Born with Teeth: A Memoir (12 page)

Then he turned to face the room and shouted,
“Champagne per tutti!”

The room erupted into laughter and cheers. Roberto grabbed the house phone and called my mother as I stood there, understanding that something momentous had just occurred but having absolutely no idea what was going to happen next.

Two days later, as Mother prepared to board her plane at Fiumicino–da Vinci, I appealed to her as a friend and implored her to tell me if she thought I was doing the right thing.

“I don’t know, Kitten,” she said, zipping up her money belt, “but I’ll tell you one thing—if it were a book, I wouldn’t be able to put it down.”

On a cold winter’s night, and after many whiskeys at Harry’s Bar, Roberto jumped on his motorcycle and headed home, toward his villa in Scandicci. He hurt more when he was drunk and drove fast to prove that he could withstand the pain, that he was impervious to life’s blows and indifferent to fate. Those winding country roads on a dark night were treacherous even when conditions were favorable, but this was not a temperate, clear night, and Roberto’s mood was very black. He hit a large rock, swerved hard, and flew high into the air, landing in a gutter at the side of the road. They say he lay there for almost two days before he was found and rushed to the nearest hospital. They say he nearly died, having lain in a ditch for almost
forty-eight hours with a broken neck. Incredibly, he survived. They stapled him into a reasonable facsimile of himself, propped him up in a wheelchair, and gave him a full-time nurse. They say he never complained and that one day, when the nurse had momentarily left him alone in the garden, he simply decided he’d had enough and stopped breathing.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Many, many years before this incident occurred, and on another motorcycle, Roberto and I flew through the hillsides of Scandicci, stone-cold sober in the face of imminent danger, not willing to concede an inch. For brief moments, we were airborne, and then it seemed that time stood still, until we would find the road again, and, satisfied with our invincibility, slither home at top speed. It was late to bed, then, or—and this depended on the season—we would veer off-road and find ourselves behind someone’s farmhouse, where a midnight fire was seen burning bright inside the barn. We’d call out a greeting and receive one in return,
“Viene, Roberto, venite qui, amici!”
The barn doors would be opened wide, revealing a rustic wooden table that ran the length of the room and that bore the fruit of the gentleman farmer’s labor. The hearth warmed the room, and when at last we sat, red wine was poured, glasses were raised, and rough voices sang out in unison:
“Salute! Cent’anni, cin cin!”

Roberto owned several vehicles, but my favorite was a green vintage army jeep. This we took into the higher hills when the
fragoline di bosco
were in season, and everywhere the eye could see, the ground shimmered with rosy crowns. A checked blanket would be thrown on top of this masterpiece, and we would lie on it, sipping champagne from the bottle and eating tiny, perfect strawberries, mouths ruby red under a warm afternoon sun.

In the villa, I was given a room of my own. Roberto converted one of the bedrooms on the second floor into a study for me, bought me an electric typewriter, ordered a desk, and
placed both of these under a window that looked out over the rolling fields of Scandicci. A woman came and measured the room for a chaise, which arrived one day and was settled against the far wall. Slowly, over weeks, it dawned on me that I was essentially a glorified prisoner and that the room of my own was merely another enhancement to my gilded cage. Roberto knew what he was doing. Whole days were spent in that room, reading, keeping a journal, and pouring out my heart in long letters to friends on the electric typewriter.

The days assumed a sameness. Roberto left the house around nine in the morning, at which time Sara, the dour Lebanese maid, would bring me an espresso and a hard roll on a tray. She would place this on the bedside table without acknowledging me. I would read and write for a few hours, and at two o’clock exactly, Roberto’s car came through the gates, and we would have lunch downstairs in the dining room, just the two of us. The table was knotted, of dark wood, large enough to seat twelve. On the table sat two high brass candlesticks, mismatched hand-painted ceramic pitchers of olive oil and vinegar, a large saltcellar with a silver spoon, and a pepper mill. Lunch was a three-course meal, without exception. Soup or antipasto to start, followed with a pasta dish, and then an entrée. Dessert was almost always a bit of fruit and hard cheese. Wine was poured with each course. Espresso signified the end of the meal. Conversation was not mandatory, but the afternoon siesta was. I would follow Roberto up the stairs to the master bedroom, where the door would remain closed for an hour and a half. Roberto would then shower, change, drop something on the bureau for me, and leave. His gifts were varied. Sometimes a strand of pearls, sometimes a few thousand lire, sometimes a pair of shoes. Three times a week, a car came for me at dusk, and I would be driven into Florence to meet with my Italian tutor, a young man with brilliant black hair, a pleasant,
affable manner, and infinite patience. Often, and with little provocation, we would dissolve into helpless laughter. I suspect that he was lonely, too.

It was a world of privilege, but it was neither warm nor welcoming. I was a twenty-four-year-old American television actress, lacking both nobility and fortune, without even passable Italian to recommend me. The Italian women, in particular, were wary, and I often caught them appraising me with cool, critical eyes, as if to say, How on earth did you stumble into this, you little fool? Roberto was completely at ease wherever we went and expected me to comport myself with grace and confidence. Speak Italian! was his constant admonition, and so I did, often to the amusement of everyone present, most of whom spoke little to no English. I learned, very quickly, that the Italian upper class does not need to exert itself; it simply is. The caste system in Italy is rooted in antiquity, and it was breathtakingly clear that I would never be embraced by this rare and elite society. I experienced the first genuine pangs of sympathy for Roberto’s mother, who must have endured years of isolation and yet, somehow, had persevered.

That white streak in her hair, I now understood, represented survival.

In the depths of the night, my agent called from faraway Los Angeles over a telephone connection so broken as to render his words incomprehensible, and I found myself on my knees shouting,
“A part!”
And heard, as if through a mangled tube, the barely audible response, “Yes, a part!”—words that filled me with joy. In less than four hours, I was packed and on my way to the Galileo Galilei International Airport.

Roberto, baffled by this sudden turn of events, was understandably unhappy and cross-examined me all the way to Pisa.

“Let me put it to you this way, Roberto,” I explained, slipping
my ticket into the jacket of my passport. “In my business, I am not the designer, I am the shoe, and the production company is the buyer. Hence the expression ‘If the shoe fits, wear it.’ ” I left him standing at the gate, but I had little doubt that his sorrows would soon be drowned in wine and the sympathy of others.

Three days later, in County Cork, Ireland, corseted, bedecked, and beribboned, I put my high-buttoned boot in the silver stirrup of a sidesaddle and allowed the wrangler to hoist me aloft. From my precarious perch atop the thoroughbred, both legs angled and tucked to the left, I could see miles into the Irish countryside, and what I saw didn’t please me. Holding the reins in a death grip, I whispered to the wrangler, “But where will you
be
when I
need
you? It’s wide open, there’s nowhere for you to hide, the camera will pick you up.”

“Now, miss,” the lying, conniving miscreant assured me, “sure, there’s nothin’ to do but sit there and enjoy the ride, nice ’n’ easy like,” whereupon the assistant director shouted “Action,” the wrangler slapped my horse’s rump with a hard, flat hand, and the animal took off like a creature possessed. It was a ride to hell, not a wrangler in sight, one of my feet dangling like a broken doll and the other digging into the horse’s flesh, my riding crop useless in my hand, which was soldered to the pommel, and images of my tragic demise looming before me, when out of nowhere, a strong hand reached over and yanked the reins out of my hand. The horse came to an abrupt stop, and I slid off the sidesaddle and into the arms of a laughing and lovely Pierce Brosnan, who was shouting, “Cut, the man said, cut! Jaysus, woman, but you’re a terror on that feckin’ thing!”

Later, nursing my bruises in a hot tub, I mused that there were worse ways to spend an afternoon than playing Pierce Brosnan’s love interest in an epic miniseries that would keep me in Ireland for almost six months.
The Manions of America
was conceived and written by Agnes Nixon, whose penchant for the melodramatic showed itself in every frame, but it catapulted Pierce Brosnan to almost overnight stardom and forged friendships that would last forever.

Pierce, a true Irishman, was not averse to practical jokes at five a.m., especially if the target was Simon Rouse, or T. P. McKenna, and we often found ourselves convulsed with laughter before the first shot was pulled at seven o’clock. We minded our manners around Anthony Quayle and Hurd Hatfield, well-respected veterans, but we all wore wellies under our costumes, and those wellies walked us to many a pub of a damp Irish evening. It was as if some mysterious power had unzipped me and out poured weeks of unbridled laughter.

Roberto visited me on weekends. Like most of the civilians I’ve introduced to show business over the years, he was initially fascinated by the process of filming, then baffled, and, finally, bored. A set can be disappointing for visitors, who come expecting to witness high drama or, at the very least, some degree of questionable behavior but are unprepared for the discipline and repetition that are required to get a film made properly. Roberto found it particularly difficult to maintain silence through multiple takes and could often be spotted stirring up trouble close to camera or chatting too loudly over coffee at craft service. He was accustomed to being the center of attention, and this make-believe world of mine, filled with people concentrated on tasks that did not require his involvement, held no appeal for him.

All too soon, the filming came to an end, and I left the world I loved to return to one with which I was increasingly at odds. Roberto lived at a speed and height that could dazzle from a distance but, up close, threatened to scorch. It was nothing to fly to Paris or London for a weekend, to dine at Maxim’s one night and have lunch at the Connaught the next. It was madness, or so it felt to me, but then I was just the sidekick, and
my opinion was seldom sought. I was dragged from restaurant to restaurant, from club to club, from overcrowded bar to overcrowded bar. The evening almost always ended in some terribly chic discotheque, an amphetamine-induced riot of sound and touch. I would sit on a banquette in a shadowy corner of a plush underground club in Kensington sipping champagne and longing for a hot bath and a good book. These comforts were withheld until (not unlike Chinese torture) my every sense had been thoroughly assaulted, and often even then Roberto would insist on going to an after-hours club somewhere in the bowels of Piccadilly, where a peculiar breed of pasty-faced Englishman would stare at me as if observing a large and rather hardy vegetable.

Unpleasant incidents began to occur, and I began to note them.

Roberto was particularly fond of his business colleagues in London, and it was not uncommon to spend long evenings in their company, over lavish dinners that lasted for hours. It was excruciating for me, watching Roberto in animated conversation with one of his more attractive female buyers and enjoying himself immensely. One night, I felt ill and begged to be excused. When Roberto failed to respond sympathetically, let alone respectfully, I stood up and excused myself. Roberto caught up to me outside, just as I was getting into the limousine, and took me roughly by the arm.

“
Cosi fai,
eh? What do you think you are doing? This is important to me, to my business, you cannot just do whatever you want whenever you want to do it!
Ecco,
you!” he called to the driver. “You take her back to the hotel, and make sure she doesn’t go anywhere.”

I looked at him, stupefied, but held my tongue and climbed into the backseat of the car.

Once in the hotel room, I wasted no time in calling my mother, who advised me to get on the next plane to America.

“Don’t go to New York,” she instructed me. “Go directly to Chicago, throw him off the scent. I’ll meet you there.”

Very quickly, then, I packed my modest bag, took the elevator to the kitchen level, located a door that opened onto an alley, and walked until I found a high street, where I flagged a taxi and ordered the driver to take me to Heathrow. Within hours, I was on a plane to O’Hare.

One of the most interesting and, one might even say, endearing qualities of certain Italians is their singular ability to work effectively while feeling rage and desire at the same time, and one of the most peculiar and pathetic traits of an actress is her compulsive need to check her answering service for messages at every conceivable opportunity. This I did upon arrival in Chicago and learned, with no little satisfaction, that Roberto had left ten frantic messages, all of them alternately hot and cold, plaintive and bitter. I was to call him back immediately, I was to forgive him unconditionally, I was an impossible brat and a prima donna, he loved me madly, was intoxicated, helpless without me, I was to inform him of my whereabouts pronto or there would be serious repercussions. But I was loved. No, I was adored. In fact, I was
honored
above all women. I was the future mother of his children, the secret Madonna of his heart, the fire of his loins. My answering service operator, to her infinite credit, actually read these messages aloud without bursting into laughter.