“Do you think Dad will get a good report?” Jaclyn asks.
“He looks good. You know, physically.”
“Val, he always looks good. The people in our family can be at death’s door and they never look sick. They die in the picture of health. You can’t count on visuals,” Tess says.
“I hope I age like Dad. He’s looked the same since he was forty.”
“It’s the nose,” Jaclyn says. “A nose is important as you get older. It holds everything up. Like a tent pole.” Jaclyn scrolls through her BlackBerry. “Look. Gram sent a picture of Dominic and her. Check it out.”
Gram and Dominic embrace on the deck of a cruise ship. There are foamy white caps on the Black Sea. They are bundled up like sherpas, in down coats, knit caps, dark sunglasses, and thick gloves.
“Are they on their honeymoon, or did they join the Russian mob?”
“It must have been cold over there,” Tess says. “Freezing. Hey, here’s one with Gianluca.” Jaclyn hands it to me.
I look down at the picture. He’s standing by the hood of his car with a peevish expression on his face. Gram and Dominic must have been late to go somewhere. Annoyed or not, he looks gorgeous in the picture.
“Have you heard from him? I mean, any word since I caught him in the bathroom?”
“Yes, I’ve heard from him.”
My sisters lean in.
“Are you Skyping?” Tess asks, trying not to pry, but desperate to know every detail.
“No. We write letters.”
“With stamps?”
“Yes, Tess. With ink, stamps, envelopes. The old post office routine.”
“Wow. How romantic.” Tess says the word without meaning it. Her idea of romance is cards that play songs when you open them, huge floral arrangements, and a diamond heart suspended on a thick gold chain. A handwritten letter is the poor man’s way to a woman’s heart, and Tess, like my mother, prefers the glitz. “An old-fashioned letter.”
“But why?” Jaclyn, not yet thirty, does not remember life before cell phones and e-mail. “How long does the mail take from Italy? Isn’t it years? Mom sent us a postcard from Italy, and she’d been home three weeks when the card arrived. Why would you bother with all that when you can text him?”
“He’s not a technical guy,” I tell them.
“He’s old.” Jaclyn shrugs, satisfied that she’s cracked the Vechiarelli code.
“Yeah, he’s older…ish, but it’s not that. He really pays attention to the people around him. It matters to him how he spends his time. I don’t know him that well yet, but everything he does, everything he says, has meaning. He thinks things through. I’ve never met anyone like him.”
“Do you think it’s serious?”
“Don’t buy your bridesmaid dresses.”
“But Bendel’s is having a sale,” Jaclyn whines. “I got my eye on a Rodarte sample.”
Tess turns to me. “Don’t let her push you. There will always be perfect dresses and weddings to wear them to. You make sure he’s right for you. Take your time. Eventually, you’ll know for sure if Gianluca is The One.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I don’t know if I believe in that anymore.”
“Of course you do! Look at us!” Jaclyn says. “One Charlie! One Tom!”
“Well, it’s worked out well for you guys. I’m different.”
“You always say that, but you’re really not that different from us,” Tess says.
“Believe me, I wish I was exactly like you. You get an idea in your heads, and you see it through. Some people go for the brass ring, and you went for the diamond version. It worked out for you. But I never fall in love with men who do what I want to do. There’s always a conflict.”
“Maybe this is it. Maybe Gianluca will compromise,” Tess reasons.
“When is he coming over to visit?” Jaclyn asks, hoping that gown she likes will still be on sale when Gianluca convinces me to take the next step.
“He’s running the tannery alone now. I don’t think he can take time off.”
“So you have one of these Jane Austen romances where there are letters but no actual sex.” Tess sounds disappointed. “No action. Just words.”
“Poetry,” I correct her.
“What does he say in the letters?” Tess asks.
“None of your business.”
I will not make the mistake of showing my sisters the letters from Gianluca. Gabriel’s dissection of Gianluca’s letter left me stone cold. June’s assessment helped because she put her opinion in the context of her extensive life (and love) experience. The last place I’m going to look for validation is my immediate family. I’m long past the days when I have to run everything I’m feeling by my family.
As the last single person in a family of married people, I have become their final frontier, their project. They will not rest until I’m taken. I would prefer they use their energy to help Mom install her dream lily pond on Austin Street instead of meddling in my love life.
Mom pushes through the swinging doors that lead to the interior of the hospital. She is dressed head to toe in yellow. Sunshine gold. Mike Roncalli has brought a splash of color therapy into Manhattan’s palace of healing.
“Oh, girls! All clear!” Mom embraces the three of us and begins to cry. “Every time I set foot in here and we get a decent report, I realize how completely out of my mind with worry I am every single day. Ordinary life can drain you.”
“Yes, it can,” I agree.
“It’s not the big things, you know—it’s the maintenance. But thank God and Saint Teresa, who never fails me, Dutch is all clear for now.”
“I’ll text Alfred,” Jaclyn says.
“Thanks,” Mom says, tightening the belt on her yellow princess coat. Something bothers her still. “You know,” she says, “your dad notices that Alfred never comes on these appointments.”
“He’s back at the shop, Mom,” I tell her. “He’s researching—”
“Don’t make excuses for him. You make the damn shoes, Val, and you find the time to come here and be with your father and me. No, your brother doesn’t get it. And you know what? He never will! He will hold a grudge against your father until the day he dies.”
“Let’s hope not,” Tess says diplomatically.
“What is it?” Mom throws her hands up. “Why can’t children forgive their parents? We don’t set out to disappoint you. We really don’t. And when we do, we are the first to know it—and as far as I can tell, your father has made reparations. Not that he would use that word—”
“Or pronounce it.” I nod.
“But honestly,” Mom continues, “the man has made all matters of restitution to me, to his family, to his God. Furthermore, he has tried time and time again to open up the channels of communication with your brother, on Alfred’s terms, and he’s been rebuffed. Every single time! Daddy isn’t selling himself as some perfect parent. He’s well aware of his failings, as I am of mine. But for God help me, it’s been twenty years. It’s almost a non-memory for me at this point. But, for your brother? It’s a fresh gash.”
“That’s just Alfred,” Tess says. “You’re not going to change him, Ma, don’t let it bug you.”
Mom considers this. The sadness and anger leave her face as quickly as if she were wiping them off with one of her premoistened makeup sponges. “You’re absolutely right. Alfred will get it when he gets it. But, please, my trio of angels, don’t let my peevishness ruin your day. You are the best! Each of you have so much on your plates, with children and work and husbands and…” Mom looks at me. “Overseas enchantments. Yet with all you have to do, your father and I must have done something right, because you always show up for us.”
“Where are we gonna go, Ma? We’re family,” Jaclyn says.
We sit and wait for Dad to dress and join us, and I think about my brother, and how somebody is always angry with him. That can’t be good for Alfred. It’s sad that he’s missing out on this great moment with us. Relief is an i
nstant balm, but it has to be earned. Alfred ignores the agony, and then he misses the joy. He doesn’t make any emotional investment in us. Maybe he saves it all for Pamela and his sons.
Or maybe they, like us, know the truth: none of us are good enough for Alfred, whether we were born after him, gave birth to him, fathered him, or married him. Alfred’s standards are so high no one can reach them. I have to remember to tell Bret to keep this in mind. I can’t have Alfred derail my relationships at the Angelini Shoe Company because he has unrealistic standards—or because he doesn’t want to see the sister who never measured up succeed despite herself.
“I know this is against your religion…,” I say into my cell phone. I stand on the corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue, with one hand over my ear and the other clutching my phone. “…but I had to do the modern thing and call you.”
“Valentina?” Gianluca could not be happier to hear from me.
“I have good news. Dad got a great report at the doctors.”
“Va bene!” Gianluca is thrilled by the news, and just as happy to hear from me.
“I wanted to tell you.” A bus pulls up at the stop and decompresses with a loud blast as the steps are lowered closer to the sidewalk. “Sorry about the noise. I’m outside. On my way back to the shop.”
“The noise is not a problem,” he assures me. “I am happy to hear your voice.”
“Gianluca?”
“Yes?”
“Be patient with me.”
“Valentina.”
The soothing sound of his voice, the way he says my name, blankets me. I want to let him know what he means to me, that I couldn’t wait to get home and write it on the onionskin paper. Suddenly, it felt urgent. It only takes a trip to Sloan Kettering to remind me how short life is, and that there’s nothing wrong with a little prioritizing. “I’m not as good at this as you are, at expressing myself. I…” I pause and think.
He waits patiently until I speak. He doesn’t interrupt me. He lets me find my point, and then gives me the time to share it. “I am trying to say that I love your letters. They are very descriptive and honest…and I feel so much when I read them.”
“Grazie,” he says, then amends. “Mille grazie.”
“I guess, what I’d like to tell you is to…keep them coming. And if you do, I will read them with as much care as you take when you write them.”
“Valentina, I must see you.”
“When?” I ask him.
“I wish today.”
“Me too,” I tell him, and I mean it.
“Now, in the shop here, it is difficult. My father is a new man with a new life. The old life holds very little interest to him now. So, I work twice as long each day.”
“The same at my shop.”
“We’re in, how do you say it?”
“The same boat!”
“Right. Correct. That makes us closer still? No?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him.
When I return to the shop, Gabriel and June are laughing at the cutting table. There is something so natural about the two of them working side by side.
Gabriel wasn’t around as much when he lived in Chelsea, but now that he is about to move in, there isn’t any aspect of life on 166 Perry Street that he isn’t a part of—and that includes the shoes.
“What’s going on?” I hang up my coat and look over at Alfred, whose head is buried in a file.
“June is teaching me how to cut patterns,” Gabriel says. “I’ve decided to make the drapes for the living room myself.”
“Do you think you can?”
“You should know better than to ask that question. I can do anything I set my mind to.”
“He’s very good, this guy. Very quick,” June says. “He has a real eye for dimension—which is the one attribute every pattern cutter needs.”
“And when I choose to learn something new, I insist I learn from the master,” Gabriel says.
“Well, that’s me, kiddo.” June cackles. “Thirty-plus years with these pinking shears. I’d say that makes me the master.”
“You feel like a coffee break?” Gabriel asks her.
“Sure,” June says.
“I made blondies with walnuts.” Gabriel looks at me and Alfred.
“I’m okay,” Alfred says without looking up.
“Me too. Late lunch. You go.”
June and Gabriel head up the stairs.
“Dad got an all-clear.”
“Great,” Alfred says.
“You couldn’t be more thrilled.”
He puts the file down. “What do you want me to do? Dance a jig?”
“No. I’d like you to show up,” I tell him. “You’ve never been to the hospital—not when Dad had the surgery, or the chemo, or the radiation—you just leave it to us. And it’s not fair.”
“If you remember, I got him into Sloan, and I paid for the extras. I’ve done my bit.”
“You’re his only son.”
“Yeah, well, that’s its own reward, isn’t it?” he snaps. “I don’t want to fight with you, Valentine,” he says wearily.
“No. You’re fighting the whole world, and then I’m forced to live in it.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t get along with people. You take a defensive position. Or you issue an order and expect me to fall in line. You decide we’re going to make the Bella Rosa in China, and that’s how it’s going to be. You steamroller me, you make Bret unhappy…”
“Oh, now I’m responsible for Bret’s happiness?”
“When you’re working with him, you are. Because he matters to me, I value his opinions, and he’s stepped up for this company.”
“He’ll get his commission.”
“That’s not the point. He didn’t have to take us on. But he did. And if we succeed, and that’s still a big if, Bret will have been a major part of that. So act a little more appreciative and a little less imperious—if you don’t mind.”
“You got it, boss,” he says.
“If only that were true. But I got the deal with the devil here.”
Alfred looks at me. “Now I’m the devil.”
“You can be cruel. I don’t like the way you treat our dad.”
“It always comes back to that.” He turns away from me and goes to sit down at the desk.
“If you’d only make an effort.”
“It’s not gonna happen.” Alfred sits down and props his face on his hand and opens a file. He actually ignores me and goes back to work. So I haul out the big gun, the torpedo of the Roncalli arsenal: guilt.
“Dad isn’t going to be around forever.”
“That’ll be a relief,” he snaps.
“Take that back!” I shout.
A rage wells inside me. My brother’s deliberate absences make it so much harder for our family to cope with my father’s illness. It’s almost as if Alfred gets joy in separating from us, from our problems—because as long as he does so, they are not his own. He is not this way with his in-laws. He’s dutiful toward them. He’s there when Pamela’s family is in crisis. He’s most comfortable in the role of family member once removed. But with the Roncallis, he cut the tie long ago, and left us hanging.
“If you don’t want to make it right with Dad for your mother, or your sisters, consider your sons. Because I guarantee you, if you don’t get past whatever it is you have against Dad, it will visit you and your children.”
“My sons are different.” Alfred turns back to his work.
Alfred’s tone tells me he’s done talking about this. If I could throw him out of the shop, I would. I don’t know how long I can handle having him around. We try to get along, or rather, I try to get along with him, but I find myself either tiptoeing around the land mines or stepping on them, then dealing with the aftermath of the explosion. We have spats over nothing, and then I have to bring the mood of the shop back to normal. On top of my real job, I have another—trying to please Alfred. I have been doing this all of my life
, and I’m tired of him.
I’m also furious. So I’m going to talk to Bret about a time line. On days like these, when the tension is as deep as the ten layers of leather on the cutting table, I can hardly do my work. And then, exhausted from the dance, I lie in bed at night and dream of what it would be like to own this business outright. I imagine the shop, debt-free, all markers paid in full. I’m the boss and answer to no one. Someday I will buy my brother out, and then I’ll be free of him once and for all.
It took two days to move Gabriel Biondi out of his cousin’s illegal sublet in Chelsea and into 166 Perry Street. There’s that much stuff.
The eight floors of the ABC Carpet and Home warehouse store on Broadway have less furniture than Gabriel Biondi. We could easily fill an additional building (if we had it) with his possessions. Boxed and crated, or wrapped in batting, each item is revered.
There are gilt Rococo mirrors, Art Deco hat stands, demi love seats in matching zebra print, a set of six straight-backed chairs shellacked off-white with rattan seats, turn-of-the-last-century steamer trunks that made it off of the Titanic and into Gabriel’s collection, Tiffany floor lamps with bronze tree-trunk bases, and lamps composed of mosaics of turquoise and rose glass, and framed posters of Broadway shows since On the Twentieth Century and She Loves Me were running long on the Great White Way.
Gabriel stands with his hands on his hips. “I know, it looks like a gay tag sale. But trust me, I plan to weed out a lot.”
“Like what?”
“A set of Minton china with soup tureens.”
“You should keep that.”
“Why?” Gabriel asks nervously.
“Because it goes with the English riding saddle you want to mount on the wall.”
Gabriel looks around at the skyscrapers of brown paper boxes in my living room and is about to ask, “What saddle?” when he realizes that I’m joking. “Oh, ha, ha. You.”
“Really, you have more stuff than a holding cell at the Met. Every period in interior decoration is represented here.”
“Except early American. I loathe it. I like Abraham Lincoln as much as the next guy, but I can’t abide major furniture that looks like it was whittled.”