The Supreme Macaroni Company (16 page)

“He might be able to give you one, but we wouldn’t understand it.”

“I don’t care. I want out.”

“Oh, honey, stop it. You love Gianluca.”

“I don’t want to love him. I want to come home and have my life back.”

“You’ll have your life. It will just be different. It will be better.”

“How?”

“You have a man that loves you. Every person that ever lived has a dream. To be loved. To have someone in your corner. He didn’t do anything to hurt you. He was trying to help.”

“But I need to know things,” I wailed.

“You need a plan. You two need to sort things out.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You say that, but you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it.”

“No, you don’t, Val. I know when you don’t mean things. And you don’t mean it. This man is the love of your life. He’s a good guy, and he’s got your back. Now you have to sit down and reason with him. No crying or histrionics. I know that’s hard for you. But you have to do it.”

“Or what?”

“Or you end up like Aunt Feen. Bitter and alone with a rum and Coke in one hand and a remote in the other, having sexual fantasies about Alex Trebek.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad right now.”

“Come on. It’s hell on earth. Talk to Gianluca. He’s smart. He’ll listen.”

“I don’t know where he went.”

“He’s probably downstairs at the bar. That’s where I go when you get on my nerves. I have a stool at Automatic Slim’s on Washington. Why don’t you go look for him?”

“What will I say when I find him?”

“Tell him you need to make a plan. A life plan. The two of you.”

“But I don’t know what to ask for.”

“Start with how you want to live, and then talk about the Angelini Shoe Company. Don’t dive into business. Ask him what he wants first.”

“He wanted me.”

“And he still does.”

“You think so?”

“Honey, only a man that loves you would move to Greenwich Village and build a new life when his old one was perfectly fine. May I point out that he left Tuscany for you? That’s the one place on earth everyone wants to go and never wants to leave. And yet, he did it for
you
. It’s you that he wants. It’s you that he married. Stop acting like you still have a choice here. You love him too. Now go and find him and make this right.”

I hung up the phone and looked in the mirror. I looked awful, and slightly crazy, not unlike my great-aunt after a few cocktails. I sat down on the edge of the bed and breathed. When tears would come to my eyes, I blinked until they stopped. I was doing everything within myself to get to a place where I could face Gianluca. I grabbed my coat and went out the door. 

7

N
ew Orleans is nothing like New York City, but I’m an urban girl born and raised, so I can find my way around any city in the world if there’s a grid and I can walk it. I realized, as I walked through the French Quarter, that I really hadn’t paid a lot of attention to where we went. I’d been content to follow Gianluca wherever he wanted to go. As I walked through the same streets alone, the haunted beauty of the city was lost on me. It was no longer lush and romantic. It was strange and confusing.

My feet were beginning to hurt. I’d run out of the room in a pair of mules, leather slides I take on trips so I’m never barefoot on hotel room floors. They’re meant to get me from the bed to the bathroom, not walking around on pavement. It seemed all my decisions, great and small, were misguided. I couldn’t even choose the right shoes.

I passed a small, crowded bistro next to Café Du Monde, our regular breakfast place. Something told me to stop and slow down at Ilaria’s. It reminded me of a trattoria in Arezzo. It wasn’t just a restaurant. There was a party going on. The crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk. The outdoor café was packed with customers eating crocks of gumbo and cracking the shells of crawfish while downing mimosas. I could have used a Gin Fizz myself right about then.

Going up on tiptoe to look inside, I saw the back of Gianluca’s head at the bar. I squeezed my way through the crowd until I got to him. He was puffing on a cigarette, the open pack lying on the bar, and drinking a glass of bourbon.

“You smoke?”

“Sometimes.”

“I mean, I knew you had a cigar now and then.”

“And now and then I have a cigarette.” He looked at the rows of liquor on the shelf behind the bar, not at me.

It was noisy, and I found myself getting angry all over again. Maybe if he had embraced me and said, “Why don’t we go somewhere where we can talk?” I would’ve forgiven him on the spot. But instead, he put me on ice like Kentucky bourbon. He took a slow drag off the cigarette as if I were not there. I became furious all over again. I raised my voice. “Do you want a divorce?”

“We haven’t been married yet.”

“It’s best to catch a mistake sooner rather than later.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Common sense.”

He nodded. “You’re very calm.” Finally, he looked at me. “You’ve thought this through.”

I broke his gaze and looked off. “I’m holding it together.”

“I can see that.”

“You said some awful things to me.”

“I’m capable of saying awful things, just as you are capable of doing them.”

“Whoa right there. You’re the one who kept a secret from me.”

“It wasn’t a secret. You could have read your e-mails all week.”

“I didn’t because you didn’t want me to.”

“Oh, so you do listen to me.”

“I respected your wishes.”

Gianluca turned and faced me. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be angry with him, but he might have been the most beautiful man I had ever seen. No, he
was
the most beautiful man I had ever seen. If I looked at his blue eyes for a hundred years, I would never be able to describe their color. I looked away because I didn’t want to make this about his eyes. I was tired and my feet hurt and anger exhausts me.

“You look tired,” he said.

“I’ve been crying.”

“I can see that.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I think we need a plan,” he said.

“Do I need to call a lawyer?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Don’t you want to get rid of me?”

Gianluca put out his cigarette. “No. Do you want to get rid of me?”

I felt my eyes fill with tears, and instead of trying to hide them, I just cried. “I don’t know how to be married.”

“Neither do I.”

“I know. You’re divorced! Whose brilliant idea was it to marry a divorced man? There’s a reason things don’t work out.”

“Maybe Aunt Feen was right. Maybe I am befuddled.”

“
Besmirched
. I don’t think it’s just you. It’s me too. Maybe it’s
all
me, and you’re just reacting to the weirdness. I think I am incapable of being a wife. I don’t want to change anything about my life, and yet I wanted to marry you.”

Gianluca put some cash on the bar. He took my hand and guided me through the crowd to the street. I would miss the security of his hand in mine when he divorced me and jumped on the first plane back to Tuscany.

“I can find my way back to the hotel,” I told him. I felt the crush of defeat in my heart and then, suddenly, all around me. This whole thing seemed impossible, and I didn’t have a clue how to communicate what was wrong. I was wrong. That much I knew.

“We need to talk,” he said. “You build shoes. Would you ever build a pair without a pattern?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Well, then, how can we expect to stay married if we don’t have a plan?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have an idea, Valentina.” Gianluca put his arm around me, and we walked back toward our hotel.

“You do?”

“I think we give this marriage one more shot. Just tonight. One more night. You may still want a divorce in the morning, and I will give you one if you still want one tomorrow.”

“What magic thing is going to happen tonight to change our minds?”

“If it’s magic, we won’t know in advance.”

We walked back to the hotel without saying much. If I saw an antique urn, or he saw a stone wall that captured his attention, we’d stop and observe its beauty without commenting on it. We were avoiding returning to our hotel room where our anger hung in the air like a fog. Gianluca had made it clear that I should think of this as our last night together. As we climbed the stairs to our room, I felt like Anne Boleyn on the way to the tower. At least she knew why she was banished. There was within me an urgency to show him it hadn’t all been a giant mistake. I loved him. I had wanted to marry him. And I wanted to show him exactly what he meant to me before we were over.

He pulled the drapes on the terrace closed and turned to face me. I unbuttoned his shirt because I wanted to be close to his heart. If this was our last night, I thought of all the things I wanted him to know, so that he might pack them up and take them with him wherever he went. As we made love, it was as if we were in water, immersed in an ocean beyond the gulf as blue as a night sky. How could two people connect like this and yet have so much trouble communicating? Maybe I needed to learn Italian, because I felt he had studied me in all my American detail.

He kissed me a thousand times. If his kisses were rose petals, I could have scattered them all the way home. It was as if he was storing them up, making certain I’d have enough to last in the years to come. He wrapped me in the blanket and pulled me close.

“It isn’t enough to love you, but I do,” I told him.

“Love
is
enough.”

“I have to put you first.”

“Do you want to?”

I had to think. I held up my hand so he wouldn’t take it as a no. Plus, I’m the kind of woman who agrees to anything after romance. I can’t help it. It’s when I’m the most grateful. “I need something from you.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to tell me when I’m not putting you first. Will you do that?”

“I can do that,” Gianluca said. “Will you tell me when I fail you?”

“Yes, I will.”

“Then we agree.”

“We have a plan.”

I kissed him to seal The New Deal.

I wouldn’t look back on New Orleans and think of it as the Big Easy. After our argument, I’d think of it as the Big Impossible. So in the same place that Hurricane Katrina came and ruined homes and lives, destroyed beauty and art, I had my first real fight with Gianluca.

I’d assumed that I would continue to live my life as I always had, wedding ring or not. Why would I change what had worked for me? Why should I compromise when I already had the best solution? Or does having a husband mean that I am required to defer to him, and therefore he speaks for me?

This
was what my father warned me about. There were big differences between Gianluca and me. Some were small cracks, others fissures, and one was a deep chasm. The obvious one: our ages. He had lived longer and raised a child to adulthood. I couldn’t imagine that breadth of experience.

The subtle difference between us: the way we did business. When one partner wants to rule the world, and the other wants to be happy and quiet in a corner of it, there’s conflict. My ambition was fueled by a drive to be the best, his, by a gentle energy to do your best but not worry about the reaction.

The stealth difference: we’re both Italian, but I was an American first and he was truly an Italian first. All the vowels in the world that we had in common couldn’t make up for the disparity in our points of view.

The deepest divide was the one that was almost impossible to overcome. He was a traditional man, raised in a typical Mediterranean patriarchy. I was raised under the same label, but it was a fake. My mother made all the decisions. She just
pretended
that my father made them. And the kicker: she was content with the charade, but more importantly, so was my father.

Gianluca was very determined. This was a man who fought for what he wanted—including defying all convention and marrying the granddaughter of his stepmother. But in all the hoopla, we hadn’t stopped to figure out how to drive the bus. We didn’t know how because we hadn’t made it a priority.

Maybe this is why a long engagement is a good idea. Those couples who take years to plan a beef tenderloin dinner learn how to talk things through. We sped through pre-Cana like we were going through a yellow light, hoping not to hit anything. But then we did hit something, and it was no speed bump—it was the Grand Canyon, and we couldn’t cross it. We disagreed about how we saw the world.

I woke up alone in the hotel room the next morning. A wave of panic rolled over me. Maybe he’d left me and gone back to Italy, just as he had when we were in Buenos Aires.

I heard the key in the lock. Gianluca pushed the door open. He carried a sack of beignets, the round puffs of fried dough doused in powdered sugar that I had grown to love. He also carried two cups of chicory coffee. He placed them on the nightstand and came and sat beside me. He kissed me.

“We’ll be all right, Valentina.”

“I know.” But did I?

Gianluca kissed me again. As he did, I released all my problems: the closing of Roberta’s factory, the loans due to the bank, and the search for a new manufacturer. I was not going to worry about where the money would come from, who the investors would be if it came or if it didn’t. Even if I had all the answers, it couldn’t be solved that minute, and in that moment, I needed to pay attention to Gianluca.

So I took my husband’s advice on our last morning in New Orleans. I let go of all of it. He took me in his arms, and we made love as we said good-bye to our honeymoon and started our marriage all over again. We made peace and we made a pact. We promised to listen to one another. And we sealed the promise with a feast of beignets.

Someday I would look back on this fight and know for certain that there is only one fight in a marriage, the first one. And as much as you might try, the fight is never solved. Over time, it becomes a conundrum, the immovable thing, the inexplicable conflict that forms a wall between you. It grows higher and higher, and then the vines come, and when the wall is grown over in bramble and weed, there’s no getting over it. You cannot see past it, get around it, or blow through it. It takes up the space between you, and no amount of love can bring that wall down.

I knew I would look back on that fight and wish I could take back every word and the terrible thoughts behind them. In time, I hoped to understand Gianluca’s point of view. He wasn’t fighting to keep me from working. He was fighting to show me how to live.

A
lfred and Bret sat at the cutting table in the shop sipping coffee. Alfred had made the coffee so it tasted like mulch. No amount of cream would dilute the bitter brew to drinkable. Gianluca joined us with his laptop. I opened a folder with the production schedule from Roberta’s factory.

Gianluca was very secure within himself, and as he worked in the shop and observed our operation, he began to see Bret’s knowledge as invaluable. Alfred was controlled, and rarely showed emotion in business. As a former banker, he wore a poker face, so it was hard to know when we were in crisis mode or in the deep, delicious, and profitable black. I was the wild card. I threw myself into the financial decisions as I had the designs. Sometimes I was emotional about how to bring a design to fruition. Other times, you would think I was working on an assembly line, focused but not emotionally engaged.

When I went off the rails, Alfred pulled me back on track. We had grown to understand each other, so I let him. I guess Gram knew what she was doing when she made this unholy alliance.

The short history of the partnership of the Caminito Shoe Company and Angelini Shoes was laid out on the spreadsheets in detail. It was a profitable deal for both of us. I didn’t know where in the world we would find another manufacturer who wouldn’t sacrifice quality for cost.

“The last of Roberta’s obligations will be completed by early summer,” Bret told us.

“So we need a new manufacturer in place by then,” Alfred said. “Nice when your family gives you the heave-ho.”

“Well, if you had told me about it, I might have been able to convince her to stay in the business.”

“Val, it doesn’t do any good to rehash what might have been. Roberta is out, Buenos Aires is out, and we have to find a new factory,” Bret said calmly. “And if you want to stay on schedule for the fall line, we need to be up and running somewhere by the first week of June.”

“I could speak to some of my friends in Italy,” Gianluca offered.

“Thank you,” Bret said. “The problem will be that most of the Italian factories are booked through next year.”

“That’s true,” Gianluca admitted. “But it doesn’t hurt to ask. I know manufacturers in Barcelona.”

“I’m done with the Spanish,” I complained.