“You were supposed to be busy with Tovi a little bit longer,” the boy says unapologetically, hiding four hot chremslach behind his back. “Then we were going to share them with her in the living room. That was the deal. But now she won’t get, because she didn’t keep you distracted long enough.”

“Excuse me?” Tovi’s voice jumps from sweet to shrill. “I distracted Savta for 30 seconds, by the clock! You had time to take eighty chremslach, not just eight!”

Leah hits them both lightly on the head with the spatula handle, and lets them go with their loot and a warning not to take any more. She can hear them in the living room, whispering and plotting. She resolves to stay focused, even if a whale comes flip-flopping into her kitchen.

Just as she’s taking out the next batch, smiling with satisfaction at their perfect golden-brownness, she hears her cell phone ringing in the living room.

“Beri, Mordechai, somebody!” she calls. “Bring me my phone, please!”

She’s quite sure this is another one of their ploys, but Beri comes in looking perfectly innocent, holding the phone out to her. Her friend Yocheved’s name is on the screen. Two seconds later they’re chatting away, a typical Chol Hamoed conversation, and Leah moves toward the sink to wash a few dishes. A moment later, she suddenly stops. She stares, stunned, at the empty platter. “I don’t believe it — they tricked me again!”

Yocheved can’t help laughing when she realizes that she was the unwitting decoy. “They’re a riot, those eineklach of yours. They asked me to call and keep you talking for a few minutes. I thought they were planning a surprise for you.”

The shrieks of delight from the living room must be filling the whole building. Leah goes to the doorway and sees them happily dividing the spoils — a son, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, and assorted grandchildren.

She loves them.

She’d invited the whole gang for a Chol Hamoed chremslach party. At this rate, there wouldn’t even be one left to serve at suppertime. But that doesn’t really bother her. Let them eat matzah and omelets.

Gedalya arrives. He must have just finished Minchah. She knows that light knock, those footsteps. “What’s going on here?” he asks, removing his shtreimel and putting it down on the table.

The kids, between mouthfuls of chremslach, try to explain the joke to him. But her Gedalya, for all his intellectual powers, doesn’t get it. In his view, it isn’t proper for children to steal anything from their grandmother. No, not even as a game. And it’s not proper for Dudi to encourage, aid, and abet them, instead of being the responsible adult in the room.

“I aided and abetted them, too,” Chaya informs him. “It was my idea to call Yocheved Beigel.”

“Lighten up a little, Gedalya!” says Dudi, trying to calm him down. “It’s just a game! Ima doesn’t mind, she was even enjoying it. Everyone was having fun until you walked in and burst our bubble.”

“Kibbud av v’eim isn’t a game,” says Gedalya. “If Ima says not to touch the chremslach, you don’t touch them, and that’s it.”

Chaya sighs. She opens the Hed HaChag and looks for something to read.

The children scatter, each finding some new amusement.

In the frying pan, another batch of chremslach sizzles cheerfully, unaffected by the general change in mood. Leah harvests them one by one, from her wooden spatula to the paper towel. She looks at the oily stain spreading out around them.

Gedalya sits down, facing Dudi. “We didn’t come into This World to fool around,” he says.

“Of course not. We came into This World to censor ads.”

“I’m being serious, Dudi,” Gedalaya says, irritated. “Don’t turn it into a joke.”

“And I’m being serious too. Maybe they have a job for me at HaMehadhed?”

“Dudi, is it really impossible to talk with you seriously? Can’t you do anything but joke?”

“What makes you think I can’t be serious? I’m listening. Let’s hear your mussar schmuess, I’m all ears.” Dudi cups his hands around his ears, the better to hear him with.

•••

Gedalya had always been good at preaching — even better than he was at sifting impurities out of the stories in the paper. Every time they heard about a tragic event or a troubling situation for Klal Yisrael, he would say to Dudi, “This is a wakeup call for cheshbon hanefesh,” and the unspoken hint was loud.

“Yeah, cheshbon hanefesh,” Dudi answered him on one of those occasions. “Only trouble is, you always want to do cheshbon hanefesh for me.”

Dudi remembers the machberet cheshbon, the arithmetic notebook he filled with homework exercises back in his cheder days. Rebbi Gross would give them reams of exercises to solve, and Gedalya, a young avreich at the time, would often find Dudi bent over his notebook and come to his rescue, filling the lines with precise, round, decisive figures.

The machberet cheshbon is long gone, and since then Dudi has learned much more sophisticated mathematics. Gedalya can’t help him with numerical analysis, infinitesimal calculus, or abstract algebra. But he’s always willing to help out with cheshbon hanefesh, Dudi thinks bitterly. Especially when no one asked him.

They step out to the porch, where the open air can hold all the fury that can’t be contained in the confines of the house. The upstairs neighbors probably enjoy all these dramatic performances broadcast free of charge.

Dudi’s gaze is fixed on his brother’s kapoteh. “Have you ever noticed what a talent you have for putting a damper on things, whenever people are having fun?” he asks rhetorically. “You won’t let people relax and have a laugh. We were having a good time in there, and you come in like a policeman and break it up. Look what you’re doing to your kids.”

“My children are growing up very well, baruch Hashem. They’re being raised to have good hashkafos and yiras Shamayim.”

“Really? Your daughter is suffering from anxiety, and you don’t even know it.”

“Which daughter?” Gedalya turns pale. That was a direct hit.

Dudi doesn’t care. He’s fed up. If Gedalya can do people’s introspection for them, so can he.

“The one you’re taking to America for surgery in two weeks,” he says bitingly. “She’s having nightmares — did you know that? She doesn’t even tell you about them, because you’ll just tell her to say Shema Yisrael and have bitachon.”

“Are you implying that there’s something wrong with Krias Shema or with emunah?” Gedalya’s hand strokes the doorpost. “Maybe you really shouldn’t be talking with my children. I’m sorry we agreed to come today.”

“Oh, please, I’m trying to explain to you that if you’re going to be so makpid on all the little details, you’ll never see the big picture. Do you know Tovi dreamed that they implanted a nose on her, instead of an ear? Tovi whispered it to Yaffa’le before. It was a big, swollen, red nose, she said. Even as a nose she wouldn’t want it, and for sure not as an ear.”

“It wasn’t a nose. It was a pompom.” Gedalya knows better than Dudi what’s going on in his daughter’s life, and he hastens to prove it. “Chaimke told me all about that dream.”

“No, it was a nose. She was so scared and ashamed of the dream, she didn’t even want to tell you the truth, so she made up that part about the pompom.”

“And when I was having tantrums about taking money from people, it wasn’t really about the money. It was just that I was terrified of the surgery,” she’d told Yaffa’le. “I’m so scared, it’s like I have this big, hairy black monster in my head, with evil eyes and hundreds of arms.”

“Fine, so I’m a terrible father. What is it you want?”

“Me? I don’t want anything,” Dudi says evenly. “Only for you to stop spoiling people’s fun all the time. If there’s a great game going on, and everybody’s into it, being robbers and spies and guards, don’t come along with your chumras and kill the whole thing.”

“Ribbono shel Olam!” Gedalya truly doesn’t understand. “My chumras? I carved kibbud av v’eim on the Luchos?” In the pocket of his kapoteh, his mobile phone vibrates. “Pelephone Bayit” is calling. What does Shifra want, and why isn’t she here yet?

“Gedalya, are you there? Please come to the urgent care clinic,” she says.

“What are you doing there?” he asks. As far as he knew, she had just left the party to shop for a few items in Geula.

“Just come, Gedalya.”

“They’re open now?”

“Yes. I’m here, and the doctor says she’ll wait 15 minutes for you. Take a taxi, all right? It’s urgent.”

Gedalya ties his gartel and puts on his shtreimel. He tells his mother he has to go. Leah doesn’t ask questions, just quickly packs him some chremslach. “We should hear besuros tovos,” she says. “The children will stay here for now, yes?”

The question is rhetorical. Chumi and Suri are sitting very happily on Yaffa’le’s lap, examining the necklace of big stones their aunt is wearing. Chaim’ke is horsing around with the Bernfeld kids, as if he were a baby instead of a 16-year-old bochur. Tovi is on the couch, conversing in whispers with Chaya and Dudi. Gedalya isn’t too pleased with the scene, but there isn’t much he can do about it right now. “Yes, Ima, thank you. A gutten moed.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 897)