I exhale slowly, as if to blow the images off the ceiling and erase them from my mind’s eye. I imagine Rue de Something or Another on a sunny day in Paris as Christian Louboutin pores over his winning sketch for Rhedd Lewis surrounded by a team of French geniuses, in their expansive, modern, state-of-the-art design lab. The workers bring forth sheets of soft calfskin. They fill the table with sumptuous fabrics-silk moiré, taffeta, crepe de chine, and embroidered velvet. Christian points out aspects of his brilliant sketch to the workers. They applaud. Of course they win the windows, why wouldn’t they? The applause becomes deafening. I’m screwed, I think. I’m screwed. And my greatest folly was thinking for one second that I could actually compete with the big guns. The Angelino Shoe Company. Win? The odds of that are about as good as my father learning to pronounce prostate. It will never happen.
I turn over and put my arm around Roman, who has fallen into a deep sleep. I imagined so much more for us with the full run of the house. I dreamed of romantic nights drinking wine on the roof while I point out the hues and shifts of the Hudson River; I imagined Roman making me dinner in the old kitchen downstairs, then making love in this bed in my room. Other nights, where we just relax, he with his feet up on the old ottoman, me next to him while we watch The Call of the Wild so I might teach him everything I know about Clark Gable. Instead, he is gone all day, works through supper and into the night, comes home near dawn, bone tired, and crashes. As soon as the sun is up, after a quick cup of coffee, he is gone again.
We don’t have the long, intense conversations that I crave. In fact, we hardly talk at length because there never seems to be enough time. The texting, the twenty-second phone calls, while plentiful, make me feel needed, but then I feel abandoned when he hangs up in midsentence. In the rush of it all, I assign him feelings and tenderness he may not have, because there isn’t time to find out what he’s feeling. When we do scrape together an hour here or there, his phone doesn’t stop ringing, and there’s always some crisis in the kitchen that only he can negotiate, and usually, it needs his immediate attention. To be fair, I’ve been consumed with my work, too, with the slate of orders in the shop, trying to find financing to move forward, and the competition for the Bergdorf windows. I’m probably not full of fun because I’m busy, with work and life, worried about my father’s health and my future.
Maybe this is what relationships are. Maybe this is the work my mother and Gram refer to when they talk about marriage. Maybe I must accept the disappointments because it’s nearly impossible to make room for someone in a life crowded with ambition, drive, and deadlines. Now is the time to establish our careers, as the opportunity may not come later. Roman had his wake-up call, so he moved to New York and started his own restaurant. I surely had mine when I found out about the debt, and my brother’s determination to sell the building. I’m not just an apprentice anymore. I have to mastermind the future so that I have a place to work in the years to come. Roman and I know where we’re going in our careers, but where are we headed in our private lives? I touch his face with my hand. He opens his eyes.
“What is it?” he says groggily.
I want to tell him everything. But instead, I don’t. I can’t. So I whisper, “Nothing. It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.”
“I don’t care if it’s Lent. A bribe is a bribe and they work,” Tess tells me as she fishes two Hershey kisses out of the bottom of her purse. “Charisma? Chiara?” The girls clomp down the stairs to the workshop, then burst through the door like two pink bottle rockets.
Tess looks down at them. “Enough with the running and the jumping and the noise. Young ladies should have some finesse. You sound like a longhorn cattle drive on those stairs.”
“Well, you called us.” Charisma stands before her mother in a shiny pink T-shirt that says PRINCESS and a full tulle skirt that conjures up the lead swan in the ballet. Her black laceless Converse sneaker slips-ons have two rolls of knee socks clumped around her ankles. Chiara is still dressed by my sister, so she wears a pressed pink-striped corduroy jumper, a blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and Stride Rite lace-up boots.
“Cool down. There’s a chocolate kiss in it for you if you do. Mommy is trying to talk to Auntie Valentine.”
Charisma and Chiara put their hands out. Tess drops a kiss in each.
“I’m saving mine!” Chiara hollers as she follows her sister back up the stairs.
“I’m the worst mother. I use payola.”
“Whatever means necessary,” I tell her.
“How’s it going with Roman?”
“Not so great.”
“You’re kidding. What happened to making 166 Perry Street into a love spa while Gram’s on retreat?”
“It’s so not a love spa. I work all day. I sketch all night. He works all day and all night, gets here at three in the morning, goes to sleep, and wakes up the next morning and goes. I’m getting a little taste of what a permanent relationship would be like with him, and let’s just say that the only permanent thing about Roman is that he’s perpetually in motion.”
“That would change if you married him.”
“Married him? I can’t even get him to commit to go to the movies.”
“You have to make Roman focus on you. When we were dating, Charlie was so invested in his job it scared me. After we got married, his priorities shifted. Our family comes first. Now he goes to work, and when he comes home, life begins.” Tess puts her hand on her heart. “Us. The part of his life that matters.”
We hear a loud crash upstairs. We run to the vestibule. Chiara appears at the top of the stairs with Charisma.
“What was that?” Tess yells. The hand on her loving heart has turned into a fist that she shakes in the air.
“I spun Charisma in a pas de deux. Don’t worry. She landed on the rug.”
“Stop throwing your sister around. Sit and watch your show.”
The girls disappear into the living room.
Tess looks at me. “Don’t look at my children as an example of what yours might be someday. You might have ones who behave.” Tess looks up at the clock. “Mom can’t get here fast enough. She knows how to handle those two.”
June pushes the door open with her hip. She carries two green plastic flowerpots filled with purple hyacinths. “We need some spring around here,” she says, handing the pots off to Tess.
“Val is going to break up with Roman.” Tess takes the flowers to the sink and runs water into the pots.
“I didn’t say that.”
“It sounded like it to me,” Tess says.
“Why on earth would you give him the boot?” June asks.
“We hardly see each other. He’s busy, I’m busy.”
“So?” June buries her hands in her pockets and looks at me.
“So? It’s a pretty big deal that we barely lay eyes on each other.”
“Everybody’s busy. Do you think people get less busy as time goes on? It gets worse. I’m busier now than I’ve ever been, and if I sat down and tried to figure out why, I couldn’t. There’s no ideal situation out there. A shot of a good man even once in a while is not a bad thing.”
“I hear you,” I say. When it’s good with Roman, it’s the best it can be. I sometimes think that the good stuff blinds me to reality, sways me to keep trying. But is that enough? Should it be?
“You have a perfect situation.” June pours herself a cup of coffee. “You see each other, you have fun, then you go your separate ways. I’d be with a man myself right now if they didn’t eventually nag me to move in. I don’t want somebody in my house twenty-four/seven. I like my own life, thank you.”