From Scratch by Tembi Locke

Author:Tembi Locke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2019-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

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Back in L.A., I pulled a cake out of my suitcase. The cake from Polizzi we had carried across three continents. Pino had told us it was dry cake and could be kept wrapped and unrefrigerated for up to ten days. He assured us that once in Vincent’s hands in Los Angeles, Vincent would know what to do with it. Something about a liqueur that could be poured onto it or about it being like a panforte or an American fruit cake, neither of which I had tasted or held much appeal. So Saro became the cake’s custodian while I balked at the extra encumbrance when we boarded a train in Fez. I had pushed it to the back of our hotel room closet in Marrakesh. In my mind, there was just no way that cake would ever set foot on US soil. There was no way the acclaimed actor Vincent Schiavelli would ever eat a dessert brought to him by complete strangers.

We had barely finished handing over our customs form after landing in Los Angeles before Saro asked me, “So how are you going to get in touch with Vincent?” He asked it with a whiff of challenge, as if he had done his part and now it was my turn.

I let two days go by; then I called my agent to ask about Vincent Schiavelli’s agent with what I am sure sounded like a convoluted story about a cake and connection to Sicily.

Thirty minutes later, my jaw dropped when Vincent Schiavelli called our home phone. Two hours later, the actor was standing in our one-bedroom apartment, wearing round wire-framed spectacles and a pastel linen jacket on his six foot–plus frame.

“This is perfect, I am having a dinner party later tonight. This will make a delicious dessert.” He was delighted, beaming with incredulous joy that he was about to share a taste of his beloved ancestral land with his closest friends. That a stranger had taken the time to bring him cake.

We made small talk about where exactly in Sicily Saro was from, how long he had been in the States, how we had come to have the cake, how Pino had known to give it to us. I didn’t mention that I was an actor, too, which, in Pino’s world, meant that naturally Vincent and I were colleagues and would know each other. After fifteen minutes, I snapped a picture of Saro, Schiavelli, and The Cake just before Vincent sauntered down our steps and back into his own life.

Saro and I told that story for years. He used it as evidence of the tenacity and determination of his people. He used it as a way of educating Americans on what it means to hold on to a piece of yourself when you straddle two cultures, calling two lands home. Each time he told it, he referred to the protagonist in the story not as himself but as “Schiavelli’s cake.” The cake was the connective tissue that had brought a Hollywood star into an immigrant’s home.

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