“Who needs company the third day? And she’s your friend, not mine. I don’t want anyone examining my third-day pimples! And we’re using plastic”

You are cordially invited to our home on Shabbos afternoon

for the Sixth Meal of the Three-Day

Yom Tov….

Bring your kids your appetites

and your leftovers!

Women only 😉

Shabbos October 14th

12 p.m.

39 Lakeview Road

Looking forward to greeting you!

“We’re using plastic.”

I heard Shaindy’s voice from across the kitchen and waved her away. Over the phone Esti was still talking. “I love you Libby seriously ” she was saying. “And the e-mail invite was adorable! My kids were so excited they kept pushing to see it again on my phone — wait where did Yanky go with my phone? Hold on I’m on the landline now. Need to find that kid last time he played with my Galaxy he sent crazy text messages to my boss—”

It was early Wednesday morning. My parents had just flown out to Chicago to be with my sister Dena. She’d called last night panicked to let us know she was in labor for real this time. Dena had phoned with the exact same story before Rosh Hashanah and before the first days of Succos; there’s something about the prospect of three days without cell phone service that gives everyone contractions even if they’re not expecting.

But when my brother-in-law got on the phone to tell us they were en route to Rush University Medical Center with Dena screeching in the background that she is not having her mother-in-law do Lamaze with her and she needs Mommy to come right now my frenzied parents booked tickets that hour and took a 6 a.m. flight out leaving Shaindy and I back home. My aunt had invited us for the Yom Tov meals which we’d accepted.

“But I’m not leaving the house the third day ” Shaindy had insisted. “There’s only so much dry shampoo can do. I’m hibernating tell her.” I’d agreed; Shabbos we’d do ourselves. Then the thought of being cooped up with my 19-year-old sister for yet another day started giving me heart palpitations and I impulsively sent an invite for the day meal to Esti a married friend who lived a block away and was drowning with her baby and three other kids under age six; our small community had an eiruv making these arrangements easier.

“Who needs company the third day?” Shaindy was hissing furiously now. “And she’s your friend not mine. I don’t want anyone examining my third-day pimples! And we’re using plastic.”

“Esti’s not like that ” I reassured her waiting for my friend to get back on the line. “And come on be nice. She’s going stir-crazy with the kids the whole Succos.” I did feel bad. Her husband went to Uman for Rosh Hashanah and got stuck there the entire Tishrei because of some passport issue her parents went to Florida for the second days and her mother-in-law invited her to come without her two-year-old if possible or to strap him to a chair.

Esti came back on the line. “So yes we’d love to come! I’m going crazy with the kids especially Yanky…. It’s bad to say this out loud you know but by the time Shabbos comes around on that third day I’m ready to throw them out the win— okay I’m not saying it out loud. I love you for real. I’m totally looking forward!”

“So are we ” I said grandly turning my back on Shaindy who was shaking her head furiously and making wild hand motions.

“We’re using plastic ” she repeated stubbornly.

Nine hours later, we were ready for the three-day Yom Tov. We were showered, dressed, our hair blown and makeup done to perfection; the hot water urn was set, and back issues of every Jewish magazine published from 1994 onward were stacked halfway to the living-room ceiling.

Shaindy had already given her complete analysis and criticism of Hinda’s diaper-changing workshop scam, Shalva’s first-date phobia cured by a potion made from grape leaves, and Tzvi’s wild attempt to join the Korean army, as though the characters piled in our home were actual houseguests, but we still had the other half of the stack to read.

“You spoke with Mommy and Tatty?” Shaindy asked as we headed to my aunt’s for the Shemini Atzeres night meal.

“Yeah, no updates. Dena’s admitted to the hospital…. There’s a bikur cholim apartment nearby, they’ll play it by ear.”

Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah came and went, leading right into Friday-afternoon Shabbos prep in a frenzy of cholent beans, fish pots, and spray shampoo.

And then came the sixth meal.

“Hi, is this where the Third Day meal is?”

It was a quarter to twelve, Shabbos morning, and Shaindy and I had just put the finishing touches on the dining-room table, set for six. When the knock on the door sounded and I saw a woman I didn’t recognize proffering a tray of — was that tzimmes? — I was completely taken aback.

The woman looked eager, and a trail of five kids crowded into our porch succah. Next to her, a blonde woman gazed at me calmly; she looked fresh, as though it weren’t the third day of a Three-Day affair.

Ugh. I hate those people.

“Um, no,” I said. The blonde standing beside her — she looked like Ivanka Trump, actually — remained expressionless. I touched my ponytail self-consciously.

“Oh.” She looked disappointed, and the blonde turned away. “Maybe I have the wrong address? Let me check.”

They backed off, and I closed the door.

Five minutes later, Esti bounded into the room with her brood.

“Hey, good Shabbos!” she called. “This is great! I brought some leftover schnitzel, anyway it’s the only thing Yanky eats, where should I put it?”

“On plastic.” Shaindy entered the room, her hair tied back. “We’re using plastic only. Plastic plates, plastic forks, plastic knives, plastic tablecloths—”

“Okay, we got the point,” I told her. “So, who’s making Kiddush — whoa!”

Frenzied knocking interrupted us and the door flew open. A woman barged in, holding a 9x13 pan, followed by eight kids dressed in all-matching outfits. “Thank you so much!” the woman gushed. “This was really so, so sweet of you! I mean, I don’t even know who you are!” She dumped the pan into my hands, and I gaped at her. Who was this person? “And here, I brought my leftovers, it’s my grandmother’s special recipe for fried-onion tzimmes, it’s really quite tasty, nobody ever touches it—”

Another woman rushed in. “I brought broccoli salad!” the new arrival exclaimed, plunking the bowl atop the tzimmes pan. I looked inside. Wilted, two-day old broccoli cuts and purple onions stared back at me, swimming in mayonnaise, the salad overtaken by raisins that — I peered closer — had challah pieces attached? What kind of recipe called for bread—

“You have to wash on it!” the woman was saying. “My kids refuse to eat the raisins from the challah and I hate throwing food out, such a waste, also, I brought some tzimmes—”

“Um, who are you?” I asked, dumbfounded. “And why did you bring—”

“I’m here for the Third-Day meal! I got the invite! Communal meal, bring your leftovers! Such a lovely idea!”

The Third-Day meal? Invite?

Leftovers?

What is going on here?

“Esti!” the first woman squealed, shooting forward to catch my friend in an embrace.

“You know these people?” Shaindy demanded, as the women left to the dining room.

Esti looked flabbergasted. “They live on my block! Both! But why did they… how did they—”

“Hi, is this where the Third-Day meal is?” A woman with a face full of makeup peeked through the doorway, and Shaindy gaped at her, then bolted outside. “Oh, hi! Esti!”

“My e-mail got hacked!” Esti said frantically, her face white. “I promise, I wouldn’t have forwarded it over! It was a mistake! This is crazy!”

Shaindy came back inside. “This isn’t crazy; this is a disaster! There are like 20 people streaming down the avenue!”

“Yanky! He must have posted your e-mail to my block chat!” Her eyes widened. “I’m so sorry! I’m so, so—”

“Hello, hello! I’m Ella Kornitzer!” A woman in her fifties wearing a huge floppy hat over her sheitel pushed into our foyer, holding a bowl. Another woman, considerably younger, stood behind them. “Such a great idea! Here, I brought you—”

“Please not tzimmes!” Shaindy moaned.

“— fish eyeballs.” She started uncovering the foil, but Shaindy let out a shriek and pushed her hand down. “Plus, a special surprise for the kids!” She pulled a black garbage bag from behind her and beamed.

“Amazing,” I stammered, looking up. The woman behind her blew me a kiss.

“My mother-in-law,” she mouthed. “Thank you!” She backed up into the yard and disappeared.

“I’m so sorry!” Esti whispered, panicked, as Mrs. Fried-Onion Tzimmes tiptoed up.

“Listen,” she whispered. “You have a back door I can sneak out of? Benny’s fine now in the living room, but best if he doesn’t see me leave….”

“Wait — you’re leaving your kids here?”

“My husband, he came through the back. Do you mind?” She smiled brightly and disappeared down the hallway.

“Holopchkes!” A woman wearing a housecoat and oven warmers barged through the door. “Made with cinnamon and ginger, hot off the blech, cabbage part only!” She deposited a massive pan on the table and dribbles of tomato sauce sloshed over the sides, staining the white—

“We were supposed to use plast—” Shaindy stopped abruptly, eyes widening, as a stream of women and kids filed through our succah porch, chatting excitedly, lugging pans, bowls, baggies, and 9x13s of their Yom Tov leftovers. “I’m going to cry.” She pulled me frantically into the kitchen. “What are we gonna do?”

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and exhaled. “We’ll serve food. We’ll kick them out. We’ll hire an entire cleaning agency Motzaei Shabbos.” I opened my eyes. “And then we’ll cry.” I marched back into the living room, now hijacked by strangers.

Shaindy followed me. “And we’ll use plast — omigosh.” She yanked me back into the kitchen. “The married girl who just walked in with the tzimmes!” she whispered frantically. “No, the other one! I was just redt to her brother.” She covered her eyes. “Get her out of here! This is gross! I look gross! I’m never getting married! My face! My hair!”

She reached automatically for her greasy ponytail, as Esti and I screeched simultaneously, “Don’t touch it!”

I walked into the dining room to check the sister out. And froze.

Ayala Rosen was sitting at the table, between a woman who looked like she’d cemented makeup on with a steamroller and the Ivanka look-alike; I guess she’d found her way back.

I’d gone to school with Ayala, but hadn’t spoken to her since graduation, years ago. I didn’t have much to do with her in high school, either; she was part of that crowd of girls I definitively did not belong to. Wealthy home, fabulous clothes, sleek hair, super-assured persona. It wasn’t even that I was the average nebach blah-nik of the class, but Ayala was the type whose hair didn’t get wet even if it rained.

I remember how we’d both been dance heads, way back in the day. We did the choreography together, everything was perfect, and we had this opening scene, this complicated set of cartwheels meant to symbolize the power of tefillah — don’t ask — and we did one last practice run, and someone had just waxed the stage floor, and we both went flying. Okay, so two girls, two casualties, right? Well, this is what happened: I tore a ligament, sprained an ankle, knocked over a bucket of paint left over from scenery with my flailing arm and ended up with green streaks all over my face that took weeks to wash out. And Ayala? Ayala landed flat on her stomach and bounded up a second later.

So of course, on the third day of a Three-Day Yom Tov, Ayala looked perfect. As always.

I’m going to brech.

“Ayala Rosen is here!” I wheeled back into the kitchen. “This is sick! I look gross! My hair—”

“Don’t touch it!” Esti and Shaindy shrieked.

We stared at each other in horror.

“And she looks perfect.” I shook my head despairingly. “Why am I the only one who looks gross on the third day? Seriously, she looks perfect, she’s sitting next to an Ivanka doppelgהnger, and I look like I need a five-day shower—”

“Okay, honestly, you both look okay,” Esti said finally. “Relatively speaking. But if it makes you more comfortable…”

“Good Shabbos!” I announced, the feel of my mother’s snood foreign on my hair. “Women in the kitchen, man in the dining room! Or rather, women in the kitchen and dining room, man on the back porch! Grape juice for Kiddush is on its way.”

“And we’re using plastic!” Shaindy chimed in, snood pulled over her head.

I returned to the kitchen, slumping against the wall. “Right.”

Shaindy looked at me critically. “Your greasy roots are showing,” she informed me. “I don’t know what a tefach is, but maybe bring your snood down over your eyebrows anyway.”

And the meal began.

Shaindy, Esti, and I rushed between the kitchen and dining room, dispensing disposable plates, cups, cutlery, and napkins, sticking spoons and forks into communal dishes — we ended up with seven flavors of tzimmes — and serving whatever drinks we could find. The salmon I’d cooked up for Shabbos was sliced into mini hors d’oeuvres, combined with leftover sliced carrots from someone’s gefilte fish; Esti had promptly dumped the fish eyeballs. I cut up eggs, adding extra onions for volume since I’d only cooked up four hard-boiled eggs, and went to the cabinet to find another plastic plate to serve the mush on.

Oh, shoot. We didn’t have any more plastic plates! I searched the cabinet again, frantic, finally giving up and settling on Corelle.

Shaindy entered with a stack of fish leftovers, snood lowered even farther down. “This is insane!” She broke off, eyes narrowing. “Wait. Stop right there. Why are you using dishes?”

“We ran out of plastic.”

“Are you crazy?” Shaindy hissed. “Let them share! Or—” She grabbed a box of precut foil lying on the counter. “They can use aluminum foil! And she—” she gave a violent shake of her head in the direction of the dining room — “she can eat off the floor.”

“Good idea,” I said, yanking out two pieces of foil and spooning the egg salad mush inside. Oh, gross. I placed the foil into the bowl — hopefully no one would shift it around, so the bowl would remain clean — and carried it into the dining room, joining the frenzy of activity. Where was Ayala? I didn’t see her, but the rest of the women were in the midst of lively conversation.

“Do you have a straw?” Cement Blush lady was asking Esti. “Or — well, it’s the third day, I guess it’s okay if my lipstick comes off, right?”

“How’d it stay on in the first place?” the woman on the right asked curiously. “Mine comes off, whatever I do, after a few hours, max. I layer, I blend, and I sleep straight on my back. And still it comes off.”

“I sleep standing up.” As Cement Blush lady’s lips moved, ever so slightly, ivory-colored dust sprinkled down from the area around her mouth. “I first prime my skin with Super Glue, and after the foundation sets in, I set it with hairspray and hold my head in a preheated oven for five minutes. Then I — well. I’m not giving away all my secrets.” She smiled, eyes just barely crinkling, and I heard a slight crack as a chunk of what looked like eye shadow broke off and fell into the broccoli-mayonnaise-raisin challah mixture on her foil.

“Tell her to stop talking before her face falls off,” Shaindy hissed. “I refuse to scrape body parts off the parquet floors.”

“Hello, I’m Sarah, and I’m two years old!” I looked down. A child, face and hands covered in chocolate, was tugging my skirt, holding a children’s book. Her nose was running. “Read it?” she squeaked, her high-pitched voice rising over the din. “Please?” And she buried her face in my clothes, snotty nose and all.

Grimacing, I disentangled her grimy hands from my cream-colored skirt, wincing as I noted the stain. “Is It Shabbos Yet?” I said, reading off the title. I looked down at her, still clinging to my skirt, then appraised the outrageous scene in my dining room. “Yes. Yes, it is. The end!”

“You skipped pages!” Her face crumpled, and I hastily pushed her toward Shaindy.

“Oops! Go, she’ll read you the rest.” I rushed upstairs to change, banged open the door to my bedroom and halted.

There was a woman sleeping in my bed, snoring softly.

I backed away, and stood on the second floor landing. I closed my eyes again, taking deep, measured breaths to steady myself, then forced them open to survey the scene down below. A cherubic-faced toddler was running around barefoot, loose diaper wagging behind her. Two little kids were arguing over a potato-stix bag, plastic cups half-filled with juice littered the room, and an orange-soda spill decorated the living room carpet.

I was going to cry.

Is it Sunday yet?

I wheeled backward, nearly bumping into the person who’d just left the bathroom.

“Oops!” she exclaimed. “Sorry!” And Ayala looked at me.

Oh, shoot.

And I looked at her, and something flashed in her eyes. I could tell she recognized me.

Uh-oh.

“Pardon me,” I blustered. “I just needed to find my sheitel clips—”

“Libby?” she asked. Her eyes darted to my fingers; I quickly hid my ring-less left hand behind my back. “I thought it was you! When did you get married? Wait—” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Don’t tell me—”

I sighed. And then I dragged the snood off my head.

And had a miniature heart attack when she did the same. But with her hair.

It was from Amazon, she told me from the bathroom, where we both secluded ourselves to make sure no one else saw us. Just a thin layer of hair to clip to the front and blend in with her natural hair, since generally it’s just her roots that get yucky, and her hair is dark so she’d managed to get away with the inexpensive options African-American women use for weaves. Sixty-two bucks, plus shipping.

“Wow!” I said, stunned. “I didn’t know you could do that… wow. You mean that hair isn’t yours!”

“Well,” she’d said drily, “it is, technically. I can show you the receipts.” She paused. “Um, now that the masquerade is over…. ” She let the sentence trail off.

I sighed. “Yeah. I promise, by the way, during the week I look normal.”

She looked me up and down. “You look fine, seriously. From the neck down — just kidding!” She grinned. “So it’s been, what, how many years? How’ve you been?”

“Showered,” I said. “Promise you. Showered, blow-dried, made-up—”

“Let’s meet up sometime, when we’re both back to being all perfect,” she said. “I mean, this is embarrassing.” She pointed at her hair — it looked worse than mine, actually — and fingered a pimple that was sprouting on her chin. “I look gross now.” She pointed at me. “And so do—”

“Right,” I said hastily, trying to will some color into my pale cheeks so I didn’t look so sallow.

And suddenly she started laughing. And I joined in.

“The stupid things we do,” Ayala chortled. “Seriously? A snood?”

“I put it on because of you!” I told her, between giggles. “A wig? And did you see that woman with the makeup cemented on? I mean, the things we do—”

“That’s my mother.”

I stopped laughing, feeling my face heat up. “Omigosh. She looks great, really, I was just—”

“Two hours.” Ayala was crying with laughter again. “She spent two hours on her makeup Erev Yom Tov. I told her no one’s looking, but she gets nervous, all the women in shul….”

“We’re all crazy.”

“She lines her face with Saran Wrap after it’s all done, by the way, till she’s ready to step outside. She skipped that part. You had a lot of guts, sending out that invite!” Ayala said. “But you were always the confident type—”

I was?

“That was a—” I stopped. Why let her know it was one giant misunderstanding? If she thought I was confident… let me hold on to the little bit of mask I still had on. She didn’t need to know everything.

“A last-minute idea?” Ayala asked, curious.

I nodded. “I didn’t know you lived around here, by the way.”

“I have an apartment in Brooklyn now, closer to my job, but came back home for Succos. Wow, it’s been years!” She grinned suddenly. “Hey, remember when the paint can—”

“Uh, I really need to get back down to make sure the house doesn’t implode,” I said hastily.

“I’ll come with you.”

I pulled on my snood, Ayala snapped on her hair, and we headed downstairs together.

Floppy Hat was holding court in the center of the living room, the two-year-old on her lap and a gazillion kids swimming around her, reading in a high-pitched voice. “ ‘…So do I, said her Mommy.’… The end! And now, for a special Shabbos leftovers surprise…” She clapped her hands and suddenly her huge bag was opened and there was candy string squirting across the room and Twizzlers zooming all over the place and delighted giggles and popcorn flying everywhere. “Candy for the children!” she hollered, and all mayhem broke loose.

And two hours later, it was over.

Esti was the last to leave, apologizing profusely and promising to return later to help with cleanup, and when nightfall came, we headed to our next-door neighbors to hear Havdalah.

“A lot of action this afternoon,” Mr. Dembitzer observed, pouring grape juice into his cup. “What was happening?”

“It’s a long story.”

And then he made Havdalah, and it was over.

We trekked back home across the grass, Shaindy and I, the light from the Dembitzers’ front porch illuminating our path as we climbed the steps and crossed into the porch succah, passing through to the front door. An image of what was in store for us inside flashed before my eyes. The fish pot hidden behind the closed oven door, where the fish juice fermented into that awful-smelling stuff that people were more careful with, ever since that crazy story last year of an older woman who’d passed out when she’d opened the pot cover; Hatzolah had posted warning flyers this year, reminding people to keep fish pots exposed to air and away from anything flammable.

The garbage bin that was overflowing, with the Ivanka Trump mask Shaindy had discovered buried inside after all the guests had left, launching her on a fiery, ten-minute tirade about three-day Yom Tov cheaters. The jumble of plates, tissues, candy wrappers, foil, and soda bottles strewn over the tables and floors, sticky half-eaten Laffy Taffys to scrub from the walls. The tablecloths that needed to be dumped, the floors that needed to be mopped, the two bowls — I’d refused to serve the cholent in Kleenex boxes as Shaindy had insisted — that needed to be washed.

“We’re throwing the tzimmes out,” Shaindy said. “All of it. And I get the shower first.”

I nodded.

Tomorrow was Sunday. Back to routine. Back to fresh laundry and clean hair and perfect faces, with a tentative lunch date with Ayala in the new cafי that had opened around the corner, where we both, I knew, would be dressed to the hilt.

“Should we take down the succah now?” Shaindy asked. “Let’s just get the job out of the way, get all the chairs in, the decorations at least. Tatty can do the rest when he’s back.”

Yes, Yom Tov was over, and soon all the remnants of Succos would be packed up in boxes and stored in the garage.

And weirdly, I wasn’t ready for that yet.

“You know what?” I said finally. “Let’s hold off. Leave it up another day.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just — let’s hold off.”

The phone was ringing as we passed through the succah, and Shaindy shot off into the kitchen to catch the call.

I lingered outside.

The star-studded sky peeked through the sheets of bamboo, the moon just a sliver of what it had been one week earlier, when we sat down here for the first time. On impulse, I reached for a folding chair and sat down, my eyes taking in the walls, the sechach, the decorations, for one last time before it all got packed away.

“It’s a girl! They named her Aviva!” I heard Shaindy holler, and through the front window shades, I saw her silhouette dancing in the living room.

Still I sat there, gazing up at the stars, at the wind chimes we’d hung from the sechach with their golden bars, at the sign hanging limply from the wall with pictorials of Ushpizin already gone. Somehow, Succos crept out quietly, beneath the social hysteria of the Third Day that consumed the entire neighborhood. And suddenly, I felt… empty.

Ribbono de alma…

The phrase popped into my head, out of nowhere. What was that yehi ratzon again, the one I’d recited Shemini Atzeres when leaving the succah at my aunt’s house? I mentally repeated snatches of those words, the ones I’d remembered — was I allowed to say it now, after Yom Tov? — mouthed hurriedly two days ago in a rushed whisper under the drizzle of an impending thunderstorm.

Ribbono de alma… Osan melachim hakedoshim ha’shayachim l’mitzvas succah… heim yislavu imanu b’tzeiseinu min hasuccah, veyikansu imanu l’bateinu….

A siddur was left behind on one of the chairs, and I opened it to find the rest of the tefillah, the pages tickled by a sudden breeze drifting through the air. I skimmed the English translation Let those malachim of the succah escort us as we exit the succah, and enter our homes alongside us….

The hanging wind chimes tinkled gently, the metal color reflecting the glint of the moonlight peeking through the layer of sechach. I continued reading.

….V’nihiyeh kulanu shekaitim v’shelaivim… v’ovdei Hashem b’emes l’amito…. b’chlal kol Bnei Yisroel.

And let us live in serenity, as true ovdei Hashem, among all of our people.

I closed the siddur, bringing it briefly to my lips.

And then I stood, gave one final look at the succah surrounding me, and went inside to find myself a toothbrush.

(Originally featured in Family First Issue 562)