Backstage with Julia

by Nancy Verde Barr

  "A very moderate Republican and a remarkable man. The best Rhode Island has ever had to offer." I went on to extol Chafee's many "Democratic" points of view, but Julia would have none of it. She was what my parents' generation called "a yellow-dog Democrat," that is, someone so staunchly loyal to the party that a vote for a yellow dog on the Democratic ticket was preferable to a vote outside party lines. Our friend Sally Jackson defended my position by declaring that I had a liberal heart in spite of my party registration. Nonetheless, for years Julia never missed an opportunity, when politics was the subject, to announce to a tableful of people, "Nancy's a Republican," always with a teasing glance in my direction.

  Conversation was no less stimulating when there were just the three of us at dinner, although I have to admit that I often brought our talk around to the subject of espionage. I was relentless in questioning Paul about his experiences with the OSS during World War II. Julia already knew that I was certain that she had been a spy, or maybe I just wanted her to have been. I was even more suspicious of Paul. After all, he held a black belt in jujitsu, spoke French like a Frenchman, and could ski down the steepest mountains on barrel slats. How much more James Bond can you be? He'd worked in the secret, strategic map room of the OSS, and when the war ended, the French awarded him the Legion of Honor, the highest civilian medal, for his wartime efforts. When I begged Paul to tell me if he had been a spy, he always denied it, but I watched for signs of dissimulation, such as furtive eye movements and shifts in body position. All to no avail, so I worked on Julia. "Was Paul a spy?"

  "No. He drew maps," she'd say.

  That sounded like hedging to me. "But they were strategic maps. And that sounds like a great cover for a spy."

  "Well, if he was, I didn't know about it," she'd respond to my litany of reasons why he just had to be.

  It was during the company dinners that Julia and I met many of each other's friends and families. She invited hers and told me to include mine. Julia's good friends and neighbors, Pat and Herb Pratt, were regulars at those dinners. The Childs and the Pratts were good friends and had connections to each other that predated their friendship. Herb's twin brother had been a student of Paul's at Avon Old Farms School, and Pat had graduated from Smith College seventeen years after Julia. But even without those connections, I'm sure they would have been friends. Pat could have been Julia's sister, raised in the same family. She has that same down-to-earth, unguarded way of greeting life, the same intense interest in people and things around her, the same sense of fun and whimsy that Julia had.

  A landscape designer by profession, Pat was also a cooking assistant and recipe tester for Julia's PBS television series, for Parade issues, and for several of her cookbooks. Wearing her landscaping hat, Pat designed the enchanting garden that surrounded Julia's house. The yard was not large, but it seemed so by the way Pat created spaces and movement with her plantings. When Julia complained that she couldn't enjoy sitting out in her lovely new backyard because the yellow jackets were so bothersome, Pat designed a screen-wrapped, wrought-iron gazebo that sported two whimsical wire sculptures of oversized, nervy yellow jackets on top. Julia and Pat called it "the folly," and sixteen or more of us could sit comfortably at tables for an al fresco meal. Appropriately, Pat often showed up at dinner with a newly discovered variety of vegetable for us to cook.

  Paul and Julia had no children of their own, but they both had siblings and an army of nieces, nephews, grandnieces, and grandnephews between them. I met many of them around Julia's table. It took me a while to learn which hailed from the Child side of the family and which from the McWilliams side; they all seemed like one big clan. Whenever a niece or nephew arrived with a new offspring, Julia referred to the offspring as "our baby."

  I met Charlie Child, Paul's identical twin brother, in Julia's kitchen one morning at breakfast. I was alone in the kitchen making coffee. He looked and sounded so much like Paul that at first I thought it was. We introduced ourselves, I poured coffee into our breakfast bowls, and we sat down at the table and talked. He was a delightful man. Strong, confident, and self-reliant, Charlie was in his late seventies at the time and on his way to the Maine cabin that he and Paul had built years before with their own hands. There was no heat or running water in the cabin, so he would be up there chopping wood and hauling water all alone. Not only did I like him immensely, I was extremely impressed. Were there no slackers in that family? A biography of Julia says that Paul nicknamed me "Sparkle Plenty," but it was actually Charlie. Paul and Julia thought it fit, so they began to use it.

  I shared meals at that kitchen table with Julia's sister, Dorothy (or Dort the Wort when she was a kid), but I met her first in New York, and I am unlikely ever to forget that meeting. It was about a year after I began working with Julia, and Dort, who lived in California, was visiting the city when we were there for GMA. We were staying at the Dorset Hotel, and Julia arranged for us to meet her sister for drinks in the hotel bar, then go out to dinner afterward. "We'll meet Dort at the entrance to the bar at seven," she told me as I left the elevator to go to my room.

  I entered the lobby a few minutes before seven and stretched up so I could see over the heads of the convention-size crowd that was milling about between the bar and me. I saw someone I thought was Julia at the entrance to the bar and began to weave my way through the crowd. Several feet into the crowd, I heard an unmistakable boop-boop coming from near the elevators. I turned around and saw the real Julia several people behind me. She had her arm raised well above her head and her hand was making a castanet-like motion as she continued to boop-boop.

  I looked back toward the bar just in time to hear counterfeit Julia return the boop-boop in the exact same voice. Her arm was raised and her hand was playing the same imaginary castanets. The lobby crowd was as amused as I was, their heads turning back and forth to follow the sound, and probably wondering along with me if we were seeing double. Julia and Dort seemed to be the only two in the room who were oblivious to the attention their boop-booping generated.

  Dorothy is slightly taller than Julia was, but if you didn't see them standing together it was easy to mistake one for the other. Some years later when Julia, Dort, and I were traveling in California, we were waiting in line outside a popular breakfast spot when Dort and I decided to go inside to the ladies' room. Two or three customers greeted her and said, "I love your shows," "Love your books," Keep cooking." Dort smiled and thanked them in that same Julia warble.

  Julia and Paul also came to dinner at our house, and although I don't recall what I cooked, I know I was long past thinking I had to cut paper booties for a rack of lamb in order to impress anyone. Something else, however, did concern me. The Childs were going to spend the night, since the next day they were driving to Connecticut and Providence was halfway to their destination. It was a sensible plan. I knew how Julia felt about sharing a bathroom, and although our master bedroom had its own, the guest room shared the one across the hall with the boys. Our house had been built before indoor plumbing even existed, and the bathroom had been converted from a former small bedroom, so it was a large room with two doors a distance from each other. Neither door had a lock, purposely. When I was about ten, I watched in fright as a firefighter mounted a two-story ladder next door to rescue a shrieking three-year-old girl who had locked herself in the bathroom and couldn't unlock her way out. I recalled the drama of that event when my sons were born, so no locks.

  As I prepared for my guests, I thought about the likelihood of Brad chasing Andrew through one bathroom door and out the next—a rather common occurrence, but not one either Paul or Julia would expect. Philip and I decided to give them our room.

  "I don't want to put you out," Julia said with obvious sincerity.

  I explained about the unlocked bathroom, and she immediately responded, "Thank you. We'll sleep in your bedroom."

  I do remember what I cooked when Paul and Julia first visited us at our summer home in 1984—lobster, local sweet corn, and local
tomatoes. Sakonnet summers don't get any better than that. It was the perfect meal, but more than the food, I remember Julia's fascination with Philip's new toy. When she arrived, she was captivated by the sight of Brad and Andrew tooling around the grounds on a four-wheel, all-terrain vehicle—an ATV. She had never seen one in action and wanted a ride. Since Andrew was prone to frequent unscheduled wheelies and Brad was intent on testing the limits of what "all-terrain" meant, we decided it would be better if Philip gave her the ride.

  "Be careful," I called after Philip as he took off with Julia's arms wrapped tightly around him. "That's precious cargo riding with you."

  Brad and Andrew hoping for takers on their ATV demolition ride.

  "Go faster," the seventy-two-year-old precious cargo instructed.

  Who knows at what precise moment in those first few years Julia and I went from being colleagues to friends? I don't, and I doubt that she did. But I loved that she was my friend. Prone to foolishness, craving a laugh and a good time, she was a hoot. Forget her age; Julia Child never parted company with the spunky, outrageous Julia McWilliams who'd led her siblings and childhood friends through one mischievous neighborhood caper after another. She was always the slightly naughty Julia who'd piled her college friends into a 1929 Ford convertible and hauled them off to a nearby speakeasy; the adventurous Julia who, in the midst of World War II, joined the Office of Strategic Services and fearlessly ventured to far-off Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) aboard a ship with a handful of women and three thousand men; the same Julia who relished a hot dog with everything at ten in the morning.

  Julia never could seem to remember the name ATV, so forever after she referred to it as "that motor machine."

  Undoubtedly, Julia was her most delightful when she was with a group of female friends, especially at culinary conferences. She reminded me of being at girls' camp or in college, when we played foolish pranks on each other, tried to sneak in after curfew, and rummaged through our roommates' closets for something to borrow. Julia and I couldn't exactly share clothes, given the difference in our sizes, but if I arrived unprepared for a turn in the weather, she'd dig up one of her cardigan sweaters for me and insist that the below-the-knee look was in. We shared scarves, and she was forever loaning me a dressy bag since I never seemed to remember to pack one. And notions, always notions, as well as cosmetics with the exception of mascara and nail polish. "I have the kind of eyes that can't wear it," she said when I asked to borrow mascara. As for the nail polish, I wore bright red and she always wore a pale fleshy pink color. "You don't notice it so much if it chips," she noted practically, and since I was always trying to cover unsightly nicks in mine, I acknowledged that she had a point.

  Julia was so well prepared for everything that she always had the exact item that someone else needed and was so organized that she could always find it. However, we all drew the line at borrowing one of her rain hats. Julia's purse always held a few of those useful but dreadfully unattractive accordion-pleated plastic rain bonnets, "just in case." When "just in case" began to drizzle down, she'd put hers on, and when we all declined her offer, she'd tell us, "You'll be sorry." You have to be tremendously self-assured to wear one of those pleated shower caps in public.

  Andrew was so impressed with Julia's ATV skills that he thought nothing of later suggesting parasailing to her.

  A characteristic description of a culinary conference could well be "a series of mad dashes from one event to another." Evening affairs were the most hectic, since they usually involved a change of clothes and some makeup repair. One conference night, Gourmet magazine's food editor, Zanne Stewart, Julia, Susy Davidson, and I were scrambling to catch the last shuttle bus to an evening event. Harried and disheveled, we scampered onto the bus and took stock of our conditions.

  "Does anyone have a comb or brush?" I asked.

  "I do," said Julia, reaching into her purse and coming up with a slim plastic thingamajig that looked like a large key holder.

  "What's this?" I asked.

  "Unfold it," she said, obviously amused. And sure enough, when I bent it back on itself, plastic bristles popped out. I had never seen one before, and I'm not sure which one of us was more delighted—me at the discovery or Julia at having surprised me so.

  Meanwhile, Susy was rummaging in vain through her purse. "I need lipstick," she said.

  "Wait, I have some," Julia said as she reached back into her purse and produced a utilitarian-looking black plastic tube that was obviously not from her favorite Elizabeth Arden counter. Susy twisted the tube and up twirled a stick of brilliant apple-green lipstick.

  "Excuse me?" Susy exclaimed, and Zanne and I looked at the green stick and immediately checked out Julia's lips. Had we missed green lips in our frenzied run for the bus? No. Her lips were a very pretty shade of pink and they were smiling impishly.

  "Try it," she said. "It changes from green to pink when you put it on. It has something to do with your body chemistry."

  None of us had seen or heard of green lipstick that turns to pink, so we all put it on, unaware of exactly how much chemistry had to do with the color. Instead of Julia's pretty pink, Susy's were a horrifying bright blue-pink; Zanne's and mine were a hideous orange that Zanne forever after referred to as "pumpkin lips." Nevertheless, we all got tubes of Magic Lips for Christmas. I also got a collapsible plastic hairbrush.

  Sustaining the flexibility and spontaneity that made her so open to fun and adventure as a kid, she was, as an adult, always game for a party, a late-night dinner, or a spur-of-the-moment adventure. Mention zipping down to New York for someone's birthday, crashing a party in Santa Barbara, or even taking an excursion to Timbuktu by camel train, and her response would be, "Why not?"

  In 1983, Philip and I had plans to visit Venice with our friends Dagmar de Pins and Walter Sullivan and Nan McEvoy, whom we'd met in Bologna during Marcella's classes. The Sullivans were bringing a good friend of theirs, Ron Schwartz from San Francisco. When I told Julia about our trip, she said, "That sounds like great fun."

  "Why don't you come with us?" I said.

  "Why not?" she said, immediately.

  Me with Zanne Stewart showing off our pumpkin lips.

  Nan McEvoy, me, and Dagmar de Pins Sullivan in Bologna taking notes at Marcella's classes.

  You can't always be certain that your friends are going to like your other friends, but I had a good feeling about Julia liking these friends and vice versa. Dagmar, Nan, and I had bonded from day one of cooking school. Philip and Walter, who, sadly has since passed away, were in Bologna as non-cooking participants, so as we three women—or, as Walter called us, "the three tamales"—learned to pound veal, hand-roll pasta, and palm little balls of bread dough into pencil-thin grissini, Walter and Philip hung out in Bologna and did their bonding in local restaurants.

  Dagmar de Pins Sullivan is the ultimate food fanatic. In class and in restaurants, she wrote down every detail of what she ate. She purchased untold numbers of cookbooks written in English, Italian, and French. She was raised in France and still divided her time between there and California, so she was able to read the French and English books. Her Italian was limited, but she was a good guesser and an excellent cook, so she could assume her way through the Italian ones. She grew up surrounded by good food and wine; her grandfather was Georges de Latour, founder of Napa Valley's Beaulieu Vineyards. Her French-born parents, the Marquis and Marquise de Pins, insisted upon eating well.

  Nan, whose grandfather Michael de Young founded the San Francisco Chronicle in 1865—the original parent company of Chronicle Books, now owned by her son Nion—claimed to be only "somewhat interested" in food and cooking. So years later, she surprised us all by starting a Tuscan-style olive grove in California and producing McEvoy Ranch oil. As Nan tells the story, she didn't intend to do it. She was merely looking for a "wonderful place in the country" where she could have her grandchildren visit and experience the great outdoors. After she fell in love with a 550-acre former dairy ranch in Petaluma, sh
e learned that it was strictly zoned for agriculture, which meant she couldn't build so much as a tool shed without an agricultural purpose. So she went to Tuscany, bought a hundred tiny olive sprigs, and hired an Italian expert in olive oil production. The local agriculturists said it couldn't be done. In fact, Julia and I visited Nan shortly after the trees arrived and we weren't so sure it could be done. Today there are eighteen thousand trees in the grove and a very fine product on the market. Nan, much like Julia, is one of those people for whom the words "You can't do that" are fuel for determination and not water on the fire.

  It was more than a mutual passion for food that made me think that Julia would like Nan, Dagmar, and Walter. They all shared deep California roots—roots that foster a can-do spirit common in many people who trace their heritage to a pioneering spirit. Throughout the trip, whenever a change of plans or spontaneous suggestion came up, it was impossible to tell whether it was Nan, the Sullivans, or Julia who first said, "Why not?"

  Walter, who had a way of making such things happen, arranged for us to have balconied rooms at the posh Hotel Danieli directly on the Venice lagoon. Philip and I stayed in a room next to Paul and Julia's, and on our first evening, before we left to go out for dinner, Philip and Julia stood side by side on adjoining balconies to absorb the glorious sites of Venice. It was dusk, and they were standing there just as the multitude of glittering lights came awake along the length of the canal.

  "Isn't that magical," Philip said to Julia. "We're so lucky to be here."

  "It has nothing to do with luck," she responded. "We work very hard and we've earned this."

  As I suspected, the Sullivans, their friend Ron, Nan, and the Childs took to each other like pasta and ragù. One night at dinner, the subject of "crunchily undercooked vegetables," as Julia called them, came up. Italians cook their vegetables until they are cooked—completely, through to the center. American chefs, on the other hand, were in the throes of the notion that a quick dip in boiling water or a flash in a hot sauté pan was sufficient cooking. The color stayed bright, but the vegetables were crunchy. "I like my vegetables raw or cooked," Julia said, "but that in-between ridiculousness is inedible. I won't eat them." Dagmar was just as disdainful as Julia was about improperly cooked food, and our discussion of certain chefs' lack of classic technique inspired Dagmar to give a most amusing example. Many years earlier, her father had ordered dinner in the elegant dining room of San Francisco's Huntington Hotel. He chose lamb, and the waiter asked him how he would like it cooked.