“Valentina?” a voice says from behind me.
“Unless you’re Salvatore Ferragamo with a job or Carl Icahn with a check to save this shoe company—go away.”
Soon there’s six foot plus of pure Italian man standing next to me. If I close my eyes, I would know for certain it was Gianluca Vechiarelli from the clean scent of cedar and lemon and leather. If I were my mother, or one of my sisters, I would throw myself into his arms. In despair, they like to lean on a man. But I don’t. I cross my arms over my chest and take a step away from him, leaving plenty of room for him to view the expanse of lower Manhattan from our roof. “You can stay in the purple bedroom. Your dad can stay in Gram’s. The bathroom is at the end of the hall, but you know that because you had to pass it to get to the steps to the roof.”
“Thank you. But we are staying at a hotel. The Maritime,” he says.
“That’s unnecessary. You’re family.”
“You’re not pleased about the engagement?” he asks quietly.
“For her. For Gram. Yes. And for Dominic. Sure I’m pleased.”
“Va bene.”
“And you? Are you va bene for them?”
Gianluca shrugs and, pursing his lips, his mouth is a straight line. These are his noncommittal lips. I remember this expression from the Prato silk mill when I held up a perfectly lovely but evidently lame selection of duchess satin. “Yeah, well, you’d better get on the love bus, Gianluca, because they’re going to be living with you.”
“I know.” He smiles.
“I guess love finds willing victims no matter where, no matter when. It’s like anything in life, really, including disease. We’re all fair game.”
“Why are you—”
“Sarcastic? It’s a hard shell covering another hard shell.”
“Why do you push love away, as if you can find it every day?”
“I thought we were talking about my grandmother.”
“Talk to me. You’re afraid of me. I’m not what you dreamed of.”
“How do you know what I dream of?”
“It’s very simple. You make no time for the cook even though you love him. Or perhaps you believed you loved him, so now you’re obligated. The woman you are, the woman of passion, comes through when you’re working. Then, you’re at peace. With men? No. With leather? Very much so.”
“You’re wrong. I would welcome a man who welcomes me as a woman and a shoemaker. But a man, at least the ones I know, might say it’s fine for a woman to be devoted to her career, but what they mean is: not so devoted as to take time away from him. I can have my big life, but it must fit into his big life, as the perfect handkerchief in the most tailored breast pocket. Sacrifice—to use a Catholic word, and to be exact—is what it takes. Men want total surrender. They need it.”
Gianluca laughs. “You know what men require?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“If you know what a man requires, why not give it to him in order to provide you with your own happiness?”
I look out at the river. And then, my moment of personal transformation comes toward me like the deck lights on the night run of the Hudson River Water Taxi. The illumination happens slowly and surely. First, in the far distance, the lights are dim and flicker in the murky waves, then, as it moves closer to shore on the Manhattan side, the beams turn into searchlights, guiding the boat into the harbor in bright, unrelenting light. The kind of light that cannot help but reveal the truth in all its detail. Suddenly, I see myself, clear and plain. “Dear, dear Gianluca…,” I begin.
He seems surprised that I address him tenderly.
“Roman Falconi needs a wife at the cash register of Ca’ d’Oro, just like his mother was there for his father in their restaurant. You need a friend. You need a woman who can drop everything and go sit by a lake…that one with the cranes…”
“Lago Argento.”
“Right, right. A woman who can sit with you at this stage of your life and be there. You want peace and quiet and nature. You want to coast.”
“Now, you analyze me.”
“Gianluca, it’s true. Listen to me. I am completely attracted to you. I was blindsided by that attraction. I had a boyfriend when I met you, and frankly, you are not my type. You are, however, handsome, and you have beautiful hands, and the sexiest thing of all, you’re a good father. But I’m not for you. I’m not for any man right now. In fact, in this moment, I choose art. I choose the bliss that comes from creating something from the labor of my own hands.”
“You don’t have to choose one or the other. You can have love and work together.”
“But I can’t! I tried. I spent the last year trying to be there for Roman. I can’t spend the next one trying to be there for you. Everybody winds up disappointed and sad and unfulfilled…”
“This is what you believe?” He shakes his head.
“This is what I know.”
Gianluca looks out across the Hudson River, as I’ve done so many times. He sees a dull gray waterway, whereas I see a river that connects to a wider ocean, a universe of possibility. He doesn’t like my river at all, I can tell.
After a while, he says, “Your city…is very noisy.” He goes to the door and I hear the door snap shut as he goes back down the stairs into the house. I turn to my river that has never let me down. It’s my constant, my muse. I lean over the railing and look up and down the West Side Highway, which in sunset looks like an unfurled bolt of violet Indian silk punctured with tiny mirrors. This is the river I love and the city that is my home. Yes, it’s noisy, but it’s mine—just how I like it.
Gram’s Thanksgiving table has a flock of construction-paper geese down the center, made by her great-grandchildren. I light bright orange candles in the candelabra underneath the chandelier. Gabriel helps my sisters bring the platters from the kitchen to the table. I give Gabriel a quick hug. “Thank you for coming.”
“My pleasure. I needed a reason to pound my own cranberries, and your invitation gave me the perfect excuse.”
“Is Roman coming?” Mom asks me.
“He sent a cobbler.” I always thought it was funny that he made his girlfriend, the shoemaker, a cobbler. “He had to work,” I lie. Instead of making this holiday about my breakup with Roman, I decide to be as vague about it as my mother has been about her age all these years. Roman and I tried to make time for each other after Gram got out of the hospital, but between filling orders in the shop and taking care of her, I didn’t take care of him. We decided to take a break.
“Nobody works harder than Roman,” Mom sighs.
Tess hands me a pitcher of ice water to fill the glasses on the table. She follows me with the gravy boats.
“You’re not going to tell Mom about Roman?” she asks quietly.
“Nope.”
“She was curious about Gianluca, you know.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” I avoid looking at Tess, who knows the whole story: the moon over Capri, the kisses, the grotto. In her mind, that’s a lot of nothing.
“There’s plenty to tell! You fell in love with Roman, and then you were hit by lightning again in Italy with Gianluca. Two fabulous men in one year! That’s a fairy tale. You’re Cinderella with two, count them, two princes.” Tess straightens the cloth napkins next to the plates.
“Oh yeah, except when I tried on the slippers they were sample-size six. And I’m a nine.”
“So cram,” Tess says.
“I tried! But let’s face it: this is one Cinderella who’s going to make her own slippers.”
We gather the family around the table. Dad sits down at the head of the table, and Gram at the other end. He raises his glass.
“Let us first give thanks for the good health of our family, especially Ma’s recovery from her spill. And then, while we’re at it, let’s thank God for the new Teodora, baby T.”
Jaclyn rocks her new baby in her arms.
He continues, “And as per usual, Lord, we give thanks for the surprises life ho
lds. Ma’s engagement springs to mind, and why wouldn’t it? That was a shocker. Gabriel, it’s good to see you—”
As with most of my father’s prayers, they don’t have actual endings, so we look at one another and gamely make the sign of the cross around the table so we might serve the food.
“I just want everybody to see this.” Tess holds up In Style magazine. “I am so proud of you.” Tess passes around a glossy picture of Anna Christina, the star of Lucia, Lucia, wearing a pair of Angel Shoes, in coral calfskin with gold angel-wing embellishments. I sent Debra McGuire a pair in California and she asked for five additional pairs, one of which wound up on the feet of a rising movie star.
Mom looks at the photograph proudly. “I love them. They’re very Valentine.”
“The orders will pour in. I just know it,” Tess says supportively.
When the magazine reaches Alfred, he looks at it and passes it along to Pamela, who, for the first time since she met my brother, seems duly impressed with his family.
“Have you set the wedding date, Gram?” Jaclyn asks.
“Valentine’s Day in 2009 in Arezzo,” Gram says, smiling at me. “I adore that holiday and my granddaughter’s name, so there it is.”
As my family discusses their travel plans to the wedding, what airport, which rental car company, how many hotel rooms we’ll book at the Spolti Inn, my sisters imagine what they’ll wear, how their husbands will take time off from work, and my mother, perplexed, wonders how she’ll find a good caterer and wedding florist in the hilltop Tuscan town, we eat our Thanksgiving dinner.
Alfred hands the magazine to me. “A lucky reprieve,” he says quietly.
“As long as I make the payments on this place, you cannot close me down,” I say pleasantly and firmly. I don’t engage in the petty anger anymore. I don’t have the energy to fight with my brother and take over the operation of the shoe company. Alfred, of course, does not respond. He knows that the woman I was a year ago has been replaced by an eight-hundred-pound gorilla with a business plan. We’re not done wrangling, but at least he knows where I stand. For now.
My sisters help me do the dishes and clean up the kitchen while the men watch football. This is the last family Thanksgiving on Perry Street. This time next year, Gram will be living with her new husband in his home over the tannery.
I pack up leftovers for everyone to take home. Gabriel takes the last of Roman’s cobbler, knowing it’s the last time he’ll ever get it without ordering it at Ca’ d’Oro. I send Gram up to bed to talk with Dominic on the phone. I’m thrilled to be alone at the end of a long day. I hear the key in the lock downstairs. My mother must have forgotten something. Then I hear a voice call softly to me from the stairwell, “Valentine?”
Roman enters the living room. I stand by the kitchen counter and look at him.
“How was the cobbler?” he asks.
“Delicious. I have your pan.” I hold it up.
“That’s why I came over here. The pan.” He smiles.
I look at him, drinking in the details of him, from the layers of his long hair down to his Wigwam socks. I look down at his feet, even in the mood to embrace his yellow plastic clogs, but tonight, he’s wearing real shoes, and they are (at long last!) a pair of Tod’s fine suede loafers. From this vantage point and at this moment in our history, I can’t believe we broke up. Isn’t that weird, how I want what I can’t have, and when I have it, I don’t understand it. “Do you always check up on girlfriends when you break up with them?”
“Only you.”
He comes to me, takes me in his arms, and kisses me on the cheek and then the neck. “I’m not over you,” he says.
“Roman, heat was never our problem.”
“I know.” He’s been thinking about us, too. And evidently, he’s come to some of the same conclusions I did. “There’s a lot of passion, Valentine.”
“Maybe we’ll stay friends, and then when we’re old, we’ll reconnect like Gram and Dominic and rent a Silverstream and travel around the country.”
“What a terrible idea,” Roman says. The way he says it makes me laugh. “You know, I think about the first time I saw you on the roof. And how I shouldn’t have looked, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to help it. Sometimes I think back to that night when I didn’t know you, and how I imagined what you would be like if I was ever lucky enough to get to know you. And then I got to know you and you were so much better than the woman I imagined you to be. That’s when I fell in love with you. You exceeded my expectations, and even still, you surprise me like no other woman ever has. It’s strange. I know it’s over, but it can’t be for me.”
I hold Roman close. “I’m not going anywhere, but right now, I can’t be with you because you don’t deserve to be second, you should be first. I don’t want you to wait for me, but if, down the line, when things settle down, and you think of me,” I say, taking his face in my hands, “use the key.”
“It’s a deal,” he says.
Roman knows and I know that he will probably never use the key, that it will wind up in the bottom of his drawer, and someday, when he’s looking for something, he’ll find the key and remember what we meant to each other. But for now, he’ll keep it in his pocket, and when he needs to believe that there’s a possibility, he’ll take it out, look at it, and consider the trip across town to the West Village.
I remember the cobbler pan, and I tuck it under his arm. I watch as he goes. Then, as his footsteps fall on the stairs, I remember that I never made him a pair of boots as I promised. So many things I meant to do, so many things that went undone.
The sun glows behind the skyscrapers, like a tiger’s eye on this early December morning. The sky holds the light like it’s buried inside a gray wool coat. Gram and I stand on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street, holding our paper cups of hot coffee, hers black, mine with cream and no sugar. Her emerald-cut diamond engagement ring sparkles against the blue columns on the Greek-diner coffee cup. Nice color composition.
Like two architects in ancient Rome, we squint before our masterpiece with cold, clinical eyes and take in every detail. I shift my weight from foot to foot as I study it. Gram takes a few steps back and tilts her head, slightly adjusting her point of view. We haven’t built a duomo, a cathedral, or even garden statuary, we’ve made wedding shoes, and here they are in Bergdorf’s holiday windows. Our entire line is represented. To see one hundred years of our shoes in the windows takes our breath away.
Delivery trucks rumble by, but we don’t pay them any mind. Jackhammers punctuate the din, reminding us that no matter what time of day or night in New York City, somebody somewhere on this island is making something. We stand for what seems to be a long time. “So. What do you think?” I finally ask.
“You know, for the longest time, your grandfather and I would argue about which was the better movie, Dr. Zhivago or The Way We Were. I voted for The Way We Were because it was about my group…but now”—she sips her coffee and then continues—“now, that I see these windows, and the drama in the details of the Russian style, I have to say I’m going to go with Dr. Zhivago.”
“Me, too,” I say, putting my arm around her shoulder.
These holiday windows are for grown-ups. A few blocks south, you can stand in line behind a red velvet rope at Saks Fifth Avenue or Lord & Taylor to view miniatures of enchanting Christmas villages for children. You’ll see snow-covered mountains trimmed in glitter, ice skaters pirouetting on mirrored lakes, and toy trains carrying tiny foil presents chuffing through the scenes.
Here at Bergdorf’s, though, you get none of the kitsch, and all of the cream. Here’s a sophisticated holiday tale of true love Russian style as dramatized by glamorous American brides. Rhedd Lewis’s wedding feast for the eyes begins in the side windows of West Fifty-seventh Street, wraps around the front of the store on Fifth Avenue, and concludes in the side windows on West Fifty-eighth Street.
As our eyes follow the action from the first window, we s
ee full-size, gilded wooden horses pulling magnificently costumed brides standing on enameled chariots and baroque sleds, festooned with jewels. Upon closer inspection, you see that the modes of transportation are decorated with actual jewelry—cabochon-laden earrings, gold necklaces that drip with chunky gemstones, gleaming cuff bracelets, and enormous dome rings, the effect of which makes a resplendent mosaic.
Fabergé eggs are cracked open in the foreground, spilling forth loose diamonds and pearls on a bed of wedding rice. Antique books are strewn on the ground, while loose pages float through the air. Window to window the pages and words change—there’s Dr. Zhivago (of course), Anna Karenina, The Three Sisters, The Brothers Karamazov, and War and Peace, appropriate for a wedding(!).
The backdrops are hand-painted murals of the Russian countryside, flat, squarish hills behind fields of white snow. These windows, sophisticated tableaux, actually tell a story, as the brides are surrounded by mannequins depicting working-class Russians—dressed in dull green factory jumpers, burlap aprons, and work boots over hand-knit woolen stockings. Dramatized as artists in service to the brides are seamstresses, orchid farmers, dressers, drivers, and yes, even a cobbler, who kneels and places a shoe (our Lola!) on a bride swathed in white velvet with an ermine headpiece.
The juxtaposition of the sophisticated brides portraying the very rich in love countered by the workers who facilitate their dreams is not lost on me. It takes many hands to create beauty. The brides wear elaborate gowns by great designers, including Rodarte, Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, Marchesa, John Galliano, and Karl Lagerfeld. Their signatures appear in the corner of each window in gold.
The first bride, in a mélange of tulle over a satin sheath, wears the Ines, which peeks out from the hem of her skirt, lifted by the cobbler; the next window has a bride in white silk pants and a flowing blouse paired with the Gilda, whose mule shape and embroidered vamp are a sleek fit with the wide-leg pants.
Very Valentine Page 37
