The Cookbook Collector

countless details of mother and rebbetzin, even though the Messiah was due at any moment.

9

On Thanksgiving Day, with the markets closed, the whole world seemed to sigh with satisfaction. Emily was worth half a billion dollars. Jess was a happy thousandaire. They drove to Providence with Richard, Heidi, and the girls to eat dinner at a new restaurant called Sonoma Grille.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird to fly back east to eat faux Californian cuisine?” Jess whispered to Emily when they arrived.

“Shh!” Emily glanced toward her father as they sat down at the table. They were six without Jonathan, who had to cancel at the last minute.

“Servers went down this morning,” Emily explained, and she tried to sound serene, and she tried to feel patient, but she was neither. All she wanted was to take her father’s car and drive to Cambridge. “He has to be there.”

“An ISIS crisis.” Jess poked Maya with a breadstick.

“It’s not a big deal,” Emily said. “It’s just a little …”

She trailed off, sensing Jess watching, waiting for her to admit how she really felt.

“We’ll have Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Jonathan had promised Emily on the phone.

“I’m sorry about the crash,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice was light. He was in great spirits, thrilled that Emily had come, and certain that, within weeks, he would be as rich as she.

Everybody knew prosperity would come, that wealth was imminent. Profits followed prospects. Cash kept rolling in. Chaya accused Shimon on Thanksgiving of thinking money grew on trees, and he told her, “But it does!” Chaya was fretting about children’s winter coats, but her husband had a deeper understanding of the age. His own student Barbara, a regular at all his classes, was married to Mel Millstein, the director of Human Resources at ISIS. His own Barbara, who came to services each week, had expressed her wish to share whatever wealth the Internet would bring.

Even now, Barbara was serving Thanksgiving dinner in her little house on Fuller Circle. The tablecloth was harvest gold. The salt and pepper shakers, Pilgrims. Barbara served turkey, sage and onion stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and corn bread to her grown children, Sam and Annie, and her husband, Mel, the angel who didn’t know it. Poor Mel, stubborn Mel, who didn’t like to listen to Barbara’s stories of the Bialystoker rebbes.

“The third Bialystoker Rebbe is known as the Dreamer,” Barbara explained to her family. “When he was a young student, his learning was so brilliant that he levitated above the ground As his knowledge grew, he began floating higher, so that, in time, whenever he opened his mouth, he began to fly upward, lighter than air. His teachers had to keep the windows shut. They were afraid the young man would fly away….”

“Your mother is taking a class in Jewish mysticism,” said Mel.

“Cool,” Sam said politely.

“What happened to going back to school?” asked Annie.

“Oh, I don’t think I have time,” Barbara murmured.

“Why not?” Annie had always been ambitious on her mother’s behalf.

“Well, there’s the house. There’s the garden,” Barbara said vaguely.

“Mom, it’s November,” Annie said. “How are you gardening in the winter? And what do you need to do in the house?”

“Quite a lot!” Barbara retorted, thinking of the wet basement.

“You need to get a life.” Annie meant this lovingly. She was just thinking aloud.

Barbara plunged the serving spoon deep into the cranberry sauce. “I have a life.”

Barbara seemed at times like a woman having an affair. Mel knew, of course, that she was not sneaking off to sleep with God, or any of his messengers, but sometimes it felt that way. She hummed. She was always humming without noticing, and she had never been a hummer. She glowed when she talked about services or classes at the Bialystok Center. A sudden youthfulness suffused her skin. Maybe it was love after all, but if so, Barbara was in love with the whole Zylberfenig family—the rabbi, his wife, and all their children, down to the baby. Especially the baby. She was irrational about these people. They held her in their thrall.

Mel was Jewish, named for his grandfather Mendel. With his dark eyes, strong nose, and melancholy little mouth shaded by a moustache, he looked as Jewish as they come. But he was from the nonbelieving branch of the religion. Superstition scared him. In fact, superstition made him superstitious. These were strange times. The world seemed on the cusp of some revelation—or some disaster. The Y2K bug lurked inside the world’s computers like a worm eating the world tree. According to the CIA, terrorists were out to get everyone on New Year’s Eve. Even as Barbara began praying and nailing mezuzahs to door frames throughout the house, Mel felt that something terrible might befall him. Each mezuzah case was no larger than Mel’s index finger and concealed a scroll inside, so that no scripture was visible, except for one Hebrew letter, the shape of a three-tined fork. They were small, these mezuzahs, but they were everywhere, each like a chrysalis, a tiny portent. Lately he lived in dread. What would become of him? What new belief would open up its wings and flutter through the house today? Barbara had begun praying morning, noon, and night. Turning toward the east, she clutched her prayer book and mumbled words in Hebrew. And she wrote checks. Little checks. Nothing too crazy, but donations all the same, to the Zylberfenigs, those mystic Bialystokers of hers.

As he cleared and Barbara washed the Thanksgiving dishes, she said, “I’m sorry I snapped at Annie. I’m happy.”

“I know.” His voice was bleak.

“I’m thankful, actually, because we’re all together.”

He nodded, although he and Barbara were alone in the house. The kids had driven off to see their friends.

“We’re blessed,” said Barbara. She turned off the water in the sink and turned to face him. She was glowing again. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes bright with the sky. She looked as though she’d just come in from walking on a perfect fall day. “Just think what we can do when we sell our stock.”

“Our stock? Who’s selling stock?”

“We could give,” said Barbara.

Suddenly, Mel knew the desire in Barbara’s infatuated heart. He took a full step back in shock. Donate stock! Mel had assumed that after twenty-eight years of marriage he and his wife had discovered every little quirk and source of irritation—but now this! An entirely new category, like a previously uncharted island or a new species in the rain forest. That was how her suggestion revealed itself to him, a new mammal, a giant three-toed rat, just when naturalists thought they’d seen it all.

“Oh, no. No. That’s not going to happen. If and when ISIS goes public—if and when I’m clear to sell my shares—there’s no way in hell I’m giving them to those Hasidic lunatics of yours.”

“Mel,” said Barbara, hurt by his language.

Anger swelled within him. “I am not giving a penny of my money to those holy rollers and their evangelical, superstitious, brainwashing cult. Over my dead body.”

“I never said anything!” Barbara protested.

“You don’t have to. I know. Don’t you think I know what they want out of you? And what you want to do?” And he did know, because after all, he had been married to Barbara half his life. He had met her at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he had worked in payroll and she was just a sweet young nurse. He knew exactly how his wife looked when she hoped for something, or when she wanted something, or when she dreamed. He knew her yearning liquid eyes, her tender mouth. He could read her face, even as she became a stranger to him.