The Supreme Macaroni Company (7 page)

“Can you believe I’m going to be a stepmother?”

“I hope you turn evil. They’re the only interesting ones. You ever met the first wife?”

“No.”

“I bet she’s a piece of work.”

“I have no idea.” Actually, when I agreed to marry Gianluca earlier this evening, the farthest thing from my mind had been that I was going to be his second wife. Clearly his first wife was not a keeper, and here I was, attempting to be the one who would last. I wondered if I had the goods or if he did.

“How are you going to do this?” Gabriel looked up at the sky.

“Do what?” Now Gabriel had me nervous, like I might have to actually address the situation with Mirella, the ex.

“Marriage and the shop and the shoes and Roberta and Argentina and me.”

“I’m getting married, I’m not dying.”

“Are you going to live in New York?”

“Of course.”

“You discussed it?”

“No, but he knows the deal.”

“Oh, you sad, naive girl. Men never know anything. They have to be told.”

“Seriously?”

“He’s probably got ideas of his own about where he wants to live.”

“I can’t live in Italy.”

“You might have to, at least part-time.”

“I can’t! I took my brother on as a partner to hold on to this business and this building.”

“I’m not the one you need to negotiate with. You have to talk to Gianluca.”

Gabriel has a funny way of going round and round with me and getting to the pith suddenly and without intention. I hadn’t asked Gianluca any of the hard questions, so I really didn’t know why I thought my marriage with him would work more than, say, his marriage with his first wife. I know that these were the things I should have focused on, how to proceed with my creative life while also taking on the new role of
wife
. But that night wasn’t a typical night. It was Christmas Eve. There was a big family party and a whopper family fight. There was no long, intense conversation where we shared our dreams for the future. I washed dishes, we drove Aunt Feen home, and he dropped me off. It was a night full of revelations and strange surprises and not necessarily the good kind.

My phone buzzed. I fished it out of my coat pocket.

“Who is it?” Gabriel lay back in the lawn chair.

“Bret.” He texted, “I’m sorry. Hope you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. Sorry about everything,” I texted back.

“Are you going to tell him that you got engaged?” Gabriel asked.

“I can’t text that.”

“I would.”

“Why?”

“Otherwise he’s going to think that kiss was something other than friendship.”

“It
was
friendship.”

“He doesn’t know that.”

“I think he does.”

“You better write a disclaimer then. Say something about Gianluca without saying anything too specific.”

I texted, “Went to Jersey with Gianluca.”

Bret texted, “I am at my parents’. Kids are with Mac in the city.”

I texted, “Hang in there.”

“ ‘Hang in there’? After what the man has been through, you act like he lost his wallet?” Gabriel sipped his tea.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“I don’t know, but not
that
. That’s a platitude you find on a poster at Denny’s.”

“It’s all so bizarre. All of it.”

“You can’t change history. You were once engaged to Bret. And now you’re engaged to Gianluca. All these threads tie together.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’re not being clear. You have a diamond ring on your hand, and you didn’t discuss the conditions of the agreement to wed. You kissed one guy and got engaged to another in the time it took your sister to boil a lobster.”

“What do you recommend I do?”

“I don’t know. I can only identify problems. I don’t solve them.”

“Gianluca forgave me for the kiss. He didn’t assume the worst about me. He figured I had my reasons.”

“And what would those reasons be?”

“History.”

“You should erase your history, if you ask me.”

“No, it’s the opposite. When you marry someone who’s been married, or someone like me, who’s been engaged, the history part is a gift.”

“Or a constant reminder of past mistakes.”

“Maybe, but what’s wrong with that? I bring a lot of what I’ve learned to our life together. One of the things I love about Gianluca is that he’s already seen and done so much, and yet he’s not jaded.”

“Well, Val, one thing’s for sure, you’re marrying an optimist. He has a few years under his belt, and he still sees the possibilities in the world and wants to start over with you. Good for him.”

“I’m lucky.”

“Poor Bret. He’s ending as you are beginning.”

“He’ll bounce back.”

“I never liked Mackenzie, and she never liked you. She always thought Bret carried a torch for you.”

“Bret came here to see me because he had nowhere else to go. There’s no romance between us.”

“What about the kiss?”

“It was a lifeline kiss. He wanted to be reassured that everything would be all right. It wasn’t about any feelings he had for me. He was scared about being alone.”

“I know those kisses. They come around closing time.”

“Right. A closing-time kiss. That’s all it was.”

“Would you have been as forgiving had you caught Gianluca kissing his ex-wife?”

“Probably not.”

“Probably? Most definitely not! Fidelity has always been your big issue, and isn’t it ironic that you went and did the very thing you’re most afraid of someone doing to you?”

“Are you trying to make me feel worse?” I asked.

“I want you to think about how amazing it is that you’re going to marry a man who really loves you and who didn’t let a kiss with an ex ten minutes before he proposed marriage ruin everything.”

“I get it, Gabriel. I really do.”

“We’ve got another problem. A different complication. You know we
work
with Bret, right?”

“Yeah, I’m going to have to have a conversation with him.”

“I hope you straighten everything out. He’s our banker. He gets us our loans. He gets along with Alfred. We need him.”

Gabriel was thinking about the shop, but I was worried about the rest of my life.

I looked up at the sky. A smattering of stars appeared in the distance over the water. I thought about what needed to be done. There were issues to sort out, feathers to unruffle, and plans to be made. Everything was going to change in my life, even the aspects that were already working.

“It’s going to snow,” Gabriel observed. “I hate snow.”

Gabriel dragged the lawn chairs back to the edge of the roof, where he folded and stored them.

“Come on, it’s been a long day.” Gabriel held the door open. “And I need my rest. I have to close out 2010, and I have to find a place to live.”

“I wish you could stay.”

“No, thanks. Three of anything never works. It’s two by two or nothing.”

G
abriel and I had our routine in the apartment above the workroom on Perry Street. It was a kind of marriage. He took care of the cooking, and I did the cleaning. He’d taken my old bedroom after I moved into Gram’s old room. The extra bedroom was for company, and we used it a lot. New York City funnels people on their way to most other places in the world, and having the extra bedroom gave old friends and relatives a place to stay when they were passing through.

Gabriel had fixed up the roof, upgrading it from rustic Italian to Village Rococo. He installed a washer and dryer upstairs, painted the walls, and refinished the wood floors. He always had a project going, a stack of wallpaper samples by his side. As I look back on our time together, I realize I was one of those projects.

I looked into the bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth. Gabriel had artfully placed a dimmer switch for the lighting fixture over the medicine cabinet. The softened light diffused all my flaws, as there is nothing worse than being over thirty and looking into the glare of headlights first thing in the morning (or the last thing at night, for that matter). I held my hand up against the mirror, taking in the white-hot diamond on my hand.

One little ring changes everything.

As I slipped down the dark hallway to my bedroom, I saw that Gabriel’s light was out. He’s one of those people who goes to sleep quickly and wakes up five hours later, refreshed. I’m an insomniac who tosses and turns until I surrender to sleep. As soon as I got under the covers and sank beneath my down blanket, my mind began to race.

I began to list the changes that would come in the weeks ahead. I bundled the fears, beginning with my living situation. I knew Gabriel and I would share a work life going forward and our friendship as we always had, but we wouldn’t be living together anymore. I was sad about that transition. Leaving Gabriel was a bit like choosing a new pair of shoes over the old, comfortable loafers. I would still see him in the shop every day, because he had become our pattern cutter after June died, but he wouldn’t be there at breakfast, and he wouldn’t be there at dinner. I was trading my best friend for a husband.

Husband! My heart filled to the brim with love when I thought of Gianluca. I’d found my partner in him. There were so many things we needed to talk about. I wanted to make Gianluca comfortable in his new home. For starters, he’d need a desk and a workspace. Closets. What else? We were going to be married in a matter of weeks. The idea of
that
seemed daunting, but it might be better to move quickly and begin our new life together instead of having one of those long engagements to buy time to make everything perfect. I punched the pillow and turned over.

Whenever I couldn’t sleep, my thoughts would turn back to the ladies who nurtured my spiritual life when I was a girl. The nuns at Holy Agony taught us to examine our conscience at the end of every day. We were told to replay the events honestly and assess what we had learned, what we would change, and whom we should ask for forgiveness. I had a list as long as the Westside Highway.

I had hurt Gianluca. My worst moment (comforting Bret) gave way to the best moment (agreeing to marry Gianluca). I could not have had one without the other. I promised myself I would never knowingly hurt Gianluca again. Whenever I tripped up in a romantic relationship in the past, it was the end. Now, I loved a man who loved me enough not to walk away.

It is no small thing to be understood. For Gianluca to have assumed the best about my character in the worst possible moment must mean that he really loved me. He wasn’t jealous or unkind, impatient or judgmental when I was at my worst; he assumed I had my reasons, and trusted that even if I made a mistake, I had the strength of character to make it right.

I don’t know any other man who could give me the gift of trust when I hadn’t earned it. I’ve looked for trust all my life, brought my hopes out into the world, and taken a few risks here and there, including imagining a life alone instead of settling for less. I even pretended that a pale version of a decent man’s loyalty was enough, and that only led to a dark place where I ended up disappointed in myself for assigning integrity to a man who didn’t have it.

In a world where time is precious, I spent too much of it working through problems in makeshift relationships, attempting to build something lasting with weak materials instead of insisting on excellence when building my life. The best components are the most durable. “If you want shoes to last, choose the best leather,” Gram used to say. My grandmother taught me this, but I had forgotten the deeper meaning.

I texted Gianluca. “Thank you for loving me.”

“Go to sleep,” he texted back.

I laughed. Of all the things I loved about this man, the best trait was that he didn’t agonize. I did enough of that for both of us. Gianluca showed me that when you’re certain that forgiveness is yours, you’re free to choose love. When the channels of the heart are open, a kind of wondrous beauty flows through. That is the power of true love, and that is why I agreed to marry Gianluca Vechiarelli.

Leonard’s, here we come.

4

I
swept a thin dusting of snow off the steps outside the entryway of our shop on Perry Street. Underneath the powder, glassy ice peeked through on the concrete. Even the cobblestones had a sheen, and the sidewalks, shiny patches where the puddles had frozen like lost mirrors.

I took the broom, reached up, and swept the snow off the Angelini Shoes sign over the door. I sprinkled salt on the steps and threw a handful onto the sidewalk like fairy dust, though in reality the white granules landed in a clump like a scoop of laundry detergent.

The week between Christmas Day and New Year’s is one of my most productive in the shop. We close out the accounts for the past year and send the books to the accountant. After the holiday blitz, I have free time to think ahead and imagine what direction I’d like to take the shoes.

The spring and summer lines had been designed and were now in production in Argentina. My long-lost cousin Roberta was meeting production in her factory in Buenos Aires. Soon the spring line would be shipped to our vendors. It was time to create the designs for the autumn line and for winter 2011, and figure out what my customers might want to wear a year from now.

I removed my gloves and placed them on the radiator in the foyer, hung up my coat, and flipped the stone on my engagement ring back to the front of my finger before I pushed open the glass door of the shop.

The drafty shop, every cupboard and shelf, filled with the history of our family, has provided me with a sense of wonder and security. From the time I was little, this shop meant everything to me. Inside, I was fascinated by the craft of shoemaking while the big windows gave me a view of the world outside. Greenwich Village had it all: funny characters, winding cobblestone streets, and a big river.

As I flipped on the lights, the shop was serene, the mood almost reverent, reminding me of church. Creativity is born in silence. The quiet rustle of the pattern paper as it was pinned to fabric sounded like pages turning in a hymnal. The low hum of the machines sounded like the drone of prayers said in unison. The rhythmic chuff of the steam iron and the smooth staccato of the needle on the sewing machine made a kind of music.

The Angelini Shoe Company is where dreams are born in the name of style. We revere our process and our customers. There’s a higher purpose in all we do; we create beauty through a sense of service. The high ceilings and low work lamps over the cutting table remind me of the pools of light over the altar at Our Lady of Pompeii on Carmine Street.

Maybe I was so attached to this shop because I knew I could find my grandparents here seven days a week. That’s what it took to make a profit back then, and it isn’t so different today. We run the place like my great-grandfather and my grandparents. What worked a hundred years ago still sustains us.

What had been my childhood wonderland became my creative space. It hasn’t changed much over the years, but it has changed me.

Every element a good shoemaker needs to make a pair of shoes is available in this room. I opened the floor-to-ceiling supply closets and marveled at the dowels of raw silk and duchesse satin, dyed in pristine shades of eggshell white, beige, and wheat. The shelves were filled with neatly stacked sheets of fine leather and suede, stored between layers of clean chamois cloth. Gianluca instinctively knows what materials I like and provides them.

The notions closet, a series of floor-to-ceiling drawers filled with small compartments of embellishments including shiny grommets, snippets of ribbon, mesh wire rosettes, all sizes, shapes, and styles of buttons, loose faux jewels and elegant seed pearls, was a giant jewelry box, and I spent hours sorting through the treasures. I still have the same thrill when I hunt for the perfect accent to finish a shoe.

I inherited my great-grandfather’s original patterns for wedding shoes inspired by the opera. His creations were infused with the passion, drama, and colors of the theater. He even named the prototypes of his designs after the great roles sung by women. In his own hand, he wrote their names with a flourish, then he specified their dimensions in mathematical terms. Pinned to those sketches are bits of fabric and leather so the customer might imagine the finished product.

There is a shelf of wooden lasts, sleek model forms in various foot sizes that are over a hundred years old, which Michel Angelini carved himself in Italy. When he and his brother emigrated to the United States, they had no money or prospects, just a change of clothes and these lasts. The shop was Angelini owned and operated but whenever an outsider was hired, they became family.

I learned how to cut a pattern from June Lawton, who was trained by my grandfather. She answered an ad, looking to make extra money to pay her rent, while training as a dancer, not knowing that once inside the workshop, a different artistic enchantment would take over. June was a Greenwich Village institution. She moved to New York City in her youth to become a modern dancer in experimental theater. She danced for Alvin Ailey and jetéd onstage in the nude. She lived for years in a rent-stabilized apartment in the East Village. When her dancing didn’t turn her into Margot Fonteyn, she, like so many artists, turned to the world of day jobs to make a living.

My grandparents saw that June had artistic talent beyond the dance, and trained her as a pattern cutter. She stayed at the shop after Grandpop died and Gram took over. When Gram handed the reins to Alfred and me, June stayed on long enough to convince Gabriel to learn how to cut patterns. He took June’s place, even when I believed no one could. I miss her in the shop, but I also miss her in my life.

When June died, I thought we would lose our way. Gram had moved to Italy and June was the final thread that remained from the years my grandfather ran the shop. Gabriel gave up his job running the cabaret at the Carlyle Hotel and took on the work in the shop, full time. He made the transition his own. He hung a signed photograph of Keely Smith over the buffing machine, to remind him of where he came from. Keely’s Gram’s favorite singer, so when I look at her, I think of my grandmother, but when I watch Gabriel cutting a pattern with precision, I think of June.

Gram handed the business over to Alfred and me when she married Dominic Vechiarelli. I had already spent six years as my grandmother’s apprentice. Artistically, she felt I was ready to take over the shop, but she believed I needed help on the business side. She brought my brother Alfred in to run the numbers. He had lost his job at a big bank, and Gram convinced him to switch gears and join the family business. Again, I thought this move would close the shop entirely, as I have never gotten along with my brother. But shoes mean the world to me, and finances to him, so we put aside our differences for the sake of the family brand.

Gram knew that it would take time, experience, trial and error, all the givens on the frustrating path of artistic creation, to turn me into a master craftsman. She also knew that everything I needed was right here.

I use the simple tools handed down from my grandfather, who inherited them from his father who had brought them from Italy. I like to think that their skills live in the awl, hammer, and knife as they do in me. We’ve added modern equipment through the years, including the roller, presser, steamer, and motorized blade over the cutting table. I’m careful when blending in any new technology, but if it makes the process better, I’m all for it. I often sketch on my laptop while Gabriel takes my designs and makes the patterns.

I was taught to maintain the tools and equipment, to treat them respectfully, to clean and service them. A shoemaker must also be a bit of a mechanic. Whenever a machine broke down in the shop, my grandfather would take it apart and analyze the problem like a surgeon in an operating room. I remember ceramic cups filled with tiny screws, nuts, and bolts, which he used as he figured out how to fix the glitch.

I grabbed the ring of keys, unlocked the safety shutters on the windows, and rolled them aside. The sun threw a triangle of bright gold on the worktable. Fresh coffee brewing on the counter signaled the start of a long workday, along with the scent of leather, lemon wax, and the last gasp of the fresh holiday wreath on the door. I was in my little corner of heaven.

I rubbed my hands together to warm them. I tapped the radiator and sat down at the desk that Alfred kept neat and orderly. The ledger, files, and sample book were all within reach on a shelf over the desk. A few bills I needed to look at were resting under the statue of Saint Crispin, the patron of shoemakers. Gram had begun leaving bills under him years ago, so as not to lose them, and now we do too.

I sipped a cup of coffee and flipped on my computer. There was an e-mail from my cousin Roberta, who wanted to check the lot numbers on the shipment of the
Bella Rosa
, our summer flats, made of pastel leathers inspired by a tin of saltwater taffy from the Jersey shore. I sent her a quick e-mail with the specifics, but I signed it:

VR, soon to be . . . Gianluca Vechiarelli’s bride

Roberta e-mailed me back instantly.

How wonderful for you and even more for him to choose you! Intelligent man! Let me know the date. I’ll dance at your wedding.

I unrolled butcher paper across the top of the cutting table, taping it down on both ends. I flipped open the box of tubes of oil paint and began mixing them on a palette. I swept a deep cobalt blue across the paper, switched brushes, and outlined the blue in a clean, white stripe. I picked up a small brush and made small stripes of black on the blue. It was fun to return to deep blues after months of playing with pastels.

When I painted the blue and black without the white stripe, the saturated tones read “evening couture” instantly. I took a photo of the colors on my phone and downloaded them into the computer. I’m able to work more efficiently electronically, when I can layer colors and test them on sketches that I’ve drawn to scale.

In the old days, shoemakers used to break down patterns mathematically on paper. Now I use stock measurements on my pattern program on the computer, invented by Joe Miele, the great mechanical engineer. I still have to dream and engage ideas in my imagination—these artistic drives have not changed over the last century and most likely never will—but we recently added some new software to help us realize the dream more efficiently.

When we were a strictly couture shop, we would sit with the customer, look at her gown, and match the shoe to the bride. Now that we’ve branched out into the retail market, we’re serving a wider audience, so we consider trends. We study women in their ordinary day-to-day activities, and think about what they watch in the theater, at the movies, and on television. What does she like? What does she think? What does she need? We play a kind of guessing game. We analyze the times, what women are buying, and their moods. Sometimes the color of a popular cocktail inspires the suede of the moment. What becomes courant often begins with something ordinary like the color of candy or textural, like like pattern of a cobblestone street. What a woman is
feeling
translates into what she chooses to buy.

There is also a synergy among the creative impulses of all the other shoe designers in the world and the elements I choose. Somehow, themes emerge even though we don’t officially consult the competition. It is as if we hear the same music in the air, walk the same streets, eat the same food, and interpret the same moment en masse. Our observations as we live in our times shapes the landscape of what we design.

I wrote words around the swirls of blue on the butcher paper. Over the course of the next several weeks, the paper would be filled with my scribbles, stream-of-consciousness thoughts and ideas, varied, unedited, and without censure. This crazy collage of layers of ideas would become the template for the next collection. I would spend weeks winnowing down the broad ideas into the specificity of the message.

A rapping on the window on the Hudson River side interrupted my thoughts. Bret waved to me from the sidewalk. As I motioned for him to come around, I wondered how long he had been standing there. I was happy to see him, despite what happened on Christmas Eve. He moved quickly to the entrance. His strong Irish profile, upright posture, and carriage showed total self-confidence, a far cry from the vulnerable person he was a few nights ago.

I wasn’t surprised. Resilience was Bret’s way; he invented the bounce-back. He didn’t hold on to sadness or its sister, failure, for very long. Stability was one of his best traits, and the one that worried me the most. If there is ever a time to dig deep and find answers, it’s when someone you love leaves you.

By the time Bret made it inside the store, I’d poured him a cup of coffee with a dash of milk in it, just as he likes.

“There’s going to be more snow,” he said, removing his coat as I handed him the mug of coffee. He wore a beautifully cut navy pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit with a white shirt and green silk tie that brought out his eyes. The stripes made him appear leaner and taller, if that was even possible. “How was the rest of your Christmas?”

“The kids had fun. Went out to Mom and Dad’s Christmas Day. Gram and Dominic stayed with them so they could be with the grandkids.”

“Seven Fishes at Tess’s house on Christmas Eve? I remember the hoopla.”

“Oh yeah. It was even bigger this year, a very special night.” I held up my hand and showed Bret my engagement ring. “This is why I wanted to see you.”

He grinned and took my hand. “You’re getting married.”

“I am.”

“Well, it’s about time.”

“Only you could say that to me and it doesn’t hurt my feelings. For the record, there have been, in the history of mankind, older brides than me.”

“Who?” Bret teased.

“For starters, my grandmother. And, according to Gabriel, Ethel Merman was older than me when she married Ernest Borgnine.”

“I have no idea who they are but I wish you every happiness.” Bret embraced me, and as quickly as he had his arms around me, he removed them and stepped back.