learn a little Gemara?”

She feels a little wave of rage within her rising, cresting, sweeping the sand and crashing on the beach.

“Of course I want you to learn! Don’t change the subject!”

“Well, I want to learn!” he insists.

“Not with him!”

She looks at the beautiful cake she’s prepared. Bitterness fills her. Her shvigger should only be well. “Your mother had to pick you to set up with that fellow. Why not Shua, or Gedalya?”

“She did try to set him up with Shua. But he said no.”

“And you’re going to say no, too.”

“I’m saying yes. And anyway, my mother didn’t set me up with him. I contacted him myself.”

They’re on the brink of another round of fruitless arguing. Dudi is baffled by what he calls her “sudden attack of holiness.” Yaffa’le explains that it’s not an attack and it’s not sudden, it’s just called having basic boundaries. There’s a limit!

“What, you’re afraid he’s going to destroy my innocence?” he taunts her. “That I’ll pick up foreign ideas from him? Do you think I don’t know about the big world out there?”

She doesn’t respond.

“I made the choice to be where I am,” Dudi says, eyes flashing. “Even though my family has no appreciation for me at all. They don’t realize I have principles. And red lines I won’t cross. I’m where I choose to be, and no Raphael Beigel can drag me down.”

“That’s… not true.” The air between them shudders. “Friends pull us in all directions. And Raphael is… he’s really problematic. He doesn’t believe in Torah at all. We both know that. His mother might not realize just how far gone he is. Your mother for sure doesn’t.”

Once, when they were a few years younger, just getting to know each other, and much more excited about life, Dudi had given her a scientific demonstration. From a third-floor balcony, he’d dropped coins and balls of paper to the ground. They’d watched them fall, and he’d explained to her about velocity and acceleration. The longer an object was in free fall, he’d told her, the more speed it picked up. She’d watched with sparkling eyes, and listened as he described a hundred-story skyscraper and threw imaginary objects from the top floor. She’d imagined a home.

Now she thinks of those crumpled balls of paper in free fall, and how they picked up speed before they hit the ground. She won’t let this happen to her husband.

“I’m worried about you, Dudi,” she says. There is none of the usual cynicism in her voice. “I’m worried about us. Please. For me. For Avital. Call off this chavrusa. Please.”

• ••

“But you already made the cake,” he says to her afterwards, when the chicken soup is simmering on the fire, the potato kugel is baking in the oven, and the early Shabbos of midwinter is about to spread its wings. “You’ve made a cake in honor of my chavrusa. What will we do with it?”

“We’ll eat it, of course,” she says. “In honor of our home, and our boundaries. And even if nobody appreciates us, at least we’ll enjoy something delicious.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 879)