“I do,” she said, sniffling. “That’s why I came here in the first place, right?”
“You tell me,” Ben said.
“It is,” said Jane. She hesitated. “Well, because of Miriam, anyway.”
The rabbi nodded. “You wouldn’t have come otherwise?”
“Why would I?” Jane replied.
Ben shrugged his wide shoulders. “I don’t know,” he told her. “Why would you?”
“Stop doing that!” said Jane.
“Doing what?”
“That!” Jane said. “Answering everything I say with another question.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” said Ben, one side of his mouth lifting slightly, as if he were trying very hard to remain composed.
Jane snorted. “Very funny.”
Ben laughed. “You obviously haven’t met many Jews,” he said. “Or therapists. But we’re getting off track. Walter asked you to marry him. You said no.”
“I said I can’t,” Jane clarified.
“Can’t,” said the rabbi. “However, you’ve known all along that it would come to this. Which, by the way, brings us back to why you came here in the first place.”
“Oh, I know,” Jane said, her frustration audible in her voice. “But that was before.”
“Before?” Ben said. “Before what?”
“Miriam,” Jane replied. “Before Miriam. When she was just his mother I could handle her. The idea of her. The reality, however, is not at all agreeable.”
“A lot of women clash with their potential mothers-in-law at first,” said Ben. “It seems to come with the territory.”
Jane shot him a look. “Are you married?” she asked.
Ben surprised her by looking away. “I was,” he said. “My wife died giving birth to our daughter.”
Jane felt terrible for having asked the question. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
Ben held up a hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re not prying. You thought I had no experience with mothers-in-law.”
“No,” Jane objected. “I just … well, yes, that’s what I thought.”
The rabbi laughed. “As it happens, my mother-in-law is a wonderful person,” he said. “And my mother loved Naomi very much. But I’ve heard stories.”
It was Jane’s turn to laugh. “I imagine you have,” she said. She paused before asking her next question, afraid she might cause Ben pain by voicing it. “Your daughter,” she said. “Is she …” She fumbled for her next words.
“She’s six,” said Ben. “Her name is Sarah.”
Jane was suddenly overcome by sadness. She felt a tear slip from her eye. She wiped it away, but another soon followed. She couldn’t help but think about her own family, particularly Cassie. How she missed her sister. How she longed to have her there to confide in and to laugh with, to say “Do you remember when?” to, and to just be quiet with.
“Would you like a tissue?”
The rabbi’s voice jarred Jane from her thoughts. She realized to her horror that she had been crying freely. Her cheeks were damp, and her nose was running. “Yes, please,” she said, sniffing.
Ben located a box of tissues and handed it to her. “There’s a Jewish proverb,” he said. “ ‘What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul.’ ”
Jane blew her nose. “In that case, I seem to be having quite a good scrubbing,” she remarked.
“My people specialize in grief,” Ben said. “If they awarded degrees in it, every Jew would hold a doctorate.”
Jane laughed as she dried her face. “My people are just the opposite,” she told Ben. “Our upper lips are so stiff they prevent us from smiling.”
“How did we get here?” asked Ben. “Oh, yes. Your potential mother-in-law and how the reality of her is far worse than what you’d imagined.”
Jane sighed deeply. “I expected her to be protective of Walter,” she said. “But honestly, she’s like something out of an old Norse legend—or Grendel’s mother. Oh, and you should see her little dog, Lilith. She’s adorable, what with having only three legs and all, but what a little monster.”
“Lilith?” Ben said. “That’s interesting.”
“Why?” asked Jane.
“In Jewish folklore Lilith is the name of Adam’s first wife,” Ben explained. “Supposedly she left him because she found him weak and stupid. Some stories say she was a demon with the feet of an owl, and that she came at night to suck the blood of children. Essentially, she was the world’s first vampire. If you believe in that kind of thing.”
Jane considered this information for a moment. “And do you believe in that kind of thing?” she asked the rabbi.
Ben shrugged. “Who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?” he replied. “The world is a strange and wonderful place.”
Jane nodded in agreement. “So Judaism allows for the existence of vampires?”
“Among other things,” said Ben. “Some people say that Lilith was actually trying to suck the souls out of her victims, not just their blood.”
Jane felt herself growing uncomfortable. More than once during the past two hundred years she had wondered about the state of her soul and what had happened to it when she died and was reborn. She’d never had anyone with whom she could talk about such things. Now she wondered if she dared.
“Assuming she really was a vampire—or whatever—do you think Lilith had a soul?” Jane asked.
Ben got up and went to a bookcase. He returned with a small book, its covers stained with age. As he flipped through the pages he said, “There is a Jewish poet—a philosopher, really, although those two often go hand in hand—named Solomon ibn Gabirol. Lived in the eleventh century. He wrote a number of poems about humankind’s relationship with God. My favorite is called ‘Kether Malkuth.’ A large part of it is devoted to the nature of the soul.”
He stopped at a page and ran his finger down it. “Here we are,” he said. “Listen to this.
Ben shut the book. “I love that idea of the soul being indestructible,” he said. “It endures despite everything.”
“But it also has that bit about an unclean soul wandering in wrath and anger,” Jane pointed out.
“Which brings us back to Lilith,” said Ben. “Some scholars would argue that her soul, being unclean, is what caused her to turn into a demon. A vampire, if you will. Her bloodsucking is simply her attempt to steal a clean soul from someone else. But that in itself makes her own soul even more unclean, and so she can only be purified by being destroyed and allowing her soul to come back in the body of another, to have another chance at redemption, if you will.