It wouldn’t be like her first marriage, she thought. It’s so different when you’re young. The blood races, the stomach knots. You are excited, terrified, too, of the unknown, the forbidden territory of sexual love opening up like iron gates long locked by custom and tradition and law, suddenly, thrillingly, flinging open wide to let you pass through with God’s blessing. It would be nothing like that. Just two lonely human beings finding refuge and comfort with each other, leaving enough room between them for all their memories. He’ll bring his Malka Ruth, and I’ll bring my Yitzchak Chaim, she thought. All four of us would be in such a marriage. But so what? The table was big enough to hold them. And as they sat across from each other, she could put down a bowl of good soup in front of him and then in front of herself, and a potful would last a week, instead of a month in the freezer like now, with no one to eat her cooking but herself. Who can cook for one? It was depressing and impossible.

Yes, she thought, changing sides again. It could be a good thing. But how to go about it?

She couldn’t even imagine. Why, the very idea of approaching the subject with a matchmaker made goose bumps rise on her arms beneath the ankle-length, long-sleeved flannel nightgown and on the scalp beneath the tichel that covered her hair even in sleep.

He would have to initiate, not, God forbid, her! It would have to be his idea.

She began to think of ways in which Rav Alter might be helped along to come up with this idea all on his own.

17

YAAKOV STRUGGLES

His heart was aflame with the kind of passion he had seldom known in his life. It is all going to hell, he thought as he tried to concentrate on the numbers and ledgers and computer spreadsheets that took up his desk.

Why is this happening to me? he thought helplessly. That a daughter of mine could do such a thing … go alone into the city at night with a young man who she had been secretly meeting for who knows how long? A terrible, debilitating thought struck him. Had Leah known about it and kept it from him? And worse. Had she encouraged it?