Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 86 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
“And they’ve been at Shimon Weisskopf’s in Boro Park for a week already, recovering.” Hinda concluded the story as she conducted a little tour of the small apartment in Bnei Brak.
“That’s amazing…a real suspense story! Does your uncle feel better now?”
“Yes. And he’s had tests done at a hospital in New York to make sure there’s no neurological damage. He apparently did sustain a real blow to the head, and then, for a long time, they stuffed him with substances that dulled his senses and disoriented him… But he was released after three days in the hospital, and while he’ll need some follow-up, he’s definitely stable.”
“How long is he staying in America?”
“I guess a few more weeks, until he really gets back to himself and is able to fly home.” The apartment was very sweet. Aside for the master bedroom, there was also another room with two beds. She liked that.
And it seemed that Penina, standing beside her with Batsheva in her arms, liked it even more. Hinda had a feeling that this young family would be visiting them often.
“It’s so nice that your uncle was able to get out of that place,” Penina said. And then, out of context, she added, “And it’s really nice of you to try living next to us.” She paused, and then continued in a rush. “When you got engaged, I asked my father if he could stay in Bnei Brak, with you moving in with him, but he said there was no way he could ask such a thing of you. And at first, I thought that I really couldn’t ask anything of you either.”
“Anything?” Hinda asked playfully, as she glanced at her ringing phone. “One minute, Penina. It’s my uncle, the one I was telling you about. I try to answer right when he calls.”
“Hello?”
“Hello, Hinda? How are you?”
“Baruch Hashem. It’s good to hear your voice. How are you recovering?”
“Wonderful, baruch Hashem. I’m walking out of the bank right now…”
“Which bank?”
“My regular branch. What do you mean?”
“In Boro Park? You have an account there?”
“What Boro Park? I’m in Yerushalayim.”
“Yerushalayim?!”
“Why not? It’s only an eleven-hour flight. I landed less than two hours ago, and on the way home, before I go see what Martin destroyed over there, I popped into the bank to see what the organization’s account looks like. Tell me, what’s all that money in the checking account?”
“What do you mean?” she replied, instead of saying, Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back already? or, We would have been happy to come meet you at the airport. Because there was no point in asking a lone wolf such questions. “Every month, I deposited the checks and the money I collected. The income continued as usual, and there were hardly any expenses. Just a clothing sale that Martin once organized, and the payment for the chicken and meat deliveries to your families. But besides that, you weren’t here to take any money out.”
“Aleichem hashalom, of course it’s me. Baruch Mechayeh hameisim? Sure, baruch Hu u’baruch Shemo.” His voice grew fainter, until Hinda realized he’d met someone and had stuck his phone into his pocket, still on. “Goldberg from which yeshivah? Oh, yes, I remember. In Netivot. What? You were looking for me over the past few months?”
Hinda cut off the call and looked around her. Penina was standing at the milchig silverware drawer, calmly sorting knives and forks.
Hinda quietly walked away and went to see how the washing machine worked. Then, after twenty seconds, she called Michoel back.
“Oh, Hinda,” he said, “wait a minute, I’m just getting out of the taxi. Wow, it sure looks neglected here… Martin gave me the key he had, which he had taken from the window. Such chutzpah… But he’s a nice kid. He’s staying with Shimon Weisskopf for now, and trying to convince him that they should open a business together…after he goes to Canada and back. Meanwhile, I became friendlier with Mike, the other boy who was there. Maybe he’ll come here to Israel, to me, for Pesach—we’ll see. Wait a minute, I’m opening the door.”
He was probably holding the phone and the key in the same hand, so Hinda was granted a live broadcast of the door opening. “So, like this…” She heard Michoel’s voice from a distance; he hadn’t yet put the phone back to his ear. “Everything looks alright…good, good, baruch Hashem…” And then he was quiet for a few long moments and she heard footsteps, and then a squeak of a door, maybe of a cabinet. “It’s really empty here; I see I need to do some urgent food shopping… But the main thing is that I’m home. I have no time for nonsense.”
“Food isn’t nonsense.”
“True, but there are lots of more important things in life.” He was talking to her again.
“I agree with that, for sure.”
“You know, during those rough days there, I didn’t always know how old I was, and there were times when I thought I was thirty or forty, and other times when I thought I was ninety. What should I tell you…? When I thought I was so old, I regretted all kinds of changes that I didn’t make when I was younger.” He was quiet for a minute, and she felt a desperate urge to change the subject. She fervently hoped he would not ask about that shidduch with Freiberg again. Let him not forget, for a second time, that it was just not relevant anymore!
“Progress is something that’s always important to achieve, so as not to remain stuck in the same place in life,” she said. “But tell me, what kind of changes have you seen in the bank account? You mentioned something like that before.”
“Excellent changes. Baruch Hashem, the amounts just grew, though I prefer not to mention sums over the phone. Now I need to deal with that, first thing. And maybe I’ll still get a huge compensation payment from what’s-their-names for what they did to me. Because those guys didn’t only get messed up with me, but also with Mike Kopshitz, and they won’t get off so easily from his father…”
“The boy who was with you there?”
“Yes, yes. I just met the yeshivah administrator from Netivot, Kletzkin, and he told me how they’ve been struggling. I’m first going to send them twenty thousand shekel, and then I’ll check what else I can do with the tzedakah money that has accumulated.
“Oh, and tell me,” he said, suddenly remembering something else. “Can you host a little girl for some of Pesach?”
“What?” Hinda’s first thought was about Penina, who was walking from room to room in the little apartment. “Which girl?”
“Kopshitz’s daughter. You know, the guy I was just talking about.”
“The millionaire whose son was with you in South Carolina?”
“The billionaire, to be more precise. You can say that Shimon Weisskopf, Martin, and I helped Mike get out of there. The family feels a lot of hakaras hatov to us now.”
“Which will be translated into money?”
“I’m usually the cynical one, Hinda; es past nisht for you. Anyway, can Mike’s little sister stay by you when I take Mike on some trips around the country? She’s insisting on coming to Israel along with him. And she’s quite an entertaining little girl; I think she has a very high IQ. You know, there are all kinds of ways to do tzedakah.”
“Sure, Uncle Michoel, but who said she’ll enjoy it in my house? After all, we’re a not-so-young-anymore couple who might bore her.”
“You? Oh, no. I’ve long taken you out of your shell, did you forget?”
No, she wouldn’t get offended now; she would not. It wasn’t age-appropriate at all, at this point. Especially as she’d also learned, a long time ago, that it just wasn’t worth getting offended by blunt, boundary-less Uncle Michoel. “But I live in Bnei Brak now, Uncle Michoel,” she said, pulling out her final card. “So if you thought she’d have a nice vacation in the bay city…”
“Bnei Brak? Why’d you move there?”
“Dov wanted to,” she replied, wondering if she’d just opened herself up to another barb.
“Ah, it was good for you to get married… Doing things because someone else wants you to…beautiful! Alright, Hinda, I’m going to finally put my things away and get myself organized here. Do you think it’s nice to keep someone on the phone when he’s just walked into his house for the first time, after more than half a year of being away?”
Hinda began trying to convince herself again that there was really nothing to be insulted about, but then she heard him chuckling, and she realized it was a joke.
“Okay, Uncle Michoel, take care! And a gutten yishuv!”
She went back to Penina, still smiling. “This uncle of mine… He decided that he was tired of convalescing in New York, and came back to Israel without telling me ahead of time…”
“At first I thought that you were the type who wouldn’t understand my world at all, and there would be nothing to talk to you about, but I soon realized that that’s completely not true.” Penina put Batsheva into her carriage. Hinda looked at her, wondering what connection there was between what she’d said about Michoel and what Penina had just responded, and then she realized that there wasn’t any connection. Penina hadn’t heard what she’d said right now; she was still at the place where their conversation had gotten cut off, and she’d just picked things up from there.
Hinda replayed the words in her mind and shifted gears. “I’m happy that you were pleasantly surprised,” she said finally, with a wink, as she checked the hinges on the cabinet doors.
Penina looked up at her. “Tell me, will you…” She fell silent.
“Will I what?” Hinda asked.
“Do you think…you’ll continue to collect money for your uncle’s organization?”
“Yes,” Hinda replied simply. Then, seeing Penina’s face, as the younger woman opened and closed her mouth, Hinda added jovially, “But I’ll travel to Haifa once a month to do that. At my age, I wouldn’t change my workplace.”
“You won’t be knocking on doors in Bnei Brak?”
“No,” Hinda said. And then she decided to put Penina to the test: “And if I would?”
“The question is what you would be like,” Penina said right away, as if she’d planned out this answer for days ahead of time. “If you’d be a regular woman, volunteering to be the gabba’is tzedakah for an organization, I’d be fine with that. But if people think that you are the poor woman herself…”
“You’re saying that the fact that I collect money doesn’t matter, it’s just who I am that does?”
“Exactly.”
“So that has nothing to do with the actual collecting?”
“Right,” Penina answered.
Hinda wiped a finger on the stovetop. “And how will people know if I’m a regular lady who’s volunteering or whatever, or if, chalilah, I’m the poor woman herself?”
“How will they know? I guess it would be based on what they see and understand of you.”
“So it’s not even who or what I really am, it’s the way I look and seem to people?”
“Yes,” Penina replied, laughing awkwardly. “It’s funny when you think about it, but that’s how the world is, right? People look at the outside; there’s nothing we can do about it. Are we not allowed to want to look okay to others?”
“Of course we’re allowed to want that.” Hinda was thinking aloud. “And more than that, sometimes it’s worth it for us to invest in our externals, if it will affect our internal selves… But let’s just remember that this ‘bubble’ is just a step on the way to being who we really are; it’s not the final outcome in and of itself.”
***
Hinda, her hostess, had a warm smile and voice, and after four hours of endless talking on Becky’s part, the girl declared, “You’re a therapist, right? For children or adults?”
“A therapist?” Hinda’s laugh was also warm.
“Why, you’re not one?”
“No.”
“Well, you should know that you really are a therapist. Because you have a voice like a therapist and an expression like a therapist, and you talk nicely like one, and you think like one—“ She sat up in her chair importantly and nibbled at Hinda’s Pesach cake, her sixth slice for the day. “Even if you don’t have a clinic and appointments, that’s what you really are.”
“And who knows? She may yet become one, someday!” Uncle Michoel announced, as he opened the door just in time to hear the tail end of the conversation. “Because she’s the type of person who is not afraid to change. Is there any better type than that?”
thenextpage-israelbookshop.com 