“First day of school,” June says wryly as she picks up her pinking shears to resume her work from yesterday.
“That’s exactly what it feels like,” Alfred says.
I give Ray a gift bag off the desk. “Confetti from Gram’s wedding.”
“Thanks. I love Jordan almonds, but I can’t have them anymore.” Ray points to his mouth. “Too much bridgework.”
“Soak them in vodka first. That’s my tip,” June says.
“Shall we meet upstairs?” Alfred proposes.
Ray and Alfred go up the stairs. June motions for me to have courage as I follow them.
Ray sits down at the end of the table and pulls files from his briefcase. I take a folder of documents that I compiled for Alfred and Ray from Gram’s stack on the end of the table. I sit down across from Alfred with a pit of despair in my stomach.
Ray lays out the contracts, I look over them, but the words are a blur to me. I pretend to read them as Alfred pores over them. I look at Ray. He knows I’m making a deal that I never would have agreed to if I didn’t feel forced. But I have no choice in the matter. If I want to live and work here, I have to play along.
“Valentine, we’re going to establish a rental payment for you in the apartment above the workspace,” Ray says.
“That’s fine. I told Gram that’s okay with me.”
“We’ll keep it low.” Ray smiles.
“I hope so,” I tell him.
“It says here that all financial decisions are made jointly.” Alfred looks at Ray.
“It does,” Ray says.
“But Valentine has full control of the creative also.”
“Alfred, your grandmother was very clear. She wants you to serve as chief financial officer, setting budgets and payroll, restructuring debt, and assisting Valentine in whatever she may need to grow the company. This includes research and pursuit of future contracts. Now, Valentine has been engaged in product development with Bret Fitzpatrick…” Ray explains.
“He’s a fund-raiser,” Alfred says. “And he should be compensated for that.”
“Yes. And Teodora is comfortable with Bret in the mix, as long as his efforts serve Valentine’s vision.”
“I get it,” Alfred says.
“So any decisions about financing are to be made by you and Valentine—jointly,” Ray clarifies.
“That leaves me hamstrung,” Alfred says aloud as he continues reading.
“Well, it is my business.” I look at Ray.
“But I’ve been brought in as chief financial officer to run it,” Alfred corrects me.
“I mean—” I take a deep breath and lower my voice—“that it’s my business in the sense that I create the product we sell—and you rely on me to deliver that product. Otherwise, I’m happy to share everything.”
“Okay.” Alfred looks at me.
I realize that he’s only being agreeable because he’s been on the job for all of ten minutes. “So here’s my budget.” I reach across the table and give Alfred the current budget with operating expenses. “And here’s the list of custom shoes under current contract, with down payments and shipment dates.” I place the report on top of that. “And here are my projected business goals—including the manufacturing of the Bella Rosa. This file includes all of Bret’s research with the Small Business Administration and some information about foreign manufacturers. But the foreign element is incomplete. You can help me figure out that piece.”
“Wow.” Alfred seems slightly impressed. Then he says, “I’ll read over this.”
“Take your time.” I stand up. “Ray, thank you for setting this up for us.” I extend my hand to him. “I’ll probably be calling on you from time to time.”
Ray shakes my hand. “My pleasure.”
“My goal in life is to sell enough shoes so I might purchase you a proper briefcase.”
“Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.” Ray pats his old satchel.
“And sometimes they need to,” I tell him.
Gram left her bedroom suite behind. The heavy, dark stained oak furniture with its four-post finials and deep carvings on the headboard says 1940 like Rosie the Riveter or garter hose with seams. The bed is made with the same pale green satin spread that’s covered it since I was a child.
Gram suggested I move into her room, because it’s larger. I’ve been living in the smaller guest room all these years. My mother’s bedroom, across the hall, is a shrine to the 1950s. The wallpaper has a pattern of bunches of violets tied with gold ribbons that gives the effect of a year-round garden. I like the vintage paper but I don’t want to move in there either. I’m going to stay put. Gram will be back to visit, I hope, and when she returns, I want her to find some of the old familiar things she loves in place as she left them. Besides, I’ve grown to love the guest room across from the bath, with the stairs outside my door that lead to the roof. It’s home to me now.
My mother’s room is filled with stacks of storage boxes that Gram didn’t have time to sort through before she left. We packed up her clothes, and some heirlooms from her mother, to take to her new life in Italy. She and Dominic plan to redo his house in Arezzo, so she wanted to start fresh. She didn’t even take her reliable spaghetti pot, which signaled to me that she’s determined to start over.
I’ve promised myself that I will go through a box at a time, whenever I get a chance, and eventually I will have distributed these mementoes to my mother, sisters, and Alfred. There are lots of pictures of my mother, the only child, enough to fill a crate, and at least one wall in the homes of each of her four children. My mother’s life is chronicled from her birth in black and white to her marriage, in vivid shades of Kodachrome film. I’m getting to know her all over again.
The photographs are so telling of the moods we were in, and what was happening when the pictures were taken. The pictures taken in the 1980s, when Tess, Jaclyn, Alfred, and I were young, tell the story of a family in crisis, and then, once into the 1990s as we go off to college, you see the mood lift and the joy return.
My mother and father survived a crisis of my dad’s own design, when he had an affair and Mom moved us into this building during the summer of 1986. Of course, she never told us the real reason she moved us into the city—she said our house needed rewiring—but it was actually our dad that needed the redo. As the years went on, we got bits and pieces of the story, until our parents felt we were old enough to handle it, and then we were allowed to ask anything about it that we wished. Today, if we discuss the past, their story is told in full, complete with my father’s confession, my mother’s forgiveness, and my father’s return to the fold.
My father’s ancient infidelity is now part of the fabric of our family. We don’t embroider over it, or pretend it never happened—it’s just become one of those things—like a cancer diagnosis, a failed driver’s test, surviving the mumps, or the celebration of a deserved promotion with the Parks Department. Dad’s indiscretion is dropped into conversation like any date or period of historical significance in the story of our family. So, then too, is The Aftermath, the “better years,” Mom calls them, after our parents renewed their vows and we, their four children, stood up for them in church, knowing full well what they, and we, had been through. In a sense, they gave us the gift of forgiveness by forgiving one another. It was a lesson that took with my sisters and me, but not with Alfred. We had to convince him to come to the church. Finally, though, after a lot of pleading, he showed up.
Sometimes I marvel at my family’s ability to accept the worst, and to forgive, but that’s due to my mother and father’s determination that no one, not even a seductress named Mary from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, would come between us. How ironic, then, to think that it isn’t an outsider that threatens to tear us apart and destroy us now, thread by thread, but a boll weevil from within. The real enemy of our family unity, as it turns out, is a sharp businessman with a cold heart—my brother.
Of all the things Gram left behind, my favorite memorabilia
is the collection of annual calendars that used to hang over the desk in the workshop. They are the true minute book of this corporation, an unofficial ledger of business transactions that date back to my great-grandfather’s arrival in the United States.
We have the calendars as far back as 1910, each month illustrated by whatever business or supplier sponsored it. The oldest ones were provided by a company that made Red Goose shoes. There are circled dates and notes made first by my great-grandfather, then my grandfather, and finally Gram. The word affitto is written on the last day of the month, until 1918, where it changes from affitto to pagamento d’ipoteca. I could never throw these out—not with my great-grandfather and grandfather’s notes scribbled on them—so I flip through them, placing them carefully back in the box without wrinkling or tearing the pages.
I’m the sole custodian of our family history, and not because anyone asked me to be. The truth is, no one else is interested in the contents of these dusty old boxes, nor do they want to store them. I’m the only Angelini who treasures these old documents and is inspired by them.
My sister Tess has no patience with anything antique. Even her home decor is sleek and modern: Ikea meets Richard Meier. Tess rebelled against Mom’s interior decoration, ornate English and French, in our family home in Queens. Jaclyn has a streamlined Swedish look in her condo—Gustavian, with distressed furniture and neutrals. Alfred and Pamela are New Jersey chic, a rambling faux farmhouse filled with highly polished Ethan Allen. I don’t think any of them have attics or closets filled with junk. They prune as they go. Pamela would take one look at these old calendars and recycle them.
I flip through 1912, looking at the styles of the time. In less than a hundred years, the world is completely different. They thought they were mod back then, with advertisements for cars with rumble seats and bathing costumes made of fine wool.
I have a separate box of my great-grandfather’s sketches. I often refer to them when I’m drawing, as they are the template for our couture shoes, each named after the heroine of a famous opera. For eighty years, there were six key designs, until Gram added a seventh in 1990. Occasionally I get out his sketch pad, but I did a thorough transfer of the drawings from paper to computer, because I didn’t want to add wear and tear to the delicate drawings, done in his hand with charcoal and ink.
As I pick up the last calendar to replace it in the box, a sheet of thick sketch paper falls out of it. A woman’s dress shoe is drawn in meticulous detail. It has a slim, stacked heel, and it’s made of woven leather, with an ornate flap on the top of the shoe, modified from a Louis XIV style. The toe is rounded, while the vamp is sleek. It is unlike any of the designs in my grandfather’s hand. He sketched in an architectural fashion, and his renderings have actual measurements printed carefully next to the components and notes written in Italian, specifying grommets, velvet piping, laces—whatever the requirements of the shoe might be.
This shoe, however, is pure fancy. You could hang the drawing on the wall—it’s artful and loose, playful and fun. The shoe rests on a cloud, with a thunderbolt indicating a storm underneath it—a powerful image, almost like an advertisement. In the corner of the drawing, I see the signature of the artist. It says:
Rafael Angelini
I’ve never heard of a Rafael Angelini. I find this odd, as I know all the names of my cousins in Italy. My grandfather was an only child, like my mother. My great-grandfather, Michel, had sisters. There was Zia Anna, Zia Elena, and Zia Enes. No Rafaels. And, as far as I know, none of their children were named Rafael.
Maybe my grandfather designed under the name Rafael. Maybe under a pseudonym, he let go, created with abandon, designed whimsical shoes, fashionable shoes, courant shoes. Maybe he even had the idea, long before I did, of developing a line of shoes that could serve a mass market. But why wouldn’t I know this? Surely this would be part of the family story.
I look closely at the drawing. This was definitely not drawn by my great-grandfather’s hand. There’s another Angelini. But who is he? I lay the drawing carefully on the bed, so I’ll remember to ask Gram about it.
Then, I open one of Gram’s prized possessions: a turquoise leather case with a white patent leather top. There’s a gold metal handle and a buckle on the side. I snap it open. It’s filled with record albums.
I can’t believe Gram left her collection of Frank Sinatra records behind. Gram never collected china or silver, or Hummels or Lladro; her only vice was The Chairman of the Board.
The dust jackets of the Sinatra LPs are stored alphabetically in the case. They are uncompromised and untouched by time. I would wager there’s not a scratch on the record albums inside the sleeves. There’s even a pristine chamois cloth folded neatly in an envelope inside in the lid to dust them before playing them.
I remember when Gram would stack the records on the turntable, and the automatic plastic arm would slip across to hold them in place. Then she’d carefully turn the knob, and like magic, one record would drop, the needle would slip over to the outside groove, and then, suddenly, the house was filled with music.
When we were children, we were pretty much allowed free rein with anything in this house, except the Sinatra albums. We were allowed to play Louis Prima and Keely Smith records, or Boots Randolph instrumentals, or even the Perry Comos, but the Sinatra collection was sacrosanct. Only Gram could load Sinatra on the hi-fi.
These were the songs that played through my grandmother’s youth, courtship, and married life. When Sinatra was young, so was Gram. She was a bobby-soxer, only twelve years old when she bought her first record in 1940, with “I’ll Never Smile Again” on the A side and “Marcheta” on the flip side. She danced to “For Every Man There’s a Woman” at her wedding to my grandfather.
My mother remembers Gram taking her to the Fulton Record Shop and waiting when a new album was to be released. Gram was a diehard fan, but she left the sound track of her life before Dominic Vechiarelli behind, which says everything about her desire to start over. All that’s left of her years of stewardship over these albums is the nostalgic scent of the old record shop: high gloss ink and plastic. If I needed proof of my grandmother’s ultimate intentions, it is here, in my hands. She’s never coming home.
I lift out her prized albums and sort through them. I prop them across the headboard of her bed. The covers are a fest of Frank. Sinatra in a single beam of light in front of a microphone; young, thin, and totally sexy. Sinatra illustrated pulp fiction style in vivid tones of turquoise and magenta, on the runway with a TWA airplane behind him, extending his hand to a woman whose lacquered red nails rest in his hand. Another with a sky blue background with a photograph of Frank wearing a dapper fedora. As I shuffle through the collection, Frank Sinatra gets older, but he never loses his luster. The images of the glamorous past get to me. So, I throw on my parka, grab my glass of wine, and head up to the roof, balancing the glass on the stairs as I unlatch the door.
The winter clouds have rolled away, and all that is left is a night sky of the deepest blue, the same shade as the ink on Gianluca’s letter. I go to the edge of the roof and look down across the West Side Highway. The blinking red lights of a police car parked by the pier look like ruby buttons on black suede boots. Even this roof feels different since Gram left. It doesn’t feel safe any longer, it feels as though it can’t be trusted—as if the clouds opened up and carried her away.
This is the biggest change for me. This roof, with its tomato plants in summer and snow drifts in winter, was our sanctuary. In the fall, we would roast chestnuts on the grill, and sit by the fire, waiting for the nuts to cook through, and pop open with a soft crackle. The scent of the iron skillet on the fire and the sweet chestnuts was always a comfort.
I look over at the grill, covered in an old tarp, and wonder if I’ll bother to make the trip over to the Chelsea Market to buy a sack of chestnuts to roast. Will I continue to do the things that Gram did, the rituals that brought us such joy? Will I commit to keeping the treasures of the
past alive in the present?
With every crate I unpack, with every box I sort, the list of things I must do grows. There’s the business, the building, the family obligations. I think it’s time to pull the Roncallis together and dole out the traditions, the recipes, and the assignments; to be as specific about who will do what as my mother has been in labeling her jewelry, each piece marked with a name and stored, to be given out after the moment when, God forbid, she passes on.
As I look over to the Hudson River, the expanse of black water seems to widen in the dark, like a pit of velvet quicksand. But I don’t feel consumed by my river, or by this night sky, nor do I feel small, standing downstage of the skyscrapers that loom behind me like black daggers. It’s the boxes in my grandmother’s bedroom, filled with everything my grandmother was and is, that overwhelm me. Papers, contracts, photographs, articles, sketches, and documents filled with the history of our family and the company that made us. Our history can only be told through the things she saved, and now that Gram is gone, it’s left to me to decide what’s worth keeping.
5
Polka Dots and Moonbeams
GABRIEL BIONDI WAVES TO ME from our booth in Pastis, where we have a standing breakfast date once a month, because if we didn’t keep to this schedule, we’d never see one another. Gabriel works nights at the Carlyle, and I work days in the shop, and rarely do the two schedules intersect. We chose Pastis because it’s the closest thing to a French bistro we can get in Greenwich Village. And while we live in New York City happily, once in a while we like to pretend we’re in Paris.
The antique mirrors, black-and-white-checked tile floors, and polished oak tables give the restaurant the down-home feeling of a warm, expansive kitchen. I weave through the chatty crowd. A couple of tables are packed with men in suits, but the rest are neighborhood locals who come regularly for the best eggs, bacon, and brioche in the Village.
Gabriel gives me a kiss on the cheek, his jet black hair tucked under a beret. He wears a fitted black cashmere sweater over jeans so tight they show off every hour he spends in advanced spin class at the gym. Gabriel has turned his shape into an upside-down triangle: wide at the shoulders and slim at the hips. “I got the poached eggs for me, and I ordered the French toast for you.”