Very Valentine

  “Because you complain about it! I’d rather be broke and living in a box on the Bowery than in that castle of fear you live in. Just look at Clickety Click…” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  Tess and Jaclyn inhale quickly, while Mom mutters, “Oh no.” In the silence that follows, I swear I can hear the clouds drift past in the sky overhead.

  “Who is Clickety Click?” Pamela asks. She looks at me and then up at her husband.

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he says.

  “Valentine?” Pamela looks at me.

  “It’s a—”

  “It’s a term of endearment really,” Tess says, jumping in. “A nickname.”

  “It’s not a nickname if I’ve never heard it.” For the first time in seventeen years, Pamela’s voice hits its upper register. “Wouldn’t I know my own nickname?”

  “I’m begging you, girls, get off this subject. It’s getting us all nowhere.” Mom pulls the collar on her faux mink up around her ears. “Come on. It’s getting too cold up here. Let’s go in and make some Irish coffee. Anyone for Irish coffee?”

  “Nobody is going anywhere.” Pamela sets her steely gaze on Mom. “What the hell does Clickety Click mean?”

  “Valentine?” Mom looks at me.

  “It’s a nickname that—” I begin.

  “It’s the sound you make when you walk in your high heels,” Jaclyn blurts out. “You’re small and you take short steps and when the heels hit the ground, they go…clickety click, clickety click.”

  Pamela’s eyes fill with tears. “You’ve been making fun of me all this time?”

  “We didn’t mean it.” Tess looks desperately at Jaclyn and me.

  “I can’t help my…my…size. I never make fun of you, and there’s plenty to laugh at in this crazy family!” Pamela turns on her heel and stomps off. Clickety click. Clickety click. Clickety click. When she realizes the sound she’s making, she rises up onto her toes and moves silently en pointe until she reaches the door. She grabs the door frame for balance. “Alfred!” she barks at him. Then Pamela goes clickety click down the stairs. We hear her calling for the boys.

  “You know, I don’t care if you’re mean to me. But she never did anything to you. She’s been a good sister-in-law.” Alfred follows her down the stairs.

  “I’m going to wrap up some leftovers for them,” Mom says, following Alfred out.

  “You had to blurt it out,” Tess says, throwing up her hands.

  I point to Jaclyn. “You had to tell her?”

  “I felt trapped.”

  My face is hot from the wine and the fight. “Couldn’t you have made something up? Something glamorous, like the clickety click of an expensive watch or something?”

  “That would be Tickety Tock,” Charlie says from his guard position in the outpost by the fountain.

  “You’ll have to apologize to her,” Gram says quietly.

  “You know I’m not supposed to get upset in my condition,” Dad says, adjusting the collar on his car coat. “These implanted seeds are radioactive. If my blood pressure goes berserk, they’re likely to blow like Mount Tripoli.”

  “Sorry, Dad,” I whisper.

  Dad looks at his three contrite daughters. “You know, we got one family here. One small island of people. We’re not Iran and Iraq and Tibet, for crying out loud, we’re one country. And all of youse, except you, Tom, with the Irish blood, all of youse have some Italian, or in the case of Charlie’s people, the Fazzanis, a hundred percent Italian including that quarter Sicilian, so we got no excuses.” Dad remembers his manners and looks at Roman. “Roman, I’m assuming you’re a hundred percent.”

  Roman, caught off guard, nods quickly in agreement.

  Dad continues, “We should be united, for one another, and we should be unbeatable. But instead what do we got? We got rancor. We got rancor coming out our ears and out our asses. And for what? Let it go. Let it all go. None of this matters. Take it from your father. I’ve seen the Grim Reaper eyeball to eyeball and he is one tough bastard. You got one life, kids. One.” Dad holds up his pointer finger and presses it skyward for emphasis. “And trust your old man, you gotta enjoy. That’s all I know. Now if Pamela has short legs and has to wear high heels to read her watch, well, we need to accept that as normal. And if Alfred loves her, then we love her. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, Dad,” Jaclyn, Tess, and I promise. Roman, Charlie, and Tom nod in agreement.

  Gram’s eyes are closed as she leans back on the chaise.

  “So that’s gonna be how it’s gonna be. I’m going in.” Dad goes down the stairs.

  Charlie and Tom have stepped away from the fray as far as they can go without falling off the roof. They stand with their hands in their pockets, half-expecting more bullets to fly on Christmas. When they don’t, Tom looks around and says, “Is there any more beer?”

  Roman helps me into the passenger seat of his car, then climbs in the other side. I shiver as he starts the engine. His seat is pushed back as far as it can go; I push my seat back to his. “What do you want to do?” he says.

  “Take me to the Brooklyn Bridge so I can jump.”

  “Funny. I have a better idea.”

  Roman drives over to Sixth Avenue and heads uptown. The streets of Manhattan are bright and empty.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.” I reach over and hold his hand.

  “One time at a Falconi Christmas, we served dinner in the garage; my brothers got into a fight and were so angry they started pelting each other with spare tires. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I won’t now.” We laugh. “What did you think of Alfred?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Roman says diplomatically.

  “Alfred has very high standards. No one is allowed to fail. After my father’s affair, Alfred got very righteous and even thought about going into the seminary to become a priest. But then Alfred was called by a different god. He became a banker. Of course, that’s just another way to get back at Dad. My father never made a lot of money, and that’s another way for Alfred to be superior. Alfred is morally and financially superior.”

  “How about his wife?”

  “She’s under his thumb. She’s so nervous, she eats baby food because she has chronic ulcers.”

  “Why is he so hard on you?” Roman asks gently.

  “He thinks I’m flip. I changed careers, I live with my grandmother, and I didn’t close the deal with the perfect man.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not interested in perfect.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You.” Roman lifts my hand and kisses it. I’m besotted, and I don’t think it’s a passing holiday mood. As terrible as the fight on the roof was, I was soothed by Roman’s presence. He made it all better without saying a word or doing a thing. I felt protected.

  Roman slows down in front of Saks Fifth Avenue and then makes the turn onto Fifty-first Street. He parks the car at the side entrance. “Come on,” he says. He comes around to my side and helps me out of the car. “It’s Christmas. We gotta do the windows.”

  He takes my hand and we walk behind the red velvet ropes. There’s a Latino family down the way taking pictures in front of a window with a circus act of snowmen. The father holds up his three-year-old son, near the glass.

  Fifth Avenue is hushed as we look at the windows, dioramas of holiday happiness through the ages, a fussy Victorian scene where the family opens a present and the puppy pulls the ribbon from a package over and over again, another of the Roaring Twenties, with girls in bobbed haircuts and short sequin sheaths doing the Charleston in synchronized repetition.

  A man with a saxophone appears on the corner of Fiftieth Street, breaking the silence with a jazz riff. Roman holds me close and moves me down the line to the tumbling-snowman window. The man with the horn stops playing, his brass sax dangling around his neck like an oversize gold charm. As we move to the next window, I look at
the old man and smile. He wears a beat-up English tweed cap and an old coat. He sings,

  We have been gay, going our way

  Life has been beautiful, we have been young

  After you’ve gone, life will go on

  Like an old song we have sung

  When I grow too old to dream

  I’ll have you to remember

  When I grow too old to dream

  Your love will live in my heart

  So, kiss me my sweet

  And so let us part

  And when I grow too old to dream

  That kiss will live in my heart

  And when I grow too old to dream

  That kiss will live in my heart

  Roman takes me in his arms and kisses me. When I open my eyes, the floodlights on the dormers of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral disappear into the black sky in cones of white smoke. “You want to stay at my house tonight?” he asks.

  “That’s about the best Christmas present I can think of.”

  Back in the car, Roman looks at me and smiles. I plan to spend the ride to wherever he lives kissing his neck. And I do. He turns on the radio. Rosemary Clooney sings, sounding as smooth as whiskey and whipped cream. All I can think is that we’re going to start something wonderful tonight. I bury my face in his neck and wish that this car could take off and fly us to his home.

  I am falling in love! My thoughts explode like a coin shower when the winning quarter hits the release lever in a slot machine in Atlantic City. I watch myself in my mind’s eye as gold disks pour out all around me by the hundreds, then thousands! I see spinning tops and ribbons unfurled, bluebirds flying out of belfries, church bells ringing, showgirls, rows of them in red sequin shorts, tap dancing at full power until the sound is so deafening you have to cover your ears. I see a bright blue sky filled with red kites, purple and white hot-air balloons, and shooting silver asteroids of fireworks that rain down like Christmas tinsel. I feel a parade coming on! Marching bands, flank after flank, in emerald green uniforms, baton twirlers in white sequin tank suits weaving in and out of formation while polished copper tubas work the street from right to left, braying a tune, my tune! My song! My head is full of sound, my eyes are full of wonder, and my heart is full of old-fashioned, spectacular joy. I open my eyes and look up at the moon, and it’s flipping in the sky! A celestial coin toss! I won! I’m in the money, my friends!

  Roman pulls his car into a parking garage on Sullivan Street. He leaves the key in the ignition and waves to the attendant, who waves back. We go out onto the street and he kisses me under the streetlight. “Which one is yours?” I ask him.

  “That one.” He points to a loft building, an old factory of some sort, with words carved on the door, but I can’t read them. He grabs my hand and we run to the entrance. We get inside and go up in the elevator to the fourth floor, we kiss, and when the car bounces, our lips wind up on each other’s noses and we laugh.

  The doors of the elevator open onto an enormous floor-through loft with a series of large windows on both sides. The floors are wide planks of distressed oak with polka dots of old nail heads. Four large white pillars anchor the center of the room, creating an open, indoor gazebo. Greek-key plaster molding hems off the cathedral ceiling, while architectural pilasters lean against the wall, giving the loft a feeling of an old museum storage room. There’s a large painting on the far wall of a lone white cloud on a blue night sky.

  An industrial kitchen, the length of the loft, is behind us. Neat and organized, it’s outfitted with state-of-the-art appliances. A wild chandelier of Murano-glass trumpet vines in orange and green hangs over the counter.

  His bed, in the far corner of the room, is a four-poster, with a valance behind it of clean white muslin. The silver radiators spit steam into the silent loft. It’s got to be 120 degrees in here. I begin to sweat.

  “Let’s get that coat off you,” he says. He kisses me as he unbuttons my coat. He doesn’t stop with the coat. He undoes the tiny pearl buttons on my pale pink cashmere sweater and slips it off my shoulders. For a second, I wonder how I look, then disregard it, good, he’s already seen me naked. He touches the damp drops on my forehead.

  “Is this the steam heat or us?”

  “Us,” I promise. He unzips my skirt. I help him off with his coat. He struggles with the sleeve of his shirt until I pull it off his arm, like a wrapper. We laugh for a moment, but then go back to kissing. I hold his face in my hands, never letting go as we move across the room. We leave a trail of our clothes on the floor, like rose petals, until we make it to his bed. He lifts me up and puts me on the soft velvet coverlet. He reaches across and opens the window. The wind blows in, ruffling the valance like summer laundry on the line. The cool air settles on us as he lies over me.

  We make love to the music of the cranky boiler and the whistle of the Christmas wind. We are hot and cold, then cold and hot, but mostly hot as we tangle ourselves in each other. His kisses cover me like the velvet quilt that now lies on the floor like a parachute.

  I sink down into his pillows, a spoon in chocolate cake batter.

  “Tell me a story.” He pulls me close and rests his face in my neck.

  “What kind of story?”

  “Like the tomatoes.”

  “Well, let’s see. Once upon a time…,” I begin. As I’m about to continue, Roman falls asleep. I look to the floor and the coverlet, knowing that sometime in the next few hours, the boiler will rest and I will freeze. But it doesn’t, and I don’t. The only thing I wear as I sleep are his arms. I’m warm and safe and wanted by a man I adore, who lies beside me like a mystery, and yet, enough is known to sleep deeply and dreamily long into this Christmas night. What a blissful place to rest my once weary heart, patched like the old man’s coat pockets, the man who grew too old to dream.

  8

  Mott Street

  “NOW THAT’S MY IDEA OF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS.” June bites into a jelly doughnut and closes her eyes. She chews, then sips her coffee. “You know, sex on a holiday is the best. You’ve had good food, scintillating conversation, or in your case, a family brawl that sets the mood for a roll in the hay. And after a fight, you know, you need it. Gets the kinks out.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been there?” The better question may be, where hasn’t June been?

  “Oh, I could tell you about a Saint Patrick’s Day in Dublin that would make your—”

  “June.” Gram comes into the shop, wearing her coat and a scarf tied under her chin. She puts down her purse and takes off her gloves and coat.

  “I was just about to tell Valentine about that rogue with the brogue who I met on vacation in 1972. Seamus had no shame, believe me. Delightful man.”

  “I wish you’d write a book. That way, we might savor the details as a literary experience”—Gram hangs up her coat—“and we’d have the option of checking the book out of the library…or not.”

  “No worries. I’ll never write a book. I can’t be vivid on the page.” June flips the pattern paper on the cutting table like she’s a matador twirling a cape. She lays it on the table. “Only in real life.”

  “The sign of a true artist,” I say and fire up the iron.

  “What do you think?” Gram removes her head scarf. She turns slowly to model her new haircut and color. Her white hair is gone! Now dyed a soft brown, her hair is cut and cropped, with long layers pushed to the front, and pale gold highlights around her face where there used to be small, pressed curls. Her dark eyes sparkle against the contrast of her pink skin and warm caramel hair color. “I used the gift certificate you girls gave me for Christmas at Eva Scrivo’s. What do you think?”

  “God almighty, Teodora. You lost twenty years on the walk home,” June marvels. “And I knew you twenty years ago, so I can say it plain.”

  “Thank you.” Gram beams. “I wanted a new look for my trip to Italy.”

  “Well, you’ve got it,” I tell her.

  “I mean our trip to Italy.” Gram looks at me. “Valent
ine, I want you to go with me.”

  “Are you serious?” I have only been to Italy on a college trip, and I would love to see it with my grandmother.

  In all the years my grandparents traveled to Italy, the trips were strictly business: to buy supplies, meet fellow artisans, share information, and learn new techniques. Usually, they would be gone about a month. When I was small, they went annually; in the later years, they would stagger the trips and go every two or three years. When Grandpop died ten years ago, Gram resumed her annual trips.

  “Gram, are you sure you want to take me?”

  “I wouldn’t think of going without you. You want to win those Bergdorf windows, don’t you?” Gram flips through her work file. “We need the best materials to make them, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.” We are waiting for the dress design that Rhedd Lewis promised us. I’m learning that in the world of fashion, the only people who work on deadlines are the ones making things, not the ones selling them.

  June puts down her scissors and looks at Gram. “You haven’t taken anyone to Italy in years. Not since Mike died.”

  “I know I haven’t,” she says quietly.

  “So, what gives?” June pins down her pattern paper on the leather.

  “It’s time.” Gram looks around the shop, checking the bins for something to do. “Besides, someday Valentine will run the shop, and she needs to meet everybody I deal with.”

  “I wish we were leaving tonight. I’m finally going to see the Spolti Inn, and meet the tanners, and go to the great silk fabric houses in Prato. I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

  “And those Italian men have been waiting for you,” June says.

  “June, I’m taken.” Did she even hear the cleaned-up version of my Christmas night?

  “I know. But it’s the law of the jungle. It’s been my experience, whenever I have a man, I attract more of them. And in Italy, trust me, the men line up.”

  “For tips. Porters, waiters, and bellboys,” I tell her.