Living in a Foreign Language (4 page)

I used the occasion to propose a trip that would take us the entire length of the Italian Peninsula. After making a solemn promise that I wouldn't buy a house, we flew off for a month's journey that would give us a taste of Italy, from stem to stern.

Third in our party—and party it was—was our friend Caroline, who had also been invited to Birgit's birthday. We first met Caroline when she'd worked for us as a personal assistant—a job, by the way, that you shouldn't give to a dog. If I had to be my personal assistant I'd shoot myself. But Caroline thrived—perhaps because she'd spent her first four years as an orphan in South Korea and after that even our job looked good. Over the years, the three of us became such good friends—living in the same house, traveling together,
manning the calendar together, raising our dogs together—that we finally had to fire her. So now she's part of the family. She travels well, having grown up with her adopted parents in India, Pakistan and Indonesia before moving to Europe for what she calls her “professional years.” She speaks five languages fluently—English, perhaps, not quite as fluently.

Caroline and Jill have grown together over the years—as confidantes, fierce supporters of each other, sisters in the great fight, as it were—and have formed a unit in our house that stands as a powerful counterbalance to the rampant male ego that is me. Whereas I can usually bully my way past one of them, or do an end-around sneak past the other, the two of them back each other up—not unlike a pair of all-pro defensive backs—in such a way as to make male dominance in my household more and more difficult to maintain. Not impossible, mind you, just more difficult.

Caroline tends to be brutally honest. I think it's a Korean thing. This trait generally makes me want to sneak out the back door when I see her coming; but Jill seems to value Caroline's brand of tough love more and more as the years go by. Last year, when Jill and I were doing a play together, Caroline came to see a final dress rehearsal and afterward we casually asked her what she thought. Not being of the theater, she had no idea as to the protocol in dealing with the sensitive egos of actors about to open a play, and she blurted out to Jill that she thought she should be “bigger, more theatrical, go all the way with it.” I sat there holding my breath, not believing that Caroline would dare trample into Jill's private domain, her art. I know I certainly wouldn't. But Jill just sat there, nodding for a minute, thanked her and then went into the office for a couple of hours to work. The next
night, her performance took on a whole new size and dimension—nothing, mind you, that hadn't been there before, but with a hell of a lot more assurance. No way would she have taken that criticism from me.

Jill won't buy a dress or shoes without running it by Caroline first. Caroline won't take a step toward a new boyfriend without first having extensive coaching sessions with Jill. It's a very complicated relationship. They serve as mirrors for each other, support systems, truth-tellers. And they torment each other on a fairly daily basis as well. Caroline is envious of Jill's beauty, her stature, her success—both in career and in relationship; Jill is envious of Caroline's youth, her athleticism, her ability to turn heads as she walks down the street, her parade of admiring male suitors.

Off to Italy

For me? Well, all I can say is that life has never been so interesting. Not a cakewalk, mind you, but very, very interesting. If men are from Mars and women from Venus, I guess what happened in our household is that Venus now has a lot more clout than she did before. She holds her opinion in a much clearer, more assertive way. Which—when I can get past the ego part—actually makes my life much easier. Because all I want to do is to give Jill everything she wants, and now I have a much clearer idea of what that is.

So we were three for the road, taking a month to drive from the Alps to the very southernmost tip of Puglia. Because I was the head planner, our itinerary skirted churches, castles, museums and such, and focused in a very direct way on food and wine. Of course, if we saw a church that piqued our interest—great. If a museum called out to us to see its paintings—by all means. But the overriding mandate was to eat well and to be in places intrinsically Italian—mostly in smaller towns, usually overlooking something beautiful: the sea, or a hillside of grape vines or olive trees. Our goal was to slow down our hearts and minds until they synched up with the circadian rhythm of the Italian countryside.

First we drove to Alba in the Piemonte, the home of my favorite wines, of Slow Food and white truffles—one of the gastronomic treasure troves of Italy. We booked into a little bed-and-breakfast just outside of town. The owner, Roberta, is a foodie and knows all the inside spots where the best local cooking is being turned out. After long breakfasts of fresh yogurt and Roberta's just-picked berries, we spent our days driving up and down the vine-covered hills between little villages named Barbaresco, Barolo and Neive.

Then we were off to the Cinque Terre—for fresh grilled anchovies, pristine white wine that grows on the vertical
hillsides overlooking the sea and pasta
al pesto
in the very place it had been born. If there is a more beautiful town than Vernazza, I have not seen it. Every day Caroline, who is a triathlete in her spare time, led us on backbreaking hikes up and down the vineyards to burn off at least some of the calories we were picking up at lunch.

Our plan was to stay at a bed-and-breakfast in Tuscany for a few days, then head down to Sorrento, where we'd also get a chance to see (and taste) the pleasures of Naples. Then it would be on to Puglia for a week of birthday partying and, finally, Rome, where we would spend a few days before catching our flight home.

Serendipitously, we planned a little afternoon side trip from our B and B in Tuscany to Spoleto, in Umbria, where a friend of a friend had told us about a restaurant experience, a farmhouse on the top of a mountain, that sounded too good to be missed.

That's where fate interceded. The place in Tuscany was not what we had hoped for. It seemed the proprietors were the foremost collectors of Art Deco in the entire Tuscan countryside. So, zebra-striped chaises stood beside lip-shaped coffee tables next to Bauhaus desks with satin-covered side chairs. It was a nightmare. The bedrooms were gloomy and damp and, after a really depressing breakfast of cold toast and instant coffee, we had a little meeting over in the corner of the yard.

“Honey, we don't want to stay here anymore.”

Caroline nodded solemnly in agreement.

“Yeah, but I've already paid for three nights. And it wasn't cheap.”

The two girls stared at me. They didn't have to say a word.

“Where will we go?”

“Anywhere else,” said Jill. “We could go to Sorrento a little earlier.”

“Or maybe Positano,” offered Caroline. We had been there for just a day a few years before and had loved it.

“I'm kind of fixated on that farmhouse lunch that we've booked for tomorrow—over in Spoleto,” I said. “Why don't we try to find a place there.”

So I called a woman named Joanna Ross who had been recommended to me by the same friend who'd given us the lunch tip. Joanna is an American who had relocated with her husband and son to Spoleto some ten years before. Before that she was a William Morris agent in New York. It turns out that she had been one of our agents for a time but because she was in New York and we were in L.A., we'd never actually met.

“Joanna? Hi. I'm Michael Tucker and, uh, we're the people who are doing that lunch tomorrow at the farmhouse? I think you helped set that up?”

“Yeah, at Patrico.”

“Well, we hate where we're staying in Tuscany,” I told her. “Can we find anything nice—you know, not fancy, just beautiful, local, charming—over in your area?”

“I'll call you back in ten minutes.”

She took my cell phone number and hung up. I felt not unlike the way I feel when I talk to my agent in Los Angeles—like I'm not the most important thing on his mind right at that moment. But less than ten minutes later, she called back with exactly what I had asked for.

“Okay. There's a hotel called II Castello di Poreta. It's a castle from the fourteenth century. I know the people who renovated it and opened it up as a B and B. It's owned by the
comune
, the local town, but my friends have a long lease on it. They'll give you a great deal—the inside price. You'll love it.”

She generously offered to meet us just outside Spoleto and lead us on to the Castello. We swapped cell phone numbers and made a plan to meet in a couple of hours. The three of us checked out of our Tuscany place with a story about how our plans had changed. The owners put on long faces and explained, artfully and decorously, that they couldn't give any of our money back and we packed the car and crossed over the border into Umbria and our destiny.

W
E MET
J
OANNA IN THE PARKING LOT
of the Volkswagen dealership in the industrial section of Spoleto. We had been waiting a good half hour and were getting worried that we had the wrong place when, finally, she pulled into the driveway.

“Hi, kids. Been waiting long?”

We nodded.

“Well, that's Italy. Get used to it.”

Her accent was hard to place. There was definitely a bit of British—she had been born in England and both her parents are Brits—mixed with a dialect that can only be described as “New York theatrical agent—speak,” a patois developed from years of bullying, coddling, negotiating and demanding for fourteen hours a day over the telephone.

“Hop in your car. I'll lead you to the Castello.”

On the way, we passed below the Ponte delle Torri, the splendid ancient aqueduct connecting Spoleto to Monteluco, and followed Joanna's little Fiat north on the Via Flaminia a few miles to Poreta. This highway that connects all the towns
and villages in that part of Umbria is the very same Via Flaminia that the Romans built in the third century B.C. to connect Rome to Rimini. Now—with gas stations, outdoor furniture stores, lumber yards and nurseries—it looks a bit more like the Miracle Mile on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. After a mile or two, Joanna pulled over onto a little side road and we parked behind her and got out.

“You see that town up there?”

She gestured over the valley toward a mountain north of us. On it was a pristine, white, walled city dominating that part of the valley.

“That's Campello Alto. Then over here”—she pointed south to another hilltop—“is the Castello. That's where you'll be staying. Back in the Middle Ages, these two towns would declare war on each other every couple of years. Whenever they got bored.”

We drove up the steep road to the Castello, emptied our luggage out of the car and entered through a huge portal that stood in the half-ruined wall of the castle. The view of the valley stopped us dead in our tracks. To the south is Spoleto itself; to the north, Campello Alto, Trevi and beyond, Spello, Foligno and Assisi. Across the valley, there's Montefalco, the wine center of central Umbria, and beyond the hills, Todi. These medieval (and older) hill towns dominate the valley and look down on a broad expanse of tobacco farms, vineyards and endless miles of olive trees. I flashed on that moment in
Lost Horizon
when the pilgrims rounded the mountain pass and first gazed down on Shangri-la. This was a definite upgrade from the Art Deco museum in Tuscany.

We checked in and met Luca, the manager of the hotel, who showed us to our rooms. Joanna led the way, making sure we had the best accommodations, the perfect views. Along the way, she filled us in on the history of the castle, its recent renovation and new incarnation as a hotel. In the center of the complex of buildings—between the restaurant and the guest rooms—is an exquisite chapel that had been the family place of worship back in the Middle Ages.

Spoleto

“When the
comune
leased them the place and gave permission to do the renovation, they insisted that they restore this chapel. Now it's used for concerts, art shows, yoga classes—things like that.”