He wasn’t speaking to you, she tells herself firmly, shepherding her mind back to safe pasture — the apples, her compote.

She wasn’t that sort of mother. But these long months, a shiur here, a walk in the park there, some reading, some cooking, so much time for the mind to wander, it’s been making her think about (herself and) her children.

For you, Moshe, she murmurs to the apples. For Yocheved whom you love to spoil, for Chavi the kallah, for all the kinderlach.

There are big Yom Tov meals coming up, their overflowing Seder table; Moshe’s family, Rella’s family flanking her and Asher on all sides.

She holds them in mind, as she peels, slices, dices, soothed by the compote-making motions. She finds the biggest pot, usually reserved for chicken soup, puts in water, apples, sugar. Over the flame, she stirs and stirs, seeing herself knocking on the principal’s door, a letter in her bag — her resignation. Back then she’d felt like a woman making a preemptive move, respecting herself and her abilities, because the school was going all-digital, files on the system, that interactive whiteboard.

She’d had her own system that had worked for decades, and the school had honored that for a long time — until they couldn’t any longer. Plus, if she was honest with herself, all of it was starting to take a toll; she was hardly a spring chicken anymore.

The other teachers had protested her decision; the core of them who’d worked together for years were a family, thick as thieves. Recesses were for speaking about anything and everything. How many confidences had been shared in that staffroom?

But the principal, Bella Kornreich, hadn’t protested. Oh, she’d been suitably chagrined, saying things like it’s the end of an era, but doing nothing to stop Batya.

She hadn’t really thought about what would come afterward, after the goodbye balloons had burst, and the colorful tablecloth draped across the staffroom desks was whisked off. Party over.

The door is flung open, and Asher stands in the doorway looking puzzled. “Pesach cooking?”

“For the Seder, for Moshe’s family, Rella’s,” she says defensively.

“Moshe’s going to be a fresh mechutan. He’ll have his own eidem, you think he’ll still come to us for the Seder?” he muses.

The pressure is killing me, she hears in her son’s desperate low voice.

He doesn’t come to her when he’s in trouble. But who does he go to? Who’s Joe?

“Well, I’m just cooking,” she says tightly.

“Batya?” Asher’s voice is kind, concerned.

She doesn’t want to tell him about Moshe, what she overheard; doesn’t want to make any of it real. And maybe — probably — it’s nothing, just pre-wedding stress. Instead, she says, “You don’t understand. You have that new shiur and your two chavrusas and your fitness class. Your new lease on life.”

She doesn’t really begrudge him that, she who’s always had such a packed schedule, who was always so self-sufficient and okay.

The smell of sweet apples is suddenly cloying, nauseating, and she drops the spoon, turns off the flame, and leaves the kitchen.

“H

i, Ma, I’m running into a meeting, what can I—?”

“It’s nothing, I’ll call you another time.”

She scans the counters full of containers of kugel and soup. Another morning of cooking up a storm, though now, no one could fault her timing. On Purim, Rella had confirmed that she’d be hosting her in-laws, and Batya was anxious to know Moshe’s Pesach plans. Would his family come at all; would she even get to serve all this food?

But it’s silly asking him now; the wedding is on Wednesday.

She packs everything into the freezer — for who? for what? — feeling redundant and old. She wipes her cold hands, looking at them like someone else’s; their trees of veins. You can tell someone’s age from their hands.

But maybe not nails. She could still make them pretty for the wedding.

She grabs her coat and is out the door. Not to the place on the avenue. There will be a wait, and she’s not in the mood. She takes a longer walk several blocks out, to a quieter place she’d begun to frequent now that she has time. It’s not the best neighborhood, but they have good service, and it’s a nice day.

When she gets there — “Andrei’s,” that’s what it’s called — there’s just one person at the table at the back. It’s not the Korean woman she vaguely recalls from here; it’s an older woman in a maroon-knit sweater. Probably my age.

“Do you need help choosing?”

The woman reaches for a small bottle. “This is what most people from” —  She indicates with her head out the door, to the part of town Batya’s just come from — “take. It’s refined and  natural-looking, like you’re hardly doing this.”

Batya can’t help but laugh.

“I haven’t met you before. You are?”

“Rosa,” the woman says with a slight dip of the head.

“I’m Batya. You’re new here?”

“I’m just filling in for a few weeks for the other girl, Mi-Cha. This is my son’s place, Andrei’s,” note of pride in her voice. “When he needs, I like to help him out if I can.”

“Nice,” Batya says. “And for someone who’s here just a bit, you sure do know your clientele….”

Now she’s the one to incline her head toward the great beyond.

“I know your community,” Rosa says, “I used to work for someone from your community, Mr. Bleier.”

At that, Batya is patently aware of the woman guiding her fingers into the container of warm water; serving her, a member of your community; the divide solid as the table between them.

Rosa’s head’s bent in concentration. “It was good work, I’d get long breaks for Succos, for Passover.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t look at me like that, you embarrass me. I keep what I can. Back in Moscow, my grandmother, she would bake matzah.”

Batya tries to modulate her face. “I just didn’t…” she trails off.

“You people are good to your own…” Batya hears Rosa say, continuing where she’d left off.

She nods, then abruptly stops, registering Rosa’s subtext. Is she saying but not to others?

There’s an exuberant, “Hey, you!”  from the front of the store; the proprietor back-slapping someone who’s just come in.

“Must you really be so loud, Andrei?” Rosa calls.

“Mom, Mom,” Andrei says good naturedly, coming over to her. “Alex,” he indicates his friend, “say hi to my mom.”

Rosa nods, smiling warmly at Alex.

She turns back to Batya’s nails. “My Andrei,” she says; part exasperation, part fondness.

“Look, he’s from the young generation. They do things differently, and sometimes it’s hard to see, but I do like to be here with my boy; sometimes my grandchildren. They come here when Natalie stays late at her program. She’s studying to become a nurse.”

Batya can feel the other woman’s pride. Her nails are done now, and she fishes for her wallet in her purse.

It’s a quiet morning; there’s no one waiting for Rosa after her.

“Here you go, Mom,” she hears Andrei say, handing Rosa an oversized steaming mug.

“Just how I like it,” Rosa says, taking it from him and sitting herself on a couch in an alcove.

Batya goes to the front to pay as Rosa takes the first blissful sip. From across the salon, she smells the strength of the brew, something old-world with a hint of chocolate. She’s hungry herself suddenly. Not for a coffee; for the way that Andrei sits down near Rosa, how he gesticulates with the hand that isn’t clutching his own coffee, how she responds, how they put down their coffees to share a laugh.

She watches their camaraderie, the relevance the woman has in her son’s life, and it seems, at that moment, to call her own life into question.

Rosa smiles at her as she leaves through the back door with the rest of her coffee. In a way, she’s on her son’s dime now, Batya thinks, insinuated herself into his life; but look how good they are together, the good it’s doing her.

When she leaves the salon, she’s still pensive, not quite ready to go home.

There’s a small alley at the side of the building, and she can see the edge of Rosa’s red sweater. She follows it, not sure what she’s doing. Is it that she wants to ask Rosa about her son, her grandchildren; how it is to be part and parcel of their lives in the way that she is? Inane, but here she is, making her way down the alley. It’s cold and shadowy, lined with wet leaves and debris. At the end of it, Rosa sips her coffee and puffs on a cigarette.

“You?” Rosa says.

“Your Andrei, you’re so proud of him, so much a part of his life…” Batya blurts. Where is she going? Why is she saying this to a stranger? But maybe it’s easier with a stranger, and Rosa is nothing if not direct, she makes it easy.

“What about you, with your children?”

“Well, you know, good, good. For years and years, I worked, teaching high school, I never had the time to just sit and relax with my children. And we never got into the habit and now we still don’t sit together to talk, relax, drink coffee… Now they have their own lives, and they don’t need me. But what if now I finally want to…?”

Rosa looks at her. “You chose to be busy.”

“Maybe,” Batya nods miserably. “I didn’t think what would come after I left.”

“You chose to be so busy,” Rosa repeats. “And maybe you want to think: Why?”

Batya winces.

Just then a man walks out of one of the back doors. He’s so preoccupied he might not even have noticed her. But she recognizes him and freezes like a frame in a videotape.

Has he heard? What does he think of her talking like this to a stranger on her smoking break?

Her very stillness makes him look and he croaks out one syllable. “Ma?”

She’s frozen, mute. She feels Rosa’s stare.

“What—” he starts to say, but then his phone comes to life in his hands, and he looks down at it, swiping the screen with a sigh that holds the weariness of the world.

“You’ll have the money by…” He says into the phone as he walks quickly on, his urgent voice fading out, so weighted down by the caller, that he leaves his mother there.

Batya breathes.

Beside her Rosa says, “I’d check on him if he were my son. It’s never good when people are coming from Maurice Alfaro. Believe you me, he’s a shady, no-goodnick if there ever was one.”

S

he never does get to speak to Moshe. She’d tried right after leaving the alley, because what Rosa had said had frightened her. But Moshe had not picked up, and he hadn’t called back, and maybe she’d been a little relieved.

But now she’s here, in the wedding hall, in her gown and manicured nails and nice sheitel, the lines in her face hidden under makeup. And there he is; her Moshe posing with his beautiful family, all in peacock blue. Yocheved is transformed; she looks half her age. This couple… but then her son has always been a bessere mentsh. He’s the only one of their children who lives in town, who’s made it right here.

She follows the flowers from behind the kallah’s set, strung along the tables, hall turned into a fairyland. She bites her lip. It’s not that she doesn’t like the finer things; it’s her son’s pinched face as he strode off; this Maurice whoever he is….

“Ma!” Moshe says.

“Moshe. Mazel tov.”

He takes her in and all at once she can see Monday’s memory spring into his eyes.

She shakes her head. “Not now,” she whispers. Then she closes her eyes and wishes him all the brachos like only a mother can.

Halfway through the dancing she looks for a chair. One of Rella’s girls, Sari, sees her sitting.

“Bubby, come dance with us.”

Another couple of granddaughters materialize beside Sari and they start to dance around her. They’re being dutiful, wonderful; Batya hauls herself up.

The music changes and her granddaughters fly into a complicated step. She makes for the blessed edges of the circle. She never was a dancer.

“Batya, good to see you! Mazel tov to you.”

It’s Bella Kornreich, probably here for someone on the other side.

“We miss you at school…”

“How’s it going?” she asks, keeping her face impassive.

“Well, you know… it’s not the same without you, but baruch Hashem it’s going well.”

There’s something so smug and self-satisfied about her.

“Baruch Hashem,” Batya has to parrot, as if they aren’t discussing her utter dispensability.

From an inner circle, Rella passes by and holds her hand out for Batya. Behind her she hears Bella Kornreich start to yap with someone else.

I don’t need you, Bella Kornreich, Batya thinks.

She looks around the family circle she’s been pulled into. Rella, and Moshe’s wife, Yocheved, and her Libby who’s come in from Israel, and the grandchildren — teenagers prancing as if the world belongs to them.

The hole she feels, it’s not the school — she had her good run of it, years and years, it was time to go — it’s all that she didn’t cultivate with the precious people in her life. A hole she’s stepped over, walked around, for years, maybe scared of its depth, but suddenly she wants to fall into it.

I need you, all of you.

Rella’s little one is tugging at her mother’s dress and she has to step out of the circle. She’s overwhelmed by her brood in Lakewood; hardly comes to Brooklyn anymore. The others keep the circle going. Batya looks at Libby who has all the carefreeness of someone who’s on vacation and has left her family thousands of miles away. Her outfit’s outdated, and she dances unapologetically like she just couldn’t care. Good for her. The teenagers giggle with her. Bop-bop-clap, go the girls. Who are these people who should be at the core of her life? Who is she to them?

You chose to be busy, she hears in Rosa’s voice. But oh, what had she forfeited? Someone pushes her in to dance with Yocheved. Be here, here, she tells herself, falling into step with her daughter-in-law.

Be here, she tells her wandering mind hours later as she watches Moshe at the mitzvah tantz.

He looks almost illustrious, she thinks; the perfect suit, the fatherly expression.

But then, he always did know how to pull off an image. To be exactly who society wanted him to be.

And how well do you know him really?

Batya!

She wants to focus on the moment, the tefillos; her son davening for his daughter; she, the grandmother, davening for the both of them.

And yet —these months of retirement,  looming days and too little activity,  finding that her children had made a life without her —

She shakes her head. Through misty eyes she sees Moshe sway, the kallah sway. They are her generations; she is the matriarch of this family. But, but —

She looks down at her nails and thinks of another mom and son.

It’s not too late for her, is it?

“M

a?”

He hands her a tray with leftover garlic rolls.

“What do you want to do with this?”

She points to a spot in the loaded kitchen, where the small waitering crew they’d hired for the sheva brachos is washing dishes. “Put it down there.”

From the dining room comes the rumble of Maariv starting up, but Moshe leans against the doorjamb, making no move to leave.

“How’s the father of the bride doing?” she says; a sweet platitude to fill the space between them.

Said father doesn’t respond right away and it dawns on her, as he stands there, not quite looking at her, that it’s the first time all week that they’re together alone.

Oh, she’s seen him. Each night of sheva brachos, on Shabbos. But always there were others about — children, spouses. Now there’s just the wait-staff in the room, and they know how to blend into the background. Their conversation, the rush of the faucet, clink of dishes; it’s all backdrop for the moment that’s upon her when Moshe says —

“Ma, what was that?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

She looks her son in the eye. “I was just chatting to the manicurist, uh, Rosa…”

“The manicurist? That Russian woman? Out there? What could you be talking to her about? And near…”

“Well,” she says, “what were you doing there?”

He shakes his head. “No — nothing.”

“Rosa says it’s not nothing,” she says sharply. “Why don’t you talk to me?”

“I don’t know, Ma.” And suddenly, her son, the unflappable, has-it-together Moshe is shouting, his tone bitter. “What I know I can do is tell you the good things, the pretty things. Hi, Ma, I just made this deal, baruch Hashem. How are you, Moshe? Yeah, yeah things are good… How’s the family, the kids? Good, everyone good?”

He moves his head side to side, miming the conversation. A thousand past conversations.

Beside him, she’s blanching.

“But this, this isn’t pretty,” he says. “What’s happening now isn’t just hard, it’s killing me.”

She feels deadweight in her own heart, but her lips form dry words. “Tell me. I want to be there for you.”

“Really?” his tone is thick with cynicism.

Batya finds a strength. “Really,” she repeats.

“Where to start?” he says, like he still expects her to stop him, like he’s still giving her an out.

She doesn’t take it.

“You know, I’m used to being a certain way, appearing a certain way. People expect it of me, Yocheved expects it from me, it’s what she’s accustomed to. And not only her, Chavi, the other children, the mechutanim, society.” He spits the word out as if it’s bile. “I mean, out of the family I’m the only one who lives in town, who’s made it here. I was always going to be able to make nice weddings. And I was working up to it, I should’ve been able to handle it. But suddenly, things aren’t adding up, there’s a hole somewhere. I’ve put Jack on it, but he hasn’t come up with anything untoward, and now I’m thinking, can I even trust him, could it be him?  But that’s not for now. Look at me, I’m a sheine Yid, I’ve made all sorts of commitments. The mechutanim expect me to cover the majority of the wedding and support, everything someone in my position should be able to do, everything I’ve always said I would. And my wife… Listen, you saw me the other day. It got so bad that I thought about going to… Ach…”

He sighs. He looks old.

“How much does Yocheved know?”

“Not much.”

Behind them, the threesome of wait-staff keeps going, plate by clean plate.

She’s silent, not sure what to say. Moshe turns to head back to the dining room, and she suddenly sees that this is what he’s expecting — to just go.

She looks at her hands. Hands that never lie about age. At her nails. She can do this.

“Moshe,” she says to him, “I’m going to think, going to see what I can do to help. But please not that Maurice Alfaro. Rosa said…”

“Maurice Alfaro?” comes another voice. Asher’s.

Moshe shakes his head at his father, as Asher starts to babble, “I was looking for you, we’re almost done in there, but, but… don’t tell me, don’t even try to say…” A muscle throbs in his forehead.

He grips the table, and Batya notices how very white his knuckles are.

What a fool she is, thinking she could help. It was probably too late now. Rosa said something to her, but she’d done nothing, had let more than a week pass —

“You know what he can do? You know who he’s involved with? Ach, there are such stories with him. I can’t believe you got involved with him. And for what? For over-the-top luxus, shtusim, narishkeiten…”

“Asher,” she says, absolutely stricken. But her heart’s thrumming the bongo; if her even-keeled, not-a-bone-of-spite in him husband is like this, giving it over the head to Moshe, it can only mean one thing: real danger.

“Tatty,” Moshe says.

“You don’t know what these people, loan sharks like him, are capable of. Oyyy.”

“Tatty.”

Asher looks up, wild-eyed and frightened.

Moshe’s face is hard; impenetrable as glass. “I didn’t take a loan from him.”

T

wo women are working, heads bent — one’s hair is black as a raven, the other’s like dirty snow — when she returns to Andrei’s Hair and Nails.

Batya waits for the older one. When she lifts her head and notices her, it’s like snow melting.

Batya smiles back.

She sits herself in the chair in front of Rosa when it becomes available, and Rosa starts the electric file on her fingers to remove the gel nails.

Over the buzzing, Batya talks. “My son—”

“Dear G-d, he was coming from Maurice Alfaro that day.”

“Yes, but he didn’t actually take money from him, thank G-d. And my husband found someone to help him keep out of trouble with the likes of them.”

Rosa exhales.

She cares.

“He still owes a lot of money. What if…” she finds herself saying.

“If?” Rosa prompts.

“What if I could go into his business and help him see where the holes are. I know he’s having issues with his accountant, he said he doesn’t know if he can be trusted. And me, I’ve always had a thing for numbers, taught math for years, and, in the later years, accounting to the older grades. I think I really could.”

The thought’s been steeping like leaves in a tea since last night, Batya realizes. She doesn’t mean to sound so passionate, but it’s as though she’s tasting the idea and likes what she finds in the drink.

“Could you really help, if things are so bad that he went to a loan shark?”

“I don’t know. But I’m thinking that it’s what I could do. And I want to do something. The other day, you asked me why…”

Rosa nods, saving Batya from ending the sentence.

She points to Rosa’s coffee. Andrei had brought it over before, placing it tenderly near her.  “But I, I, don’t have what you do with my son.”

“You’re his mother. You have something your own way. Look, you can ask him. He might say no. He’s his own person with his own life.”

“I know that. What I don’t know sometimes is where I come in.”

“But you always do.” Rosa talks quietly, pensive. “You know, when we came over from the old country, I left my parents behind, and I never saw them again. I like to think I’m a privilege in my son’s life.”

Rosa talks about other things and Batya only half hears. She’s thinking whether she can do this, reach out. And if Moshe would take it from her.

“We’re done here,” Rosa says. “Good seeing you. Have a good Passover. Can’t believe it’s next week already.”

A good Pesach. Rella’s not coming. Moshe’s doing the Seder himself, though he’ll come for second days.

“And you,” she says automatically.

“Me? My Andrei is going to Disneyland for the long break, taking the kids on a special trip…”

Batya looks at her. Her whitish grey hair, those wise eyes, shoulders rounded by the old country and by the new, and still the confidence of her stance.

“How about?” she says, and there’s a buoyancy about her, as though she’s throwing herself to the wind, like the woman who’s going to call Moshe is a different woman. “How about you come for the Seder?”

She watches Rosa’s face; the snow melt all over again.

“I’d like that,” Rosa says.

“So would I.”

She dials as soon as she leaves the salon, before she can lose her nerve.

“Moshe?” she says.

“Ma.”

She finds herself in the side alley, for privacy. She notices the silver sign for Maurice Alfaro Inc. innocuous as anything, as though there wasn’t a serpent behind it. It gives her all the resolve she needs.

“Moshe, you said things weren’t adding up in the office…”

“Yeah, I had Jack run through things again and also Nicole, and still, something not right. I don’t know who I can trust… if I can trust anybody.”

This. She clears her throat, finds her voice.

“What if I could offer the services of someone who’s good with numbers…”

“Ma?”

“I mean I would, that is, if…”

The nameplate sparks in her eyes; she doesn’t know if it’s sun or moisture. In that dirty alley, she stands to her 65-year-old height — myself — seeing in the sign her own face, blurred but exultant.

“Ma,” he says again, “that would be, that would be—”  His voice is thick with the word he can’t find. Instead, he says. “Yes. When can you start?” Ff

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 938)