The Cookbook Collector (10 page)

Jess awoke Thanksgiving morning to find Lily holding Blue Bear by the side of her bed.

“Where’s my presents?”

“Emily has them.” Jess was so woozy with jet lag and cold medicine that she could scarcely open her eyes.

“Can I nail-polish you?”

“What?”

“Can I nail-polish you?”

“No.”

“Can I pretend-nail-polish you?”

“Fine.” Jess buried her head in her pillow and thrust out both hands for Lily.

“Wait, I have to …” Lily scampered off and Jess drifted to sleep again.

A moment later, Jess felt something cool and slippery on her fingernails. Lily was coloring each nail with marker. Jess hoped that this would take a while.

At least Emily had Jonathan. He would swoop down from Cambridge and take Emily away, while Jess was stuck in Canaan for the long weekend. In one of Jess’s birthday letters, Gillian had written,
I hope that you’ll share whatever comes your way
. It was funny to imagine Gillian writing this so many years ago, thinking about sharing toys and candy, and cutting Black-and-White cookies straight across, so that each half had some chocolate and some vanilla. Jess had no desire to split Jonathan down the middle, except when she was angry with him, but she did envy Emily the excuse to get away.

Downstairs, Emily was already dressed and toasting frozen waffles. Heidi was checking her e-mail at the kitchen table. Richard had gone running.

“Would you like a plate?” Emily asked when Jess plucked a pair of waffles from the toaster.

The house was crammed with toys, particularly plastic toys in a certain shade of pink, a bright bubblegum tint like a contagion in every room. Pink plastic chairs and pink doll strollers, pink easels, and a pink and white miniature kitchen. As Jess nibbled her waffles, she made one of her never-in-a-million-years vows. If and when she had a baby, never in a million years would her daughter touch plastic or play with baby dolls. Jess would not allow pink in her someday house, nor would her little girl wear that color. No! Overalls instead, and green checked shirts. Toy trucks, or, better yet, tiny solar-powered cars.

“Let’s go outside,” Jess told her little sisters. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

For the next hour, Jess spotted the girls on their cedar climbing structure, and caught Maya at the bottom of the slide. She hoisted the girls into a pair of baby swings, and struggled to stuff their snowsuited legs through the holes.

“Higher!” squealed Lily, as Jess pushed the girls, one with each hand.

Maya shrieked. Lily’s hood flew back, and she threw her head back as well and laughed. The chains were short, and they squeaked. Still, if Jess closed her eyes for a moment, she could remember the long arc of the rope swing, Leon’s hand on her back, her own flight into the air.

“Underdog!” screamed Lily.

Jess ducked under the swing to the other side.

The yard faced south, and a thousand twittering sparrows sunned themselves in the boxwood hedge that separated the property from the Weldon place. The huge garden there looked desolate, striped with winter shadows. But
that
was not a shadow. No, that was a man in a dark suit. The developer? He wore a round-brimmed black hat, a white shirt, a black frock coat. Shiny black dress shoes. The little man was trying to look casual, as if he’d just happened by.

“Me! Me!” shrieked Maya.

Jess kept her eyes on the trespasser next door. He knew that she was watching him. He decided to make the best of it and walked right up to the hedge, where he smiled and called, “Good morning!” The sparrows seemed divided about him. Some fluttered up in alarm, and others stayed in the hedge, chirping, as he called out, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” said Jess, examining his face. His eyes were the rare pure blue found in the very young or very old. He had a russet beard and rosy cheeks and wore no gloves. He blew on his hands.

“Hello, let me introduce myself,” the man said in a welcoming way, just as if he were standing on his own land. “My name is Rabbi Shimon Zylberfenig, and I am the director of the Bialystok Center of Canaan.”

“Good to meet you. I’m Jess.”

“And these are your children?”

“My sisters,” said Jess. “I’m just visiting.”

“Very nice. Where are you from?”

“Berkeley.”

“I have family in Berkeley!”

Oh, this was too strange. Jess remembered Rabbi Helfgott.
My brother-in-law lives in Canaan! My wife’s sister’s husband
.

“Do you know Rabbi Helfgott? My brother-in-law,” said Rabbi Zylberfenig with some pride. “A very famous rabbi on the West Coast. You have perhaps heard of him?”

“I met him recently,” said Jess.

Rabbi Zylberfenig beamed at her.

“It’s a funny coincidence,” said Jess.

“There are no coincidences,” said Rabbi Zylberfenig quite seriously. “I hope you’ll come by us for Shabbes at our center here in Canaan. We are not yet so big and well established, but we are a very warm community, very welcoming. You’ll come for dinner?”

Rhythmically, Jess pushed her sisters on the squeaking swings. “I think I’ll probably need to stay here.”

“Bring the family,” Zylberfenig urged her. “We always have room for more. In fact, we are always interested in making room.”

“Is that why you’re looking at the property there?” Jess asked.

“Only browsing,” Zylberfenig said, as though he were standing at a magazine stand and not a boxwood hedge.

The girls were fussing. “Up!” Maya cried, by which she meant “down.”

“There are many possibilities,” the rabbi said.

Rabbi Zylberfenig’s wife was waiting on the other side of the old Weldon place. The rabbi had parked on Pleasant Street, and Chaya was sitting in their van.

“Two acres at least. Beautiful,” Shimon said as soon as he returned to Chaya. They sat together and looked out at the white house with its peeling paint. Their little ones slept in car seats in the back. The other four were home.

“I met a very interesting woman from Berkeley,” Shimon continued. “She knows Nachum.”

“Really?” Chaya was slender, bright-eyed, English. “Is she staying? Did you invite her for Shabbes?”

“Of course.”

“She’s coming?”

Shimon smiled. “Who knows? I hope. She’s visiting her family.”

“Invite them too.”

“I did. I told her please bring the family.” Shimon’s eyes were still fixed on the two acres. A pair of giant oaks stood in the front yard. “Just four hundred thousand,” he said.

Chaya tsked under her breath. She wondered if the place was overpriced, and if they’d get a variance, and if these neighbors would object to a Bialystok Center. Some did and some did not, and you could never predict. But the big question was, Where would they find the money?

“We would have room for expansion.” Shimon started the van and released the emergency brake.

“Renovating that house …,” Chaya began.

“We won’t renovate.
Im yirtzeh
Hashem, we’ll crush it down.” As Shimon eased down the hill, a loose apple rolled along the floor of the van.

“This is a small community,” Chaya said.

“Even a small community can do great mitzvahs. It is very interesting what a small community may do.” He spoke softly, so as not to wake the children. “You’ll see.”

The Rebbe had sent the Zylberfenigs from Brooklyn as newlyweds to bring Yiddishkeit to Canaan, returning lapsed Jews to their own religion. Now, eleven years and six children later (although they did not count children, because it was bad luck), they had not succeeded as well as their peers in other towns. Chaya’s own sister in Berkeley, for example, presided over a large establishment with her husband. This was partly because Berkeley was a city, while Canaan was a town of fewer than twenty thousand inhabitants (although it was better not to count populations either). Berkeley was more affluent than Canaan and overflowing with young college students, many of them Jews, ready and waiting, ripe on the vine. Canaan’s Jews were older and well settled and often mistrustful of their own religion.

It was also true that Bialystok emissaries had to fend for themselves. Parents might support
shleichim
, but not Headquarters. Each Bialystok Center had to raise its own money. In his wisdom, the Rebbe adhered to the famous dictum “Every tub on its own bottom.” Chaya had married with a little dowry, but that money was gone. He was not a saver, Shimon. He was a spender, and a buyer, and always, every day, expected miracles. “We have students,” Shimon reminded her. “We have supporters. We may even someday have angels.” He was a pious man, but when he said “angels” he meant in the financial sense. Angels who would buy property for them someday. Shimon was always hopeful, always learning, always thinking, and Chaya respected this, but she found her husband aggravating as well, probably because she was a woman, and had to concern herself with laundry, groceries, and cooking. She was constantly sorting out her children’s shoes, performing the countless details of mother and
rebbetzin
, even though the Messiah was due at any moment.

9

O
n Thanksgiving Day, with the markets closed, the whole world seemed to sigh with satisfaction. Emily was worth half a billion dollars. Jess was a happy thousandaire. They drove to Providence with Richard, Heidi, and the girls to eat dinner at a new restaurant called Sonoma Grille.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird to fly back east to eat faux Californian cuisine?” Jess whispered to Emily when they arrived.

“Shh!” Emily glanced toward her father as they sat down at the table. They were six without Jonathan, who had to cancel at the last minute.

“Servers went down this morning,” Emily explained, and she tried to sound serene, and she tried to feel patient, but she was neither. All she wanted was to take her father’s car and drive to Cambridge. “He has to be there.”

“An ISIS crisis.” Jess poked Maya with a breadstick.

“It’s not a big deal,” Emily said. “It’s just a little …”

She trailed off, sensing Jess watching, waiting for her to admit how she really felt.

“We’ll have Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Jonathan had promised Emily on the phone.

“I’m sorry about the crash,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was light. He was in great spirits, thrilled that Emily had come, and certain that, within weeks, he would be as rich as she.

Everybody knew prosperity would come, that wealth was imminent. Profits followed prospects. Cash kept rolling in. Chaya accused Shimon on Thanksgiving of thinking money grew on trees, and he told her, “But it does!” Chaya was fretting about children’s winter coats, but her husband had a deeper understanding of the age. His own student Barbara, a regular at all his classes, was married to Mel Millstein, the director of Human Resources at ISIS. His own Barbara, who came to services each week, had expressed her wish to share whatever wealth the Internet would bring.

Even now, Barbara was serving Thanksgiving dinner in her little house on Fuller Circle. The tablecloth was harvest gold. The salt and pepper shakers, Pilgrims. Barbara served turkey, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and corn bread to her grown children, Sam and Annie, and her husband, Mel, the angel who didn’t know it. Poor Mel, stubborn Mel, who didn’t like to listen to Barbara’s stories of the Bialystoker rebbes.

“The third Bialystoker Rebbe is known as the Dreamer,” Barbara explained to her family. “When he was a young student, his learning was so brilliant that he levitated above the ground As his knowledge grew, he began floating higher, so that, in time, whenever he opened his mouth, he began to fly upward, lighter than air. His teachers had to keep the windows shut. They were afraid the young man would fly away….”

“Your mother is taking a class in Jewish mysticism,” said Mel.

“Cool,” Sam said politely.

“What happened to going back to school?” asked Annie.

“Oh, I don’t think I have time,” Barbara murmured.

“Why not?” Annie had always been ambitious on her mother’s behalf.

“Well, there’s the house. There’s the garden,” Barbara said vaguely.

“Mom, it’s November,” Annie said. “How are you gardening in the winter? And what do you need to do in the house?”

“Quite a lot!” Barbara retorted, thinking of the wet basement.

“You need to get a life.” Annie meant this lovingly. She was just thinking aloud.

Barbara plunged the serving spoon deep into the cranberry sauce. “I
have
a life.”

Barbara seemed at times like a woman having an affair. Mel knew, of course, that she was not sneaking off to sleep with God, or any of his messengers, but sometimes it felt that way. She hummed. She was always humming without noticing, and she had never been a hummer. She glowed when she talked about services or classes at the Bialystok Center. A sudden youthfulness suffused her skin. Maybe it was love after all, but if so, Barbara was in love with the whole Zylberfenig family—the rabbi, his wife, and all their children, down to the baby. Especially the baby. She was irrational about these people. They held her in their thrall.

Mel was Jewish, named for his grandfather Mendel. With his dark eyes, strong nose, and melancholy little mouth shaded by a moustache, he looked as Jewish as they come. But he was from the nonbelieving branch of the religion. Superstition scared him. In fact, superstition made him superstitious. These were strange times. The world seemed on the cusp of some revelation—or some disaster. The Y2K bug lurked inside the world’s computers like a worm eating the world tree. According to the CIA, terrorists were out to get everyone on New Year’s Eve. Even as Barbara began praying and nailing mezuzahs to door frames throughout the house, Mel felt that something terrible might befall him. Each mezuzah case was no larger than Mel’s index finger and concealed a scroll inside, so that no scripture was visible, except for one Hebrew letter, the shape of a three-tined fork. They were small, these mezuzahs, but they were everywhere, each like a chrysalis, a tiny portent. Lately he lived in dread. What would become of him? What new belief would open up its wings and flutter through the house today? Barbara had begun praying morning, noon, and night. Turning toward the east, she clutched her prayer book and mumbled words in Hebrew. And she wrote checks. Little checks. Nothing too crazy, but donations all the same, to the Zylberfenigs, those mystic Bialystokers of hers.

As he cleared and Barbara washed the Thanksgiving dishes, she said, “I’m sorry I snapped at Annie. I’m happy.”

“I know.” His voice was bleak.

“I’m thankful, actually, because we’re all together.”

He nodded, although he and Barbara were alone in the house. The kids had driven off to see their friends.

“We’re blessed,” said Barbara. She turned off the water in the sink and turned to face him. She was glowing again. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright with the sky. She looked as though she’d just come in from walking on a perfect fall day. “Just think what we can do when we sell our stock.”

“Our stock? Who’s selling stock?”

“We could
give,”
said Barbara.

Suddenly, Mel knew the desire in Barbara’s infatuated heart. He took a full step back in shock. Donate
stock!
Mel had assumed that after twenty-eight years of marriage he and his wife had discovered every little quirk and source of irritation—but now this! An entirely new category, like a previously uncharted island or a new species in the rain forest. That was how her suggestion revealed itself to him, a new mammal, a giant three-toed rat, just when naturalists thought they’d seen it all.

“Oh, no. No. That’s not going to happen. If and when ISIS goes public—if and when I’m clear to sell my shares—there’s no way in hell I’m giving them to those Hasidic lunatics of yours.”

“Mel,” said Barbara, hurt by his language.

Anger swelled within him. “I am not giving a penny of my money to those holy rollers and their evangelical, superstitious, brainwashing cult. Over my dead body.”

“I never said anything!” Barbara protested.

“You don’t have to. I know. Don’t you think I know what they want out of you? And what you want to do?” And he did know, because after all, he had been married to Barbara half his life. He had met her at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he had worked in payroll and she was just a sweet young nurse. He knew exactly how his wife looked when she hoped for something, or when she wanted something, or when she dreamed. He knew her yearning liquid eyes, her tender mouth. He could read her face, even as she became a stranger to him.