Yechiel left the house to pick up his sister, Tante Chaya J, as she was known in the family — to distinguish from the three Chaya Jacob grandchildren — and Raizy hurriedly got dressed and tried to put the kids to sleep. It wasn’t a very successful attempt, but Tante Chaya J came and took over, and Raizy promised treats for good behavior, and whatever, who cared, her sister was engaged.

She arrived at the Wetman home to a round of shrieks and hugs and, “Yikes! I hate what she did with my hair! Please, Raizy, can you fix it?”

Raizy laughed, then went ahead to fix the kallah’s perfectly beautiful hair, cube fruit on skewers, divide nuts and chocolates in small bowls for the men in the dining room, and do her mother’s makeup, because according to her mother, nobody but Raizy knew how to hide all those lines under her eyes.

“You’re a lifesaver, Raizy,” her mother said as Raizy dabbed a bit more powder on her face. “I know what it’s like leaving your kids at this hour, but I don’t know what I would do without you.”

Yeah, it was a running joke in the family that Raizy had to suffer for all her talents. “Too bad,” Leah would tell her when she forced Raizy to write thank-you poems or figure out where she’d gone wrong with a recipe. “Hashem made you amazing at everything, you can complain to Him.”

Sometimes it was annoying, but for the most part, Raizy really didn’t mind helping out. “For something like this,” she told her mother sincerely, “I’m more than glad to be here.”

From makeup, Raizy stepped into hostess mode, greeting guests and doing her part in making introductions and connections and smiling and saying all the right things to make the simchah vibe just right.

It was only after the excited crowd started thinning that Raizy actually had a chance to talk to Tziri.

“Can I admit how deathly afraid I am about moving to Eretz Yisrael?” Tziri asked.

“That makes sense. It’s a huge adjustment. But you’re going to love it, I have no doubt. I’m so, so happy for you.”

She was, extremely, even if the thought of her going made Raizy’s heart plummet.

She was going to miss Tziri. She was already regretting the cute, rosy, sisterly bonding that she’d always dreamed of and now most likely wouldn’t materialize.

But when she joined Yechiel in the car a little later, she was forced to admit that it wasn’t the separation that was making her feel so queasy.

“If my sister is going to live in Eretz Yisrael, that means my parents are making a pretty significant support commitment,” she mused out loud.

Yechiel nodded. “I assume so.”

“Plus a wedding,” Raizy went on. “Weddings today probably cost almost double what our wedding cost six years ago.”

They were both quiet. Raizy caught the doggie bag she’d brought home for Tante Chaya J that was sliding around on the dashboard and secured it on her lap as the unasked question hung between them.

What would Tziri’s engagement mean — for them?

Her parents weren’t millionaires. Would they be able to continue helping her if they were supporting a couple in Eretz Yisrael?

After a moment, Yechiel spelled it out. “So if we were thinking to borrow money for a down payment… there goes that?”

L

eebie was in the Akeres kitchen Erev Shabbos, filling a deli container with coleslaw, when her phone rang.

Well, whoever it was, she’d return the call soon. Some people believed that if a phone rings, you must answer right away, no matter if you’re on the other line with the president or if you’re at the shoe store with the kids. Amram was like that. Sometimes he answered a call only to tell the caller that he wasn’t available to talk, and Leebie never got it. Just don’t answer and it’ll be clear you’re not available.

She snapped a lid onto the coleslaw, then proceeded to fill more containers with cholent, kishke, farfel, and liver. She packed everything into bags, then added small pans of potato and Yerushalmi kugels, apple cobbler, and deli salad.

Yum.

When she reached their room in the small family wing with her arms laden with bags, she kicked the door lightly instead of knocking, and Amram opened.

“Food!” she announced. She put the bag down on the small table in their room. “Should I admit that toameha is my favorite ‘meal’ at the heim?”

Amram fluttered his fingers in the air, and Leebie realized that he was on the phone. She checked her own missed call. It was Yehudis, probably with a vital question on the process of boiling eggs. She grinned as she called her back.

“Are you trying to reach Yehudis?” Amram asked after the third ring. “I’m talking to her.”

Ah, oh. She hung up and set out plastic plates. Kugel and nothing else for Chananya, apple cobbler and nothing else for Dassi, and the rest of the kids would come take whatever they chose.

She started filling a plate for Amram when his words hit her ears. “You’re really lucky that you got such special in-laws. Not everyone is zocheh to that, and it’s a real bonus in a shidduch. Don’t take it for granted.”

The container of cholent nearly fell out of Leebie’s hand. She bit down on the inside of her cheek, breathing unsteadily as she observed Amram’s face.

It was over. It was all over. Yehudis hadn’t called her to ask how to boil eggs. Amram had spoken to her father-in-law about the rent, and now she wanted an explanation.

“Great!” she heard Amram say. “So have a wonderful Shabbos. Save me a slice of that s’mores pie. I’m sure it’ll put Akeres’s dessert to shame, ha ha.”

S’mores pie?

“Her in-laws are so nice,” Amram said when he hung up. “They sent the couple dessert for Friday night. And they’re having them for the day seudah, so it was really thoughtful of them.”

That was all? Dessert? Leebie searched for a discreet pocket of air to release her choked breath.

But even amid the relief that her secret was safe, apprehension squeezed in her stomach. This was nuts. It was enough that she had to keep her own little mission hushed; she couldn’t keep gagging Yehudis’s mouth.

“I’m going to get the kids,” she told Amram abruptly.

“Yes, go get them. I takke want to check if Pinchas was maavir sedra already. Oh, and by the way, I decided not to tell Yehudis anything about this whole rent story. I cleared it up with Shaul, and now there’s no reason for her to know what Ita did here.”

Standing at the door, Leebie could barely cough up a grunt in response. She hurried out of the room, but instead of heading to the lobby where she’d last seen the little ones, she decided to do a quick nursery run first, to review the Shabbos schedule with the nurses. Her nerves were tingling, and she needed a distraction before returning to her family.

She summoned the elevator and waited. And waited and waited.

One of the mothers noticed her standing there. “The elevator isn’t working,” she said. “I tried it a bunch of times.”

No way, the elevators weren’t breaking down on her now. This was not the kind of crisis she was in the mood to deal with on a Friday afternoon. The heim couldn’t go into Shabbos this way. The nurses needed to bring the babies in their bassinets to their mothers during the night for feedings. This was a problem with a capital P.

She noticed the woman who’d given her the elevator update shuffle off toward the stairs, and grimaced. The woman was postpartum and clearly in a lot of pain. This problem was a problem.

Well, dealing with problems was what she got paid to do. She followed the woman to the stairway and sprinted up the stairs ahead of her. Forget toameha. She’d need to sit into her office and do whatever it took to get maintenance on the task.

But when she pushed open the stairway door on the second floor, she discovered that “maintenance” was already on the task. Shaya, Dassi, and Chananya each stood in front of an open elevator, pushing the doors apart each time they started sliding closed.

“Shaya!” she yelled. “Dassi and Chananya! Are you crazy? Let go of the elevators this second!”

The kids jumped back, and the doors of the three elevators slid shut.

Leebie inched closer, anger bubbling in her chest. “What were you kids thinking?! Shaya! You’re ten years old, what is up with you? Are you completely out of your mind? You’re going to break this whole building! I told you kids to wait for me in the lobby, I went to get you food!”

Then another thing caught her attention. The kids. Their clothes. They were filthy dirty. Looked like they hadn’t waited for her to get food — they’d gone straight to the lounge where the guest toameha buffet was set up and helped themselves.

The anger in her chest turned into a blaze of fury. “Look at you!” she bellowed. “Look at your Shabbos clothes! You’re a mess! Disgusting! Do you plan on going into Shabbos this way? You should be ashamed of yourselves! And why in the world did you take food from the lounge? That food is for the mothers here, and you know that good and—”

She halted suddenly as a prickle crawled over her skin. Hesitantly, she turned her head back to the stairway.

Two ladies were standing there, staring at her in shock.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 926)