Chapter One

The Duke of Décor

on the Jersey Shore

1970

I want you to imagine my house. It's a classic English country
cottage, nestled on an inlet overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the
borough of Our Lady of Fatima, New Jersey, about five miles north
of Interlaken. The fieldstone exterior gives the illusion of a
small fortress, so I softened the overall effect with white
hyacinth shrubs and a blanket of sky-blue morning glories cascading
over the dormers like loose curls on a cherub. After all, a man's
home must first be inviting.

Every morning at sunrise a honeyed pink light fills the front room,
throwing a rosy glaze on the walls that cannot be achieved with
paint. Believe me, I've tried. I settled instead for a neutral
shade on the walls, a delicate beige I call flan. When the walls
are tame, the furnishings need to pop. So I found the perfect
chintz, with giant jewel-toned flowers of turquoise, coral, and
jade bursting on a butter-yellow background, to cover my Louis
Quatorze sofa and chairs. The upholstery soaks up the light and
warms the room better than a fire blazing in the hearth. Anyone who
says you will tire of a bold pattern on your furniture is a fool.
The right fabric will give you years of joy; it can become your
signature. Scalamandré's Triomphe #26301 has my name on
it.

My day begins at dawn as I take my cup of strong black espresso
outside to watch the sunrise. I learned this ritual from my mother,
who worked in a bread shop. Bakers are the great philosophers of
the world, mostly because they have to get up early. When the world
is quiet, great art is created --- or, at the very least,
conceptualized. Now is the moment to sketch, make notes, and
dream.

From my front porch, a dignified, simple portal with a slate floor
(I laid the charcoal-gray, dusty-mauve, and smoky-blue slabs
myself), I watch the colors of the sky and sea change at the whims
of the wind. Sometimes the ocean crashes in foamy white waves that
look like ruffles. Then, suddenly, the light is gone and everything
turns to gray satin. When the sun returns, the charcoal clouds lift
away and the world becomes as tranquil as a library, the water as
flat as a page in a book, Venetian glass under a blue cloudless
sky.

What a boon to live on the water! Such delicious shades and hues!
This is a template worthy of the greatest painters. The textures of
sand and stone could inspire incomparable sculptures, and the
sounds --- the steady lapping of the waves, the sweet chirping of
the birds --- make this a sanctuary. I soak up the view in all its
detail and translate this glorious palette to the interiors of
local homes. You see, I am the Town Decorator.

Many have compared our little borough to the village my family
emigrated from, the enchanting Santa Margherita nestled in the Gulf
of Genoa on the Mediterranean coast of Italy. I've been there, but
I favor my hometown over the original. Italy, despite its
earthiness and charm, can never be New Jersey. Here we value
evolution and change; Italy, while it warms the heart, is a
monument to the past. In America we change our rooms as often as
our fashions. In Italy you're likely to find throw pillows older
than the Shroud of Turin. It's just a different way to live.

Part of my job is to convince my clients that change is good, then
guide them to the right choices. I remember when I installed a
velvet headboard on my cousin Tiki Matera's double bed (she was
plagued by insomnia from the cradle) and she told me that, for the
first time in her life, she felt so secure that she slept through
the night. That Art Deco touch changed her room and her life ---
not a small thing. That's the business I'm really in: creating
appropriate surroundings to provide comfort and that essential
touch of glamour. I built my company, the House of B, and my
reputation on it. HOB stands for the eye of Bartolomeo di Crespi
and the guts of beauty itself: truth, color, and dramatic sweep,
from slipcover to oven mitt. I don't fool around.

My work can't be defined by one particular style. The rococo period
where French design and Italian flair came together make my heart
leap for joy in my chest. But, I love them all: Chinese Modern,
Regency English, French Norman, Prairie Nouveau, Victorian (without
the precious), Early American (with the precious), all the Louises
from I through V (Vuitton, of course), postwar, prewar, bungalow,
foxhole, and even the occasional log cabin. I can go big and I can
do small.

I work from the inside out. Truly great interior design includes
the rooms you live in and everything your eye can see from your
windows. I often bring the colors from outside indoors, which
soothes the soul and creates harmony. I may install a reflecting
pool outside your living room to catch the moonlight, or plant a
garden of wildflowers with a rose arbor anchored over a flowing
fountain beyond your kitchen window, or perhaps place a
wrought-iron loveseat surrounded by lilac bushes outside your
bedroom for a midnight rendezvous.

Your home should inspire you to greater heights of emotion. It
should crackle with color and pizzazz. Every detail is important;
every tassel, tieback, and sheer should say something. Under my
trained eye, stale corners become Roman baths, while bland
entryways become magnificent foyers and crappy pasteboard ceilings
become frescoes. Let's face it, I can take a ranch and turn it into
a villa. In fact, I did that very thing right on Vittorio Drive,
three blocks away.

My life as a decorator began not with a sudden flash of
inspiration, but with a problem. I was born without symmetry. This
is not my real nose. As soon as I was old enough to pull myself up
onto the stool in front of my mother's dressing table (an Art Deco
red enamel vanity with a pink velvet seat circa 1920), where I
could pull the side mirrors in to study my face from three angles,
I realized that something had to be done. From the east, my nose
looked like the fin on a Cadillac, from the west, a wedge of pie,
and dead on, a frightening pair of black caverns, two nostrils so
wide and deep you could lose your luggage in them. It had to
go.

As an Italian American, I was born into a family of prominent
noses. The di Crespi clan was known for their fish (Pop had a
dinghy for clamming and crabbing, and a storefront in town to sell
his catch) and their profiles. We were not alone. Our neighbors
were also of Italian descent, many from the same village, and they
too had versions of The Beak. The variations included all possible
shapes, angles, and appointments, all with the same result: too
large.

I was raised to be proud of my cultural and nasal heritage, so it
wasn't shame that brought me to the surgeon, it was a desire for
perfection. My instinct is to create balance. Faces, like
buildings, require good bones.

As soon as I could save up enough money (I worked after school and
for five summers in the Mandelbaums' bank as a coin sorter and
roller), I took the bus from Our Lady of Fatima (OLOF) to the
office of Dr. Jonas Berman on East Eighty-sixth Street in
Manhattan. I was eighteen years old with a spiral-bound sketch pad
under my arm and a checkbook in my pocket.

First, I'd drawn a self-portrait in charcoal, showing my original
nose. Then, in a series of detailed drawings, I fashioned the nose
I wanted from every angle. Dr. Berman flipped through the pad.
Amazed at my artistic skill, he cited Leonardo da Vinci's pencil
sketches of early flying machines as being substandard to my
talent.

If I was going to have rhinoplasty, I wanted to make sure I had the
nose of my dreams. I didn't want a hatchet job that would leave me
with a Hollywood pug. I wanted regal, straight, and classic. In
short, Italianate without the size. I got exactly what I
wanted.

My sister, Toot (as in the song "Toot, Toot, Tootsie," not the toot
of a horn), who is eleven years older than me, was the first person
to see my new nose when the swelling went down. She was so thrilled
at the result that she convinced my father to sell his car so she
could have the same surgery. My father, never one to tell a woman
no, paid for her to have The Operation (as my mother came to call
it). Never mind that I had worked like a farmer to earn my new
profile. But I don't hold a grudge.

Toot elected to have her nose done not in New York City by my
capable surgeon, but by a doctor in Jersey City who was rumored to
have given Vic Damone his signature tilt. (I am the only person in
my family who does not believe in medical bargains.) When Dr.
Mavrodontis peeled Toot's bandages off, Mom, Pop, and I were there
for the unveiling. Mama clapped her hands joyfully as Papa got a
tear in his eye. Talk about change. Her new nose had a sharp tip
with an upturn so steep you could hang a Christmas stocking off it.
Gone was her old nose, which had looked like an elbow; but was this
delicate Ann Miller version an improvement?

To be fair, the new nose gave my sister the dose of self-confidence
she needed. She suddenly believed she was beautiful, so she went on
a spartan diet of well-done steak and raw tomatoes and lost a good
thirty pounds, tweezed her eyebrows and straightened her hair (by
sleeping on wet orange-juice cans every night for a year), and,
shortly thereafter, in the right pair of black clam diggers and a
tight angora sweater, fell in love with Alonzo "Lonnie" Falcone, a
jeweler, at a Knights of Columbus weenie roast in Belmar. Six
months later they had a big church wedding at Our Lady of Fatima
Church and three sons followed in short order. Her nose may not be
perfect, but it was lucky.

817 Corinne Way has been Toot's address for eighteen years. After
they lived for a couple of hardscrabble years in a row house in
Bayonne, Lonnie's business took off, so they bought a home in OLOF
to be near my folks. When Toot and Lonnie divorced, she got the
house, a lovely Georgian with grand Palladian columns anchoring a
polished oak door trimmed in squares of leaded glass.

I pull up in the driveway next to my sister's chartreuse Cadillac.
I get out of the car, taking a small footstool that I reupholstered
for Toot with me. The lawn is freshly mowed and green. The boxwood
hedges are trimmed and tidy. Everything about the exterior of the
house is appropriate except for one glaring design misfire: My
sister mucked up the entrance with a countrified porch swing she
found at a tag sale in Maine. I tell her that a Georgian with a
porch swing is like a hooker in a girdle, but she keeps the swing
and I keep my mouth shut. The truth is, I'm a little afraid of her.
Toot has always been a second mother to me, and any Italian son
will tell you that two Italian mothers in a lifetime is a handful.
I'm not complaining, because we adore each other; I defer to her on
family matters, and she to me on aesthetic ones (most of the time;
after all, she kept the swing).

"I'm here!" I holler cheerfully. Toot's house always smells of
anisette and fresh-perked coffee, the lovely bouquet of our
mother's home.

"Back here, B," she yells.

Carrying the footstool I'd re-covered in pale blue wool for her
boudoir, I make my way down the long hallway, which is papered in a
Schumacher pale-yellow-and-white paisley print. I decorated the
entire house, but my favorite room is her kitchen. I did a real
number on it.

First, I sent my sister to Las Vegas to visit Cousin Iggy With The
Asthma for three months. Then I gutted the old kitchen. I installed
a bay window on the back wall to maximize the light and designed a
Roman shade of pure white muslin to let in the sun but keep out the
nosy neighbors. Underneath I built a window seat with cushions
covered in a practical red cotton twill (Duralee Hot Red #429). I
believe that any fabrics used in a kitchen should be
washable.

For fun, I used oversized zippers on the seat cushions to pick up
the metal accents of the appliances. To bring nature indoors, I
used rustic white birch paneling on the wall around the window. I
papered the remaining walls with a bold Colefax and Fowler
red-and-white stripe and installed white Formica cabinets with red
ceramic pulls. The result is peppermint-candy delish!

The countertop, in white marble, has an extension that swings out
in an L shape to make a breakfast nook, with sleek bar stools
covered in white patent leather with brass-stud trim. The studs are
an excellent accent to the shimmering copper pots that hang over
the sink area like charms on a bracelet. The refrigerator
(side-by-side) and stove (gas) were purchased in white, but I had
them delivered to Chubby's Garage, where they were
jet-spray-painted a bright, shiny, fiery red. I'm forever thinking
of ways to give design that extra kick, using unlikely sources.
Take note.

The kitchen table is topped with wide white ceramic tiles. Beneath
the table, I installed a cutting board that pulls out for
additional workspace. It comes in handy when Toot makes pasta. The
table is surrounded by cozy booth seating in a cheerful red
gingham. The palette works. It's vibrant! It's up! When you stand
in this kitchen, you feel as though you are on the inside of a
tomato, the exact effect I wanted.

"You like my pants set? It's new." Toot does her version of a
model's twirl, pointing her right foot out in front of the left and
holding her arms out waist-high like a milkmaid. The sweater is a
disaster, an enormous white pilgrim collar on a cable-knit orange
cardigan. (I can see that the wool is a fine cashmere, but what
good is it? The eye sees round, round, round instead of sleek. My
sister needs length, not width.) The brown slacks have a wide bell
hem. She looks like a piece of candy corn. "It's a St. John knit,"
she says, giving me an in-the-know wink.

"Only a saint could get away with such a color combination," I
say.

Like all Mediterranean girls, my sister is aging well. By soft
candlelight or with the help of a dimmer switch, she has the look
of a plump Natalie Wood. In broad daylight, she's a dead ringer for
our great-grandmother, the pleasantly pudgy Bartolomea
Farfanfiglia, whom we never knew, but who stares at us with disgust
from a sepia photograph on the television set.

Excerpted from ROCOCO © Copyright 2005 by Adriana
Trigiani. Reprinted with permission by Random House, Inc. All
rights reserved.