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“I’d like to know how.”
“The federal government has really stepped up. There’s an incentive program for small business in New York State-they’re taking applications for loans right now.” Bret hands me a folder filled with forms. “The city will reassess your property taxes and adjust them according to deflation in the real estate market, and they’ll give you some breaks on utilities, as long as you keep a minimum of four employees on the payroll. Right now, you’ve got three-you, Alfred, and June. You need a fourth to qualify-but you have time to hire that person. And then, there’s the new development fund. I think you might be able to swing a very low-interest loan to launch the Bella Rosa.”
“I haven’t been able to get any traction with the banks,” I admit.
“No one can at this point. The small business rep in New York is a woman named Kathleen Sweeney. I hear she’s tough.”
“Nice Irish girl.”
“Exactly. Here’s her information. Call her and schedule an appointment. And it would be smart for you to include Alfred, so he’s invested in this.”
“Good point. So what can I do for you? How can I ever repay you for all you’ve done for me?”
“You can come to Maeve’s birthday party. She’s turning five.” Bret gives me an envelope covered with pink balloons made of felt.
“Already?”
“Already. I can’t believe it. Piper is going to be two.”
“It seems like yesterday that you told me that Mackenzie was expecting.” I can’t believe all that Bret has accomplished in the past six years. He’s built a family with Mackenzie, broken into the financial world, bought a home, and moved out to the suburbs. When I look back on the same period of time, I think about how I mastered sewing kidskin by hand. We are leading two very different lives. “Are you going to have more children?”
“Mackenzie says the shop is closed. I would love more.”
“I think you defer to the lady on those matters.”
“Of course. Always.”
“I’ll definitely be at the party.” I give Bret a hug.
“Bring Gabriel.”
“The black cloud? No way. He hates kids.”
“Yeah, but he gives our suburban New Jersey parties some edge. And when he has a couple glasses of wine, he sings the Rodgers and Hammerstein song book like nobody’s business.”
“I’ll bring him.”
I walk Bret to the door. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t have to. It’s fun for me.”
“Yeah, but you’re busy, and this is small potatoes. Of course, I say potatoes because you’re Irish.”
Bret laughs. “I have a feeling when you get these shoes off the ground, it’s going to mean some big changes for you.”
“Wouldn’t that be something? I’d pay off the mortgage and the loans and remove the ax of impending doom that hangs over my head.”
“The good news: the ax is imaginary. You’ll get Alfred where you want him. And Val, if anybody can do it, it’s you.” Bret pushes the door open and turns to me. “You’re on to something big here.”
Sometimes when I look at Bret, I see all the years we’ve known each other unspool like a long, endless ribbon without a begi
“It’s easy.” He smiles and goes.
I open the invitation to Maeve’s birthday party. The invitation has been written in calligraphy and assembled by hand, with glitter and lace. The section with the date, time, and place pops up out of the crease with a bunch of balloons. Maeve’s round face appears inside the balloons.
How does Mackenzie do it? Would I ever be the sort of mother who could assemble birthday party invitations with sequins and glue? Would I even be the kind of parent who would enjoy doing it?
What a beautiful face Maeve Fitzpatrick has, with her father’s serene countenance and her mother’s blond hair. I pin the invitation up on the bulletin board. I’ll endure anything for Bret-including screaming five-year-olds, a pirate who does magic tricks, and a train ride to New Jersey.
A letter from Gianluca arrives in the mail from Italy, along with a sleeve of leather samples from his shop. Business and pleasure tucked into one envelope.
I open the letter first. His handwriting is artful, that glorious Italian script with the curlicue edges. He wrote it with a fountain pen in midnight blue ink. A fountain pen in 2010! Miraculous!
14 febbraio 2010
Cara Valentina,
Even my name looks prettier when written by an Italian. The letter is dated the night of Gram’s wedding, the night we almost spent together. Here’s a fundamental difference between us: that night, Gianluca went home and wrote down his thoughts, while I slammed the door of my room at the Spolti I
Please accept my apologies for tonight at the i
I have not had the true love I had hoped for in my life, and now, I wonder if it is even possible. Many men, except the poets, seem to search for this particular love, and they find it somehow, in words and intention. But me? I do not know. There was a moment in the church when I thought I saw it, in your eyes, your face, your beautiful face. Later, when I found you in your room at the i
My love,
Gianluca
Oh, for Godsakes. I have to sit down. I’m thirty-four years old, and no one has ever written me a love letter. Full disclosure: there’s an old shoe box in my mother’s attic with evidence to the contrary. I saved notes I passed in school with Bret (the phrase that sent me swooning then was “You’re my girl” written in pencil on lined school paper). And I did put the text messages sent by Roman Falconi (“Love U”) in a place called permanent memory on my phone. But I’ve never received a letter on onionskin paper stamped “Par Avion,” written in indelible ink, that described me as “beautiful” and “longed for,” or specifically asked me what I want and what I need, romantically. This is a first.
I imagined that if I was ever presented with a letter describing such ardent feelings, in plush and meaningful sentences, that of course I would believe them. I want to believe them. I’d like to think that every now and again, I could render a man weak-but this isn’t the English countryside, and I’m not Jane Eyre, and he’s not Mr. Rochester riding up on his horse to the manor where he hides his mentally unstable wife in the attic. Or is he?
I go to the ironing board and plug in the old equipment, as I have done by rote many mornings. I need something to do, because I don’t want to think about what I want to do with Gianluca. When I was a girl, I bought my mother’s lines about one man for every woman, referred to it in passing as “a lid for every pot,” “a hat for every head,” “a glove for every hand”(oddly, no “shoe for every foot,” despite the fact that we are in the business). Nevertheless, I thought my life in love would go as my mother’s had before me, even though every conscious decision I have ever made regarding my future followed the motto “Whatever Mom did, do the opposite.” My mother kept it simple. The old “One God, one man, one life” is the philosophy she built her life upon, but it has not pa
I lick my finger and test the base of the iron. I leave my finger there a second too long and burn it.