Brava, Valentine

I have a separate box of my great-grandfather’s sketches. I often refer to them when I’m drawing, as they are the template for our couture shoes, each named after the heroine of a famous opera. For eighty years, there were six key designs, until Gram added a seventh in 1990. Occasionally I get out his sketch pad, but I did a thorough transfer of the drawings from paper to computer, because I didn’t want to add wear and tear to the delicate drawings, done in his hand with charcoal and ink.

As I pick up the last calendar to replace it in the box, a sheet of thick sketch paper falls out of it. A woman’s dress shoe is drawn in meticulous detail. It has a slim, stacked heel, and it’s made of woven leather, with an ornate flap on the top of the shoe, modified from a Louis XIV style. The toe is rounded, while the vamp is sleek. It is unlike any of the designs in my grandfather’s hand. He sketched in an architectural fashion, and his renderings have actual measurements printed carefully next to the components and notes written in Italian, specifying grommets, velvet piping, laces-whatever the requirements of the shoe might be.

This shoe, however, is pure fancy. You could hang the drawing on the wall-it’s artful and loose, playful and fun. The shoe rests on a cloud, with a thunderbolt indicating a storm underneath it-a powerful image, almost like an advertisement. In the corner of the drawing, I see the signature of the artist. It says:

Rafael Angelini

I’ve never heard of a Rafael Angelini. I find this odd, as I know all the names of my cousins in Italy. My grandfather was an only child, like my mother. My great-grandfather, Michel, had sisters. There was Zia A

Maybe my grandfather designed under the name Rafael. Maybe under a pseudonym, he let go, created with abandon, designed whimsical shoes, fashionable shoes, courant shoes. Maybe he even had the idea, long before I did, of developing a line of shoes that could serve a mass market. But why wouldn’t I know this? Surely this would be part of the family story.

I look closely at the drawing. This was definitely not drawn by my great-grandfather’s hand. There’s another Angelini. But who is he? I lay the drawing carefully on the bed, so I’ll remember to ask Gram about it.

Then, I open one of Gram’s prized possessions: a turquoise leather case with a white patent leather top. There’s a gold metal handle and a buckle on the side. I snap it open. It’s filled with record albums.

I can’t believe Gram left her collection of Frank Sinatra records behind. Gram never collected china or silver, or Hummels or Lladro; her only vice was The Chairman of the Board.

The dust jackets of the Sinatra LPs are stored alphabetically in the case. They are uncompromised and untouched by time. I would wager there’s not a scratch on the record albums inside the sleeves. There’s even a pristine chamois cloth folded neatly in an envelope inside in the lid to dust them before playing them.

I remember when Gram would stack the records on the turntable, and the automatic plastic arm would slip across to hold them in place. Then she’d carefully turn the knob, and like magic, one record would drop, the needle would slip over to the outside groove, and then, suddenly, the house was filled with music.

When we were children, we were pretty much allowed free rein with anything in this house, except the Sinatra albums. We were allowed to play Louis Prima and Keely Smith records, or Boots Randolph instrumentals, or even the Perry Comos, but the Sinatra collection was sacrosanct. Only Gram could load Sinatra on the hi-fi.

These were the songs that played through my grandmother’s youth, courtship, and married life. When Sinatra was young, so was Gram. She was a bobby-soxer, only twelve years old when she bought her first record in 1940, with “I’ll Never Smile Again” on the A side and “Marcheta” on the flip side. She danced to “For Every Man There’s a Woman” at her wedding to my grandfather.

My mother remembers Gram taking her to the Fulton Record Shop and waiting when a new album was to be released. Gram was a diehard fan, but she left the sound track of her life before Dominic Vechiarelli behind, which says everything about her desire to start over. All that’s left of her years of stewardship over these albums is the nostalgic scent of the old record shop: high gloss ink and plastic. If I needed proof of my grandmother’s ultimate intentions, it is here, in my hands. She’s never coming home.

I lift out her prized albums and sort through them. I prop them across the headboard of her bed. The covers are a fest of Frank. Sinatra in a single beam of light in front of a microphone; young, thin, and totally sexy. Sinatra illustrated pulp fiction style in vivid tones of turquoise and magenta, on the runway with a TWA airplane behind him, extending his hand to a woman whose lacquered red nails rest in his hand. Another with a sky blue background with a photograph of Frank wearing a dapper fedora. As I shuffle through the collection, Frank Sinatra gets older, but he never loses his luster. The images of the glamorous past get to me. So, I throw on my parka, grab my glass of wine, and head up to the roof, balancing the glass on the stairs as I unlatch the door.

The winter clouds have rolled away, and all that is left is a night sky of the deepest blue, the same shade as the ink on Gianluca’s letter. I go to the edge of the roof and look down across the West Side Highway. The blinking red lights of a police car parked by the pier look like ruby buttons on black suede boots. Even this roof feels different since Gram left. It doesn’t feel safe any longer, it feels as though it can’t be trusted-as if the clouds opened up and carried her away.

This is the biggest change for me. This roof, with its tomato plants in summer and snow drifts in winter, was our sanctuary. In the fall, we would roast chestnuts on the grill, and sit by the fire, waiting for the nuts to cook through, and pop open with a soft crackle. The scent of the iron skillet on the fire and the sweet chestnuts was always a comfort.

I look over at the grill, covered in an old tarp, and wonder if I’ll bother to make the trip over to the Chelsea Market to buy a sack of chestnuts to roast. Will I continue to do the things that Gram did, the rituals that brought us such joy? Will I commit to keeping the treasures of the past alive in the present?

With every crate I unpack, with every box I sort, the list of things I must do grows. There’s the business, the building, the family obligations. I think it’s time to pull the Roncallis together and dole out the traditions, the recipes, and the assignments; to be as specific about who will do what as my mother has been in labeling her jewelry, each piece marked with a name and stored, to be given out after the moment when, God forbid, she passes on.

As I look over to the Hudson River, the expanse of black water seems to widen in the dark, like a pit of velvet quicksand. But I don’t feel consumed by my river, or by this night sky, nor do I feel small, standing downstage of the skyscrapers that loom behind me like black daggers. It’s the boxes in my grandmother’s bedroom, filled with everything my grandmother was and is, that overwhelm me. Papers, contracts, photographs, articles, sketches, and documents filled with the history of our family and the company that made us. Our history can only be told through the things she saved, and now that Gram is gone, it’s left to me to decide what’s worth keeping.