Born Round: A Story of Family, Food and a Ferocious Appetite (45 page)

The truth: this self-awareness might well spare me any further rides on the gain-and-loss roller-coaster, might put an end to yo-yo me.

The truth: I couldn’t be sure. For now I was on the straight and narrow—or narrow
ish.
But it might not stay that way. I was getting slower and creakier. But I was trying. I was making a real effort.

 

 

 

 

O
n December 31, 2008, we gathered at Dad’s: my siblings, their spouses, my nieces and nephews. Dad was actually in Atlanta for the winter with Dottie, who had been living there when they met and had held on to her place after they married. But the rest of us packed into his Scarsdale house to welcome the arrival of 2009 together.packed

Adelle roasted an enormous beef tenderloin and laid out several pounds of boiled shrimp, along with cocktail sauce. Sylvia arranged about six cheeses on a large platter, and kept asking me which I’d tried and what I’d thought of them. It tickled me how everyone in the family had instantly attributed such keen epicurean discernment to me the minute I started reviewing restaurants: how they’d suddenly begun consulting me on dinner party menus and whether the rack of lamb was ready to come out of the oven. Before, I’d just been the family member who could put away more of the lamb than anyone else.

They seemed to have as much fun with my job as I did, and that made me feel so proud, especially when one of my nieces or nephews, whose ages now spanned six to twelve years old, beamingly told me that some teacher or other adult in their lives had asked if they were related to the Bruni who reviewed restaurants
.
They thought it was cool beyond words that some people who didn’t actually know their uncle nonetheless knew who he was. And everyone in the family got a kick out of the mention of me in a question on
Jeopardy,
which asked contestants to connect my name and my large spending allowance to the right position at the
Times
.

They got a kick, too, out of this odd Web site where a person could buy T-shirts, sweatshirts, bibs and even pet apparel with the words “I Am Frank Bruni” on them. The joke behind the clothing seemed to be that its wearer would set himself or herself up for better treatment in restaurants.

“You know,” I told my family members, “I often get these weird reports from people in the restaurant business about diners making reservations in my name.”

“Why would they do that?” asked my nephew Harrison, tuning in to the conversation late. Like Harry in the past, he got distracted.

“Sometimes because they think it’ll guarantee them a better table,” I explained. “But other times, I don’t know.” In fact I’d recently received an e-mail from the owner of a restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, who asked: “Did you eat at our restaurant today? A gentleman ate at our counter and, after paying, identified himself as you.” The gentleman was someone else, and I wondered what he thought he was accomplishing by brandishing my name on the way
out
the door.

At my dad’s house that night I noticed how Leslie, nearing thirteen, had started picking at her food and controlling her portions. That seemed normal enough for a girl her age. I made a silent wish that it would stay normal. She still reminded me of Mom in terms of how headstrong she was. But she reminded me of Grandma in terms of how attuned to public appearances she could be. Both women lived on in her.

Along with the beef tenderloin there were mashed potatoes, but I passed on those, just as I’d avoided all the peanuts and almonds lying around during the cocktail hour, because I knew that I’d want seconds of the beef.

I also had seconds of a frozen peanut butter pie that Lisa made for dessert.

“The recipe says it’s low-fat,” she reminded me.

“That’s what Mom always said about that multicolored sherbet thing of hers,” I said, referring to a dessert with three kinds of sherbet, angel food cake and Cool Whip. “But when you’re trafficking in that much sugar, I’m not sure the fat content really matters anymore.”

The next day I didn’t feel as stuffed as I had after so many Bruni Thanksgivings and other family get-togethers in the past, but I felt fuller than I’d hoped to. And so I regretted that I’d made a date for that evening with Tom, a handsome, considerate guy I’d met a month and a half earlier and been dating exclusively since. He seemed like a keeper—like the first keeper in a very long time. I wanted him to see only the best of me, and I had the sense that the tenderloin and peanut butter pie might be visible on me in an ever-so-slightly increased width of love handles, an exaggerated roundness of belly.

But honestly: Could I look
that
much different than when we’d seen each other just three days before? Could his interest in me hinge on such minor fluctuations in appearance, and if it did, was it an interest worth worrying about and working to sustain?

We went to a new Greek restaurant in my neighborhood. While we stood in the bar area drinking wine and waiting for our table, he kept his hand on my back. He mentioned a trip he’d be taking to Europe in a few months and said I should consider going with him.

So he was already looking that far ahead? Apparently the steak and the peanut butter pie weren’t such spoilers.

For dinner that night we had a chickpea spread, a fish roe spread, a dish of plump and tender meatballs, a slab of swordfish smothered in capers and some honey-drizzled pastry for dessert.

“Hey, hey,” he said as he dug further into the dessert, “don’t you want some more of this? You better take some more of this before I finish it.”

He was working his way through it quickly, the same way, I now realized, that he’d worked his way through the rest of the meal. I hadn’t noticed any restraint in him, any self-consciousness. A part of me envied that, a part resented that, another part was just a little scared. I couldn’t let myself be like him. When and how should I tell him why? And what would he make of it?

I took another bite of the dessert, just so I didn’t seem to be avoiding it. But I stopped there. Somehow, I’d learned to do that. At least for now.

Without the permission and patience of so many family members who gave generously of their time and recollections, I wouldn’t have been able to lend the detail I did to the anecdotes in this book. I’m hugely grateful to all of them: my father, Frank Sr.; my siblings and siblings-in-law, Mark, Lisa, Harry, Sylvia and especially Adelle, who combed her memory longest and hardest; and my wonderful, wonderful uncles Jim and Mario and aunts Vicki and Carolyn. Thanks, too, to Lisa’s mom, Betty Valek, for helping me get the time line of a pivotal Thanksgiving right.

Thanks to my nieces and nephews, Leslie, Frank, Erica, Sarah, Harrison, Mark, Gavin, Christina and Bella, for forgiving me when I cut visits short or stole away with my laptop instead of hanging out with them.

I got crucial, concrete input for, and help with, this project from Alessandra Stanley, Maureen Dowd, Ned Martel, Kerry Lauerman, Barbara Laing, Soo-Jeong Kang and in particular Tom de Kay. I thank them so very, very much.

It would be impossible to mention all the additional friends and colleagues who listened to me prattle about this book, assisted me with a specific aspect of it or just made me feel calmer while I chiseled away at it. So this is woefully incomplete, but:

Jennifer Steinhauer, Marysue Rucci, Elinor Burkett, Anne Kornblut, Campbell Brown, Jeremy Peters, Rick Berke, Jill Abramson, Renee Murawski, Julia Moskin, Kim Severson, Ginia Bellafante, Vivian Toy, Jason Horowitz and Gary Simko—you’re awesome.

And both I and this book would be in considerably worse shape without the support I’ve received over the last few years from Melissa Clark, Kate Krader, Alice Feiring, Elizabeth Minchilli, Bill and Emma Keller, Bill Schmidt, Sam Sifton, Dwight Garner, Kit Seelye, Barbara Graustark, Trish Hall, Pete Wells, Nick Fox, Kathleen McElroy, Charles Isherwood, Frank Rich, Alex Witchel, Don Van Natta, Lizette Alvarez, Seth Gilmore, Christian Cervegnano, Stuart Emmrich, John Haskins, Rusty O’Kelley, Gerry Marzorati, Sarah Lyall, Ed Wyatt, Michael Kimmelman, Ashley Parker, Florence Fabricant, Zahra Sethna, Marian Burros, Esther Fein, John Barrett, John Berman, Kerry Voss, Adam Nagourney, Danielle Mattoon, John Geddes, Ariel Kaminer, Eric Asimov, Biff Grimes and Helene Cooper.

Thanks to Lisa Bankoff for embracing this project and finding it the right home, and to Jane Fleming, Ann Godoff, Tracy Locke, Liz Calamari, Lindsay Whalen and the folks at Penguin Press for taking such very good care of it when it got there.

Thanks to Tom Nickolas for making the home stretch a happy time and me a much happier person.

And thanks above all to two loving, dynamic, difficult, complicated women who are still with me every day, so long after they left: Adelina Mazzone Bruni and Leslie Frier Bruni. Somewhere, somehow, we’ll eat again.