Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

Now is night , Jess answered.

What is this? Emily inquired, pointing to a lonesome pine.

This is a tree , said Jess.

If I turn around the tree vanishes , said Emily.

Now is still now , said Jess. This is still this. Here is still here .

How do you know?

Cautiously Jess said, Because I’m still me .

Really? Emily pressed. Are you sure?

When Jess opened her eyes and saw the blue morning light, she wasn’t sure at all. She could not remember what Hegel said about consciousness; she could not even remember her own dream. All she knew was that she had to drive to San Francisco to pick up Emily from the airport.

Later she recalled forebodings, an inner certainty that something bad had happened, but in fact she felt no inkling until she discovered that Emily’s car was not where she had parked it. She was sure she’d left it on the right side of Derby. Anxious, she walked up and down. Then, more anxious still, she crossed the street and walked up and down again, calling softly under her breath, “Car, car, where are you?” as though she were out looking for a cat. Had she really been so stupid? Had she really lost Emily’s new car?

She ran back to the Tree House and burst into the kitchen where a bunch of Tree Savers were eating oatmeal. “Where do you call if you think your car was towed?”

Daisy looked up from her bowl. “Maybe it wasn’t towed. Maybe somebody stole it.”

“No!” Jess gasped. “But it’s Emily’s Audi!”

“Not anymore,” said Daisy.

“Take a breath,” a Tree Saver named Siddhartha suggested.

“Have some oatmeal,” Noah offered, and he tried to serve her from the pot on the stove.

“I can’t! I can’t have oatmeal. I have to pick her up from the airport!” Jess rushed outside and hopped on her bike for the BART station. On the platform a flautist in patchwork pants was playing a husky, breathy “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” but Jess scarcely noticed.

Emily, I have bad news. Emily, something bad happened. Emily, I’m sorry . Jess rehearsed all the way to the airport on the rattling train, until the woman sitting next to her changed seats.

“I’m sorry I’m late.” Jess ran toward Emily at the baggage claim. “I’m sorry…. I’m so sorry.”

“What happened?”

“Well …,” Jess began, and suddenly she thought it would be better to tell the news outside, and she started walking.

“Are you all right?” Emily followed her through the automatic glass doors.

“I’m fine,” said Jess. “Except …”

“Jess!” Emily stopped suddenly on the walkway and her rolling suitcase stopped with her, like a well-trained dog. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I’m fine.”

Emily sighed with relief. “Okay. Let’s see.” She studied the signs. “Ground transportation. Central parking. Short-term parking.”

“Um, we won’t need to … We don’t have to go in there,” Jess said.

“Where did you park?” Emily asked.

“Well—I didn’t, because—I’m so sorry. I’m pretty sure someone stole your car.”

“Really?”

Jess nodded miserably. “Right off Derby Street.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Oh, God, I didn’t think of that! I was afraid I wouldn’t get here in time, so I just rushed to catch the train.”

Emily shook her head at Jess.

That did it. The gesture of disbelief, with its suggestion of great forbearance. Jess burst into tears right there in front of the United Airlines terminal. “I had a feeling when I woke up this morning,” she sobbed. “I just had a feeling something was wrong, and then …”

“Jess”—Emily unzipped the outer pocket of her rolling bag and produced a travel package of tissues—“come with me.” Emily wheeled her obedient suitcase back into the airport.

“Where are you going?”

“To rent a car,” said Emily.

“But what will you …? How will you …?”

“Please stop crying,” Emily begged her sister. “I have insurance. It’s just a car. It doesn’t matter. I’ll buy a new one.” And Jess recalled that her sister was worth more than $100 million. Emily never acted spoiled or materialistic—not in the ways you would expect, but at times like these the money showed.

“Who are you calling?” Jess asked.

“Laura.”

“On Saturday morning?”

“Hi, Laura. How are you? Really?” She smiled. “Listen, could you call the police and also Commerce Insurance about my car? We think it was stolen last night in Berkeley. I know!”

“I need an assistant,” Jess said after Emily got off the phone.

“Why?” said Emily. “You have me.”

Do I? Jess thought. Emily could give her money, but Jess’s asking would have meant explaining how she’d donated her stock to Save the Trees. Emily could give advice as well about school, and Leon, and life in general, but none of the advice was what she wanted to hear.

She felt like an item on Emily’s to-do list: (1) fly to Banff with Jonathan; (2) establish Veritech Foundation to promote math education in underserved communities; (3) ask Jess what she’s doing with her life.

More like a fabulous old aunt than a sister, Emily began to pick up Jess every couple of weeks and take her to brunch at Greens, where she plied Jess with French toast, and Jess abstained and ordered blueberries with nothing on them. Then they would walk along the Presidio walls, with the wind whipping their hair, and they would gaze out at the ocean, and Emily would ask earnestly, “Are you sure you really want to be with Leon?”

Or Jess would sleep over at Emily’s condo, and they would drive together to the White Lotus in San Jose for vegan Southeast Asian food. Coconut soup, summer rolls with peanut sauce, mock squid lo mein, mushroom hot pot, and no-dairy flan for dessert. And Emily would say, “Are you sure you want to be in grad school if you’ve taken so many Incompletes?”

She had met Leon one day when she came to visit Jess at the Tree House, and her response had been about what Jess expected. “Totally inappropriate! What is he—forty? Who is he? Do you even know?” And she had taken the extraordinary step of assuming Jess’s share of the rent at her old apartment on Durant, simply because she could not bear the thought of Jess living in the Tree House.

“It’s a waste of money, keeping that empty room for me,” Jess told Emily.

“You need a home away from him,” her sister said. “You need somewhere to go.”

Jess had begun to dread these conversations. Generally, Emily’s Outings, as Jess began calling them, coincided with weekends Jonathan had canceled a visit, and Jess was not above pointing this out. “You only want to see me when you can’t see him,” she complained on the phone one January night.

“That’s not fair,” Emily said.

“You mean that’s not nice of me to say.”

“That too.”

Undaunted, Emily asked, “Do you want to go to the city on Sunday?”

“I have to work.” Jess sat cross-legged on the floor with her Logic text in front of her. George needed extra hours. Classes were beginning on Wednesday, and she still had Incompletes in Hegel, and Logic, and last year’s Incomplete in Philosophy of Language. She was in danger of losing her meager fellowship.

“We could go to Muir Woods.”

Jess hesitated. “I would,” she said, “but all you want to do is lecture me.”

“I don’t.”

“Right, you don’t want to, but you think you have to,” Jess said.

“We could drive the new car.”

Jess felt a pang of guilt about the old one.

“I’d like to go,” said Emily.