She buried her head in his pillow.
“Talking about it is another.”
He didn’t want to talk about it either. He wanted to remain in this dream state as long as possible. The outside world was all obstacles and complications. Leon. The Tree Savers. Their missions up to Humboldt County. George could say Leon was dangerous. He could tell Jess that she was wrong to get involved with him. What was he offering in return? A sinecure. A dependency. To be crass, his bed. He could say he loved her. Would he mean it? They enjoyed each other. They were friends, and he desired her. He knew himself well enough to doubt that such feelings would last. He was fully capable of breaking Jess’s heart.
As for Jess—she was mixed-up about George. She was at home with him. Calm and happy. She could think aloud. She never felt that way at the Tree House, and yet the people there shared her beliefs about the world. Philosophically, ideologically, she and Leon were a pair. She and George agreed on nothing politically. He had no interest in the environment. He recycled like everybody else, but he cared little for other species, and maligned Tree Savers as eco-terrorists. He was old that way, ill-informed and cynical, preferring books to social change, studying antique maps instead of current battlegrounds of deforestation. Living in the past, he turned his back on the future, and this was a position she deplored.
Then there was his money. She remembered Leon’s warning:
Abashed, she read Haywood’s instructions to maidservants, advice on chastity preceding recipes for pickles, directions for choosing meat, best methods for
Jess sighed. She knew, in the long term, she and George were philosophically unsuited, financially unequal, generationally mismatched. Only in the short term did they agree. Only when it came to fingertips, and tongues and wrists. When he touched her and then slipped his wet fingers in her mouth and said, “This is how you taste.” In their laughter and the food he brought her, the freshest and most delicate of vegetables: watercress, fennel, dandelion greens dressed with champagne vinegar. They shared a private language in the cookbooks, and whispered inside jokes. Even their jokes were gentle. Tender buttons. He was tender with her.
She craved his company. The edges of her life were ragged, her feelings conflicted, her behavior incoherent, probably immoral, and at the same time, she was deeply happy, consuming nectarines, and Asian pears, sliced thin, and the pinot he poured for her.
“Try the wine now,” George instructed. Then, a little later, “Try it again,” and she tasted a new liquid altogether. Wine that had been tight and taciturn became mellifluous.
“It’s like finding a door,” she told George as they sat together in his kitchen. “It’s like stepping into a new room you never knew existed.”
“The pinot?”
“No,” she told him. “Everything.”
For she was becoming a researcher, tracing gorgeous threads, preparing a catalogue raisonné of the McClintock Collection, corresponding with scholars and librarians at the Schlesinger and the Huntington and at universities around the world. She had begun to study sweets—the sparing use of sugar in early cookbooks, and its ubiquity in eighteenth-century recipes. She checked out books from Bancroft. Deerr’s
On a Friday, at the end of August, just before her twenty-fifth birthday, Jess sat alone in George’s dining room and unfolded a menu she had not seen before, one of the collector’s fantasies on graph paper. The menu was tucked inside
McLINTOCK
A strange, unappetizing bill of fare, wine and dessert, followed by eel pie and sheep’s tongue. It’s not like you, Jess thought, addressing the collector, to put together such an awkward menu. Elsewhere, McClintock sought out the most exotic and delectable combinations. Kisses to begin, new peas, or
Why, then, these awkward dishes out of order, and no vegetable or fish or salad course? She read the menu twice and then a third time, and then she wondered if the words could rearrange themselves into something better.
A name: Jane. Jane McClintock! Was this Mrs. McClintock? Was she the one? But what to do about
She picked up George’s phone and called Sandra, but no one answered. She ran out and drove to Sandra’s house. She rang the bell, and rapped on the window, but no one came to the door. Should she leave a note? Try again tomorrow? No, her question wouldn’t keep.
She sat on Sandra’s porch in a raggedy wicker chair. Curled up in the window, Geoffrey seemed to recognize her, and wish her ill.
An hour passed before Sandra arrived carrying her groceries. Jess jumped up. “Hi!”
“Jessamine,” said Sandra, after a moment.
“I’m sorry,” Jess said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Could I help you carry those?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Sandra told her.
“I’ve been working on the collection,” Jess said. “I’ve been working almost six months. The books are fabulous.”
“I’m glad.” Sandra pulled at her keys, which she wore on a plastic bracelet around her wrist.
“I’ve found some interesting material.” Jess followed Sandra to the door.
