Very Valentine

“Where’s Teodora?” June asks.

“She’s not up yet,” I tell her.

“Hmm.” June opens a cabinet, pulls out a red corduroy work smock and puts it on. “You think she’s okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” I look at June. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. She seems tired lately.”

“We’ve been staying up late watching the Clark Gable DVD boxed set.”

“That’d do it.”

“Last night it was The Call of the Wild.”

June whistles low. “Gable was sex on a stick in that one.”

“Loretta Young was pretty great, too.”

“Oh, she was a true beauty. And it was all real. Those were her lips and her bones. She fell in love with Gable when they were making that picture, you know. She got pregnant, kept it a secret, had the baby, and gave her up for adoption. Then guess what she did? She adopted her own baby back, named her Judy, and pretended for years that the girl wasn’t biologically hers.”

“Seriously?”

“Back then you couldn’t have a child out of wedlock. It would have ruined her. These stars today? Even bad acting can’t ruin them.” June pours herself a cup of coffee. “This is when I miss smoking. When I get myself worked up.” June drops a teaspoon of sugar into her cup. “How are you?”

“I need six million dollars.”

“I think I can float you.”

We laugh, then June’s expression turns serious. “What do you want with that kind of money?”

I haven’t told a soul that I’ve been going online to research real estate comparables in the neighborhood. Since Gram gave permission to Alfred to call brokers, I decided I needed my own set of numbers so I could figure out some strategy outside my brother’s. The results of my search are staggering. I can trust June, so I confide, “I’d like to buy the shop. The building with the business.”

June sits down on one of the stools with roller feet. “How are you going to do that?”

“I have no idea.”

June smiles. “Oh, what fun.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Valentine, that’s what’s delicious about being young. Try everything. Reach. Really reach. Six mil, or six bucks, what’s the difference when you’re young and you just might get it? I love the salad days, hell, the salad years! You can’t know this now, but the struggle is thrilling.”

“I can’t sleep at night.”

“Good. That’s the best time to figure out a strategy.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not finding any answers.”

“You will.” June puts down her coffee and stands. She pulls pattern paper off the reel and places it over the duchess satin on her table. She pins the paper to the fabric. “What does your grandmother think?”

“She doesn’t say.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“June, this is all so touchy. You’ve known her a long time. What do you think she’s thinking?”

“Your grandmother is my best friend, but she is an enigma to me in many ways. I’m very open about what I want, but she never has been. She’s a brilliant woman, you know. But she holds a lot in.”

“She’s the only person in our family who does.”

June smooths the pattern paper with one hand. “I think she’s been better since you’ve worked here.”

“You do?”

“You’re a good team. She gets a kick out of you, too. That helps.”

“Has she ever said anything about retirement?”

“Never,” June replies, which I take as a very good sign.

Gram pushes the door of the shop open. “Morning, ladies.”

“Coffee is fresh,” I tell her.

“You should have woken me up, Valentine.” Gram goes to the desk, picks up her notes, reads them, and sighs. Lately, Gram is like the shoemaker in the fairy tale. I think she half-expects that some morning, she’ll wake up, come down the stairs, and magically, elves will have done our work for us while we dreamed; splendid new handmade shoes will be assembled and ready to wear. “I could have used the early start.”

“We’ve got everything under control,” I tell her.

“Besides that, you were hardly wasting time up there. Weren’t you dreaming of Gable?” June says, smiling.

“How do you know?” Gram asks her.

“Who doesn’t dream of Gable?” June shrugs.

I pull the finished shoes off the shelf. Gram has wrapped them in clean, white cotton. I unwrap the shoes gently, like taking a blanket off a newborn baby.

I place the left shoe on my work pedestal, smoothing the satin carefully. I marvel at Gram’s needlework around the border of the vamp. The stitches are so tiny they are practically invisible.

There is a loud banging at the door. I look up at June, who is at a point in her cutting that can’t be interrupted. Gram is making notes on her list. “I’ll get it,” I tell them.

I open the entrance door. A young woman, around twenty, stands under a flimsy black umbrella. She is soaking wet and carries a clipboard. She wears a backpack and a headset around her neck, which leads to a walkie-talkie hooked to her belt.

“Do you guys fix shoes?” She pushes the wet hood of her zippered sweatshirt off her head. Her long red hair is secured with a navy-and-white banda

“Sorry. We don’t do repairs.”

“It’s an emergency.” The girl looks as though she might cry.

The girl props her umbrella in the corner of the vestibule and follows me into the shop.

“Who are you?” Gram asks politely.

“My name is Megan Donovan.”

“You’re Irish,” June says without even looking up. “I’m a lass myself. We’re outnumbered here. You can stay.”

“What do you need?” Gram asks her.

“I’m a PA on the movie shooting over at Our Lady of Pompeii Church…” Her voice goes up at the end of the sentence, like a question, but she’s not asking one.

“That’s my parish.” Gram sounds surprised that they’d be making a movie where she attends mass, got married, and baptized my mother.

“They didn’t check with you first?” June continues to pin fabric, but this time she looks up. “Call the Vatican,” June says with a grin.

“What’s the movie about?” I ask Megan.

“Well, it’s called Lucia, Lucia. And it’s about a woman in 1950 in Greenwich Village. Anyhow, we’re filming the scene of her wedding and her heel broke. And I Googled wedding shoes in Greenwich Village and found you guys. I thought maybe you could fix it.”

“Where’s the shoe?”

Megan drops the wet backpack off her shoulders, unzips it, and lifts out a shoe, which she hands to Gram.

I join Gram behind the table to assess the damage. The heel has completely ripped away from the shaft.

“It can’t be fixed,” I tell her. “But this is a size seven. Our samples are sevens.”

“Okay, let me tell them.” Megan whips out a BlackBerry and types rapidly with both thumbs across the keypad. She waits for a response. She reads. “They’re on their way.”

“Who?” Gram asks.

“My bosses. The costume designer and the producer.”

“We can’t fix this shoe,” Gram says firmly.

Megan looks flustered. “This is my first movie and these people are real perfectionists. When the heel broke, they all started screaming. They gave it to me and said, ‘Get it fixed,’ like they’d kill me if I didn’t. They’re serious about every freakin’ thing. I mean, totally picky. The bride couldn’t just carry white roses; it had to be a certain kind of white roses. I was at the flower market this morning at three AM to get some Ecuadorian rose that blooms, like, once a year.” Megan wipes her eyes with her sleeve; I don’t know if she’s wiping away tears of frustration or rain.

Gram pours Megan a cup of coffee. Megan dumps cream and sugar into the mug until the coffee is the color of sand. She grips the mug with both hands and sips.

“Well, now we know where the craftsmanship in America has gone. It’s in the movies.” Gram smiles.

“Here, give me your sweatshirt. I’ll throw it in the dryer,” I tell Megan. She peels it off and hands it to me. Her black T-shirt with bold white letters that say ADDICTED is, amazingly, dry.