“But if you move there, you could live in a big apartment. Much bigger than what you could afford in Yerushalayim,” Nechami reminds her. She’s trying to scrub wax drippings from Havdalah off the top of the cupboard.

“I don’t need a big apartment. We have a sweet little apartment in Yerushalayim that works just fine. And we worked so hard painting it and everything!”

“Well, nobody’s forcing you to move.” Nechami fills a cup with boiling water and splashes it on the sticky candle wax. The water spreads out into little puddles, and she jumps back when it drips over the edge, heading straight for her toes. Meanwhile her little sister is making a speech about…

“…Rebbetzin Tzveig. Before she passed away, she said she’d never refused a request from her husband.”

“What?” Nechami missed a few words while she was bending down to wipe the floor. “How did Rebbetzin Tzveig get into this conversation?”

“I told you. And at her levayah, they said she always put her husband first, always did whatever he wanted. Always.”

“So at your levayah they won’t say that, what can I tell you.” Nechami chokes back laughter. “Or they’ll say, she always put her husband first, except for that one time early on when he suggested moving to Neve Tzinobarim.”

She imagines a small crowd gathered at the Shamgar Funeral Home, and someone giving a hesped in a sobbing, Yerushalmi-accented voice, listing the few occasions when the nifteres didn’t comply with her husband’s wishes. For some reason, she finds it amusing.

“No.” Chaya’s voice is choked, but defiant.

“Well, what do you want, then?”

“I want Moishe not to want to live here. Daven for me. This trip was his idea — daven that he shouldn’t end up telling me he wants to move here.” Her little sister’s voice is laced with urgency. “I want to stay in Yerushalayim. I can’t live in a place where all the neighbors notice every time I step out of the house and think it’s their business where I’m going. A place where the latest news flash is that you’re going out of town today. Even at the train station, when we got off to walk here, there was a couple that was staring at us, trying to figure out who we were coming to visit. I couldn’t survive here for a single day.”

An insistent call-waiting signal punctuates their conversation.

“Maybe you should answer that?” Nechami suggests.

She’s looking for a way out. At last, the paraffin stain is gone. No worries, a new one will take its place next week, when Shua, all aglow with the Motzaei Shabbos torch, will become oblivious to his surroundings again.

“It’s Moishe.” Chaya sounds so anxious. “He’s calling to say he wants to live here.”

“Oh, please. He just wants to head back to Yerushalayim now. And you’d better answer, ’cause if you don’t, they won’t be able to say at your levayah that you always took your husband’s calls immediately.”

Chaya presses the keys on her phone. But her hands are shaking, and she doesn’t realize that instead of switching over to Moishe, she’s just added him to a conference call. Nechami is still on the line.

“There’s a really nice apartment here for rent,” Nechami hears her brother-in-law, the masmid, say. “Do you feel like going to see it? Stam, just in case you’d ever be interested… you know, just as a possibility….”

“Of course,” says her sister, the one who proclaims that ad meah v’esrim, she will always do as her husband wishes.

Nechami is worried. She knows all too well that such uncompromising devotion comes at a heavy price. She feels a fierce urge to jump in, to say no, my dear brother-in-law, don’t take Chaya anywhere but back to her own apartment in Yerushalayim. She doesn’t want to move out of town!

But her good manners win, and she hangs up.

•••

Leah Silver is making granola cookies. A cranberry falls from the spoon to the counter. She collects it and returns it to the bowl.

As she assembles the ingredients, she thinks about Tovi, who’ll be flying abroad for her surgery on Sunday. They’ve been waiting for this for 12 years. She’s not quite sure what kind of tefillos she should be saying, but something in her wants to daven.

“Let the new ear catch hold,” she whispers, and bites her lip worriedly. “I don’t know how the procedure is done, exactly… but just let it catch hold, and let it function so Tovi will hear perfectly, and let it all go well, without any problems or complications, Ribbono shel Olam.”

The cookies will keep well in a sealed container. She’ll send them to Beit Shemesh Motzaei Shabbos, together with the whole-wheat crackers she’ll be making next, and the date pinwheels, so they should have plenty of nosh during their stay, in case they’re craving a taste of home.

She davens for Gedalya, her amazing, serious son, the one who brings her so much nachas. May he have all the strength he needs to support Tovi through the whole ordeal. And may the traveling go smoothly, so it doesn’t disrupt his learning schedule. And may he be able to get some work done, too… or at least not be worried about money.

She prays for Dudi.

“Let him see the light,” she whispers. “He should just see the light.”

Maybe spending a week with Gedalya will do him good. Maybe he’ll absorb some of that yiras Shamayim, that seriousness, that meticulousness in halachah. Maybe he’ll spend a little less time on that smartphone and that computer of his. Maybe he’ll even open a Gemara?

Her thoughts are dotted with bright spots of optimism, like cranberries in a cookie dough.

She prays for Yaffa’le, too. “Remember that she’s letting Dudi go away for a week, without any resentment or bitterness,” she reminds the Master of the Universe. “She works hard, too, at the advertising agency. And she’ll be left alone with their little girl. Avital isn’t the easiest — she’s not even three yet, and she’s already got opinions of her own.”

Leah remembers Nechami’s claim that it’s genetically impossible for any child of Dudi and Yaffa’le not to be opinionated.

In her small, old kitchen, Leah Silver turns her gaze to the window, looking for a patch of blue sky among the jutting building extensions that crowd her view. She finds one, and addresses her earnest commendation of her daughter-in-law to it.

“I’ll send a package of gutte zachen to her, too,” she decides.

Leah Silver doesn’t know that Yaffa’le isn’t planning to stay at home alone.

•••

Later that afternoon she calls Dudi, to check in on his travel plans and commend his wonderful wife for being so willing to stay alone.

“Actually,” Dudi says cautiously, “she’s not going to stay alone. She thought it would be a lot easier if she goes on a trip with some friends of hers. They’re renting a tzimmer near the beach.”

“That’s nice,” Leah says. “Maybe I can visit them there, near the beach, and bring them some nice homemade food. Where is it, up north?”

“No, more southward. Past Ashdod,” Dudi says, cautiously evasive, stepping carefully.

“Ah, beautiful,” Leah says. “”Beautiful that Yaffa’le realizes a vacation doesn’t have to be extravagant. A few days on a moshav in the south can also be very enjoyable.”

“Hmmm,” Dudi says. He brings the conversation to a close, and Leah goes to put in a load of laundry.

It’s only a few days later that her friend Ruchama tells her the truth: Yaffa’le is not at a moshav. She actually flew with Avital to Dahab, in the Sinai Peninsula.

Apparently the tzimmer that Yaffa’le rented is a cluster of huts on the beach. The hosts are Bedouins, and the guests are tourists from all over the world. And Leah’s pure little granddaughter is there, with all those self-indulgent, irresponsible friends of Yaffa’le’s, half of whom don’t have husbands yet, and the other half don’t anymore.

Rage burns and sputters in her bones. Why did Ruchama have to tell her the truth? Can’t she keep anything to herself?

But really, this is Dudi’s fault. Why didn’t he tell her the truth? He knew she would be upset; he kept it from her intentionally.

And she bursts into flames when she thinks of Yaffa’le, the gem her reckless son chose for himself. The irresponsibility of it will boggle her mind. Who takes a little girl and goes galivanting off with friends to a Bedouin camp, to spend a week in a primitive hut, lolling around in the sand on straw mats?

It all comes out before the flight, when she says goodbye to Dudi. He can tell she’s angry, but he tries to keep things light. “Think of it as a trip back to our ancestral roots, when we left Mitzrayim, Ima. A trip to Yam Suf, for inspiration and tefillah.”

“Yam Suf?” As far as she knows, the beaches of the Sinai Peninsula are on the Mediterranean, not the Red Sea. “Sinai is the continuation of the Gaza Strip, no?”

“Yes, but Dahab is on the other side. A little further down than Taba. It’s a beautiful, quiet place.” Then he hopes Ima won’t ask how he knows that — but he’ll hope in vain.

“How do you know?” Leah asks, sharp as ever. “Don’t tell me you’ve been there.”

“I have.” When you thought I was in Meron with friends.

Her throat constricts. “Dudi, I can’t tell you a thing, and I know I can’t make decisions for you and your wife. I just… I just daven for you both, that’s all.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 901)