Mindy
Recap from last week: Avraham and Shiffy Krauss come to Mindy and Chezky’s home for barbecue. Chani is shaken when Mrs. Krauss says that she hears they know her brother.
Mindy wasn’t sure why Chani suddenly seemed so perturbed in the middle of a very regular barbecue conversation. Then Mrs. Krauss said, “I’m sure you heard my brother got married, didn’t you? Now he has a shul in Mill Basin. Good old Nati, he was just made for a job like that. He was always one of the most yeshivish of our siblings.”
Chani visibly exhaled. Mr. Krauss now picked up the thread, adding cheerily, “And Shiffy has another brother, Effi! He’s coming here this week to stay with us a bit and help us get our New York branch up and running. Effi’s terrific! He was the brains behind our app.”
Chani nodded politely, but she didn’t follow up with questions. Mindy found Chani’s silence odd. Maybe Mrs. Krauss’s brother was single! Why wasn’t she asking more about him? Her sisters and sisters-in-law all needed shidduchim! She tried and failed to think of a discreet way to find out more, but then Pinny came running over with a glass of orange soda that he spilled all over her skirt, and the discussion turned to whether or not Fanta stains come out in the wash.
Mindy, of course, had no idea Chani was busy struggling to process the idea that Effi Weinberg would be coming to town, wondering if he hated her and how she would react if their paths crossed. All she saw was that her guests were finishing their plates and polishing off the tart, and the Krausses were rising to leave. “It’s been a very long day. We are totally bushed,” Mr. Krauss said as his wife stifled a yawn.
“That red-eye flight is a killer,” she said. “Then standing all day telling the movers what to do—my legs are jelly! But this was really so nice of you, Mindy and Chezky. It was delicious and we’re so happy to have gotten to know you!”
“You’ll come again, and next time Chezky’s parents will be here,” Mindy said. “They’re dying to meet you and your brother Effi, knowing what he did for them!”
She and the others walked them around to the front of the house and waved goodbye. As Mindy turned to go back to the backyard to start cleaning up, she caught sight of Chani’s confused face. What had Chani missed?
“What did this brother do for your in-laws?” Chani asked, trotting behind her to the patio. “And why didn’t they come tonight? I thought you invited them!”
“I did, but they cancelled,” Mindy told Chani as the two of them began dumping dirty plates into a garbage bag. “What happened was they also stopped by to meet the Krausses this morning, after we did, and course they all started playing Jewish geography. They realized it was Mrs. Krauss’s brother Effi who was responsible for getting poor Dudi to contact the family just before he was niftar. Can you believe the incredible hashgachah pratis? Small world! But of course my mother-in-law got all emotional, and it threw her into a funk for the rest of the day.”
Chani still looked clueless, and Mindy realized she’d never heard that whole story. Of course, Chani knew about Dudi—poor Dudi! He was Chezky’s younger brother, who had tragically passed away young and left a hole in his parents’ hearts.
As far as Mindy could tell, however, Dudi had been a bad egg for as long as anyone could remember. He’d been a hyper kid who could never sit still in yeshiva, ended up with a bad crowd and got into drugs. The Moskowitzes had tried everything: tutors, rabbis, wilderness camps, counseling, rehab. He’d get sent away and come back presumably clean, then a few months later it would all start up again. The Moskowitzes finally decided, with guidance of course, that they had to resort to tough love: Either he stayed clean, or he couldn’t live in their house.
Dudi’s response was to disappear, which made them even more frantic. Who knew where he was or who he was hanging out with? They were on the verge of hiring a private investigator when finally, miraculously, they got an email from him saying he was camped out in Palo Alto after a few weeks of hanging out in the Berkeley area.
“He had met Mrs. Krauss’s brother, this Effi Weinberg, through a friend of a friend,” Mindy now explained. “Effi was nice to him and tried to get him back on track. He dragged Dudi to shul a few times and gave him a little part-time work answering phones and working as a gofer. Then, at some point, Dudi let slip that his parents had no idea where he was! Effi was shocked, and convinced him to send them an email letting them know he was okay.”
But after that Dudi, predictably, met up with someone who enticed him to buy a little weed, and then he was smoking again, and then he bought some weed that was laced with too much Chinese Fentanyl. His roommate found him stretched out on the bed, lifeless, the next morning. His distraught parents had the body flown to New York to be interred near his grandparents in Long Island.
“Now Effi is coming to town, and my in-laws are practically falling all over themselves to express their gratitude for having convinced Dudi to get back in touch with them,” she told Chani, balling a plastic tablecloth and stuffing it in the garbage bag as Henny and Lieba brought serving dishes back to the kitchen. “That email changed everything!”
A few precious lines of communication had meant the world to the Moskowitzes! Their beloved, prodigal son harbored no ill will towards them! He still cared enough to be in touch! The prompting on Effi’s part had probably been little more than a spontaneous suggestion, tossed out and immediately dismissed from his mind, but it made all the difference to Dudi’s parents. Instead of beating their chests in guilt, tortured by the idea that they had alienated their child, they had proof in their inbox for all eternity that he had continued to love them and think of them.
“What can I tell you? Acharei mos kedoshim—after death everyone is holy,” Mindy said to Chani. “After Dudi died he suddenly was transformed in everyone’s memory from a bummy kid to a poor, sweet child who’d had the misfortune to be led astray by wicked companions.” Mindy, who didn’t share the family’s emotional attachment, was the only one who remembered him for what he’d really been: a guy who never wanted to work too hard, and who, once caught up in his addiction, had been perfectly oblivious to the torment he caused his poor parents.
Nevertheless, the news of Effi Weinberg’s arrival stirred up memories for his parents, and Mrs. Moskowitz went into one of her “blue moods,” as she called them, when a wave of grief sunk her usual cheerful spirits into a funk.
The cancellation had worked out fine for Mindy, keeping the party more manageable. It was already after nine o’clock, the sky almost dark. Her boys had been up too late and were becoming unmanageable, and the hormones of her first trimester were pulling her eyes shut even as she collapsed into a lawn chair. “Chani,” she whispered. “Can you put my kids to bed? I don’t have an ounce of strength left.”
And Chani, sweet, obliging, efficient Chani, led her two little princes upstairs for pajamas and bed.
To be continued.
