While Loretta and Franklin attended to business matters, I found my way back to my second-floor suite, which I’d seen during the tour. Living room, bedroom, bath, and walk-in closet—they all seemed even larger than when I first explored them. A bag containing my small wardrobe—much more would be coming from Marjorie Merrimen and Giovanni Leone over the next week or two—lay open on my bed. I put things away in dresser drawers, including a long nightshirt in a soft material that was nonetheless concealing.
For a time I sat in the living room, admiring the furniture. I tested the sofa, the armchairs, the straight-backed side chairs, and all were comfortable. Nothing in the room was an expression of me, but I didn’t mind. I’d never lived in a room that you could walk into and see anything that declared,This is Alida’s place.If given license to change things, I’d have had no idea what to do. Who was I, after all, but books well remembered and memories well forgotten?
I closed my eyes for a moment’s rest and saw Captain sitting on my sofa beside an albino man with long white hair. The pink-eyed albino listened intently, nodding.
I erupted from the chair. So vivid had been the image that I half expected to find unwanted company. I was alone. I must have dozed off for a minute. A little daymare. Nothing more.
Two windows provided views of the back-acre gardens, perhaps two-thirds of the property, and between them was a French door. I stepped onto a balcony and listened to birds singing in the pepper trees. I could see fountains and winding paths, statuary and a small pavilion, all the way to the bungalow at the end of the estate. I’d always lived at ground level in the carnival. When Captain and I traveled and stayed in motels, he booked us into first-floor rooms even if there was a second story, as though he believed it wise always to be able to make a quick exit. As I stood there, a strange sensation overcame me. With a wall only at my back, with warm sunlight all around and empty air between me and the limestone terrace twenty feet below, I felt at peace, as if I belonged here more than anywhere else in the Bram. If I were to climb onto the balustrade and step into the void, would I at last be in my element? This was not just a thought but also an urge. I definitely was not contemplating suicide, which is a most heinous act, selfish and blasphemous. Rather, I felt that if I better understood myself, I could step forward into a freedom beyond my fondest dreams. As I warned you, it was a strange sensation, and it passed quickly.
To properly accommodate the children and because Loretta and Franklin were often early to bed in order to meet production calls at studios, dinner was at five thirty. Having freshened up by five o’clock, I saw an opportunity to make the acquaintance of the chef, Mr. Luigi Lattuada, who was by then surely busy in the kitchen. My suite was but a few steps from the back staircase. The moment I opened the stair door to descend, I found myself in a rising draft of smells so delicious that my mouth watered. We had eaten a late breakfast at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but the day had been so busy that we’d not had time for lunch.The clatter of cookware rose in that vertical passage, and I hurried down to meet the wizard who could conjure such wonderful aromas.
Luigi combined with Lattuada led me to believe that the chef would be as Italian as Enrico Caruso or even Ettore Boiardi, who was maybe the most famous Italian in America since launching his hugely popular canned-pasta products almost three years earlier, under the Chef Boyardee brand. Overseeing the steaming pots and sizzling pans, however, was a tall, broad-shouldered gentleman as handsome as Mr. Duke Ellington, the composer and band leader whose music was on the radio and whose photo I’d seen in a magazine. I excused myself for intruding and explained that I was looking for Mr. Lattuada of whose cooking I had heard such good things. He said, “As unlikely as it may seem, I am the highly praised Lattuada, previously of Milan and Genoa. And you must be Princess Alida, about whom one likewise hears only good things.”
“Oh, I’m no princess, just a commoner who has somehow fallen down a chimney into paradise. If you don’t mind my asking, what is your accent? You don’t sound Italian.”
“I have a British accent because my dear mother is a Jamaican educated in London, where she met my father, who is Italian.” As Mr. Lattuada talked, he remained in motion, making sure no pot boiled over, peeking through an oven-door window, plucking a bottle of cream from a Frigidaire. “They moved to Italy, opened a restaurant, and created me. I grew up speaking English with my mother’s accent, Italian with my father’s accent, and very bad French.”
“I find that fascinating,” I said. “All those faraway places I will never see. Are there many like you in Italy?”
“Cooks? Oh, many cooks. Many, many. If you mean Italians who speak with a British accent—not so many.”
I blushed. “That was rude of me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be. My manners are self-taught, and obviously I haven’t been the best teacher.”
“Ah, you mean are there many Negroes in Milan and Genoa. Well, not so many that horsemen wearing white sheets have been inspired to set crosses on fire.”
“Ku Klux Klan,” I said. “I’ve read about them. They’re terrible people.”
Stirring something with a large wooden spoon, he said, “They’reamongthe worst, but as you will learn, this world provides us with a variety of worst people, each group with its own obsessions.”
“I’ve known some of them. One in particular. He valued his own life but no one else’s.”
Mr. Lattuada paused in his stirring and regarded me with what might have been sympathy and surprise. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was, I believe, what Mr. Freud would call a psychopath, although I suspect the whole psychology thing is only the littlest bit more useful than the advice provided by tarot cards.”
He put his spoon aside and adjusted the gas flame under the pot and said, “If I may be as rude as you so recently were—how old are you, child?”
“You’re funny, Mr. Lattuada. I mean that in the best way. I mean you’re funny if that’s what you intend to be. If that’s not your intention, I apologize. I’m seventeen.”
“Indeed, I have a sense of humor. I am revealed and cannot now pretend to be dour and humorless like the French chefs I have known. I imagined you were at most thirteen, but as you’ve talked, I see my error.”
“I’m small for my age. There’s not much chance I’ll ever be taller. From my perspective, you’re enormous but not terrifying.”
“Did you expect me to be terrifying?”
“It was a possibility. Mostly I expected you to be like Chef Boyardee, with a little mustache and a tall white hat.”
“I tried a mustache, but I looked ridiculous. My tall white hat I left in Genoa. Now you best skedaddle, or I’ll be so distracted I’ll burn your dinner.”
“It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”
“So it has. You are always welcome in my kitchen.”
A butler’s pantry separated his domain from the dining room. As I reached that door, I looked back at him, and he was staring after me. I said, “The Bram seems like the New Jerusalem, does it not?”
“It does indeed.”
“The New Jerusalem wouldn’t have even just one of the worst kind of people, would it?”
