Michael Tucker - Family Meals: Bringing Her Home

Family Meals

Also by Michael Tucker

Living in a Foreign Language

I Never Forget a Meal: An Indulgent Reminiscence

COMING TOGETHER TO CARE
FOR AN AGING PARENT

MICHAEL TUCKER

Copyright 2009 by Michael Tucker

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Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9894-5

Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

Jill and I started out writing this book together, but we decided to save the marriage instead. We love to act together; we give speeches around the country together; were great at parties; so we thought that team writing would be a snap. But no, our rhythms in that area turned out to exist on different planets. So we adopted another strategy: I would write our story and thenchapter by painful chaptershe would read it and tell me what I did wrong. That seemed to work out just fine.

Jillas a person and as an actorcannot help but expose herself. Its what she does; its what makes her so beautiful. And that is what she did during every day of the writing of this book.

I dedicate the book to her courage and her magnificent heart.

Family Meals

THE WOMEN HAD NATURALLY GRAVITATED to the shady side of the table and the men sat on the exposed side, sipping their wine and warming their bald spots in the sun. We had been at the table for hours. The trattoriaan osteria, really, because it has some rooms to rentsits perched on the side of a mountain looking out onto endless groves of olive trees that carpet the hillsides all the way down to the Spoleto valley. It was past three in the afternoon and the summer wind whipped the silver-green branches until they looked like a storm at sea.

The meal had progressed in the Italian manner. First, bottles of watergas and no gaswere opened and pitchers of the house wine, both white and red, were put out before us. We had silently performed the ritual of turning our glasses right side up so they could receive their respective liquids. It was an instant Rorschach test to see who used the large glass for water and who used it for wine.

Antipasto had been crostinislices of bread, toasted and topped variously with tomatoes and basil, garlic and oil, and, best of all, a spread of wild mushrooms and black truffles, which are a local specialty.

The pasta course should have been enough for lunch. We ordered all the pastas: strangozzi, the local noodle, with truffles; tortellini with cream, sausage bits, and truffles; and spaghetti with tomatoes, hot pepper, and strong, salty pecorino cheese. We feasted on them family-style as the waiter refilled the wine pitchers.

We were now finishing up a mixed grill of meats that had been brought to the table on our own little charcoal grillto keep everything properly sizzling. Lamb chops, pork chops, sausages, and pork ribs, which, unlike their American counterparts, needed no rubs, no sauce, no mouth-numbing spicesjust a little salt and onto the grill.

Our friend Joehe and his wife, Teresa, are our neighbors and friends both in New York and in Umbriaturned to the assembled group. He held a lamb chop in one hand and his glass of red wine in the other, and a little lamb grease properly decorated his chin. He lifted his glass in a toast and said, Abbiamo trovato lAmerica. He was beaming.

This was a new one for me. We found America?

You never heard that expression before?

I shook my head.

Sure, said Bruno, who was the only actual Italian among us. It means we got lucky, we stepped in it.

At the turn of the century, said Joe, who likes to hold forth, when all the Italians were emigrating to America and the streets were said to be paved with gold, that phrasetrovare lAmericacame to mean to win the lottery, to hit the jackpot, to manifest your happiness.

They had no idea how tough their life in America was going to be, added Mayes. Shes married to Bruno.

I was leaning back in my chair with my hands folded across my contented belly. My brain was pleasantly buzzed. Behind Joe I could see the view all the way down to the valley floor, backlit by the sun. Our friends around the table were the best friends you could ever find. In a little while Jill and I would make our way back down the hill to our little house for an afternoon snooze and some time to ourselves.

Si, I said to Joe. Abbiamo trovato lAmerica.

IVE BEEN ACCUSED, BY PRIGS AND CALVINISTSand the occasional internistof having too much fun in my life. Or, rather, of putting too much value on having fun, as if the pursuit of pleasure isnt a proper enterprise for a grown person. Im not here to debate the issue; you can live how you like. But Ill stand by my program of enjoying a good meal whenever I can, sipping the appropriate spirited beverages and indulging in almost anything else that brings the blood to the surface and a gleam to the eye. I couldnt do otherwise; its my nature. My first spoken word was menu.

This has often been a prickly point between my wife, Jill, and myself. Not that she doesnt like pleasureshe has a healthy aptitude for it, actually. But she doesnt want to appear as if she does. She wants to publicly blame all her pleasure on meas if its something she has to endure as a condition of marriage. And thats fine; I can take the hit.

This all came up on a plane trip we were taking from New York, where we now live, to Santa Barbara to visit Jills mom, Lora. Jill had been taking a lot of these trips recently because Lora and her second husband, Ralph, were getting on in years. Lora was eighty-seven and Ralph had just achieved ninety-one. The problem was that every time Jill came home after one of these jaunts, she was stressed and depleted and it took me days just to scrape her off the floor. Her mother always managed to put her into this state. And apparently its been this way since she was a child.

So we decided it would be best if I accompanied her from now on. I would act as the cruise director, sex slave, matre d, whatever. I would support Jill so that she could support them. That was our deal.

Youll see, I told her on the plane, were going to have fun this time.

Just be nice to me, she said. Thatll help a lot.

Nice to you?

Sometimes you get mad at me when Im around my mother.

Oh, well There was some truth in this. She drove me crazy when she was around her mother.

I dont care, she said. Just be nice.

Her mom had recently fallen for no apparent reason and Ralph had not been able to pick her up. He had to call 911. This was a problem because they were trying to stay under the radar as far as their health issues were concerned. They thought if the front office found out that they needed assistance, theyd be thrown out of assisted care. I dont know; its generational, I suppose. I dont think Ill mind getting assistance when I get old. Even now wouldnt be bad.