“Maybe we should think about expanding, making more shoes, and hiring people to help us grow.”
“With what?” She looks at me.
“I’ve got it!” I clap my hands together. “I’ll make a sex tape! I’ll sell it on the Internet! Works for the starlets. Maybe it will only bring in a couple of bucks and a MetroCard, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Let’s hold off on the desperate measures,” Gram laughs.
I get up and embrace my grandmother. “There’s a solution to every problem.”
“Who told you that?”
“The Norman Vincent Peale of our family, my dear mother.”
“Mike invented upbeat.”
“Yeah, well, this is one time we should follow her lead.”
“Okay, okay,” Gram says and lets go of me.
“Gram?”
“Yes?”
“It’s only money.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I promise her.
Gram’s eyes fill with tears. She lifts her glasses and wipes her eyes. Gram is not a weeper, it’s rare that I see her cry.
“You’re not alone, Gram. I’m here.”
Gram makes her way upstairs while I close down the house, rinse our glasses, pull the drapes closed, and turn out the lights. As I do my chores, I review all the business questions I have for Gram. I climb the stairs to find out more about exactly what is going on around here.
Gram sits up in bed, reading the newspaper in her fashion. The New York Times is folded into a book-size rectangle. She leans on one shoulder into her pillow, holding the paper up, close to the lamplight as she reads.
Gram’s face is oval, with a smooth forehead and an aquiline nose. Her even lips have the faintest touch of coral left from her lipstick. Her deep brown eyes study the paper intently. She adjusts her eyeglasses and then sniffles. She pulls a tissue from the sleeve of her nightgown, wipes her nose, returns the tissue to its spot, and continues reading. These are the things, I imagine, that I will remember about her when she’s gone. I will remember her habits and quirks, the way she reads the paper, the way she stands over the pattern table in the shop, the way she uses her entire body as she places her hand on the lid of a mason jar to seal it shut when we can the tomatoes. Now I have a new picture to add to the pile: the look on her face this evening when she told me the Angelini Shoe Company is in hock up to the rooftop garden. I played it cool and calm, but the truth is, I feel as though I’m on life support, and I haven’t the guts to ask the doctor how long I’ve got.
“You’re staring,” Gram says, looking at me over her glasses. “What?”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the loans?” I ask.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“But I’m your apprentice. Translated from the French it means ‘to help.’”
“It does?”
“Not really. The point is, I’m here to help. From the moment I became your apprentice, your problems became my problems. Our problems.”
Gram begins to disagree. I stop her.
“Now, don’t argue with me. I want to master making shoes because I want to design them someday and I can’t do it without you.”
“You’ve got the talent.” Gram looks at me. “You definitely have the talent.”
I sit down on the edge of the bed and turn to face her. “Then trust me with your legacy.”
“I do. But, Valentine, more than the success of this business, in fact, more than anything in this world, I want peace in my family. I want you to get along with your brother. I want you to try and understand him.”
“Maybe he should try and understand us. This isn’t 1652 on a Tuscan farm where the firstborn son controls everything and the girls do the dishes. He’s not our padrone, even though he acts like it.”
“He’s smart. Maybe he can help us.”
“Fine, first thing tomorrow I smoke the peace pipe with Alfred,” I lie. I’m not going to do one more thing to put me into deeper indentured servitude, emotional or financial, to my brother. “You need anything before I go to bed?”
“Nope.”
The phone rings on Gram’s nightstand. She reaches for it. “Hello,” she says. “Ciao, ciao!” She sits up in the bed, waves good night to me. “Il matrimonio è stato bellissimo. Jaclyn era una sposa straordinaria. Troppa gente, troppo cibo, la musica era troppo forte, ed erano tutti anziani.” She laughs.
I stand and walk toward the door. I can make out phrases here and there. Nice wedding. Pretty bride. Loud music. Gram’s vocal tone has changed, her crack Italian words tumble over one another and she hardly takes a breath, like a gossipy seventh-grader after her first dance. When she speaks Italian, she’s lighter, downright girly. Who is she talking to? I glance back in her direction, but Gram covers the mouthpiece.
She waves me off. “It’s long distance. My tanner from Italy.” Then she smiles and goes back to her call.
On the way to my bedroom, I turn the hallway lights off. Lately, these calls from Italy have become more frequent. Leather must be a hilarious subject between shoemakers and tanners, judging by the way Gram jokes on the phone. Whoever she’s talking to has a lot of pep for 5 A.M. Italian time. But how can she laugh when the wolf is at the door with a lien and a buyout? I go into my room, which is about seventy degrees cooler than the hallway. I close the door behind me so the cold air doesn’t waft down the hallway and give Gram a chill.
I am so upset, I cannot get in bed, so I pace. What a day. A wedding day so hot that when I danced with Jaclyn’s father-in-law he left a wet handprint on my dress. The humiliation of the Friends’ table, explaining myself, my life to a bunch of people I see only at weddings and funerals, which should tell me something about their place in my universe. Then I return home to bad news which, deep down, doesn’t surprise me as much as it should, if I’m completely honest with myself. I have noticed a shift in Gram’s mood in the shop. I preferred to ignore it, which is a mistake I won’t make again. From now on, I’m not going to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. I’m angry at Gram for mishandling the business. I’m angry that she assumed Grandpop’s debts without restructuring, or bringing in professionals to advise her. She has set the wheels in motion to close the shop, or maybe this is her way of letting the decision to retire be made for her. I can see it all now: Alfred will close the shop, sell the building, I will be on the street, while Gram goes off to live in one of those cold, impersonal condos, and someday her great-grandchildren will look at photographs of the shoes she made, like relics under glass in a museum.
I should have sat down with her when I came to work here and had her explain everything, not just the history of our family business, or the mechanics of the craft, but the hard facts, the numbers, the truth about what it takes to keep a small, independent company thriving in this era of mass merchandising and cheap foreign labor. I skirted all that because I was beholden to her for making me her apprentice and allowing me to learn how to make shoes. I was indebted to her, and now I will pay the price.
I would have handled things differently if my mentor wasn’t my grandmother. I never felt I could ask questions because who was I to ask them? But now, I know. I should have asked. I should have asserted myself! I wasted so much time. And there it is, the root of my anger and frustration, so obvious I should have thought of it sooner. I took my time until my thirties to find my calling, and then I waltzed in assuming that the details would take care of themselves. I should have come to work here full-time when I was young and my grandfather was alive. I should have become their apprentice right out of college instead of being sidetracked by Bret and by a career as a teacher, which I was never completely committed to. Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this fix.