“Right, Ma,” I challenge her. “And the road is icy, your tires are bald, and you’re skidding. Anything to support your precious and brilliant son, Alfred. What he wants, he gets. If he was truly concerned about Gram and her well-being, I wouldn’t open my mouth. But my brother is all about the money. He’s only ever been about the money.”
“How dare you! I’m worried about Gram!” Alfred shouts.
“Are you?”
“Your brother loves his grandmother,” Dad interjects.
“Don’t speak for him,” I tell my father.
“Don’t speak for me,” Alfred tells Dad.
Dad puts his hands in the air in surrender.
“And don’t speak for me,” Gram says, standing. “I will make all the decisions about the Angelini Shoe Company and my building. Alfred, as smart as you are, you have a big mouth. You should never talk numbers. You’ve thrown everyone into a tizzy.”
“I thought since it was just family-”
Roman looks off, like a guest hoping to disappear from the fray. But he can’t move. I catch a flicker of impatience in his eyes.
“Even worse!” Gram says. “Those kinds of numbers only make people nervous. For God’s sake, they make me nervous. I’m a private person and I don’t want my business ripped into like a Christmas package for public consumption. And, Valentine, I appreciate everything you do for me, but I don’t want you to stay here because you think you have to-”
“I want to be here.”
“-and Alfred has a point. I’m not what I was.”
“I didn’t mean it to sound like that, Gram,” he says. “I do believe it’s your choice. But I’d like to see you relax for the first time in your life. There’s a reason people don’t work at a job when they’re eighty.”
“Because most of them are dead?” Gram says, giving up and sitting down.
“No, because they’ve earned a break. And, Valentine, nobody said you couldn’t pursue shoemaking as a hobby. It’s time for you to have a real career. You’re in your midthirties and you’re living like a Boho bum. Who’s going to take care of you when you’re old? I suppose I’ll get stuck with that tab, too.”
“You’re the last person I’d ask for help.” And I mean it. Clickety Click exhales, one less thing for her to worry about.
“We’ll see. So far, I’m the only Roncalli kid who picks up a check.”
“What are you talking about?” Tess wants to know.
“Gram’s party.”
“We offered,” Jaclyn and Tess say in unison.
“So did I!” I tell him.
“But I paid! And I’ve got news for you, I always pay.”
“That’s not fair, Alfred, you can’t pick up a check and then complain about it. That is terrible form!” Tess makes a motion that Gram, the honoree, is listening.
Alfred doesn’t care. He goes on. “Who do you think pays for Dad’s doctors? He has insurance, but there’s a deductible and there are out-of-pocket expenses. He has to go out of network for some of the procedures. But you girls don’t know that! Why? Because you never ask!”
“We will repay you, Alfred,” Mom says quietly.
“If you didn’t swoop in and pay for everything, like Lord Bountiful, we would be happy to pay our share,” I tell him. “You only pay so you can hold it over our heads.”
Alfred turns to me. “I’m not going to apologize to you for being successful. There’s a success tax I pay every day in this family. I’m the one who makes money, so I’m the one who pays. And you resent me for it!”
“Because you complain about it! I’d rather be broke and living in a box on the Bowery than in that castle of fear you live in. Just look at Clickety Click…” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Tess and Jaclyn inhale quickly, while Mom mutters, “Oh no.” In the silence that follows, I swear I can hear the clouds drift past in the sky overhead.
“Who is Clickety Click?” Pamela asks. She looks at me and then up at her husband.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” he says.
“Valentine?” Pamela looks at me.
“It’s a-”
“It’s a term of endearment really,” Tess says, jumping in. “A nickname.”
“It’s not a nickname if I’ve never heard it.” For the first time in seventeen years, Pamela’s voice hits its upper register. “Wouldn’t I know my own nickname?”
“I’m begging you, girls, get off this subject. It’s getting us all nowhere.” Mom pulls the collar on her faux mink up around her ears. “Come on. It’s getting too cold up here. Let’s go in and make some Irish coffee. Anyone for Irish coffee?”
“Nobody is going anywhere.” Pamela sets her steely gaze on Mom. “What the hell does Clickety Click mean?”
“Valentine?” Mom looks at me.
“It’s a nickname that-” I begin.
“It’s the sound you make when you walk in your high heels,” Jaclyn blurts out. “You’re small and you take short steps and when the heels hit the ground, they go…clickety click, clickety click.”
Pamela’s eyes fill with tears. “You’ve been making fun of me all this time?”
“We didn’t mean it.” Tess looks desperately at Jaclyn and me.
“I can’t help my…my…size. I never make fun of you, and there’s plenty to laugh at in this crazy family!” Pamela turns on her heel and stomps off. Clickety click. Clickety click. Clickety click. When she realizes the sound she’s making, she rises up onto her toes and moves silently en pointe until she reaches the door. She grabs the door frame for balance. “Alfred!” she barks at him. Then Pamela goes clickety click down the stairs. We hear her calling for the boys.
“You know, I don’t care if you’re mean to me. But she never did anything to you. She’s been a good sister-in-law.” Alfred follows her down the stairs.
“I’m going to wrap up some leftovers for them,” Mom says, following Alfred out.
“You had to blurt it out,” Tess says, throwing up her hands.
I point to Jaclyn. “You had to tell her?”
“I felt trapped.”
My face is hot from the wine and the fight. “Couldn’t you have made something up? Something glamorous, like the clickety click of an expensive watch or something?”
“That would be Tickety Tock,” Charlie says from his guard position in the outpost by the fountain.
“You’ll have to apologize to her,” Gram says quietly.
“You know I’m not supposed to get upset in my condition,” Dad says, adjusting the collar on his car coat. “These implanted seeds are radioactive. If my blood pressure goes berserk, they’re likely to blow like Mount Tripoli.”
“Sorry, Dad,” I whisper.
Dad looks at his three contrite daughters. “You know, we got one family here. One small island of people. We’re not Iran and Iraq and Tibet, for crying out loud, we’re one country. And all of youse, except you, Tom, with the Irish blood, all of youse have some Italian, or in the case of Charlie’s people, the Fazzanis, a hundred percent Italian including that quarter Sicilian, so we got no excuses.” Dad remembers his manners and looks at Roman. “Roman, I’m assuming you’re a hundred percent.”
Roman, caught off guard, nods quickly in agreement.
Dad continues, “We should be united, for one another, and we should be unbeatable. But instead what do we got? We got rancor. We got rancor coming out our ears and out our asses. And for what? Let it go. Let it all go. None of this matters. Take it from your father. I’ve seen the Grim Reaper eyeball to eyeball and he is one tough bastard. You got one life, kids. One.” Dad holds up his pointer finger and presses it skyward for emphasis. “And trust your old man, you gotta enjoy. That’s all I know. Now if Pamela has short legs and has to wear high heels to read her watch, well, we need to accept that as normal. And if Alfred loves her, then we love her. Do I make myself clear?”