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 holds. 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 He knows that the woman I was a year ago has been replaced by an eight-hundred-pound gorilla with a business plan.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.