The Cookbook Collector

daughter? But she followed Sandra down this passageway as well. She chose to believe her. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “What’s happened to her?”

“She’s losing her children,” Sandra said.

“What do you mean? Divorce?”

“Leslie raised them, but her partner is the biological mother.”

So Leslie is the one Raj meant to honor, Jess thought.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” said Sandra.

“I don’t,” Jess admitted humbly.

“Leslie was the one who cared for them. She was the one who woke with them and fed them, and pushed them in the stroller to the playground every day. She was the stay-at-home mother. She dedicated her life to those boys. They’re all she’s got, and her ex took them to New Jersey.”

That’s why she needs money. Legal fees, Jess thought.

“I’m worried,” Sandra said. “I can’t sleep at night. My daughter hasn’t seen her children in over a year. And I’m afraid …” Here, her voice broke entirely. “They’re only five and three. I’m sure they don’t remember her.”

Jess answered gently. “You never know what children can remember. I lost my mother when I was five, but I still remember her. I think I remember her sewing, and I remember standing on a chair and baking with her. And also …” Jess searched for another memory she could put into words, some event she might produce, although most of her memories were flickers: light and shadow, hedges along the sidewalk, her mother’s white hands pulling her away when she tried to lick—what was it?—a fence? She loved the tang of metal. The ladder to the slide?

“You’re missing the point,” said Sandra.

Again Jess felt that this was a test, and it was no ordinary exam: not a test of what Jess knew, but of what Sandra believed. “Your situation is more complicated than your uncle could have imagined,” said Jess. “You wouldn’t be selling for a profit. You’d sell to pay your lawyers. In that case, don’t you think that he’d approve?”

Sandra searched Jess’s face.

“I don’t know Raj. I don’t know what Raj would do with these books, but George appreciates them. He’ll study them—and so will I, and so will Colm. We’re not just collectors. We’re readers.”

Sandra nodded.

Emboldened, Jess continued, “And wherever your uncle is, he’ll understand, because the point is, children shouldn’t have to remember their mother.”

Then tears started in Sandra’s eyes. All the tension seemed to leave her body, and she sighed, a drawn-out sigh. “Yes,” she said, and then, almost a sob, “Yes. That’s true.”

When Sandra opened the study door, George and Colm started up. Colm raised his eyebrows questioningly; George searched her face, anxious for the verdict. Jess didn’t say a word in front of Sandra. She couldn’t gloat. She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. Oh, she’d done well—and George and Colm didn’t even know it yet. There they were, waiting in suspense. She bit her lip, determined to keep a poker face, but her cheeks began to dimple anyway. She’d passed the test: She’d got Sandra’s Sphinxian riddle right. Princess in the morning. Bitter in the afternoon. Grandma in the evening. What am I? Lonely.

Eager, mystified, George looked at Jess, and she met his gaze. Who knew that Jess, who was such a terrible salesman, would be a brilliant buyer? Jess hadn’t known herself—but here she was, victorious. Didn’t you think that I’d win her over? Jess asked George with her eyes. Didn’t you think that I could win these books for you?

Part Five Free Fall March through August 2001

19

The markets swooned. Like a beautiful diver, the Nasdaq bounced three times into the air and flipped, somersaulting on the way down. Tech stocks once priced at two hundred, and then seventy-three, and then twenty-one, now sold for less than two dollars a share. Companies valued in the billions were worth just millions, and with a blood rush, investors thought, So this is gravity, this is free fall. This is what the end feels like, ripping through water. But the end was not the end. There were still more ends to come.

Looking back, analysts could predict the crash. They spoke of weak fundamentals, softening in the tech sector, reckless speculation. But who can measure appetite, or predict the limits of desire? Who can chart love’s parabola, from acquaintance to infatuation to estrangement? Multiply by millions buying and selling. Small exits accrued into a great migration, darkening the sun. So many hearts beat rapidly together, so many investors rose up calling to one another as they took flight, that it seemed there were no buyers left, except the day traders screaming obscenities on message boards, scavenging and wheeling like gulls.

Rabbi Helfgott was one such day trader, although he did not post on message boards. Waking before dawn to log in as the markets opened in New York, he made a few dollars, even as the crash wiped out his portfolio. He blinked sometimes and shook his head, as his investments melted away. Veritech at two, Janus at a dollar fifty, ISIS at seventy-five cents. Nevertheless, he remained hopeful. He had a sanguine nature, prayed three times a day, and believed the Messianic age was imminent. Therefore, he was better prepared than most for market turbulence.

He himself had read some economics. In fact he had read The Wealth of Nations, a book Jessamine had recommended, and he saw in Adam Smith a very Jewish form of Providence. What was the invisible hand Smith always spoke about, but the hand of God? What was a correction, but the Creator’s recalibration of the world? Had he studied physics in college, Helfgott might have learned that what goes up comes down. But the rabbi had not attended college, only seminary, where he learned that what comes down, must rise again. Applying this principle, he believed that what the markets destroyed they would, God willing, speedily restore, and this belief sustained him, as did the knowledge that he owned the Bialystok Center of Berkeley free and clear. Many years before, he had saved the life of a young man, an addict in the ashram occupying the building, and the boy’s grateful father had purchased the property and then sold it to the rabbi for a dollar. Now the young man was married, living in New Jersey, and a father himself! Such was the marvelous circularity of exchanges. Such, with God’s help, was the world’s hopeful trend, difficult in the short term, but in the long run beautiful.

Others were not so philosophical. When ISIS hit a new low of seventy—not seventy dollars, but seventy cents—Jonathan took the debasement personally. His high-flying company was about to be delisted, too small to register on the Nasdaq stock exchange. He knew that ISIS would come roaring back. He knew because he would make it happen. In the meantime—well, he hated meantimes.

Sleepless, he paced his Somerville apartment. His roommates had moved on, but Jonathan still lived there and he hated that too. He hated the stasis, the stalemate developing between him and Emily. Although he and Emily had set the date for their October wedding, they had not bought a house, nor had she left Veritech. She was rolling out a new product. She was setting up a research group for Alex—an unfathomable idea—rewarding Alex for his bad behavior. Twice, three times, she postponed her move east, and then she pushed the wedding off as well.

She said she missed him. At the end of every visit her eyes filled with tears—but she returned to California anyway, and somehow she remained patient. Where did this excessive patience come from? Did she still have reservations? She had told him in her sweet teacherly way that now she was ready—they were ready—to be engaged, but he had no idea what she meant by readiness. Waiting, taking time, becoming ready—this was the vocabulary women used to divert attention from what they wanted. And what did women want? The same thing men did—only slower.

What would it be like to live without this level of intense anticipation? Like ancient nobles he and Emily waged wars and signed treaties, convening privy councils in their separate conference rooms. What would it be like