He was strange and self-absorbed. He asked questions and then wandered away before he heard the answers. Then when Jess asked a question of her own or tried to start a conversation, he interrupted.
“I’ve read some Trollope—” she would begin.
“And you were offended by the foxhunting?” George broke in.
“I see no reason,” she mused, “that books are more expensive because of who owned them. It’s—”
“The way things work,” George cut her off.
He was attractive and he knew it, but he pretended he had no idea. Therefore he was both vain and disingenuous. Tall, or so he seemed to Jess, he looked Italian with his dark skin and dark eyes. Very old—again, from Jess’s point of view—where anyone past thirty harked back to another era altogether. Despite his years, George had a powerful body, a broad chest, a face of light and shade, a glint of humor even in his frown. When he wasn’t lobbing his sarcastic comments, he seemed scholarly and peaceful, like a Renaissance St. Jerome at work in his cave of books. All he needed was a skull on his desk and a lion at his sandaled feet. He wore T-shirts, jeans, rimless reading glasses, sometimes tweed jackets. He had the deep didactic voice of a man who had smoked for years and then suddenly quit and now hated smokers everywhere. He never watched television, and he never tired of telling people so. But the most pretentious thing about him was his long hair. With his chestnut locks threaded gray, he was a fly caught in amber, the product and exemplar of a lost world.
“I’m working on the money,” Jess told her sister. “Could I just explain?”
“There’s nothing to explain.” Emily’s voice was tense. “You know what you have to do. Take care of it.”
Later, waiting for her laundry in the basement, Jess weighed her choices: angering Emily, or asking Richard.
Perched atop a churning washing machine, she heard the clank of metal. Had she left her keys in her jeans pocket? A handful of coins? She wished her grandfather were still alive and she could call him. She had been close to her father’s father.
Mrs. Gibbs wheeled in her laundry. She pushed it in a little cart with her detergent on top.
“Good evening.” Mrs. Gibbs produced a change purse segmented with compartments for each kind of coin. Extracting quarters, she began lining them up in the slots of the machine opposite Jess. “How are you?” Mrs. Gibbs inquired as she loaded her whites.
“I’m okay,” said Jess.
Mrs. Gibbs shot Jess a penetrating look.
“I’m fine.”
“Fine sitting down here all alone?”
“I was just thinking.”
“Fine isn’t good,” said Mrs. Gibbs. “Fine isn’t right.”
“I’m okay. My sister is annoyed with me. I said I’d do something and I can’t.”
“Breaking a promise,” Mrs. Gibbs intoned.
“No!”
“Mmm,” said Mrs. Gibbs and suddenly all the machines around Jess seemed to hum with disapproval.
“I’ll figure it out.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m not depressed or anything,” Jess reassured her neighbor.
“Have you tried prayer?” Mrs. Gibbs reached up to clasp Jess’s hands in her own.
“Mrs. Gibbs,” said Jess.
“Put your hands together.”
“This is just a small thing,” said Jess. “It’s not a matter of life and death. I’m okay.”
“Dear Lord,” Mrs. Gibbs prayed, “help Jessamine Bach to keep her promise. Help her and guide her to honesty and truth. Keep her in righteousness and do not allow her to fall. And let us say, ‘Amen.’”
“Amen,” said Jess. “But I’m not about to fall.”
“We could all fall at any moment,” Mrs. Gibbs said. “Remember that.”
“It’s just a little money thing….”
“There are no little money things,” Mrs. Gibbs said darkly.
“No, no, let me explain.” Jess told the story of Emily’s IPO and the Friends and Family deadline. Mrs. Gibbs listened in silence. At one point she closed her eyes, and Jess wondered if her neighbor was praying again silently, or simply appalled at how trivial Jess’s conundrum was.
“I have no money to lend you,” said Mrs. Gibbs at last.
“Oh, I wasn’t hinting!”
“But I will speak to my rabbi and see if he knows what to do.”
Jess hopped off her washer in surprise. “Your rabbi?”
Mrs. Gibbs gazed at Jess calmly. “Don’t you know, honey, that I am a Jew?”
“You’re kidding,” Jess blurted out.
“It’s not the color of your skin, but the feeling in your heart,” Mrs. Gibbs said.
“You’re right.” Abashed, Jess leaned against a washer. “I’m half Jewish,” she volunteered. “My mother was Jewish.”
Mrs. Gibbs nodded. “I’m a Jew by choice.”
“How did you choose?”
“I didn’t,” said Mrs. Gibbs, “the good Lord chose me.”
“Really?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But how did you … how did He …?”
“Many years ago when I first moved to this town, I was at my Bible study reading Deuteronomy 7:6:
“I told my Bible study about this conversation, and they prayed for me. However, they could not point to the text and deny that the chosen are the Jews. After many weeks and arguments, I took my Bible with me to the Berkeley Bialystok Center.”
Reentering her apartment with her clean clothes piled high in her laundry basket, Jess found Theresa studying for orals at the table.
“Mrs. Gibbs is a Jew,” said Jess.
“Yeah, right,” said Theresa, scarcely looking up from her Kristeva.
“Seriously.”
“Has she offered to debate the merits of Jesus Christ with you?” Theresa asked.
“No.”
“Has she asked you to come with her to Bible study?”
“No. She wants me to meet her rabbi.”
Now Theresa shut her book. “Do not go anywhere with that woman.”
“Why?”
“Look, I grew up with evangelicals,” said Theresa. “I understand them. Mrs. Gibbs wants to steal your soul. I’m serious. Stay the hell away from her. You’ll end up dropping out of school, marrying some holy roller, and becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the Philippines.”
“I think you might be a little prejudiced,” said Jess, and she began telling Mrs. Gibbs’s story.
“Where have you been?” Theresa interrupted. “That is a standard conversion narrative. Listen to me. I grew up with these people. I wasn’t allowed to date ’til I was sixteen. Then I only dated Christians. Then I took a vow of abstinence. I had to spend my weekends saving souls door-to-door. You have no idea.”
“But you escaped,” Jess pointed out. “You aren’t evangelical now.”
