Terms of the Deal

Savta loved to go all out for this vacation supper, preparing all her children’s favorite dishes. Though being the good children they were, they didn’t come empty-handed either. Yitzchak always brought a fragrant shepherd’s pie — Malka made an exceptionally good one, with layers of savory meat topped by swirls of creamy mashed potatoes, and a hint of nutmeg inside. Yoav brought bags of freshly roasted pitzuchim from his store: sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds and salted peanuts and the freshest almonds in the country. And Yaron always brought his Adi’s famous mango mousse, made from the mangoes they grew in their own backyard. You could taste the sun in each bite, Savta Shlomit liked to say.

She’d been crowing extra loudly about the taste of the sun the last few years, hoping that Yaron wouldn’t notice how Yitzchak and his kids never finished the mousse to the end. Oh, they ate it, they exclaimed over it, they clearly relished the tropical treat. But somehow each one left a noticeable segment in the cobalt-tinted bowls she served it in (she could use disposables, like Orli always recommended, but the sunset yellow of the mousse looked so bright and pretty against the blue bowls). She suspected it had something to do with Yitzchak’s stringencies, all those complicated chumrot he and Malka had picked up over the years. Hopefully Yaron didn’t realize, hopefully Adi wasn’t insulted.

That’s the last thing she needed, for one of her children to feel slighted by the other.

Of course, when they were small, they fought plenty, but even when they hurt each other, they knew the force of their love far outweighed the pettiness of their quarrels. If a neighbor or classmate so much as threatened one of them, the other two would be there in a flash. One time she’d even gotten a complaint from Gveret Lilienblum down the street — your Yaron told my Adam that if he bothers Yoav again, he won’t be able to walk for a week — Savta Shlomit had made concerned noises, but inside she was proud of Yaron. That’s what it meant to be a brother. You can’t just go on with your life knowing someone is threatening your own flesh and blood.