After a long minute, Mommy had sighed and smiled and said, “Your father means well, Yechezkel, and he loves his family”

There had been a group of Kach’niks at Chezi’s bar mitzvah, clustered at a round table in the corner of the Banyad Hall basement in Spring Valley, with their large white knitted yarmulkes and military bearing, two of them in actual military garb.

They ate the same knishes in mushroom sauce as everyone else and drank Be’er Mayim soda, because the hall didn’t allow non-heimish brands and whatever askan had helped Chezi’s mother figure out the event hadn’t been very picky with halls.

At the end, it had been a cute distraction. Chezi’s classmates who knew nothing about Meir Kahane and Kach were awed by the presence of adults who owned guns and were happy to tell the wide-eyed boys about the responsibility of a Jew. At some point, the menahel came to say mazel tov and he had broken up the little conversation, leading the boys in dancing, but for the rest of junior high, the boys talked about those men.

Chezi knew a bit more than they did, because Abba would go to every Kach meeting and come back enthused, talking to no one and everyone about “building a future” and “making what’s our own, our own.”

That period hadn’t lasted long, because Abba had moved on soon after, Satmar, Lubavitch, Breslov, and Pshevorsk in less than two years. He had once spent four full months in the Ukraine, part of a small group that worked on heightened focus, and it took weeks of preparation to actually experience anything, so if they were going to do it, they should do it right. Abba had called the children together to explain this to them — he would be away for a while but they should know he would be davening for them and though he couldn’t really call or write, he would need all his focus there, they were connected in their neshamos.

At that point, it didn’t make much of a difference. Even when Abba was around, he wasn’t really around much. He slept a lot because of his various medical conditions and was altogether fragile. He was a vehement opponent of the kosher food industry, convinced that the chemicals and additives had weakened him in the first place, but Mommy had long ago learned to live with his protests. She didn’t argue, or even ignore them. She would listen, nod soothingly, and do her thing.

Once, when Chezi was sixteen years old, he asked Mommy point blank why she didn’t get divorced. He felt very mature saying the word, and he wasn’t sure how Mommy would react.

She was cool, looking at him for a while before she said anything.

She got the question. Her husband, who had been an eager, personable, inspired baal teshuvah like she was when they had gotten married, was more like a familiar guest now, wandering through rooms and muttering to himself and then disappearing again. Mommy worked long hours for TriStar Insurance and somehow ran the house and made do with whatever food came their way in the boxes and tried to be there for the children, expecting nothing and getting nothing from the man they called Abba, though he had recently tried, unsuccessfully, to get them to switch to Tatte, since Abba sounded Zionist. Currently, he was busy with a group fighting immorality, and spent most of his time writing emails to newspapers and raising money for the major legal challenge they were launching against New York State on behalf of traditional marriage, regularly going to meetings to plan strategy.

After a long minute, Mommy had sighed and smiled and said, “Your father means well, Yechezkel, and he loves his family.”

Chezi didn’t argue, but he wasn’t sure that his father loved them. He knew his father loved causes, that he loved groups, and he loved theories about who was right and how they were being wronged, but did he love his family? Even when he came to the Shabbos table, it was to push away the processed foods and eat his weird-smelling herbal dishes and stubbornly make his way through zemiros though his ivra wasn’t great and he couldn’t sing.

Chezi had contemplated this, remembering, suddenly, a moment many years earlier when he had been on the swings at Viola Park, Abba pushing him and singing, “Chezi fly, Chezi fly, Chezi flyyyyy” with each touch.

When they used to walk to shul together, Abba would often put his arm around Chezi’s shoulders, and that had felt like love, but now Abba davened in his own places, either vasikin or in his tiny study. Once, when Chezi’s bike was stolen, Abba had shaken his head sadly and said, “I would punch that thief in the nose if I saw him,” which had made Chezi feel good.

Did Abba love them? Did he?