The Cookbook Collector (39 page)

Her voice was muffled, weary, terribly sad. “What’s wrong now?” George asked. “What happened?”

“I have to go to London.”

“No! No, you don’t. If your sister wants to go and see all those relatives, then you go ahead and let her. She’s a grown woman.”

“I have to go,” Jess said. “She’s in a bad way. I can’t let her go alone.”

“Why not? Why can’t you? You’ve been with her almost a month. Come home.”

“I can’t,” said Jess. “I can’t.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I’m helping her. She needs me.”

“I know,” George said. “But what about you?”

Jess demanded, “Can’t you look at this from Emily’s point of view?”

Then George was honest, much too honest. He knew even as he said the words that they would anger Jess, but he missed her so much that he could not help himself. “I’m not interested in her point of view.”

Silence.

“Jess? Are you there?”

“You’re very good at that,” Jess said.

“Good at what?”

“Triaging. You’re first, and I’m second, and everybody else is a distant third.”

“You’re overwrought,” George said. “This situation is poisonous for you.”

“Maybe it is,” said Jess. “But I’m the only one she has.”

“What about your father?”

“You don’t understand. He’s half the problem.” Jess glanced back at the house. “I’m the one who has to go.”

All that night and the next day, Emily worked busily. She drew up charts and lists and plans. She asked Laura to FedEx her passport. Then she took Jess for pictures and ordered her a passport as well. Emily was more than pleased. This new discovery satisfied her investigative soul, turning her heart toward social connections which were intricate but calculable, concrete, and fixed. Even as Jess watched, Emily returned to life, e-mailing, organizing, buying guidebooks and new clothes.

She and Jess drove to the Canaan mall and Emily bought Jess a puffy down jacket, and chenille sweaters, and good warm socks, and waterproof boots, and a pair of Indian gold earrings for good measure.

“Does it help?” Jess asked.

“Does what help?”

“Shopping.”

“Let’s get Dad something at Home Depot.” Emily strode across the parking lot to the great brick edifice dedicated to home improvement. “Look at these snowblowers. They’ve already got snowblowers out and it’s not even Halloween.”

“Emily?” said Jess.

“What do you think the difference is between Turbo Power Plus and the Turbo Power Max?” Emily murmured.

“Will London make you happy?”

Emily touched her sister’s shoulder. “We have a family there. It’s just such a gift.”

What was wrong with Jess, then? Presented with this gift, she felt utterly alone and empty. George was frustrated with her for staying with Emily for so long, and Emily expected Jess to accompany her. She not only expected Jess to go; she assumed Jess shared her excitement.

Suddenly among the shiny red snowblowers Jess understood how Sandra McClintock must have felt, hearing that her mother was the object of her uncle’s affections. She realized how disconcerted Sandra must have been. Information wasn’t always such a gift; it was also a loss, the end of possibility. To tell the truth, when it came to her mother, Jess preferred mystery. She preferred to make up her own stories. It was painful to think that Gillian was someone real. Maybe Emily took a macabre satisfaction in diving into the wreck to reclaim this relic and that. Wasn’t she missing the point? The storm at sea? The end of all their mother’s hopes, ideas, and memories?

“Is that your phone?” Emily asked.

Jess glanced quickly at the number and didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk to George.

While Emily hunted down a salesman, Jess slipped away through aisles of locks, power drills, carpet rolls, kitchen sinks, doors with fanlights, bathtubs, vanities. Piled high with storm windows, a beeping forklift backed toward her, even as she scrolled through her telephone’s address book and dialed.

“Sandra?” she said.

“Who is this?”

“This is Jessamine Bach. May I speak to Sandra?”

“Oh, Jess!” Sandra exclaimed. “How are you?”

The cheerful voice sounded nothing like the Sandra Jess knew.

“I called to apologize,” said Jess as she walked down an aisle of white wire closet organizers.

“What do you mean?” Sandra asked.

“I ambushed you with information about your mother and your uncle. I saw their connection in the McLintock cookbook and I got a little carried away.” Pausing, Jess glanced at the shelves. “I was so proud of myself. I never really considered the effect it might have had on you.”

“Oh,” said Sandra. “Well.”

“I’m sorry,” Jess whispered. “I didn’t understand. I wanted to say that I do understand now. I’m very, very sorry.”

“Stop! That’s ridiculous,” said Sandra. “I’m fine, and everybody’s fine. I haven’t thought about any of that in weeks. Your discovery was worth a lot to me, as I’m sure you know.”

Jess stood before an array of paint chips. “No, I don’t know. I’ve been away. I’m out of town.”

“That’s right, you aren’t working for him anymore. I thought he might have told you. George reassessed the cookbooks after you found the McLintock, and he doubled his payment.”

“George?”
Jess was shocked. “He paid you double?”

“He did,” said Sandra. “My daughter got a new lawyer because of that, and she’s settling with her ex for joint custody. We’re getting summers and every-other-weekend visitation.”

Jess plucked out paint samples in shades of blue:
Chartered Voyage, Summer Dragonfly, Rushing Stream
. “He never told me that.”

“Well,” Sandra said, “he felt that he’d undervalued the collection. He wanted to give me even more, but I was afraid my uncle would not have liked it. We agreed on donating to the Redwood League instead, toward the purchase of the Dillonwood Grove. Have you heard of it?”

“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.”

31

G
eorge 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.