Very Valentine

“No, no, he’s real Italian, Pop, from Chicago.”

“So, what do you think about this paisano?”

“I don’t know, Dad.”

“You know what? You don’t have to know everything. Sometimes, it’s better not to.”

A Forest Hills Sunday-afternoon quiet descends on the garden, like old fog. The arm of the love seat pinches my thigh, but I don’t shift. I want to sit next to my father as long as I can, just the two of us, he with his theories of religion, love, and the eternal nature of trees, and me, hoping that he’ll be around for the turns my story will take.

I reach out for my father’s hand, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old. He grips it tightly, as though he will never let go. Dad looks off into the Buzzacaccos’ yard, with its fire engine red picnic table, shriveled hedges, and crumbling statue of the Venus de Milo (with arms). I look up at the house. My mother stands in the kitchen window watching us with a face so sad, now she’s the Modigliani.

The wheels on the brush machine whirl as I crank the pedal. I put my hand in a cotton mitt and then place a soft pink leather pump over the mitt. I brace the heel with my free hand and place the shoe between the round brushes. I buff the vamp of the shoe until the leather looks like an iridescent pink seashell.

One of the joys of working with leather is finding the patina. Sheets of new leather from the ta

Sometimes it takes days of resaturating the leather with dye, letting it dry, then polishing and buffing for hours to acquire a shade that pleases the eye and is appropriate for the shoe. Then I give the leather a pearlized depth by manual brushing. I can see grades and tones in the surface that change in the light; deep veins in the fiber give a look of age, and the sheen provides a layer of energy for the final product. My grandmother has taught me that the palette for leather and suede is limitless, like musical notes. One persnickety bride wanted her shoes dyed Tiffany blue to match the box her engagement ring came in. It took me a month to get the right saturation of color, but I did it.

I place the second shoe on my left hand, guiding it under the brushes with my right. I hear a tapping on the front window of the shop. Bret waves to me and I motion for him to meet me at the entrance.

“You’re up early,” he says as I hold the door open and usher him in.

“That’s the shoemaker’s life. And evidently the same is true for the barons of Wall Street.” I check the clock. It’s 6:30 A.M. I’ve been working in the shop since 5:00.

“I’ve got some information for you.” Bret sits down on the rolling stool at the cutting table. I sit down next to him. He opens a file. “I’ve done some digging. Let me start out by saying that you’re in the worst possible profession to get investors.”

“Great.”

“Fashion is a wild card. Many more failures than successes. Completely dependent upon the whims of the marketplace and individual spending habits. Designers are artists, and therefore considered unreliable in the business world. In a word, handcrafted anything is on shaky ground for investment purposes.” I find it odd that anything as necessary to human beings as shoes could be viewed as risky, but Bret continues, “Unless you’re Prada, or some other venerable family company that the conglomerates are looking to buy.”

“Does it matter that the business has been here since 1903?” I ask.

“It helps. It shows a level of quality and craftsmanship. That’s good. But it also says rarified to the investor.”

“What do you mean?”

“It means that your name has exposure to a very small audience, and that wedding shoes are luxury items. Given the current economy, investors aren’t looking at luxury goods for a return on their money. Right now, in fashion, it’s all about trends and a low sticker price. That’s why you see so many celebrities with clothing lines. Target, H & M, even Wal-Mart, all have a stake in low-priced high fashion. They’re the guys financing the trend.”

“Well, we don’t do what they do.”

“What you could do, and what all major designers do eventually, is lease your name and your designs. You get them mass-produced and you get a portion of the revenue stream. But even then, somebody has to believe there’s a market for you.”

“All the major wedding designers have used us from time to time. Vera Wang used to send girls down here regularly until she started manufacturing shoes with her own name on them.”

“That proves my point exactly. Traditional designers are getting the portion of the business you should be getting when they start their own affordable secondary lines. Val, if we’re going to get Angelini Shoes back in the black by finding a team of investors to make you more liquid, then you need a product that is stylish but can be mass-produced for maximum sales and profit.”

“I don’t even know if Gram would let me sell our designs. I mean, they’re my great-grandfather’s.”

“Then you’ll have to design something new. Something that reflects the Angelini brand, but is your own creation. Then you wouldn’t even need Gram’s permission. The hard truth is that nobody is interested in a shoe shop that can produce three thousand pairs a year. The profit margin is too small. But your classic wedding shoes can become the flagship items in a broader portfolio. You can continue to make one-of-a-kind shoes. As a matter of fact, you have to-that’s the Angelini hook. But you also need a product that can be mass-merchandised to pay off your existing debt, meet your balloon mortgage payments, and allow you to maintain a living and working space in one of Manhattan’s fastest gentrifying neighborhoods. This is a tall order, Val, but if Angelini Shoes is going to make it in the twenty-first century, there’s no other way.”

Bret leaves a file behind, full of research about luxury goods made by long-standing family businesses and how they work in the new century. There are spreadsheets filled with figures, and columns with comparisons, and graphs showing the growth of certain products in the last twenty years, as well as a chronicle of failed ventures. Family-owned businesses like Hermès, Vuitton, and Prada are cited. There is a section about buyouts of small enterprises by conglomerates (which seems to be the way of the world in fashion). I look around our shop, with its machinery from the turn of the last century, and our hand-drawn patterns on butcher paper, and wonder if it’s even possible to make the Angelini Shoe Company a viable name in the age of mass-produced, machine-made goods. And even if it is, am I the one to do it?

The November sky over the Hudson River is a menacing lilac with a low row of Jasper Johns-style charcoal clouds threatening rain. Occasionally, the pumpkin-colored sun peeks through to throw light on the choppy river, its whitecaps showing teeth like the edge of a serrated knife. I pull the belt on my wool coat tight, yank the brim of my baseball cap down, and tuck my long chenille scarf inside my collar.

“Here.” Roman gives me a cup of hot coffee from the deli as he sits down on the park bench, propping his vintage black leather Doc Martens on the railing in front of us. He wears faded jeans and a chocolate brown leather motorcycle jacket that looks to be at least twenty years old, and on him, it’s twenty years of sexy. Roman leans back on the bench as a ru

“It was nice of you to call,” I tell him.

“Between your shoes and my gnocchi, I only see you about half as often as I would like to.”