The Cookbook Collector

“Of course.” Jess had never before heard George speak this way. She liked the urgency in his voice.

Working at the store, she had become a connoisseur of sorts, someone who knew the difference between a first printing and a latter-day edition. She had come to appreciate white rag paper and color plates with tissue over them and marbled endpapers and gilt titles. Once, she had insisted that content was all that mattered. Now form began to matter too, and her eye delighted in elegant type, and her hand loved thick creamy pages. She treasured what was old and handmade, and began to enjoy early editions more than new. George had influenced her this way, not so much by what he said, but by example. His passion and his knowledge inspired her. When he acquired a new book, he called her over. “Jess, come quick!” Sensing her interest, he explained what made the volume scarce and fine. At those moments, she wished she could work longer hours at Yorick’s. The trouble was that she had so little time.

She knew that she was overextended, but she couldn’t help herself. Student, tree lover, citizen of the Earth, she was busier than ever as she raced through Berkeley on her bicycle, and stood on street corners with petitions. She was a blithe spirit, and increasingly a hungry one. Vegan, but not always strict. She never ate meat or tuna fish or honey harvested from indentured bees, but sometimes she craved eggs, and cheese, and even butter, and she bought herself a croissant or ate a slice of whole-wheat pizza, or a whole box of saltine crackers which she ate in bed, one by one, so that they dissolved on her tongue like the heavenly host. She felt bad afterward, and her guilt mixed with missing Leon.

A year ago, she and Leon had been inseparable. They had driven north to Humboldt County, and camped near ancient roots where he held her in his arms and whispered he would make a climber of her, show her the ropes. He promised he would rappel with her into redwood crowns that swayed and creaked like floating islands in the sky, rich ecosystems unto themselves, of lichen and lungwort and insects, and even miniature trees, bursting forth like Athenas full grown from the Creator’s brow. If only Jess had overcome her fear of heights to join Leon up there. If only she were not afraid, she might have been with him, and lived in the trees— not merely for them, or under them. Alas, the very thought of climbing made her ill. Her heart and mind longed to glide into the air, but she could not overcome her fear. Leon had tired of cajoling her to try on a harness and practice on the old oak in the Tree House yard. Impatient, he reminded her that even children could climb trees this size. Then Jess steeled herself. She said she would, but at the last minute, her stolid feet refused to leave the ground.

On weekends Leon began driving north to tree-sit in Wood Rose Glen. He scaled a redwood the Savers called Galadriel, and spent nights in her lovely branches. Jess envied that beautiful redwood, and all the people in it, although she pretended that she didn’t, and went to dinner at the Bialystok house, and sometimes attended mysticism class where she sat with Mrs. Gibbs and listened to Rabbi Helfgott hold forth on God’s laws, which were numerous, and His designs, which were intricate. She enjoyed the company on a Friday night. Fellow students, Israelis, tourists, Russians, sad-eyed runaways, a panoply of souls.

Jess didn’t eat, but she loved to listen to the Friday-night blessings over candles, wine, and bread, and the singing, especially the wordless tunes called niggunim, which Mrs. Gibbs hummed and Jess sang in chorus with the others at the table. While she did not believe in mystic Judaism, she enjoyed its tropes and songs and angels. The Tree House felt chilly without Leon. At the Bialystok house, the rabbi and his wife, Freyda, welcomed her as an honored guest.

One wet December night, Freyda Helfgott sat with Jess at dinner and introduced her to her sister Chaya Zylberfenig, who was visiting from Canaan.

“This is Jess!” Freyda told Chaya. “She is one of our best singers. And she is a philosopher.”

“Really?” said Chaya, and she looked at Jess with her shrewd dark eyes.

“Well, I’m not really a philosopher yet,” Jess demurred.

“You look like a Gould,” said Chaya.

Freyda cocked her head and looked Jess up and down. “Do you think so?”

“What’s a Gould?” Jess asked, thinking that perhaps Chaya was talking about some mystic sect.

“Freyda and I are Goulds,” Chaya said warmly. “A Gould is one of us.”

Jess knew the Tree Savers did not feel quite the same about her, although she tried to pull her weight. While Leon was away, no one looked overjoyed to see her, or saved a place for her at the kitchen table. No one moved a car to help her park in the communal driveway when Jess returned that night, driving her sister’s car. Emily was back east for the holidays, and she had left her new Audi for Jess to use.

After Friday night dinner, Jess had to drive several blocks before she found a space. Just her luck. As soon as she parked, it began to rain. She ran to the Tree House in a downpour.

Once inside, she pulled off her shoes, left them on the rubber mat, and ran all the way upstairs in her wet socks. She was hoping Leon had come home, but when she opened the door, the room was just as she had left it, bed unmade, desk strewn with unfinished problem sets for logic class, and a badly tangled Hegel paper in notes and drafts. Chilled, she took off her dripping clothes and hunted in the closet for dry sweatpants and a warm sweater.

She picked up her Fichte reader and her Hegel and her reading notes, and turned once more to her term paper on “being for self.” She was staying in Berkeley for winter break so that she could take care of her Incompletes. But the work was lonely, and she paced the room and thought of Leon. Sometimes late at night he slipped into bed with her, and she turned and wrapped her arms around him, and he pulled off her T-shirt and slid on top of her to take his first rough kiss. And then sometimes she woke and realized that she had been dreaming, and she was still alone. She did not expect to be with her boyfriend all the time. She had always known he was a traveler and a politico, and she admired him for it, but she missed him, even as she wondered why she needed companionship so much.

This is a mistake, she thought as she took Phenomenology of Spirit into bed. The book made her sleepy at her desk. Under the covers she didn’t have a chance.

What was it about Hegel that got her down? His sentences bristling with bony definitions? His arguments disguised as systems of the universe? He was everything Jess had come to loathe in her philosophy classes: stentorian about the world, but somehow alien from it. She had come to philosophy reading Plato’s dialogs, and now she found herself waist-deep in inner monologs about the Self. Was there a future for her in this marshy field? Or did she like forests too much? And leafleting? And living? She propped her head on the pillow and alternately read and dozed, and dreamed that Emily asked her in Hegelian fashion: What is now?

Now is night, Jess answered.

What is this? Emily inquired, pointing to a lonesome pine.

This is a tree, said Jess.

If I turn around the tree vanishes, said Emily.

Now is still now, said Jess. This is still this. Here is still here.

How do you know?

Cautiously Jess said, Because I’m still me.

Really? Emily pressed. Are you sure?

When Jess opened her eyes and saw the blue morning light, she wasn’t sure at all. She could not remember what Hegel said about consciousness; she could not even remember her own dream. All she knew was that she had to drive to San Francisco to pick up Emily from the airport.

Later she recalled forebodings, an inner certainty that something bad had happened, but in fact she felt no inkling until she discovered that Emily’s car was not where she had parked it. She was sure she’d left it on the right side of Derby. Anxious, she walked up and down. Then, more anxious still, she crossed the street and walked up and down again, calling softly under her breath, “Car, car, where are you?” as though she were out looking for a cat. Had she really been so stupid? Had she really lost Emily’s new car?

She ran back to the Tree House and burst into the kitchen where a bunch of Tree Savers were eating oatmeal. “Where do you call if you think your car was towed?”

Daisy looked up from her bowl. “Maybe it wasn’t towed. Maybe somebody stole it.”

“No!” Jess gasped. “But it’s Emily’s Audi!”

“Not anymore,” said Daisy.

“Take a breath,” a Tree Saver named Siddhartha suggested.