Rivky hadn’t just abandoned our organization— she’d sabotaged it. Why does no one agree with me?
Rivky moved to Lakewood today. Someone mentioned it to me in passing, assuming I knew, and I acted like I did. She moved to one of those 55+ communities.
“She wanted to be closer to her kids,” the woman said. She was too polite to admit it, but we both knew that was a farce. Rivky still had boys in yeshivah, a daughter in seminary, and only two married daughters in Lakewood. She was moving away because of me. Well, because of Tikvah Refuah, the organization we’d run together for the past 30 years.
I know I’m supposed to feel bad. But I’m more bewildered than guilty.
The woman was a yenta, baiting me with information and comments, waiting for me to say something she could tell an acquaintance while waiting in line to pay at whatever supermarket she’d be in next. I’m not an idiot, though. Years ago, my mother taught me, Smiling and nodding is always a lady’s option.
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