Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“He would never let us down,” Dave said. “He would never say die. He led as he lived, fearless, imaginative, excited about the future. How could we lose someone who loved life so much?”

But Emily thought, Jonathan, how could you betray me? All those conversations where you accused me of putting Veritech first. All those times you said I was inflexible. Had you sold me out already? Six months ago. Nine months ago. Had you already betrayed me then?

She heard the other speakers in a dream. She heard them all from far away. Rabbi Zylberfenig spoke of angels. “Our sages teach that for each of us on Earth, there is an angel. This is very interesting to think about. We are each one of a matching pair. Therefore in the universe, we are not alone….”

A baby wailed.

Aldwin read from Kahlil Gibran. “When you part from your friend, you grieve not; / for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence….”

Sorel sat on a stool and sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” accompanying herself on her guitar. “Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord …”

Until, like the main event he was, Lou Steiner took the stage. Shuffling his papers, clearing his throat, he seemed to have lost his place somehow. Emily stared at him, but she didn’t see him. Orion glared at Lou, and he thought, My God, he’s drunk. But he underestimated his father. Lou knew his poem by heart, and the poem he recited was not the one promised. Not “Where Are the Bees?” but something else entirely, one of his old sixties flower poems.

When truth dies

No one comes .

Truth passes without ceremony .

Her friends can’t afford a proper burial .

Truth’s enemies write her epitaph

And build her tomb .

As for truth’s relatives ,

They’re estranged .

How? Emily asked Jonathan. How could you?

When peace dies

Everybody comes .

Peace plunges to her death

With fireworks and flags .

Full military honors .

Her friends hang their heads .

Her enemies say they’ll bring her back .

She was so beautiful

And much too young .

This was not the villanelle printed in the program, not at all the short sweet poem Dave and the memorial committee had expected. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, Dave leaned forward to look at Orion.

Orion shook his head and smiled. With a grim satisfaction, he thought, Fuck you. Even you can’t tell my father what to do. He didn’t see Emily’s face, so pale, or hear her panicked thoughts: How could you? How could you?

Visit truth and peace together .

They share a plot .

In lieu of flowers

Please send bodies

To the war .

In lieu of roses

Please send

Your Self-Addressed Stamped Sons ….

The audience squirmed and whispered as Lou shifted into higher gear. What did this have to do with Mel and Jonathan? Wasn’t he talking about Vietnam? Even in Cambridge, this was almost embarrassing. The poem was almost—well, it was sort of on the nose for a memorial service, wasn’t it? And it went on and on. Such was the case with Lou’s antiwar poetry, predating his late, great pared-down lyrics, the new minimalism which charmed before it stung.

Even as Lou recited, Emily rose from her seat and hurried down the aisle. Whispers rustled under Lou’s clarion voice. Look. That’s the fiancée. It’s too much for her … too much for her . Softly they whispered as she exited the auditorium, and watched her as she closed the door.

Jess and Richard looked at each other past Heidi who sat between them, and their eyes said: Should I go after her? No, let me. I will.

In lieu of lilies

Please send

Lies .

In lieu of freesia

Please send

Funds .

Had Emily overheard Chaya Zylberfenig talking? What had Emily heard? Jess rushed to the lobby, where she found her sister standing still and pale.

“What happened?” Jess pleaded.

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to go? Was it something Lou said?”

“No.” Emily pushed open the glass lobby doors. “I just want to be alone, okay?”

“You were right, you shouldn’t have come,” Jess fretted.

“I’m glad I came,” Emily said grimly.

Then for the first time, Jess was afraid Emily would wander off and hurt herself. “Where are you going? Don’t go out there by yourself.”

Close-lipped, Emily smiled at the idea that Jess could come along, that anyone could travel with her to this new hell. The pain was entirely new, when she reconsidered all that went before. Where there had been no body, she’d held fast to Jonathan’s spirit. And now?

He had given her an enormously expensive ring, but she had given him information worth more than any diamond. She remembered his silence as they lay together in the dark and she told him about fingerprinting. He’d tried to stop her. He was overwhelmed, moved, shocked that she would say so much. Was that because he knew he could not resist making electronic fingerprinting his? Did he already know he would steal her idea?

But the idea had not been hers to tell. If she was accusing Jonathan, she should indict herself as well. Fingerprinting had belonged to Alex. Indeed, it belonged to Alex now. Even now, at Veritech, Alex continued to research fingerprinting for a project his team was developing to check for spyware: a project Emily herself had named Verify. What would Alex do when he heard what Jonathan had done? You were right, Jonathan, she told herself. You were right all along. You win. I’m just like you. You betrayed me, but I betrayed Alex first. She stood on the plaza in front of Kresge, and these ideas spread like poison through her body, numbing her fingers and toes, darkening her vision, blackening the sun.

That night, Richard sat with Jess at the kitchen table and he said, “Your sister’s been through enough.”

“She has to find out sometime,” Jess said, and unconsciously Richard glanced up at the ceiling, thinking of Emily upstairs. “Were you really planning to keep us in the dark forever?”

“You treat this as some life-changing revelation,” Richard said. “It’s not. It doesn’t change anything about you.”

“Yes, it does! This means that I have Jewish aunts! Chaya Zylberfenig and Freyda Helfgott. And Rabbi Helfgott is my uncle! Why didn’t you tell us?”

Heidi poured three mugs of herbal tea.

“You shouldn’t have kept a secret like that,” Jess accused her father.

Richard met her angry gaze. “It wasn’t my secret. Your mother didn’t want you or your sister to have any contact with those people.”

“Those people are our family,” said Jess. “Even if they’re religious mystics and they look different and act different from you and me.”

Then Richard struggled a little with himself. He tried to speak and stopped. Heidi stood behind his chair and kneaded his shoulders with her small hands until he put his hands up onto hers. “When they found out your mother had married a non-Jew, they sat in mourning for seven days. When she chose to marry me, they declared her dead.”

“And Mom took that name—Gillian? And she went by Gold instead of Gould?”

“She wanted a free life,” said Richard. “She wanted to choose her own husband. She wanted a musical career.”

“Yes, but—”

“She associated those people with pain.”

“But you could have told us,” Jess said. “You could have told Emily and me.”