This is what happens, Cass answers him. All of this. The rituals of purification; and the laws of separation, with menner on one seit and froyen on the other. The communities that define themselves in distinction from others, and the hatred in those others who can burn them alive. The young people clashing over sensuality and piety, and the dreams of our bodies or our souls outwitting death. The longings for redemption and for redeemers, and our imbuing others with the perfection that escapes us. The elected circle of disciples, and the ordeals that try their faith, and the sinner born again as a Hasid, a pious man. The signs and the portents of the coming of the Messiah, and the descent into madness of the false messiahs. The forces of our soul that press us outward and dissolve the boundaries of the self and burst us open onto the world, so that all of existence feels the way New Walden feels to a Valdener, an intimate world that will embrace us in coherence and connection and purpose and love, and whose caring is no more open to doubt than is the Valdener Rebbe’s love for his own Valdeners.
The crowd in front of the synagogue is thinning, and the young men in the Rebbe’s front yard are no longer singing, and Cass hurries on. In three minutes, he can see the ramshackle two-family house where Jesse is living.
Cass is pretty sure his brother can afford better. He probably likes the shabbiness, because it exaggerates the discontinuity between his former life and this one. The front yard is littered with pastel plastic toys. The family that Jesse shares the two-family house with have the typical Ha-sidic brood. Cass wonders whether Jesse is going to find a Valdener girl and start having children himself. Their parents’ Volvo is parked in the unpaved driveway.
“You made it!” Cass’s mother greets him, as he stoops and she stands on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“Of course I made it. Did you have any doubt?”
“How long did the drive take?” his father asks, the same question with which he’s been greeting him ever since Cass got his license.
Ben Seltzer used to be almost as tall as Cass himself, though he’s lost an inch or two. Cass’s mom is a bit less than average height, trim and athletic. She’s been a tennis player since her twenties, and she still looks like one in her late sixties. Her hair is gray now, and she wears it short and sensible, as she always has, except when Cass was very young, when her hair had flowed over her shoulders and down her back like a river of red. Jesse’s side locks and beard have emerged in the same vivid shade. Cass wonders whether he’ll ever stop having the urge to yank one of his brother’s payess to test whether they’re real. He has an image of Jesse detaching them every once in a while, taking time off from Valdenerism to connect with some model he’d dated in the past.
Their mother had been philosophical about Jesse’s becoming a ba’al t’shuva, a penitent who returns to the fold.
“If it will help quiet his troubled spirit, then how can I object? I’ve never understood him, and I don’t think you do either. Maybe, when it comes to your brother, Hillary was right. It takes a village.”
“Over four hours,” Cass answers his father. “I hit rush-hour traffic coming over the Tappan Zee Bridge. And the winds are fierce. You could feel them slamming into the car.”
“I know. We almost went airborne coming in from New Jersey.”
“Where’s Jesse?”
“He’s already left,” his father says. “It’s going to be a mob scene, according to him.”
“It already is.”
“Let’s get going, then. We were just waiting for you.”
Ten minutes ago, Cass couldn’t get his car through, and now there are only a few stragglers on the streets. Cass’s mother obediently crosses to the froyen seit, without making a sarcastic comment.
“Look at that,” Cass’s father says. “She must be growing out of her rebelliousness.”
As they near the synagogue, Cass notices a thin young man in a long black wool coat and an elegant shtreimel on the women’s side, and then he looks again and it’s a tall young woman, and then he looks again and it’s Roz in her mink hat.
“Roz!” he calls out.
His mother hears him and goes up to her and says, “You’re not really Roz Margolis, are you?”
“I am!”
“My goodness. I’m Deb, Cass’s mother. I’ve been wanting to meet you for twenty years.”
“Me, too! That’s how long I’ve been waiting to meet you!” And she throws her arms around Deb, and the two women hug.
“Roz!” Cass calls over to her again.
“It looks like Cass wants to talk to you.” Deb is laughing. “I’ll save you a seat in the women’s section. We’ll finally get acquainted. Mazel tov!”
“Mazel tov!” Roz answers, and Cass tells his father to go on to the synagogue without him, and Cass and Roz leave their respective sides and meet in the middle of the road.
“Mazel tov,” Roz says.
“Mazel tov,” he answers her.
“Look where we are.”
“Look where we are,” he answers her.
“Have you seen him yet?”
“No, I just drove in. He got in touch with you?”
“He sent me an e-mail. Believe it or not, he was worried about you. He wanted to make sure you acquitted yourself well with Fidley.”
“He sent me an e-mail apologizing that he hadn’t been available.” He laughs. “Only Azarya would send an apology under the circumstances!”
“Only Azarya,” she agrees.
“How did it go for you in New York?”
“It went great. I’ve got myself a book deal. Immortality Now! All I have to do is write it.”
“So Auerbach has taken you under his wing.”
“I should say so! He gave me the coat off his back.” She gestures downward. “The one I brought with me was a bit too flamboyant for New Walden.”
“Ah, that explains it,” Cass says, smiling.
“Explains what?”
“I thought you were a young man flouting the rules of menner seit and froyen seit, especially with that shtreimel.”
“I’ll accept the ‘young’ part.” She laughs. “Have you noticed?”
“I’ve noticed.”
“We’re almost there. You’re not going to stop us.”
“When have I ever wanted to stop you, even if I could?”
“But will you come with me?”
“It’s too early for me to say.”
“We’re almost there,” she repeats.
He looks at her closely.
“Promise you’ll keep a few laugh lines.”
“But will you come with me?” she asks him a second time.
“Too soon to say,” he repeats.
“I might get lonely living so long without you.”
“You seem to have managed quite well for the past twenty years.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve been trying to tell you that it’s our living that teaches us how to live. There’s a lot to learn. That’s why we need all the time we can get.”
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
“What’s that from?”
“The Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich.”
“A world-famous atheist quoting a Catholic mystic in the middle of a Hasidic shtetl in twenty-first-century America. By the way, I thought you were magnificent in the debate.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“Come on. You know it. I think you may even have convinced the Agnostic Chaplain.”
“I thought that maybe you weren’t so pleased with my performance.”