“Is that you hiding over there?” Suri calls across the entire hospital lobby in her strongest southern drawl.

“It’s me” comes the answer. Rachel’s caught.

“Come on down over here.” Suri motions to the closest chair.

“What brings you here? Suri asks.

“Tonsils” Rachel answers with a wave of the hand to say it’s nothing especially because she knows why Suri and Chaim are there.

“Did you hear that?” Suri yells over to her husband to make sure he hears.

“Yeah.” Her husband shakes his head trying to be as social as a person can be after eight chemo sessions.

“It’s his eighth chemo” his wife whispers cupping her hands round her mouth loud enough for everyone in the lobby to hear.

“That nurse was so nervous” Suri says in a slight southern drawl. “I think she had a bee under her bonnet”

Her husband slaps his leg and laughs though his eyes are tired and swollen. Chaim wants only to cheer. He’s always only wanted to make people happy. That’s why he chose to be a professional clown all his life.

Now their eyes meet. Even the angels can’t hold back their tears. But they continue to laugh.

People around can’t figure it out: are they laughing or crying?

They stop to laugh at the same exact time.

“You know you can’t even be a clown anymore.” Chaim’s eyes are deep and serious.

“Kids ask ‘Is that all you can do blow balloons in the shape of a dog?’$$separate quotes$$”

His wife laughs but he doesn’t so she stops.

She gets serious. Two well-rehearsed actors in a long running play.

“I think your mother’s really starting to warm up to me” — she throws the thought into the hospital’s lobby without noticing or maybe not caring if anyone’s listening — “now that I keep my mouth shut.” She pinches her lips closed.

“She sees I’m taking care of you.”

They look again at each other instead of glaring straight across the lobby.

“My mother-in-law gave me these” Suri fingers the necklace of heavy brown beads hanging over her sweater.

“My mother-in-law really got to like me” Suri says suprising herself.

“I think it’s because I’m learning to keep my mouth shut.” Suri runs her fingers across her lips like they’re a ziplock bag.

Rachel smiles because she loves Suri. She even laughs a little though she knows Suri’s serious.

“It makes me feel good about myself not to say everything that’s on my mind.” Rachel shows Suri how she appreciates her amazing realizations.

“My mother-in-law sees how I take care of my husband and baruch Hashem she doesn’t pressure me or make me feel bad that we couldn’t have children.”

Rachel knows Suri says what’s in her heart and on her mind with the innocence of a child.

“I wonder why Hashem didn’t want me to have children” Suri thinks out loud.

“You know I used to be bitter about it that I’m not going to have anyone to continue the line.” Suri holds up the necklace her mother-in-law gave her running her hand up and down the unfilled parts of the string. “Like there’ll be no continuous thread no link to the next generation.”

Now Suri looks right into Rachel’s eyes. “I remember your daughter the one with the bouncy curls came running up to me in the park and gave me the biggest hug with her arms wide open. Wasn’t that ten years ago?” she asks.

Suri looks over to see how her husband’s doing. He hears every word his wife says but pretends not to.

He’s sitting looking holy. His eyes burning with fires of fear and faith.

“You know when I first came to Israel I lived on a kibbutz.” Suri starts a new-old chapter.

“Really.” Rachel says knowing that at any moment a new story could pour out from Suri’s life. The holes in the sieve of her brain were just wider than others’. Anything could pour out.

“I had a roommate. She was a soldier” Suri reminisces. “She wasn’t religious at all. I was. The only thing she did do was light Shabbos candles. Every Friday night she lit two candles in our room. One Friday night the candles went on fire and burned everything in the room. That soldier girl didn’t get angry. She just bent down on her hands and knees and crawled around in the ashes searching and searching till she found the Magen David she wore around her neck.”

Rachel sees that Suri’s story is totally linked to Suri and Chaim’s life. The chaos that illness brings about is like an all-consuming fire leaving them confused and like that girl on the kibbutz searching through the ashes for a connection G-d.

Still somewhat in the past Suri turns to check on her husband. She searches for him and finds him through the ashes.