Very Valentine
Gram’s eyes fill with tears. She lifts her glasses and wipes her eyes. Gram is not a weeper, it’s rare that I see her cry.
“You’re not alone, Gram. I’m here.”
Gram makes her way upstairs while I close down the house, rinse our glasses, pull the drapes closed, and turn out the lights. As I do my chores, I review all the business questions I have for Gram. I climb the stairs to find out more about exactly what is going on around here.
Gram sits up in bed, reading the newspaper in her fashion. The New York Times is folded into a book-size rectangle. She leans on one shoulder into her pillow, holding the paper up, close to the lamplight as she reads.
Gram’s face is oval, with a smooth forehead and an aquiline nose. Her even lips have the faintest touch of coral left from her lipstick. Her deep brown eyes study the paper intently. She adjusts her eyeglasses and then sniffles. She pulls a tissue from the sleeve of her nightgown, wipes her nose, returns the tissue to its spot, and continues reading. These are the things, I imagine, that I will remember about her when she’s gone. I will remember her habits and quirks, the way she reads the paper, the way she stands over the pattern table in the shop, the way she uses her entire body as she places her hand on the lid of a mason jar to seal it shut when we can the tomatoes. Now I have a new picture to add to the pile: the look on her face this evening when she told me the Angelini Shoe Company is in hock up to the rooftop garden. I played it cool and calm, but the truth is, I feel as though I’m on life support, and I haven’t the guts to ask the doctor how long I’ve got.
“You’re staring,” Gram says, looking at me over her glasses. “What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the loans?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“But I’m your apprentice. Translated from the French it means ‘to help.’”
“It does?”
“Not really. The point is, I’m here to help. From the moment I became your apprentice, your problems became my problems. Our problems.”
Gram begins to disagree. I stop her.
“Now, don’t argue with me. I want to master making shoes because I want to design them someday and I can’t do it without you.”
“You’ve got the talent.” Gram looks at me. “You definitely have the talent.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed and turn to face her. “Then trust me with your legacy.”
“I do. But, Valentine, more than the success of this business, in fact, more than anything in this world, I want peace in my family. I want you to get along with your brother. I want you to try and understand him.”
“Maybe he should try and understand us. This isn’t 1652 on a Tuscan farm where the firstborn son controls everything and the girls do the dishes. He’s not our padrone, even though he acts like it.”
“He’s smart. Maybe he can help us.”
“Fine, first thing tomorrow I smoke the peace pipe with Alfred,” I lie. I’m not going to do one more thing to put me into deeper indentured servitude, emotional or financial, to my brother. “You need anything before I go to bed?”
“Nope.”
The phone rings on Gram’s nightstand. She reaches for it. “Hello,” she says. “Ciao, ciao!” She sits up in the bed, waves good night to me. “Il matrimonio è stato bellissimo. Jaclyn era una sposa straordinaria. Troppa gente, troppo cibo, la musica era troppo forte, ed erano tutti anziani.” She laughs.
I stand and walk toward the door. I can make out phrases here and there. Nice wedding. Pretty bride. Loud music. Gram’s vocal tone has changed, her crack Italian words tumble over one another and she hardly takes a breath, like a gossipy seventh-grader after her first dance. When she speaks Italian, she’s lighter, downright girly. Who is she talking to? I glance back in her direction, but Gram covers the mouthpiece.
She waves me off. “It’s long distance. My tanner from Italy.” Then she smiles and goes back to her call.
On the way to my bedroom, I turn the hallway lights off. Lately, these calls from Italy have become more frequent. Leather must be a hilarious subject between shoemakers and tanners, judging by the way Gram jokes on the phone. Whoever she’s talking to has a lot of pep for 5 A.M. Italian time. But how can she laugh when the wolf is at the door with a lien and a buyout? I go into my room, which is about seventy degrees cooler than the hallway. I close the door behind me so the cold air doesn’t waft down the hallway and give Gram a chill.
I am so upset, I cannot get in bed, so I pace. What a day. A wedding day so hot that when I danced with Jaclyn’s father-in-law he left a wet handprint on my dress. The humiliation of the Friends’ table, explaining myself, my life to a bunch of people I see only at weddings and funerals, which should tell me something about their place in my universe. Then I return home to bad news which, deep down, doesn’t surprise me as much as it should, if I’m completely honest with myself. I have noticed a shift in Gram’s mood in the shop. I preferred to ignore it, which is a mistake I won’t make again. From now on, I’m not going to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. I’m angry at Gram for mishandling the business. I’m angry that she assumed Grandpop’s debts without restructuring, or bringing in professionals to advise her. She has set the wheels in motion to close the shop, or maybe this is her way of letting the decision to retire be made for her. I can see it all now: Alfred will close the shop, sell the building, I will be on the street, while Gram goes off to live in one of those cold, impersonal condos, and someday her great-grandchildren will look at photographs of the shoes she made, like relics under glass in a museum.
I should have sat down with her when I came to work here and had her explain everything, not just the history of our family business, or the mechanics of the craft, but the hard facts, the numbers, the truth about what it takes to keep a small, independent company thriving in this era of mass merchandising and cheap foreign labor. I skirted all that because I was beholden to her for making me her apprentice and allowing me to learn how to make shoes. I was indebted to her, and now I will pay the price.
I would have handled things differently if my mentor wasn’t my grandmother. I never felt I could ask questions because who was I to ask them? But now, I know. I should have asked. I should have asserted myself! I wasted so much time. And there it is, the root of my anger and frustration, so obvious I should have thought of it sooner. I took my time until my thirties to find my calling, and then I waltzed in assuming that the details would take care of themselves. I should have come to work here full-time when I was young and my grandfather was alive. I should have become their apprentice right out of college instead of being sidetracked by Bret and by a career as a teacher, which I was never completely committed to. Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix.
I’m a late bloomer, and knowing a little bit about plants the way I do, sometimes late bloomers don’t bloom at all. I may never become the artisan I hope to be because there won’t be a master to teach me, or a place for me to perfect my craft. The Angelini Shoe Company will close, and with it will go my future.
I waded into becoming a shoemaker when I should have jumped in. I’d show up on weekends and help trace patterns, buff leather, dye silk, or cut grommets; but it wasn’t a calling for me at first, it wasn’t as if I was compelled to be a shoemaker. I just wanted an excuse to spend time with Gram.
Then, as these things go, I had an epiphany.
One Saturday morning, when I was still teaching English at Forest Hills High School, I came over to help. I draped a gorgeous piece of embroidered velvet over the cutting table. I picked up a pencil and traced around the edges, marking where the seams of the shoe would eventually go. I had traced the pattern instinctively, without breaking the flow of the line, as though something or someone was guiding me. I had an effortless connection to the task, it came as naturally as breathing. I had found my calling. I knew that was it, no more teaching. I would leave behind that career and my life in Queens, and sadly, Bret, who had his own life plan configured, w
hich didn’t include a struggling artist with student loans, but rather a traditional life, the center of which would be a stay-at-home mother who would raise the children while he took Wall Street by the horns. I didn’t fit in his picture, and he didn’t fit in mine. Love, I decided then, had to wait while I started over.
I pull my sketchbook off the nightstand and wiggle the pencil out of the wire. I flip the pad open and leaf through my sketches of vamps, insoles, heels, and uppers, drawn tentatively at first, then with a stronger hand. I’m getting there, I think as I look at the sketches. I’m getting better, I just need more time.
As I flip through the pages, I reread the notes I’ve scribbled in the margins: try kid leather here? how about elastic there? velvet? Throughout the pages, knowledge imparted by Gram offers me the instructions and facts that I need daily, ideas to revisit and refer to in the day-to-day operation of the shop. Finally, I flip to a clean white page.
I write:
How to Save the Angelini Shoe Company
I am completely overwhelmed. I add:
Since 1903
A hundred and four years have come and gone. The Angelinis were educated and clothed and sheltered with the profits of their shoe shop, a life made and financed by the labor of their own hands. I cannot let the business die, but what does this business mean now, in a world where handcrafted shoes are a luxury? We make custom wedding shoes, in a world where shoes are manufactured and mass-produced in minutes and assembled by cheap labor in factories in corners of the world no one has heard of, or worse, pretend that they don’t exist. Making shoes by hand is an antiquated art form like glass blowing or quilting or canning tomatoes. How do we survive in a contemporary world without losing everything my great-grandfather built? I write:
Sources of Revenue
I stare at the words until my eyes blur. The only people I know with a real knowledge of money and how to gain access to it are Bret and Alfred, two men I’d rather not ask for help. I flip the pad closed, shove the pencil back into the wire, and drop it onto the floor. I turn out the light. I flip over and pull the blanket close. I’ll make this happen, I promise myself. I have to.
3
Greenwich Village
BUONITALIA IS AN ITALIAN GROCERY in the Chelsea Market, an old, converted warehouse on Fifteenth Street filled with specialty shops that sell everything from party cakes in the image of Scarlett O’Hara (with antebellum hoop skirts made of frosting) to live lobsters.
The rustic, brightly lit building is a mini-mall of great eating, but nothing tops BuonItalia, as they carry a bounty of all my favorite imports, direct from Italy. You can find everything from jumbo jars of Nutella, a chocolate whip made with hazelnuts (there’s nothing else like it spread on a fresh croissant); Bonomelli’s chamomile flower tea; Molino Spadoni farina (the only kind Gram will put in soup; I’ve been eating it since I was a pup); to big tins of acciughe salate, anchovies straight from Sicily, which we stuff into hot peppers and eat with hot bread.
At the back of the store, a series of open refrigerator bins are filled with fresh, handmade pasta. There’s a special on one of Gram’s favorite noodles, spaghetti al nero seppia, a thin linguine made with the black ink of squid. In the package it looks like licorice whips dusted in cornmeal. I’ll prepare it with fresh lemon, butter, and garlic.
I pick up a package of arugula, some firm white mushrooms, and some roasted red peppers to make a salad. Gram loves Zia Tonia’s dark chocolate curls on vanilla ice cream, her own version of stracciatella gelato, so I pick up a container of that, too. On the way out, I stop at the Wine Vault and buy a bottle of hearty Sicilian Chianti.
As I walk along Greenwich Street, on my way back to the shop, I remember when I was small and my mother wouldn’t allow us to go north of Jane, where the old Meatpacking District merged with the residential West Village. Mom believed that if the speeding meat trucks didn’t kill you, the exposure to the drug peddlers would.
There was some discussion in the early 1980s about Gram and Grandpop selling the shop and getting out of the neighborhood. There were unsolved murders on the docks of the Hudson River and all-night parties in clubs on the West Side Highway named after places you only hear about during a colonoscopy. So many of my grandparents’ contemporaries and neighbors feared the worst, sold their buildings for rock-bottom prices, and left for Long Island, Connecticut, or the Jersey shore. Gram still stays in touch with the Kirshenbaums, who owned a printing press on Jane Street and now live in Connecticut. Friends who hung on until the gentrification of the 1990s fared much better. My grandparents stuck it out, and now Gram will reap the benefits. This strip along the Hudson has become some of the most desired and expensive property on the island of Manhattan.
I remember a more homespun village from my childhood, a working-class neighborhood with a small-town feeling. Gardens weren’t manicured. It was pure luck if you had something green growing on your stoop. Buildings were maintained, not renovated. Redbrick walls were chipped and cracked, beaten by the wind and rain to a dull pink, while concrete steps had chunks missing, like the ears worn away by weather on ancient Greek statues.
There used to be big gray garbage drums locked with chains in front gardens, and bicycles hanging off the chain-link fences. Now those same gardens hold marble urns spilling over with exotic plants, and the bikes have been replaced by decorative vines of orange bittersweet berries loaded with blossoms in the spring and berries in the fall. Magazine prettiness has replaced real life.
The poets and musicians who wandered these streets have been chased away by wealthy ladies from the Upper East Side in black town cars shopping for European couture. They haven’t paved over the cobblestones yet, but you get the feeling that’s coming. How many limousines will have to bounce over them, tossing rich people around in the backseat, before someone objects? As long as there are cobblestones, I will have proof of my childhood. Once those are gone, I won’t be so sure about where I came from.
I push the door open. I take a quick look in the shop. The leather Gram cut this morning is laid out on the worktable. The back windows are cracked open; a soft breeze blows over the pattern paper, making it rustle slightly. “Gram?” I call out to her.
The powder-room door is open, but no sign of her there. There’s a note on the cutting table from June Lawton, our pattern cutter: “Finished up. See you in the A.M.”
I climb the stairs with the grocery bags. I hear a man’s voice in the apartment. He talks about food.
“Quando preparo i peperoni da mettere in conserva, uso i vecchi barattoli di Foggia.”
He says he cans peppers.
“Prendo i peperoni verdi, gli taglio via le cime, li pulisco, dopodichè li riempio con le acciughe.”
Now, he’s saying something about stuffing the peppers with anchovies.
“Faccio bollire i barattoli e poi li riempio con i pepperoni ed acciughe.”
The voice still isn’t familiar.
He goes on, “Aggiungo aceto e spicchi di aglio fresco. All’incirca sei spicchi per barattolo.”
“Così tanti?” Gram says to him.
I walk into the apartment with my bags.
Gram is seated at the kitchen table. The man sits at the head of the table with his back to me. Gram looks up at me and smiles. “Valentine, I’d like you to meet someone.”
I take the bags into the kitchen and place them on the counter. I turn around and extend my hand. “Hi…” The man stands up. He is instantly familiar to me. I know him from somewhere. I shuffle through my memory bank, all the while smiling, but my mental hard drive is coming up with nothing. He’s good-looking, sexy even. Is he a supplier? A salesman? He’s not wearing brown, so he’s definitely not the UPS man. He’s not wearing a wedding ring either, so chances are he isn’t married.
“I’m Roman Falconi,” he says. The way he introduces himself tells me that I should know his name, but I don’t.
“Valentine Roncalli.” I extend my hand. He takes it. I release my grip. He d
oesn’t. He stands and smiles with an expression of knowingness. Maybe he went to school at Holy Agony? I’d remember that. Wouldn’t I?
“Nice to see you again,” Roman says.
Again? Nice to see you again? I roll his words around in my head and then suddenly it hits me. Oh no.
This is the guy from the apartment. The Meier building. Last night. The guy in the Campari T-shirt. This is the man who saw me naked. I run my hands over my clothes, relieved that I’m wearing them.
Roman Falconi towers over me. He’s definitely taller in person than he seemed in the apartment. Of course, in a glass building, when it’s dark out, with distance and the angle, he looked small to me, like one of those bugs trapped in resin for science class.
His nose makes the schnozolas in my family seem demure, but again, everything on his face seems larger up close. He’s got thick black hair, cut in longish layers, but it doesn’t look coiffed. It would be wonderful if he were gay. A gay man would have looked at my nudity as a study in light, contrast, and form. This guy looked at me longingly, like a ham sandwich and a cold soda accidentally found in the glove compartment on a long car trip with no place to stop and eat for miles. He is not gay.
His eyes are deep brown, the whites around them pale blue—this is genuine Italian stock here. He has a wide smile, excellent teeth. I wiggle my hand out of his grasp. He has a look of surprise on his face, as if to say, What woman has the temerity to ever let go of my hand? Big egos go with big hands.
“Valentine is my granddaughter, and the apprentice in the shop.”
“Do you take care of the garden on the roof?” This time his smile is, well, dirty.
“Sometimes.”
Gram interjects. “Valentine is up there all summer. Every day. She’s the real gardener in the family. I don’t know what I’d do without her. The stairs are getting to be too much for me.”
“You’re just fine, Gram.”