Backstage with Julia

by Nancy Verde Barr

  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.

  When she received the devastating news about Bob, he was in the hospital with no hope of recovering. Knowing her paranoia about contracting the illness, I was surprised when she told me she'd visited him.

  "How is he?" I asked.

  "He's not going to make it."

  I couldn't help wondering how she'd dealt with the visit. "Did you go into the room?" I asked.

  "Oh, yes. I gave him a hug and told him how sad I was."

  Bob died in September 1986, and I still think about Julia's courage in walking into that room without knowing for sure whether she was putting herself in danger. Paul had said that he loved that his wife had guts, and she did. She cared about Bob, and she was willing and able to table her own fears to show him that she did. Julia verbally expressed her feelings for Bob by dedicating The Way to Cook to him: "To the memory of Robert H. Johnson, dear friend and mentor who brought so much of this to pass."

  In 1987 and 1988, Julia spent more time in Santa Barbara, where she and Paul could take long walks together on the beach and she could keep closer watch over him in the smaller home. "He's like a clock, slowly winding down," she told me, and when Philip, the boys, and I visited with her in 1987, I saw that indeed he was. He was quieter than usual. He constantly fell asleep during meals, and simple tasks confused him. Probably most difficult for Julia was Paul's need to have her always with him. She had obligations to fulfill and a book to write. When she traveled to conferences, gave demonstrations, or made appearances at signings and interviews, she brought a friend or member of the family with her so that Paul would not be alone.

  I don't suppose there is any convenient time for surgery, but if there were, that time in Julia's life would not qualify. Convenient or not, one of Julia's knees simply gave out. The many years of "standing behind a stove," as she put it, took its toll on what was already in tough shape from the basketball and skiing injury. Medication could no longer relieve her pain, and she underwent a total knee replacement. Following surgery, Julia faced a rigorous regimen of physical therapy; typical of the way she did things, she threw herself into it "whole hog." She was back on her feet in a remarkably short time and back on the road. But it wasn't long before "always something" struck, and that something was a broken hip. According to Julia, she was "plunging around" in her office, did not see the computer cord in her way, tripped over it, and broke her hip. More surgery, then more physical therapy. She called me from the hospital after the surgery and, as I expected she would, said, "Immer etwas," but there was no sigh that time. She was as mad as a wet hen at herself for doing it. "How could I be so stupid?" she said, and I could picture her slamming her fist down on her hospital tray.

  Meanwhile, back East, my life wasn't going along much better. My friend Dagmar de Pins Sullivan says the French have an axiom for it: "It only rains on wet people." Once it starts to rain on you, it never does seem to let up. I've always traced the start of my drenching to 1986, when Philip and I renovated our summer home. I think old houses have ghosts and ours was a historic house. Built in the seventeenth century, with a "new" addition dating to the 1800s, the house had not been modified since then. Our ghosts had roamed undisturbed for a long time and were decidedly unhappy about the chaos of construction. I blame them for the troubles.

  Because it was an extensive renovation, we completely emptied every room and locked the contents in the carriage house. Then thieves completely emptied the carriage house into their truck, leaving us with a few sand shovels and a warped wooden tennis racket. As the saying goes, once bitten, twice shy, so before we moved into our newly renovated, nearly empty house we asked the builders to install a sophisticated alarm system that not only would alert us to break-ins but also would warn us if the interior temperature dropped so low as to freeze the pipes. When the system signaled the alarm company of an attempted break-in in February, they called us and said the police had checked all doors and windows and saw no signs of a robbery. They reset the alarm. It went off twice more, and the company said there must be a short in the wiring. They shut the system down and I agreed to meet them there the next afternoon so they could fix it. Sure enough, the house was secure and our possessions in place—and all soaking wet. The company ha
d installed the wiring backward, so the alarm was yelling, Burglar, burglar, burglar, when it should have said, Help! Get down here immediately because the pipes are frozen and about to burst and water will gush through the ceilings and . . . gulp . . . too late. The repairs were finished by summer, but it hardly mattered. By then Philip's father was hospitalized with congestive heart failure, and between squiring the boys to their summer activities and dashing to the city to be with my father-in-law, I only saw enough of the house to know I missed being there. The following summer was worse. My mother had a stroke, and it stopped me in my tracks. I closed my cooking schools, stopped writing articles, said no when the IACP asked me to be conference chair, and told Sonya I could no longer work at GMA for anyone other than Julia. I concentrated my attention on family and my book, which somehow was still on track to meet the deadline. I told myself that next year would be better. It wasn't. After twenty-two years of being like the proverbial contented team of oxen pulling along the same path, Philip and I began to tug in opposite directions. We tried to work it out, but in the end we decided to separate, and a few years later to divorce. It was an amicable divorce; Philip is still today a very dear, close friend. I refer to him not as my ex but as my "starter husband." It is so much less hostile-sounding. But any divorce is hard, and the couple of years that led to it were stressful.

  Ironically, Julia, with no children of her own, was the friend who advised me that the most crucial aspect of dealing with the divorce was to concentrate on our sons. "Divorce is like having the rug pulled out from under them. You have to make them feel secure." When I told her I could not be at the fall taping for Good Morning America, she told me I was making the right decision. "Stay close to home," she told me.

  Next to the boys, she was most concerned about what I saw as the one upside of what I was going through: I weighed less than I ever had.

  "You're so thin, dearie. I'm worried about you," she said when I next saw her.

  "Please don't be," I replied, tightening the belt on my size 2 slacks.

  In the summer of 1989, I had as much cause to worry about her as she did about me. She made what she said was one of the most difficult decisions of her life: she put Paul in a nursing home. Fairlawn Nursing Home in Lexington is a beautiful facility and close to their Cambridge home, so she could visit him, often two or three times a day. But it grieved her not to have him with her, and more so when he repeatedly asked her to bring him home. The first time I visited Paul with her, I sensed why it had been such a painful decision.

  When we walked into his room, he was sitting in a chair by the window, baseball cap firmly set on his head, patiently waiting for his Julie and their ritual walk around the grounds. I bent over his chair to kiss his cheek. His still bright blue eyes smiled directly into mine and he said, "Forgive me for not leaping to my feet." All that charm still there in spite of his infirmities. He was still her Paul. I wanted to bring him home myself.

  When we returned to the room after our walk around the grounds, Paul stretched out on the bed. Julia climbed up next to him, leaned back against the headboard, and rubbed the top of his head. "How's my Paulsky doing?" she said, using her pet name for him.

  Sensing the personal nature of the moment, I said, "I'll wait outside."

  "No, stay with us," Julia said.

  I sat in Paul's chair and for fifteen minutes or more witnessed that tender side of Julia, so rarely if ever seen by her public. Indeed, some people who knew her well said they never saw that side of her. Her public image was always that of a strong woman. "She's sensible, no-nonsense, straightforward," columnists would write, and fans would echo it. But Julia had a romantic, sensitive side that was extremely endearing. A Puccini aria, a sad movie, even a beautifully cooked meal that reminded her of Paris could make her tear up.

  As I sat quietly observing the tenderness of their relationship, I thought back to the time when Julia was choosing the music that would accompany her series Dinner at Julia's. We were in her Cambridge kitchen cooking dinner. Paul was upstairs napping. The doorbell rang, and Julia collected a small package from the delivery service. It was the completed audiotape of the piano piece that had been specially arranged and recorded for the show.

  "We should listen," she said.

  I agreed, but I was at that moment broiling an entire oven rack of vegetables and couldn't leave them, so Julia said she'd bring the portable tape recorder into the kitchen.

  A few minutes later, still occupied with the broiler, I heard the pleasant, familiar sounds of "These Foolish Things," coming from the recorder sitting on the nearby counter. Julia was watching the recorder; her back was to me.

  "That's lovely," I said when the tape ended.

  "Isn't it?" she replied, and when she turned to me I realized that she was crying—not just tearing up but crying.

  "Are you all right, Julia?" I said, walking over and putting my hand on her arm.

  "It's a favorite song of Paul's and mine," she said.

  I couldn't know which foolish things had aroused the memories that made her cry that day, or which ones were going through her head as we sat in silence at Fairlawn. But I felt the bond shared by those two very special people and I saw their heartache at being separated.

  There's a sad, poignant lyric in a Tom Waits song, "Grapefruit Moon": "Every time I hear that melody, something breaks inside." But that wasn't Julia. Things might bend inside her, but they didn't break. She didn't wallow in self-pity or allow her sadness to govern her life. Along with guts, Paul had said that Julia "was tough, worked like mad, and never gave up on things." In spite of her concern for Paul, she did indeed work like mad.

  In October 1989, her truly wondrous The Way to Cook was released, and she began an intense, two-month promotional tour in San Francisco two days after the earthquake that shook that city. "Do you really think you should go there now?" I asked her.

  "Why not?" she said.

  In city after city, the crowds were enormous and the pace heroic, especially since she insisted on returning to Cambridge at least once a week to visit Paul.

  Undaunted by earthquakes, the frenzied pace, or long hours, seventy-seven-year-old Julia Child hawked her book with the same intensity of purpose that she'd had when she was fifty and promoting Mastering the Art of French Cooking. "It's my job," she responded when anyone questioned her how she could maintain such a pace. She took her job of selling books seriously, right down to the last one. But there was one that got away, and I loved to tease her about it.

  Julia stayed with me in Providence in November 1989 when she was in town to promote her book at a local Cooks and Books event. Several of my friends left books at my house for her to sign, and there was a large pile waiting for her on the kitchen table. Six of the books belonged to my friend Mary Higgins, who wanted one autographed to her cousin Geraldine. Julia and I had a lot of catching up to do, so we were talking nonstop as I shuffled open books to her waiting pen. While asking or answering questions, she'd glance at the list of names I wrote out for her, sign a book, and push it to the side. Inadvertently she signed two books in a row to Geraldine.

  "That's okay, Julia," I said. "I'm sure we can get another one from the committee."

  "That would be a waste of this one," she said with her hand guarding the book as though it were the last one in existence.

  "Well, maybe I can cut that page out with a razor and you can sign on the next page," I suggested.

  "No. I'll sign one of my own and keep this one."

  "What will you do with it?" I asked.

  "I'll take it with me on the book tour until I find a Geraldine."

  I knew she would hate lugging that book around with her. More than once she had mentioned that it weighed an appalling five pounds plus. "I don't think Geraldine is on any list of the most popular girls' names, Julia. It's not like Susan or Jane. I don't think you're going to come across one."

  "I'm sure I will," she stubbornly insisted. She carried that book back and forth across the co
untry, certain that at some bookstore, demonstration, or culinary event someone would ask her to write, "Bon appétit to Geraldine." We spoke often on the phone during her travels, and I couldn't help asking each time, "Find a Geraldine yet?"

  "No, but I will."

  When she returned, she still had the book. "No Geraldine?" I asked.

  "I can't believe I didn't meet a one. I was thinking I'd send it to Geraldine Ferraro as a gift."

  Julia worked liked mad, down to the last book, not only because that was her character but also because she never took her success or her audience's acceptance of her work for granted. I saw this so clearly when we were in London before The Way to Cook was released there.

  "Look at all these cookbooks," she said as we wandered through the downstairs cookbook section of Hatchards bookstore. "I wonder if anyone really wants another book from me." To me it was a no-brainer; anything she published was sure to be a success. But she wasn't looking for quick platitudes from me, and I asked her what made her think they wouldn't. She said it was because she didn't have a regular television program at the time and you have to be out there for people to know you. I remember wishing I had the right words to encourage her, but when we got upstairs, I saw that Julia was not one to rely on words alone anyway.

  She pulled me aside and whispered, "Dearie, will you go back downstairs and turn my books cover out?" Hatchards had several of her books, but they were positioned on the shelves with their spines facing out. Cookbook authors resolutely believe that if the cover is showing, the book is more apt to sell, so she sent me back downstairs to turn her covers out.

  The official finish of Julia's book tour by no means signaled an end to her full and active schedule. In fact, somehow it seemed to become even more hectic. Fortunately, that's when Stephanie Hersh applied for a job. "I'm going to try her out," Julia told me. "I haven't promised her she can stay."

  With degrees from both Katherine Gibbs and the Culinary Institute of America, Stephanie had the organizational skills to whip the chaos of Julia's schedule into shape and the culinary expertise to see and understand the whole picture of Julia's work. The "tryout" lasted for all the years to come, and "Thank God for Stephanie" became a common Julia refrain.