I organized my notes of potential factory buildings from best to worst, separating out my favorites. I tried to imagine the spaces accommodating the operations I had seen in Buenos Aires. I was concerned about ceiling height, an area for shipping, and enough space for cutting and finishing.
“It’s not like buying a house,” Gianluca said, flipping off the television.
“I know, honey.”
“Are you sure about putting up a factory here?”
“Why? Are you?”
“Why would you choose this town over Italy?”
“Didn’t you say that the factories in Italy are booked?”
“We could put off the manufacturing until next year.”
“That’s not an option. I have orders to fill.” I took a deep breath, hoping I wouldn’t snap. “I like the idea of Youngstown because the raw space is cheap, it’s close enough to New York City, and they have a workforce here that needs jobs. Most of these families are like mine—they’ve worked in factories or run their own small businesses. They would understand the mission.”
“Your father said things had changed over the years,” Gianluca said. “The workforce isn’t what it was.”
“We’ll revive it.”
“So you’re going to find the space, renovate it—”
“Gianluca, there are no shoe factories here.”
“So you have to renovate. How will you pay for it?”
“We’ll get a loan.”
Gianluca picked up the file and began leafing through the circulars.
“You don’t want to open a factory at all, do you?”
“I want you to have what you need to do your work.”
“I need a little support from you.”
“I’m here, Valentina.”
“Are you? Or did you get roped into this because I was enthusiastic about it? Cousin Don is a great salesman—maybe you feel we played you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tricked you into coming out here and looking at the real estate.”
“What is your tie to this place besides your cousins?”
“I have memories of this town as a girl. I remember the boom years when the steel mills operated double shifts, and the small factories couldn’t accept all the work that was offered them. I remember meeting middlemen traveling through from New York. They went from town to town making deals. There used to be a system. There were jobs and if you needed one, all you had to do was work hard and you’d be all right. You could take care of your family. If I’m going to manufacture shoes in a factory, then I want to make them in America.”
“Because?”
I felt my face getting hot. “Because it’s the right thing to do! Because American-made means quality.”
“That’s why manufacturing left this country.”
“God, Gianluca, it was the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement that killed it. Other countries like China made what we made more cheaply, and our factories couldn’t compete.”
“What happened to American quality then?”
“The standards were lowered. Customers started to accept cheaper construction and materials,” I said softly. I knew when I was licked.
“And you, a custom shoemaker, are going to bring it all back.”
“I want to try in my small way to do something.”
“What if we went to Italy and worked from there?”
“Oh, man, you totally set me up. Do you want to live in Italy?”
“I want to live with you, wherever that is,” he said.
“It sounds like you want to go back and take me and my work with you.”
“Would that be so terrible?”
“No.”
“Add that to the long list of things on that pad that you’re thinking about.”
“I need to be honest.”
“Ah.” Gianluca smiles, knowing that I haven’t been.
“Italy is a dream to me, but I love my country. I love Greenwich Village. I love Youngstown. I love all those small towns between the two. I like the giant hot dog on a bun on the side of the road and that inappropriate four-story Indian outside the gas station when we crossed the state line. It might be kitsch, but it reminds me of the car trips we made when we were kids and how we marked the distance by the hot dog and the Indian. You’d only find those things in America.”
“You can have that in Italy. We have the giant wheel of cheese.”
“But you don’t have a twenty-four-hour news cycle and buying in bulk. I like a deal. I enjoy making something out of nothing and selling it. I like that I can go from a custom shoemaker to a designer for the masses and still give the customer paying sixty dollars a lot of the same elements that the custom customer gets. I like home shopping on TV. I like the idea of someday showing what I’ve made on television, sold by a perky host wearing false eyelashes. I like the con and I like the sale. I love all of it. That makes me an American. But I’m an American married to an Italian, and what you want is as important as what I want.”
“Is it?”
“Yes! If Roberta hadn’t decided to close the factory, we wouldn’t even be here.”
“We’d be fighting somewhere else about something else.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I told you how I feel and you disagreed and that’s the end of the discussion.”
“Not true!”
“It happened in the shop last Monday, Valentina. Whenever I suggest something regarding the business, you dismiss it.”
“Am I supposed to agree to make you happy?”
“No. But consider it. That’s the nature of a partnership. One shows the other the flaw. One handles one operation, and the other another. You see.”
“I get it!”
“Va bene.”
“No, no va bene. Listen to me. There’s a lot involved here. And I need you to be on board with what we’re doing.”
Gianluca nodded again.
“Would you please say something?”
“You won’t like what I have to say.”
“I can take it.”
“It’s not medicine or poison. It’s the facts. You have no experience in running a factory. Roberta had a system in place, and you got into business with her. Don is a good man, and he’s very smart, but he’s seventy years old, and this is a lark for him. Is this a lark for you?”
“No.”
“Be aware. Now, I’m not going to convince you not to put up a factory here, because you have good instincts. But I will tell you to be cautious and to make sure that what you build is what you need to make the shoes you want to sell. I think you should seriously consider the properties that Don has shown you—but I also think you shouldn’t dismiss Italian manufacturing as a possibility. They know what they’re doing at home.”
There. He said it. Italy was home. Not Perry Street, not Youngstown’s Main Street—but Arezzo in Tuscany. He couldn’t tell me how much he missed being in Italy, but he didn’t have to—I could see it, I could feel it. My husband wanted to take Angelini shoes back to Italy, but he wanted it to be my idea.
I went to the bathroom and changed for bed. As I brushed my teeth, I looked in the mirror over the sink. Then I turned and looked at myself in the full length mirror inside the bathroom door. I turned sideways. There was a softening to my edges that could only mean one thing. I already had the other indicator, I just was in denial about it. I joined Gianluca in bed.
“Well, you know how you say life is full of surprises?” I put my head on his chest. He pulled me close.
“I’m sure we’ll find your perfect factory tomorrow.”
“I’m not talking about work.”
“No?”
“No. I think we’re having a baby.”
Gianluca sat bolt upright in bed.
 
; “I think it was the night you landed in New York. You really landed in New York.”
“Did you take a test?”
“No. But I’m one of those students who didn’t have to take a test to access what I know. I just know it.”
“I’d like you to take a test.”
I laughed. “Of course. I’ll be happy to.” I took my husband’s face into my hands, “If I am, are you happy about it?”
“Of course.”
“Maybe we should go back to Italy, and I’ll make shoes by hand. Our baby will grow up speaking Italian. You’ll teach him how to cut leather.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“I’m not an expert on pregnancy, but I have been through the experience before. Anything you think, say, or do cannot be trusted. You are building a baby, and everything in you surrenders to that process.”
“I’m a raging vat of hormones.”
“To start.”
“But we didn’t plan this.”
“Babies can’t be planned. I’ve heard that they show up when they want to.”
“You just threw out six years of sex education and my subscription to the Our Bodies Ourselves Web site and my doctor’s advice.”
“What did he have to say?”
“She. She said I’m at my peak fertility. Well, she was right about that.”
Gianluca and I held one another. We were exhausted. Cousin Don had traipsed us through Youngstown like Lewis and Clark, and now we were facing an entirely new terrain, but this time, there was no guide to show us the real estate. We were on our own. I put my arms around my husband and for the first time, surrendered everything to him. After all, when it came to parenthood, he was the expert.
Don took us to dinner at the Lake Club on our last night in Youngstown. The elegant club, built on a crystal lake and hemmed by bright green rolling hills, was in full bloom.
I imagined bringing buyers from all over the country to the club. We’d court Neiman’s and Saks and Macy’s. We’d fly their reps out and wine and dine them. I had to think about how to market the shoes once we made them. I was beginning to believe everything I envisioned was possible.
“I have an idea, Don,” Gianluca said. “I know the equipment is expensive. Even in Italy, it takes months to make a good presser. Rollers, the best quality, are hard to find. These machines are not mass-produced. They’re custom-built. They’re like violins now—you need a master to make the equipment, because there isn’t a great demand for it.”
“A Stradivarius ain’t cheap.” Don nodded.
“I think you know that Cousin Roberta is selling her factory in Buenos Aires. She didn’t sell it to a shoe manufacturing group, she sold the space to a developer.”
“Condos and a beef processing plant.”
“Beef is big in Argentina,” Dad said. “So I’m told.”
“She has the equipment and is going to sell it. I’d like to call her and offer her a deal.”
“I like what I’m hearing.” Don nodded. “The old-timey equipment is the best. You can’t find steel rollers and copper gears anymore. Lots of shoe factories have turned to lesser metals and plastics in their machinery. We’d be better off with the tried and true.”
“That’s what I think. Alfred and I hired my brother-in-law Charlie to go down and take a look.”
“Then I’d better get to work on the deal to lease this place. It’s just sitting here rotting. Maybe I can negotiate a five-year lease with the first year free.”
“Do you know guys who do this kind of refurnishing?” Dad asked.
I didn’t bother to correct my father, but we were all thinking, Refurbishing.
“About a hundred guys. You could throw a rock on Main Street and hit somebody looking for a job. Everybody is looking for work.”
“What about start-up money?” my father asked.
“I’ll go to the bank. If we get a plant going with seventy-five employees to start, that’s a lot of moolah flowing through the veins of the Y bank. It’s a return to glory over there, believe me,” Cousin Don said. “They’ll look like a pack of heroes instead of suspicious financiers. So send Alfred out in full confidence that I can deliver the manpower to make your shoes.”
“We may have him come out with Bret Fitzpatrick.”
“Do I know him?” Cousin Don asked.
“You met him at my high school graduation.” I looked at Gianluca, who didn’t react.
“So send the boys out and we’ll make the plan. The sooner we get this thing going, the sooner my Midas touch starts making us all some coin.”
“But what if the bank doesn’t come through?” my husband asked.
“I’ll make sure they do.”
“But if they don’t?”
“We go the private investor route.”
Gianluca smiled. “Just so you have an alternate plan.”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, I got plans for every letter of the alphabet—I start with A and then on to B, and if that don’t work, and so on and so on.”
“This all sounds good to me,” I told him. “Because baby needs new shoes.”
“What the hell, you can make yourself as many shoes as you need.”
“No, I mean real baby shoes.” I took Gianluca’s hand. “Go ahead, honey.”
“We’re having a baby,” Gianluca announced.
My father’s eyes filled with tears. “Really and truly? God bless you.”
I gave my father a big hug. He shook hands with Gianluca.
“I thought you were looking a little thick, Val,” Don said.
“A little? My face looks like a clock.”
“Holy Mother of God. You know this is good luck.” Cousin Don beamed. “Yeah, it goes way back to the Greeks.”
“Do tell.” My father smiled.
“Oh yeah. A woman with child brings good luck to anything she touches. It applies to everything from baking a cake to stock offerings. I used to put them under Ann’s pillow at night. I sold my Wrather Corporation stock at a thirty-percent profit in 1965 when Chrissy was born. This factory is gonna work. I feel it.”
The ride back to New York City flew. I was consumed with thoughts of the baby and the new factory. I guess that Mother Nature wanted me to become a juggler sooner than later. All this circus act needed was a trapeze. As I lay in the backseat, watching a small patch of blue sky underlined with black wires zoom past, I imagined myself walking along the electrical cables that stretched across Ohio, never flinching on the tightrope.
The notion that the equipment my great-great uncle invented would return to the United States, where he and his brother had founded their shoe company, made the transaction seem fated.
There is something so satisfying about taking a century-old rift in my family and healing it so all the parties involved feel a sense of closure. My great-grandfather and his brother never had the benefit of working out their differences, and here we were healing the hurt, laying the past to rest for good. We could not go back and bring my grandfather and his brother together again, but we could harness the spirit of their dream to make beautiful American-made shoes for women.
So what if there weren’t a lot of shoe factories in the United States? Would we be better served by e-mailing our designs to China and hoping for the best? The Italian factories were booked years in advance by designers who had middlemen, logos, and contacts at Vogue. Could we wait and hope that another company would fall on hard times and we would sweep in and take advantage?
Youngstown was on.
When I was a girl and we visited our cousins, I never thought I’d be back and engaging the workforce. And the best part: Don Pipino was determined to make our factory the greatest business success of his career. It seemed to be a win-win.
I would trust Bret, Alfred, and Gianluca to figur
e out the finances. I had my own responsibilities in this new venture. I had to design beautiful shoes. And I could see them. I could see them in full in my imagination.
Gabriel unfurled the bolt of duchesse satin, nipped the corner with his scissors, and tore the yardage in a clean line. I helped him drape the fabric on the cutting table. He pinned the pattern pieces to the material.
Charlie came into the shop with a box of doughnuts. When he was courting my sister, his idea of winning us over had been to show up every Saturday morning with a box of fresh doughnuts from Sam’s in Queens. It worked. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Tess telling me how Charlie used to win over new accounts with doughnuts. Gabriel looked up from his work and noticed Charlie’s business attire. “Who died?”
“I dress for success,” Charlie said. “And your best friend.”
“You look good, brother,” I assured him.
Bret, Alfred, and Gianluca came down the stairs into the shop. They greeted Charlie, who seemed nervous. We’re a tough bunch; even twelve years legally wed into our family assures you of nothing.
“I’m going to bring up Don Pipino on Skype,” Alfred said as he turned his laptop to face us. We gathered around the worktable, each of us taking a seat.
“There he is,” Alfred said, pointing to the screen.
“How are you, Cousin Don?”
“Folks. I know this meeting is about welcoming Charlie into the club, but we have a problem here in Y-town. Let’s just address this downer off the bat. We lost the building.”
“What?” I shouted.
“Yep. Lost it. The owner won’t lease. He’s selling. He’s gonna put a bowling alley in there.”
“Well, that’s that,” Alfred said. “What else have you got for us, Don?”
“In terms of real estate?”
“In terms of everything.” Bret looked at Alfred.
“Well, I can’t very well go out and get a loan on nothing. We need to find another space.”
“Do you want me to come out and help you?” Charlie offered.