Brava, Valentine

“Are you open to any offer?” I ask. “You could come and live with me.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have all that space. Three bedrooms! Two empty. I miss Gram. I wander around the roof like an old pigeon looking for crumbs. I traipse from room to room with nothing but my memories to make me smile. Besides, my love life only exists on paper. The mail comes once a day, and Gianluca only has so much ink in his pen. I need you.”

“Living together might ruin our friendship.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Gabriel’s eyes widen at the possibilities of moving in to Perry Street. I watch him scheme.

“We’d see more of each other,” I offer.

“We did live together in college,” Gabriel reasons. “And I broke you of your worst habits then: wet towels on the floor…”

“I have a drying rack now.”

“Good. And how’s the coaster situation?”

“I never place a cup of coffee on a bare table. I’ve grown up. I respect wood grains. Always a coaster.”

“Wow. You’re playing hardball here. This is very tempting,” he says.

The waitress serves us our breakfast. Gabriel sprinkles Tabasco on his eggs. “Tabasco burns calories. I even brush my teeth with it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Another reason for you to move in-with tips like these, I’ll look like Kate Moss in six months.”

“A year,” he amends.

“Look, just think about it. I mean, if Prince Charming comes along and drives you and your personality away in his Bentley, that’s one thing. But if he doesn’t, why not come and live with me?”

“Soirées on the roof…under the stars…Jersey in the background. I love a roof.”

“You can grow roses up there.”

“The thought of a trellis on a rooftop is almost irresistible.” Gabriel butters his toast with the smallest smidge while I pour a quart of maple syrup on my French toast.

“Think about it?”

“Can I paint?” he asks. “I’m a man who loves to dimple his own stucco.”

“Do it. Paint, stencil, decoupage! Anything you want,” I promise him.

“Your ceilings are high, and I’m into wallpaper.”

“Wallpaper is great.”

He leans in. “How do you feel about a classic toile wallpaper with foil accents? You realize I’ve never had an entire house and roof garden to decorate.”

“Now you do, my friend.”

My brother Alfred, now a few days in as my partner, still seems surprised at how complex the business of making shoes can be. He responds to the challenges of the Angelini Shoe Company in the same way he rose to valedictorian of his college class. He sits at the desk with his back to June and me as he combs through ledgers in a concentration so deep, it’s as though he’s studying for a make-or-break final exam upon which his future depends. Occasionally he types into his laptop.

When he was a boy and wanted to learn something, he’d go to the library and immerse himself in research. He’d carry home stacks of books and plow through them. Never one to get by with general knowledge, Alfred’s goal was to burrow into a subject and come out the other side an expert. Our mother marveled at his intelligence, and used to say, “I don’t know where he came from.” Then of course, she’d take full credit and say, “I am his mother.”

There may be a potential upside to our partnership-he may challenge me to find better ways to do my work. I don’t know if I could work any harder at designing and building shoes, but maybe I could work smarter.

“We should call Mike to come in and help us with the shipment,” June says as she surveys the shipment for McDonald’s bridal boutique in Boston. “Your mother packs shoes like a pro.”

“She buys them like a pro, too,” Alfred says from his work, without looking up.

“Gee, Alfred. A joke.” I nod, impressed.

He turns and faces me. “I’m not the worst person in the world, you know.”

“Now, now, let’s not have any personal feelings in the workplace,” I remind him.

Alfred breaks a slight smile.

“Oh, you two are downright docile. There used to be real battles in this room. And I was the referee. Believe me. Your grandparents would go at it-and Big Mike would get so angry, he’d throw the iron against that wall. One afternoon, it almost hit the cat.”

“Buttons,” Alfred remembers.

“I never worried about that cat. He could take care of himself. They adopted him from the street, and truthfully he needed to be in the zoo. Feral. Used to sleep in the trashcan. But he definitely got his bad attitude from your grandfather.”

“Gram doesn’t remember the fights.” I hold down the pattern paper while June cuts the leather.

“Widows never do. Grief wipes out all bad memories. After your grandfather died, she wrote to the Vatican to have him canonized.”

“No way.” Alfred laughs.

“Nah, but she would’ve. She blamed herself for everything that went wrong between them after he died. I had to remind her that he was human and made mistakes just like the rest of us.”

“Like having a girlfriend on the side,” I say. “This is a particular weakness in our family.”

“Maybe, but that was the least of it to your grandmother. She didn’t care about that. She cared about stability. Home was on the second floor, and she never took her work problems up those stairs at night. And this is a rough business. You have to show up every single day and produce. It’s not easy. I felt for both of them.” June places the pattern paper and the leather in a stack for me to sew.

I place a finished kid leather dress shoe on the brushes. I pump the pedals with my foot as the brushes whirl rhythmically, evenly buffing the leather. Small striae of the palest pink begin to peek through the vamp of the eggshell pump. I concentrate on making the patina even. I stop the pedal when the pink is the exact shade of a new dogwood blossom. As I lift it up to the light, I realize that Alfred stands beside me.

“I remember when Grandpop used to buff the shoes on that machine. You’re pretty good at it.”

“Surprised?” I’m so used to snapping at my brother in self-defense, I do it even when he pays me a compliment. “I didn’t mean that,” I tell him. “I meant to say, Thank you.”

The phone in the shop rings. June’s and my hands are full, so Alfred picks it up.

“Angelini Shoes,” he says.

I look at June. I’ll bet it’s the first time in my brother’s professional life that he has picked up the phone like a receptionist.

“It’s Mom.” Alfred gives me the phone.

“Checking in!” Mom says. “What’s going on?”

“June wants to retire.”

June chuckles as she sorts straight pins and shakes her head.

“Don’t let her,” Mom says.

“Too late.”

“Valentine, listen to me,” Mom says. “June has threatened to quit for years. We give her a good long three-week vacation and she comes back fresh and says, ‘I don’t know how people lead lives of leisure.’ Okay? She’s not going anywhere.”

“Tell your mother I mean it this time,” June says.

“Ma, she means it this time.”

“Put her on the phone,” Mom says.

I bring the phone to June’s ear. I can hear my mother through the receiver. June says, “Uh-huh…” And listens. Then June says, “Okay, all right, Mike…Uh-huh…Okay, then. Good-bye.”

I take the phone back from June.

“It’s all settled,” Mom says to me. “June wants a nice break this summer. So you need to get ahead of the game in the shop. I’m coming in to help out.”

“When?”

“As soon as I take care of some things around the house,” she says.

Mom is fibbing. She doesn’t have any chores in Queens. Her house is in tip-top shape down to the hand-polished brass doorknobs she made my father install when she saw them in a layout of an English manor house in British House & Garden. Mom is simply buying time to plan her glamorous working-girl wardrobe. Mike Roncalli does not set foot on the island of Manhattan without pla