The Supreme Macaroni Company (15 page)

Cousin Don looked at my mother, who looked at my father.

“Aunt Feen,” my mom said firmly. “Have some bread. I insist.”

“Father got the job done. That’s all that matters,” Gabriel said.

“He had a very thick accent,” Roberta agreed.

“I thought you of all people would understand him,” Feen said, buttering the bread with her soupspoon.

“Because I’m black?” Roberta smiled.

“Hey, he is way blacker than you. You’re mocha-chino. Caramel. The color. Not the car service.”

“That’s
Carmel
,” my mother said slowly.

“Whatever. Now, Father Nigeria—”

“Father
Nikako
,” my mother and I said in unison.

“Nikako. Now that man is as black as his cassock.”

Gabriel leaned over me and took a sip from my wineglass.

“Aunt Feen, Abraham Lincoln just called. He wants his Civil War back,” Gabriel toasted her.

A
honeymoon in New Orleans the week after Fat Tuesday is a bit like walking Fifth Avenue at 3:00 a.m. the morning after a ticker-tape parade. The streets are quiet, except for a lone saxophone heard through the open door of a band bar. Some laughter floats through the air and fades away like the smoke from a cigarette.

The sidewalks are carpeted with a shimmering patina of confetti and shards of ribbon that stick to the cement. The street gutters have an occasional glint of gold or purple or green from a lost bead that makes your heart race momentarily when you imagine you’ve found a lost treasure. What is real and what is faux is intertwined in New Orleans. You cannot tell the huckster from a duke.

By day, chicory and cinnamon and the pungent scent of something slow-roasting meets you at every corner. At night, it’s as if the city slips on her evening gloves. Fragrant freesia hangs in the air, and except for the booze, New Orleans has the scent of an elegant lady.

When I remember my honeymoon, I think of Gianluca and me walking in a city that doesn’t seem to have a country. You can’t say it’s American (even though it is), but it isn’t European either. It is its own universe with its own sense of time. New Orleans should be surrounded by a scrim of velvet curtains, because what happens within these city limits is pure theater.

The architecture is ornate, and in keeping with a city surrounded by water, aspects of old ships are used in the design. A face from the prow of an old ship is used as a finial on a porch lamp. Doors bound with hemp trim seem transported from another place, some banana republic to the south. Old steamer trunks are used as coffee tables on porches. This isn’t a destination, but a glorious stop on some grand adventure. Like everyone else, we are passing through.

There is languid beauty in the design and movement of the city—brick facades dripping with old branches loaded with purple morning glories, banisters intricately carved to look like lace, latticework screens separating porches from the street, and windows heavily lidded from within by grand layered draperies, to keep whatever happens inside private.

If New York is about walking and moving and doing, New Orleans is about stopping, resting, and reclining. Gianluca couldn’t have picked a better place to start our marriage. The city might be new to us, but we felt welcome. Here, Gianluca’s accent and our age difference was of no consequence. In New Orleans, what is on the surface doesn’t matter much. It’s the depths beneath that are celebrated here. Adventure, storytelling, cons, and danger make the atmosphere sweet and thick.

On the last night of our honeymoon, after a week of eating beignets for breakfast and jambalaya and beer, cornbread and crab cakes, Gianluca was enjoying a cigar on the terrace.

I was packing and thinking about the trip home, which made me think about work.

For the first time in years (and a honeymoon is a good work detox, by the way) I hadn’t checked e-mail or called anyone about the shop. Gabriel said he’d keep everything running smoothly, so I didn’t need to worry. So when I typed in the password to check the work e-mail, my heart sank when I saw 131 unanswered messages.

I scrolled through and saw a few from my vendors, with message lines that read “Italian suede,” “Spanish patent,” and “Kidskin from Brazil.” Those would wait. It was the slew of e-mails from Roberta that concerned me. I opened the oldest one, in which Gianluca was cc’d, dated the morning after our wedding day.

Dear Valentine and Gianluca,

The wedding was beautiful. I now can say with assurance that Italian American weddings are the best anywhere in the world!

It was a special treat to get to spend so much time with you, Gianluca. The Hotel Roncalli in Queens was full-service, but the best part was being able to talk through business matters. Your assurance that you would find a smooth transition between the closing of my factory and the end of my contract with Angelini Shoes makes everything on my end less painful.

It was a difficult decision to sell the factory, but I think it will be best for me and my family. The auction on the equipment will take place later this summer, and I will forward the information to you, should you know anyone who wants to get into the shoe business.

My father gave his life to the factory, and it occurred to me that maybe this isn’t all life has to offer. I look forward to further discussion and correspondence.

Love,

Cousin Roberta

I became so angry I threw the phone down on the bed. I went to the terrace and confronted Gianluca with such fury it caught him by surprise.

“Roberta is selling the factory?”

“Yes.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“Tomorrow, when we arrived in New York.”

“How could you keep this from me?”

“She told me after the rehearsal dinner. Was I going to call you up on the night before our wedding and ruin it with the news?”

My mind raced as I remembered Gianluca, Alfred, and Roberta at the reception in a huddle and at the rehearsal dinner, heads together, evidently figuring out a way to drop me as a client. I felt betrayed. I could deal with Alfred later, but right now I wanted to address my husband, who I felt had been disloyal, and—worse—protective of me as a businesswoman. “I built this business. It was my idea to design shoes for mass production. I found Roberta. She can’t just close down the factory on whim! We have accounts! Obligations! Loans! What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that your life is more important than your work.”

“My work
is
my life.”

“Oh, so you married a pair of shoes at Queen of Martyrs?”

“I married a tanner.”

“Ah, I’m a tanner now.”

“Well, aren’t you?”

“I’m your husband. And, I believed, your partner.”

“Partners don’t keep secrets from one another.”

“I didn’t tell you because I knew you would react this way.”

“Oh, now you’re a mind reader? The keeper of all information. And you know best?”

“In this situation, yes. We had a wonderful week together.”

“Now it’s ruined.”

“Oh, that’s how it works. One problem, and everything is ruined?”

“This is a big-ass problem.”

“You’re a child.”

“And you’re not my boss. I ran a business without you. You’ve made the situation worse. I could’ve convinced her to stay open. I don’t have a manufacturer anymore. Not one I can trust.”

“I was planning on helping you replace Roberta—”

“Stay out of it! This is not your concern!”

Gianluca was furious. He stood up and faced me. “What do you think a marriage is? Do you think it’s going out to dinner and getting dressed up and making love in every room of the house, and then you go your way and I go mine and we meet in the kitchen for dinner and talk about whether it rained that day?

“If that’s what you want, then leave me now. I don’t want to be your butler, or your cook, or your tanner. I want to be your husband. For me, that means that I guard what you hold precious, I stand with you, I work with you, I make sure you have rest when you need it, I open the books and we figure out the finances, I build a space where you can create and I can help you get your creations out into the world.”

“I don’t need your help! And by the way, work doesn’t consume my life—I’m here with you now, aren’t I?”

“And it’s such a pleasure.”

I ignored his comment because I wanted him to understand. “Gianluca, you might as well know this tonight. I’m an artist. I can’t turn it on and off. It’s not just what I do, it’s who I am.”

“Let me help make your life easy. With two of us working at the business, the business will not consume our lives. It’s not worth it, Valentina. There isn’t a prize at the end of a hard day’s work that can compare to the happiness you feel when you sleep with your lover in your arms—the lover you chose, the lover you married.”

“You went behind my back.”

“I protected you.”

“I don’t need protection!”

“Yes, you do. And if you think you don’t, you’re a fool. Letting me love you and letting me protect you is not a weakness—it takes courage. It means that I take your well-being and safety as seriously as my own—as Orsola’s—as that of anyone that I love. But it’s more than that. You’re my wife. We are one now.”

“We’re one, all right. You’re number one.”

“I don’t want to be king. I asked to be your husband. What you love, I love. What worries you, worries me. What you dream of, I will try and make come true. That’s all it is, Valentina. I have no other agenda.”

“You betrayed me.”

“You choose that word to describe me? That’s crazy!”

“Now I’m crazy for looking out for myself and the business I built.”

“I didn’t betray you. I wanted you to have a few days of peace. Your American ambition controls everything about you.”

“I like my American ambition! I’m proud of it!”

“At the expense of everything else? Your ambition loves you back, gives you a peaceful home? Makes you feel complete?”

“Yes, it makes me feel useful and important and necessary. I make beautiful shoes just like my great-grandfather, just like Gram, my grandfather. This is history I’m living here. This is a legacy that I have to maintain. Why should I apologize for my high standards? The standards I set? I have something to show for my hard work. I’m doing something special with my shoes. I married tradition and style.”

“Now we have it! Now I hear you! Now I know what you’re married to—you’re married to some idea, a notion that what you produce is more important than anything else in your life. I’m Italian. We don’t eat ambition three times a day to sustain ourselves. We work hard, but it doesn’t fill us up. Only love can do that. Only love. And here I am, in love with you, and you don’t see my purpose in your life. Why don’t you decide what’s important to you? And when you do, let me know.”

Gianluca grabbed a room key and left.

I will not stay married to this man. He’s ridiculous. Pompous. Patronizing. A know-it-all. To think he wanted me to take his name. Thank God I drew the line. That would have been one more thing that I’d given up to become his wife, and one more thing I’d have to try and replace once he left me! What made me think I could make this work? Why hadn’t I seen this before I married him?

And why had I been blindsided by Roberta’s announcement? We talked every week, and yes, we’d complain about problems with the business. But I’d believed she was in it for the long haul like me.

Had I misread her? Her passion? Intent? She had a sign over her factory in Buenos Aires that read “Since 1925,” and I have the same sign on Perry Street. We came from the same origins. We had the same roots.

I believed Roberta and I were more than cousins. We were simpatico artists who’d found each other after a long family estrangement, determined to resurrect the Angelini brand on two continents and change the world one beautiful pair of shoes at a time. But it would be no longer. I was in the shoe business for life. For Roberta, it was a means to an end, a path on the way to a new chapter in her work life.

I didn’t know if my heart was breaking because I felt abandoned by Roberta, or misunderstood by Gianluca. What is true: I didn’t see either scenario coming.

I sat and stewed. My big,
fast
Italian wedding had done the thing I was most afraid of—it had taken my attention off my work. I resented every moment wasted on or around my wedding.

I grabbed the laptop and sat in a chair and began reading all of Roberta’s e-mails in chronological order. She was selling the factory because she’d gotten an offer on the building and the complex behind it. They were building apartment houses in Buenos Aires. Roberta wanted to go back to school to study political science. What? Shoe manufacturer to politician?

Gabriel picked up his cell when I called him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m getting a divorce.”

“What?”

“Roberta’s selling the factory, and Gianluca knew about it.”

“How is that Gianluca’s fault?”

“He kept it from me.” I began to cry.

“Maybe he wanted you to have a honeymoon. A vacation. You haven’t been on one in years.”

“I don’t need a vacation! I need to be home in my shop, making shoes.”

“No, everybody needs a vacation.”

“He says I’m obsessed.”

“You are. Who plans a wedding and builds her staff at work at the same time? You hired Charlie, then Jaclyn, then Tess. Who’s next? Your mother?”

I didn’t care about the staff. I was angry, and I wanted to revel in my righteousness. I wanted Gabriel to understand that I was right and Gianluca was a judgmental meddler. “He says I put my work before my life.”

“You do,” Gabriel said calmly.

“I don’t know how else to do it. He says he’s my partner now.”

“Did you think you were going to get married, and he was going to roll leather in one room and you’d build shoes in the other? Are you kidding?”

“I thought I’d have my work, and he’d have his. Yes.”

“Val, this is why shotgun weddings never work. You didn’t think this through.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m going to get an annulment. Call that priest.”