The Supreme Macaroni Company (23 page)

“Honey, get the iPad out.”

My husband fished in the duffel again.

“Let’s Skype Gram and your dad.”

“It’s the middle of the night there.”

“They won’t care.”

Gianluca smiled. “You’re right.”

At first, it rang and rang, so Gianluca called separately on the phone. He told his father about Alfie, and instructed him to pick up the Skype.

The next face we saw was my grandmother’s. Gianluca moved the iPad to show Alfie.

“Oh, Valentine, she’s gorgeous!” Gram said. “Was it a long labor?”

“No, it was so quick, I’m stunned!”

“Oh, isn’t that wonderful! You dodged a bullet!”

“I know! How lucky am I?”

“Kiss her for us.”

“That’s not a problem!”

My mother burst into the room. She was dressed head to toe in white, with a hot pink pashmina thrown over the ensemble. The ball fringe on the cape swayed as she moved. Leave it to my mother to wear a white pantsuit in a birthing room.

She was followed by my dad, who was rattled. His hair was askew, and he was dressed to clean out the garage.

“Oh, Ma, it happened so fast.”

“I’m sick I missed it.”

“You didn’t miss anything. She’s here now.”

I handed my baby delicately, like a precious teacup, to my mother. She took the baby skillfully and held her close, as she had in the first few hours of the lives of all of her grandchildren.

“So you and Gianluca did this alone?” my mother asked.

Gianluca looked at me and smiled.

When I married Gianluca, he joined this massive family who are around all the time. We call each other every day, sometimes more than once. When we don’t get a return call or text quickly, we assume the person is dead. When we have a spat, we hang up on one another and Gianluca shoots me a look that says, “Call your sister back.” He had become brother-in-law, mediator, and olive oil on the troubled waters.

We spent many Sunday dinners with my family. Holidays. There was a social life around sacraments. First Communions gave way to Confirmations, then marriage, and on your way out, Last Rites with a funeral Mass followed by a buffet. There was always a school play or a recital or a game that required our attendance. It never mattered whether anyone else showed up. We made up for any last-minute cancellations. The Roncallis filled the seats, pews, or bleachers, no matter the occasion.

Gianluca moved to Perry Street and took on the Roncallis, Angelinis, Fazzanis, and McAdoos as his own. Yes, it could be a pleasure, and sometimes it was wonderful and fun, but there was something great about it just being the two of us for the birth of our baby. We were exhilarated. We did this. Alfie was
ours
. And our daughter would be forever our own.

So on that day, I figured Gianluca needed to be the only voice in the room. I wanted my husband to navigate the birth coach, the doctor, and the nurses. I wanted him to make decisions on behalf of the baby’s welfare. I wanted him to have the knowledge that we were his family now, and that Orsola and Matteo were part of it. It seemed crazy that Alfie would have a twenty-seven-year-old sister, but looking down the line, I trusted it would be a gift to our daughter. I couldn’t see how, but hoped it would be true. We would make it so.

“What’s her name?” Mom asked.

“Dad?”

My father had put on his reading glasses and was studying his latest grandchild as though she was a delightful bit of news he was reading in the newspaper.

“As long as you don’t name her after a street or a state, I’m happy,” he said. “Enough with the Paris Dakotas.”

“No problem. That’s a good thing. Because we named her after you. Her name is Alfreda.”

“Valentine. Really?” My dad’s eyes filled with tears.

“I want her to be just like you.”

“She’ll need a coach for the vocabulary section on the SATs,” my mother said.

“She’ll have one.” I laughed.

“Her middle name is Magdalena, for Gianluca’s mother,” I added.

“It is?” Gianluca beamed.

“You’ll have to tell our daughter all about your mother.”

Gianluca kissed me on the forehead.

“There are a lot of stories in this family. The good, the bad, and the ugly.” Mom sighed. “But we never repeat the ugly. Denial is a good thing.”

She opened a small gift box and removed a gold pin. Dangling from it was a small cross and a Star of David. She pinned it to the blanket swaddling Alfie.

“A pin?” Gianluca said.

“It’s an Italian tradition,” Mom said. “What, you never heard of it?”

“We pin a saint’s medal to the crib.”

“Don’t worry. I have that covered. I have Saint Rose of Lima in my purse for the bassinette.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

My mother held her new granddaughter close. “I had to cover both religions. Doris Gluck sent the Star of David. I had a Capuchin monk bless them.”

“Thanks, Ma. You might as well go ahead and book Leonard’s for the bat mitzvah.”

“Are we going that far?”

“You never know.”

“Good point. We can always cancel. Carol Kall is nothing if not flexible.”

“May I?” Dad said to Mom.

She gently handed him the baby.

“Hello, Junior,” Dad said to his namesake.

“Honestly, Dutch. We have a little princess here, and you’re calling her
Junior
?”

“This one is all mine,” he said.

“You say that every time we have a grandchild.”

“Yeah? Well, this time I mean it.”

A
lfie was sleeping in her car seat on the worktable when I showed the staff of the Angelini Shoe Company our new line.

Gianluca and Gabriel leaned against the cutting table. Tess had a notebook open to jot down ideas, while Charlie helped himself to a doughnut and a cup of coffee. Pamela had her laptop open with several new designs of the new logo. Jaclyn and Tom sat on the worktable, eager to see what new designs I had come up with.

“Okay, I want your honest feedback,” I announced. I noticed that Gabriel and Gianluca shot one another a look.

Evidently I had been a little less than cooperative in the shop in my postpartum state. “In honor of our new venture, I based the new designs on macaroni.”

“Made of macaroni?” Tom blurted.

“No, brother,
inspired
by macaroni.” I was glad I had Tom working in shipping and not creative.

I held up the first sketch. “This is the
Orecchiette
sandal. I took silver discs like
orecchiette
pasta, and strung them on silver mesh with a flat buckle.”

“Nice,” said Tess. “I’d wear those.”

“Me too,” said Jaclyn.

“I love them,” Pam said as she typed into her laptop.

“Here’s the
Pastina,
a simple beige or plum pump with a square heel embellished with tiny beads à la
pastina
.”

“You’ll sell those like cannolis in Brooklyn,” Gabriel said. “Those girls like glitz.”

“And this is the
Rigatoni
, a bouclé vamp and a block heel shaped like—”

“
Rigatoni
,” Charlie finished.

“Right. And here’s the
Fusilli.
A leather mule in vivid blue, black, and red, with a spring heel—”

“The Fush-heel.” Gabriel helped my presentation along.

“Yes. And here’s the
Linguini.
A neutral calfskin golf shoe accented with bright laces of rolled leather—”

“I’m rolling the leather.” Gianluca smiled.

“And you do it so well, honey. Well, what do you think?”

“I think we’re going to have a ball marketing these,” Pamela said. “They’re kitschy, but they’re beautiful. They’re functional and whimsical. We can do a whole campaign with the shoes in the kitchen, in pasta pots, that sort of thing. Hip for your feet.”

“Go wild,” I told Pam.

“I’d like to thank my staff for helping me pull this presentation together.”

“Staff of one,” Gabriel said.

“This was a family business from the beginning, and it will remain that way forever. You’ve all made Gram very happy. She loves that we’re all under one roof.”

“And let’s face it, since you had Alfie, you need us.” Tess smiled.

“And that too.”

Alfie’s birth had given me a whole new perspective on family. I had been the guest for years at my nieces’ and nephews’ milestones and passages. Now they would be there for Alfie. And if we were going to have them around all the time, why not put them to work? Why shouldn’t they benefit from the business? After all, it was their family business too.

My mom became built-in child care. Tess and Jaclyn and Pamela brought their children to the shop, and just like when we were kids, they had full run of the house and the roof. Our childhood wonderland had become theirs.

My sisters had thrown themselves into the work. It was like the old days when Gram called Feen to help with a shipping deadline. Mom would drop everything to come into the city to wrap the shoes in chamois sleeves and box them. It was natural for us to help one another in business because we had seen this sort of teamwork all our lives. Tess and Jaclyn had worked as temps or did odd jobs here and there after they became mothers. Now they had a place to go; each had her own desk on Perry Street.

The couture line paid our salaries, and once Youngstown took off, we’d be able to plow more money back into the business. Eventually, I hoped to offer retirement and shares in the company to my family.

The business was going great, but I was torn. For me, motherhood and work was a terrible combination. The only way to make shoes and maintain a family was to have a husband so supportive, I could jump from one high wire to the other with ease. I had a net, after all. The net was Gianluca.

“Do you really like the line?” I asked Gabriel after everyone had left.

“It’s adorable and doable. God, I sound like Pamela. She’s a walking advertisement. The new factory should be able to handle these.”

“Charlie says the equipment should arrive in Youngstown by the end of the month.”

“You realize that you’ve hired every Roncalli in the family except for the goldfish in your mother’s koi pond.”

“Can you imagine?”

“Family: the gift that keeps on taking,” Gabriel reminded me.

G
ianluca was rocking Alfie when I came up from the meeting. He was looking out the window, and for a moment, memories of my own dad rocking Jaclyn when she was a baby came rushing back.

“That was a great meeting,” I said as I poured myself a glass of water.

“Alfie is hungry.”

“She has my appetite,” I said as I took the baby. I took her to the kitchen and prepared her a bottle.

“You’re not going to nurse her?”

“I’m weaning her.”

“So soon?”

“It’s been six months. My doctor said it was fine. She got all the nutrients up front.”

“That’s part of breast feeding, but the more important aspect of it is the bonding.”

“That’s judgmental.”

“It’s not a judgment. It happens to be true.”

“Look, they’re my breasts, and I’m done with it.”

Gianluca looked perplexed and then fixed his gaze on the baby.

“Is something wrong?” I asked him.

“Your staff is unhappy.”

“Gabriel?”

“The upstairs staff. Me.”

“What are you talking about?” All I could think was, Nice, buddy. I carry the baby, I have the baby, I nurse the baby, I am up all night with the baby, and it’s not enough. Gianluca had some idealized, old-fashioned notion of the Italian mama who wraps the baby in her apron, does her chores, nurses the baby on her breaks, and then tends the husband with any leftover time she has. I was furious. “I know I don’t multitask like a perfect mother in Italy, but I’m doing my best.”

“Why do you always have to denigrate my country and my people when we get in an argument?”

“Because you judge me.”

“When did I judge you?”

“I came upstairs, and you’re all cold and weird.”

Alfie began to cry. She spat the formula out. Gianluca jumped up and grabbed the bottle. He tested it on his arm. “It’s cold, Valentina.”

I grabbed the bottle from his hand. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Now we get to the truth. You know everything.”

“I know a lot, and frankly, more than you.”

“It’s a contest.”

“You’re making it one!”

“Well, guess what, Valentina? You’re losing. You can’t do everything you want to do and do it well. You rush down to your meeting as though it’s more important than Alfie and me, and then you rush back up the stairs and feed her cold formula. My daughter deserves better than this!”

“Are you kidding? She is surrounded by love!”

“That’s very loving. Screaming at the top of your lungs. Let me raise my voice, so perhaps you will hear me. I asked you to take time off with the baby, but you insisted on working through the first weeks of her life. We will not get these moments back.”

“I am so tired of you being the expert.”

“You asked me to help you through this process. I am only telling you what I know. But you ignore every suggestion. You glared at me at the hospital when I took away your phone when you were having contractions.”

“That’s extreme.”

“It’s true!”

“Here’s my truth, Gianluca. I’m angry.”

“And that’s what I wake up to!”

“Poor Gianluca! You’re not getting enough attention, so you lash out at me?”

“I don’t need your attention, but your daughter does.”

“How dare you? You see what I have to do in a day.”

“I watched you sketch an entire line of shoes in Italy, and you never once lost patience or became angry.”

“We were on vacation!”

“Life can be that easy every day in Italy.”

“Oh, my God. You and Italy. Italy is the solution to every problem!”

“It’s a start. Don’t you see? You’re like a tense piano wire. You are pulled as far and as tightly as you can be by obligations and commitments, so tight that when the hammer hits the wire, it makes no sound. Listen to me, the shoes aren’t important. Your business is not the thing you will remember when you’re older—”

“Oh, now I’m going to take advice from the man who had big dreams to put a tannery on the Amalfi Coast and it didn’t happen, so now I’m going down in flames too!”