Julia Child_ A Life - Laura Shapiro [53]
The fact that the world paid little attention to his art, his poems were consistently rejected by magazines, and most of his published photographs were of Julia didn’t appear to trouble him. Standing by at a book signing with nothing to do while “Julia’s adoring public” swarmed over her, he felt he was providing a service just by being there. “It demonstrated that Julia is part of a combination rather than a lone operator,” he explained. “I remember how horrid it was for Edith. Financially & sexually rapacious men were constantly trying to take advantage of her. My plan is never to have Julia appear anywhere in public without the very evident husband.” For Paul to experience such a rush of masculine satisfaction in this role—self-appointed protector of a giant—says much about the confidence he brought to his marriage. He called her “Joooolie” or sometimes “my little wifelet,” created the witty, loving Valentines they sent out every year instead of Christmas cards (“Wish you were here,” read one of them, showing Paul and Julia in a bubble bath), and considered her the most remarkable and delightful creature on earth. Every morning they liked to snuggle in bed together for a half hour after the alarm went off, and at the end of the day, Paul would read aloud from The New Yorker while Julia made dinner. “We are never not together,” Paul said once, contentedly. One evening after the dishes were washed, Julia stayed in the kitchen and made an impromptu batch of blueberry muffins. When they came out of the oven, Paul opened a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot for a late-night celebration. What was the occasion? Just life. Or as Paul explained it, “Iced champagne and hot blueberry muffins!”
Paul was one of the few men of his generation who found it natural, even admirable, for women to have careers. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to object to his wife’s passion for work, even as it swept her from cooking school to teaching to writing to national television. But during their years in Europe, both of them took it for granted that Paul’s job came first. As a foreign service couple, they were expected to socialize and entertain a great deal, and Julia’s participation counted heavily. More important, at least from Julia’s point of view, was the fact that Paul worked extremely hard and needed all the moral and logistical support she could give him. This posed no problems for her during the first years of their marriage, when her only obligation was to be Mrs. Paul Child—a job she treasured, especially in the entrancing new surroundings of their life in Paris. “The husband comes home for lunch,” she told Avis. “I love that!” But the more deeply involved she became in the cookbook project, the more she resented being pulled away for consular events, tea with the embassy wives, and Paul’s occasional trips. He hated to travel without her, and she hated to make him unhappy, so she often went along despite a kitchen full of eggs or mushrooms pleading for her attention. “My first job is wifedom,” she said resignedly, in the midst of an unwanted burst of official travel right after they moved to Marseille. When she couldn’t bear to leave the book, she sent him off alone and felt horribly guilty about it. “If I was able to put in as much work as I would like to, we would soon be having a divorce, I fear,” she told Simca, exaggerating the potential for divorce, but not the painful sense of conflict. Though she was sorry to leave France for their posting in Germany, she welcomed at least one aspect of the new assignment. “Paul doesn’t come home for lunch, and I shall have almost the whole day to work in,” she reported to Avis. “Thank heaven!”