“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. I sat down again and stirred my tea. “You think I’m an awful person. Sitting here on an all-expenses-paid vacation, complaining. How greedy, right?”

T he greatest difference between my friends and me was that most of them had 1,000 square feet of floor to keep clean, and Miele canisters, while I had 3,500 square feet and a central vacuum system. A broken central vacuum system.

After the repairman, who charged $150 to prescribe a $700 motor replacement, left, I turned to my broom and said, “You and me are going to become tight.”

I was reaching for the shovel to collect yet another mound of dirt when my mother called.

“I have a little surprise for you,” she said. The tinkle in her voice made my stomach knot.

“A surprise?” I repeated weakly.

She chuckled. “Yup. Me and Tatty decided to treat you girls in honor of Mimi’s wedding. I made an appointment with Tehilla for you, Rivky, and Chani to get new sheitels. On us, of course.”

The knot in my stomach went snap. “Wow,” I breathed. “Th-thank you.”

When my mother said “new sheitel,” she was not referring to the AliExpress variety. I’d given up estimating how much this wedding was costing my parents. All I knew was how much it was costing us. Babysitters for the wedding night and all sheva brachos, the sheva brachos my siblings and I were doing (in a restaurant; siblings always do restaurant sheva brachos), gowns for myself and my girls. (“Ma is gonna pay, she always does,” my sister Rivky kept reassuring me, but these things were so unpredictable, and so far my mother hadn’t said a word.) And a gift for the chassan kallah. (“We have no choice,” I’d explained to Efraim. “My siblings bought us an antique silver fruit bowl when we got married.” To which Efraim retorted, “Give them ours.”)

In hindsight, I probably should not have broken the sheitel news to Efraim over supper. With my husband running out to tutor a bochur before night seder, we had a skimpy half hour together every night. A shame to squander that on an argument.

Worse, he was 100 percent right. “What’s wrong with your sheitel?” he demanded. “What do you need a new one for?”

“What do you want me to do?” I snapped. “I didn’t ask for it. Don’t you think I’d prefer if she gave us the money and told us to use it for wedding expenses?”

“Why don’t you tell her this?”

“Are you nuts? She’ll be totally insulted.”

He grunted. “Did you tell her about the vacuum?”

I sighed wearily. “I can’t. This vacuum system was a moving gift from my parents, remember?”

“The gift that keeps taking.”

“Like the house?” I asked quietly.

Efraim nodded grimly. “Like this fancy, tremendous house, which we’re going to lose.”

I filled my lungs. “You’re exaggerating, right?”

“If only.”

It was quiet after that. Efraim shuffled through the mail, ripping and tossing envelopes.

“They mean well,” I said. “My parents, you know. They have this vision, buying houses for the children, supporting them in learning.”

“Torah u’gedulah,” Efraim muttered. “Ah, the beauty.”

“Efraim!”

He waved an envelope in my face. “Tuition. We’re three months behind. And I wasn’t joking about the house. We’re this close to defaulting on the loan. Who needs it? We can buy three condos with the value of this property.” He paused. “I know Mimi’s chassan. Yehuda is a serious boy, totally sincere. He wants to learn.”

The insinuation stung. I understood Efraim. Still, it wasn’t fair to blame my parents. “They may be clueless, but they’re also very generous. They gave a 30 percent down payment on this house.”

“Thirty percent, plus a central vacuum system.”

That was going too far. I glared at Efraim and was about to say something really nasty when the doorbell rang. Biting my lip, I went to answer it.

“A meshulach,” I came back to report.

Efraim rubbed his forehead and pulled out his wallet. He deliberated, then withdrew a bill.

“Ten dollars?”

He nodded sadly.

I swallowed. My anger of moments before slowly faded, replaced by deep pity. I took the money and headed back to the door, trying not to think about the voucher checks my father ripped off every time the bell rang. The booklet did not contain any $10 checks.

I averted my eyes as I placed the bill for the meshulach to take on the console table — the polished chrome console table that matched the mirror above it, a little gift from my parents for our 10th anniversary.

In a couple of days, I was going to be the owner of a brand new wig, probably a Yafi.

And I couldn’t afford to give a meshulach more than a 10 dollar donation.

*****

“Nice bag,” I raved.

Rivky grinned, blushing. “Shimon picked it up for me for my birthday. On his own, can you believe it?”

Yes, I could believe it. The taste part, anyway. You don’t have to be a world’s maven to appreciate a Chanel bag. What I couldn’t believe was that my brother-in-law had spent that kind of money when, to the best of my knowledge, his mortgage was in a similar range as ours. Since when was he so reckless?

Oh well, none of my business. I turned my attention to my girls’ gowns. My mother had hired Rosie Simon to guide her through the gown process. The entire Feingold clan was clustered in Christina’s dingy basement, and the results were showing.

Christina was admirably patient with her fidgety clients. After two hours, when the last kid stepped up for her turn, my mother donned her jacket. “I’m going out to buy her some chocolate,” she told us, gesturing at Christina who was kneeling to adjust a hem, her mouth full of stickpins. “She deserves it.”

“Totally,” Chani agreed.

The next thing I knew, there was an invoice in my hand. I looked at my sisters, bewildered. What did this mean? Wasn’t my mother paying?

“Ma just called,” Rivky said. “She’s going ahead and said we should meet her at Butter House for lunch. I’m sending Fraidy out for the chocolates.”

“Rivky?” I whispered urgently, holding up the invoice.

“What’s a matter?”

“Isn’t Ma paying?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Don’t be cheap. She’s giving us plenty and more for this wedding. We’re getting new sheitels, remember?”