Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

So many gathered that it was difficult to move. Sorel stood sentry by the door, a white usher’s flower pinned to her long dark dress.

“Are you okay?” Orion asked her, under cover of the crowd.

Subtly, her hand brushed his, and almost unconsciously his fingers wove through hers. Contact for just the instant the doors opened. The crowd surged forward, and he and Sorel were not touching anymore, but they saw Molly looking at them. What had she seen? Nothing, except the way they stood together. Confused, questioning, Molly turned to Orion, and he might have had to explain himself, if not for the arrival of Emily, and Jess, and Richard, and his wife.

“Emily!” Broken-voiced, Molly embraced her.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Lou told Emily. “Remember me?”

“Of course,” said Emily, the still center of the storm.

“Emily’s read all my books,” Lou announced to the assembled. He spoke in his public voice, his poet’s voice, fortified with Scotch. “Emily was Orion’s first girlfriend,” Lou confided to the provost.

“Let’s get you inside,” Orion said.

Jess wished she could get Emily inside as well. She wanted to spare her sister all the strangers sorry for her loss, but she could not shield Emily entirely. The lesser mourners drew close to Jonathan’s fiancée, and looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and awe. They whispered, I can’t imagine what she’s going through , but they wanted to imagine. They wanted to touch her pain, if only to draw back again, as from a flame.

Chaya Zylberfenig was one such stranger, but she observed Emily and Jess with special interest. Chaya remembered Jess perfectly from the Shabbes dinner a year ago in Berkeley. She had thought then that Jess looked familiar. In fact, she looked like one of the Gould cousins. Now, watching Jess standing with Emily, observing the two together, she was sure of the resemblance. It wasn’t simply the dark hair, or gray-green eyes, the fair skin, it was something in the manner of these sisters, the way they spoke to each other, the way Emily bent her head to the side, a gesture both gentle and skeptical as she listened to Jess speak. Freyda had that look, as she took in some piece of news.

“Excuse me,” Chaya said. “Jessamine? My name is Chaya Zylberfenig. Freyda Helfgott’s sister. Do you remember me?”

Jess turned to see a bright-eyed woman in a navy-blue suit with gold buttons, and a sleek wig in pageboy style. The suit was both fancy and fanciful, lending the little rebbetzin a nautical air. “You were at a Friday-night dinner.”

“Yes!” said Chaya. “That’s right. Is she your sister?”

Jess drew Chaya away from Emily. Richard and Heidi were taking her inside, and Jess delayed Chaya from following.

“Baruch dayan emet,” said Chaya, then quickly translating, “‘Blessed is the true judge.’ Pardon me, may I ask you something? Do you have any relatives with the last name Gould?”

Jess shook her head.

“No one in your family from London?”

“My mother was from London,” Jess said, “but that’s it.”

“Your mother was from London? What was her name?”

“Gillian Bach.”

“That was her whole name? What was her maiden name?”

“Gold,” said Jess.

“Are you sure?”

Jess hesitated. “I think so. It was either Gold, or Gould.”

Oh, but this was all that Chaya needed. “Gould! And her first name. Are you sure that it was Gillian?”

“Yes,” said Jess.

“But originally it wasn’t Gillian.” Chaya’s dark eyes widened with discovery. “In Yiddish the name wasn’t Gillian, it was Gittel! Your mother was my older sister, Gittel.”

Baffled, Jess blurted out, “My mother couldn’t be your sister. You’re too young to be my aunt.”

“I’m the youngest in the family.” Now tears filled Chaya’s eyes. “I’m the youngest of nine. Gittel was the oldest sister. She ran away when I was a baby, and she left the rest of us behind.”

“They’re getting started now.” Clarence and Umesh, with white flowers pinned to their sweaters, were ushering stragglers into the auditorium, where Bach radiated from a scientific-looking pipe organ, all sawed-off cylinders.

“Jess. Let’s go.” Richard had returned for her.

“Hold on a second—” Jess began.

“We’re sitting with Emily in front.” Richard swept past Chaya in her gold buttons and he took Jess by the arm. In his grip, Jess remembered all the slights of childhood, along with larger silences, the relatives he never spoke about, the grandparents who had died, the family in London that Gillian had disowned because they had disowned her.

“We are gathered today,” Dave intoned at the lectern, “to celebrate the lives of two very special people.”

In their reserved seats in the front row, Jess sat folding and refolding her program in her lap. How could this be? How could her own mother be a Bialystoker? Maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe this was just some fairy tale Chaya had made up. When they found out she was Emily’s sister, people responded in strange ways, speaking in hushed voices, making odd connections, bringing up an acquaintance of their own who had been killed, or a distant cousin who had gone missing. Jess thought Chaya must be wrong, and yet certain phrases returned to her from Gillian’s letters: I know from my own experience that some memories are indelible . What memories were those? And why had Gillian kept them to herself?

Jess could not concentrate at all. She could not think about Jonathan. Her own questions interrupted every eulogy. Who was Gillian? And if Chaya was right about her, why had Gillian kept such a secret from her children?

How self-centered the imagination was. The living thought about the living, even when they had gathered to speak about the dead. Orion sensed Molly staring at him, considering him, possibly judging him, maybe even dangerously, expensively forgiving him. Rabbi Zylberfenig stroked his beard and rehearsed his remarks silently, while Lou produced his reading glasses and shuffled the typed pages of his poem. Orion’s father had his game face on. Lou understood that he was also clergy.

“Mel Millstein hired me at ISIS. He gave me my chance….” Sorel leaned over as she spoke, and her white usher’s-flower weighed down her décolletage. “He always looked after me….”

Lou told Orion, “I’ll bet he did.”

At the lectern Dave recalled, “The first time I met Jonathan, I thought, ‘Is this guy for real?’ Let me rephrase that. I thought, ‘Is this kid for real?’ I said to him, ‘What are your goals for ISIS?’ and he said, ‘World domination.’ I said, ‘You’re joking, right?’ He said, ‘I’m not joking at all.’

“It’s one thing to have confidence when the going is great. It’s another thing to feel that way when the going gets tough. That’s the mark of a leader, a hero if you will.” Dave coughed. “I don’t use the word hero lightly, but I’m not … I’m not exaggerating when I say that this young man was a hero to me.

“The last time I saw Jonathan, we were in a meeting and I felt, as I sometimes did, that I had to rein him in. I said, ‘The climate is challenging right now.’ He said: ‘The climate’s history. The point is where we’re going.’ He was already thinking ahead. Six months ago, even nine months ago, he thought his way into a new space. He came to us with that gleam in his eye. He stood at the whiteboard and he wasn’t moaning, he wasn’t whining—he never whined about anything. He was like a kid in a candy store. ‘I have a new paradigm. I have a new plan….’ He had no idea then how important his new plan would be—a new system for data tracking.”

Dave’s words overflowed with feeling, and in the audience tears flowed freely. Even Lou almost forgot his own performance. Only Emily sat up, dry-eyed. Others heard a tribute to Jonathan’s indomitable spirit. Emily understood that he had stolen her information, appropriated and built a version of electronic fingerprinting.