Very Valentine

“I know! But I do, too. If I had an alternative plan, I think she’d consider it.”

“So you’re looking for investors who would keep you in business while you figure out a way to buy the business outright?”

“That sounds good. I mean, I don’t know anything about finance.”

“I know,” he says, smiling.

“But you do.”

“You know I’m here for you. Let me figure this out.” He takes my arm as he walks me back to Perry Street.

“Are you behaving yourself?” I ask.

“Like a conscientious altar boy. I know what I have at home, but thanks for reminding me.”

“Hey, that’s why I’m here. I’m a foghorn for fidelity.”

Tess twirls in the stylist’s chair to check the back of her brand-new haircut in the mirror. I lured my sister to Eva Scrivo’s, the chicest hair salon in the Meatpacking District, with the promise of hip, modern hair.

Black leather chairs are lined up in front of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, filled with customers in the various stages of cut and color. One woman wears a headdress of massive fronds of tinfoil painted with bleach; another woman, with short, swingy champagne-streaked strands is getting a blow out, her hair pulled tight on the end of a round brush; another customer has her roots saturated with a purplish brown mixture while the ends of her hair stand away from her scalp like bike spokes.

“You were right, Val. I needed this. I was a boring soccer mom with that blunt cut.” Tess smiles. “Not that there’s anything wrong with soccer moms, because I am one.”

Scott Peré, the master of curly hair, fluffs Tess’s chunky layers with one hand while looking at her reflection. “I’m only go

“I can think of a lot of things a woman needs after thirty, and layers aren’t even in my top ten,” I tell him.

“Rule amendment,” he says. “With your gorgeous skin you’ve got until forty.” Scott takes his comb and moves on to his next customer, who sits under a drying contraption that throws heat on her pin curls as it slowly gyrates around her head like a swirling metal halo.

I poach some smoothing cream from Scott’s station and flip my head over and work it through. My cell phone rings in my purse. “Grab that for me, Tess. It’s Gram wondering where we are.”

“Hello.” Tess listens for a few moments. I put my hair in a topknot. “This isn’t Valentine. I’m her sister.” Tess hands me the phone. “It’s a man.”

“Hello?”

“I thought it was you. Sorry,” Roman says.

“Roman?”

“Sexy name!” Tess says approvingly as she takes her purse and goes to the counter to pay.

“I was calling to thank you for the other night,” Roman continues. “I got your note. I carry it in my pocket.”

“I’m dreaming of that risotto.”

“Is that all?” He actually sounds disappointed. “I was wondering when we could see each other again.”

“Do you need a haircut?” I ask him.

“No,” he laughs.

“Too bad. There’s an open chair here and I’m pretty good with scissors.”

“I’m going to pass on the haircut, but not on you. Okay? But here’s the hard part. I’m pretty much chained to this place.”

“It’s the same for me in the shop. How about I call you for coffee? After lunch sometime?”

“That’s good.”

I close the cell phone and slip it into my pocket. I meet Tess outside the salon. She motions to me as she talks to her husband. “No special night. Absolutely not. You tell Charisma to stay away from that ca

“I had a date.”

“And?”

“And he’s very interesting.”

“A Poindexter?”

“Not at all. He’s hip.”

“Complicated?”

“Aren’t they all?”

“Even my Charlie. Complicated even in his simple demands. He likes pasta every Tuesday, a movie on Fridays, and sex on Saturdays.”

Tess has never mentioned sex with her husband. Obviously, the haircut has freed her. I laugh. “That’s a doable schedule.”

“I’m not complaining. But you gotta watch out for the routine. You need to keep a man on his toes. Charlie’s getting close to forty, and you know what happens. New car, new wife, new life.”

“That will never happen to you,” I promise my sister.

“It happened to Mom.”

“Yeah, but that was the eighties. Back then, it happened to everyone’s mother.”

“History has a fu

I stop and face my sister. “What?”

“Yeah, Mom told me that Grandpop had a…friend.”

“Are you serious?”

“I don’t know her name or anything, but Mom told me about it before I got married.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“As if tales of infidelity are some sort of heirloom we need to share like the family silver?”

“Still.” I feel bad that Gram hasn’t confided this to me. “Gram’s never mentioned it.”

“You idolized Grandpop. Why would she?”

I unlock the front door to our building. Tess and I go into the vestibule. The door to the shop is propped open, the worktables are bare, and the small desk lamp throws off the only light in the room. There’s a note on the desk in Gram’s handwriting. “Meet me on the roof-the chestnuts are in.”

We race up the stairs, out of breath as we reach the top. “In my next life,” I gasp, “I want to live in one of those fabulous lofts, all the space without the stairs.”

“The original assisted living,” Tess pants.

I push open the door to the roof. Gram has the grill going, with two large frying pans covered in tinfoil over the red charcoal flames. The smoke from the charcoal offsets the scent of sweet chestnuts as they roast, a delicious smell of honey and cream.

“They’re good this year. Meaty,” Gram says, shaking the pan, gripping the handle with an oven mitt. She wears a kerchief over her hair, and her winter coat is buttoned to the top. “Oh, Tess, I love your hair.”

“Thanks.” She tosses her head. “Scott is very good. You should go to him, Gram.”

“Maybe I will.” Gram lifts the spatula off the hook on the side of the grill. She lifts the foil off one pan with her oven mitt, then she whacks the chestnuts with the flat side of the spatula, cracking them open. She scoops them onto a stainless-steel cookie sheet. Tess and I sit down on the chaise longue and take the tray. We blow on them, and then take one apiece, pulling the sweet, translucent chestnut out of its burnished shell. We pop them in our mouths. Heavenly.

“My mother hated chestnuts,” says Gram. “When she was growing up in Italy, money was tight and they made everything with chestnuts-pasta, bread, cakes, fillings for ravioli. When her family emigrated, she vowed she’d never eat another chestnut. And she never did.”

“It just goes to show you, sometimes you can’t shake the things that happened to you in childhood.” Tess looks off toward New Jersey, where her husband is probably locked in a garage while Charisma and Chiara paint the automatic doors with frosting.

“I’d like to shake some of the things that happened to me in adulthood,” I say as I crack open another chestnut.

The door to the roof swings open. “Don’t be alarmed, it’s just me,” Alfred says as he places his briefcase by the door. He goes to Gram and gives her a kiss.

“This is a surprise,” says Tess as our brother kisses her on the cheek and then me.

“Gram called and said the chestnuts were in,” Alfred says stiffly.

“I’m glad you could make it.” Gram beams at her only grandson with enough love to fill the boat basin on Pier 46.

“I’ve been to the bank,” he says, drawing a deep breath. “They want some numbers, a new appraisal on your property.”