the Bialystok Center, returning his investment tenfold! As it was written, there was a time to plant and a time to reap, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Naturally, reaping was preferable! Dancing was more pleasurable.
“King Solomon was a very great man,” the rabbi told the assembled. “You have perhaps heard of his gardens, his palaces, above all his Temple built with the best the world had to offer—olive wood, and gold, the finest linen, cedar from Lebanon. This man loved beautiful things! He enjoyed life! However, he also asked, ‘What profit is it to own so many things, to stroll in gardens and enjoy precious jewels, to eat such food and drink such wine? In the end, what good is it to collect such riches? Every wall will crumble. The beautiful will wither and decay.’”
“True,” murmured Sandra, who stood with the other guests among the roses.
“In the end, nothing lasts. Even
“To the good Lord,” said Mrs. Gibbs.
The rabbi nodded, but he amended, “Where do we find Hashem when He is so great, transcending our comprehension? Where do we look for Him?”
George looked at Jess.
“We find Him in each other.”
Ah, thought Raj, very good. He himself had a soft spot for religious rhetoric. His own mother in Calcutta was a very religious woman.
A perfectly calibrated crowd-pleasing little sermon, mused Richard. The Bialystoker presents himself as a humanist in Hasidic clothing.
“We find Him in each other,” Helfgott repeated, gazing at George and Jess, the
“Place it on her forefinger and repeat after me….” Helfgott smiled as George instinctively slipped the gold band onto Jess’s ring finger. “Her other forefinger.
George repeated the words. As in a dream, he spoke his first words in Hebrew, announcing that he took Jess to be his wife. The blessings afterward were flowing and melodious. He heard them in the distance, as gentle waves against the sand, or soft wind in the trees. Almost imperceptibly, Jess leaned toward him, and although the rabbi seemed to be telling him to wait, George’s arm twined around her waist.
“One last thing, one final act, the breaking of the glass.” The rabbi turned to Freyda, who produced a gleaming orb from her purse.
“That’s not a glass, that’s a lightbulb,” George whispered, even as Helfgott wrapped the bulb in a cloth napkin.
“It is our tradition to use a lightbulb,” the rabbi whispered back, “because in my experience, nine times out of ten, glass goblets are very hard to break.”
“Try me,” said George.
“I don’t think we have a glass,” said Helfgott who had used silver cups for the ceremonial wine.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jess murmured, but quick-thinking Emily hurried to the caterer waiting with champagne and strawberries at the bottom of the garden and returned with a champagne flute, which the rabbi wrapped, and George crushed the glass, stamping it to smithereens.
“Mazel tov!” cried Rabbi Helfgott, and all the guests. Music began again, no longer classical, but klezmer, as George and Jess laughed and kissed.
Everyone descended to the lower garden for refreshments and then repaired to the house on Wildwood for a wedding breakfast of eggs (poached to order in the kitchen), kippered herring, smoked mackerel, cured salmon, scones melting in the mouth to tender crumbs. Rabbi Helfgott beamed, although he would not partake.
Lily and Maya ran through the rooms with fistfuls of anise cookies and madeleines. They showed their mother marzipans of miniature books with gilt-edged pages, and they tried candied ginger, and they ate chocolate lace.
“We got the menu from your uncle,” George explained to Sandra.
Jess added, “But we left out the meat.”
“And the smoked fish?” Raj asked playfully. “I assume they took their own lives in the wild?”
“You have a beautiful daughter,” Mrs. Gibbs told Richard.
“I have four beautiful daughters.” Richard finished his second glass of champagne. “It’s very good, isn’t it?” he told Heidi.
“It really is.” She sighed with relief. Lily and Maya were playing in the garden. As of yet, Richard had said nothing sarcastic. She had spoken to him seriously about this the night before.
“Whatever you think about the rabbi or religion in general, this is your daughter’s wedding,” Heidi had admonished him.
“I know, I know,” he told her. “It’s just that George is not what I expected.”
“Well,” said Heidi, “now you know how my parents felt when I married you.”
Jess slipped off her green shoes and glided everywhere at once, kissing Theresa and Roland, her old roommates.
“I told you this would happen,” Theresa reminded her. “I told you Mrs. Gibbs would convert you and you would end up …”
“Barefoot in the kitchen,” said Jess. “Did you try the cake?”
There were three wedding cakes, curious and historical but tasty, each labeled with a calligraphed card:
American Cookery, 1796.
Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, 1736.
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 1982.
“Our new company is called Geno.type,” Emily told Nick in the living room. “We’re working on developing on- line communities, so you can constantly contact and update everyone in your family on news, birthdays, long-lost relatives.”
“So is this a new Web site? Or a service company?” Nick asked.
“What we’re really trying to do is move into the social-networking space.” Her eyes were shining, alight with her new venture. As of yet, she had just four programmers, but Laura was still working for Emily as executive assistant, and together they were looking for someone in marketing, and they were interviewing Web-site designers. Geno.type filled Emily’s days, and she dreamed about her business plan at night. She was not dating, but starting the company was very much like falling in love, turning her head, entrancing her. The world opened up, and it seemed to her as it had once before, that she was living on the cusp of a new era. Internet technology was that
