Questions swirl around my brain; there’s a corresponding eddy in my stomach. Major depressive disorder? Treatment protocol ineffective?

My brain takes over, and I continue copying requests and phone numbers from emails to a document that the referring secretary will use.

Henny depressed?

PPD, maybe? But Avrumi just turned two, I don’t think she can be considered postpartum, unless things started a long time ago — treatment protocol has not been effective

I review parties, Shabbosos, simchahs. When did I see them last? Succos they went to Henny’s parents. Maybe summer? We had a family bash in the middle of summer vacation. Henny looked fine, I think. So many kids and grandkids, kein ayin hara, hard to remember….

My chest tightens.

Why did Chaim not say a word? My son knows exactly what my views are in regards to secret-keeping.

Erase stigma. Speak up. Ask for help. After our own harrowing experience with Lipa’s illness and subsequent petirah, after losing their father when they were so young, my kids know how passionate I am about openness and honesty.

Community advocate, liaison with local hospitals, bikur cholim volunteer… that’s me, and Chaim and Henny know it. As do all my children and their spouses. They join in my projects and drives when they can. Are proud of it.

I pull up the email again. We recently switched insurance….

Granted, mental illness isn’t the same as being diagnosed with a malignant tumor.

Still. I’ve been vocal on the destruction that shame and secrecy can wreak in any situation. Erase stigma. Speak up. Ask for help.

And my own kids haven’t said a word.

I grab my phone and pull up Chaim’s number. I’m his mother. He couldn’t reach out? I would have sent food! Watched the kids! Given them contacts! Just listened!

And Henny, poor Henny. Like a daughter, I always say. She could have mentioned something, known I would always support her, no matter what.

I thought we were close.

I put the phone into my handbag, look at the clock. Forget calling, I should just drop by. There’s a bakery on the corner. Danishes are a great pretext.

“Shvigger?” Henny is nothing if not gracious. I see her mouth open, eyes widening, and the panicked glance over her shoulder, but only because I look for it.

“Hi, I was on your street and thought I’d pop in to see you and the kids!” Not really a lie. “What kind of a shvigger am I, can it really be that I haven’t seen you since before Succos?”

No chaos or neglect that I can see; the floor seems reasonably clean for a toddler-occupied space.

“Sure, come right in, we’re just finishing supper.” I follow her into the kitchen just as there’s a crash.

“Oh no! Avrumi!”

Malky runs to me while Avrumi is extricated from some splattered yogurt, and I look around. Regular food-prep mess.

“I brought Danishes, Henny, do you want me to put them in the refrigerator?”

Everything looks fine. No trays of chesed food. Fresh produce and pots on the stove.

Henny herself looks great; I don’t understand it. Malky brings me a book to read and Yiddy wanders in from wherever he was to listen in. I hear Henny singing to Avrumi while she cleans him up.

I’m not so stupid as to think that all people struggling with depression lie in bed crying while the home descends into chaos. But major depressive disorder that doesn’t respond to treatment doesn’t sound like the giggling I’m hearing from my daughter-in-law.

Henny dances into the living room and plops down next to us.

“Shvigger, listen to Avrumi!”

I listen with half an ear. Smile. Gush, oh wow, all the while trying to make sense of the picture painted by an email versus the scene in front of me.

I can’t say anything if there’s nothing I can use as an opening. If the kitchen had been overrun with days-old dirty dishes, if the refrigerator had been empty… maybe.

A mistake?

The front door opens.

“Tatty!” Malky slides off my lap and launches onto Chaim as he comes into the room.

“Hi, Chaim, I just dropped in….”

It’s right in front of me — in the bruises under his eyes, in the weight loss I had complimented him about at that summer family get-together, in the new sharper planes and angles of his face that I had seen but not observed.

There is my answer.

HENNY

My shvigger knows.

We may be close, but she never drops in unannounced. Even a five-minute heads-up would have been more her style.

I saw the way she scanned the floor, my counters. That’s not my shvigger — she really doesn’t care about, and certainly never checks out, my housekeeping.

And then Chaim walks in, and I hear the tiny but sharp intake of breath, see the way she looks at her son, and I know that she knows.

I close my eyes for a second, I really do, because that hard, heavy rock sitting on me for months and months, that monstrous boulder that doesn’t let me be me, carefree Henny Steinmetz… if anyone is going to take it away, my shvigger will.

She stands up.

“Chaim?”

“Mommy? You’re here for a visit…?” and his voice trails away as happens so often, when I can see that blink, and whatever he meant to say is gone, buried under the thing that is muting his mind.

My shvigger looks at me. I look back, and then she sees that I know she knows.

“Right,” she says, brisk. No-nonsense. In charge. “Yes, I came for a visit, I’m going to help Henny get the kids to bed, and then we’ll be able to chat. I haven’t seen you in ages.”

She doesn’t say anything about Chaim as I do baths and pajamas and she does bedtime stories, but I don’t need her to.

My shvigger is here, she knows, I have no idea how or why, but my legs are shaking as if I’ve run for miles, and I could crumple at her feet from the sheer relief of it.

And then rational thought asserts itself. My shvigger knows. For me, it’s relief, but what does that mean for Chaim? My shvigger, the be-assertive-ask-for-help-secrets-destroy crusader. And Chaim — the only thing he clings to, insists on, is that no one ever, no, no, no one EVER knows.

The boulder resettles itself on the nape of my neck. There isn’t much progress I can point to, but will my shvigger on Chaim’s case make things worse?

I press Avrumi’s blanket hard into my eyes before spreading it over him. Tell myself this can’t get worse.

And then, like I’ve been telling myself for months now: Can’t afford to cry.

The Danishes will taste just as good even if I plate them on paperware; disposables have become a crucial part of my home management.

I get a bottle of water.

“Let’s sit in the kitchen, Henny. It seems so formal round a big table, what do you think?”

I think whatever my shvigger says right now is gold. She’ll know what to do, what to say… I feel lightheaded with the possibilities.

I wonder what Chaim will say to an invitation to talk, which card he’s going to play, and then I feel nauseous with the guilt, because it’s not his fault, and it’s not a card game… but still.

I push away the fear. I’m spineless, weak with the luxury of having someone else to take charge.

“I think I’ll pass, Mommy,” he says, but his mother won’t stand for it, and I catch the glint of steel that must have been there when she raised her kids singlehandedly.

None of us touch the Danishes.

“I’ll get straight to it, Chaim. Baila asked me to take over her job while she’s in Miami with her mother.”

I keep my eyes on Chaim and see that neither of us has any idea what his mother’s friend actually does.

“She works for Teshuah.”

So that’s what happened. My temple throbs suddenly, and I press a hand to it. Don’t let Chaim get angry, don’t let him blame me, I was out of ideas.

“Chaim?” He’s looking at nothing, eyes dull.

“That’s a mental health referral organization.” She stops, and it’s quiet. I hear a car honk outside. A door slam.

“Chaim.” Gently. “I read the email before I recognized Henny’s number.”

When there’s no reaction, she holds his gaze. “Why didn’t you tell me, Chaim. Depression?”

He breaks eye contact, irons one hand forcefully down the other arm. Up, down, and I admire my shvigger all over again because she just put it all out there, direct and respectful, didn’t say the words pills or psychiatrist, doesn’t ask what we did already, just waits. She’s listening, and this is what always makes her the address for help.

“I’m not interested in telling anyone,” Chaim says. “I’m not a meshigenne or a nebach, and no one has to know.”

I see the shock in the way her eyes open huge, in the color spreading up her cheeks. I shake my head, no, but she doesn’t see me.

“Chaim! Who’s talking meshigge or nebach? Where is this coming from? Who have you ever heard talk like this?”

He’s standing now, and I can’t help myself, but I bend my head, knowing what’s coming — and that my shvigger sees.

“It’s all voil and fein, everyone talking about breaking stigma, or whatever, yeah, Mommy? Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of? Just pop a few pills, go to therapy, everything’s gonna be amazing, sure.” He shoves his chair forward, and the water bottle sloshes violently.

“Well, let me tell you a secret, Mommy. It’s all shtissim, when it comes to it. People say one thing but we all know what they’re thinking. Snap out of it, yeah. You’re not really trying. Put just a little more effort into acting normal. There’s no such thing as can’t, yeah?”

And then blink, the anger’s gone.

He’s at the kitchen door when he turns back.

“And if you tell anyone, Mommy. Anyone.” His eyes are dark, eyebrows low. “It will destroy me. Destroy me. I’m serious.”

And then he’s gone, and my shvigger looks at me and I look at her, and even though we’re just not the type, she touches my shoulder and says, Oh Henny, so soft, and her heartbreak is my heartbreak, and suddenly I’m sobbing in her arms like a lost kid who’s just been found.

LEIZER

We’re finished the furshpeis and still Chaim hasn’t shown his face. I’m worried, because there’s no way my brother is missing the first bar mitzvah I’m making without a very good excuse. And the way we’re close, me and Chaim, a very good excuse means a car accident or earthquake. Chas veshulem.

Everything is perfect, so many l’chayims, our bar mitzvah bucher’l would make anyone burst with pride, but brothers-in-law are not brothers, and with Tatty not here — he should rest in a lichtige Gan Eden — where is Chaim?

I catch Mommy at the mechitzah after the fake three lines of the drusheh and the singing.

“Where’s Chaim, did he call you? Something happened?”

My mother doesn’t believe in lying. She always said that it might be the quickest way to get one leg out of the mud but the rest of you sinks right in. And then what help is one leg out?

But she looks down at her watch and up at me again, and says, “Family emergency,” not strong and straight like she always speaks, and later, when we’re all packing leftovers and getting ready to leave and still no Chaim, I think that not even her shoe is out of the mud.

All the lukewarm phone calls, and the times he canceled our Leil Shishi cholent farbreng, and coming late to Tatty’s yahrtzeit siyum… shoin. I took the excuses. But this? I wasn’t born yesterday.

Something is going on with Chaim, and I’ll go right into his office tomorrow and demand an explanation. You don’t miss your only brother’s simchah.

You also don’t miss work for….

“How long, did you say?” I ask the guy sitting at my brother’s desk who may be very good at communications and public relations but is definitely not my brother.

“Something like two, three months,” he says, looking at me as if I’m nisht mit allemen, which you can’t blame him for, the way I marched into his office.

I give a nice apology and go find Chaim’s boss.

Sick leave?

And I’m sweating, my hands barely gripping the steering wheel as I try to slow down in time for stoplights.

Chaim? Sick? Ziser G-tt, not after Tatty! Chaim?

I double-park and run up the path, then stop at the door to get a grip on myself. No point giving Mommy a shock. She knows; I saw her lie last night. But still.

I do our special knock before letting myself in.

“Leizer!” Mommy is pretending she’s happy to see me but scared that I’ve come to force things out of her, things I already know, and it’s too terrible, I can’t take it.

“Chaim,” I say, and my voice won’t work for a few seconds. “He’s sick?”

Mommy just looks at me, and I can’t, I can’t think of chemo and radiation and all the nightmares we’ve already had to deal with.

“Is it serious? Terminal?” I whisper. Mommy shakes her head and I collapse into a chair and say Thank You Tatte ziser, but I don’t understand why she’s still sitting there like it’s Tishah B’Av.

“What’s the issue, Mommy? Money? I’m in, I’ve got Chaim’s back. He hasn’t been working two months at least, his boss told me. Who’s paying the mortgage, the utilities, food, clothes — you, Mommy? Ich farshtei nisht, why didn’t you say anything? He needs flights, doctors, nu? For this you’ve been in the field for what, 15, 20 years?”

And she’s sitting there, so quiet, so tired, that I get scared all over again.

“Mommy?”

She looks at me, and shakes her head again.

Still quiet.

“Is Chaim sick or not, I don’t get it.”

I take off my coat — I’m still shvitzing from the running and the shock — and wipe my forehead.

“Chaim does not have yenne machleh,” she says, and nu, if that’s the case why the depressed face and why is my brother, the hardest-working guy I know, off work for two, three months?

“So what’s he sick with, something like MS?” Hashem yerachem.

Mommy shakes her head again. Then it looks like there’s a conversation in her head, and I can’t say anything until it’s over.

“Leizer, listen to me. I can’t tell you anything about Chaim. He’s not sick with anything you can help him with.”

I’ve never heard of such, such, well, I can’t say shtissim in front of my mother, but this sure sounds like a lot of it.

“What does that even mean, Mommy? Chaim is sick or he isn’t sick?”

What I don’t say, because ah bissel kuved, but — you, Mommy? Of all people? Never the lies and never the secrets, it’s always the best thing to just tell the truth, people get better quicker with support — you can’t tell me? Me? Chaim’s only brother, the best person to help him?

She shakes her head again, and I feel like I’m going to say something I’ll regret, so I go to find some Coke in the refrigerator.

My mother isn’t scared of anything or anyone. She for sure doesn’t make you go round and round with questions for no good reason.

So. That means she actually can’t tell me, which means that she knows, and Chaim doesn’t let her tell me.

Nu. I’ll go to Chaim and have it out with him.

But when I say that to Mommy, she gets a look on her face, ich zug dich — I’m nine years old again and tzittering because when that face goes on it’s like Yom Hadin, and you’d better take back what you just said.

“Leizer Steinmetz,” she says, and it might be Yom Hadin, but something in her voice makes me think that behind that stern face is someone who wants to cry. “You will not go to Chaim or anyone else about this. Ever.”

And din is din. So I go home and daven.

CHAIM

All those months, probably over a year ago, I can’t even remember exactly, it wasn’t like I suddenly woke up one morning, and instead of sun outside it was all dark.

It happened slowly. I was just so tired all the time, schlepping myself to work, to daven, home again. So exhausted I couldn’t keep my eyes open halfway through the day. Couldn’t eat. Wasn’t in the mood of hanging out with the chevreh in the coffee corner.

And like that, day after day until it was like I was behind a thick wall of ice in the dead of winter. I could see everyone skiing down mountains and laughing and throwing snowballs and telling me to just come and have some fun for a while, and I could even see that they had some sun but the ice wall was too solid, too heavy, to ever break.

It’s not like I didn’t try.

First the blood tests, just to rule out vitamin deficiency and who knows what else. Kidney, thyroid, ich veiss. Everything the doctor wanted me to do, and I did it even though getting to the clinic felt like pulling a bus.

All of my tests came back clean, and I caught Henny crying when she got the phone call, and I knew that she was happy that I was healthy, but terrified of what else might be wrong.

Me? I was dead by then, buried behind that thick ice wall.

I let Henny drag me to doctors and then psychiatrists. Took pills that gave me insomnia and night sweats and nightmares — like the one I was living in wasn’t enough.

There was one medication that made me so dizzy I bashed my head on the side of the bedroom door and ended up with stitches.

And still I tried, if not for me, for my wife and children. It’s not like I couldn’t see Henny, it was just that I was so far away there was nothing I could do to help her. What can a man trapped in ice do?

So we went here and we went there. And one day I couldn’t work anymore, couldn’t stand one more day when I had to put on a smile and figure out if Horowitz was eligible for an upgrade to his benefit package.

I took sick leave, and that’s when Henny begged me to tell people. Her parents, my mother. Siblings, friends, family. She needed help.

All those months, we thought this medication would work. That therapist would have the answer. But it only got worse, and the psychiatrist we went to was kind but explained that it was a process, and we had to be patient. All these months we kept quiet. Hoping that this week, this combo, would do the trick.

But Henny was falling apart, she said. And I could see that. Please, she asked, l need to tell people. We need help.

But it would destroy me, and I told her that.

If I became a community tzedakah project, I would prefer to disappear forever, and I told her that, too.

She begged. Only our parents.

She cried. I cried in my heart, but I couldn’t let her tell anyone. I got angry, felt the blood rush to my head.

It will destroy me, I raised my voice, again and again, and for a few seconds it felt good, I felt alive, I was angry.

But then that died, and I was back, deep, deep under the freezing ice.

I don’t deserve it, I don’t deserve her, but she kept it secret.

And then Mommy arrived, and now she knew — she with all the knowledge and the do-gooding, and the strength and please let me help. Like a battering ram covered in care and worry. And still I couldn’t let her take over, tell whoever she thought needed telling. Involve my sisters, Leizer… no.

If there’s anything that keeps me trying to climb out of here, it’s the idea that someday I’ll get there. Some doctor will recommend something I haven’t tried already. A new medication. An approach that actually makes a difference. And I’ll force myself out, chip little holes in the ice wall, one after the other. Even with frostbite, I’ll stand straight and keep hacking until I manage to smash the wall down.

And I’ll know that no one knew where I’d been all this time. That’s what keeps me going.

I tell it to Henny, and I know she tells her therapist, because I’m not so selfish not to let her get help that way.

And I know she tells it to Mommy, somehow explaining to a lady who has made a career out of telling people about stigmas and asking for help, why her son won’t do it.

And I know Mommy respected that need when the world doesn’t crash on my head after Leizer’s bar mitzvah.

I wanted to go, I really did. Even got dressed, and then I couldn’t.

There are no words in any of the languages I know to describe how I felt as I told Henny to go with the kids, no words to say what crawling into bed meant when I knew I was hurting everyone I loved.

Maybe that was the lowest point, though.

And maybe a week or two later, we go to a new doctor, some bigwig Teshuah got us an emergency appointment with. (Did Mommy use her influence somehow? Will I ever ask her?)

And maybe a few weeks after that, I wake up one morning and the snow isn’t so heavy on me, the ice wall seems less thick.

And maybe a couple of months later, there’s a Chanukah party at Mommy’s house, and Henny asks me what we should do, how we’re going to get out of this one, no mechitzah for my loving, bossy, nosy sisters not to notice my absence.

Maybe I tell Henny that I’m coming, and maybe she cries when she goes to get ready, and I put the gift I ordered for her on the menorah tray, so she sees it when I light.

Maybe I walk into Mommy’s house with a gift for my mother, too — my mother who went against everything she thought was right and true, just so that her son could have his kavod.

I slip into the kitchen where she’s alone, it’s all under control, everyone out! taking a tray of roast potatoes out of the oven, so predictable, so dependable.

“Mommy?” I say, after she puts the tray on the cooling rack.

And she stands there, a tentative smile behind those ridiculous oven gloves up on her face.

“Chaim?”

“I’m here.”

And even as it occurs to me that coming to a party may not be the greatest idea: Even as the sounds of bubbling happy chaos from the rest of the house make me want to go home, now; even as I sit down and think that maybe I’ll stay in the kitchen, I nod.

“I’m here,” I say again, as what may be the first smile in forever makes the first crack through an ice wall.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 869)