Backstage with Julia (31 page)

Fourteen chefs prepared a delicious meal the following January at the Rainbow Room in New York. It was a good time, but perhaps it went on too long because she abandoned me. She stayed to cheer the parade of waiters carrying sparkler-lit, individual baked Alaskas around the darkened room, and to hear Jean Stapleton read a poem. But after Julia accepted a giant whisk garnished with flowers and pearls and marched around the room with it on her shoulder, she gave me a subtle poke and said, "Let's go. I'll call for the car."

I was more than ready; it wasn't my only party with her that week. "I'm going to the ladies' room first," I said.

"Okay. I'll get our coats."

Ladies' room accomplished, I went to the coat check area, but there was no Julia. I waited for a while, knowing how long it can take Julia to walk through a crowd. Then I decided to get our coats to be ready for her. I had to describe them to the girl at the coat check because, at Julia's suggestion, I had hidden my small purse with my money and claim check in the sleeve of my coat so I wouldn't have to carry it around.

"Mrs. Child picked them up already," the girl told me.

"Did she leave?" I asked. She didn't know. I looked back into the dining room and went back to the ladies' room; no Julia. I decided to wait in the car, hoping that she would assume that's where I was. I stepped out onto the street just in time to see the car pulling away from the curb with Julia sitting in the backseat. I had to run half a block in heels too high for walking to catch them at the corner and beat on the window.

"What are you doing?" I asked, truly incredulous that she was leaving without me.

"I thought you were having a good time and would find your way back when you were ready."

"But you have my coat and my purse and my money!" I wailed at her like a petulant child as I slid onto the seat next to her. "What were you
thinking
?"

She just grinned at me like a party girl who'd eaten the whole baked Alaska and split the scene with someone else's cash and fur coat. She thought it was terribly funny, but I told her I was not amused at the thought of traipsing coatless and penniless through the late-night streets of New York, where untold dangers would most likely deprive my sons of a mother. In truth, I was really only pretending to be miffed at her. I knew she would have sent the car back for me, with my coat and purse, but I wanted to be able to needle her for a couple of days. I guess I was just addicted to that devilish grin and the twinkle in her eyes that needling wrought.

For the February party at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California, the hosts flew in a gaggle of nine French chefs to join forces in the kitchen with some sixty American chefs who held sway over French-inspired restaurants. The spirited, good-natured Gallic kitchen bantering was projected onto screens in the dining room for the entertainment of the five hundred guests, who enjoyed an incredible five-hour meal preceded by about sixty different kinds of hors d'oeuvres. At the end of dinner, the chefs rolled out a cart with a birthday cake carved, molded, and decorated as a replica of her kitchen, complete with a marzipan Julia standing by a chocolate stove. The French chefs then performed a quite admirable can-can.

The public parties were, as Julia noted, embarrassingly prolific. The private ones were special. A small group of us gathered at her friend Jasper White's Cambridge restaurant. For dessert, he prepared chocolate bars with "Happy Birthday Julia" written in icing so she could take a bite out of the hoopla of her birthday. She did so with great relish. Pam Fiore, who was then the editor of
Travel
&
Leisure
magazine, held a beautiful dinner party in Julia's honor at her New York apartment, where a group of us including Susy, Victor and Marcella Hazan,
Food
&
Wine
editor Mary Simons, and
Good Morning America
producer Jane Bollinger, did our best to sing on key the lyrics of songs Pam wrote for Julia.

Susy Davidson planned the perfect Julia party at Julia's home. Close friends gathered in the Cambridge kitchen to cook dinner together. Before congregating in her backyard to sip cocktails and devour Jonah crab claws and an assortment of her favorite oysters, we gossiped and gabbed in her kitchen while trimming, peeling, and roasting. We didn't want Julia to have to do any of the work, but she couldn't keep out of the kitchen. She found a space by a cutting board, looked around at us all clad in specially made aprons stenciled with "Happy Birthday Julia," and beamed. "Isn't cooking together fun?"