Tonight, Leah would be going to the mikvah. The longing in his heart to be with her once more, a husband and lover, banished all his misery. He would take the whole night to himself, he thought. He had already put in a call to Meir telling him he would not be able to come to their weekly study session together. He would buy her flowers and candy, just as he did when they were going out. He would wipe his mind and heart clean of all the aggravations, doubts, and unhappiness that infected it. He would be with her, only her, in completeness and devotion, the way he had not been for so long, he told himself.

Then he sighed, taking up the little pieces of paper and smoothing them out, trying not to think about the people who generated them.

26

LEAH, YAAKOV, SHAINDELE

The bright flowers were damp against his hands. His heart leaped up with anticipation as he viewed the fragrant pink roses, magnificent dotted purple stargazer lilies, the peachy pink alstroemeria. He was glad then that he’d spent the extra time and money to let the florist work her art instead of grabbing a ready bunch of predictable red roses from one of the buckets. He rejoiced, too, that he’d splurged on the chocolates: kosher Swiss pralines boxed in festive gold with a large red ribbon that had been curled with the joyous and delicate devotion given a favorite little girl’s precious hair. His whole body felt light as he clutched his gifts heading home along the dusty streets of Boro Park, barely conscious of his feet touching the cold ground.

“Here, these are for you, my lovely wife,” he would say to her when she answered the door. And her face—her lovely, kind face—would dimple, her beautiful eyes deepening with joy, as she flashed him a smile of pure, white light. She would take his gifts and lead him past the children to the intimacy of their bedroom. “I have been to the mikvah,” she would whisper into his tingling ear, as she …

“Shalom aleichem, Reb Yid,” a voice boomed into his consciousness.

He looked up, his face blushing red as if his thoughts were flashing across a neon sign emblazoned on his forehead. It was a person he vaguely recognized who sat near him in the synagogue.

“On your way home? I’ll walk with you. Flowers, candy? It’s a simcha?”

Yaakov’s heart sank. He knew the man meant well and was just being friendly, but he fiercely did not want his company or his intrusive questions to replace the silent joy of his anticipatory dreams. To make things worse, the man was elderly, and his pace was slow. But Yaakov could think of no way to extricate himself that would not be unkind.