Brava, Valentine: A Novel

by Adriana Trigiani

  Brava, Valentine

  Adriana Trigiani

  For Pia

  Contents

  1 Shake Down the Stars

  2 From the Bottom of My Heart

  3 Ain'tcha Ever Coming Back

  4 Just as Though You Were Here

  5 Polka Dots and Moonbeams

  6 April Played the Fiddle

  7 Love Lies

  8 Be Careful, It's My Heart

  9 The Street of Dreams

  10 Here's that Rainy Day

  11 It Isn't a Dream Anymore

  12 Autumn in New York

  13 A Little Learnin' Is a Dangerous Thing

  14 Don't Ever Be Afraid to Go Home

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Adriana Trigiani

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Shake Down the Stars

  THE MOST MAGICAL THING HAPPENED on the morning of my grandmother's wedding in Tuscany. It snowed.

  This is definitely Italian snow, not the New York City variety of midwinter precipitation. It doesn't fall in big, chunky flakes, nor is it heavy February hail that stings faces and turns sidewalks into solid sheets of ice. Rather, this is a flurry of white glitter that sifts through the air and melts instantly when it lands on the stone streets.

  From my window at the Spolti Inn, it seems the entire village of Arezzo is swathed in a lace bridal veil. I sip hot milk and espresso from a warm mug as I watch an old horse-drawn carriage pull up in front of the inn to take us to the church. It doesn't feel like 2010. It could easily be a hundred years ago, not a modern touch in sight. Time stands still when people are happy. The ticking of real time resumes as soon as the rings are exchanged--for all of us.

  Gram and Dominic's wedding plans were made quickly and effortlessly (the beauty of an eighty-year-old bride is that she really knows what she does and doesn't want). The airline tickets were bought online after a series of negotiations that eventually led to the splendid group rate that brought the Angelini and Roncalli families to this Italian village, into this moment, this morning.

  We've all got roles in this romantic tale. The great-granddaughters are flower girls and the great-grandsons miniature groomsmen. My sisters Tess and Jaclyn and I are bridesmaids, as is our sister-in-law Pamela, while my mother is matron of honor. Dominic's granddaughter Orsola will represent his side of the family in the bridal party. My father will walk his mother-in-law down the aisle and into the arms of Dominic Vechiarelli.

  "It snowed that day," I imagine I'll tell my children. I'll explain that after ten years as a widow, my grandmother found love again. Teodora Angelini's story relies on fate, timing, and the best of luck. It's also a story filled with hope--reminding all of us who haven't found love that, regardless of age, experience, or locale, it's a bad idea to close the book before "The End." You just never know. Not one of us, not even the bride, saw this day coming.

  "Somebody shoot me!" my mother shouts from the hallway. "My hair is a wet mop!"

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Mike. We're in a freakin' hotel. Pipe down," I hear my father bark back.

  "Do you have to yell?" Tess hollers from her room. "Why does this family always have to yell?" she yells.

  "Shh. You'll wake the bay-bee!" Jaclyn whisper-shouts from her doorway.

  My door bursts open. My mother stands in her full black slip with her hands on her hips. "I blew out my flatiron," she announces. A flatiron blowout in my family is worse than finding a lump. And we have found our share of lumps.

  Mom's face is made up, alabaster-perfect and powdered down, ready for photographs from all angles. Her fake eyelashes give her enough oomph to pass as one of Beyonce's backup singers. Her cheeks have a peachy Bobbi Brown glow, but that's all that's sparkling about my mother. She's beyond frazzled and close to tears.

  "What's the matter, Ma? You're not yourself."

  "You noticed?"

  "What can I do to help?"

  "I don't know. I'm just a-a-a...mess." She plops down on my bed. Half of her head is done, straight, glossy strands of freshly dyed chestnut brown, and the other half is still damp and crimped. Mom has naturally curly hair, but you would never know it from her left profile. From the front, however, she looks like a split-screen hair model on the Home Shopping Network: before and after the anti-frizz cream has been applied. She smoothes the front panels of her black slip over her thighs and pulls the hem over her knees.

  I sit down next to her. "What's the problem?"

  "Where do I begin?" Her eyes fill with tears. She pulls a tissue from under her slip strap and dabs the inner corners of her eyes so as not to irrigate the eyelash glue and cause the mink spikes to float away in her tears like paper canoes down the Nile.

  "You look great."

  "Do I?" The tears insta-dry in my mother's eyes, and she sits up straight. All it takes is a compliment to pull my mother back to her emotional center.

  "Like a million bucks," I promise her.

  "I brought my Clarisonic. So at least I'm exfoliated. That didn't blow in the outlet, thank God."

  "Thank God."

  "I don't know, Valentine. I just don't know. I'm completely off my game. I'm shaking. Look." Mom holds up her hand. It flutters partly from nerves, and partly because she's making it flutter. "This is so strange to me. To be a maid of honor at my own mother's wedding."

  "Matron," I correct her. "The last over-sixty maid of anything was Mother Teresa."

  Mom ignores the comment. She continues, "There's something so out of kilter about this whole thing."

  "Gram is happy."

  "Yes, yes, and I've adjusted to all of it! It began with the news that my mother, eighty years young, fell in love. Then once I swallowed that, she decided to marry. I accepted her decision. Then she announces that not only will she become Dominic's bride, she has decided to move to Italy. For good. It's been a series of whammies, I'll admit it. One beaut after another, I'll tell ya. But I survived the shock of each little bomb she dropped and put aside my doubts and misgivings and went with it. Don't I always go with the flow?"

  "Always. So what's the problem?"

  "I feel disloyal to my father." Tears fill her eyes once more.

  "Mom. He'd be happy for Gram."

  "You think? He didn't much worry about her happiness when he was on earth."

  I look at my mother. She never says anything unkind about her father.

  "See what I mean?" Mom throws her hands in the air. "This wedding is bringing out the worst in me. I'm even judging my dead father. What the hell is wrong with me?"

  "I wish I knew," my father says. He stands in the doorway wearing his pressed blue-and-white-striped boxer shorts (yes, my mom irons his underwear) and starched formal dress shirt, which is so long it mimics one of Ann-Margret's mini-dresses from Viva Las Vegas. His thin, hairless, sixty-nine-year-old legs are covered to the knee in black stockings held up by elastic braces.

  My mother has placed two half-moon-shaped Frownies under each of Dad's eyes. When he makes an expression, the sharp corners of the anti-wrinkle patches poke his eyeballs, so Dad keeps his eyes open wide without blinking, which gives him the look of a threatened gorilla. "Get these goddamn patches off my face."

  Mom checks her watch. "Five more minutes, Dutch, and you won't have lines or bags."

  "Remove them. I want to be able to see now. I can't look down. Or sideways. Believe me, it won't be pretty if I fall down and break a hip. Can you imagine the medical care around here? They probably tie you to a plank with rope and make you lie there until the bones fuse." Dad tries to yank the Frownie patches off his face.

  "Don't try and remove them on you
r own!" my mother yells.

  "What is this adhesion?" Dad pats the patches.

  "Adhesive. It's a natural glue of some sort. I'll get the rosewater spray to dissolve them. Dutch, I mean it. Don't pull at them. You'll make scabs."

  "Get the spray," Dad says clapping his hands together in a tick-tock beat. "Get the spray. We got a schedule to keep here. You don't want to be late for a wedding that features two eighty-year-olds. Anything could happen."

  Mom rushes out.

  "What is wrong with her?" my father asks. He looks out the window, his eyes bulging out of his head like a pug's. "Snow. I thought it was balmy in Italy. What the hell is going on?"

  "It's good luck."

  "Is it?"

  "I don't know. I'm just saying." I shrug.

  "Have you ever noticed that whatever clime blows through on a wedding day, somehow it's interpolated as good luck?"

  "Interpreted."

  "A mushroom cloud of poison gas could linger over Tuscany and by God, that would be a good sign." My father shakes his head.

  "The triumph of love over nuclear annihilation."

  "As if that could be true. It rained when your mother and I got married. But we were twenty-one and twenty-two, and what the hell did we know? Rain, shine, we just wanted to get to the Inn at Oldwick."

  "Thanks, Dad. I like to imagine you and Mom on your honeymoon. Especially right after breakfast."

  "When you're young, it's all in front of you, when you're old, well, you got your memories and the occasional stirring of your adrenals to remind you of what you once were. Between you and me, your grandmother and Dom are a ticking time bomb. If they get a year out of this deal, they'll be lucky."

  "Don't say that, Dad. Don't even think it."

  "Excuse me for being a naturalist."

  "Realist," I correct him.

  My father places his index fingers on the Frownies and holds them down to blink. "Whatever. I'm happy for Teodora, I think it's all great and well and good. But lest we forget, they are a coupla old people. I mean old. They're merging when most people are done. So I guess, good for them. Right? What the hell." Dad sits down in the rocking chair by the window. "Big changes."

  "Yep." I sigh.

  "For you the most."

  "For me the most." If only my father knew how much I dreaded this day for selfish reasons. I am losing the most important person in my life. Gram is my master craftsman, my confidante, and my friend. I don't even want to think about going home without her, much less back to work.

  "Has it sunk in yet?"

  "Not really, Dad. But it's happening. It's done, so I have to do what I have to do."

  "That's all you can do."

  Mom comes in with the rosewater spray. "Dutch, lean back. Close your eyes." Mom hovers over Dad as he tilts his head back.

  "I feel my carotid artery pulsing." He places his hand on his neck. "Is it normal to hear your heart beat in your ear?"

  "This will only take a second." Mom spritzes the wrinkle patches.

  "In my eye! In my eye!" Dad covers his eyes with his hand. "I'm burning! I'm burning!"

  "Get a towel!" Mom barks at me. "Soak it!"

  I bolt into the bathroom, turn on the water, saturate the towel (or try to--it's one of those thin Italian towels that are more moppeen than bath towel), and run back to my father. I place it on his face.

  "Cold! Cold!" he screams.

  "Flush. Flush them, Dutch!" my mother tells him.

  Tess rushes in wearing black tap pants and a hoodie that says JUICY FOREVER across the chest. "We are not the only patrons in this hotel!" Then she sees our father swabbing his eyes like he's been evacuated after a gas explosion on his favorite TV drama, 24. "What's wrong, Dad?"

  Dad hangs his head and dabs his eyes with the towel until the Frownies are damp enough to peel off. He holds up the half-moons and hands them to Mom. "Don't ever make me glue this crap on again. I like my wrinkles. I'm going to be seventy--everything on me is shriveled. Especially after the cancer. My balls are like prunes--"

  "Dad!" Tess and I stop him before he describes them in further detail.

  "Dutch, I've seen them before and I've seen them after, and there's not that much difference in the general circumference," Mom reasons.

  "Mom!" Tess and I are disgusted.

  "It doesn't matter. My point is: I look old in pictures because I am, in actuality, old. It is what it is, and what it is, is not going to get better."

  "All right, all right," Mom says impatiently. "As if self-improvement is a crime."

  "That's it!" I wave them out. "Everybody out. I have to get ready. The carriage awaits."

  "Is it here?" Mom asks.

  "Come and see." I pull back the curtain. My mother, father, and sister stand in the window with me. We look out over the village and take in the enchanted scene. The horse pulling our carriage shakes his head, making the bells he wears jingle sweetly. The sheer beauty of the moment soothes us as we look on in awe and silence.

  "Okay. Enough with the view," Dad barks. "We gotta get a move on. That old nag is gonna be looking for a bucket of oats. And frankly, so will I."

  "What about my hair?" Mom looks in the mirror.

  "Pull it off your face and use some Bed Head gel. Tess packed, like, three kinds. Right?" I look at my sister.

  "In my room. In the red duffel. There's a pack of bobby pins too. And a HairDini if you want some extra volume."

  "An upsweep. Good idea." Mom goes, followed by Dad, who fluffs the ample seat of his boxer shorts like a skirt.

  "Mom is losing it," Tess says as she sorts through my makeup kit. "It's an emotional time."

  "Why? Why can't it just be fun? Do you ever notice our family can't be happy for anybody that's happy?" Tess takes a tube of mascara out of my case, unscrews it, and pumps the brush. She leans into the mirror and tries my long-lasting dark brown Rimmel. "We have to inflict negativity on every event."

  "That's a little harsh."

  "Really? Don't you notice? We appear completely nuts to outsiders. How about last night at the rehearsal dinner? Mom got up to give a toast and started sobbing and made it all about her childhood. 1-800-therapy, anybody?" Tess throws the mascara back into the makeup case. "Thank God most of the people who attended didn't speak English."

  "It was pretty uncomfortable," I admit.

  "Thank God Gianluca saved the night with his funny story about never having a sister and now he has one with Mom. You know Mom loved that because she's old enough to be his aunt. But now she can shave off a dozen years because Gianluca's, like, what...fifty?"

  "Fifty-three," I correct her.

  "No way. He looks good. You know, for a guy his age." Tess snaps open a compact of concealer and dabs it under her eyes. "He was really chatting you up."

  "I'm not interested," I lie. I don't have to tell my sister that when I saw Gianluca for the first time again last night, my heart pounded like a blowout on a flat tire hitting the rim at eighty miles an hour. Whomp. Whomp. Whomp. I'm surprised the guests couldn't hear it. I won't tell her that Gianluca's grasp of my hand as I turned away to talk to someone sent an electric shock through my entire body. I wasn't expecting that either. Tess doesn't need to know that I came back to this room and dreamed of Gianluca all night, woke up at 3:00 A.M., and had to open the windows for air because the mental pictures were so steamy, they drove the temperature in the room up to boil.

  I take the concealer from Tess and dab it under my eyes. The dark circles we inherited are a nice complement to the dark secrets we carry. Gram's love affair with Dominic was the last big reveal. She had been seeing him for ten years, since my grandfather died, and nobody knew it. Only after I saw them together at the tannery last summer did I realize that Gram had a lover. And even when I found out, I kept the secret, as only a good Angelini/Roncalli girl can. I lean into the mirror. Eight layers of this yellow putty will cover generations of intrigue.

  "If I were single, I'd be all over Gianluca. He is one hot Italian," Tess
continues.

  "I'm all the hot Italian you can handle." My brother-in-law Charlie stands in the doorway.

  "You see? I could never cheat. I even get caught talking about it." Tess sighs.

  Thankfully, Charlie is dressed. The sight of another pair of boxers on yet another male relative might put me over the edge. Furthermore, Charlie's legs are so hairy that in shorts, he looks like he's wearing felt pants.

  "How do I look?" Charlie opens the front panels of his jacket to reveal a lavender silk vest under the jacket of his morning coat.

  The minute Gram announced her nuptials three months ago, Tess put Charlie on a diet. She also sent him to the gym. It doesn't appear that he's lost a pound, but he's gained a few inches in his neck from lifting weights. Now his head cradles directly into his shoulders, giving him the look of a Sicilian Humpty Dumpty.

  "You look buff," Tess purrs.

  "You gonna wear clothes to this thing?" Charlie asks her.

  "No, I thought I'd wear tap pants."

  "I never know with you," he says.

  "Help!" Mom calls from down the hall. "Call 911!"

  "They don't have 911 here," my brother-in-law Tom shouts back.

  I follow Charlie and Tess down the hallway. Their daughters Charisma and Chiara, dressed in pale blue organza gowns, stand in Aunt Feen's doorway with Mom. We blow past them and into the room.

  My great-aunt Feen, who declined her sister's invitation to be in the wedding party and had to be dragged overseas like my mother's XL shoe duffel/body bag, sits on the edge of the bed with a blood pressure cuff hanging off her arm. She is dressed in a black wool suit that I've seen at every wedding and funeral since I can remember. Her Papagallo flats lie next to her stocking feet, which sport double toe corn pads and elastic bunion slings. I kneel down next to her.

  "What happened, Aunt Feen?"

  "I got dizzy. The room was spinning."

  "Were you trying to take your own blood pressure?" Charlie asks.

  "Who is he?" Aunt Feen looks up at Charlie, whom she has known for twenty years, as though he's a stranger.

  "It's me. Charlie."

  "I know who you are, but you're an in-law. Get out."

  Charlie leaves the room.

  "That wasn't very nice," Tess says diplomatically.