Gram nods. “In the shoe business, you can’t beat the Ferragamo family. They get it right every time.”
“And your inspiration?” Rhedd smooths the necklace around her neck.
“Oh, I’d say—my girls.” Gram smiles.
“And who would they be?”
“Let’s see. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly.”
“Simplicity and style,” Rhedd agrees.
“Exactly,” Gram says.
Whenever Gram makes cultural references, she refers to her holy trinity of style for women of a certain age: the First Lady, the movie star, and the princess. Born around the same time as Gram, their lives, while they didn’t mirror her own, gave a context to her work. Jacqueline Onassis was all about cut and line, built from the finest fabrics; Audrey Hepburn was a waif, her style influenced by dance, then exalted in theatrical evening wear that was embroidered and beaded; Grace Kelly had the cool classicism of the debutante turned working girl, gloves, hats, A-line dresses, tweed coats.
Gram points out that her muses wore the fashions, the fashions didn’t wear them. Gram believes a woman should invest wisely and prudently in her wardrobe. Her philosophy is that you should own one gorgeous coat, one great pair of evening shoes, one good pair for day. She can’t understand why women my age power-shop, as she, Gram, believes in quality over quantity. However, in other ways, my generation is a lot more like hers than she knows.
Gram’s peers were born at the end of the Jazz Age. They had a certain inborn confidence in their abilities that my mother’s generation had to struggle to find. Even though my mom’s generation of women were rowdy feminists, Gram’s group really blazed the path for them in the workplace; of course they would say that they had to. Gram’s group included the young women who went to work in mills, factories, and shops when the men went off to fight in World War II. The jobs they held during the war went back to the men when they returned. Gram says that’s how women ended up back in the kitchen in the 1950s. She went back to the kitchen, too, but it was up a flight of stairs after a full day of work in the shoe shop. Gram was a working mother before that was a label. In her day, she said, she “helped her husband,” but in fact, we know the truth—she was his full partner.
Rhedd circles around her desk, sits down, and leans forward. She adjusts the Tiffany clock and the ceramic pencil cup before her. Her computer screen is recessed into the wall next to her desk. Her screen saver is a black and white 1950s photo of the great model Lisa Fonssagrives, smoking a cigarette in a New Look gown at the intersection where Gram and I got out of the cab a few minutes ago.
“Ladies, my good friend Debra McGuire told me about you. Debra has a great eye. She brought me the shoes you gave her for the movie. I was very impressed.”
“Thank you,” Gram and I say at once.
“And it gave me an idea.” Rhedd gets up and goes to a tea cart under the windows. She pours herself a glass of water, and then two more, one for me and one for Gram. As she serves us, she says, “We work about a year in advance on our holiday windows. And when I saw the shoe you made, it gave me an idea for the 2008 windows. I want to do brides. And a Russian theme.”
“Okay.” Gram thinks. “Cut velvet, boots, calfskin, fleece.”
“Maybe. I’m looking for a one-of-a kind fantasy shoe, something that would be shown exclusively in my windows.”
“Interesting,” Gram says, but I can hear the skepticism in her voice. “But you should know that we work from our company designs—”
“Gram, every pair of shoes we make is custom,” I interrupt and look at Rhedd. “We’ve done fantasy styles for weddings. We did a pair of riding boots in white calfskin and black patent leather for a bride and groom who were married on a horse farm in Virginia.”
“That’s true,” Gram admits. “And we did a pair of mules in fire engine red satinet for a bride who was married to a fireman on the Lower East Side.”
“And there was the bride who married a Frenchman and we did a Madame Pompadour pump with oversize silk bows.”
“To be perfectly honest,” Rhedd says, “I haven’t had much luck with small shops like yours. Small companies, exclusive custom shoemakers, stay small for a reason. Usually, they know what they know and they’re uncomfortable in a bigger venue. They lack a worldview, a vision.”
“We have a vision,” I assure her. I don’t look at Gram as I make my point. The salesman in me comes out. “We know we have to grow our brand, and we are taking a hard look at how we can do that in today’s marketplace. We approach every customer as an opportunity to reinvent our designs. However, and you should know this, we are proud of our legacy. Our shoes are the finest made in the world. We believe that.”
Rhedd looks off toward the closed door behind us as though she’s expecting some big idea to walk into the room, but lucky for me, I think she heard it already. “That’s why I want to give you a chance.”
“And we appreciate it,” I tell her.
“A chance for you and for other shoe designers to give me what I need.”
“There are others?” Gram leans back in her chair.
“It’s a competition. I’m meeting with several other designers, a custom shop from France, and a few well-known names who manufacture on a grand scale.”
“We’re up against the big guys?” I take a sip of my water.
“The biggest. But if you’re as good as you say”—her eyes narrow—“you’ll prove you have the talent and execution to pull this off.
“My creative director is going to come up with some sketches for the backdrop of the windows, the settings, if you will. I will select the wedding gowns for the tableaux, and from that group, we will choose one gown to send to you and the other designers. You will each design and build a pair of shoes for that gown. And then I will choose my favorite, and that designer will be brought on to do the shoes for all the gowns in the windows.”
My heart sinks a little. I was hoping that whatever she was going to offer us would be real, and timely. She’s not an idiot, and she senses my disappointment.
“Look, I know this feels like a long shot, but if you do what you say you can do, you have as good a chance as anyone to get the job.”
“That’s all we need, Ms. Lewis.” I stand and extend my hand to her. Gram rises and does the same. “A chance. We’ll show you how it’s done.”
After our meeting with Rhedd Lewis, I sent Gram home to Perry Street in a cab, while I took the crosstown bus over to Sloan-Kettering to meet Mom. I BlackBerried my sisters with a cc to Alfred about the Rhedd Lewis meeting, telling them of the competition. Tess is good for a novena (we really need the prayers now), Jaclyn will be supportive, and the cc to Alfred was to show him that I do have a vision about the future of the company. I included a snapshot of Gram in front of the store for Mom, who likes a visual with her news.
The sliding doors of the hospital open as I approach. Once inside, I see my mother sitting on a couch by the windows facing a sunlit sculpture garden, typing on her BlackBerry like a wild game of Where Is Thumpkin. Her sunglasses are perched on her head like a tiara, and she is dressed from head to foot in baby blue, with a wide swath of beige cashmere thrown across her chest like a flag.
“I’m here, Mom.”
“Valentine!” She stands and embraces me. “I’m so happy when it’s your shift.” Mom has decided, that instead of all of us showing up for every single one of Dad’s appointments, she would put her children on rotation so we wouldn’t burn out. Of course, she is in attendance at every poke, prod, and MRI.
My mother has never suffered from burnout, nor does she shy away from a project before it’s completed. I never saw her energy flag when it came to her family; she was and is eternally peppy, whether it was French-braiding three little girls’ hair before school, negotiating through the mayhem of the holidays, or pouring concrete to form a new front walkway, she is up for anything. These days, it’s getting my father well.
“I loved the
picture. How did it go at Bergdorf’s?”
“We’re entering a competition to design a pair of shoes to win the holiday windows for Christmas 2008.”
“Fabulous! What a coup!”
“It’s a long way to winning, Ma. We’ll see what happens.” It doesn’t even dawn on my mother that we might not win. Another reason to love her. “So, how’s Dad?”
“Oh, it’s just boring test day. They’re going to put the seeds in after Gram’s birthday.”
Mom and I sit down. Instinctively, I put my head on her shoulder. Her skin has the scent of white roses and white chocolate. Her hoop earrings rest against my cheek as she talks. “He’s going to be fine.”
“I know,” I tell her. But I really don’t know.
“We stay positive and we pray. That’ll do the trick.”
I love that Mom thinks cancer is a trick that can be turned at will with a smile and a Hail Mary. When I lie in bed and think about my father and the future, I think of his grandchildren, and how, at the rate I’m going, he’ll never meet my children. Sometimes I swear Mom can read my thoughts, and she asks, “How’s it going with the fella you’re seeing?”
I lift my head off her shoulder. “He’s tall.”
“Excellent.” My mother nods her head slowly. In the pantheon of male attributes, my mother admires tall above full pockets or a full head of hair. “Handsome?”
“I’d say so.”
“That’s wonderful. Dad said he’s a chef. I love that name, Roman Falconi. Sexy.”
“He owns his own restaurant down in Little Italy.”
“Oh, I’d love a chef in the family. Maybe he could teach me how to make those fancy foams they’re doing at Per Se. I read about them in Food and Wine. Imagine the infusion of new ideas!”
“He’s got a lot of those.”
“When is the unveiling?” Mom asks.
“I’m bringing him to Gram’s birthday party at the Carlyle.”
“Perfect. Neutral ground. Well, my only advice in general is to take it easy. Don’t force it.” My mother bites her lip.
“I won’t.”
“I only hope you find the abiding happiness I have with my Dutch. Your father and I are nuts about each other, you know.”
“I know.”
“We’ve had our troubles, God knows, all kinds of storms and rough waters on high seas. But somehow, we rode through it all and made it back to shore. Sometimes we even crawled, but we made it back.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I can say that we prevailed.”
“You did.”
“And, you know? That’s what it’s all about. A great philosopher said, something like, you know I can never remember jokes or the exact words of philosophers, but basically, he said that love is what you’ve been through together.”
“It was James Thurber. The American humorist and author.” Sometimes my BA in English comes in handy.
“Well, whoever. My point is, it seems to me we keep going through it.”
“You do, Mom.”
“Your father wasn’t a saint. But I’m not the Blessed Mother either, am I?”
“I think you have more jewelry.”
“True.” She laughs. “But I know he never wanted to hurt me, or you children. He just lost his mind for a while. Men go through their own version of the change in their forties, and your father was no exception.”
“Roman is forty-one.”
“Maybe he went through it last year, before you met him,” Mom says brightly.
“We can hope.”
Mom goes into her purse; when she snaps it open, a clean whoosh of peppermint and sweet jasmine fill the air. Sticking out of the pocket where the cell phone goes is a clump of perfume testers from the Estée Lauder counter. That’s another of Mom’s elegant-living tricks, she tucks paper bookmark perfume samplers in lingerie drawers, evening bags, purses, and car vents, wherever ambience is needed, and evidently, in my mother’s view, you need ambience everywhere.
She finds the tinfoil sleeve of gum among the cancer pamphlets, punches a red square, hands it to me, then pops one in her own mouth. We sit and chew.
“Mom, how did you know you could get Dad back after the…incident?”
“I didn’t do a thing.”
“Sure you did.”
“No, really, I just left him alone. The worst punishment you can give a man is to isolate him. I’ve never seen one who can handle it. Look at what being alone did to our priests. Of course, that’s another subject entirely.”
“I remember when you and Dad fell in love again.”
“We were lucky, we got it back. Most people don’t.”
“How did you do it?”
“I had to do what a single girl in your position has to do when she likes a guy. Never mind that I had four children and a college degree collecting dust. I had to make myself desirable again. That meant I had to show my best self to him at all times. I had to figure him out all over again. I had to redo the world we lived in, including the house and my wardrobe. But mostly, I had to be sincere. I couldn’t stay with him for you, or for my mother, or for my religion, I had to stay with him because I wanted to.”
“So how did you know when you had succeeded?”
“One day, your father came home with a bag of groceries from D’Agostino’s. You kids were at school. It was a few weeks after we got back together. Big week. First week of school…”
“September 1986. I was in the sixth grade.”
“Right. Anyway, he comes into the kitchen. And I was sitting there, filling out some form for one of you kids for school and he opens the fridge and unloads food into it. And then he lights up the burner on the stove and puts a big pot of water on the flame. Then he gets out a saucepan and starts cooking. He’s chopping onions, peeling garlic, browning meat, and adding tomatoes and spices and all. After a while, I said, ‘Dutch, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m making dinner. I thought lasagna would be good.’ And I said, ‘Great.’”
“That’s how you knew he loved you?”
“In eighteen years, he had never made a meal. I mean, he’d help if I asked. He’d cut up melon for a fruit salad for a buffet or he’d pack the Igloo with ice for a picnic or he’d set up the bar for the holidays. But he had never gone to the store and bought the ingredients without asking and then come home and cooked them. That was left to me. And that’s when I knew I had him back. He had changed. You see, that’s when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you—without you asking.”
“The without asking is the hard part.”
“It has to come from the heart.”
“Right,” I say and nod.
Mom and I watch the people move through the lobby, patients on their way to appointments, staff returning from break, and visitors jostling in and out of the elevators. The sun bounces off the windows in the pavilion that faces the lobby, and drenches the tile floor with a gleam so bright, I close my eyes.
“Have I upset you?” Mom asks me.
I open my eyes. “No. You’re a font of wisdom, Mom.”
“I can talk to you, Valentine.” She fiddles with the gold post in the back of her hoop earring. “I just—” And then, to my complete surprise, she breaks into quiet sobs. “Why the hell am I crying?” She throws her hands up.
“You’re scared?” I say softly.
“No, that’s not it.” Mom fishes through her purse until she finds the small cellophane pad of tissues. She yanks one out. “These”—she holds up the tiny square—“are worthless.” She dabs under her eyes with the small tissue. “I just don’t want it all to have been a waste. We’ve come so far and I was hoping we’d grow old together. Now, time is running out. After all that, we don’t get the time? That would kill me. It’s like the soldier who goes off to war, dodges gunfire and bombs and grenades, makes it out of the war zone, only to return home and slip on a banana peel, fall into a coma, and die.”
“Have a little f
aith.”
“That’s coming from the least religious of my children.” Mom sits up straight. “I don’t mean that as a judgment.”
“I mean faith in him.”
“In God?” “No. Dad. He’s not going to let us down.”
Our family, like all the Italian-American families I know, is big on Excuse parties: birthdays and anniversaries that end in a zero or a five. We even have special titles for them, a twenty-fifth anniversary is A Silver Jubilee, a thirtieth birthday is La Festa, a fiftieth anniversary is called A Golden Jubilee, and a seventy-fifth anything is a miracle. So, imagine how thrilled we are to toast Gram, in good health, still with excellent vitality, in fine physical shape save for those knees, and having “all her marbles,” as she calls them, on this, her eightieth birthday.
I also thought, knowing my immediate family would be in full attendance, that this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce them to Roman. I know I’m taking a chance here, but I have learned, when it comes to my family, it is best to introduce a new boyfriend in a crowded public venue where there’s less possibility of a gaffe, slip, or chance that someone will reach for the photo albums and show pictures of me buck naked, wearing only angel wings, on my fourth birthday.
We offered Gram the standard big bash at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Forest Hills, with a DJ; a ceiling of silver balloons; the stations of the cross on the walls, covered with streamers of crepe paper; and a custom sheet cake with Gram’s age embossed on it. But she opted for this party instead, a chic night out, dinner and a show at the Café Carlyle. She’d seen enough and plenty of the extended family at Jaclyn’s wedding, plus, Gram’s favorite singer of all time, Keely Smith, the great song stylist and comedienne, is the headliner at the Carlyle. When Gabriel, my friend the maître d’, told us that she was appearing, we reserved a table.
Keely Smith and her music have a special place in Gram’s life. When my grandparents were young, they used to travel around to catch Keely singing with her then husband Louis Prima, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses. The act was a swinging cabaret alternative to the orchestras of the big band era. Gram will tell you that they personified hip.