The Cookbook Collector (34 page)

The McMansion’s three-car garage opened, and Mel drove away in his black Lexus, while Barbara stood as usual in her bay window, with her black prayer book in her hands. On Alcott Street, Rabbi Zylberfenig’s little boys were dressing, pulling out all the clothes from their shared bureau onto the floor.

In Cambridge, by the Charles, Jonathan went running, even as Orion and Sorel sat together on a bench on the riverbank and talked of Fast-Track. The team was combing every line of code before the October rollout.

“Last night was pretty smooth,” Orion said with pride.

And Sorel agreed. “Fast-Track is the Second Coming for this company!”

Breathing deep, Jonathan ran along the river, because he could not fly cross-country without exercise. He kept up his quick pace and thought of the day ahead at Tech World, the night he’d spend with Emily, the news he’d bring her, that ISIS was nearly ready to ship its new product, the surveillance system inspired by electronic fingerprinting. He had waited to tell her, but convinced himself that he was right to wait. He recognized that the conversation might be tricky, given his long silence, but he had to prepare her for the rollout.
Emily
, he told her in his mind,
if we’re together
,
then we share success. What you do and what I do are almost the same. Emily
, he rehearsed for her,
if we have a life together, then your money and mine, your company and mine, your decisions and mine—we hold them all in common
. Admittedly, he had not kept her secret. Admittedly, he had not confided in her about the flaws in Lockbox that winter night she’d asked. But that had been almost two years ago. Running on the riverbank, he envisioned a life with no barriers or limits. Marriage without borders. He saw the future, as he ran to the Eliot Bridge and back again, under the allée of sycamores with their silvery trunks and their green-gold leaves. Orion and Sorel could not have been farther from his mind. Nor did he consider Mel Millstein, who was driving in from Canaan to Logan Airport, bad back and all, to show the flag for ISIS, and to do his bidding. Jonathan thought about his day, not other peoples’. He meted his own stride.

Mel drove along the river to Logan, and he had no idea how close Jonathan was at that moment, nor did Sorel and Orion. They didn’t see Jonathan coming. No one ever did.

“I’m thinking of writing a dot-com opera,” Sorel said, leaning against Orion, head on his shoulder.

“How would that work?” he asked.

“It would be sort of
Tommy
meets
Ring of the Nibelung.”

They heard Jonathan’s voice first. “What are you guys doing here?” And then they saw him, bright-eyed, sweaty, jogging in place.

Sorel sat up straight.

“Jonathan,” Orion said heartily. “How’s it going?”

Jonathan looked at the two of them with his dangerous smile. “Come here often?”

“Bird-watching,” Sorel said, gesturing toward the fat black geese waddling and honking on the bank.

“Not much to look at,” said Jonathan.

“I’m quite nearsighted,” Sorel explained, embracing the absurdity of the situation. “I can’t see the smaller species, so we come here for the … large-print birds.”

Humor helped. Jonathan’s smile softened, and he shook his head ever so slightly. Then Orion knew he wouldn’t tell. He was never sure which Jonathan he would meet, but this morning he lucked into his old friend, the joker and the rugby player; the boy, not the tycoon.

Under the redwoods, the early-dawn air was chilly, and George tucked the blanket around Jess. “You were tired, after all.”

Jess didn’t answer. She was still asleep, even as Leon and the Tree Savers camped in Wood Rose Glen, and Daisy shielded Galadriel, and Emily called Jess’s cell phone, which was now lost, forgotten in the tree along with her waterlogged Thoreau. Emily left messages. “You said you were coming home on September 11. I’m just wondering where you are, Jess.”

At ISIS, programmers drifted to work with cups of coffee. In Central Square, Molly was arriving home, postcall from Beth Israel Deaconess. She was winded, climbing the stairs. She had no time for the gym. She had no time for anything. She had eaten a blueberry muffin for dinner. Blinking in the bright sun, she thought of babies, because all night she had been assisting in deliveries. She had worked for a day and a night inside the hospital, and now it was morning again, and as she walked, she thought of tiny bodies, eyes opening in surprise, mouths opening to cry, forming perfect little Os.

PART SEVEN

The Bottom Line

September and October 2001

27

Y
ears later, they remembered where they had been. At their desks or in their beds, indoors or out. Driving, walking, working, alert, or half asleep. Each recalled momentary confusion. An airplane hit the World Trade Center. Pilot error? Technical glitch? And then the shock. A second plane. No accident. No mistake. The flames were real, as everyone could see on television. The Twin Towers burning, again and again. Bodies falling, again and again. The same towers, and the same bodies, and the Pentagon in flames. The scenes played constantly, at once heartbreaking and titillating, their repetition necessary, but also cheapening. Who, after all, could believe such a catastrophe after just one viewing? And who, after viewing once, could look away?

Finishing the night shift at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center, Mrs. Gibbs saw the fire on every TV, in every patient’s room.

Waking early in Los Altos, Laura found her children staring at the giant television in the den. She stood transfixed with her three little ones in their pajamas, until she began to understand what they were seeing, and snatched the remote control away.

Across the country, Chaya Zylberfenig was running on her treadmill in the bedroom, and she called her husband. “Shimon! Come quick!” even as her feet kept moving under her.

Shimon didn’t hear. He was sitting outside with his
New York Times
, reading headlines already out of date. As so often, Chaya would be the one to tell him what had happened. Hands on hips, she watched him watch the planes smash into the towers on TV. With dark fierce eyes, she glared at her quixotic husband, as if to say: I dare you to find the good in this.

At ISIS in his corner office, Dave was meeting with Aldwin, when Amanda ran in. “Look at CNN!” That was when Dave saw the breaking story on his desktop. He watched along with Jonathan’s friend as the words
American Airlines Flight 11
flashed across the screen.

“That wasn’t Jonathan’s flight, was it?” Aldwin asked.
“That wasn’t …”

Amanda was covering her mouth with her hand.

“Call the airline!” Dave screamed at her.

She burst into tears as she fled back to her office.

Orion lay in bed, asleep after the all-nighter, and his cell phone started ringing on the floor. When he found the phone and opened it, he heard Sorel crying on the other end.

“What?” Orion said, and his voice was fuzzy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan’s flight,” she said.

“I can’t hear you,” Orion told her. “Slow down. Sorel, Sorel …”

At that moment Molly rushed in from the kitchen, and he closed the phone.

Molly looked so pale that he thought she’d heard him talking, but she had not heard him murmuring Sorel’s name. She’d heard the news, and now they watched the flames on television. They watched together, and he read his e-mail, the ISIS announcement that Mel and Jonathan were on American Flight 11 and presumed dead.

Molly leaned against him, and he wrapped his arm around her as he stared at the inferno on the screen. Of course, Jonathan had been Molly’s friend too. The news shook her too. He felt the weight of Molly’s head on his shoulder, the softness of her face. Despite their troubles, her long hours, her nagging, their estrangement, they absorbed this shock together.

And yet he had to talk to Sorel. He had to be with her. He knew she needed him as well. They had been the last to see Jonathan, and Jonathan had been the first to see them together.

He remembered Jonathan’s smile at the river, his expression mischievous but forgiving, his slight shake of the head, as if to say,
I
won’t say anything. He remembered Jonathan’s laughter, and his aggression. The way he turned from fun-loving to steely, cold—until he switched back again, once he got his way.
Be very careful
, Jonathan told Orion once, and for a moment Orion had hated his old friend, but Jonathan was impossible to hate for long. Of course Orion pitied Mel, poor guy. He remembered Mel too, but in death, as in life, Jonathan was the one you couldn’t shake. He was the world beater, the history maker. He had a force field all his own. He drew you in. Oh, Emily, Orion thought. What are you feeling now? How are you getting through?

She heard on the radio just as she sat down for breakfast. She was sitting at her white table, with her bags already packed for L.A. She was bringing them to Veritech and then going to the airport straight from work. That was the plan, anyway. That had been the plan….

Breaking into Susan’s report to give you breaking news from New York City where planes
, two
planes, have hit both towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan—the upper floors of the World Trade Center, a hundred and ten stories high
 …

That’s terrible, she thought, as she sliced a banana into her cereal.
The first plane is said to be a commercial airline, and the second, also thought to be a commercial jet
…. Software failure? she wondered, as she began to eat.
The indications are that one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center was in fact a hijacked plane. The American Airlines plane from Boston
 …

From Boston? she asked herself, confused. But that wasn’t Jonathan’s flight. He’d left already.

All air travel has been grounded
….

She glanced at her flight bag by the front door. She couldn’t go to L.A., and Jonathan was stuck at Logan. Ironic. Typical. She called him, but he must have turned off his phone.

Her own phone began to vibrate in her hand. That would be Jonathan. But it was not Jonathan. It was Dave.

“Emily,” he said.

No one had ever spoken her name with such sadness or such dread.

“We’re in shock,” Dave said. “I am sitting here unable to …”

Today we’ve had a national tragedy
, President Bush announced on the radio.

“Jonathan was on the first plane,” Dave said.

“What do you mean?” Emily challenged him, opening her laptop to check his itinerary. American Airlines …

“Flight Eleven,” said Dave.

She forced herself to swallow. That wasn’t really Jonathan’s flight. It couldn’t be.

American Airlines said that one of the aircraft that crashed into the Trade Center was American Airlines Flight Eleven, hijacked after takeoff from Boston en route to Los Angeles
 …

She was shaking. She was sick, vomiting cereal-banana-milk. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t listen. She felt her way into what looked like someone else’s kitchen, and she opened drawers, but she had no idea what she was looking for.

On the counter, her answering machine was pulsing, filling up with messages. Laura. Orion. Her own father.

“Emily?” Laura’s voice wavered, trailing upward, uncertain, childlike, and she seemed to be standing in a crowded room; she seemed to be speaking very quickly, asking questions.

“Are you there?” her father asked her, and his voice was furred with rust.

“Hey,” Orion began, and then he said nothing. She heard him standing there trying to think of something to say.

Shivering, she ran upstairs to her bedroom and huddled under blankets. She piled every blanket she owned onto her bed, burying herself, but she could not get warm. She closed her eyes. Sleep was the only respite from this dream.

The house was quiet when she woke. Her arms ached. Her body knew, but she lay in bed, tracing the woven leaves on her comforter, a pattern difficult to follow because the foliage was white on white. She traced each leaf and stem with her finger, and recalled the day before, the night before, the moment before she turned on the radio. She worked her way backward, from banana slicing to pouring milk, to taking out the cereal box. She was nothing if not disciplined, and she kept to her task, tracing white leaves with her finger, working her way backward through time, as though she could repair the breaking news.

She was patient, deliberate, rational. Therefore, she did not cry as she remembered her last conversation with Jonathan, when they’d fought on the phone, and he’d said, “Don’t say you miss me, when you won’t come to see me.”

“I do come. I just did!” she’d protested.

“You came in March. I’m the one dropping everything to fly out to L.A.”

“You don’t drop everything. You never drop anything,” she said. “You work me in. You schedule me in. I’m the one moving. I’m the one leaving my job to move in with
you.”

“Just don’t say you miss me,” he told her, “when you won’t change your schedule for me.”

And those had been his last words.
You won’t change your schedule for me
. Words that would have faded, once they were together. An argument painful to remember for many reasons, but primarily because she wished their quarrel had been worse, that their bickering had escalated into a full-scale conflagration and his refusal to meet her in L.A.

Oh, but he had refused, he must have. In the end he had missed the flight on purpose. She could not let go of this idea. Jonathan had not stepped aboard that plane. In fact, she was almost convinced he’d been too angry. She would delete the messages on her machine, the panicked voices. One by one, she would erase them, because they were wrong. She knew the truth. She and Jonathan had fought. He’d skipped Tech World, and he was sulking. He wasn’t speaking to her. In fact, he had turned off his phone.

This was her delicate logic. Each idea and contingency fed the next, as in a Rube Goldberg machine. A furious little red ball collided with a green ball, which flew up on a miniature trampoline to land at the top of a chute, where it began traveling down again, gathering speed to push over the first domino in a vast array. The last of these black-and-white dominos tripped a switch, which blew a fan, which extinguished a candle. In this way, Emily put the fires out, and saved Jonathan, and the world as well.

To which end she hid in bed. She did not eat or drink or speak to anyone. Far below, she thought she heard someone at the door, but she did not venture down to answer it. She kept the faith all day, pretending nothing had happened, struggling to protect herself, building new facts by which to breathe and live, but she had competition. Working overtime, her imagination took a guilty turn, and reason followed, where it was afraid to lead.

If she had not delayed the wedding, if she had hurried east the year before to marry Jonathan, then he would not have flown out to L.A. to meet her. If she had not hesitated; if she had simply married him when he’d asked, then she would not be alone. If she had loved him as she should have loved him, without trepidation, without tests, then Jonathan would be alive.

Because he was right after all, in everything he said about her. If she had really missed him, if she’d really wanted him, then she would have come to him before. She’d have shown him, instead of talking and postponing all the time. She would have been with him.

What was wrong with her? Why had she held back? She should have left Veritech long ago. It seemed a paltry sacrifice in retrospect. She might have saved him, if she had been less ambitious.

What did waiting get you in the end? There was no perfect time to marry, no ideal moment to move or leave your job. The only perfect time was now, and now was what she had denied herself. Who said that patience was a virtue? And temperance? And practicality? Who said, “Look before you leap”? With all that wisdom she had murdered Jonathan. These were her thoughts, as the banging on the door below grew louder.

I killed him, she thought, as Jess called, “Emily, let me in!”

I never really loved him, she accused herself.

I’ve never loved anybody, she thought, and she hoped that was wrong. She hoped she had loved Jonathan—loved him still!

“Emily!” Jess screamed, and the banging came from the back of the house, a thumping so loud that even in her distracted state, Emily remembered that her neighbor worked nights and slept days, and she scrambled to open the kitchen door.

“Shh! Be quiet!” Emily pleaded, barefoot, wild-haired, blinking in the late-afternoon sun, balled-up tissues in the pocket of her plaid pajamas. And then her eyes teared up, and she began to laugh and cry at the same time. For there stood Jess, with her hair pulled back, wearing the Vivienne Tam suit Emily had given her a million years ago. Tweed jacket in brown and rust, caramel silk blouse, tailored skirt, and stockings, actual stockings, and a pair of brown pumps. “You’re wearing the suit now? You’re getting dressed up
now?
Why now?”

“You know why.” Jess took her sister’s hands in hers.

“What happened to your hands?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Jess tried to hug her sister.

No, Emily thought. Don’t. She would break into pieces at the slightest touch. She would shatter.

Jess sensed this and stepped back. She stood before Emily in that beautiful suit and said, “I got dressed up so that you’d see … so you’d know I’ve come to take care of you.”