Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“Yes.”

“The league is buying that tract to add to Sequoia National Park, and we’re making the donation in honor of Tom McClintock’s work on lungwort in the canopy. He was a very important lichenologist, you know.”

“I don’t think … I’m sure George never did anything like that before.”

Sandra answered with some pride, “He said he had never seen cookbooks like mine.”

Emily found Jess outside, crying among the terra-cotta flowerpots. “They’re actually plastic,” Jess said. She lifted a giant faux-stone urn. “Look how light they are.”

“Jess? What’s wrong?” Emily rushed over. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What happened?”

“I didn’t know,” Jess said.

“How could you have known? Dad wouldn’t tell us who she really was. He tried to prevent us from finding out.”

Jess shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m angry at him too,” said Emily. “I’m disappointed, but the point is to think about her.”

“I can’t think about her.”

Emily wrapped her arms around her sister. “It’s a shock, but it’s really better to know. We have to know—even if it’s painful. I know you miss her….”

“No. I mean, yes, but it’s not that. I miss George,” Jess confessed.

“George!” Emily dropped her arms, and suddenly her hands were on her hips. “Oh, Jess, don’t tell me that—”

“Please don’t say, ‘Oh, Jess.’ Please don’t be that way.”

“You said it was over. You said that you’re just friends,” Emily scolded. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“Well, what would you call it then?”

Jess quailed a little before her sister. “Understatement?”

Emily shook her head. “You’re amazing. You go from one totally inappropriate guy to the next. Just one after another.”

“It’s not what you think,” said Jess. “It’s not some motherless daughter thing.”

“Of course it is. How old is he? He’s twenty years older than you, isn’t he?”

“Sixteen years older,” said Jess. “It doesn’t matter.”

“So he’s a very young middle-aged guy? Is that supposed to be endearing? You have no common sense, Jessamine.”

Jess turned on her sister. “Aren’t you the one flying to London to look up long-lost Hasidic relatives?”

“That’s real. That’s our family. What you are talking about is yet another of your infatuations.”

“No,” said Jess. “You’re the one infatuated with Gillian’s memory. Not me. You’re the one chasing a dream. Not me.”

For a moment Emily could not speak.

“You don’t know him, but George is actually wonderful, and funny. He’s musical. He’s … secretly philanthropic.”

“That’s the problem,” said Emily. “You’re part of his philanthropy.”

“No, Emily. No. Not really. He understands me. He reads me. I’m in love with him,” Jess whispered.

Emily sighed at her legible sister.

“I’m sorry I’ve cried wolf so many times. This time I mean it.”

Emily spun around and took her receipt to Security where the Turbo Max snowblower was waiting for pickup.

“Please believe me.” Jess hurried after her.

“If you love him so much, why are you here with me?” Emily asked her.

“Because you need me more right now. You come first.”

“If I come first, why can’t you confide in me?”

Jess was so startled that she couldn’t answer right away. “It … it wasn’t the time!”

“If you love him, then why is it a secret?” Emily asked. “And if you need him, then you shouldn’t be apart.”

“You can love someone even if you’re separated,” Jess answered slowly.

“For how long?” Emily asked.

“Is this some kind of test? For as long as it takes.”

“No,” Emily said.

“What do you mean?”

When Emily answered, her voice was serious and low. “You can’t be apart indefinitely. You can’t keep postponing and expect everything to stay the same. If you keep deferring, everything gets old. Even love, eventually.”

George closed Yorick’s at five. He closed the register, and Colm pulled down the metal grille over the front window. No one had come in all afternoon, except for Raj, who had driven over to show off his pristine first-edition Ulysses. “It isn’t signed,” Raj admitted, “and it’s been read …”

“Oh, too bad,” George said drily.

“But it’s very beautiful.” Raj opened a box, and lifted the cloth-bound novel as gently as a newborn puppy.

“Ooh.” Colm raked his fingers through his thick wavy hair.

“You don’t have a first-edition Ulysses, do you?” Raj asked George.

“I’ve already told you no, and I’m not buying this one, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not asking,” said Raj, cradling the book. “It’s not for sale.”

“If it’s not for reading, and it’s not for selling, what’s it for then?” George inquired.

Later when Colm had gone to work in the back room, George whispered to Raj, “If you like him, why don’t you just ask him out?”

“It’s complicated,” Raj said airily.

He began to explain, but George said, “I don’t want to know.”

He couldn’t stand another set of complications. He felt so worn, tired, cranky, old. When he drove home that evening, up Marin Avenue, he thought his transmission was going. When he parked, the young deer devouring his daylilies barely looked up.

He collected the mail, climbed the steps, unlocked his door, and only then did he notice a pair of battered running shoes inside on the mat. His heart pounded as he ran into the dining room.

“Jess!”

“Just a sec,” she told him, holding up her hand to stop him.

She was sitting cross-legged at the head of the table with cookbooks stacked up all around her, the reference manuals, the laptop, the note cards, as of old. “What do you think of this? By 1736, McLintock includes sugar in over half her recipes. Generally she uses a pound of sugar for cake or biscuits. What was scarce is now a staple in the home cook’s pantry. The luxurious is now ubiquitous and sugar’s smoother, lighter, facile sweetness is not only desired but expected at the table. Desire shifts to expectation, and expectation creates desire. This dynamic applies to everyday mass consumption in the kitchen, and feeds new theories of supply and demand, hunger and satisfaction. Indeed, in 1739, just three years after McLintock published her Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, her countryman David Hume diagrams the cycle of desire in his Treatise of Human Nature: ‘Any satisfaction, which we lately enjoy’d, and of which the memory is fresh and recent, operates on the will with more violence, than another of which the traces are decayed….’ (Section VI).”

“Not bad,” said George. “Who wrote that?”

“You know I did! I’m still working on the transition to Hume. I know what I want to say, but I still have to …”

“Keep reading,” he said, but she shook her head and opened up her arms for him.

He knelt at her feet and rested his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his hair. “That’s as far as I got,” she said. “If I read you any more, I’ll have to back up and start from the beginning.”

“I thought you went to London.”

“Emily talked me out of it,” said Jess. “With a lot of lecturing.”

He lifted his head. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

“She says I’m too young for you, and you’re too old for me, and we’re at different stages. She warned me that we’ll become a cliché.”

“So what?” He took her by the hand and led her up the stairs.

By spring, fewer troopers with dogs and submachine guns stood guard at the airports. Obituaries and memorial services had tapered off, and flags were smaller where they still flew. Magazines showcased 9/11 widows and their families, especially the babies their husbands would never know, but those same publications featured recipes for easy, breezy outdoor fun, tips for praising children the right way, and full-page photographs of fruit cobblers, no-bake desserts, no-sew craft projects, closet makeovers, and illustrations of simple exercises for those mornings when there was no time to run. Death never died, but the idea of death receded, as it must.

The new reality was clear-eyed. Start-ups scaled back on spending, hiring, and hype. Google was still closely held, its culture whimsical as its search engine was bold. Its founders talked about managing finances carefully and refused to set a date for their IPO. Such were the lessons learned from the prior generation, those high fliers from two years before: Reap what you sow, and look before you reap. Transactions speak louder than words. Festina lente.

The new reality was all about repentance: no razzle-dazzle, just hard-earned profits; no more analyst exuberance, just sober assessments. Venture capitalists threw money at fewer start-ups, and demanded even more access to the businesses they funded. No one talked about going public in a year. People took the long view: three years, five years, even more.

Books were written about the old new economy. Memoirs, dissertations. Harvard Business School students studied the successful evolution of the ISIS business model from a focus on Internet security to Internet surveillance, and its shift from servicing small businesses to winning government contracts. Professors lectured on Veritech as well, tracing the rise and fall of the high-flying start-up: a company peaking at $342 a share, falling to under fifty cents, and at last returning to its roots as a much smaller venture, when its remaining principals, Alex, Bruno, and Milton bought back stock. No one knew the secret history of electronic fingerprinting. The germ of the idea remained mysterious, upstaged by larger historical and economic forces. The lightning-quick response by ISIS and other companies that could shift priorities with the shifting times showed up cautious Veritech as a young dinosaur. Once upon a time Xerox had developed the first graphical user interface, but Microsoft had capitalized on the idea with Windows. So now, Veritech had researched electronic fingerprinting, but ISIS cashed in with OSIRIS. ISIS thrived, and Veritech faded into footnotes.