“You know the way home?”

“Of course!”

Reluctantly, she hugged the girl’s stiff body, coiled in resistance. Like dropping off a small, helpless child at a day care center for the first time, Leah looked on helplessly, her heart sinking with an inexplicable heaviness and guilt as she waved goodbye.

Shaindele waved back, watching as Leah opened the elevator door and disappeared. When she was gone, Shaindele stood there uncertainly for a few moments. Then she rang the bell.

“Come in,” a deep voice said. Something about its timbre frightened her. It sounded demanding, even on something this neutral, she thought, her hand hesitating as it clutched the doorknob. She inhaled then shrugged, gathering her courage. After all, what choice did she really have?

There was no waiting room, she saw as she opened the door, surprised. Just a strange orange couch so wide it could have been a bed. At the far end of the room was another door. That must be where the main elevator left you, she realized. So why had they been told to come in the back way? Inside, up against the wall, was a desk without a single piece of paper on it. And instead of the massive bookcases she’d imagined, there was only one small shelf with different-colored business binders. There wasn’t a single psychology book or a single diploma or certificate. Instead, there were a few pictures of nature: a waterfall, a clump of trees in the forest, and, strangely, a picture of the beach with a few women in immodest bathing suits, the kind no Boro Park matron would ever wear.

She felt her face grow hot.

He stood up and walked toward her. “Already a red face? Why?”

He was short and overweight with a graying beard and salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in the uniform of the Hasidim: black suit, white shirt, pants wide at the cuffs over white socks and laced-up black shoes. On his head was a large black velvet skullcap.

Somehow, she found this reassuring: his outfit, his age, his girth, his grayness, his stubby fingers. He was indistinguishable from the kind of men she passed by on Boro Park streets every two minutes. Only the beach scene grated. It was absolutely incongruous with who he was presenting himself to be. She looked at it again in case she’d missed something.

“Ah, the beach,” he smiled, not unpleasantly. “Yes, surprising. But what is the matter with having a scene to look upon in the privacy of our homes and offices that reminds us how beautiful the world is, and how many things there are to give us pleasure? Even if our faith prevents us…,” he added quickly as her eyebrows rose.