Backstage with Julia (26 page)

We watched people come and go through the lobby, scanning faces for anyone who looked as though they might be someone named Faith Willinger, although neither one of us had a clue what that look was. Then a woman strolled into the lobby, looked at Julia, smiled, and gave a little wave. Julia smiled back and signaled to her to come join us. She selected the chair next to mine, across the coffee table from Julia. We exchanged simple pleasantries, and then for several moments the situation was awkward. Uncharacteristic of ingénue food professionals, Faith wasn't offering much information on exactly what she did, and Julia didn't really remember enough about her to pose pertinent questions. Not a problem. Years as a wife in the diplomatic corps had trained Julia well to handle the most uncomfortable of social situations.

"Now, tell Nancy all about yourself. She is a fine Italian cook and would love to hear about what you do," she said with genuine enthusiasm.

The woman turned her attention to me but didn't seem to know where to begin, so, taking a clue from Julia, I helped her out.

"I understand you are very involved with food." It seemed a wide-open area for her to run with.

"Well, I don't do much cooking, but my roommate does. She loves to cook." To say the least, her answer surprised me, but if I looked perplexed, it wasn't only because of her response. I realized that I recognized this woman but couldn't quite place her. I could even picture her in a different dress, with a big smile and dangling earrings. And then it came to me. Her face was on the small cardboard billboard sitting on an easel in the lobby. She was the piano bar entertainer. Julia and I had read about her the day we arrived. Obviously she'd been walking by us on her way to perform, recognized Julia, and, as fans all over the world did, smiled and waved. I hated that she might think Julia had invited her over only because we thought she was someone else, so I quickly devised a ploy to ease us all out of an embarrassing situation.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I didn't get your name." I hoped that Julia would hear that her name was not Faith Willinger, make the connection with the billboard, and then diplomatically switch topics from food to song.

Julia did hear her reply and immediately boomed, "Well, you're not who you're supposed to be at all!" So much for diplomacy. But after explaining the mix-up, Julia moved right into asking her all about herself—what had brought her from America to Italy, what she sang—which made the performer feel quite comfortable, especially, I suppose, since she didn't have to talk about food. The real Faith showed up soon after, and I don't remember if we told Faith what had preceded her arrival, but I do remember making a mental note that directness has a place in diplomacy.

Our first shoot in Florence was the one Julia most anticipated—
bistecca alla fiorentina.
The amount of setup was insignificant, so we descended as a group on the restaurant in the center of Florence. The restaurant was known not just for the essential authenticity of the Chianina beef but also for cooking the meat in large, wood-fired brick ovens. With the cameras rolling, the chef salted the huge steak, drizzled it with olive oil, and transferred it to a footed Tuscan grill that sat over hot coals. In less time than we could say "
Mamma mia,
that's a steak," he turned it over, cooked it briefly on the other side, and transferred it to a plate. The steak was so large that it hung over the sides. Julia was already seated at a table, and as soon as the director said, "Action," she picked up her fork and knife and cut into the beef. Other than the thin seared layer on the outside, the meat was blood-red, practically raw. Julia looked at it for a minute before saying anything, and I thought she might be questioning her carnivore loyalties. But hers had been a pause of appreciation. "Now that's a steak!" she said enthusiastically. Had it not been so early in the morning, I think she might have come close to eating the whole thing.

The next day our car and van drove through the winding hills of Chianti to Badia a Coltibuono, and we saw for ourselves that it was the idyllic place promised by the brochures. Julia met Lorenza de' Medici, and the mutual admiration and affection were immediate. Lorenza has a gentle, captivating graciousness as well as an astute sense of business. Those qualities did not go unnoticed by Julia, who within a short time was encouraging Lorenza to join the International Association of Cooking Schools so she could "get known." Lorenza did join and rallied other Italian culinary professionals to do the same; each year at meetings, Julia would ask me if our "Italian ladies" had arrived yet.

On camera, Julia and Lorenza displayed the easy, friendly demeanor of two friends cooking their way through traditional Tuscan recipes—a pork roast laced with rosemary and garlic, and white beans cooked with tomatoes and sage. For the closing shot, the two new friends sat outside at a simple round country table set on a stepped terrace and prepared to toast the audience
arrivederci
with the house-label
Vin Santo
. You know those movie outtakes in which the actors just cannot stop laughing? That's what that parting shot became. Julia could not remember the name of where she was. She'd begin, "This is Julia Child with Lorenza de' Medici, wishing you bon appétit from . . . Bad . . ." Then she'd stop and ask Lorenza to say the name again for her. After three or four takes, both she and Lorenza would break into giggles as Julia tried to get the three words together in a row. When it became clear that Julia was not going to be able to say the name, Sonya suggested a new ending. Julia said, "This is Julia Child with Lorenza de' Medici, wishing you bon appétit," and then Lorenza added, "From Badia a Coltibuono."

The next day's talent was Giuliano Bugialli, who was supposed to give Julia a lesson in how to make two traditional Tuscan recipes that used leftover bread: a salad,
panzanella,
and tomato bread soup,
pappa al pomodoro.
Instead we were about to get a lesson in the Italian casual attitude about time.
Domani
is a favorite word of Italians, and it does not necessarily mean exactly "tomorrow." A better translation is "when I get around to it." Sonya called Giuliano early in the morning to confirm that day's shoot and discovered that the day was not convenient for him after all. "Perhaps tomorrow," he said. His excuses were legitimate; he kept and continues to keep a demanding schedule, but it put Sonya in an impossible scheduling dilemma, and she was upset when she reported the news to Julia and the waiting crew.

"Get him on the phone for me," Julia said with such authority that we all sat up at attention. Julia informed Giuliano that we would be at his school that afternoon exactly at the appointed time to shoot the spot as planned, and then, without waiting for his reply, she hung up the phone. We were, he did, and we left for Ravenna and eels.

The eels excited Julia more than they did me, but then she was the one who would have to hold up a live slithering beast, so I didn't mention my distaste for them. Christmas Eve dinners at my Italian grandmother's had fostered a dislike of the fish I could only think of as snake, but I had not yet sampled the delicate creatures of the Adriatic Sea, which were nothing like the ones I remembered. Besides, after Julia told me the fascinating story about eels, I thought they deserved to be on camera.

All the female eels in Europe and America, after lolling about for seven years in fresh water, swim downstream in search of their mates, express their affection, and then travel thousands of miles to the salty waters of the Sargasso Sea, between Bermuda and Puerto Rico, to deposit their eggs; then, for all their labors, they die. The wee hatchlings then make the long journey back to their familial waters and continue the cycle.

Sitting in front of Dante's tomb, Julia held a bottle of white wine in one hand and in the other, high above her head, a vigorously squiggling eel. After telling viewers that Dante wrote about the benefits of drinking wine flavored with eel, she dropped her eel into the wine bottle. Then she suggested that viewers try it and let her know how it tasted.

Our splendid week was over, and the next day Julia and I left Italy. It was late when we returned to Boston, and I spent the night at her house.

"Buona notte,"
she said, giving me a hug as we stood in the upstairs hall between our rooms. "It was a good trip."

"It certainly was," I agreed, and then a childhood memory of my own came out of nowhere into my head.
"Sogni d'oro,"
I said.

"What does that mean?" Julia asked.

"Golden dreams. It's how my grandmother always said goodnight to us."

"Sogni d'oro,"
she said smiling. And forever after, that was how Julia and I said goodnight to each other.

Chapter 8

Life is just one damn thing after another.

—Elbert Hubbard, writer and publisher

Julia was never one to sigh, but on the few occasions she did, the sigh usually came before or after her saying,
"Immer etwas."

"What does that mean?" I asked the first time I heard her say it.

"It's always something," Julia translated. It was a phrase she'd learned in Germany in the mid-1950s, when the State Department transferred Paul there from France. Julia wasn't thrilled about the move, but she was quite fond of the expression and the huge German-made potato ricer she bought. It was a solid, well-made instrument that Julia used with enthusiasm. "You see, the potato goes in and you go
schoooom
and out she comes!"

Her KitchenAid K5A stand mixer eventually replaced the ricer, but "
immer etwas
" stuck, and from 1985 to 1991 Julia had several occasions to use it. So did I.

Julia's primary concern was Paul. His mental health was declining, and he grew more and more confused about where he was and what was happening around him. Through all the years since his heart attack and strokes, Julia dealt with his condition as a minor alteration in the way they went about their lives. She took more charge of their activities and daily routines, but her work and Paul's participation in it never came to a halt. He traveled with her, attended every conference, and joined her for dinners, whether they were social or work-related. The only times I remember him not being with us were the days or nights that Julia and I took Boston-area cooking classes. He stayed at home, alone, for those few hours, writing the letters he loved to write or reading. Then, several months before our trip to Italy, Paul took his regular morning walk to the corner of the street for a newspaper. Within minutes, he returned and said that he couldn't remember where he was going. Julia was visibly shaken. She realized that it was no longer safe to leave Paul by himself. Her decision not to have Paul travel with us in Italy was based on her fear that he would become disoriented, since the long on-camera hours would keep her from his side. Feeling that he would benefit from less household confusion around him, she asked
Parade
to move the shoots from her house to Jim Sherer's photographic studios, and gave Rosie and me more control over the sessions. Then in 1986 she resigned from
Parade
altogether. Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, authors of
The Silver Palate Cookbook
and subsequently
The New Basics Cookbook,
took over her position. Through it all, Julia demonstrated a remarkable ability to balance the two most important aspects of her life—her work and her love for her husband.

Paul's health was not the only
"immer etwas"
on the table. Julia learned that the illness plaguing her lawyer, Bob Johnson, was AIDS. He had been in and out of the hospital with what he said was a strange disease he'd contracted during a Caribbean vacation. Then his behavior became erratic, and Sonya said he often called her late at night in a frenzied state—about what, she couldn't quite determine. But no one suspected AIDS, least of all Julia. It was too new a disease to be the first thing to come to mind when someone exhibited what are now recognized as characteristic symptoms. Besides, Julia never knew Bob was gay, so she probably wouldn't have made a connection between his symptoms and what was at the time considered a gay disease.

Julia was both stunned and greatly saddened by the news. Bob was not only her lawyer, he was her friend. As her lawyer of almost twenty years, he was a tough negotiator on her behalf, making demands that Julia herself never would have. He saw ways in which Julia could increase her visibility as well as her income, and he made them happen. Bob was aggressive with Julia's career and she liked that about him, though not everyone else around her did.

I didn't know Bob all that well, but when Julia told me, I was sad for him, sad for her, and sad to know how close to home that insidious disease could strike. I thought of a conversation Julia, Paul, Philip, and I had in Verona during our 1984 trip to Italy, when the awareness of AIDS first crept up in the United States.

Julia was close to what I would call obsessed over what we didn't know about this threat to our health. "What if the chef in the kitchen has AIDS and sneezes into our food?" was the type of question she continually asked. Although at that time little was known by anyone about how AIDS was transmitted, as a member of the medical community, Philip knew enough to tell her that a sneeze was not going to do it. But, as she did with all that was newsworthy, Julia read all the information that was available, and she determined that there were no definitive scientific facts about what caused AIDS, so she continued to speculate on the possibilities of transmission.