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"Jess gazed at the apples arranged in all their colors: russet, blushing pink, freckled gold. She cast her eyes over heaps of pumpkins, bins of tomatoes cut from the vine, pale gooseberries with crumpled leaves. "You could buy a farm." "Why would I do that?" "To be healthy," said Jess. Emily shook her head. "I don't think I'd be a very good farmer." "You could have other people farm your farm for you," said Jess. "And you could just eat all the good things." Emily laughed. "That's what we're doing here at the Farmers' Market. We're paying farmers to farm for us. You've just invented agriculture." "Yes, but you could have your own farm and go out there and breathe the fresh air and touch the fresh earth." "I think that's called a vacation," said Emily. "Oh, you're too boring to be rich," Jess said. "And I would be so talented!" --
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farmers-market
emily-and-jess
produce
haha
colors
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Allegra Goodman |
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"You're a throwback." "To what?" Jess considered this. Hi-tech at work, Emily was paradoxically old-fashioned in her life. She didn't even own a television. "The nineteenth century," Jess concluded. "No. Eighteenth. You can be eighteenth. I'll be nineteenth." "I never pictured you as a Victorian." "No, early nineteenth century," said Jess, who had always been a stickler when it came to imaginary games and books. The Blue Fairy, not Tinker Bell. Lucy, not Susan. Jo, not Amy. Austen, not the Brontes."
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what-are-you
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centurion
sisters
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Allegra Goodman |
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The sisters' voices were almost identical, laughing mezzos tuned in childhood to the same pitch and timbre. To the ear, they were twins; to the eye, nothing alike. Emily was tall and slender with her hair cropped short. She wore a pinstriped suit, elegant slacks, tiny, expensive glasses. She was an MBA, not a programmer, and it showed. Magnified by her glasses, her hazel eyes were clever, guarded, and also extremely beautiful. Her features were delicate, her fingers long and tapered. She scarcely allowed her back to touch her chair, while Jess curled up with her legs tucked under her. Jess was small and whimsical. Her face and mouth were wider than Emily's, her cheeks rounder, her eyes greener and more generous. She had more of the sun and sea in her, more freckles, more gold in her brown hair. She would smile at anyone, and laugh and joke and sing. She wore jeans and sweaters from Mars Mercantile, and her hair... who knew when she'd cut it last?
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emily-and-jess
jess-bach
emily-bach
sisters
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Allegra Goodman |
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a4ec64e
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"Richard had sold Gillian's piano. He'd offered to ship it out to California, but neither Jess nor Emily played. Emily had quit her lessons at "Streets of Laredo" and Jess only got as far as "The Teddy Bears' Picnic." They had Gillian's jewelry, but she hadn't collected much. She had never liked necklaces or earrings. In fact, she'd never pierced her ears. She'd preferred a rosebush or two for her birthday, or a standing mixer. "This is very sticky dough," she would tell Emily as she rolled it out. "It's very difficult to work with this dough, because it's so short. You see?" She dusted the rolling pin and board with more flour and rolled briskly, as if to tame the stiff pastry, which she then cut into circles with an overturned teacup, or filled with honeyed poppy seeds, or spread into a glass pan to bake a cake with luscious prunes, their sweetness undercut with lemon. Nothing too sweet. That was the secret. Gillian said as much to Emily in her "Sixteenth Birthday" letter. 'Don't doctor recipes. More is less, and sugar will only get you so far."
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emily-and-jess
pastries
gillian-bach
emily-bach
dough
piano
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Allegra Goodman |