Very Valentine

  “Our brother, Alfred, his sons, and our husbands,” Tess explains as she puts her arm around Jaclyn in a united, don’t-mess-with-us fashion.

  “You’re forgetting Pamela,” I remind them.

  “And Pamela. My only daughter-in-law. She’s so tiny you almost miss her.” My mother waves her hand in the air and laughs.

  My father and the boys come downstairs and Mom, now in full command of Roman Falconi, introduces the remaining family members. Alfred’s sons extend their hands in greeting, like gentlemen in the drawing rooms of old. Chiara, with all the charm of her older sister, makes a face at Roman, and runs to join her sister at the table.

  Gram motions to us to help her in the kitchen. Pamela stands up to come with us, but Tess says, “Don’t worry, Pam. We’ve got it.” Pamela shrugs and goes to the table.

  “You complain that Pamela doesn’t help and then you don’t let her,” Gram whispers.

  “If we gave her a platter to carry, she’d collapse under the weight and her stilettos would sink into the floorboards like penny nails.” Tess puts a pepper grinder under one arm and picks up the water pitcher with the other. Gram, Jaclyn, and I grab the last of the platters and join the family at the table.

  My father takes his place at the head of the table. He folds his hands in prayer. He makes the sign of the cross, and we follow him. “Well, God, it’s been a helluva year.”

  “Dad…,” Tess says softly, looking at the children, who find the mention of hell hilarious in a prayer.

  “You know what I mean, dear Lord. We’ve had trials and tribulations and now we meet a new friend on the journey…” Dad pauses and looks at Roman.

  “Roman,” Mom pipes up.

  “Roman. We give thanks for our good health, my relative good health, Ma’s eightieth birthday, and all the rest in between.” Dad goes to make the sign of the cross.

  “Dad?”

  He looks up at Jaclyn.

  “Dad…one more thing.” Jaclyn takes Tom’s hand. “Tom and I would like you all to know that we’re having a baby.”

  The table erupts with joy, the children jump up and down, Gram wipes away a tear, Mom reaches across the table to kiss Jaclyn and then Tom. Dad holds up his hands.

  Roman takes my hand and puts his arm around me. I look up at him; he is beaming, which means the world to me.

  “My baby is having a baby. Well, this is proof positive that God isn’t sinkin’ our ship just yet.” Dad puts his hand to his forehead, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—”

  “Amen!” we shout, the least religious of my mother’s children the loudest. I’m thrilled about Jaclyn and Tom’s news, and I’m also happy that my first Christmas with Roman is off to a great start.

  We crowd onto the roof in our coats, hats, and mittens for the Annual Christmas Marshmallow Roast. Mom follows with a bottle of Poetry wine and a stack of plastic glasses embossed with sexy girls dressed as elves. (Where does she find this stuff?)

  Dad and Alfred load the sticks with marshmallows and hand them to the kids, who gather around the grill like little match children, holding the white puffs into the flames. Roman puts his arm around me.

  “Time to light the torches!” Mom calls out. “Ambience inside and out, I say.”

  “She’s exactly as you described her,” Roman whispers in my ear, then joins Charlie and Tom as they fan out and light the torches on the corners of the roof.

  Dad helps Alfred Junior and Rocco hold their marshallows on sticks to the flames. Charisma, a little pyro, lets her marshmallow burst into flames, open like a bomb, and ooze onto the hot coals. Chiara waits patiently, toasting each side of her marshmallow uniformly. My sisters stand behind the girls, guiding them as another holiday tradition is handed down from my generation to the next one.

  “Great-gram?” Charisma asks. “Tell the story of the velvet tomatoes.”

  “Great-gram has had too much great wine.” Gram sits down on the chaise and puts her feet up. “And I’m having some more. Have Auntie Valentine tell the story.”

  “Tell the story!” Charisma, Rocco, Alfred Junior, and Chiara jump up and down.

  “Okay, okay. When I was six years old, my mother brought me over to stay with Gram and Grandpop when she went to see Phantom of the Opera for the eighth time.”

  “I love an Andrew Lloyd Webber show,” Mom says unapologetically to Roman, who shrugs.

  “Alfred and Tess were at summer camp…”

  “Camp Don Bosco,” Tess clarifies.

  “…and baby Jaclyn was in Queens with Dad. I had Gram and Grandpop all to myself. And I came up here to play on the roof. First I had a little tea party, using garden tools for utensils and mud for scones. Then I decided to be like Gram, and I went over to the tomato plants and started to dig around in the dirt. But when I looked up through the vines, there were no tomatoes. So I ran downstairs, right into the shoe shop, and I said, ‘Somebody stole the tomatoes.’ And I started to cry.”

  “She almost had a nervous breakdown,” Gram says wryly.

  “She was worried! No tomatoes,” Chiara says in my defense.

  “Right. So Grandpop explained that sometimes the plants don’t bear fruit, that sometimes, no matter how well you take care of them, it’s just too rainy for the plants to make tomatoes. The plants are so smart, they know not to bloom, because the tomatoes would come in all mealy and tasteless, and what good would they be?”

  “And then I said we might have to wait until next summer for the tomatoes to grow. But Valentine was heartbroken.” Gram lifts her glass of wine.

  I pick up the story again, looking at Roman, who is as engrossed as the kids in the fate of the tomatoes, or maybe he’s just being polite. “The next Sunday, everyone came over for dinner, and Gram said, ‘Go up to the roof, Valentine. You won’t believe your eyes.’”

  “And everybody raced up the stairs!” Chiara says.

  “That’s right.” I put my hands on Rocco’s and Alfred Junior’s shoulders. “We all came up to the roof to see what had happened. And when we got here, there was a miracle. There were tomatoes everywhere. But they weren’t tomatoes to make sauce, they were velvet tomatoes, made with red and green fabric, and they dangled from the barren plants, like ornaments. Even the tomato pincushion from the shop was there, hanging from the vine. We jumped up and down like it was Christmas morning even though it was the hottest day of summer. I asked my grandfather how it happened. And he said, ‘Magic!’ And then we all celebrated the harvest of the velvet tomatoes.”

  My mom gives me a thumbs-up as the kids eat their marshmallows and we drink our wine. I look around at my family, feeling blessed and full. Pamela remains glued to my brother’s hip, like a gun holster, while Gram lies with her feet up on the chaise. Tess and Jaclyn pull Mom away to watch a Norwegian cruise ship make a lazy entrance into New York Harbor. I look at Roman, who seems to fit into this crazy family without too much fuss. The moon peeks out between the skyscrapers looming behind us, looking an awful lot like a lucky penny.

  Dad holds up his sexy elves plastic cup of wine. “I’d like to make a toast. To Dr. Buxbaum at Sloan who took my prostrate numbers from north to south. Which is a good thing.”

  “To Dr. Buxbaum!” we toast. My father is beating prostate cancer and he still can’t pronounce it.

  “Many, many more years, Dutch,” Mom says, raising her glass again. “We have lots of sunsets to see, and lots of places to go. You still have to take me to Williamsburg.”

  “Virginia?” Tess asks.

  “That’s your dream trip?” Jaclyn says. “You can get there in a car.”

  “I believe in setting goals that one can achieve. Low expectations make for a happy life. I can die without seeing Bora-Bora. Besides, I love glassblowing, Georgian architecture, and Revolutionary War reenactors. Aim for doable, kids.”

  “I think you mean it.” I swig my wine.

  “I absolutely do. I have dreamed of the attainable and the attainable has found me. I wa
nted a nice Italian boy with good teeth, and that’s what I got.”

  “I still have all my choppers,” Dad says, nodding.

  “You think small things don’t matter until you consider teeth,” Gram toasts Dad from the chaise.

  We sip our wine as we ponder Dad’s bite and Mom’s dream of Colonial Williamsburg. The only sound we hear is the faint pop of the marshmallows as they ignite into orange flames, only to turn bright blue before charring to black. Roman supervises the operation and actually seems to be having fun. He looks over at me and winks.

  The kids have gone downstairs to play with some of those minuscule Polly Pocket dolls, while the grown-ups remain on the roof, sitting around the old table finishing our wine. A cold wind kicks up as the fire in the grill dies down. I collect the cups, and I’m about to head downstairs to start the dishes when I hear Alfred lean over and say to Gram, “Scott Hatcher’s offer is still on the table.”

  “Not now, Alfred,” she says quietly.

  I knew this was coming. I could barely look at Alfred all night, knowing he was calculating square footage and interest rates with every mouthful of manicotti. He’s made remarks and dropped hints until I’m good and sick of it. So I turn to my brother and say, “It’s Christmas! She doesn’t want to talk about Scott Hatcher and his cash offer. And besides, you told us Hatcher was a broker, not a buyer.”

  “He’s both. He sells properties, but he also buys them for investment purposes. Anyhow, what difference does it make?”

  “A lot. A broker comes in and gives an opinion. It’s a process. After a few months, when you’ve gathered enough information and gone out to competitors to get the best price, then, and only then, if you want to sell, do you hire your own broker and name your price. But that’s not what’s going on here. He’s a developer.”

  “How do you know?” Alfred counters.

  “I did my research.” If only Alfred knew how much research. I know more about Scott Hatcher than I ever wanted to. “It isn’t prudent for Gram to sell the building after one offer. That’s bad business.”

  “And you know from business?” Alfred sneers.

  “I’ve been putting together my own numbers.” My family looks at me. Funnyone is artistic, not a numbers person. I’ve blindsided them.

  “You’re not serious.” Alfred turns away from me.

  “I’m deadly serious,” I say, raising my voice.

  Alfred turns back and looks at me, confused.

  “Not now, Valentine,” Gram says firmly.

  “Anyhow, it’s Gram’s decision. Not yours,” Alfred says dismissively.

  “I’m Gram’s partner.”

  “Since when?” Alfred yells.

  I look at Gram, who begins to speak, but reconsiders.

  “Kids, don’t get like this,” Dad interjects.

  “Oh, we’re gonna get like this.” I stand up. When I stand, the in-laws—Pamela, Charlie, and Tom—get up from the table and inch back to the fence line of the roof. Only Roman remains at the table, with a look on his face that says, Here we go.

  “You two, stop it right now,” Mom chirps. “We’ve had a lovely holiday.”

  I persist. “How much was the offer, Alfred?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “I said, how much?”

  “Six million dollars,” Alfred announces.

  Shrieks rise from my relatives on the roof, like hosannas at a tent revival.

  “Gram, you’re mega rich!” Tess exclaims. “You’re like Brooke Astor!”

  “Over my dead body,” Gram says, looking down at her hands. “That poor Astor woman. And I mean poor. May she rest in peace. If you don’t raise your children right, all the money in the world doesn’t matter. It’s the fast track to tumult.”

  “Please, Ma, we are not the Astors. There’s a lot of love here,” Mom says.

  “So what’s going to happen with the offer?” Jaclyn asks delicately.

  “It’s a very high offer, a great offer, in fact, and I’ve advised Gram to sell,” Alfred says, laying out his plan like a road map. “She can finally retire after fifty years of killing herself, get a condo in Jersey out by us, and put her feet up for the first time in her life.”

  “She has her feet up right now,” I tell him. I turn to Gram. “What happens to the Angelini Shoe Company?”

  Gram doesn’t answer me.

  “Valentine, she’s tired.” Alfred raises his voice. “And you’re pushing her. Stop being selfish and think about our grandmother for a change.”

  “Now, Alfred, you know how much I love my work,” Gram says.

  “That’s right. We’ve got a great business going here. We make three thousand pairs of shoes a year.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s hardly viable by any current business standards. You don’t have a Web site, you don’t advertise, and it’s run like it’s 1940.” Alfred turns to our grandmother. “No offense, Gram.”

  “None taken. That was a big year for us.”

  Alfred continues, “You use the same tools Grandpop did. At this point, the Angelini Shoe Company is nothing more than a hobby for you two, and the part-timers you employ. It’s a financial wash in a good year, but with the debt, it’s irresponsible not to consider closing and cleaning up what you owe. Besides, even if we could find somebody to buy the shop, it would not come to one percent of what this building is worth. This building is the gold.”

  “It’s our business!” I tell him. Doesn’t he see that our great grandfather’s shoe designs are the gold? Our name? Our technique? Our reputation? Alfred puts no value on our tradition. What are we without it? “We make our living in this shop!”

  “Barely. If you had to pay rent, you’d be in the street.”

  Clickety Click moves back to Alfred’s side. She threads her arm through his, which tells me that she’s heard this before.

  “I live within my means. I’ve never asked anyone for a penny.”

  “I helped you when you broke up with Bret and quit teaching.”

  “Three thousand dollars. You didn’t give me that money. I paid it back in six months at seven percent interest!” I can’t believe he’s throwing this in my face. Then again, of course he’s throwing this in my face. He’s Alfred! My mother shifts uncomfortably on the lawn chair and Dad stares off at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge as if it’s burst into flames like a marshmallow on a stick.

  “I think what Alfred is trying to say,” Mom says diplomatically, “is that my mother is of a certain age now, and in looking ahead, down the road, we should all anticipate changes.”

  “Right, Ma,” I challenge her. “And the road is icy, your tires are bald, and you’re skidding. Anything to support your precious and brilliant son, Alfred. What he wants, he gets. If he was truly concerned about Gram and her well-being, I wouldn’t open my mouth. But my brother is all about the money. He’s only ever been about the money.”

  “How dare you! I’m worried about Gram!” Alfred shouts.

  “Are you?”

  “Your brother loves his grandmother,” Dad interjects.

  “Don’t speak for him,” I tell my father.

  “Don’t speak for me,” Alfred tells Dad.

  Dad puts his hands in the air in surrender.

  “And don’t speak for me,” Gram says, standing. “I will make all the decisions about the Angelini Shoe Company and my building. Alfred, as smart as you are, you have a big mouth. You should never talk numbers. You’ve thrown everyone into a tizzy.”

  “I thought since it was just family—”

  Roman looks off, like a guest hoping to disappear from the fray. But he can’t move. I catch a flicker of impatience in his eyes.

  “Even worse!” Gram says. “Those kinds of numbers only make people nervous. For God’s sake, they make me nervous. I’m a private person and I don’t want my business ripped into like a Christmas package for public consumption. And, Valentine, I appreciate everything you do for me, but I don’t want you to stay here because you think you have to—
”

  “I want to be here.”

  “—and Alfred has a point. I’m not what I was.”

  “I didn’t mean it to sound like that, Gram,” he says. “I do believe it’s your choice. But I’d like to see you relax for the first time in your life. There’s a reason people don’t work at a job when they’re eighty.”

  “Because most of them are dead?” Gram says, giving up and sitting down.

  “No, because they’ve earned a break. And, Valentine, nobody said you couldn’t pursue shoemaking as a hobby. It’s time for you to have a real career. You’re in your midthirties and you’re living like a Boho bum. Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old? I suppose I’ll get stuck with that tab, too.”

  “You’re the last person I’d ask for help.” And I mean it. Clickety Click exhales, one less thing for her to worry about.

  “We’ll see. So far, I’m the only Roncalli kid who picks up a check.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tess wants to know.

  “Gram’s party.”

  “We offered,” Jaclyn and Tess say in unison.

  “So did I!” I tell him.

  “But I paid! And I’ve got news for you, I always pay.”

  “That’s not fair, Alfred, you can’t pick up a check and then complain about it. That is terrible form!” Tess makes a motion that Gram, the honoree, is listening.

  Alfred doesn’t care. He goes on. “Who do you think pays for Dad’s doctors? He has insurance, but there’s a deductible and there are out-of-pocket expenses. He has to go out of network for some of the procedures. But you girls don’t know that! Why? Because you never ask!”

  “We will repay you, Alfred,” Mom says quietly.

  “If you didn’t swoop in and pay for everything, like Lord Bountiful, we would be happy to pay our share,” I tell him. “You only pay so you can hold it over our heads.”

  Alfred turns to me. “I’m not going to apologize to you for being successful. There’s a success tax I pay every day in this family. I’m the one who makes money, so I’m the one who pays. And you resent me for it!”