Backstage with Julia

by Nancy Verde Barr

  Julia always kept an ironing board open in her bedroom during shoots so she could quickly press a blouse or skirt if necessary. One day, I noticed that along with the iron, the board held a bowl of fresh peaches and one of ripe garden tomatoes. They were gifts from Charlie the gardener, and Julia wanted to keep them for family meals rather than have them gobbled up by the production crew. In between the bowls sat what I quite suddenly realized was an urn, although I had never actually seen one up close.

  "Is that Paul?" I couldn't help asking.

  "Yes," Julia said.

  "On the ironing board, Julia?"

  She smiled that wonderful big, twinkling smile of hers. "Oh, I think he's very happy with the peaches and tomatoes. He loved both."

  Close to the end of the shooting schedule, Julia's sister, Dorothy, came to visit. She slept in the room next to mine and was always up and dressed, ready to walk down to breakfast with me, at six. But one morning, instead of joining me in the hallway, she called me into her room. She was sitting on the corner of the bed, with her hands folded in her lap. I could tell by the look on her face that she was grappling with something.

  She patted a spot on the bed next to her. "Can you sit for a minute, Nancy?"

  "Of course. Is there anything wrong? Are you okay?"

  "I wanted to talk to you about Julia. What do you think about her doing these shows?"

  "In what way, Dort?"

  "Julia made me promise to tell her when she should stop. You know, when she was too old to do it anymore. She didn't want to appear a fool. Is she?"

  I knew what Dorothy was asking and why. Julia did of course look older on the programs. She was more stooped, she sat more, and sometimes displayed a rare lack of energy. But it was more than that. The culinary genius who so expertly communicated the intricacies of French cooking to generations of cooks was often left asking chefs a third her age how they chopped their onions. On my own tours, students often asked me what was going on. They described Julia's co-hosts as being patronizing and condescending.

  "I don't think it's Julia, Dort. I mean, look at the Norway show Russ Morash did with her. That was only a few years ago, and Julia was absolutely classic Julia. I just think this is bad producing and a bad format for her unless she's with someone like Jacques, who excites and stimulates her to perform her best."

  "Do you think I should tell her to stop?"

  I don't know if Dorothy made her decision based on my response, but I told her what I felt. "This is her passion, Dort. I think asking her to give it up would be more damaging than any criticism she receives for keeping at it."

  Dort and I never discussed it again, and Julia agreed to do another series in 1996, Baking with Julia. Thank heavens, for that series neither of us had to write the book. Dorie Greenspan, author of a number of superb baking cookbooks and a master baker if ever there was one, wrote the beautiful book that accompanied the show. Julia appeared on camera with the chefs, and I was culinary producer.

  Her television work was not all that kept Julia busy in the mid 1990's. She continued to give demonstrations, attend conferences, and teach classes from California to Italy. There was simply no turnoff switch for the passion she had for what she was doing. In late February 1996, Julia and I spent six days at the Highlands Inn in Carmel, California, where Julia was the guest of honor at a truly posh culinary extravaganza. The Masters of Food & Wine event is held yearly for no reason other than the celebration of the finest in food and wine. Three hundred guests from around the world enjoyed gala dinners, truffle and foie gras lunches, wines of great distinction, and buffet tables laden with the world's premium unpasteurized cheeses. Food luminaries mingled with elegant, passionate gourmands, who paid an obscene amount of money to experience the best of the world of gastronomy. Vineyard owners from France, California, Italy, Spain, and Australia, to list but a few, were there with a handpicked selection of their productions. There was even a beer maker from Germany whose family had been making the brew for seven hundred years.

  Julia agreed to give a demonstration as well as do several radio and television interviews. Somehow, at Julia's insistence, we also found time to cut out and tour the area. She especially wanted to see if we could find the whales that were in the Pacific waters running by the inn. So we drove to a number of popular lookout sites and did indeed see them. We were both in great spirits. Julia was in California, and there was no place on earth that she loved more. And I was in love. Earlier that month, I'd met Roy Bailey. I knew as soon as I met him that he was the one, but I wonder if I would have realized it if I hadn't already known Julia so well. Roy was just as bold and outspoken, just as outrageous and naughty, and just as funny if not funnier than Julia was. His personality might well have overwhelmed me if I had not had so many Julia years to prepare for it.

  I told Julia that I was pretty sure I had met "him," and she was delighted. Up until then, she had been supportive of the few boyfriends I had, but although she didn't come right out and say it, I could tell that she didn't think they were right for me. The day we arrived in Carmel, there was a card from Roy waiting for me at the hotel desk.

  "It's from Roy," I said, all smiles, holding it up for her to see.

  "Let's see," she said taking the card and examining the address. "He has a strong, fine hand. I approve."

  I don't know if it was because Roy was a professional artist and she felt a connection because of Paul's art or if she just sensed that all the pieces fit, but from the get-go she liked him. The day I introduced them to each other, I let us into Julia's house and yelled hello as Roy and I walked up the back stairs. Julia met us at the top and Roy put out his hand to shake hers, but instead Julia reached her long arms around him and gave him a huge, warm hug. "Anyone who is with our Nancy deserves a hug," she said. Approval noted.

  So Julia and I floated happily through our days at the Highland Inn. For the gala meals, the inn invited twenty or so well-known chefs, including Julia, to each prepare a course. Knowing what a hectic schedule she planned for herself, she might have chosen to prepare a simpler dish for her contribution to the gala dinner, but she didn't. She decided to prepare her Designer Duck, which involved roasting the duck until the breast meat was just "springy rather than squishy to the touch" then skinning and disassembling the bird so the breasts could be pan-sautéed briefly to finish cooking and the legs and thighs breaded and sautéed a longer time in another pan.

  The day of the dinner, Julia spent the morning doing a television interview and the afternoon giving a demonstration. Cooks from the inn were supposed to get the ducks ready for the sauté stage, but when we arrived, we saw that nothing was finished beyond the roasting. With the dinner hour perilously close, there was no time to lose, so Julia and I grabbed knives, donned aprons, and began removing breasts, legs, thighs, and skin from enough ducks to make hunters weep. Bless the late chef Jean-Louis Palladin, who, realizing what was happening, called to all chefs who were not up their necks in their own preparations to grab their knives and get to our table. He had alerted the kitchen to our needs in French, so the entire brigade that came to our aid was French. Julia explained in French what we were doing, and I sincerely regretted that my knowledge of the language was so limited. I had no trouble, however, translating Julia's statement when she looked up from her duck, knife poised in front of her, smiled, and said in perfect French, "Cooking together is such fun." Oui a hundred times over.

  Even with all that expert help, we were not finished by the time the guests began to arrive for the evening festivities. Julia and I were expected to join the guests in the dining room in time for the cocktail hour, but she didn't want to leave the kitchen and I had to chase her out.

  "We still have so much to do," she said.

  "I'll stay and make sure it gets done," I told her. "No one will miss me, but you have to be there." Reluctantly Julia left the kitchen, and when I finally made it into the dining room in time to sit down for the first course, she caught me by the arm. "How'd it go?
" she asked.

  "Great," I said. "They're all set to be sautéed."

  "I wanted to stay," she said resolutely, and I knew she meant it. Schmoozing over cocktails did not come even close to boning ducks with a group of friends. Cooking was her passion, and I never saw it wane. Nothing ever eroded her energy or joy for being in front of a stove. It was a wise choice for Dort not to tell her to stop. And Julia never did.

  She continued to do what she had always done with all the energy and passion she'd always had. But our work together did stop. In 1997, I signed a contract with Knopf for another book, which was larger and more involved than my first. Roy and I were juggling our lives in homes in Nantucket and Providence, and for me that was enough.

  Julia and I did continue, however, to play together, and keeping up with Julia was no less of a challenge than it had ever been. In 1997, when she was still living in her Santa Barbara condominium at Montecito Shores, she invited Roy and me to stay with her for a few days over New Year's. We didn't need any reason to go other than to celebrate with her, but she had a specific one on her mind: she had decided to sell her Montecito unit and move to the retirement community of Casa Marinda. The apartment at the Casa was considerably smaller and she was in the process of furniture downsizing. Much of Paul's painting equipment was still in the condominium, and she wanted to see if there was anything that Roy would like. And she wanted to show us what would be her new digs. As she warned, they were much smaller, and when she gave us the tour, she said that the man living in the unit next door to hers was not well. Perhaps "when he slips off the raft, I can buy his place and break down the wall," she told us.

  Roy Bailey, Sally Jackson, and Joann Warren partying at the Wine Cask.

  New Year's Eve itself presented a dilemma to Julia because there were two parties that she really wanted to attend. Russ and Marian Morash were hosting what sounded like a fabulous bash at the Santa Barbara Biltmore, a breathtaking resort in a magical setting. And our good friend from Boston, Sally Jackson, and her husband, Paul Mace, were celebrating their wedding anniversary at the Wine Cask, a fine Santa Barbara restaurant, where they had had their wedding dinner a few years earlier.

  Roy and I did our best with hats and noses to keep up with Julia at Russ and Marian's New Year's party.

  Julia decided we should join Sally and Paul along with their honor attendants, Jack and Joann Warren, also friends of Julia's, at the Wine Cask since we had missed their actual wedding. We began the evening at the Warrens', where Sally and Paul gave us anniversary gifts: silver wine coasters inscribed with Julia's favorite toast, "Here's to us. None better." Then we moved on to the Wine Cask, where Sally and Paul were obviously well remembered as the good-time couple they are. We were feted admirably, and our glasses remained full until long after midnight, when we shook the confetti from our hair, grabbed a handful of the bobbing balloons, and said goodnight.

  Roy, Julia, and I climbed into our car and headed home. "That was such fun," I said, sated, tired, and a little tipsy.

  "We can still make Russ and Marian's party," Julia said.

  I didn't need an interpreter to translate the look on Roy's face when he turned to me: Is she serious? Most of us have had a number of evenings of party-hopping that last until the sun comes up, but will we still want to do it when we're eighty-four?

  Julia's ability to rally and her energetic, determined mind-set remained a part of who she was even in her nineties, when health issues threatened to compromise them. I was planning to visit her in August 2004 for her ninety-second birthday, but Sally Jackson called me in May to say that she had just spoken to Stephanie and learned that Julia's health had failed.

  "I don't want to spread gloom and doom, but I think we should go out to see her as soon as possible," she said. "Can you go next week?"

  "Absolutely."

  "I'll tell Stephanie and Julia that we're coming. I think we should be prepared for the worst."

  I began to think of how difficult it was going to be to see Julia bedridden. I had spoken to her recently on the phone, and she told me how delighted she was with her new kitten that slept on the bed with her. She emailed me photos of the wee black-and-white kitten, or poussiquette, as she referred to all felines. Poussiquette's given name, like the Childs' cat in France, was Minou, French for "kitty cat." I tried to picture Julia in bed playing with the kitten and not simply lying supine, dozing in and out of sleep.

  A few days later, I received an email from Sally giving me our flight schedule, sleeping arrangements, and a packed itinerary from Julia that filled just about every minute of the time we would be in California. None of it involved playing on the bed with a kitten. So much for keeping vigil.

  The following week, Sally and I arrived at Julia's small apartment in the lovely Casa Miranda, an above-average assisted-living facility in Santa Barbara. Julia was thinner than I'd ever seen her and in a wheelchair. I think the common expression is "resigned to a wheelchair," but there was no resignation; she was rigorously undergoing physical therapy to help her walk again following hip surgery some months before. She was also eager to get going, and for the next three days Stephanie, Sally, and I wheeled her to breakfasts with her Casa buddies, into restaurants for lunches and dinners with good friends, and through the local Costco, where a girl of about twelve approached her shyly for her autograph. We gobbled down Double-Double burgers at the In-N-Out drive-through and took in a movie, The Day After Tomorrow, which Julia thought sounded like fun. In spite of catnapping through some of it, she found the action exciting.

  Julia and I had good talks during that visit. Roy had passed away a year and half before, and she knew how much I missed him. She wanted to know if I was okay, really okay. I told her that I was following her example and keeping busy by working. I was writing a novel, which was loosely based on the television work we did together. She wanted to know all about it, and as I told her what was in it we began to talk about the years we had spent together and what fun we had.

  On the way to the airport on the morning we left, Sally and I drove by the apartment. Julia was in the middle of her therapy, and the therapist wheeled her out to the car so we could say our goodbyes. We chatted and promised to ring each other up often, and then Julia took hold of my arm. With her other hand, she gripped the walkway railing, pulled herself up and out of the wheelchair, and walked briskly and resolutely down the path to her front door.

  That was the last time I saw Julia, and my image of her on that day is the same as it always was: an exceptional woman who had the energy and determination to accomplish whatever she wanted to do, whether it was to change the way we thought about eating or get up out of that wheelchair and walk on her own two feet to her front door.

  Postscript

  I miss my unique friend. I miss the cooking knowledge that I trusted so completely and that she so readily shared, the wise mentoring she so generously offered. The culinary world as a whole is poorer for her loss, certainly less colorful, and I think less focused on her vision of uniting professionals and nonprofessionals in the common goal of enlightening and enriching American kitchens—sensibly, with moderation in all things. It has lost that strong, positive voice of reason that weighed in on food fads, the food police, nutty nutrition, and dangerous diets, and did so for the benefit of sound enjoyable dining, not for the sound bite.

  More than that, I miss the friend who made me laugh and showed me that having a good time sometimes meant breaking the rules. I chuckle when I recall her quick witticisms, such as the time I was trying to explain jam bands and in particular Phish to her.

  "Jam bands usually have large groups of fans who follow them around from concert to concert. You've heard of the Grateful Dead? Well, their fans were called Deadheads, and they went practically everywhere the band did."

  "So the Phish have fish heads," she logically concluded.

  I'd love to hear that warbling "woo-hoo" or "boop-boop" across a crowded room alerting me to where she was, or her typical nighttime
request to "knock me up" in the morning. I'd love to answer the phone and hear, "It's Ju-u-lia," as though it could be anyone else, or hear her characteristically welcoming response to my calls to her: "Is that Nancy?" I want to see that index finger raised in indignation or feel it poking me in jest. I think of walking into her office and seeing her sitting at her huge plain oak desk with a teakettle on a nearby hot plate and books everywhere. I'd love to cook with her once more in her kitchen alone and then with a group, because "cooking together is such fun."

  I miss the familiar, comfortable things: the Post-it notes, the kitchen table clothed in a padded vinyl tablecloth. I miss setting that table with her colorful round raffia placemats, the slightly chipped Provençal dishes, the blue-and-white breakfast bowls. I miss the cow.

  Foolish things, I suppose, and like the lyrics from her favorite song say, they remind me of Julia. When they pop into my mind, in spite of how much I miss her, they compel me once again to say "souf-flé" and smile.

  Resources

  BOOKS

  Child, Julia. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. New York: Knopf, 1961.

  ———.Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume II. New York: Knopf, 1970.

  ———.The French Chef Cookbook. New York: Knopf, 1968.

  ———.From Julia's Kitchen. New York: Knopf, 1975.

  ———.The Way to Cook. New York: Knopf, 1989.

  ———.Cooking with Master Chefs. New York: Knopf, 1993.

  Child, Julia, and Nancy Barr. In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs. New York: Knopf, 1995.

  Child, Julia and Jacques Pepin. Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home. New York: Knopf, 1999

  Fitch, Noël Riley. Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

  PERIODICALS