The Cookbook Collector (31 page)

“Come here.”

She didn’t come.

He took her hand. “You have to be careful not to fall in love with your material.”

She relented a little. “Maybe.”

“I thought she’d be more imaginative,” Jess told George as he ran the water in the bath. She perched on the edge of the tub, which was claw-footed, fathoms deep, and she pulled off one grubby sock and George pulled off the other.

“About her own family?”

Jess wriggled out of her jeans. “Don’t fill it all the way.” She peeled off her T-shirt and bra. “It’s a waste of …”

“Get in,” George said.

She sat in the water, tucking her knees up to her chest. “If someone told me something about
my
mother, I wouldn’t be defensive like that. To me that kind of information would be golden.”

“Why?” George climbed in after her.

“Why? Because it’s … it’s contact. It means if you know how to read them, underneath the words there’s life.”

He sat behind her, soaping her shoulders, her arms, her breasts. “You’re going to be a historian,” he said.

“I am.” With a little splash, she turned over in the water and looked into his dark eyes, and she saw that he wasn’t laughing at her. He didn’t look bemused, or skeptical. She kissed him. She slipped into his arms, and they were closer than before.

When they stepped inside Greens that night and stood together before the great piece of driftwood at the entrance, when they took their table at the wall-high windows and looked out at the Pacific, they were like travelers arriving in a new city. They were like newlyweds in fancy clothes. His sports jacket, her sleeveless dress; his tie, her mother-of-pearl buttons down the front. He ate fish and she ate polenta and they drank a bottle of ’97 Chateau Montelena. “Best year since ’94,” George told Jess, and they toasted the McClintocks, Tom, and Janet, and Mrs. McLintock too. They sat at the great windows and they watched the seagulls diving between waves and sky, and thought but didn’t say how strange it was to go out like other couples.

Jess said, “Do you think
marmalet of apples
actually tasted like something?”

And George said, “You never talk about your father.”

“It couldn’t have been bitter like real marmalade,” Jess said.

“You don’t get along with him, do you?” George said.

“No,” Jess confessed. “Not really.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t like me very much.”

George trapped her legs between his underneath the table. “That can’t be true.”

“Well,” said Jess, “he’s all computers. He’s all math, and I’m humanities. He’s all for financial independence—and I am too! But I’m not … really independent yet. He has no time for religion, philosophy, or poetry. Fortunately, he’s got Emily.”

“You must take after your mother,” George said.

“Maybe.”

“And he loved her.”

“I think so,” Jess said. “But who knows? It was such a long time ago.”

“When he reads your essay, he’ll understand what you can do,” George said.

“I don’t care whether he reads my essay or not.” Jess drained her glass and he saw that her face was flushed. “You understand what I can do.”

“That’s a complicated thing to say.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I can’t take his place,” George said warily.

Jess slipped off her shoes and rubbed her bare feet against George’s ankles until he couldn’t help smiling. “I never asked you to.”

Giddy with each other and the wine, they strolled outside through the Presidio, the old fort now housing restaurants and galleries. Jess explained that she wanted to devise a matrix for scarcity and abundance, frugality and profligacy. She thought that sweetness represented, and in some periods misrepresented, a sense of surplus and shared pleasure. “I don’t think taste is purely biological,” she said. “I think it’s economically, historically, and culturally constructed as well. Sweetness means different things depending on availability, custom, farming, trade….”

She was shivering, and George took off his jacket. “Here, sweetness.” He helped her into it and laughed at the way her hands disappeared inside the sleeves.

“Context is key—so the question is, What carries over? What can we still know about sweet and sour? Bitterness. What persists from generation to generation? Do we taste the same things?”

He kissed her, sucking her lower lip and then her tongue. “I think so,” he said. “Yes.”

“Wait, I’m not finished.”

“Continue,” he said. “Please.”

Testing herself, pushing back against her fear of heights, she climbed atop the thick two-foot wall edging the Presidio’s park, and walked above him, while he held her hand, steadying her from below.

“You see, I’m fine walking on this wall,” she declared, even as she gripped his fingers. “You see? I’ve been practicing, and I can climb very well.”

George looked up at her. “You like to tower over me, don’t you?”

She did. At that moment she wasn’t in the least afraid of towering. She was invincible. And she explained her theory about cloves, and she told him how the word
sweet
meant “unsalted” in English cookbooks.
Sweet
meant “fresh,” not “sugared” as one might think. She spoke of candying and conserves, and those mysterious syrups in McLintock.
Syrup of Violets, Syrup of Clove Gelly-Flowers, Syrup of Red Poppies, Syrup of Pale Roses
. How did pale roses taste?

They reached the end of the wall and she kept talking. She grew more and more scholarly, investigative, joyful. Absorbed in her lecture, he didn’t expect her to jump down just when she did.

“Give me a little warning!” he exclaimed as he caught her in his arms, but he didn’t want a warning, he wanted her, and he wrapped her in his arms, his chin brushing the rough weave of his own jacket.

“What’s to become of us?” She laughed.

“I don’t know.”

“Just as long as we don’t really … you know …” She meant fall in love.

“Too late,” George said.

24

L
ove was all very well, but in the world outside, survival mattered most. Veritech was strapped for cash, ISIS on the brink. Emily felt she had no time to breathe, and Jonathan grew warlike, confident as ever, but edgy from lack of sleep.

“Mel!” Jonathan sang out when Mel returned from lunch. “Exactly the person I wanted to see.”

Mel stood at the elevator, and his lower back tightened with the familiar mix of dread and pleasure to be singled out.

“Job fair in L.A. September eleventh.”

“I didn’t think we were hiring,” Mel replied.

“I want the ISIS booth there anyway,” said Jonathan. “I want to make our presence known.”

People were gathering, waiting for the elevators. Movers wheeled boxes out on handcarts. ISIS was decamping to cheaper, East Cambridge real estate.

“Maybe we should discuss this in your office,” Mel suggested.

Jonathan ignored him. “We’re going out there.”

“I’m not sure what we have to offer at a job fair when we’re not hiring.”

“This isn’t about now,” said Jonathan. “It’s about six months from now. I want the booth, the literature, the whole nine yards to extend to any programmers out there.”

“But realistically,” Mel said, “what do we tell these kids?”

“What do we tell them? We tell them who we are.”

“Show the flag?”

“Exactly. I need you to show the flag. I have a meeting in San Diego that week, so I might come out too.”

“All right.” Mel sighed. “I’ll see if I can get someone to—”

“No,” Jonathan said, “you.”

“Me?”
Only Mel’s associate directors flew west. That was long established. Mel’s back could barely withstand the Boston–New York–D.C. shuttle.

“You,” said Jonathan.

“I’ll prepare everything on this end,” Mel said. “I’ll prep Keith and Ashley, and they can go together.”

“Sorry, man,” said Jonathan. “I had to let them go this morning.”

“You did what?”

“Yeah, we’re making some cuts.”

“But you never—”

“It’s a top–down thing,” said Jonathan. “But it’s all good. Feel free to upgrade to business class. Just a second.” Jonathan’s phone was ringing. “Hey!” he told Emily. “Could you hold on? I’m just finishing a meeting.”

Some meeting, Mel thought, standing in the lobby. “Jonathan, I don’t think I can physically—I don’t know if I can manage that flight and still function in L.A.”

“Mel, you underestimate yourself,” said Jonathan. “You always do.”

“What if I trained Juliet?”

Now Jonathan grew impatient. “Juliet is your secretary, Mel. You’re the HR director. You’re the one they need to see.” He put his phone to his ear and began walking to the stairs. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and even as he listened, he turned and pointed straight at Mel. Like a latter-day Uncle Sam, he mouthed,
You
.

“It’s Jess,” said Emily. “She’s driving up to Arcata. She says a bunch of them are going up together….”

“She’s been there before,” said Jonathan.

“But this time she’s going to climb. She says that she’s been practicing.”

“Good for her.” Jonathan took the stairs two at a time.

“No, you don’t understand. It’s really dangerous for her.”

“How is it more dangerous for her than for anybody else?”

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing and she’s afraid of—”

“She’ll be with experienced people.”

“Do you think it’s rational to try to climb a two-hundred-foot redwood when you’re afraid of heights?” Emily demanded.

“I don’t know—it sounds like fun. When is she going?”

“September fourth through September eleventh,” said Emily.

“That’s when I’m coming out for Tech World,” said Jonathan. “You can meet me in L.A.”

He didn’t understand that Jess could hurt herself, and sometimes Emily thought he didn’t care. He had never liked her sister. From his point of view, she was always in trouble of one kind or another. Impatient, he did not hear Emily’s fear that this time was worse.

“Why do you have to go?” Emily asked Jess on the phone.

Jess said, “I can’t be a coward all my life.”

Emily sat in her office with her picture of Jonathan on the screen saver in front of her. “You aren’t a coward. Why do you say that?”

“I can’t keep floating from one thing to the next.”

“What is going on with you?”

“I have to grow up sometime,” Jess said.

“Growing up is not something you do on a tree-climbing expedition,” Emily protested. “Tree climbing is the opposite of growing up!”

“You remember when I made my vow,” Jess said.

“That ridiculous thing you said in Muir Woods?”

“It was not ridiculous. It was serious. And I said that in January. That was almost nine months ago. The year is almost up, and I haven’t followed through. It’s now or never.”

“What are you talking about?” Emily demanded. “Are you trying to prove something to Leon? Is that it?”

“No,” said Jess. “I’m proving this to myself. It’s not about Leon.” She added silently,
Or George
.

In truth, she was frightened. Her time with George was so intense. Not just the time with him, but the time away from him. She heard his voice. She saw him in her dreams. She had had a dream that she was flying with him through the trees in winter. They were flying slowly, drifting through the air, and she was wearing a long silk skirt that caught in bare branches.
Don’t worry
, said George as he floated down to untangle her. But she did worry. She thought about him constantly. She was sleeping over now, and spending mornings with him, as well as evenings. When he left, she missed him. While she worked, thoughts of George distracted her. She was no longer contemplating rose water. She contemplated him. She was no longer simply archiving the collector’s notes. She had
become
the collector, dreaming, doodling. She was altogether infatuated. And she wondered: How did this happen to me? How did I fall in love like this when I’m with someone else? And sometimes she and George seemed overdetermined, destined from the start. At other times, the relationship, if that’s what it now was, terrified her, because it wasn’t just George, but his things that entranced her, and she could not separate him from his possessions. His gorgeous home, his fresh sheets, his garden, his collections.

At the Tree House, Jess pitched in, like everybody else. The Tree Savers cooked and cleaned together, creating their own sanctuary. At George’s house Concepcion took care of everything. Sheets and towels reappeared magically, clean and white. Dishes returned sparkling to their shelves. At the Tree House, Jess was part of a team, but at George’s house she worked alone, reading, writing, gorging herself on McClintock’s fantasies.

To be with George was pure luxury, and she mourned, Oh, I am more materialistic than I thought. Oh, I am no idealist at all. I just want to be stroked and fed. And she was disgusted with herself. The affair was so obvious and degrading. She had nothing, and he was rich. She slept with him and read his books and drank his wine as though she were a little scholar-geisha, when she should be with Leon at the front, fighting against the Pacific Lumber Company. She was an aesthete, just when she should have been an ascetic and a revolutionary. The fact that she loved talking to George, and kissing him and falling asleep in his arms and waking up with him in the morning made the situation a thousand times worse.

So she resolved to fall out of love, and every day she planned to tell George, but that day passed and then another, until at last, as they ate risotto in the kitchen, George gave her an opening. He said, “Jess, I’m having some friends for dinner on Labor Day.” That was all, but she knew instantly what he meant.

“You don’t want me here.”

“Well …,” he hedged, and his hesitation was worse than the exclusion. “Don’t be offended.”

“I’m not offended. I’m glad,” she told him. “I’m relieved.” And she really was relieved, as well as hurt. “I’m driving up to Arcata that weekend.”

“What do you mean, ‘driving up to Arcata’?”

“I’m going to meet Leon and the tree-sitters in Wood Rose Glen.”

“You aren’t really going to start tree-sitting.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Jess demanded. But what she meant was, “How dare you tell me what to do when I can’t exist for you in the real world in front of your friends?”

“Don’t you think tree-sitting in a twenty-story redwood is risky? And just a little adolescent?”

“Don’t start lecturing me.”

“I wasn’t lecturing,” he said. “I was asking.”

“That was a rhetorical question,” Jess said. “So you weren’t asking at all.”

“How long are you going for?”

“I don’t know,” Jess answered dangerously. “As long as I want. Obviously you don’t have to pay me for the weeks that I’m away.”

“Weeks!”

“I’ll go for as long as they need me. Leon says they might stay the month.”

“And how are you going to live up there?” George asked her.

“The same way everybody else does. We have supplies. We have food. It’s not like I haven’t been before. I was there almost two months in the spring.”

He turned away, an expression she recognized, disappointment mixed with anger. “You know it’s dangerous.”

“Doing nothing is also dangerous.”

“People get killed up there.”

“People get killed on the ground too.”

He stood up to clear the risotto bowls, but walked around behind her instead and placed his hands upon her shoulders, a gesture suddenly irritating. She shook him off and sprang up from the table.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“Don’t go? Is that an order?”

“A request.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about your safety,” he said. “What if something happens to you?”

“Something has happened to me,” said Jess. “I’ve become your little pet. I’ve become your latest toy, your newest typewriter, and it’s not good, and you know it. You can’t introduce me to your friends, and there’s a reason for that. The reason is they’ll see exactly what you’ve done. They won’t approve, and they’ll be right. They’ll say, ‘George, how much did she cost?’”

“That’s spiteful,” said George. “And childish.”

Tears started in Jess’s eyes. “What’s childish is pretending we live in our own little world, when the truth is that I’m involved with someone else, and I have a life away from here. And you have your friends and your dealers and your store and Colm and all your projects, and it’s not like we have a future together, and it’s not like we have much of a past….”

“Do you really think you have a future with Leon?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You’re angry,” he said.

“Don’t tell me I’m angry,” Jess exploded. “I hate it when you say ‘You’re angry,’ or ‘You’re upset.’ I
know
that I’m angry. I’ll tell
you
when I’m angry. And I’ll tell you what makes me angry. What makes me angry is that you expect me to stay with you at your pleasure.”

“Wait—” George interrupted.

“No, you wait. You want me here when it’s good for you, and gone when it’s inconvenient for you. You want me when it’s fun for you, and then when you get bored—not when I get bored—but when you get tired of me, you’ll say you’ve had enough.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“Or maybe you’ll say it’s not working out, or we don’t belong together long-term. Which is true. We don’t. But if I point this out now, then you’re defensive, because you aren’t done yet.
That
makes me angry. And I’ll tell you something else that makes me angry. I used to have a life. Maybe not what you call a life. Maybe you couldn’t see it, but I used to wake up and say, ‘What will I do today?’ Now I wake up and I know what I’ll do. I’ll work with your books and count the hours until I see you. I don’t talk to anyone else. I don’t see anyone else. I’m virtually hiding from my sister—”

“Would you stop and let me say something?” George broke in. “I have never done anything to you. I never imprisoned you here in my house.”

“That’s true,” said Jess. “And that’s what makes it so bad. I want to work with the collection; I want to eat with you. I want to sleep with you. You’re like a drug. I can’t stop thinking about you, and it’s exhausting. It’s …”

“So you don’t want to see Leon. You want to get away from me,” said George.

“I do want to see him,” Jess said stubbornly. “And I want my life to be about something besides you.” And she walked into the dining room and began stuffing papers, the notes for her essay, into her backpack.

“Jess,” said George, “listen. Don’t do something you’ll regret. I—”

“Don’t say something
you’ll
regret,” Jess countered. “Don’t say something that isn’t true.”