10
By Friday morning, Jess was so homesick for California that she begged Emily, “When Jonathan comes to pick you up, could you take me too?”
Emily looked guilty.
“I’m just kidding!” Jess assured her.
Waiting must have been torture, but Emily hardly let it show. She kept busy, playing Candy Land with the girls, and then helping Heidi sort through boxes in the guest room. Jess avoided these activities. Through the kitchen window, as she washed an apple, Jess saw someone in the garden next door. The rabbi again, in his black coat and hat.
“Dad,” she called her father.
“Hold on.” His voice was muffled through the door of his home office off the living room.
“He’s back.” Jess stood outside the door.
“Who?”
“The rabbi looking at the Weldon place.”
Now the door opened. “Where?”
They hurried to the window.
There he was. They could see the top half of Rabbi Zylberfenig over the hedge. He was gazing contemplatively at the winter ruins of an overgrown rhododendron, surely thinking something mystical about the dormancy and rebirth of plants.
Richard’s eyes narrowed. “He must be the nonprofit with the day-care scheme.”
“He didn’t seem like a psychopath or anything,” Jess ventured.
“Except that he’d like to convert every Jew in sight to flat earth ancestor worship,” Richard countered.
Jess couldn’t help giggling at that last.
“You think it’s funny,” Richard said.
“No,” she protested.
“These people are opportunists,” her father declared. “I know what they did in Sharon, and in Bethel. They infiltrate wherever they can, because you know what they want?”
“The Messiah?”
“Money.”
Oh, if Richard had known what Jess had done—borrowing from one of them. Fortunately, her father could not read her mind. “The sole purpose of these centers is to raise money to open more centers,” he explained. “These things are viral, as is the religion, which is a cult based on their rabbi, whom they worship.”
“Oh, come on, Dad, how do you know what they believe?” asked Jess.
“I know more than you think,” her father said.
“Let’s say they do worship their rabbi. Aren’t they allowed freedom of religion? Or are you like those people theoretically supporting battered-women’s shelters—everywhere but your backyard?”
“Don’t lecture me about freedom, young lady,” said Richard. “These people intend to come in, bringing traffic to a residential neighborhood. They are planning a religious school and propaganda center next to my home. Don’t tell me their beliefs are sacrosanct when their
Who was this irate man standing in the kitchen? Who was his family? Not Jess and Emily. He spoke of his new wife and kids, of course. They were young and sweet, but Richard had aged, and his doubts had hardened, along with his beliefs. Jess had asked him once, when she was about ten, whether he’d stopped believing in God when Gillian died.
“No, sweetie,” he’d replied. “I wouldn’t give up believing because of some event that happened to me. Terrible things happen every day. It would be illogical to give up hope in God because of one death in our family. No. I never believed in the first place. Not before, not after.”
At the time, Jess had found his answer comforting. Richard’s rationality had always reassured her. If she woke in the night, afraid of thunderstorms, he would sit on the edge of her bed and talk to her about probability and statistics, explaining the low odds that she’d get hit by lightning. She didn’t worry about crossing the street, did she? Well, she was far more likely to die that way. He’d also explained that the chances of dying in a plane crash were infinitesimally small, and that Newton enjoyed the lowest crime rate in Massachusetts. Highly unlikely, then, for armed robbers to break into their home at night. Now, however, Jess looked at her father and wondered where his anger came from, and why he sounded so obsessed with people he dismissed, and so threatened by a religion he denied. She herself vacillated when it came to belief. She did not particularly believe in God. Or, rather, she didn’t believe in a particular God. Nevertheless, she kept an open mind. She was not a melancholy agnostic, but the optimistic kind. She liked to give God the benefit of the doubt.
“Why don’t you go out and talk to him?” Jess asked her father.
“I have nothing to say to that man,” Richard replied.
“That’s not true,” said Jess.
Her father returned to his study.
“I think you have a lot to say,” she called after him.
Upstairs, Emily sat on the floor with Heidi, contemplating the open box before her.
“What about your father’s
“I love those.” Jess stood in the doorway with her mouth full of apple. As soon as Heidi lifted them from the box, Jess recognized the cheerful yellow magazines—a complete set from 1915 to 1970. She’d pored over the maps and photographs, the little Afghan children in native dress, the photos of dunes and deserts, the sweep of sand in black and gray and white.
“If you want them, we can ship them all to you,” Heidi said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Jess,” said Emily. “Pretty soon you’ll see them all online.” She looked at Heidi. “Give them to the library,” she advised. “Jess doesn’t have room.”
“I’ll make room,” Jess protested, but just then the doorbell rang and they heard Jonathan’s voice, and Richard’s welcoming him, happier than he’d been all afternoon. Of course, Jonathan was just the sort Richard loved: technical and bright and poised to conquer worlds.
Emily ran down to him. Boxes and magazines, even Rabbi Zylberfenig was forgotten. Jonathan was like the cavalry coming over the hill. You couldn’t help racing to meet him. Richard grinned. The little girls giggled, and Heidi grew girlish herself, laughing when he told her to send students his way.
“We’ll lose a generation of academics if everyone goes to work for you at ISIS,” she said.
Everyone laughed at Jonathan’s response: “Well, that’s okay.”
Even Jess, who liked him least, felt Jonathan’s extraordinary pull. You wanted to please him, or at least stand back and watch. What was it about him? His sheer energy. His masculinity. He was such a guy: square- shouldered, forthright. He had served in the Marines before college, and there was something military about him still, his hair cropped short, his feet-apart, stand-and-deliver attitude even in conversation. He had the devil in him too, a take-no-prisoners smile. He adored Emily, and when they were together his good looks were touched by humility, his blue eyes softened. When he took her hand, his thumb stroked hers yearningly.
At the barbecue where they’d met, his first words to Emily had been, “I have a huge crush on you.”
She’d burst out laughing. Surrounded by men at work, she was used to unspoken admiration, passive aggression, sometimes inappropriate advances. Not this mix of audacity and humor.
He’d added, “I like your company too.”
“Was that a pun, or did you mean Veritech?”
He’d shaken his head. “I’ve never made a pun in my life!”
“Not even unintentionally?”
“I guess that was my first. I was talking about Veritech.”
“What do you like about it?”
“Your new indexing system, your partners, your client list. You guys are so cool. You’re
