The Cookbook Collector (41 page)

“True,” murmured Sandra, who stood with the other guests among the roses.

“In the end, nothing lasts. Even
wisdom
will not last—this is what wise Solomon said. What, then, has lasting value? Where should we turn for the eternal?”

“To the good Lord,” said Mrs. Gibbs.

The rabbi nodded, but he amended, “Where do we find Hashem when He is so great, transcending our comprehension? Where do we look for Him?”

George looked at Jess.

“We find Him in each other.”

Ah, thought Raj, very good. He himself had a soft spot for religious rhetoric. His own mother in Calcutta was a very religious woman.

A perfectly calibrated crowd-pleasing little sermon, mused Richard. The Bialystoker presents himself as a humanist in Hasidic clothing.

“We find Him in each other,” Helfgott repeated, gazing at George and Jess, the
chassen
and
kalleh
, in front of him. “And this is why love is sweeter than wine, finer than gold, rarer than the rarest spices.
However
, since we are human, and not entirely angels at this moment in time, we need a record and a proof of what we feel. Therefore, we write up a marriage contract, our
ketubah.”
He turned to Nick, who handed him the calligraphed
ketubah
that George and Jess had commissioned. The Hebrew words were scribed in thorny black on vellum, the border illuminated with flowering vines. “And we have a pure, unadorned ring,” said Helfgott. “The ring …,” he repeated gently to George, who hurriedly reached into his pocket.

“Place it on her forefinger and repeat after me….” Helfgott smiled as George instinctively slipped the gold band onto Jess’s ring finger. “Her other forefinger.
Harei at mekudeshet li …”

George repeated the words. As in a dream, he spoke his first words in Hebrew, announcing that he took Jess to be his wife. The blessings afterward were flowing and melodious. He heard them in the distance, as gentle waves against the sand, or soft wind in the trees. Almost imperceptibly, Jess leaned toward him, and although the rabbi seemed to be telling him to wait, George’s arm twined around her waist.

“One last thing, one final act, the breaking of the glass.” The rabbi turned to Freyda, who produced a gleaming orb from her purse.

“That’s not a glass, that’s a lightbulb,” George whispered, even as Helfgott wrapped the bulb in a cloth napkin.

“It is our tradition to use a lightbulb,” the rabbi whispered back, “because in my experience, nine times out of ten, glass goblets are very hard to break.”

“Try me,” said George.

“I don’t think we have a glass,” said Helfgott who had used silver cups for the ceremonial wine.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jess murmured, but quick-thinking Emily hurried to the caterer waiting with champagne and strawberries at the bottom of the garden and returned with a champagne flute, which the rabbi wrapped, and George crushed the glass, stamping it to smithereens.

“Mazel tov!” cried Rabbi Helfgott, and all the guests. Music began again, no longer classical, but klezmer, as George and Jess laughed and kissed.

Everyone descended to the lower garden for refreshments and then repaired to the house on Wildwood for a wedding breakfast of eggs (poached to order in the kitchen), kippered herring, smoked mackerel, cured salmon, scones melting in the mouth to tender crumbs. Rabbi Helfgott beamed, although he would not partake.

Lily and Maya ran through the rooms with fistfuls of anise cookies and madeleines. They showed their mother marzipans of miniature books with gilt-edged pages, and they tried candied ginger, and they ate chocolate lace.

“We got the menu from your uncle,” George explained to Sandra.

Jess added, “But we left out the meat.”

“And the smoked fish?” Raj asked playfully. “I assume they took their own lives in the wild?”

“Fat aged carps that run into thy net,”
Colm quoted Jonson.
“And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat, …”

“As loath the second draught or cast to stay,”
Raj continued without missing a beat.
“Officiously at first themselves betray; …”

“You have a beautiful daughter,” Mrs. Gibbs told Richard.

“I have four beautiful daughters.” Richard finished his second glass of champagne. “It’s very good, isn’t it?” he told Heidi.

“It really is.” She sighed with relief. Lily and Maya were playing in the garden. As of yet, Richard had said nothing sarcastic. She had spoken to him seriously about this the night before.

“Whatever you think about the rabbi or religion in general, this is your daughter’s wedding,” Heidi had admonished him.

“I know, I know,” he told her. “It’s just that George is not what I expected.”

“Well,” said Heidi, “now you know how my parents felt when I married you.”

Jess slipped off her green shoes and glided everywhere at once, kissing Theresa and Roland, her old roommates.

“I told you this would happen,” Theresa reminded her. “I told you Mrs. Gibbs would convert you and you would end up …”

“Barefoot in the kitchen,” said Jess. “Did you try the cake?”

There were three wedding cakes, curious and historical but tasty, each labeled with a calligraphed card:

“Plumb Cake” with currants, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, salt
,
citron, orange peel candied, flour, eggs, yeast, wine
,
cream, raisins. Adapted from Mrs. Simmons
,
American Cookery, 1796.

“Curran-cake” with sugar, eggs, butter, flour, currans
,
brandy. Adapted from Mrs. McLintock
,
Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work, 1736.

“Chocolate Honeycake” with oil, unsweetened cocoa
and baking chocolate, honey, eggs, vanilla, flour, salt
,
baking powder. Adapted from Mollie Katzen
,
The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, 1982.

“Our new company is called Geno.type,” Emily told Nick in the living room. “We’re working on developing online communities, so you can constantly contact and update everyone in your family on news, birthdays, long-lost relatives.”

“So is this a new Web site? Or a service company?” Nick asked.

“What we’re really trying to do is move into the social-networking space.” Her eyes were shining, alight with her new venture. As of yet, she had just four programmers, but Laura was still working for Emily as executive assistant, and together they were looking for someone in marketing, and they were interviewing Web-site designers. Geno.type filled Emily’s days, and she dreamed about her business plan at night. She was not dating, but starting the company was very much like falling in love, turning her head, entrancing her. The world opened up, and it seemed to her as it had once before, that she was living on the cusp of a new era. Internet technology was that exciting. Her entrepreneurial spirit was that strong.

In London she had stayed in her mother’s cluttered childhood home. She had met her relatives and their little children, attended the dark synagogue where women sat removed from men in a separate room. She’d sat at long tables for Friday-night dinners and listened to long rounds of song. She’d watched the men all dressed in black as they strolled together down the street. She’d played with babies who teethed on her fingers, and talked to women in the kitchen, helping them cook their heavy meals—their lentil soup with shank bones, their
cholent
with beef, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, beans; watching them bake
mandelbrot
and poppy-seed cake,
babkas, ruggelach
. She had listened to her cousins speak of weddings and births and holidays and met more cousins, and cousins of cousins, until at last she had decided to come home. She had returned without great discoveries about her mother, without a newfound religious faith, without a new identity or an adopted Hebrew name. What she brought back was a business plan. She would leverage the Internet to reconnect long-lost friends and relatives.

“You
look
the same,” Jess had said at Christmastime, when she met Emily at the airport. “Except for the ring.”

They were standing at the baggage claim, waiting for Emily’s suitcases, and Jess couldn’t help staring at her sister’s bare hand.

“I gave it away,” said Emily.

“Where?”

“Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.”

Even Jess looked a little shocked as she remembered the spectacular trio of white diamonds. “They take rings?”

“It’s not a ring anymore,” said Emily. “It’s the Gillian Gould Bach Research Fund.”

Now, at the reception, as Emily told Nick about her company, she nibbled a tiny lemon tart, and she was not perfectly happy. She did not have what Jess had, or what Orion and Sorel had, but she dreamed as George did once, that love was possible.

After the last guests left, after the caterers had packed up the leftovers to give away, George walked down to the garden and sank into the new hammock, a gift from Richard and Heidi. “God, I’m exhausted.”

“I’m not,” said Jess.

“Come here.” George opened his arms. “Ouch!” Of course she would dive on top of him. “Careful,” he murmured, caressing her through the silk. “You’ll rip your dress.”

“I thought McLintock’s cake was best,” she said. “What did you think?”

“I didn’t try it,” George admitted.

“Didn’t you eat anything?”

“No,” he said.

“Not even the strawberries?”

“Not one.”

“But you were drinking champagne. I saw you. And I can taste it. I can still taste the bubbles.”

“Really?”

“Well … metaphorically.”

He kissed her. “What do metaphorical bubbles taste like?”

She rested her head on his chest, and tried to describe the champagne bubbles she imagined on his lips, but she could not, so they lay together in the hammock and talked and laughed about the day in dappled light. The house was quiet. Their friends had gone. The scent of roses, wedding music, and laughter faded away. The hammock swayed under them, and George and Jess floated together, although nothing lasted. They held each other, although nothing stayed.

Acknowledgments

I
am grateful to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study where I began researching and writing this book during my fellowship year. At the Schlesinger Library, Nancy Cott encouraged me, and her superb staff helped me navigate one of the finest cookbook collections in the world. It was Nancy who introduced me to the extraordinary Barbara Wheaton, a rare scholar who spoke to me at length about cookbooks, domestic history, and the art of collecting. I will never forget our conversations. Nach Waxman of Kitchen Arts & Letters took the time to share his insights and lively enthusiasm for cookbook collecting, trading, and selling. Allen and Grita Kamin told me much about the flora and fauna of Berkeley. Eighteenth-century scholar and oenophile John Bender advised me on French and Californian wines. Each of these eloquent experts taught me and inspired me.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A
LLEGRA
G
OODMAN’S
fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Commentary, Best American Short Stories
, and
The O. Henry Prize Stories
. She has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For more information, see
www.allegragoodman.com
, or sign up as a fan on Facebook.

The Cookbook Collector
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by Allegra Goodman

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

D
IAL
P
RESS
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Goodman, Allegra.
The cookbook collector : a novel / Allegra Goodman
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60381-8
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Women booksellers—Fiction.
3. Women executives—Fiction. 4. Self-actualization (Psychology) in women—Fiction. 5. Rare books—Fiction. 6. California—Fiction.
7. Cambridge (Mass.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.O5829C66 2010
813’.54—dc22     2009047594

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