June 21, 2026 Categories: In Print / Features
Persuaded - Chapter XVIII
Effi
Recap from last week: Chezky brings Effi home briefly with him after a shiur, where to his shock Effi finds Chani seated at the table with her sister and the Moskowitz girls. Effi joined Chezky with his friends on the basketball court, but had a hard time concentrating on the game. He had to force himself to stay alert so his new friends wouldn’t find him a total washout on the court. But it was hard to keep his brain from racing. The very last thing he’d expected to see when he stopped by Chezky’s home was Chani Elman! How was that even possible? He thought his heart would stop. Okay, from the moment he arrived in Brooklyn he realized he would be staying in Chani’s old home, and had learned in conversation that Chezky’s wife was an Elman as well, the youngest sister. But no one had told him Chani would be in Brooklyn! Mrs. Moskowitz had said something about the Elman family clearing out and taking a place in Toms River! And Chani hadn’t been at the Shabbos lunch the day before, which would seem to back up that notion. So what in the name of heaven was she doing at her sister’s house on Sunday morning? Just the sight of her face brought a wrenching stab of pain, a reminder of his loss. How was he supposed to act around her now? There hadn’t been time to think about it, so all he’d managed to do was nod at her. Idiot! She must think he hated her. Effi was angry and hurt, but he could never bring himself to hate Chani. Especially not when he saw her sitting there looking as pretty as ever, not having changed one iota in eight years, her lovely blue eyes gone wide at the sight of him like a doe in headlights. Chani didn’t seem to know how to act either. She’d looked just as shocked as he was. Clearly, she was still single…but what did that even mean? Was it really possible she hadn’t found anyone else in all this time, despite her winning looks, personality, and family status? Was she too picky? Was her family too picky? He had heard of cases in which girls from high-status families, rather than marrying quickly, were never able to find anyone acceptable to their families. “Clearly I didn’t meet her standards either back then,” he reflected bitterly. Or had she been forced to end things against her will? It was hard to judge, from a single unanticipated encounter, whether she had ever regretted throwing him aside. Again he asked himself if her heart had simply not been fully invested in their shidduch, and he’d been spinning one-sided fantasies in his brain. It hadn’t felt like that as they dated, though. Maybe her family had twisted her arm because they didn’t consider him wealthy or prestigious enough. But if she had really and truly wanted him, wouldn’t she have put up a bigger fight? Stop it, he told himself. At this point all this was water under the bridge, and he’d do better to seek greener pastures. His brother-in-law Avraham was already urging him to settle down. “You’re not in Palo Alto anymore!” he had said just the previous evening as they finished seudah shlishis at home, although none of them were terribly hungry after the hearty cholent, cold cuts, kugel, and cherry pie they’d enjoyed at the Moskowitz home. “You’re back in New York, shidduch capital of North America! You can have your pick of girls here! “And no more excuses about being busy with the business. The business is doing great, and yes, we do have to launch the East Coast branch, but that’s a piece of cake compared to our first launch.” Effi now replayed that whole scene in his mind. Shifra had come to the kitchen table with an assortment of fruit and a plate of brownies, asking, “What should we tell people you’re looking for, Effi? There are tons of shadchanim in Brooklyn, and people will be asking.” Effi had shrugged. “Oh, you know, anyone between the ages of nineteen and thirty,” he’d tossed off facetiously as he grabbed a brownie and a slice of mango. “Any girl who smiles sweetly and tells me I’m Hashem’s gift to the world. I’ve been single so long it wouldn’t take much to wrap me around someone’s little finger.” “Stop it!” his sister scolded. “I’m serious! I know you—you won’t settle for just any young thing with a pretty face. If you did, you would’ve been married ages ago.” Effi had grown a bit more serious. “At this point, I need a girl who knows her own mind,” he said, “yet still has some sweetness to her. A girl who’s smart but modest. Or something along those lines. I don’t know—I’ll know it when I see it. I’ve had plenty of time to think about what I want. More time than most, unfortunately.” “How about one of those Moskowitz girls?” Avraham said. “They’re lovely girls, come from a terrific family.” Effi had raised an eyebrow. “They’re a little young, aren’t they?” he said. “But maybe.” “Wouldn’t hurt to try,” Avraham said. “You’d get a mother-in-law who’s a great cook and thinks you walk on water after you got her son Dudi to write to her before he died.” Shifra looked more skeptical. But she shrugged and said, “Well, maybe.” Who knew when a couple would click? Heavens knows she’d done her share of trying to redt shidduchim, and she’d never been successful even as she watched couples get engaged that she never in a million years would have imagined together. “I guess that’s why I’m not a shadchan,” she had concluded. But when it came to her brother, she was protective. Effi was special, and whoever married him had better be pretty darn special too. All this talk of them setting him up had made Effi uncomfortable. “What do you guys think of your new digs?” he asked to change the subject, not letting on that he’d been in this house before (although he had never gotten farther than the living room and dining room, where Mr. Elman had raked him up and down with his eyes and made a comment about the cheap quality of his suit). Shiffy shrugged. “It’s very nice in a kind of classic, old-fashioned way,” she said. “It’s a nice change from all that minimalist, stark modern stuff you see in Palo Alto that looks the same everywhere. Somebody put thought into this when they decorated it.” “Some of the upstairs bedrooms have been redone,” her husband said. “They tell me the oldest daughter is something of a fashionista and made some changes. I heard the lady of the house was niftar over ten years ago, though, very sad.” Yes, Chani never got over that, Effi remembered all too well. “I think you’re sleeping in the room Mindy Moskowitz used occupy,” Shiffy told Effi with a smile. “But they turned it into a guest room when she got married. Anyway, there’s at least six bedrooms up there, so take your pick.” Effi was relieved to realize he hadn’t ended up in Chani’s room, whichever one that was. That would have been way too weird. The rooms seemed stripped of the previous occupants’ personal possessions, which in his opinion was kind of a shame. Effi would have liked to have looked through Chani’s room, to maybe discover some overlooked books or papers…anything that might give him a better understanding of her. Anything to give him a clue as to why she abandoned him for no apparent reason…To be continued.
