Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

Emily said nothing.

“You know Mom would have hated both of them,” Jess cajoled.

“She would have hated Leon,” Emily said, with feeling. “She would have despised him.”

“She’d have hated Jonathan too.”

“How do you know that? You don’t know that.”

“Find someone musical,” Jess quoted, for she was not above citing Gillian’s letters in a pinch, and she knew Jonathan could not carry a tune. “Find someone giving. Find someone who will sacrifice for you.”

“You do look at the letters,” Emily said.

“Every once in a while.”

“And what do you think?”

Jess watched a thick, yellow banana slug squirm at her feet. “I think, probably, we aren’t turning out the way that she intended.”

“You could change that.”

“I could? How about you?”

“I’m going to marry him.”

“You keep saying that.” Jess glanced at Emily’s sparkling ring. “Do you have a date?”

Emily shook her head. “I can’t—”

“Good for you!”

“Shh!”

Jess couldn’t help smiling at the way Emily shushed her, even in front of trees.

“I meant we can’t set a date right now.” Neither she nor Jonathan could move cross-country yet. Not at this moment in their companies’ young lives. “We’re not ready.”

“This is true,” said Jess. “This is more than true. Jonathan will never be ready for you.”

“You don’t know him.”

“I know enough. I’ve known him for three years! And I told you—I read about him in the papers, taking down Green Knight….”

“The stuff in the papers isn’t true.”

“Couldn’t you just meet someone else?” Jess asked winsomely.

“You know, Jess,” Emily exploded, “I’m supposed to sit by while you drop out of school and move in with your tree lover, and it seems to me that, for someone who demands so much unconditional support, you are strangely judgmental. You stand here talking about the natural world, and how humanity is insignificant, and then you have the nerve to tell me what to do. How do you intend to change your life? Just what exactly is your plan?”

Jess thought for a moment. “All right,” she said. “You be my witness.”

With a sinking feeling Emily watched her sister place her right hand on Robert Frost. “This year,” Jess vowed, “I swear I will overcome my fear of climbing.”

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I swear on …” Jess opened her book at random and looked inside. “I swear on a dimpled spider, fat and white, that I will climb this year.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“This year,” Jess said, “I’m going to climb Galadriel.”

“You need a job,” Emily told her.

“I have a job.”

“You need a regular income. And health insurance! What if something happens to you? What if, for example, you fall out of a redwood?”

“I’d just die,” said Jess dramatically, “so I wouldn’t need medical care.” When she saw the look on Emily’s face she amended. “Sorry.”

“Please don’t face your fears.”

“I want to.” Jess looked up at the forest canopy.

“Jess, I’m serious. You’re making a huge mistake. You’re afraid of heights for a reason. You of all people should not be climbing in Wood Rose Glen. And don’t think you’re going to impress Leon.”

“This has nothing to do with him!” Jess retorted. “This is just for me.”

“Oh, God.”

“It might sound New Ageist, but I don’t want to live like a coward on the ground.”

“I don’t want you to crack your head open.”

“Since when are you so risk averse?” Jess asked. “Wasn’t coming out to California a risk? Wasn’t founding Veritech a risk?”

“I never risked my life,” said Emily.

“Okay, granted, technically you risk other people’s money, but you put your life into the company, right? You invest yourself. Isn’t that true? In Veritech, in the stock market, in Jonathan.”

Emily looked at Jess as if to say: Where do you come from? Her analogies were so fanciful. “Yes, I’m sure every choice involves some kind of risk—but tree climbing is life-and-death.”

Jess stood on the wood bridge and saw birds flying in the forest light. She saw herself flying upward, ascending to the treetops in the clouds.

But Emily interrupted, “You fall from a tree like this, that’s it. You don’t get another chance.”

“And don’t you think you can die too?” Jess countered. “Don’t you think your decisions are life-and-death too?”

Emily did not treat business decisions as life-and-death. If she was nervous, she didn’t let it show. She worked with cool confidence and inspired everyone around her. Her success inspired her employees to start dot-coms of their own. Even Charlie, the company chef, launched his own restaurant, and flush with stock, Laura’s husband dropped out of his accounting program.

Laura was a little anxious when Kevin left school, and jittery as well about purchasing a two-million-dollar fixer-upper in Los Altos.

“We always said that you would teach accounting,” Laura reminded her husband at their wood-grain kitchen table in Escondido Village. “That’s why we came here.”

“I don’t like accounting,” Kevin confessed.

Laura set down her mug of herbal tea. “You never said that before.”

“I couldn’t afford to say it before.”

Laura knit her brow. She had a gentle manner, and her sweet voice belied her reservations. “I’m just not sure we should change all our plans so quickly.”

“What plans? Our plans were to have a family and be happy,” Kevin said. “We have the family, and now we have a chance to build a house and spend time with the kids. We’re going to have a swimming pool, teach the kids to swim. You’ll have a dream kitchen!”

“I don’t need a fancy kitchen.” She glanced at her cluttered counters.

“Don’t you want more space?”

“I’d be happy with a regular kitchen with more space, not a—”

“But you deserve one. You’re amazing, Laura. Just think what you could do with counter space and pull-out pantries, and you could have a whole baking station with a marble inset….”

Laura smiled ruefully. “Stop watching those kitchen shows.”

“We’ve had this amazing luck,” said Kevin. “Don’t be afraid to do something with it.”

“But it just seems …” She couldn’t help feeling that their ship had come in rather suddenly. Laura had taken the job at Veritech only to pay the bills while Kevin was in school, but working for Emily had proved more interesting than Laura had ever dreamed. How mysterious life was. Laura and Kevin still looked like the couple in their wedding pictures, those young sweethearts who could not afford floral arrangements and decorated the tables at their reception with autumn leaves, but now, they were interviewing architects. Kevin clipped pictures from magazines and talked about a kitchen opening out onto the garden, an airy light-filled space with double ovens and a breakfast bar. “It just seems like this will cost a fortune,” Laura said.

“But we have a fortune,” he reminded her.

“I’m afraid …”

“Afraid of what?”

“I’m worried about spoiling the children,” Laura said. “I want them to do chores.”

“Definitely. Everybody pitches in,” said Kevin.

“I would like a better kitchen,” Laura admitted, “but I want everything else to stay the same.”

Laura’s kind of constancy was Emily’s goal at Veritech. Level-headed optimism. Veritech’s products were essential, its culture young and happy, liberal in all the right ways—open, green, fun-loving, civic-minded; its people were building a corporation not only great, but good. Idealistic, and entirely invested in her creation, Emily believed this. After all, she had named Veritech to soar above the rest—to merge technology with truth.