Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

Neats Tongue

A strange, unappetizing bill of fare, wine and dessert, followed by eel pie and sheep’s tongue. It’s not like you, Jess thought, addressing the collector, to put together such an awkward menu. Elsewhere, McClintock sought out the most exotic and delectable combinations. Kisses to begin, new peas, or muskmelon , followed by some tender young thing, lamb or fawn, turtledoves to whet the appetite, and then fish, and a succulent main course like loin of veal. Fruit and cream to finish. Quaking Pudding . Candied violets, rose petals, tansies, curran wine …

Why, then, these awkward dishes out of order, and no vegetable or fish or salad course? She read the menu twice and then a third time, and then she wondered if the words could rearrange themselves into something better. July-Angelica-Nutmeg-Cream … and as her eyes played with the words, she saw a pattern in the first letters, an acrostic reading down:

July-flower wine

Angelica

Nutmeg cream

Eel-pye

Neats Tongue

A name: Jane. Jane McClintock! Was this Mrs. McClintock? Was she the one? But what to do about Neats Tongue? A comment on Mrs. McClintock’s tongue? Or did she have a middle initial N? Jane N. McClintock? Or was it the T the collector referred to in his culinary code? Jane T? Janet!

She picked up George’s phone and called Sandra, but no one answered. She ran out and drove to Sandra’s house. She rang the bell, and rapped on the window, but no one came to the door. Should she leave a note? Try again tomorrow? No, her question wouldn’t keep.

She sat on Sandra’s porch in a raggedy wicker chair. Curled up in the window, Geoffrey seemed to recognize her, and wish her ill.

An hour passed before Sandra arrived carrying her groceries. Jess jumped up. “Hi!”

“Jessamine,” said Sandra, after a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Jess said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Could I help you carry those?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Sandra told her.

“I’ve been working on the collection,” Jess said. “I’ve been working almost six months. The books are fabulous.”

“I’m glad.” Sandra pulled at her keys, which she wore on a plastic bracelet around her wrist.

“I’ve found some interesting material.” Jess followed Sandra to the door.

“Good.” Sandra stood on the porch, keys in hand, groceries at her feet, but she did not seem at all inclined to invite Jess inside. “I can’t let the cat out,” she reminded Jess as she gathered all her bags together to rush the door. “You can come in, but you have to be quick.”

“Oh, I understand.” Body-blocking Geoffrey, Sandra darted inside, and Jess followed.

“Would you like a glass of juice?” Sandra asked. “Would you like to take a seat? Not that one.” She warned Jess away from Geoffrey’s dark green couch, and Jess settled on a velvet chair instead.

“Who was Mrs. McClintock?” Jess blurted out.

“What do you mean?”

“Are you sure your uncle never married?”

“He never married.”

“Are you sure he didn’t marry a Janet McClintock?” Jess asked.

“Of course I’m sure,” said Sandra. “Janet McClintock was my mother.”

George did not know where Jess had gone. She had left her books out. McLintock lay open on the book cradle. The laptop stood open as well, as though Jess intended to return, but it was past five and she did not come back. He called her on her cell, but she didn’t answer.

He poured himself a glass of wine and began to think of all the things he might have said or done to offend her. He remembered that the day before they’d had a little spat about her article. They were sitting in the living room on his couch, a massive low-slung piece with great wood slabs for arms. He said that she should write something quick and accessible with gorgeous illustrations for Gastronomica . She insisted that this was selling out, that she was developing an argument far more scholarly, with serious notes and tables. She said she had fifty-one pages already, and he’d laughed and warned her not to get lost in all that material.

Then she’d demanded, “Do I look like someone who gets lost easily?”

“Yes,” he’d teased, but she hadn’t been in the mood, and had snatched a heavy throw pillow, upholstered green, and smacked him upside the head.

They had laughed at the time, but perhaps she was still angry. Or perhaps Leon had suddenly returned, and Jess had decided she would not see George again. Was there some change of heart? Or some emergency? Should he try to reach her sister?

By the time Jess arrived, he had been waiting almost two hours, and he was in such an anxious state that he was almost in no mood to see her. But there she was, out of breath and streaked with sweat from racing up the stairs. “I’ve solved it,” she cried. “I know who she was.”

And she showed George how she had picked out Janet from the menu, and told him how she had rushed to tell Sandra. “He was in love with Janet when he was young. I think Janet was McClintock’s Laura and his Beatrice, and that’s why he drew her over and over and he read her into all his cookbooks.”

“What did Sandra say?”

“She was very offended!” Jess exclaimed. “She said her uncle didn’t even like to eat. She said that he was extremely thin. She told me her mother was happily married for sixty-two years, and she was perfectly sensible and lucid until the day she died at eighty-three.”

George smiled.

But Jess was indignant. “I thought she’d thank me!”

“For inventing an embarrassing story about her mother?”

“I didn’t invent it,” Jess said. “I know I’m right. Maybe it was an unrequited love, but she was the one.”

You’re the one, thought George.

“You’d think she’d enjoy knowing,” Jess said. “She’s convinced she was a Russian princess in a past life. Why can’t Janet and Tom have had a past life too? Why is that so shocking?”

“Let me take you out to dinner.”

“George,” said Jess. “Look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“I’m covered with cat hair.”

“Come take a bath.”

“I don’t have fresh clothes.”

“We’ll stop at your place and you can change.”

Jess ignored this. “Charles Dickens was obsessed with his sister-in-law. He never got over her.”

“Yes, and I’m sure the family loved to hear about it.”

Jess folded her arms across her chest. “And Tolstoy didn’t really model Natasha on his wife.”

“You’re upset,” George murmured.

“It’s just so anticlimactic—to put together the pieces of the puzzle and then to be …”

“Shh.” He kissed her.

“Exactly. To be shushed like that. As though I were arriving on her doorstep to blackmail her or something. As though I had something on her. She says she’s upset about her grandchildren. Her daughter still can’t get custody.”

“That explains it,” said George, frowning. “Don’t you think she’d be preoccupied?”

“I thought she might be …”

“She’s not going to be grateful to you for suggesting that her mother had some kind of affair with her husband’s brother. You got carried away, Jess.”

She didn’t answer.

“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.