Brava, Valentine

“I get it,” Alfred says.

“So any decisions about financing are to be made by you and Valentine-jointly,” Ray clarifies.

“That leaves me hamstrung,” Alfred says aloud as he continues reading.

“Well, it is my business.” I look at Ray.

“But I’ve been brought in as chief financial officer to run it,” Alfred corrects me.

“I mean-” I take a deep breath and lower my voice-“that it’s my business in the sense that I create the product we sell-and you rely on me to deliver that product. Otherwise, I’m happy to share everything.”

“Okay.” Alfred looks at me.

I realize that he’s only being agreeable because he’s been on the job for all of ten minutes. “So here’s my budget.” I reach across the table and give Alfred the current budget with operating expenses. “And here’s the list of custom shoes under current contract, with down payments and shipment dates.” I place the report on top of that. “And here are my projected business goals-including the manufacturing of the Bella Rosa. This file includes all of Bret’s research with the Small Business Administration and some information about foreign manufacturers. But the foreign element is incomplete. You can help me figure out that piece.”

“Wow.” Alfred seems slightly impressed. Then he says, “I’ll read over this.”

“Take your time.” I stand up. “Ray, thank you for setting this up for us.” I extend my hand to him. “I’ll probably be calling on you from time to time.”

Ray shakes my hand. “My pleasure.”

“My goal in life is to sell enough shoes so I might purchase you a proper briefcase.”

“Old habits die hard, I’m afraid.” Ray pats his old satchel.

“And sometimes they need to,” I tell him.

Gram left her bedroom suite behind. The heavy, dark stained oak furniture with its four-post finials and deep carvings on the headboard says 1940 like Rosie the Riveter or garter hose with seams. The bed is made with the same pale green satin spread that’s covered it since I was a child.

Gram suggested I move into her room, because it’s larger. I’ve been living in the smaller guest room all these years. My mother’s bedroom, across the hall, is a shrine to the 1950s. The wallpaper has a pattern of bunches of violets tied with gold ribbons that gives the effect of a year-round garden. I like the vintage paper but I don’t want to move in there either. I’m going to stay put. Gram will be back to visit, I hope, and when she returns, I want her to find some of the old familiar things she loves in place as she left them. Besides, I’ve grown to love the guest room across from the bath, with the stairs outside my door that lead to the roof. It’s home to me now.

My mother’s room is filled with stacks of storage boxes that Gram didn’t have time to sort through before she left. We packed up her clothes, and some heirlooms from her mother, to take to her new life in Italy. She and Dominic plan to redo his house in Arezzo, so she wanted to start fresh. She didn’t even take her reliable spaghetti pot, which signaled to me that she’s determined to start over.

I’ve promised myself that I will go through a box at a time, whenever I get a chance, and eventually I will have distributed these mementoes to my mother, sisters, and Alfred. There are lots of pictures of my mother, the only child, enough to fill a crate, and at least one wall in the homes of each of her four children. My mother’s life is chronicled from her birth in black and white to her marriage, in vivid shades of Kodachrome film. I’m getting to know her all over again.

The photographs are so telling of the moods we were in, and what was happening when the pictures were taken. The pictures taken in the 1980s, when Tess, Jaclyn, Alfred, and I were young, tell the story of a family in crisis, and then, once into the 1990s as we go off to college, you see the mood lift and the joy return.

My mother and father survived a crisis of my dad’s own design, when he had an affair and Mom moved us into this building during the summer of 1986. Of course, she never told us the real reason she moved us into the city-she said our house needed rewiring-but it was actually our dad that needed the redo. As the years went on, we got bits and pieces of the story, until our parents felt we were old enough to handle it, and then we were allowed to ask anything about it that we wished. Today, if we discuss the past, their story is told in full, complete with my father’s confession, my mother’s forgiveness, and my father’s return to the fold.

My father’s ancient infidelity is now part of the fabric of our family. We don’t embroider over it, or pretend it never happened-it’s just become one of those things-like a cancer diagnosis, a failed driver’s test, surviving the mumps, or the celebration of a deserved promotion with the Parks Department. Dad’s indiscretion is dropped into conversation like any date or period of historical significance in the story of our family. So, then too, is The Aftermath, the “better years,” Mom calls them, after our parents renewed their vows and we, their four children, stood up for them in church, knowing full well what they, and we, had been through. In a sense, they gave us the gift of forgiveness by forgiving one another. It was a lesson that took with my sisters and me, but not with Alfred. We had to convince him to come to the church. Finally, though, after a lot of pleading, he showed up.

Sometimes I marvel at my family’s ability to accept the worst, and to forgive, but that’s due to my mother and father’s determination that no one, not even a seductress named Mary from Pottsville, Pe

Of all the things Gram left behind, my favorite memorabilia is the collection of a

We have the calendars as far back as 1910, each month illustrated by whatever business or supplier sponsored it. The oldest ones were provided by a company that made Red Goose shoes. There are circled dates and notes made first by my great-grandfather, then my grandfather, and finally Gram. The word affitto is written on the last day of the month, until 1918, where it changes from affitto to pagamento d’ipoteca. I could never throw these out-not with my great-grandfather and grandfather’s notes scribbled on them-so I flip through them, placing them carefully back in the box without wrinkling or tearing the pages.

I’m the sole custodian of our family history, and not because anyone asked me to be. The truth is, no one else is interested in the contents of these dusty old boxes, nor do they want to store them. I’m the only Angelini who treasures these old documents and is inspired by them.

My sister Tess has no patience with anything antique. Even her home decor is sleek and modern: Ikea meets Richard Meier. Tess rebelled against Mom’s interior decoration, ornate English and French, in our family home in Queens. Jaclyn has a streamlined Swedish look in her condo-Gustavian, with distressed furniture and neutrals. Alfred and Pamela are New Jersey chic, a rambling faux farmhouse filled with highly polished Ethan Allen. I don’t think any of them have attics or closets filled with junk. They prune as they go. Pamela would take one look at these old calendars and recycle them.

I flip through 1912, looking at the styles of the time. In less than a hundred years, the world is completely different. They thought they were mod back then, with advertisements for cars with rumble seats and bathing costumes made of fine wool.