Left unsaid was that he, Heshy Brucker, would be the one to provide everyone that they needed

The conversation went worse than Chaim had expected.

Gitty had always been a challenge for Shaindy, and the language was the least of it. When Heshy had called to tell them that he wanted to live in Eretz Yisrael forever — when you find your place, you just find you place, he laughed, and here he knew that he was home — Shaindy had been relieved.

She loved Heshy fiercely, of course, but she had never really gotten him — his big peyos and thick beard one day, close trim and cool haircut the next, the guitar lessons and chassidus-is-the-root-of-my-soul stage, and then the kannai phase, when he had censored their succah decorations and removed gedolim whose ideology he had trouble with.

Chaim found his youngest son entertaining. Learning was hard for Heshy, and the boy clearly didn’t have zitzfleish, so what should he do? Baruch Hashem, he was erlich and had wonderful middos.

Chaim enjoyed his son’s imagination, even if it sometimes got in the way. One day, Heshy had decided that Chaim’s study was messy and he rearranged all the seforim based on the historical period in which they had been written.

Heshy had been very proud, and presented the finished product to a surprised Chaim with a lecture about the holistic experience of learning Torah, feeling the authenticity of the chain from Har Sinai. Chaim had been irritated then, because he wanted the Ohr Somayach and Reb Chaim near the Rambam, and for him that was holistic, whatever that meant.

Authenticity became Heshy’s word, then, and when he left to go learn in Eretz Yisrael, he wanted to do it authentically, he informed them.

He wasn’t going to the Mir to speak English and eat meals at American couples who served oyster steaks from America, or to Brisk to try to speak Yiddish as if he’d been born in Kovno and feel compelled to learn how to walk, square his shoulders, and nod his head like a Brisker. That, he said, was worse than staying American, because it was even less authentic.

Okay, then, Shaindy said, her voice sounding panicky, what was he thinking of?

If Eitz Chaim was still around, Heshy said, that would have been his choice, but since it wasn’t, he wanted to go to Yeshivah Meah Shearim.

Shaindy hadn’t heard of it, which was a good thing, because then she couldn’t be embarrassed by it. A chassidus would have been hard for her — they were litvish people!— and a place like Tzfas would have made it impossible, but this had a nice ring to it.

For a few blessed days, even Shaindy was into “authentic,” telling Chaim how nice it was that Heshy found a yeshivah that felt right for him. She was already envisioning this as the end of the story, but of course it wasn’t the end: with Heshy it never was.