After I'm Gone by Laura Lippman

trying not to smile at the idea of asking for Yom Kippur off at the Variety. “This is what I want to do.”
    “Why do you wish to become a Jew?”
    “I’m in love,” she said. “The man I love cannot marry me if I don’t convert.”
    “Has he said he will marry you if you do convert?”
    Julie had anticipated that question. “We are not officially engaged, no. I’m not the type of person to give ultimatums. And I don’t want my conversion to appear to be a condition, or even a ploy. Religion must be deeply felt. My conversion guarantees nothing when it comes to the love of this man. He doesn’t even know I’m pursuing it.”
    “Really?” asked the third rabbi.
    “I thought I should want this, for myself, and that would be the proof that I was making the right choice. It doesn’t hinge on anything, any man. It’s for me.”
    But, of course, it would make a difference, she thought. How could it not? Felix had entrusted her with a secret, one he had shared with no one. He cared about Judaism, no matter how much he pretended otherwise. So she must care, too.
    “So you would want to be a Jew even without this man in your life?”
    “Yes,” Julie said. “It feels right to me.”
    “You were raised—?”
    “Protestant. Baptist.”
    “Was your family religious?”
    She had to stop and think about this. “My mother went to church and insisted that the kids go, too, but my father didn’t. I think my . . . dissatisfaction with religion started there—how could it be meaningful if my father didn’t take part?” She was making things up now, trying to say the right things, but suddenly her fibs felt true. There had been a little worm of discontent. Her father had refused to attend church. But then, so had her mother. Also that was good, saying she had been dissatisfied. Made her sound deep.
    “What do you do, Miss Saxony?” asked Rabbi Tasmin, the closest thing she had to a friend here.
    “I’m a hostess.”
    “A hostess?”
    “In the Coffee Pot Shoppe. I tell people where to go. Where to sit.”
    “Ah.” The second rabbi now. “Like a hostess.”
    “Yes.” Hadn’t she said that?
    “Have you thought about Christmas?”
    She had, in fact. It had occurred to her to keep the secret from Felix until then and present it as a gift, but—oh, no. They were asking her something very different.
    “It will no longer be part of my life.”
    “Are your parents alive?”
    They were, but she preferred to close any line of inquiry she could. “No.”
    “There are siblings?”
    “We’re not close.” They had been once. Two giggling girls, on their own. But Felix didn’t want a girl who lived with her sister, so Julie had moved out. She had told Andrea about what she planned today and they had quarreled. They were always quarreling, though, especially about Felix. It wasn’t a big deal.
    The rabbis did not trust her, she could tell. They did not want her. But she had put in the time, done what was required. She continued to answer all their questions in a calm, thoughtful manner. Eventually they led her downstairs to a room that smelled, disappointingly, like the indoor pool at the Y where she had worked at the front desk one summer.
    “Make sure every inch is covered,” one rabbi advised, and Julie had a strange flashback, her first time dancing, the lecture about the pasties, what the law allowed. A lecture delivered by Felix, who pretended to be all gruff indifference, but she understood that the mere fact that he was tutoring her was indicative of his interest. There had been no jealousy among the other girls. They assumed she would fade, as they all had. Felix had a wife and two daughters, and he claimed he wanted a son, although it seemed to Julie that ship must have sailed. Surely his wife was too old to have more children? “I can’t name him Felix Junior because of the Jewish tradition,” Felix told Julie the second time they slept together. “But see if I don’t. Not that I would do