Living in a Foreign Language (29 page)

“Mikey, I'm gonna change up the agenda,” said David, in a little bit of a panic. “I'm gonna crank up the oven and do the pizza first—while the oven is hot. We'll save the lamb for this evening. This crowd can eat.”

Some people had brought bathing suits to take advantage of the pool; those who forgot just swam in their underwear. The
bocce
court was fully engaged. And the afternoon passed
into evening in a blink. The oven, which is only steps away from the pergola, was a magnet as well. The whole party eventually gathered in this area—the chairs around the table now three-deep, the finished pizzas landing rhythmically every three minutes or so, to great whoops and shouts. The lamb, trussed and ready, waited its turn for glory.

When the sun dropped low in the sky and the pizzas slowed down, Jill tapped a spoon against her wineglass to get everyone's attention so she could give me my birthday present; a beautiful rendition of “I Can't Give You Anything but Love.” She started with the verse that goes:

“Now that it's your birthday, I don't know what to do;

Can't give you a Thunderbird or a penthouse with a view;

Can't even buy a little gift;

I'm much too broke, I find.

But there is one way to save the day;

And I sure hope you don't mind

That . . .

I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby. . . .”

She sang it slow and sexy, with innuendo fairly dripping, and with one elegant gesture to the house construction and the pool she made it crystal clear why we could no longer afford anything but love.

I sat there, feeling quite like a pasha, with all these happy, sated folks around me—my brother, who's become a good friend after all these years, this gathering of new acquaintances and old standbys. And what came to mind were all the people who weren't there. The thing about Jill and my leaping off the edge together is that we tend to leave people behind. We don't leave them on purpose; nor do we leave them forever—we often reconnect at another place and time. But right at the moment of departure, I can see how it might feel like we had taken the party away. Some dear friends in L.A. were upset when we unceremoniously left for Marin. Now, people in Marin were feeling much the same way. Caroline, whose issues of abandonment go back much further than her relationship with us, felt particularly lost when we abruptly sold our house and moved to New York, taking with us a lifestyle and an energy that she had grown to count on.

The remains of the pig

Across the table were Bruce and JoJo, looking as happy and relaxed as I've ever seen them. In two days, they'd be off to Mexico for a year at least, flying without a net, living
on a shoestring, leaving us all behind to somehow manage without them. They didn't seem to be carrying any guilt about it at all.

“Fuck it,” their shining faces seemed to say. “Get over it.”

Fuck it, indeed. To have the partner of a lifetime—for a lifetime—is rare stuff. We'd be fools not to indulge it to the limit. What extraordinary freedom it is not to care about up or down, rich or poor, East Coast, West Coast, as long as we're in the taxi together. “Up and down are just directions,” said one of our gurus in Marin, “and there's a hell of a lot of fun to be had either way.”

“Lamb's ready!” shouted Liederman from the
forno
, and we all scurried to make room in the center of the table.

Thanks to my agents, Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich, for encouraging me to write this book. And to my editors, Eric Price and Morgan Entrekin, for encouraging me to write it better. Much appreciation is due to all my Italian teachers, especially Wendy Walsh in Mill Valley, who also came up with the wonderful quote from Verdi. A blanket apology is due all my friends in Umbria whose lives I exposed, and to Umbria itself whose bountiful pleasures are secrets no more.