Chapter 28 Summary: Yaffa brings Moriah to visit her grandparents. Moriah tells them about her mother’s dream to start a fertility organization, and is shocked to discover that her grandparents knew nothing about her mother’s pain from her fertility struggles.

Debbie nearly bumped into Ari as she climbed up from the basement, carrying two stacked laundry baskets.

“Oh, hello, I didn’t hear you come home.”

Ari took the laundry baskets from her. “Where do these go?”

“Living room. We’re packing Jake’s suitcases there.” Debbie shook her head sourly. Ari deposited the laundry baskets on the floor and Debbie began folding undershirts.

“You’d think Shana Aleph would be enough,” she muttered. Ari braced himself for yet another tirade about Shana Bet.

“It’s just one year,” he said quickly. “Less even.”

Debbie rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, I know, I’m the only bad guy in the family who doesn’t want him to go learn in Israel.” She rolled a pair of sweatpants into a compact ball. Suddenly her face puckered. “It’s just that … now I have to say goodbye for another whole year.”

Ari stared. Why was he so startled to realize that Debbie was, after all, just a mother missing her son? When had he started interpreting every word she said as stemming from malicious intent? He still remembered the hurt in her eyes the other day as she’d complained that he always takes his sister’s side. “Sometimes I think you forget that—I’m your wife.”

Softly, he said, “It’s hard for me, too. I also don’t want him to go.”

Debbie looked up sharply. “You don’t? Then why—?”

Her voice trailed off as Jake himself came into the room. He was on the phone, and was holding a Gemara in front of him as he walked.

“Hold on a second, Uncle Shmuel, I think I packed my Ritva in my suitcase already. Lemme see.”

Still on the phone, Jake rooted through all of Debbie’s carefully folded piles of clothing until he uncovered a sefer at the bottom. “Got it,” he said happily and settled down on the couch, oblivious to his mother’s glare. “Now what were you saying?”

Debbie twisted her head towards Ari. “Is this normal?” she hissed. “His last night home for a year and he’s spending it learning on the phone with Yaffa’s husband! Does this really not bother you?”

Ari looked at Jake, reading animatedly, asking questions, listening raptly to the answers. Then Ari looked back at Debbie. It was his instinct to say, “No, it doesn’t bother me.” Forever the peacemaker, always fine with letting other people do whatever they need to make them happy.

But, seeing the hurt spilling out of Debbie’s eyes, he suddenly recognized that the little stabs of something he himself felt watching Jake’s obvious admiration of his uncle had a name. Jealousy.

Ari raked a hand through his hair. Jealous? How childish. He sank down on the floor next to Debbie and began pairing socks, conscious of the fact that Debbie was watching him.

“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.

He chewed his lip. “I didn’t say it doesn’t bother me,” he said at last.

“You mean you’re human after all?”

Ari winced at the sarcasm … but, looking up, he was surprised to see a smile playing on her lips.

He smiled back. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Debbie flung her hair back, her eyes twinkling in a way he hadn’t seen in weeks. “So what’re you going to do about it?

It was a lighthearted tease—but it was also, Ari recognized, a test. He looked over at his eldest son, who had just hung up with Shmuel, promising that he’d be in touch once he got to Israel. And suddenly, Ari knew exactly what he wanted to do about it.

He stood up, walked over to the couch, and put a hand on Jake’s shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I was thinking, in honor of your last night, that maybe … you’d want to learn something together? With me?”

***

Ilana squinted as she stared at the WhatsApp from Moriah. “Ima, your org is officially launched! Grandpa pretty much agreed to fund. Weird that they had NO CLUE that you’d gone thru infertility. What’s up with that?”

“What in the world?” she murmured.

Leah, who was gathering library books scattered on the tables and placing them back on the shelves, paused to shoot Ilana a questioning look. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just that Moriah sent me an odd … well, never mind.”

Leah raised an eyebrow. “That made a lot of sense.”

Ilana blushed but didn’t respond. As good a friend as Leah was, she hadn’t told her about what was going on with her parents’ will. Nor had she mentioned her dream to start a fertility organization. Speaking about it to someone outside her immediate family would have brought it from the realm of fantasy to that of actual, realistic possibility—and she hadn’t been sure she was ready to move in that direction.

So what in the world was Moriah’s message about? Had Moriah actually spoken to Dad about Ilana’s idea? And, worse, asked him to fund it? Her pulse quickened. Weird that they had NO CLUE that you’d gone thru infertility. Well, of course they didn’t. And now Moriah had gone and announced that Ilana wanted to start an organization as a way to heal from her own pain, and would they please cough up the money for it?

Ilana closed her eyes as she tried to imagine the conversation. How had her parents reacted? Did they assume the request was actually coming from Ilana herself?

What had Moriah done?

Pursing her lips, she dialed her daughter.

***

Yaffa looked up from her coffee and crossword as Moriah’s phone began to vibrate on the kitchen table. The girls had just woken up and were in the middle of davening. Yaffa peered at the Hebrew “Ima” flashing on the phone and immediately picked up.

“Hey sis!”

“Yaffa! I didn’t expect to hear your voice … How are you?”

“Baruch Hashem. How are you, my tzadekes sister?”

“Huh?”

Yaffa laughed lightly. “I never knew you wanted to start a chesed organization!”

She sincerely hoped her voice wasn’t conveying any hint of the envy she’d been feeling ever since yesterday’s visit to her parents. She was supposed to be the idealistic one of the siblings, yet it seemed like at every turn, Ilana and her family were winning on the idealism front.

“Chesed organization?” Ilana asked, her voice surprisingly hard. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“Oh c’mon, don’t be modest. Moriah told me and Mom and Dad all about it. You should’ve seen how proud she was of you. It’s a great idea.”

Ilana was silent for a moment. “It’s a silly little idea, not something I was seriously considering. Moriah shouldn’t have said anything. How did Mom and Dad react?”

Yaffa raised her eyebrows. “Well, surprised. But Dad said right away that he’d be happy to fund it. I mean, not in those words exactly, but he implied it. It’s all good, don’t worry.”

Ilana hesitated. “You sure?”

“Really. In fact, Dad reacted so well that I’m thinking of hitting him up for my own tzedaka organization!”

“Yeah? I didn’t know you had one. What kind?”

Nonplussed by the seriousness of her tone, Yaffa started to say, “No, I was joking.” But then she paused.

Moriah’s words still echoed in her head. They did all the hard work of making the money—and they’re leaving all the pleasure of doing good with it to their kids.

Who said her sister had to be the only one in the family to do something good?

Now that their family was rich in tzedaka money … maybe it was time for her to start thinking along those lines as well?

Ariella Aaron is an internationally published writer with a unique talent for writing stories that are entertaining and thought-provoking, with characters who are eminently relatable. A former resident of Northern New Jersey, Ariella has now transplanted her family to Israel, where she is happily living the dream of raising her brood in our homeland.