“Jean,” she said, “listen, your children being happy now is just as important as their future, if not more so.”
“I know, Donna, and they are happy,” he responded, convinced.
“Are you sure?”
“I think so. I mean, nobody can have everything,” Jean said, shrugging.
“Oh, that’s obvious. But we have a choice about what we give up. And as far as I can tell, you’re happy to lose your wife and kids—all for the sake of your restaurant,” she hissed.
“You and the kids are the ones I’m doing all this for.”
“No, Jean, no, we’re not,” she said, indignant. “Be honest enough to admit that everything you do, you do for you and nobody else. You’ve barely finished one thing before you start thinking about another. What’s next? A new restaurant, an addition to the one you have, buying a winery to make your own wine? Isn’t that your latest idea? Don’t use us as an excuse, you don’t even believe yourself. The important thing is always you and your projects and your stars and your bigwigs . . . Where do we fit in, Jean? Where do I fit in?”
After all the time that she had been with him, the unconditional support she had offered, after putting aside her own goals . . . she found herself relegated to second place. Just like when she had wanted to be an actress. But Donna didn’t want to cry, not in front of him. She was tired of crying.
Monday came, and Jean Leon returned to La Scala.
Donna, now recovered, resumed her own life, taking care of the kids.
They saw little of each other over the coming days, as if they were punishing each other for something that had broken during her convalescence.
“I’ve been doing the numbers, and . . .”
Jean sat down next to his wife, who had been stretched out on the sofa reading a long book. She closed it with an evident lack of enthusiasm. She was expecting the usual monologue about how the restaurant was running, and she didn’t care. But Jean, to the surprise of both of them, wanted to fix things.
“Next year will be our tenth anniversary.” Donna raised her eyebrows. “And we never did get around to taking our honeymoon.”
“But Jean, what—”
“You feel like going to Rome?”
Donna didn’t say yes right away, but she also didn’t want to overthink it, to doubt him, or to look for ulterior motives. That offer, coming out of the blue, made her think for a moment that maybe they could go back to the beginning, to where they had started from. But then the story came out—why they’d be going to Rome. No surprise, it was about the restaurant, not about their relationship.
As Donna knew, La Scala’s famous delivery service, which she herself had enjoyed when Emilio had dropped in unannounced, had been a success beyond all expectations, and it had led to the most far-fetched orders over the years. In February 1961, for example, when a request came through during the filming of Cleopatra in London.
Liz Taylor had just started acting again after a bout of pneumonia, and she was making even tougher demands than usual. One day, she got a craving for cannelloni. But not just any cannelloni, no. Neither the hotel where she was staying nor any other in London could match the cannelloni Lolita with grilled beef and white truffle béchamel, her favorite dish at La Scala. It was named after the novel by Nabokov, in homage to the friendship between Jean Leon and James Mason, a fervent fan of those cannelloni and the star of the film based on the book, which Stanley Kubrick was directing.
Donna knew the story of Liz Taylor’s favorite cannelloni. Jean himself had told it in a moment of weakness, making Donna suspect that her husband might feel something more than mere professional loyalty for the actress. He was a seducer, and he’d also let himself be seduced. Donna had realized it the previous winter, when she’d seen the efforts he made to get those cannelloni to Liz Taylor at the Savoy hotel in London. Those were the actions of a person who couldn’t say no. Luckily, Emilio had come up with a solution. It turned out the best option for getting the cannelloni from LA to London in a still-edible state was to ship them off in a plane in a temperature-controlled package with dry ice. Done and done.
When she saw that miracle waiting for her on the table, Liz Taylor, pleased as punch, ordered another round for the next day.
“Now she wants to say thanks, so she’s invited us to Rome, where she’s filming the final scenes of Cleopatra at the Cinecittà studios.”
Donna’s first reaction was to put him in his place and say no. She didn’t trust him. She felt there was something behind all this . . .
“I want to go back to Europe, and I want to do it with you.”
In the end, Donna finally relented. And so Jean Leon and Donna Morgan started packing for their first big trip together after nine years of marriage. Though she wasn’t entirely happy about it, Donna agreed to leave the children with her sister for the duration of the trip. They knew they needed to be alone and far away from everything. After a long time in the City of Angels, they would now enjoy the romance of the Eternal City together.
“I’d like to visit the cellars in Monte Testaccio in Rome with you,” Jean said on the airplane after they’d taken off. “More and more, I feel like I want to make my wine in Europe.”
“In Italy?”
“I haven’t decided. But not here, anyway, not in California. I’ve been thinking it over, and I have a few European locations in mind. The first one I want to consider is this area near Rome. And I want you by my side . . .” He looked at her warmly with a smile on his lips. “Like when we were just getting started at La Scala. What did we use to say before, when we first knew we had luck on our side?”
It’s a sign, Donna remembered.
After they’d spent hours monotonously contemplating the ocean, a voice came over the intercom to say they were flying over the Iberian Peninsula and informed them of the time remaining until their arrival in Rome.
“Look, Donna,” Jean murmured, leaning into his wife and pointing out the window. “That’s my country.”
“This is France?”
“No. Spain. We’ll probably fly over Barcelona. That’s where my family is.”
Donna stared at him, as if trying to make out the letters of an unknown language. Spain? The roar of the airplane engines was suddenly overwhelming. Her ears were ringing, it was hard to breathe, and she wanted to vomit—and not from the cabin pressure or from airsickness. The person sitting next to her was, suddenly, a perfect stranger. They were thousands of feet in the air, and she understood nothing.
“I know I should have told you before, but . . . Donna. My name is Ceferino Carrión. We’ve still got two hours until we land. Let me explain it to you, please.”
Donna missed the view of Rome from the air, as well as the panoramic sights of the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Vatican from the taxi. She was distracted as she watched their luggage getting hauled up to their hotel room, as she listened to the high-pitched voice of the concierge, as she stared at the enormous pastoral painting hanging over the head of the bed. She still didn’t completely grasp what a fugitive from military justice was, let alone what it meant to have seven brothers- and sisters-in-law with their own families that she had never met or even heard of.
“So you’ve never been in touch with them?”
“Not since my sister’s wedding. That was . . . in September of 1950.”
“Twelve years,” Donna said, stunned.
“Twelve years,” he repeated.
It wasn’t easy to keep talking. She was in a state of shock. Of bewilderment. Of incredulity. Cefe what? Spanish? I have a mother-in-law, brothers- and sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews.
“You have to call them. You have to talk to your family,” she said. This much she knew.
CHAPTER 12
“Hello?”
Leon recognized the voice on the other end and got so excited, he didn’t know how to continue. He had been in the same situation before. But back then, it had only been a year since his family had heard from him. Now it had
been twelve.
“Hello?” the voice insisted. “Who is it? Who’s speaking?”
“It’s me. Who is this?” The only thing that occurred to Jean was to resort to the insolence of his youth.
“It’s Mari! But you . . . no, it can’t be.”
“Mari! It’s Cefe!”
His sister’s cries came through the telephone so loudly, even Donna, herself excited, could hear them. Jean managed to hold back the tears, but not the laughter, even as a pit of uncertainties opened for his wife.
“What about Mama?” he asked timidly.
“Yes, Cefe. She’s alive! Everyone else, too.”
The prodigal son expelled all the air he’d been holding in since before the conversation began. Donna sat next to him on the bed and put her arm around him.
“I’m in Rome right now. I’ll call back tonight. Can you try to put Mama on? I’d like to talk to her—and to you all, too.”
All Mari could do was repeat how pleased she was to hear his voice again. They still had a little time to run through what had happened in their lives over the years. Jean told her he was married and had two kids, looking affectionately at his wife, who followed the conversation with the same feeling of warmth. Even though it was in Spanish, Donna didn’t need to know the words, just as, hours later, she would intuit everything he said when he spoke with his mother.
But it was hard for her to follow along with the welcome-home festivities the entire Carrión family staged for them in the Estación de Francia one week later. A mother-in-law, lots of brothers- and sisters-in-law, and a countless number of nieces and nephews who didn’t even wait for the couple to get out of the train car to hug them, kiss them, and shout in jubilation on being reunited with their beloved Cefe. They went to the Hotel Ritz to eat. Jean had reserved a room there for the two days they would stay in Barcelona. During lunch, he patiently responded to all the random questions that his family, especially his sisters, hurled at him across the table. Jean answered and translated some of the conversation to Donna. No one in his family spoke any English.
Toward the end of the meal, he stepped away for a smoke, and then came the long-postponed conversation with Ana María—Chiqui, his little sister, the one he had always been closest with. She was the one who knew him best, and she wanted the most answers. He knew she had suffered from his inexplicable absence. But he was also dying to tell her about all he had achieved, and how well life had turned out for him.
“Mama prayed a mass for you every day for all these years, ever since the day you left. We thought you had died!” his sister reproached him, but then she bombarded him with questions: “Could you not have called? Or sent a letter? Some news? Anything? Why did you go? Just to live another life, a new life?”
Chiqui didn’t believe that song and dance about how their father’s and brother’s deaths had left him broken, unable to deal with the responsibilities bearing down on him . . . How he would never satisfy the expectations placed on him . . . How he was still on the run from the military.
“It’s been hard for us, too,” she said to him.
“I’m sure it has, Chiqui. Believe me, I am. But—”
“And all that was years ago, Cefe, nobody remembers your military service now,” she said, trying to reassure her brother.
“The whole time—”
“I know, Cefe. I missed you, too. We all did.”
They hugged, then dropped their seriousness and solemnity. They returned to the table, smiling and relaxed, to join everyone else. Jean tried to catch up with all his siblings at once. They were all married, they all had children.
“Seems we don’t know how to keep the Carrión boys around,” his sister said with a roll of her eyes.
“What do you mean?” Jean asked.
“Don’t exaggerate,” Paco said to her, then addressed his brother directly. “I didn’t cross the pond, I just took a job nearby, in Vilafranca del Penedès. It’s not much more than thirty miles from here.”
“In Penedès?” Jean exclaimed.
He couldn’t stop laughing and clapping his brother on the back. Another stroke of luck.
“Tomorrow we’re going to my brother’s house in Penedès,” Jean told his wife when they returned to their room, bringing that special day to a close. “And I’ve got a very good feeling about it.”
When Jean had made his list of possible vineyard sites a year before, he had settled on a half dozen regions between Italy and Spain. Penedès was one that Dr. Maynard Andrew Amerine, a professor of enology at UC Davis, had marked out for special consideration.
“I don’t recommend California. Not Napa or Sonoma Valley. If you want to do something different, look to Southern Europe. First of all, the land will cost you a fourth as much. You should get your vines from France, but I wouldn’t plant my vineyard or make my wine there.”
Maynard was eminent, a reference point for winemakers from all over the world. And he loved visiting La Scala. A man of the world, classy and elegant as an English lord, he was distinguished but not stiff—rather the opposite. He was an affable talker and always jovial. He loved being around people and, as he confessed to Leon, he had a strange hobby: sighting the rich and famous. He was fascinated by the local royalty who gathered at La Scala. Nowhere else could he rub elbows with the celebrities he admired so.
Maynard sang the praises of the food, but especially of the extensive collection of wines in the cellar. Leon had started with the classics: first-growth Bordeaux, Grand Cru Burgundy, Mumm, Dom Pérignon. But his curiosity was inexhaustible, he had money to spend, and soon he was buying cases of Vega Sicilia from Spain, Biondi Santi from Tuscany, old vintages of Colares and Madeira from Portugal.
He had heard rumors about a new generation of major players there in California looking to change the wine industry and go head to head with Old Europe: the Mondavi brothers, Robert and Peter; a young Croatian, Mike Grgich; Richard Graff, who had recently purchased the Chalone vineyard. Jean wanted to know about these men—what they were doing, how they were doing it, and—just maybe—whether he could get in on the game.
Wine exists to give pleasure. So when you drink it, you should have a good time. The professor repeated that maxim to Jean so often, Jean made it his own. And he decided to share with the professor the idea that had been circling around in his head for some time. Jean had consulted with wine professionals, but he’d never had an expert in his inner circle, and he couldn’t let slip the opportunity to ask for his advice.
“Everything as it should be, Dr. Amerine?”
The man was finishing his linguine with clams and his glass of zinfandel, a robust red made from a grape brought to California during the Gold Rush. The varietal was experiencing a wave of enthusiasm, with wineries like Ridge and Mondavi producing excellent examples. Leon was well aware of the professor’s love of those wines, so different from the Primitivo wines of southern Italy, although the grape was allegedly the same.
“What’s it look like to you, Jean?” Amerine answered, gesturing to his near-empty plate.
“You want a coffee or a digestif to finish off?” the host asked him, as he knew Amerine never had dessert.
“Well, if you’re buying, I’ll have another coffee. If you’ll join me, that is,” the professor responded gratefully.
Leon waved down one of the bartenders, then sat next to the professor.
“It’s strange,” Jean said, “but I’ve noticed an American will pay six hundred dollars for a wine that doesn’t match the food and isn’t even up to the quality you’d expect for that price.”
“It’s epidemic in restaurants. But why should you care? Your wines are excellent, your recommendations are always on the mark, and in the end, if they want to fork over that kind of money, who are you to stop them?”
“I appreciate your kind words, Professor. It means a lot, especially coming from you. But that’s not for me, selling other people’s wines, no matter how good they are or how much money I can make.”
“What do you mean?”
“I want to have an exclusive wine, something you can’t get anywhere else, high quality, a perfect match for food. And I’ve decided to make it myself.”
“Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent. I’ve thought it over, and I’m ready.”
Dr. Amerine nodded, already interested in the project and hoping to make his own small contribution.
“You’re a brave man, my friend. But let me tell you something, Jean. With wine, it’s one thing to recognize quality; it’s a whole other thing to achieve it.”
“My idea, and you can tell me what you think, is to compete with the French. And for that, I need to get a small vineyard with low yields. If I could do that, I’m sure I could make waves. I don’t want to just buy something and let other people run it, I want to oversee it myself, down to the last detail, like an artisan.”
Jean described his strategy, which was based on two concepts: quality and prestige. That was nothing new; he used the same approach at La Scala, and it had served him well. Why not use those same principles to make his own wines?
“Am I crazy?” Leon asked him.
“Mark Twain said a person with a new idea is a crank until that idea succeeds!” Amerine said boisterously. “Not only do I like your plan, I’d be more than willing to lend a hand.”
The specialist’s support and advice were critical to helping Jean learn what he needed to know. Before leaving for Italy, Jean had made notes on the potential locations that most interested him, making use of the information the enologist had given him. One of the names the doctor had mentioned intrigued him more than the others.
“El Penedès. An unjustly overlooked area, with excellent soil conditions and climate.” On the way to his brother’s house, Jean looked back over the notes he had taken on Penedès during his conversations with Amerine.
Optimal climatic conditions, with a microclimate similar to the best valleys in California. Altitude, proximity to the sea, and soil composition make it an ideal place for grape growing.
Stars in His Eyes Page 14