“Partners don’t keep secrets from one another.”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew you would react this way.”
“Oh, now you’re a mind reader? The keeper of all information. And you know best?”
“In this situation, yes. We had a wonderful week together.”
“Now it’s ruined.”
“Oh, that’s how it works. One problem, and everything is ruined?”
“This is a big-ass problem.”
“You’re a child.”
“And you’re not my boss. I ran a business without you. You’ve made the situation worse. I could’ve convinced her to stay open. I don’t have a manufacturer anymore. Not one I can trust.”
“I was planning on helping you replace Roberta—”
“Stay out of it! This is not your concern!”
Gianluca was furious. He stood up and faced me. “What do you think a marriage is? Do you think it’s going out to dinner and getting dressed up and making love in every room of the house, and then you go your way and I go mine and we meet in the kitchen for dinner and talk about whether it rained that day?
“If that’s what you want, then leave me now. I don’t want to be your butler, or your cook, or your tanner. I want to be your husband. For me, that means that I guard what you hold precious, I stand with you, I work with you, I make sure you have rest when you need it, I open the books and we figure out the finances, I build a space where you can create and I can help you get your creations out into the world.”
“I don’t need your help! And by the way, work doesn’t consume my life—I’m here with you now, aren’t I?”
“And it’s such a pleasure.”
I ignored his comment because I wanted him to understand. “Gianluca, you might as well know this tonight. I’m an artist. I can’t turn it on and off. It’s not just what I do, it’s who I am.”
“Let me help make your life easy. With two of us working at the business, the business will not consume our lives. It’s not worth it, Valentina. There isn’t a prize at the end of a hard day’s work that can compare to the happiness you feel when you sleep with your lover in your arms—the lover you chose, the lover you married.”
“You went behind my back.”
“I protected you.”
“I don’t need protection!”
“Yes, you do. And if you think you don’t, you’re a fool. Letting me love you and letting me protect you is not a weakness—it takes courage. It means that I take your well-being and safety as seriously as my own—as Orsola’s—as that of anyone that I love. But it’s more than that. You’re my wife. We are one now.”
“We’re one, all right. You’re number one.”
“I don’t want to be king. I asked to be your husband. What you love, I love. What worries you, worries me. What you dream of, I will try and make come true. That’s all it is, Valentina. I have no other agenda.”
“You betrayed me.”
“You choose that word to describe me? That’s crazy!”
“Now I’m crazy for looking out for myself and the business I built.”
“I didn’t betray you. I wanted you to have a few days of peace. Your American ambition controls everything about you.”
“I like my American ambition! I’m proud of it!”
“At the expense of everything else? Your ambition loves you back, gives you a peaceful home? Makes you feel complete?”
“Yes, it makes me feel useful and important and necessary. I make beautiful shoes just like my great-grandfather, just like Gram, my grandfather. This is history I’m living here. This is a legacy that I have to maintain. Why should I apologize for my high standards? The standards I set? I have something to show for my hard work. I’m doing something special with my shoes. I married tradition and style.”
“Now we have it! Now I hear you! Now I know what you’re married to—you’re married to some idea, a notion that what you produce is more important than anything else in your life. I’m Italian. We don’t eat ambition three times a day to sustain ourselves. We work hard, but it doesn’t fill us up. Only love can do that. Only love. And here I am, in love with you, and you don’t see my purpose in your life. Why don’t you decide what’s important to you? And when you do, let me know.”
Gianluca grabbed a room key and left.
I will not stay married to this man. He’s ridiculous. Pompous. Patronizing. A know-it-all. To think he wanted me to take his name. Thank God I drew the line. That would have been one more thing that I’d given up to become his wife, and one more thing I’d have to try and replace once he left me! What made me think I could make this work? Why hadn’t I seen this before I married him?
And why had I been blindsided by Roberta’s announcement? We talked every week, and yes, we’d complain about problems with the business. But I’d believed she was in it for the long haul like me.
Had I misread her? Her passion? Intent? She had a sign over her factory in Buenos Aires that read “Since 1925,” and I have the same sign on Perry Street. We came from the same origins. We had the same roots.
I believed Roberta and I were more than cousins. We were simpatico artists who’d found each other after a long family estrangement, determined to resurrect the Angelini brand on two continents and change the world one beautiful pair of shoes at a time. But it would be no longer. I was in the shoe business for life. For Roberta, it was a means to an end, a path on the way to a new chapter in her work life.
I didn’t know if my heart was breaking because I felt abandoned by Roberta, or misunderstood by Gianluca. What is true: I didn’t see either scenario coming.
I sat and stewed. My big, fast Italian wedding had done the thing I was most afraid of—it had taken my attention off my work. I resented every moment wasted on or around my wedding.
I grabbed the laptop and sat in a chair and began reading all of Roberta’s e-mails in chronological order. She was selling the factory because she’d gotten an offer on the building and the complex behind it. They were building apartment houses in Buenos Aires. Roberta wanted to go back to school to study political science. What? Shoe manufacturer to politician?
Gabriel picked up his cell when I called him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m getting a divorce.”
“What?”
“Roberta’s selling the factory, and Gianluca knew about it.”
“How is that Gianluca’s fault?”
“He kept it from me.” I began to cry.
“Maybe he wanted you to have a honeymoon. A vacation. You haven’t been on one in years.”
“I don’t need a vacation! I need to be home in my shop, making shoes.”
“No, everybody needs a vacation.”
“He says I’m obsessed.”
“You are. Who plans a wedding and builds her staff at work at the same time? You hired Charlie, then Jaclyn, then Tess. Who’s next? Your mother?”
I didn’t care about the staff. I was angry, and I wanted to revel in my righteousness. I wanted Gabriel to understand that I was right and Gianluca was a judgmental meddler. “He says I put my work before my life.”
“You do,” Gabriel said calmly.
“I don’t know how else to do it. He says he’s my partner now.”
“Did you think you were going to get married, and he was going to roll leather in one room and you’d build shoes in the other? Are you kidding?”
“I thought I’d have my work, and he’d have his. Yes.”
“Val, this is why shotgun weddings never work. You didn’t think this through.”
“No, I didn’t. I’m going to get an annulment. Call that priest.”
“He might be able to give you one, but we wouldn’t understand it.”
“I don’t care. I want out.”
“Oh, honey, stop it. You love Gia
nluca.”
“I don’t want to love him. I want to come home and have my life back.”
“You’ll have your life. It will just be different. It will be better.”
“How?”
“You have a man that loves you. Every person that ever lived has a dream. To be loved. To have someone in your corner. He didn’t do anything to hurt you. He was trying to help.”
“But I need to know things,” I wailed.
“You need a plan. You two need to sort things out.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You say that, but you don’t mean it.”
“I mean it.”
“No, you don’t, Val. I know when you don’t mean things. And you don’t mean it. This man is the love of your life. He’s a good guy, and he’s got your back. Now you have to sit down and reason with him. No crying or histrionics. I know that’s hard for you. But you have to do it.”
“Or what?”
“Or you end up like Aunt Feen. Bitter and alone with a rum and Coke in one hand and a remote in the other, having sexual fantasies about Alex Trebek.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad right now.”
“Come on. It’s hell on earth. Talk to Gianluca. He’s smart. He’ll listen.”
“I don’t know where he went.”
“He’s probably downstairs at the bar. That’s where I go when you get on my nerves. I have a stool at Automatic Slim’s on Washington. Why don’t you go look for him?”
“What will I say when I find him?”
“Tell him you need to make a plan. A life plan. The two of you.”
“But I don’t know what to ask for.”
“Start with how you want to live, and then talk about the Angelini Shoe Company. Don’t dive into business. Ask him what he wants first.”
“He wanted me.”
“And he still does.”
“You think so?”
“Honey, only a man that loves you would move to Greenwich Village and build a new life when his old one was perfectly fine. May I point out that he left Tuscany for you? That’s the one place on earth everyone wants to go and never wants to leave. And yet, he did it for you. It’s you that he wants. It’s you that he married. Stop acting like you still have a choice here. You love him too. Now go and find him and make this right.”
I hung up the phone and looked in the mirror. I looked awful, and slightly crazy, not unlike my great-aunt after a few cocktails. I sat down on the edge of the bed and breathed. When tears would come to my eyes, I blinked until they stopped. I was doing everything within myself to get to a place where I could face Gianluca. I grabbed my coat and went out the door.
7
New Orleans is nothing like New York City, but I’m an urban girl born and raised, so I can find my way around any city in the world if there’s a grid and I can walk it. I realized, as I walked through the French Quarter, that I really hadn’t paid a lot of attention to where we went. I’d been content to follow Gianluca wherever he wanted to go. As I walked through the same streets alone, the haunted beauty of the city was lost on me. It was no longer lush and romantic. It was strange and confusing.
My feet were beginning to hurt. I’d run out of the room in a pair of mules, leather slides I take on trips so I’m never barefoot on hotel room floors. They’re meant to get me from the bed to the bathroom, not walking around on pavement. It seemed all my decisions, great and small, were misguided. I couldn’t even choose the right shoes.
I passed a small, crowded bistro next to Café Du Monde, our regular breakfast place. Something told me to stop and slow down at Ilaria’s. It reminded me of a trattoria in Arezzo. It wasn’t just a restaurant. There was a party going on. The crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk. The outdoor café was packed with customers eating crocks of gumbo and cracking the shells of crawfish while downing mimosas. I could have used a Gin Fizz myself right about then.
Going up on tiptoe to look inside, I saw the back of Gianluca’s head at the bar. I squeezed my way through the crowd until I got to him. He was puffing on a cigarette, the open pack lying on the bar, and drinking a glass of bourbon.
“You smoke?”
“Sometimes.”
“I mean, I knew you had a cigar now and then.”
“And now and then I have a cigarette.” He looked at the rows of liquor on the shelf behind the bar, not at me.
It was noisy, and I found myself getting angry all over again. Maybe if he had embraced me and said, “Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk?” I would’ve forgiven him on the spot. But instead, he put me on ice like Kentucky bourbon. He took a slow drag off the cigarette as if I were not there. I became furious all over again. I raised my voice. “Do you want a divorce?”
“We haven’t been married yet.”
“It’s best to catch a mistake sooner rather than later.”
“And how do you know this?”
“Common sense.”
He nodded. “You’re very calm.” Finally, he looked at me. “You’ve thought this through.”
I broke his gaze and looked off. “I’m holding it together.”
“I can see that.”
“You said some awful things to me.”
“I’m capable of saying awful things, just as you are capable of doing them.”
“Whoa right there. You’re the one who kept a secret from me.”
“It wasn’t a secret. You could have read your e-mails all week.”
“I didn’t because you didn’t want me to.”
“Oh, so you do listen to me.”
“I respected your wishes.”
Gianluca turned and faced me. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be angry with him, but he might have been the most beautiful man I had ever seen. No, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. If I looked at his blue eyes for a hundred years, I would never be able to describe their color. I looked away because I didn’t want to make this about his eyes. I was tired and my feet hurt and anger exhausts me.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I’ve been crying.”
“I can see that.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I think we need a plan,” he said.
“Do I need to call a lawyer?”
“Why would you do that?”
“Don’t you want to get rid of me?”
Gianluca put out his cigarette. “No. Do you want to get rid of me?”
I felt my eyes fill with tears, and instead of trying to hide them, I just cried. “I don’t know how to be married.”
“Neither do I.”
“I know. You’re divorced! Whose brilliant idea was it to marry a divorced man? There’s a reason things don’t work out.”
“Maybe Aunt Feen was right. Maybe I am befuddled.”
“Besmirched. I don’t think it’s just you. It’s me too. Maybe it’s all me, and you’re just reacting to the weirdness. I think I am incapable of being a wife. I don’t want to change anything about my life, and yet I wanted to marry you.”
Gianluca put some cash on the bar. He took my hand and guided me through the crowd to the street. I would miss the security of his hand in mine when he divorced me and jumped on the first plane back to Tuscany.
“I can find my way back to the hotel,” I told him. I felt the crush of defeat in my heart and then, suddenly, all around me. This whole thing seemed impossible, and I didn’t have a clue how to communicate what was wrong. I was wrong. That much I knew.
“We need to talk,” he said. “You build shoes. Would you ever build a pair without a pattern?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Well, then, how can we expect to stay married if we don’t have a plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have an idea, Valentina.” Gianluca put his
arm around me, and we walked back toward our hotel.
“You do?”
“I think we give this marriage one more shot. Just tonight. One more night. You may still want a divorce in the morning, and I will give you one if you still want one tomorrow.”
“What magic thing is going to happen tonight to change our minds?”
“If it’s magic, we won’t know in advance.”
We walked back to the hotel without saying much. If I saw an antique urn, or he saw a stone wall that captured his attention, we’d stop and observe its beauty without commenting on it. We were avoiding returning to our hotel room where our anger hung in the air like a fog. Gianluca had made it clear that I should think of this as our last night together. As we climbed the stairs to our room, I felt like Anne Boleyn on the way to the tower. At least she knew why she was banished. There was within me an urgency to show him it hadn’t all been a giant mistake. I loved him. I had wanted to marry him. And I wanted to show him exactly what he meant to me before we were over.
He pulled the drapes on the terrace closed and turned to face me. I unbuttoned his shirt because I wanted to be close to his heart. If this was our last night, I thought of all the things I wanted him to know, so that he might pack them up and take them with him wherever he went. As we made love, it was as if we were in water, immersed in an ocean beyond the gulf as blue as a night sky. How could two people connect like this and yet have so much trouble communicating? Maybe I needed to learn Italian, because I felt he had studied me in all my American detail.
He kissed me a thousand times. If his kisses were rose petals, I could have scattered them all the way home. It was as if he was storing them up, making certain I’d have enough to last in the years to come. He wrapped me in the blanket and pulled me close.
“It isn’t enough to love you, but I do,” I told him.
“Love is enough.”
“I have to put you first.”
“Do you want to?”
I had to think. I held up my hand so he wouldn’t take it as a no. Plus, I’m the kind of woman who agrees to anything after romance. I can’t help it. It’s when I’m the most grateful. “I need something from you.”