“Please, make yourself comfortable,” he said with studied correctness, waving her to a chair, which, to her surprise, was already waiting on the other side of his desk as if it were the most normal thing in the world; as if the last meeting with all its ugly innuendoes had never happened.

Confused and wary, but grateful for small mercies, she seated herself, crossing her legs demurely at the ankles and folding her hands together tightly in her lap.

He looked her over, then leaned back in his chair, tapping a pencil in front of him, first the point and then the eraser, over and over. She stared at it, hypnotized. “I think we might have gotten off to a bad start, Miss Lehman. So if I upset you, I apologize. Let’s start all over again. Clean slate. Would that be all right?”

She exhaled, nodding. All of a sudden, he spoke perfect English, with not a trace of Yeshivish. That, too, was odd.

“So why don’t you tell me what you would like me to help you with?”

Shaindele, who had spent the week preparing her defenses against the renewal of his merciless onslaught on her privacy and modesty, allowed herself to breathe. “I’d like to talk about my mameh.”

“You lost her just recently, no?”

She nodded.

“That is very hard, especially for a young girl.” He was silent for a few moments. “Were you close?”

Shaindele considered her next step. Was it better to cooperate or not? Well, if I’m stuck here, might as well make some use out of it. Besides, he was acting differently. Maybe he really was a psychologist, after all.

“She was everything to me.”

“Please, explain,” he said patiently.

“She was not just my mameh. She was my teacher. How to be a good Jewish woman, a wife and mother, from her I learned it.”

“What kind of a person was she?”

She leaned forward eagerly. “She was so smart. She knew how to do everything. Such a good teacher she was! Her students, they love … loved her. She knew how to cook—such delicious food!—and take care of a house and children. Everything always smelled so clean and looked so shiny! I still don’t know how she did it. And … and she would sew—the most beautiful Purim costumes, and not just princesses and brides. Once, she made me a costume to be a bag of flour! And Chasya she made to be a Hershey’s bar.” She smiled to herself, remembering. “And even though she had all that work for Shabbos, she was never too tired to play with us on Shabbos afternoon when she got up from her nap. All kinds of games and big jigsaw puzzles with thousands of pieces. All the pieces always looked the same to me, but she…” Her throat caught. “She could always figure it out. I don’t know how she did it.”

“You admired her.”