Besides, who if not her? She looked around for the bride’s mother, hoping she was hiding herself in an appropriate corner with her red dress and her turbaned boyfriend. She shuddered, wondering what people were saying. Then she shrugged, setting her mouth grimly. Let them think whatever they want, but if they open their mouths, mine will also not stay closed. She knew exactly which principals’ ears to bend when children applied to the most prestigious schools, exactly which matchmakers should be dropped dismaying hints about yichus and unseemly behavior, exactly which rosh yeshiva to approach concerning hopeful applicants. And all of them—she told herself with steely conviction as her eyes swept around the room—knew it, too. Not that she was a vengeful person or a gossip, God forbid, both traits being absolutely forbidden by the Torah. But like a security guard at a bank, who mostly just smiled at you as you entered, it was important that everyone knew you also had a loaded gun dangling from a holster in case of emergency.

Rebbitzen Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum, although unconnected in blood to either the bride or the groom, nevertheless considered herself the patron of these festivities. After all, had she not arranged the hall, addressed and mailed the invitations, including personal notes to the most prestigious of the rabbinical guests to make sure they didn’t imagine their absence would go unnoticed (or forgiven)? As she sat in her chair wiping away the beads of moisture from her forehead and holding court among the many guests who came by to pay her homage as the formidable widow of the late, revered Harav HaGaon Yitzchak Chaim, she watched approvingly as the young married women and girls twirled around the hall, bright and glowing in their fashionable, modest finery, their lavishly styled wigs almost indistinguishable from real hair.

But soon her eyes misted. If only it were one of her grandchildren getting married instead! But to witness her former son-in-law, her Yaakov, paired with another woman was almost more than she could bear. She should be here, her pretty Zissele, dancing with the others. Such a tragedy!

When she looked back upon her long life, it was as if so much of it had never happened. Like pages in a book left out in the rain, most of it was blurry and unreadable, except for a few scattered sentences describing deaths and births and memorably awful sicknesses she had nursed herself and others through. Why was that? she wondered. Was it because there was only so much room in her mind and the bad was stronger than the good, and today always crowded out yesterday? Or was it because she didn’t want to remember?