When we were a strictly couture shop, we would sit with the customer, look at her gown, and match the shoe to the bride. Now that we’ve branched out into the retail market, we’re serving a wider audience, so we consider trends. We study women in their ordinary day-to-day activities, and think about what they watch in the theater, at the movies, and on television. What does she like? What does she think? What does she need? We play a kind of guessing game. We analyze the times, what women are buying, and their moods. Sometimes the color of a popular cocktail inspires the suede of the moment. What becomes courant often begins with something ordinary like the color of candy or textural, like like pattern of a cobblestone street. What a woman is feeling translates into what she chooses to buy.
There is also a synergy among the creative impulses of all the other shoe designers in the world and the elements I choose. Somehow, themes emerge even though we don’t officially consult the competition. It is as if we hear the same music in the air, walk the same streets, eat the same food, and interpret the same moment en masse. Our observations as we live in our times shapes the landscape of what we design.
I wrote words around the swirls of blue on the butcher paper. Over the course of the next several weeks, the paper would be filled with my scribbles, stream-of-consciousness thoughts and ideas, varied, unedited, and without censure. This crazy collage of layers of ideas would become the template for the next collection. I would spend weeks winnowing down the broad ideas into the specificity of the message.
A rapping on the window on the Hudson River side interrupted my thoughts. Bret waved to me from the sidewalk. As I motioned for him to come around, I wondered how long he had been standing there. I was happy to see him, despite what happened on Christmas Eve. He moved quickly to the entrance. His strong Irish profile, upright posture, and carriage showed total self-confidence, a far cry from the vulnerable person he was a few nights ago.
I wasn’t surprised. Resilience was Bret’s way; he invented the bounce-back. He didn’t hold on to sadness or its sister, failure, for very long. Stability was one of his best traits, and the one that worried me the most. If there is ever a time to dig deep and find answers, it’s when someone you love leaves you.
By the time Bret made it inside the store, I’d poured him a cup of coffee with a dash of milk in it, just as he likes.
“There’s going to be more snow,” he said, removing his coat as I handed him the mug of coffee. He wore a beautifully cut navy pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit with a white shirt and green silk tie that brought out his eyes. The stripes made him appear leaner and taller, if that was even possible. “How was the rest of your Christmas?”
“The kids had fun. Went out to Mom and Dad’s Christmas Day. Gram and Dominic stayed with them so they could be with the grandkids.”
“Seven Fishes at Tess’s house on Christmas Eve? I remember the hoopla.”
“Oh yeah. It was even bigger this year, a very special night.” I held up my hand and showed Bret my engagement ring. “This is why I wanted to see you.”
He grinned and took my hand. “You’re getting married.”
“I am.”
“Well, it’s about time.”
“Only you could say that to me and it doesn’t hurt my feelings. For the record, there have been, in the history of mankind, older brides than me.”
“Who?” Bret teased.
“For starters, my grandmother. And, according to Gabriel, Ethel Merman was older than me when she married Ernest Borgnine.”
“I have no idea who they are but I wish you every happiness.” Bret embraced me, and as quickly as he had his arms around me, he removed them and stepped back.
“I don’t want it to be weird between us,” I told him. “You can still hug me.” I gave Bret a quick hug again to prove it.
“I’m sorry. The other night was the worst of my life, and you’re my best friend. You always have been. And in that state, I really needed to see you, so I barged over here, not thinking about your plans, or your out-of-town guests, or anything but my own misery.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’m not worried about you. I’m worried about Gianluca. You know how they are about their women. He’s Italian.”
“So am I.”
“You’re Italian American—he’s Italian Italian. I think we know the difference.”
“We use a little sugar in our gravy, and they don’t.”
“For starters.” Bret sat down on the work stool. “How could we possibly expect him to understand our history?”
“He has some wisdom. That helps.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“I am. And that’s exactly what I want for you. Did you and Mackenzie work it out?”
“No. She wants a divorce.”
“Wait a second. A divorce? How did you get there so fast?”
“We had a dramatic Christmas Eve, and by the afternoon of Christmas Day, I calmed down, and she got her bearings, and her folks took the kids to Central Park and we had a chance to talk. We were okay together with the kids, but as the day went on, it was apparent that we needed to clear the air.”
“What did she say? About the future, I mean.”
“She’s fallen in love with someone else, and doesn’t want to hurt me. She didn’t mean for it to happen, but it did.”
“If she didn’t mean for it to happen, then how did it happen?”
“I wasn’t around, and he was.”
Bret had gotten a studio apartment in the city where he would crash after late nights at work. I thought it was a bad idea at the time, but he insisted he only had so many years to become a mogul, and every second counted. “Who is this guy?” I asked.
“She met him at church.”
“Dear God. Do you know him?”
“No. You know I go to Saint Michael’s and she goes to the Episcopal church. I didn’t want to convert, and neither did she. I should have gone to church with her. That might have helped.”
“Or maybe it wouldn’t have.”
“She told me it started as a friendship, and then they realized that they were meant to be together.”
”How? When? She’s married to you.”
“I know. She said she made her decision after she talked to her parents. They want her to be happy and they’ll stand by her no matter what she chooses to do. Funny, they didn’t put up a fight to keep us together.”
“Why would they? They never approved of you. They didn’t like that you were from Queens.”
“As if that’s a negative.” Bret smiled.
“I put Astoria up there with Athens, Sunnyside with Old Havana, and Forest Hills with Rome. We have an international flair in Queens that is not appreciated by those Upper East Siders. They still check the Social Register blue book for their Mayflower connections. We have our own blue book, but we use it to sell our used cars when we’re ready to trade them in.”
“I know that blue book well.” Bret nodded.
“The only one that counts. What about the girls?”
“We’re going to share custody. There are a lot of practical things we need to work out. She wants to move out of Chatham, and I don’t want to stay in the house, so we’ll have to sell it. We said we’d live close to one another and whatever school the girls attend, so that’s what we’re going to do. She wants to move back into the city.” He exhaled.
“Just like that?”
“I can’t believe it either. I asked for time. I begged her to reconsider. But there’s no fighting it. Her mind is made up, and you know how she is.”
“Well, you have your studio apartment.”
“I’ll need a bigger place with a bedroom for the girls.”
“This is crazy.”
“Tell me about it. I can’t figure out how she fell in love with someone else while she was married to me. She
was as busy as I was. But I have to figure out a way to make peace with this guy, because she intends to marry him once we’re divorced.”
Bret looked momentarily lost. I had never seen him this way. He was his practical old self when he was telling the story, but after sharing it, the weight of the situation hit him hard again. He’d always been cool in a crisis, including his own. But this state of calm was not going to last. When he realized the extent of what had happened to him, he would break and there wouldn’t be anyone there for him. This made me sad, but it also frustrated me. What are the chances that I would become engaged just as his wife left him? Through the years, I had thought about what would have happened to me had I married Bret in the first place. Would he have moved to Perry Street and supported me in my creative life? Could he have walked to work every morning on the Hudson River and returned home at night the same way? I was surprised when he chose the traditional Wall Street life, with a big house in Chatham, two beautiful daughters, and a wife who gave up everything for him. It seemed a different Bret chose a life I did not recognize.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“The nights are awful. I can’t sleep. I just think about my kids and how they’re going to grow up without their mother and me together. You remember how it was at your house and mine when we were kids. Our parents were solid. All the parents on our block looked after the neighbors’ kids like their own. I want that life, that feeling of security, for my girls. And now they’ll never have it.”
“They still have you.”
“I should’ve seen the signs before I married her. I was so madly in love with her that I didn’t see that she hadn’t figured out what she wanted to do with her life. When you’re planning a wedding, you have a job, and once you’re married, you need a new one. She decorated the house and threw herself into motherhood, but I guess all that and me wasn’t enough.”
“She probably thought she’d get back into the workforce eventually. You never know what someone else is thinking.” I twisted the engagement ring on my hand.
Bret smiled. “This is all your fault. If you had married me, I wouldn’t have gotten myself in a jam.”
“Oh, please. I would have driven you crazy. I wasn’t ready for anything when I was twenty-five. I needed a good nine years to grow up. And one more to let the fear of being alone for the rest of my life force me to make hard decisions.”
“You’re going to do just fine.”
“We’ll see. Isn’t every bride full of hope?”
“I wish I could go back and catch those small things that became big things. Address every problem head-on. Don’t be afraid to admit when things aren’t working. I saw the problems and tried to ignore them. You know they say that a relationship is work—well, I just assigned the problems to a to-do file. I figured we’d deal with things when we had time to deal with them and eventually come to some sort of agreement. But she basically accused me of living my life and leaving her out of it. She said a maid could do what I needed, that I didn’t need a wife.”
“You needed a wife.”
“I needed her. I just didn’t show it. And now I find out she wasn’t getting what she needed the whole time we were married. Whatever you do, don’t give up working when you marry Gianluca.”
“No chance of that happening. This shop is my life,” I assured him.
“If you’re happy, your marriage will be happy.”
“Did you suggest therapy?”
“She said it was too late. God, I hate that phrase, ‘too late.’ I believed that it’s never too late if two people love each other.”
“You still love her?”
“I do. Isn’t that sad? Even when I know she doesn’t love me. I’m either loyal or a fool. I can’t help it. There’s so much of her in our girls.”
“Your daughters will be all right. She’s a good mom. It’s not like there isn’t a fifty percent divorce rate, so they won’t be oddballs. You have a big, extended family, and everyone will pitch in to make the kids feel connected. You can also bring them over here more often. I’d love it. And I’ll get my sisters to bring the kids so they can all play together.”
“You always find the positive in everything.”
“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But you can do it. You learn from your mistakes. That’s not true of everyone. That’s really what it comes down to. And if you didn’t put her first and you regret it, well, next time you’ll do better. That’s all you can do, Bret.”
“You know what my wife said to me as I was leaving on Christmas Eve? Go see Valentine. That’s who you really want.”
“Oh, please. That’s just a dramatic good-bye at the end of a sad scene. She never got our friendship. She didn’t like me, but I thought it was because I didn’t wear Tory Burch. I guess it was something more.”
He smiled. “You were my first fiancée. Mackenzie did not like that she was second, friend or not.”
“I know. So more than a childhood friendship, but so what? I thought she was perfect for you—and, except for the leaving part, she was.”
Bret sipped his coffee. I lifted a can of biscotti off the shelf, opened it, and handed him one. He dipped it in the coffee. I smiled because I’d taught Bret how to dip his biscotti in coffee when we were teenagers. In fact, I served him his first biscotti and taught him how to say the word in Italian. We had the perfect Irish-Italian relationship. I baked, and he poured me my first beer.
“Do you remember that sign in Sister Theresa’s office at Holy Agony?” I asked him.
“Pay your library fines or you won’t get your diploma?”
“No, the other one. It was a white card with light blue letters. It had been there for a hundred years. It said, ‘Everything is a grace.’ ”
“You think so? Even breaking up a home, breaking my children’s hearts, and getting a divorce?”
“Everything.”
“Well, I don’t believe it.”
“You will. That will be your mission. Someday, you’ll see it all as a grace.”
The doorbells jingled.
“We’re home!” Gram shouted. Gram and Dominic came in, laughing, carrying Tupperware containers from my mother’s Christmas spread. “Hon, you have to spread the salt around out there. I almost ruined my shoes.”
“Sorry. The only salt you and Dominic will have to worry about in Florida will be on the rims of your margarita glasses.”
“Hi, Gram.” Bret kissed her on the cheek. “You’re going to Florida?”
“My cousin invited us down. We’re going to stay until Valentine’s wedding, then come back up for it.”
“You set a date already?” Bret was surprised.
As Gram introduced Dominic to Bret, Gianluca came in, carrying a large dress box tied with a red satin bow. “From your mother,” he said as he placed the box on the table.
“Congratulations, Gianluca,” Bret said and extended his hand.
“Let’s take the food upstairs, Dominic,” Gram said.
“Grazie,” Gianluca said without shaking Bret’s hand.
“I want to show Valentine the leather samples,” Dominic said as he placed a box on the desk.
“Time for that later.” Gram handed Dominic a stack of Tupperware.
Gram and Dom made their way up the stairs, balancing two leaning towers of Tupperware. I would have liked to follow them, but I didn’t dare leave Bret and Gianluca alone. The shop was oddly quiet except for the clang of the radiator.
“I owe you an apology,” Bret said, breaking the tension. “And you too, Valentine. I’m sorry about what happened the other night.”
“I’ve had some difficulties in my life, and I understand why you needed someone to talk to,” Gianluca said. “But if it happens again, I’ll throw you off the building.”
“And I would deserve it,” Bret said as he pulled on his coat.
“I’ll check in with Alfred about the annual report.”
Bret, who usually gave me a quick kiss on the cheek when saying good-bye, didn’t this morning. He simply gathered his briefcase and left.
“I don’t like that you work together,” Gianluca said.
“He mostly works with Alfred.”
“I don’t see Alfred here.”
I wanted to argue the point, but instead I pushed the box of leather samples across the work table.
Gianluca opened the box and began to shuffle through the squares. Soon the large squares filled the table like a mosaic of tiles. There were tone-on-tone striae in the leather, damask-style cutwork on one of the suedes, and soft stripes woven out of calfskin. There was a pearlized pink calfskin that I couldn’t resist.
“I knew you would like that one,” Gianluca said.
“It’s like velvet.”
“You want velvet?” Gianluca flipped through the box until he found a sheet of cream-colored suede. “Look.” He brushed his hand over the surface, turning the grain in a different direction. It gave the suede a different hue entirely, one that appeared more soft blue than white. Gianluca’s hands were magical. I may have fallen in love with him because of them. I watched as he rolled the end of the suede expertly until it was one sleek cylinder. He handed it to me. “Order it.”
Gianluca took me in his arms and kissed me. I knew how rare it was for love and work to dovetail together seamlessly in a woman’s life. I was going to marry a man who understood my work and therefore understood me. I thought of Mackenzie and Pamela, the women I knew who didn’t have the luxury of marrying men who got them.
How many signs did I need from the universe that Gianluca was not only the dream, but the facilitator of all dreams to come? I hadn’t given up anything to be with him, and choosing him felt as if it was shoring up my creative life, not draining it. I wasn’t going to wake up on some random Tuesday morning ten years from now and find myself unrecognizable in the mirror. I wouldn’t wander into church or a bodega and find a new man that understood me because the one at home was unavailable or too busy to notice that I was unhappy. Life would only become more rich, and thicken like a good sauce. I would not be a watered-down version of the person I was today, as long as I remembered that my life had a purpose that was well in place before I ever met Gianluca. I wasn’t giving up anything. I reminded myself I was only adding to a purposeful life.
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