“Yes?”
“How much double-sided duchess satin do you think we need in the shop?”
I wait for Gianluca to pick me up on the sidewalk in front of the Spolti Inn. The morning fog has lifted, leaving the cobblestones clean and wet, and the air brisk.
Arezzo is famous for its windy mountaintop climate, and it does not disappoint. I’m wearing a sleeveless pink wool shift with a matching bolero my mother found for 75 percent off at Loehmann’s. Giving credit where credit is due, my mother insists you can find great stuff at Loehmann’s if you search. The bolero was one of her greatest triumphs as it’s a gorgeous, tightly woven cashmere the color of sand.
Gianluca pulls up and gets out of his car. He comes around and opens the door for me.
“Good morning,” he says.
“Good morning.” I get a whoosh of the scent of his skin as I climb in; it’s crisp and lemony. He closes the car door behind me, bracing the outside handle like it’s a lock on a bank vault. I’m sure Dominic warned him that if I accidentally fell out of the car while in his care, he’d have to kill him on behalf of my grandmother.
Gianluca goes around the front of the car and gets into the driver’s seat. This is an old-model Mercedes, but the interior still has the scent of new leather, while the navy blue exterior is polished to a glassy finish.
Gianluca hits the gas pedal like he’s bolting from the first position at the starting gate at NASCAR in the Poconos.
“Whoa,” I say. “Keep it under ninety miles an hour, will you?”
I scroll through my e-mails. I answer Wendy’s about the hotel, Gabriel’s about the leather, and Mom’s about Gram. Roman writes:
I dream of you and Capri. R.
I text back:
In that order? V.
“You like that thing?” Gianluca points to my phone.
“I couldn’t live without it. I’m in constant touch with everyone I know. How could that be a bad thing?”
He laughs. “When do you think?”
“Funny you should ask. I actually turned this off and soaked in the tub last night, and then I did some reading.”
“Va bene, Valentina.”
That’s funny, only my father ever called me Valentina.
He continues, “I don’t like those things. They interrupt life. You can’t go anywhere without beeps going off and silly songs playing.”
“I’m sorry to tell you, Gianluca. But I think these things”—I hold up my phone—“are here to stay.”
“Agh.” He dismisses the entire contemporary-communication matrix with a wave of his hand.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m being rude e-mailing instead of talking to you.” I put the phone on pulse and put it in my purse.
I catch the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile. Okay, Gianluca, I’m thinking, you’re Italian. You’re a man. This is all about you. “I’m all yours,” I tell him.
To reward me for my undivided attention, Gianluca frequently slows down to show me the exterior of a rococo church, or a roadside shrine to the Madonna placed by a devout farmer, or an indigenous tree that grows only in this part of the world. On the outskirts of Prato, he takes a turn off the autostrada and onto a back road. I grip the handle above the door as we jostle over the gravel roadway.
As Gianluca slows down, I see a lake through the trees. It shimmers like pale blue silk taffeta. The edges of the water are blurred by wild fronds of deep green stalks that bend and twist over the shoreline. I commit the color scheme to memory. How luscious it would be to create an icy blue shoe with a deep green feather trim. I roll down the window to get a closer look. The sun hits the water like a slew of silver arrows.
“This is one of my favorite places. Lago Argento. This is where I come to think.”
The lovely silence is broken by the beep of my cell phone. I’m mortified that I’m spoiling Gianluca’s sacred space.
“Go ahead and answer it. I cannot fight progress.”
I look at Gianluca, who laughs, and then I laugh. I reach into my purse and check my phone.
Roman texts:
You first. Forever and ever. R.
I smile.
“Good news?” Gianluca asks.
“Oh, yeah.” I put the phone back in my purse.
The Prato silk-factory building is a modern, rambling complex painted a dull beige, and has a tall steel-ornamental fence enclosing it. Low landscaping around the border gives it a manicured look.
Many great designers come here to shop for fabric. The old-guard, visionary Europeans like Karl Lagerfeld and Alberta Ferretti, to new talents like Phillip Lim and Proenza Schouler, make the trip to Prato. Some designers even take the scraps from the floor and weave them into original fabric designs; evidently, even the chuff of this factory is valuable.
Gianluca shows his ID as we pull up to the guard’s gate. They ask me for my passport. Gianluca opens it to the page with my picture and hands it to the guard.
Once we park, I wait for Gianluca to come around and open my door. He was polite about my beeping phone, so I’m not about to undercut his proper Italian manners. When he opens my door, he takes my hand to help me out. When our hands touch, a slight shiver runs down my spine. It must be the spring air, which blows cool under the hot sun.
We go through the entrance where there’s a small reception area with a window. Gianluca goes up to the window and asks to see Sabrina Fioravanti. In a few moments, a woman around my mother’s age, with reading glasses on a chain around her neck, greets us.
“Gianluca!” she says.
He kisses both her cheeks. “This is Signora Fioravanti.”
She takes my hands, pleased to meet me. “How is Teodora?” she wants to know.
“She’s doing fine.”
“Vecchio?” Signora says. “Like me.”
“Only in numbers, not in spirit.” I start thinking about what my eighty-year-old Gram is up to this very minute.
I follow Sabrina into the mill, to the finishing department, where the ornate silks are being pressed and mounted onto bolts, which spin the fabric onto giant wheels that fill to the size of tree trunks. I can’t resist touching the fabrics, buttery cotton sateen embroidered with fine gold thread, and cut velvet with squares of raw silk.
“Double-sided fabrics you need?” Sabrina asks.
“Yes.” I reach inside my purse for my list. “And taffeta with a velvet backing, and, if you have it, a silk striate.” I take a deep breath.
“Is there a problem?” Gianluca asks me. He points to the deep lines forming a number eleven between my eyebrows. “You look concerned.”
“No, I’m just thinking,” I lie. “And when I think, I get a uni-brow.”
“What?”
“You know, worry lines. Ignore them.”
Sabrina returns with a young man carrying a pile of fabric swatches. It will take me the better part of the day to look through them. Now I know why I have the worry lines. This is a big job and Gram isn’t here to guide me. She’s too busy pitching woo with Dominic under the Tuscan sun to schlep to this factory and sort through hundreds of fabric samples to find what we need. I’m feeling abandoned, that’s all. But it’s too late, we’re here now, and I have to go it alone.
Sabrina goes. I pull up a stool and put my purse on the table behind me. Gianluca pulls up a stool and sits across from me at the worktable. I place my written list on the table and begin to sort through the fabrics.
“Okay.” I look at Gianluca. “First, I need a durable satin jacquard. Beige.”
Gianluca sorts through a pile and pulls one. He holds it up.
“Not too much pink in the beige,” I tell him. “More gold.”
I put aside the fabrics that would be too flimsy even if we backed them ourselves. Gianluca follows my lead. Then he begins to make a stack of the heartier varieties. I find a heavy double-sided satin embroidered with filigreed gold vines. I wonder if we can cut on the embroidery and reluctantly put it aside.
“You don’t l
ike that one?” he says.
“I love it. But I don’t think I can cut around the pattern.”
Gianluca picks up the sample. “But you can. You just buy extra, and repeat the pattern across.” He drapes the fabric on the table, then tucks it under. “See? It’s the same with the leather.”
“You’re right.”
I place the silk with vines on the top of my buy pile. There are so many to choose from, but the selection is enthralling. I begin to imagine shoes in every sample I pick up: canton crepe, peau-de-soie, matelasse, velveteen, faille, and a silk broadcloth with a tone-on-tone stripe. I throw myself into the fun of it, and the process picks up speed as we sort for a good while.
“You like making shoes?” Gianluca asks.
“Can you tell?” I check another item off my list. “Do you like working as a tanner?”
“Not so much.” Now Gianluca gets the number eleven between his eyes. “Papa and I fight. We have for many years. But it’s worse since my mother died.”
“How long has your father been a widower?”
“Eleven years in November.” He picks up a stack of crisp linen samples from the end of the table. “Are both your parents living?”
I nod that they are.
“How old are they?” he asks.
“My father is sixty-eight. If you ever meet my mom, you mustn’t let on, but she is sixty-one. We have an age thing in my family.”
“What is an age thing?”
“We don’t like getting old.”
“Who does?” He smiles.
“How old are you?”
“I am fifty-two,” he says. “That’s too old.”
“For what?” I ask him. “To change careers? You could do that in a second.”
Gianluca shrugs. “Working with my father is my obligation.” He seems resigned, but not actually unhappy about his situation.
“In America, when something isn’t working for us, we change. We go back to school and develop a new skill, or we switch jobs, or employers. There’s no need to toil away at something you don’t love.”
“In Italy, we don’t change. My desires are not the most important thing. I have responsibilities and I accept them. My father needs me. I let him think he’s the boss, but his siesta has become longer the older he gets.”
“So do Gram’s.”
“You work in your family business.” He sounds defensive.
“Yes, but I chose it. I wanted to be a shoemaker.”
“Here, we don’t choose. The dreams of the family become our dreams.”
I think about my family, and how that used to be true for us. It was family first, but now, it seems, my generation has let go of all of that. I could never work with my mother, but it’s different with my grandmother. The generation that separates Gram and me seems to bind us to a common goal. We understand each other in a way that works professionally and at home. Maybe it’s because she needs the help, and I was here at the right moment to give it to her. I don’t know. But my dreams and the dreams of my grandmother somehow met, and blended, creating something new for each of us. Even now, it seems, she is handing the reins over to me; never mind that the horse has a lame leg and can’t see, to her the Angelini Shoe Company is worth something, and to me, even with mounting debt and the production of custom shoes in jeopardy, it’s a priceless legacy. I only hope that I can hang on to it so I might pass it along to the next generation.
Gianluca and I enter a tall atrium in the center of the complex where the factory workers take their breaks. Some of the younger ones are on their BlackBerries, others chat on cell phones, while the middle-aged employees have an espresso and a piece of fruit. There are workers here close to Gram’s age, which is a huge difference compared with back home. Here, the older artisans—the masters—are revered and an integral part of the process of making fabrics. My brother, Alfred, should see this so he might understand why Gram keeps working. The satisfaction a craftsman seeks, after years of work, is perfection itself. A master may not reach it, but after years of study, training, and experience, she may come close. This, in itself, is a goal worth aiming for.
Gianluca brings me a caffè latte, while he carries a bottle of water for himself. “My wife drank caffè latte, never espresso.”
“My kind of girl.”
Gianluca sits down next to me.
“I feel bad that you got stuck with me. I’m sure you have all kinds of important things to do.”
“I do?” He smiles.
“Sure. You have a daughter and a family in Arezzo. You probably have a hobby or a girlfriend.”
He laughs.
“What’s funny about that?”
“There is no subtlety with you.”
“Well, forgive me. I’m just trying to make conversation.”
He swigs his water, and leaves my question lying on the table like the rejected pile of flimsy silk linen. But I am curious about this man, I don’t know why. I have nothing to lose, so I get personal with him. “Why did you get a divorce?”
“Why aren’t you married?” He answers with a question.
“You first.”
“My wife wanted to move to the city. But she knew I couldn’t leave my father. So we agreed that she would live in Florence while I stayed on in Arezzo, and I would visit, or she would come home on weekends. Orsola was going to university, and it seemed like the arrangement could work. We were doing what we needed to do, what we wanted to do. But that doesn’t make a marriage.”
“Sounds ideal to me. Very romantic to have two lives that come together once in a while and sparks fly.”
“It’s no good. You take each other for granted.”
“I know all about that.” The reasons behind Gianluca’s divorce sound an awful lot like the excuses I use when Roman disappoints me. Sometimes I feel that we put our relationship on hold in order to do our work. Somehow, though, I think love fixes all of this. Isn’t love the most practical of all emotions? Isn’t it a constant? “Do you still love her?”
“I don’t believe you can love someone who doesn’t love you.”
“Sometimes you can’t help it.”
“I can,” he says simply. “Now tell me about you.”
My phone pulses. I fish it out of my purse. “Saved by technology.” I check the phone. “It’s Gabriel,” I say aloud. I’ll text him later.
“Your boyfriend?” he asks.
“No, no. Just a friend.” I snap my phone shut and put it back in my purse. “We should get back to work,” I say.
I follow Gianluca back through the atrium to the hallway that leads to the workroom. There’s a set of glass doors that separate the hallway from the atrium. Gianluca dials the security code. I look at the reflection of the two of us in the glass.
“Nice couple, eh?” he says, meeting my eyes in the glass.
I nod politely. I remember something Gabriel told me back in college. He said a man never spends time with a woman unless he wants something. Gianluca is spending an awful lot of time with me. I wonder what he’s after. More business? Maybe. But we make only so many pairs of shoes a year. It’s not likely I’d double my leather order. It’s almost as if he wants an excuse to be away from the tannery. I heard the yelling. It isn’t all fun and games at Vechiarelli & Son. Maybe I’m his excuse to take some time away from the shop.
We return to the workroom and take our seats at the table. Sabrina left a new pile of swatches on the table.
“It is still your turn,” says Gianluca. “I want to know about you. Tell me about your boyfriend.”
“Well, his name is Roman. He is a chef in his own restaurant. He makes rustic Italian cuisine.”
Gianluca laughs. “All Italian food is rustic. We’ve been eating the same food for the past two thousand years. Will you marry this Roman?”
“Maybe.”
“Has he asked?”
“Not yet.” The look on Gianluca’s face annoys me. “Hey, for the record, I was asked once before.”
“O
f course, you had many suitors.”
I just look at him. Is he joking or does he actually believe I’m a femme fatale? Let him think whatever he wants. My romantic past, my pre-Roman era, seems historic to me now. A woman can reinvent or erase her history entirely when she travels. This is one of the great benefits of leaving home.
“Do you want children?” he asks.
“You know, for the longest time I didn’t know. But now, I think I might.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirty-four at the end of this month.”
He whistles low. “You’d better hurry.”
“Who are you? The fertility police?”
“No, it’s that I’m older and I have experience. You need energy to raise children. You should do it soon. It’s the best thing I ever did.”
“Orsola is beautiful and has a big heart. You should be very proud of her.”
“She is the best thing to come out of my marriage.”
“Do you think you’ll marry again?”
“No,” he answers quickly.
“You’ve made your mind up about that.”
“I have my daughter. What would be the purpose of getting married again?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Love, maybe?”
“Love is not what makes a marriage,” he says. “Love starts one, perhaps, but something else finishes it.”
“Really.” I put down my swatches and lean forward. “Please. Explain.”
“Marriage in Italy used to be about two families coming together,” he begins.
“Yes, and merging their assets,” I say, nodding. “A business of a sort.”
“Correct. And their beliefs, too, about how to live and how to build a life together. But sometimes, families don’t mesh. My wife, I believe, loved me, but she thought I would achieve great things. And when I didn’t, she left.”
“What was she expecting?”
He waves his hand in the air. “A city life.”
“You know, Gianluca, a city life is not so bad.”
“I don’t want it.”
“How could you not? It’s the best. Gram and I live in Greenwich Village in New York City. And we have a roof garden where we grow tomatoes, and sometimes, at night, it’s so quiet you’d think you were by the lake you showed me this morning. Really.”