Backstage with Julia (33 page)

Julia was unstoppable in her determination to binge on life. After receptions, parties, and "sick visits" in London, and lectures and more parties in Oxford, we arrived in Sicily for more parties, trips around the island in an old wooden boat, and lessons in Italian sign language.

For Julia, binging on life required a healthy appetite of curiosity, and she was, as she said she had been as a kid, always hungry. What made her curiosity so richly rewarding was that she noticed what went on around her, which gave her an extraordinary number of things to examine. People, things, and activities that might pass unnoticed to others caught her attention. On a trip to Napa Valley, John, Julia, my latest boyfriend and I stood in the parking lot after a tour of the Napa Valley Wine Train wondering where to go next. A truck pulled up near us, the driver went inside one of the buildings, and Julia noticed that the vehicle was shaking slightly. She asked me what I thought might be causing it. I had no idea. In truth, I had paid no attention at all to the truck. Julia was curious, so she walked up to the back and peeked in. To her delight, she found a cargo of lambs. When the driver returned, she engaged him in conversation and not only learned about the methods of raising of lambs in California but also found, upon her return to Cambridge, a neatly trimmed leg of lamb waiting in the freezer for her. Julia didn't stop there. She was curious about the effects of agriculture and climate on the flavor and texture of lamb, and before long, we were oven-deep in an exhaustive tasting of lamb from different parts of the country. And all because she noticed a truck shaking!

As always, her curiosity extended far beyond the culinary. In 1993, Susy Davidson arranged for us all, including Julia's niece Phila and her family, to spend the week following the Aspen Classic at a ranch tucked away in the middle of nowhere in southern Colorado. The ranch offered lessons in fly-fishing, which appealed to Julia since she was a passionate aficionado, and horseback riding in the high aspens, which Susy, Phila, and I planned to do. Brochures showed western-style bunkhouses lined up outside a main dining room watched over by several stuffed animal heads, and we all agreed that it was the perfect spot to relax and pursue pleasures not necessarily food-related. John was at that time having respiratory problems, and there was some discussion as to whether the trip would be safe for him. Trouper that he was, he asked the doctor for an oxygen tank and joined us.

It was a long, eight-hour-plus drive from Aspen to the ranch, and we decided to make a stop in Denver at the Tattered Cover Bookstore and buy a book on tape for the trip. We wanted something suspenseful and mysterious, and Julia and I stood looking at the possibilities. I spotted Anne Rice's name on a box of tapes entitled
Exit to Eden
and I picked it up.

"I just read her
Interview with the Vampire
and I really couldn't put it down."

"I've wanted to read her vampire story, but since you already have, let's get this," she said, taking the box to the register without examining it.

We climbed back in the car with me in the driver's seat, Julia riding shotgun, and John and Susy in back, with Susy diagonally behind me so I could see her gestured directions to turn left or right. We didn't want unnecessary talking to interrupt the storytelling.

I must have been concentrating especially hard on negotiating the streets out of Denver because I don't remember hearing the beginning of the tape. My first clue that it was not about anything as pedestrian as vampires was when I looked in the mirror at Susy for instructions on which way to turn. Her eyebrows were arched high in her forehead and she darted her startled eyes from me to the tape. I tuned in just in time to hear something about black leather and chains.

"What's this?" I asked, fumbling for and then ejecting the tape. "There must be a mistake. Do the tapes all say Anne Rice?"

It turns out that Rice writes explicitly erotic and wickedly pornographic stories that in book form appear under a pseudonym. On tape, they carry her name. At the time, we only knew we had something that seemed highly inappropriate to everyone but Julia.

"Well, let's listen to it anyway," she said, pushing the tape back into play position. Susy looked aghast, and I'm sure I heard John pulling extra hard on his oxygen tank. Meanwhile on the CD, two characters named Lisa and Elliot were pushing the envelope on the limits of pleasure at the Club, an exclusive, hidden resort devoted to the fulfillment of forbidden fantasies.

"What's he doing to her?" Julia asked. Was that John gasping? Susy was giggling.

"Look, Julia, we—we can listen to it, but I'm not explaining it to you." It wasn't so much that I was embarrassed; I wasn't exactly sure what kind of forbidden fantasies Lisa and Elliot were engaged in, and I wasn't sure John ever wanted to know. But Julia wanted to figure it out, so Susy and I did our best to offer commentary. John rolled down his window.

Julia's desire to go at the pace she did when she was eighty was inspirational. She could do it, because overall she was blessed with remarkably good health and a stalwart constitution. "Sleep well?" I'd ask her mornings when we were together. "Always do," she'd say with a complacent lilt in her voice. And she always did, just as she always ate well, without a tinge of indigestion. Surgery, medicine, and sitting more all helped with her knee problems, and the rare times when something else did lay her low, her seeming supernatural recuperative powers put her back on her feet in no time. Her physical and mental resilience was remarkable.

"I think you must have some special chromosome makeup," I once suggested to her.

"Red meat and gin," she said, but I think it was DNA and mind-set. Whether it was the common cold or hip surgery, she was usually out the door for lunch long before the florist could rush the inevitable vanful of get-well bouquets to her bedside.

I used to love to look through Paul Child's photos, which occupied several storage areas of their house. Paul was a fine photographer and a gifted artist. His paintings, photographs, and several pieces of intricately carved wood furniture filled the house. Julia was justly proud of his work and was always pleased to show it to me. We were looking through photographs and I saw some from their wedding. I commented on how pretty she looked wearing a short-sleeved, two-piece, dotted dress that accented her slim figure and long legs. Yet I couldn't help but notice the large bandage on her head.

"Pimple?" I snickered.

"Head injury," she responded.

"Excuse me?"

"Paul and I were in an accident the day before our wedding. I hit the windshield, was thrown out of the car and knocked unconscious, and my shoes came off. We both had several lacerations, and Paul liked to joke that we were married in stitches."

I got my mouth to close just enough to ask, "And you got married anyway?"

"Why not?"

I didn't know why not other than that a person with a normal chromosome makeup would probably need more than a day to recover from an accident that knocked her out and required suturing.

More than once Julia's cavalier attitude about her health caused me alarm. On our Sicilian trip, we checked into a hotel in Taormina, went to our separate rooms, and agreed to "knock each other up" for dinner in an hour or so. At the appointed time, I knocked on her door, she opened it, and I was alarmed to see an egg-sized lump on her forehead.

"Lord, Julia! What happened?"

She gingerly touched the lump and said, "Oh, this. I tripped and fell down those foolish stairs." Her room had a small foyer and then two steps that led down into the bedroom. "The fall knocked me out, for I don't know how long. Then I took a short nap."