Brava, Valentine

Alfred turns around and stands. He puts his arms around my father and buries his face in his shoulder. He is now heaving with tears. My dad looks at me as he pulls Alfred close to him.

“I’ve ruined everything, Dad. Everything.”

“It’s a dumb mistake, but you didn’t ruin anything.”

“She’s leaving me.”

“She’ll forgive you, son.”

“Why would she?” Alfred asks.

“Come here.” Dad helps Alfred sit down. Then he pulls up a work stool next to him. He takes my brother’s hands in his own. “You’re a good son. A fine man. I’ve been proud of you every day of your life. Even when you weren’t proud of me. I’ve done things that weren’t right in my life, and the goddamn thing still haunts me. And now I’ve visited it on you.”

“And I judged you, Dad. I judged you, and then I did the same thing.”

“That’s okay that you judged me. It meant that you knew I did wrong.”

“I’m a hypocrite.” Alfred hangs his head.

“Hey. Listen to me. I left my marriage for a while, and I’m not proud of it. I was in a dark place when I had that affair. I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, I wasn’t thinking straight. I felt like my life was over-I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. And I blamed your mother that I wasn’t a big cheese. I don’t know, I grew up in a household where my mother pushed my father. I guess I thought that’s what a wife should do. I’d missed out on a promotion in the Parks Department, and I went home to your mother and she said, ‘Dutch, don’t worry. It’ll come around. Try harder.’ I should have appreciated her even more, but it just made me feel bad about myself, and I couldn’t shake it. I needed to feel good about myself again. So, I went looking for trouble because that made me feel alive, back on my game. But it was a temporary fix. And when I went with the other woman…my heart…”

My father wipes away a tear, but he recovers, and focuses on my brother.

“My heart was breaking because I turned away from the people who loved me, for someone who was looking for the love I already had. Now, this seems like a…like a…contradiction…”

I exhale softly as my father at long last finds the exact right word.

“…but it wasn’t. The best thing about me was that I had a good wife and four children. That was my calling card in the world. That’s what made me a cut above. But I had to throw it all away to find that out. I had built, with your mother, a bee-you-tee-full family. But at that time, I thought I needed more, attention, appreciation. Whatever the hell you want to call it.”

“I don’t want to lose her,” Alfred says.

“You won’t, Alfred. You won’t. But you gotta persist. And when she’s ready to forgive you, you’ll get a chance to start over. You’ll have to build your life with her again.”

“I don’t know if I can do that. If she’ll let me.”

“It’s not easy. The hardest thing I ever had to do was win your mother over a second time. And every man is different. But you’re made of far better stuff than me. You’re smarter, you’re more loyal, and you’re stubborn. You can turn it around. And I’m here to help you however I can. If you’ll let me.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“You owe me nothing, son. Not an apology. Nothing.”

“I hurt you, too.”

“Because I hurt you. That only makes us even.”

Dad holds Alfred close.

I watch them for a long time. I never thought this day would come.

“I suffer, too,” I say aloud. I didn’t intend to speak, but the words just come out of me. I place my hand over my mouth.

My father looks up at me.

“Dad, I know you love us, but there’s a reason I’m not married. There’s a reason I can’t…” I feel tears coming, but I stop them. “I can’t trust any man. It’s really hard for me. I forgave you, but I never beat my own fear. I’m still afraid of loving someone and being disappointed.”

“I’m sorry, Valentina,” my father says.

Only two men in my life ever call me Valentina, my father and Gianluca. Instead of making me sad, it makes me smile for a moment.

Gianluca did everything he could to help get through my fear, and I turned him away because I couldn’t face myself. I wouldn’t show him who I really was, so at the end, he had to go because he didn’t recognize me anymore. I didn’t even fight for him. I didn’t chase him when he left our room at the Four Seasons, I just stood there, frozen, inside and out, unable to move. I guess I thought if I went after him, I wouldn’t know what to say when he stopped, I wouldn’t have known what to do. So instead, I let him go. I let a good man, rare as an emerald, go because I couldn’t think of one reason to make him stay.

“Alfred?”

My brother and father look at me.

“At least you know what happens when you break a promise. I can’t even make one.”

I leave Alfred and Dad in the shop. I pick up my shoes and climb the stairs. I think about the pithy letter I wrote to Gianluca to woo him back. I was being fu

“Feen is on her way out of Manhattan,” I a

“Where’s your father?”

“He and Alfred are talking in the shop.”

“Oh, good,” my mother says, ever the optimist.

I pull up a seat at the table. I place the wooden nut bowl in front of me, and commence cracking walnuts. My sisters and mother have small piles of shells where their plates once rested.

“June and Gabe are on the roof. They said they were roasting chestnuts, but I think they’re smoking pot,” Tess says. “That, or they’ve charred the chestnuts.”

“Good for them,” I say. “Either way.”

“I agree,” Tess says. Then she looks around the table. “What are we going to do?”

“Well, clearly, I’m going to go on a serious diet after the holidays,” Mom says.

“Oh, God, Ma, Pam was just taking potshots,” Jaclyn says.

“I only did Je

“No, Ma,” we say in unison.

“You know what? I like her,” Jaclyn says.

“Who? Pam?”

“Yeah. She’s got moxie. I had no idea she was that tough. I thought she was weak, and look at her, she stood up for herself.”

“If you look hard enough, you can find something to like about anybody,” Mom says diplomatically.

“She’s got good taste,” I add. “She has very dramatic sense of color when it comes to her clothing.”

“Always well dressed,” Tess says, cracking a pecan in half. “You can’t say she let herself go. She was right about that.”

“She was,” I agree. “So why didn’t we like her?”

“I don’t think we ever liked her because we’re all scared of Alfred.” Tess smooths her nutshells into a pile like she’s racking the balls for a game of pool.

“You’re right. We’ve danced around him all our lives. Trying to please him, or stay out of his way-it’s him. It’s not her,” I realize. “It was never her.”

“I disagree. I’m not afraid of my own son.”

“Mom, when we were kids, you’d have a pot of sauce on the stove for rigatoni for di

My mother picks up a nutcracker and decimates a pecan with one squeeze. “Do you kids analyze everything your father and I ever did or didn’t do?”