“You took over the business because you had to, not because you chose it. Don’t you see that you never choose?”
“I left teaching to become a shoemaker. I chose that.”
“And now, that’s your excuse for everything. Work. Work is always the excuse. I hoped that you were the kind of woman who wanted love as much as work. You don’t. You cannot be a real artist if you turn away from love. Without love in your life, you will be a journeyman, never a master.”
“Now you’re the expert on me?”
“No, I’m not. Far from it. I have no idea who you really are, because you won’t show yourself to me. You don’t trust me, Valentina. And I cannot be with a woman who doesn’t.”
“I don’t think you’ll cheat on me,” I say quietly.
“This is not about infidelity. It’s about trusting me with your heart. You don’t. I see you act upon it in small ways—you don’t believe me, for example, when I say it’s cold outside, you go to the balcony and check for yourself. When you ask if there are any messages when you come in the door after work, and I tell you there are not, you call the front desk and check anyway. When I ask you to meet me and you agree to, when you don’t show up, it tells me that you don’t really want to be with me.”
“I don’t know what to say.” And I don’t, because he’s right. I’m so used to being on my own that I don’t know how to let him in—or if I even want to.
“You say you love your father and you forgave him for how he treated your mother—but you haven’t forgiven men in general for being human. You have high expectations, and then when we aren’t perfect, you say, See, there it is, you disappoint me. You make love to me, but you won’t make love a part of your life.”
Gianluca makes his way to the door.
“So that’s it. You invent me in your romantic letters, and then when I’m a human being and make a mistake, or a few of them, you leave. Now who isn’t being real?”
He picks up his suitcase. “I’m going back to Italy. Is that real enough for you?”
“Now you’re being cruel.”
“I believe it’s cruel to dismiss someone that you have feelings for.”
“But I didn’t do it deliberately! Okay, I’ve made about a million mistakes with you. But, you can’t just bail on me at the first sign of trouble. It might be Italian, but it’s not American. We fight for what we want.”
“I don’t believe you want me.”
“Oh, come on. I never said I was perfect, Gianluca. You made me that way in your letters. I’d fall in love with me the way you described me! But I’m more than a rendering of your imagination. I’m a mess.”
“I see you as a woman who has everything. Why would I pretend otherwise when I wrote to you?”
“Because I don’t have everything. Not even close! I know I can be horrible and selfish and single-minded and judgmental. I’m just hacking my way through this forest trying to get to daylight. I don’t know everything—but I was learning a lot from you. And if you do decide to leave me, you should know that.”
“I do know that,” he says quietly.
“I don’t know why I didn’t jump in the cab and come back here when I couldn’t reach you. And I don’t know why I didn’t bring you to the factory. And I don’t know why I didn’t check my phone! I’m so used to separating my work and my love life—because I’ve always had to. And maybe I saw, when I was a kid, that my grandparents’ marriage suffered because they worked together, and then they went up the stairs every night and lived together—it was just too much.”
“Or maybe they were happy.”
“Maybe they were.” I throw up my hands. That possibility is not one I ever contemplate.
“You cannot love me in the shadow of what you come from. You have to love me in cold, hard light. You have to trust me,” he says insistently.
“You have to meet me in the middle. You have to look at how different we are, or this will never work. You feel a great longing for a time that’s passed. But I’m not from another time. I am right now. I’m of the moment, and I have to stay in the moment. And it’s not just about being hip, or young—it’s survival. It’s the big stuff, and then the little things too. Like…it matters if I pick purple or green for the color of the fall collection in 2011. I have to invent what comes next, or my company will fold. I will fold. I can’t live in 1812 in my love life or my work life. I know I’m asking you for a lot. I know I am a conflicting combination of the traditional and the modern—but do not mistake my honor of tradition as an excuse for me to look to a man to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”
“Then what is my role in your life?”
I put my hands on my face to think. I haven’t thought about this. I simply try to take Gianluca a day at a time and hope that our time together is building toward something. I’ve looked forward to seeing him each night when I return home. But I don’t know what his role is. I haven’t defined it, in a relationship where it is a requirement of his to know where he fits in the big picture. And I don’t know yet. But I can’t say that to him; he will think it’s just another excuse for me to avoid falling in love and committing myself to him. So I say what I’m feeling.
“I love you,” I tell him. And then I think for a moment before I say, “And you love me. Equal. Reciprocal. Back and forth. Give and take. Not one of us idolizes the other, and then the other fails to live up to some standard that doesn’t even exist. I’m made of sturdy stuff. I promise you.”
My eyes sting with tears. I have never knowingly hurt anyone in my life, but I know I’ve hurt Gianluca. I have been hiding him away—I don’t talk about him to my sisters, I didn’t even tell my mother he was here. But I find the time to call her, don’t I? If Gram brings Gianluca up on the phone, I’m the ultimate in casual disregard. I share very little about him with Gabriel. It’s almost as if I’m planning the breakup before I commit to the relationship.
Dear God, I’d go into therapy and figure this out if only I had the time!
But I have to sort this out with him, because he’s right, and I know he’s right. I don’t believe he’ll stay when he sees who I really am. I will invent some way to undermine it. I’ll blame my work, I’ll blame my family, I’ll even blame the weather. I pretend to want love because I don’t want to end up old and bitter like Aunt Feen. But that’s the path I’ve been on all along—in refusing to grow up and own my life. I know exactly what will happen to me if I stay on course, if I choose to never trust anyone. I’ll wind up all alone in assisted living wearing a muumuu and bunion pads, nursing a highball with nothing but my bitter thoughts to keep me company.
Real love requires surrender—and I’ve been faking it.
Gianluca puts down his suitcase. He puts his arms around me and gives me a warm hug, one you would give your mechanic when he fixes your transmission for free. I step back and look at him. I almost can’t believe it. It’s a final embrace.
“I’m going home,” he says. “Take care of yourself.” He picks up his suitcase and goes.
I stand in the spot where he held me for a very long time. I think of the words he wrote in the first letter he sent to me: Love builds in a series of small realizations. Well, he was right about that. And now, I have one for Gianluca. Love also ends in a series of small realizations.
The full moon over La Recoleta shimmers like a pale pink sequin. I close the robe tightly around me and pull the sash. I love a balcony. I like to be high above the ground, up and away from people, from noise, from clutter. I can think so much more clearly with an endless sky overhead. And I’ve done a lot of thinking tonight. And a lot of weeping.
I’ve cried on and off for hours. Ending a love affair in a foreign country is worse than breaking up at home. A woman needs familiar things around her when her heart has been broken. This hotel room is beautiful, but there’s no comfort for me in the opulent bed and the bath. I see Gianluca everywhere, and when I do, I just feel worse. Only Gabriel made me laugh; when I called him, he s
aid that his mother always warned her children “to never get involved with anyone from the other side.” I guess there’s a history of Italian Americans dropped by Italians from across the ocean. Well, tonight, add me to the list.
The colors of Buenos Aires are saturated like hand-dyed silk, especially after midnight, when the candy colors fall into shadow and striae of ink tones emerge, deepest violets, berry blues, ruby reds, and burnished gold. The green foliage seems to be cut from velvet, framing the autumnal buds that sparkle like beads in tiny bursts of indelible color.
My particular lover’s dream has ended badly in one of the most beautiful places in all the world. And while I’m tempted to stay another day, another week, or another month in hopes that this sadness will fade amid such beauty, that’s just a fantasy. It’s time for me to go home too. Whatever I will become will be decided under a different night sky, somewhere else in the world. I imagine anything is possible, except a future with Gianluca Vechiarelli, and even if that was a possibility, I know I would need the stars and so much more to find my way back to him.
I’m organized in my seat on the plane back to New York when I call Roberta one last time before I leave Buenos Aires. “I just want to thank you for everything. And Lupe, too. Please give her my love.”
“I will. I am so happy we met. Your brother and I are talking. I find him charming.”
“Good for you.”
She laughs. “He’s family.”
“Right, right,” I agree. I can’t believe how far Roberta and I have come on this trip. I feel as though I am just getting to know her, but the future is promising. That’s all that matters. “Before I let you go, Roberta, there’s just one thing I failed to ask you. Why did your great-grandfather name the company Caminito? Why didn’t he name it after himself?”
“Simple. There was already an Angelini Shoe Company,” she says.
Long airplane flights are truly the last bastion of electronic disconnection in the modern age. No phones allowed, so planes become bubbles transporting unknowing passengers from Point A to Point B in a general fog. It’s great—I needed an eight-hour blackout to think things through before landing in New York. I have my sketch pad out, my pencil at the ready, and the stack of letters that Michel wrote to his brother Rafael for reading material.
If my love life has been a disaster here, my work made up for it. I have sketched an addition to the Bella Rosa line, a flat called La Boca, made of deep blue suede, with gold knots scattered on the vamp—very simple, but inspired by this new place that I’ve come to love.
I bought Tess a local cookbook. Let’s see if she can re-create some of Lupe’s dishes. Argentinean food, created from a Mediterranean base but kicked up with Spanish spices—cumin and chili pepper and saffron—has changed my palate. I’ve eaten soft buds of yellow rice flecked with fresh hot pepper, an alternative to our sweet, creamy risotto. There are apricot glazes and guava nectar drizzled on moist cake instead of a powdered sugar finish.
And after dinner, they serve the blackest coffee and the darkest chocolate. The wines are smoky and hearty, with an intensity to them that you don’t find in Italian varieties.
Buenos Aires takes the best of European and African culture and reinvents it in the heat. The breads, soft, spongy bagels and honey-soaked cake, from the Jewish section; the pastas tossed with herbs and butter from the Italians; the tender filets of beef rubbed with spices and slow-cooked Spanish style; and the fresh syrups reduced from mangos and coconuts, pure African. The mélange of all these cultures somehow works together, proving that if it can be done with food, surely people can follow suit.
The greatest lesson I have learned in Buenos Aires is that tradition and the moment can live side by side in complete harmony. One does not have to pull against the other.
This trip has given me a worldview. I realize now that I didn’t have one before. I was content to become a master shoemaker, perfecting designs as old as my family itself, with my head down at the worktable hours a day, years on end, concentrating on technique and detail: making a straight seam, and sewing leather together in stitches so small, they are practically invisible. That was my goal—to mimic what had come before me, and work at the same excellent level my grandfather and grandmother had achieved.
But that was their level—not mine. I want more.
I wonder. Did they ever imagine more? A hundred years came and went, with the company working off Michel’s original sketches, the tried-and-true styles—classic, yes, but did we challenge ourselves? Did we keep dreaming? Did we even acknowledge the present, and all it has to offer?
Looking back, our company was fearful of change. To be fair, my great-grandfather and my grandparents had to make a living—and survive immigration, the Great Depression, and then a postwar economy that favored industrial manufacturing. Challenge after challenge, the Angelini Shoe Company prevailed. But did we commit to growth? I must build the brand to save the company in this economy. It’s not really that different from what Rafael Angelini had to do so many years ago; he had to leave everything he knew in order to reinvent his life and his craft.
I unwrap the letters he received from his brother Michel carefully from the stack.
I unfold the first letter, and in my sketchbook, clear a page to translate Michel’s letter to Rafael.
August 5, 1922
Dear Rafael,
My brother, I do not receive a response to my two letters, and now wonder if you are alive. I pray this is true. I do not forget your kindness to me when my Jojo died. I do not forget your kindness to my son, who is without his mother. My son Michel asks for you. He went to the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and paid an indulgence for your return. Brother, we must make amends. We must make peace, for our sakes and for my son, who only has you and me in the world. I fear that I am raising a cold son, one who cannot know love because he has been so bitterly disappointed.
Please help me help my son. Come home and be with your brother and nephew. I wish the coin we tossed had been in your favor. It was a mistake to ask you to go. Come back and we will be partners again. The shop is thriving, I am very busy. The Dutch who come to work here, no good. Kind people, but not good with leather. Only the Italians can work the leather. I think of you, brother. Please write to me and let me know that you are well.
Your brother,
Michel
I put down my pencil and pick up the letter. I close my eyes, all the while holding the delicate paper in my hands. It took guts for Michel to write letters to his brother especially when he didn’t receive a reply.
I’m ashamed that I thought Gianluca’s old-fashioned letters, written on similar onionskin paper, were somehow less relevant than a text message, which can be delivered instantly.
A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It’s a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there’s a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentiments, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer’s intent. How childish to think that could be easy.
It wasn’t easy for my great-grandfather or for Gianluca.
I used to believe that people don’t change, that it’s impossible, that we just become more of who we are as life goes on. But that’s not true. When we’re loved, we’re presented with options to change. We can hold on, we can forgive, we can sever ties completely. We can disappoint one another, or celebrate the best of ourselves—but what we can’t do is turn away. The truth is right here on paper.
How ironic that the love letters I received from Gianluca, and doubted, or even dismissed, now seem to have been written in a whole different light. He fell in love with me when he chose to describe his feelings on paper. And then, he came to Buenos Aires to convince
me that I was worth loving. And what did I do? I didn’t believe him, and I didn’t trust him, because what are words? Facts? But when I read this letter written brother to brother, the truth becomes apparent. And the truth, when it’s all over, is the only thing that remains.
11
It Isn’t a Dream Anymore
“WHEN I TELL YOU TO look, open your eyes,” Gabriel says.
I take my hands away from my face and drink in Gabriel’s handiwork, the newly decorated living room and kitchen at 166 Perry Street. “Oh, my God—or should I say, Oh, my William Haines.”
“I knew you’d get it. I knew you’d see old Hollywood in the new decor!”
“I saw it immediately!” My mother beams from the kitchen. “Like bang! Bang! Bang!” She shoots an imaginary gun around the room at the window treatments, the paint, the re-covered, and sometimes replaced, furniture.
“Very elegant,” Tess comments.
“I’m gonna have you do my house,” Jaclyn promises. “I love the blue.”
“I’m so happy the Sisters Roncalli concur.”
“You’ve got a flair, Gabriel,” my mother practically purrs.
“Yes, I do. And I have the taste to back up the pizzazz. The blue, Jaclyn, is because this level is just a floor away from the sky itself. The sky was my inspiration. I want you to feel uplifted when you enter.”
The living room is wallpapered in cream with a black-striped border. Gabriel has positioned his zebra-print love seats in front of the windows. He created draperies that mimic stage curtains, opulent turquoise silk drapes with black silk braid tiebacks. He used Gram’s simple black onyx-based lamps to anchor the love seats. He took the old wooden coffee table and painted it with high-gloss black enamel. There’s a crystal vase filled with white roses placed artfully on the table.
He kept the farm table—but refinished the top, which now, instead of stained flat walnut brown, is rubbed through to show the natural woodgrain finish. He re-covered the seats on the twelve dining chairs with a calm but fun flowered chintz in sea green, sky blue, and beige.