Brava, Valentine

  “I don’t know if Roberta even wants to bid on manufacturing the Bella Rosa. And since we may have to send you to China eventually, I think we should keep costs down and just one of us should go. And I think it should be me, because I need to figure out how to put the shoe in production on-site.”

  “This isn’t about your ability. You absolutely know what you’re doing,” he says.

  What’s going on here? Alfred has never been supportive of me. Something is up. His tone throws me off guard. “Okay, where’s the hammer?”

  He looks at me, confused.

  “Lower the hammer. You know, this is the moment when you say, ‘Just kidding. If I, Alfred, walked out of here, you’d fold in a week.’ So go on. Say it.”

  “But that’s not true.”

  “Alfred, now is not the moment for earnest. I need honest.”

  “You work hard, and you produce. You’ve kept up production on the custom shoes while developing the new line. You’re committed. You’re careful about costs. You even took in a roommate who pays rent—and all that helps in running the building and bringing down the debt. I can’t be critical of you.”

  “Well.” I think for a moment. “Thank you,” I say.

  I’m a classic middle child. If someone is nice to me, I’m nice right back. If they’re mean, then I can be too. But when behavior crosses over into cruelty, I retreat entirely. So in light of Alfred’s lovely observations about my work ethic and product, I feel I should return the compliment. “Alfred, you’ve come up with good ideas—and I think we’re producing at a level we never did before because you’re doing our budget and the financials. I mean, I’ve never done a shipment this size, knowing exactly what it costs, and what we’ll make. We never thought about the profit margin. You’ve introduced real business standards to our company.”

  “It’s nothing special.”

  “It is to me. I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done.”

  “But we still fight,” he says.

  “We do, and I don’t like it. But it’s getting better. And I’m completely confident leaving you here to run the shop while I’m gone.”

  He looks up at me, and the expression on his face is heartbreaking.

  “Listen, Valentine. I know you don’t really need me in Argentina. I just need to get away.”

  My brother is suffering. I’ve never seen him like this. No matter how I felt about him all of these years, and how he perceived me, he’s in pain, and he needs to talk.

  “Alfred, what is going on in your life?”

  My brother gets tears in his eyes. The last time I saw him get misty was at our grandfather’s funeral. They were a lot alike, and Alfred felt he was losing the most important man in his life when Grandpop died. Nothing we could say or do would cheer him up. He seems as sad in this moment as he was that day.

  “I’m a jerk,” he says. “I never intended for anything like that to happen.”

  “Are we talking about Kathleen?” I ask.

  He nods. “I thought I’d go my whole life living in a way that I believed in.”

  “So…it did happen.” Clearly, I didn’t catch a first kiss. I caught a hot in-the-middle-of-an-affair kiss that was about to become more. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His answer shocks me, because my brother always knows exactly what to do.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” I say gently. “You have Pamela and the boys. Does she know?”

  He shakes his head no. “I haven’t let her know anything lately. It took me two weeks to tell her when I was let go from the bank. I got dressed every morning and got on the train as usual. I’d come into the city and sit in Central Park and think. And then at five, I’d get back on the train and go home, having rehearsed a way to tell her what happened—and then I’d get home and I couldn’t tell her I’d…failed.”

  The thought of my brother wandering around the city in a suit with no place to go brings tears to my eyes. He could have come here, to the shop. We could have had coffee at Gram’s table. He could have gone to the roof to be alone and think. But Alfred couldn’t admit defeat—not even to his own sister.

  “Alfred, listen to me. The wolf has been at the door so many times over the years that we invite him in for manicotti. At least we have this business to hang on to, and this little shop might save all of us. Our great-grandfather built something for us, and long after his death, he continues to take care of our family—through these shoes. It’s a beautiful thing—not a failure—to work here. We own it. It’s ours.”

  “I’m ashamed of myself,” he says quietly. “I judged our grandparents all these years. You know, I thought they were simple, and that was a lesser thing—to be simple—to work, plain and hard, till you were so tired your back ached so deeply, you couldn’t stand up. Grandpop would put in such long days, working so hard, he had to soak his fingers in ice water at night.”

  “I remember. The calluses on his fingers never went away.”

  “And now I’m here. Just like he was—they were. I went to a fancy school and got a big degree, and now I’m back here.”

  “Is it so terrible?”

  “No,” Alfred says softly.

  “So why are you sad?”

  “Because…it’s not enough.”

  “Oh, boy.” I take a sip of my coffee. “So that’s why Kathleen.”

  Alfred doesn’t answer.

  We sit in silence until he says, “I’m sorry you walked in on us. I’m a hypocrite. Maybe you even like that I’m one.”

  “Come on, Alfred.”

  He looks up at me. “At least let me be ashamed of myself.”

  “Too late. Self-flagellation is not going to help you now.”

  “It’s over. With Kathleen, I mean.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “What else can I do? I can’t even face myself. I have to tell Pamela.”

  “Oh God, no! You can’t tell her. This is one secret you need to keep until you’re dead.”

  “But I’ve broken my vows! I have to ask forgiveness.”

  “What good would it do? Pam’s already terrified about the future. She’s not a girl who can heavy-lift. She’s a good woman and a fine mother, and I’m sure a pretty wonderful wife, but she’s not one to stare into the fire and find the meaning. Keep this to yourself. Forever.”

  “But how can I move forward if I don’t tell her?”

  “You got dressed and went to an imaginary job for two weeks and never told her! You’ve proven that you can keep a secret. You’d only hurt her, and the truth of the matter is you’d end up feeling better and she’d end up feeling worse. As the guilty party, you have to bear the burden here, not Pamela. Love builds in a series of small realizations.” I quote Gianluca’s letter to my brother. As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I’m surprised I retained it, and even more surprised that I believe it. But in an instant, I see exactly what Gianluca meant.

  “And then once it’s built?” Alfred asks. “Then what?”

  “You hold on, I guess.” I take a deep breath.

  Alfred nods. “That makes sense.”

  “Try and remember why you chose Pamela in the first place. Go back to the beginning. Think of the things you couldn’t live without—and the things you couldn’t wait to live with—and then marry her all over again.”

  “All right, Sis.” Alfred turns and goes back to his work.

  I wipe my eyes on my sleeve. My brother hasn’t called me “Sis” since we were kids. He needs me, and in all my life, I never thought he would.

  On top of everything else I’ve had to learn, I have to learn how to be a sister to my brother again. I imagined battling my brother in our version of the Hundred Years’ War for the rest of our lives. For what? For validation. And here it is, the moment when he needs mine.

  Talk about shame. I have it. I thought if I ever had the chance to one-up Alfred, I would make him pay, and enjoy every second of his misery. But he’s my brother, an
d his unhappiness and broken heart are as real as my own.

  I Skype Gram. Her face comes up on the computer screen.

  “Take me through your pizelle recipe. I have a little competition going with Gabriel.”

  “Got a pencil?”

  I nod that I do.

  “Okay, melt down a pound of butter and set it off to the side. Then take one dozen eggs, three cups of sugar. Beat those together. Then drop in two tablespoons of peach schnapps. Throw in four tablespoons of vanilla. Then take seven cups of flour and eight teaspoons of baking powder—add the dry to the wet. Then, preheat my press—it’s in the kitchen…”

  “I got it.”

  “…and take my shot glass—you know, the one with the Empire State Building on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the one. You dip it into the bowl of batter. I don’t know why the shot is the exact amount of batter you need, but it is. Pour batter onto the hot griddle—but in the back, not in the center. And it will spread—and when it bubbles up, lower the top half of the iron down—and then it’s seconds before it bakes through.”

  “Thanks, Gram.”

  “How’s Alfred?”

  “He’s all right.” I smile. “You might even say we’ve hit a new level of understanding. It turns out that Alfred Michael Roncalli is a human being.”

  “You didn’t know?” She laughs.

  “You’re the one who made him a saint.”

  “I think your mother had something to do with that.”

  “A little. But you’re the one who encouraged her.”

  “True. What did he do that made him human?” Gram asks.

  “He failed.”

  “Even bankers make mistakes.” Gram shakes her head. “Was it a doozy?”

  “It was. And he was sorry.”

  “I’m happy you could forgive him.”

  “I did better than that, Gram, I helped him figure out how to forgive himself.”

  “I’m proud of you,” Gram says, then adds breezily, “Gianluca stopped in this afternoon.” Gram’s nonchalance is completely transparent. She leans into the screen and whispers, “Am I not supposed to know anything?”

  “He writes me letters, Gram.”

  “That’s lovely.”

  “They are.”

  “He asks me a lot of questions about you.” Gram lowers her voice.

  “Really? And do you present me in a fabulous light?”

  “Always.” Gram laughs. “I may have married a Vechiarelli, but I’ll always be an Angelini.”

  The Angelini Shoe Company resembles Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole on Christmas Eve, except it’s May and we’re on a deadline of a different sort. Boxes lie open everywhere, ribbons with the gold seal are spooled out on the table, and the sounds of packing tape ripping, tissue paper rustling, and our laughter thread through shipping day like music.

  I run a tally on the computer as I count the finished shoe boxes and load them into the shipping boxes like I’m stacking precious gold bricks. Gram taught me that shipping is like presentation on the plate when preparing food. You want the recipient to open the box and gasp at the beauty of the contents before they even open a box of shoes. So we use bubble wrap around the edges to hold the boxes, and then over the top, we secure the boxes with a square of red velvet with an embroidered A in the center. Harlene Levin at the Piccardy shoe parlor makes throw pillows out of our packing materials—that’s how luscious the boxes look when she opens them.

  Jaclyn and Tess are wrapping the pumps in tissue paper, placing felt shoe bags over the paper, and closing the lids. My mother affixes the gold medallion dead center on the red and white striped boxes. She is never a millimeter off—she’s been doing this since she was a girl.

  My father does the heavy lifting. He checks my math, counts the boxes, and then weighs, seals, and closes them. Alfred then places the shipping label on the outside of the boxes and stacks them in the entry, ready for pickup by Overnight Trucks, who we hire to cart our shipment cross-country.

  “Dad! Make her stop!” Tess hollers from the back of the shop. “Jaclyn’s rumpling the tissue paper.”

  “Jaclyn, cut it out. You are not my favorite angel,” Dad chides her.

  We laugh. My dad hasn’t used that line from the television show Charlie’s Angels since Jaclyn was a girl.

  “What self-respecting Italian Americans name one of their children after the pretty one on Charlie’s Angels?” June says.

  “They were all pretty on that show,” Mom corrects her. “I will always love Farrah the most. May she rest in peace. She was in my group.” Mom considers any movie or television star within five years under or over her age one of “her group”—never mind that she’s never met them, she considers them her cultural equal. “We let the children name the baby.”

  “We almost named you Wonder Woman,” Tess says.

  “Yeah. That was our other favorite show,” I tell her.

  “Don’t let us interrupt.” Pamela stands in the doorway with Rocco and Alfred Jr.

  “Hey, buddies!” The boys run to their father.

  “I need some help over here, boys,” Dad teases them.

  “Can I help?” Pam asks.

  I look at my sisters. Usually, we never take Pamela up on her offers to help, whether it’s yard work or the dishes. But now that Alfred works here, Angelini Shoes belongs to all of us. It may be time to treat her like one of the family and not an in-law.

  “What do you like to do?” I ask Pamela.

  “Anything.”

  “I think you’re a medallion sort of girl. Right, Ma?”

  “Come over here, Pamela, and I’ll teach you the fine craft of affixing the company logo to the company shoe box. This way, if I’m ever hit by a bus, God forbid, somebody will know exactly where the logo belongs.”

  “Great.” Pamela smiles and puts down her purse. She goes to my mother, who shows her what to do.

  Rocco and Alfred Jr. are being carried through the shop by Alfred, who laughs as he hauls them like sacks of flour slung over his shoulders. He catches my eye. My brother smiles at me with the same relief my father had on his face when he got the last “all-clear” report from the doctors at Sloan Kettering. They are more alike than they know.

  “June, when are you taking vacation?” Mom asks.

  “Right after we finish the shipment. I’m going to take off when Valentine goes to Buenos Aires.”

  “Who’s going to Buenos Aires?” Tess asks.

  “I am.”

  “I’ve always wanted to go there!”

  “Well, maybe next time. Although, if we’re going to be fair, it will be Alfred and Pamela on the next trip. My partner gets first dibs on international travel.”

  “And we’ll take it!” Pamela smiles.

  “Who would have thought it? Valentine and Alfred are true partners,” Mom says. My mother has replaced Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible cases, with her son and daughter, the improbable partners.

  “It’s a miracle,” Dad says. “You act like grown-ups. Well, you are, I guess. And I’m proud of youse guys.”

  “Break time.” Gabriel enters the shop carrying a large tray of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. He places them on the desk. He checks the coffeepot. “Stone cold. How can we have cookies without coffee?”

  Gabriel takes the pot back to the sink to wash it.

  “This is like the old days,” Mom says.

  “Yep, somebody always bitching about something,” Dad says.

  “Now, Dutch,” Gabriel says. “Watch your language in front of the boys. And I mean…me.”

  June spoons coffee grounds into the maker. “Let me make myself useful. I can’t teach my apprentice when the table is being used for shipping.”

  “What apprentice?” Mom asks.

  “Me,” Gabriel says. “That’s right, you Los Angelinis—you better look out. I’ve moved in, and I’m taking over. I started with the living room, and now, like a good Italian mold on
veiny cheese, I’m seeping down into the workroom and into the shoe business. Soon you’ll all be wearing the Biondi.”

  “He’s got a gift.” June breaks a cookie in half and tastes it. “And our lunches during the training sessions are to die for!”

  The buzzer rings in the entrance. “It’s probably the truck.” I holler over the din of my family as they gather around the cookies, “Let them in, Dad.”

  Dad goes to answer the door. He comes back into the shop, followed by Kathleen Sweeney. She wears a red trench coat. She stands out like a cardinal who lands on the roof in snow.

  “Val, Alfred. Somebody here to see you.”

  I look at Alfred. The color drains from his face. He doesn’t move. Luckily Pamela has her head down, concentrating on the medallions.

  I spring into action. “Hi, Kathleen! Come on in. Everybody say hello to the patron saint of Angelini Shoes—Kathleen Sweeney, from the Small Business Administration.”

  Kathleen stands next to the cutting table. She looks so small there, among the stacks of shipping boxes. She ignores the packing hoopla and focuses on the people, taking in my mother and father, sisters, Pamela, and the boys as if she’s parachuted into enemy territory and has to gather as much information as she can as quickly as she can before the searchlights come on and she is discovered. This can’t be easy for her. But as it is for all mistresses, exposure to the family of the lover is a learning opportunity, and she is taking it all in to better understand Alfred, or even to help her make a deeper connection to him.

  Gabriel stares at Kathleen with a sense of wonder. No Italian comare that he has ever heard of would have the nerve to show up at the family place of business. But Kathleen is part of the Angelini Shoe Company—not directly, but she has helped us secure a loan we might not have gotten without her assistance. Whatever guilt I have about this, I’ll have to sort out down the line. I have enough to worry about when it comes to the welfare of the people in this room.

  Without taking his eyes off Kathleen, Gabriel grabs a cookie off the platter, bites it, and chews. It’s as if the cast of General Hospital is doing a live scene in the shop. He’s riveted.

  Rocco runs up to Kathleen. “You have hair like Raggedy Ann.”