Brava, Valentine

10. Here’s that Rainy Day

THIS MORNING GIANLUCA WOKE UP early with me. We’ve fallen into a Buenos Aires routine. I get up early and leave for the factory, while he sleeps. This morning we changed all that. We dressed and had breakfast together. I promised to keep the day at the factory short and be home in time for lunch. He wants to take me down to the river walk this afternoon, knowing how much I love my river at home.

I spent the morning in the cutting room. I photographed the steps of pattern making to show June, and also to compare to other manufacturers. I believe the cutting is what makes Roberta’s work special. Her team has an understanding of the leather, and they cut to the grain, which makes for the most pliable material. If they can achieve the same with fabric, in her hands, the Bella Rosa could become the best affordable flat in the marketplace.

Roberta seems to have warmed up today-or maybe she’s just getting used to seeing me around. I’m slowly becoming part of the scenery, like the old lasts on the shelf-familiar, and therefore a part of things.

“I’m going home for lunch. Would you like to come?” Roberta asks.

“Well, I was going to go back to the hotel…” I tell her. No, the truth is, I need to go back to the hotel. Gianluca is waiting for me. But didn’t I make this trip to spend as much time as possible with Roberta? So, I quickly say, “You know what? I’d love to. Thank you.” I can’t squander any opportunity to be with Roberta, and I’ve been waiting to meet her mother. Gianluca will understand that.

“Let me call my mother to let her know.”

Roberta goes into her office to place the call. I take out my cell to call the hotel. The hotel room phone rings and rings. I imagine Gianluca went out exploring. The phone rings through to the operator. I leave a message that my plans have changed-I’ll be home for an early supper instead. Then I instruct the operator to leave a hard copy of the message under the door. I don’t want to take the chance that Gianluca will miss the message.

“Let’s go,” Roberta says. “Do you mind walking?”

“Not at all.”

“We live very close.”

As we walk to Roberta’s home, she tells me about her neighborhood. La Boca is known as the Greenwich Village of Buenos Aires. There are many similarities; there’s a meatpacking district, a series of small antique shops nestled among clubs and restaurants, and a thriving subculture of businesses that make handcrafted items-like Angelini Shoes. But the detail that gets to me, that says home to me in a way nothing else can or ever will, is the cobblestone streets of La Boca. I stop and take a picture on my cell. I send it to Gabriel’s phone. Just like Jane and Perry and Charles, Avalos and Olavarría and Suárez streets are paved with old, glorious, and bumpy cobblestones.

Roberta unlocks the gate, which opens into a complex of Mediterranean-style homes that face a common park. This is another small village within the village, off the busy Caminito Street.

The homes are surrounded by a privacy wall covered with waxy green vines. There is an old fountain in the center of the complex, its marble grooves worn smooth from weather and time. At the far end, in the midst of all this antiquity, is a plastic jungle gym for kids.

Roberta points to her home, a town house with a clay roof. The stucco is painted white, and the small entry porch is covered in multicolored tiles. Roberta opens the door and invites me in.

The furniture is cozy, childproof white-muslin-covered sofas and chairs, comfortable and washable. Antique chests made of hammered silver are tucked in corners. The walls are filled with paintings in an amalgam of styles, floating impressionism set amid realistic sketches done in charcoal and still-life renderings in watercolor.

Over the mantel is a whimsical oil painting of a theater tableau, a woman singing, surrounded by a chorus of peasants. I go to the mantel and look up to get a closer view. The signature in the corner is Rafael Angelini, the same man who drew the sketch that I found at home.

“My great-grandfather’s painting,” she says.

“He was very good.”

“I love it because he painted it,” she says.

An older woman brings the baby to Roberta and places him in her arms. “This is Enzo. My son. And this is my mother, Lupe.”

Lupe is around my mother’s age, small in build like Roberta, with black eyes and a deeper hue to her complexion. She embraces me.

“I am so happy to meet you,” I tell her.

“Thank you for agreeing to meet me,” Lupe says.

Lupe shows me to the veranda beyond the kitchen. The words my cousins choose are very telling. Agreeing to meet, peace, these little phrases must add up to something. It’s almost as if their words are preemptive, either to avoid an argument or to start one.

Lupe has set a beautiful table under a shady elm tree. The navy blue ceramic dishes pop against an apple green tablecloth. The center of the table has a lazy Susan, with a clay pot in the center, surrounded by strips of thin bread, called fainá, long, slim wedges of yellow and red peppers, a bowl of olives, and fronds of fresh green lettuce.

Lupe invites us to sit, while Roberta pours our glasses full of fresh lemonade made with honey. Lupe takes the baby from Roberta’s arms. “Time for Enzo’s nap.” She takes the baby in her arms and goes.

Roberta takes the lid off the clay pot. She picks up my dish, ladles a fragrant stew of meat and vegetables called estofado on the center of the plate, surrounds it with the fresh vegetables and the bread. She follows suit with her mother’s plate and then her own. Roberta sits and shows me how to eat the stew, scooping up the meat with the vegetables.

“I’m in awe of your factory,” I tell her. “The workforce…”

“Most of them have been there for many years.”

“I could tell. So quick, so professional. And the machines, the cutting room. What an operation.”

“I just took over for my father after he died and I do exactly what he would do. That’s all.”

“It’s impressive.”

“It’s a lot now, with the baby,” she admits.

“Do you have other children?”

She smiles. “A daughter. Ines is eighteen, and in university. I’m forty-four. Enzo was a surprise.”

I can’t imagine how Roberta runs a factory and takes care of a newborn baby. Of course, she has Lupe, and that’s a big help. My mother made it clear before my sisters and brother had children that she wanted to spend lots of time with the kids, but we were not to consider her a nanny. Lupe lives here with Roberta’s family, but even with the workload, she seems very happy.

I’m so tired at the end of a day, I can’t imagine having to take care of a husband and children. Tess and Charlie have figured out a schedule with the girls and Jaclyn, who works in an insurance office, runs to day care at lunchtime to see the baby with Tom. Mackenzie, who doesn’t have a job outside her home, keeps plenty busy chronicling the life she creates for Bret and their family with invitations, scrapbooks, and homespun projects like taking classes in organic gardening. Roberta’s life seems more like my own, or at least how my life would be if I had a family.

“What does your husband do?”

“My husband is an artist. I brought him home twenty-two years ago. And Mama said, ‘No artist!’ Because we come from a family of them, all dreamers. But finally, my mother said okay.”

“And now, a whole new chapter with a new baby. Enzo has lots of cousins to play with in New York.” I decide to broach the topic we’ve both been avoiding. “The whole family would love to meet you. Whatever happened in the past, Roberta, is the past. We should move forward from here-I hope we can.”

Roberta’s expression softens, so I continue. “Can you tell me what happened with Rafael and Michel?”

“I suppose I will have to tell you if we are to move forward,” Roberta says. “What do you know about Rafael?”

“All I know is I found a sketch in an old calendar. And then, what you’ve told me. If you don’t mind, let’s start at the beginning. Why did Rafael come to Buenos Aires?”

“He had to.”

“Was it about money?”

“No, no. Not at first. My great-grandfather’s goal was to stay in New York and work there, side by side with his brother. But then Rafael fell in love with my great-grandmother, Lucretzia.”

Roberta looks down at her hands. Her tapered fingers are lovely, but they are working hands with short nails and a thin gold wedding band. She wears no ornamentation beyond the ring.

“She was black. Michel did not support the union.”

“Because of her color?” I ask.

She nods.

I try to imagine New York City through the eyes of Rafael and Michel. Boundaries were clearly drawn. Italians did not venture above 14th Street except to make deliveries or to do building and maintenance work for hire. Immigrants laid claim to particular blocks and tenements, careful to carve out a place in the city where they could speak in their native language. But the barriers of race trumped religion and nationality. An Italian immigrant and a black woman would have a nearly impossible journey.

“But they married anyway?”

“Eventually. Here in Buenos Aires. They were banished, in a sense, by Michel, in every way. Lucretzia and Rafael planned to return to Italy together, but she had family here, so, they came to Argentina instead. They had one son, my grandfather. His name was Xavier Angelini, and he married Daria, a local Argentinian woman of Italian descent. My father, also named Xavier, was their only child.”

“My mother is an only child also,” I say.

“My father would have loved to know her. He used to complain that he had no cousins-he longed for a big family.”

“My mother would have liked that very much, too.” My sisters and I always say that my mother had a big family because she was an only child. I imagine the same to be true for her first cousin. Everyone, it seems, tries to create what they don’t have, or what they believe they’ve missed, hoping it will fill them up.

“Did your mother take over the shoe shop?” Roberta asks.

“No, not at all. My mother raised a family-I’m one of four.”

“So how did you come to work in the shop?”

“My grandmother and grandfather took the shop over from Michel after he died. When my grandfather died, Gram operated the business alone until I became her apprentice six years ago. She got married again this year and moved to Italy.”

“Are you the only shoemaker?”

“I was, and now my brother Alfred has come into the business.”

“Do you like to work with your brother?”

“At first I wasn’t sure. For so long, it was just my grandmother and me, and our pattern cutter in the shop. Her name is June, and she’s the best. It took some adjusting when Alfred joined the team. But now we accommodate one another.”

“Sometimes a company needs to change. My father loved the art of making shoes by hand, but he also wanted to make money. It wasn’t enough to make a quota each year of custom shoes. My father saw that there was no way to make a profit when the number of shoes you could build a year was so limited. So he convinced my grandfather to go into machine production. Together, they ran the mill I operate now.” She smiles. “We do well at the factory, but even better in La Boca real estate. This complex is owned by our family. We rent out all the houses you see here.”

Even our fundamental family investment strategies are the same-we anchor the business with real estate: we own the building on Perry Street, and here, the Angelinis own the housing complex in La Boca.

Lupe joins us at the table. She refills our glasses before she pours her own.

“Mama, tell Valentine what you know about Rafael before he came to Buenos Aires.”

“There are many stories. These come from my father-in-law who heard them from his own father.” She sits down. “Rafael had a brother named Michel. I was told that Michel had a hard life. He was widowed young and had a child.”

“That was my grandfather.”

“The story goes that Michel could not bear to stay in the village where his wife had lived in Italy-”

“Arezzo.”

“That’s right. So Michel begged Rafael to go with him to America, to begin again. The plan was to open a shoe shop together, and raise your grandfather.”

“This part of the story is exactly as I know it, except I did not know about Rafael,” I say.

“It is understandable,” Lupe says. “Because there was an argument and then an estrangement, which left Rafael to leave New York for Argentina.”

“I told Valentine all about Lucretzia,” Roberta says.

“When Rafael decided to marry Lucretzia and leave for good, he asked Michel for his money. You see,” Lupe continues, “the brothers sold their building in Italy, split the money, and then moved to the United States to start over. They were partners.”

“Michel paid Rafael part of the money, but there was a balance on what Michel owed. Your great-grandfather sent money to his brother for a few years after he moved here with his wife, until the debt was paid off,” Roberta explains.

“But it didn’t heal the rift between the brothers, once the debt was paid?” I ask.

“It might have, but Michel did not accept Lucretzia. So Rafael never reconciled with Michel. He was forced to choose his wife over his brother.” Roberta shrugs. “And for both families, it was as if the other side never existed.”

The three of us sit in silence for a moment. We contemplate the loss we’ve shared, the years we’ve missed, and the opportunities to have the big, close family that my mother and her first cousin dreamed about. I hope it’s not too late to try and salvage what’s left, but Roberta would have to meet me halfway. “I’m here in the hopes that we can do business together.”

“I understand your goal,” Roberta says. “But I have only made men’s shoes in the factory.”

“Well, maybe it’s time to expand and make women’s shoes also. I couldn’t help but notice that your operators are very adaptable. In the two days I’ve been observing, they have assembled three different styles. Now, one of those styles was incredibly complex-”

“The Ermenegildo-”

“That one. I won’t saddle you with a difficult shoe. In fact, watching your operators inspired me to simplify my design. If you would look at my samples-”

“Did you bring them with you?” Roberta asks.

“Yes. I have three prototypes to show you.” I open my bag and give her the shoes.

Roberta looks at them, examining them like the seasoned shoemaker she is. She looks at the lay of the leather, the strength of the seams, she feels the interior of the shoe, then bends the flat to see how the leather responds to movement. Then she pulls the sides from the vamp, to check for gaps and elasticity. She hands the samples to Lupe, who does the same.

“This is a beautiful shoe. Very simple,” Roberta says.

“Thank you. The design can take many materials-in fact, you could suggest materials you think would work. I like microfiber.”

“I have a fiber material, a stand-in for suede-it’s brand-new. It was developed here in the city by a textile designer who wanted to come up with a replacement for suede that mimics animal hide. It has give and is also supple. Very durable-especially for a flat shoe. And I’m working with color-it takes dye beautifully.”

“I would love to see it,” I tell her.

“What is a practical first run for you? What can you afford?”

“We can finance an initial run of ten thousand shoes,” I tell her. “But my brother has been soliciting from China.”

“I’ve lost a great deal of business to the Chinese,” Roberta says.

“This isn’t a competition. The costs need to be close-I won’t lie to you. I can’t give you this contract for more than the Chinese bid. But this is where my heart is. This is historically a family company, and if I can, I’d like to keep it in our family.”

“You want to make amends for Michel.”

I sit back in my chair. “I don’t think that would be possible. It’s also unfair to expect me to make a situation right that I did not have a hand in.”

“Fair enough,” she says. “I don’t hold you responsible for what happened. But you must understand, in your family’s view, we disappeared. It’s difficult to embrace a family that abandoned us so long ago.”

“Roberta, to be fair, you could have contacted us,” I say. “But that’s behind us. I’m here now, Roberta, as Michel’s heir, and I’m ready to move forward with you-if you want. Think about it. We could start fresh. A new beginning. Maybe the legacy of Rafael and Michel works better with a couple of generations in between for cushion.”

Roberta laughs. “That could be.”

“I’m almost an expert in dealing with family now. I had to make huge adjustments quickly when Alfred joined the company.”

“What is he like?”

“Well, that’s a long story and requires several cocktails, and as delicious as this lemonade is, it won’t ease the pain of the details.”

She laughs again. “I see. He’s a difficult one.”

“Exactly. But he’s also very smart and forward-thinking. He’s in charge of the bids and the financials. Alfred has a breakdown of the costs and the comparables, and also, we could sweeten the deal by doing the finishing in New York.”

“Why?”

“To lessen the work on your end.”

“But we have an excellent finishing department. My girls are perfectionists. They have experience with grosgrain and patent leather finishing on my formal men’s shoes. I believe they would do an excellent job on your design.”

“Okay, then, I’m officially open to finishing the shoes here.”

“Good.”

“So you’ll consider this?”

“I like you.” She leans back in her chair.

“My daughter rarely likes anyone,” Lupe says.

“I’ll be right back.” Roberta gets up and goes into the house.

I reach over and take Lupe’s hand. “Thank you for this delicious lunch. I hope someday you’ll both visit us in New York City, and I can return the hospitality.”

“I’ve never been to New York.”

“Well, when you do, you stay with me.”

“Thank you.”

Roberta comes out of the house carrying a small bundle of envelopes. She gives them to me. “When my father died, he gave me these letters. They were handed down from Rafael to his son Xavier to my father. They were tied with this string, never opened, and never answered. My father always said that even though Rafael held a grudge against his brother to his death, he must have loved Michel, because he saved these letters. Maybe you would like to have them. I believe they belong to your family.”

I look down at the bundle, kept in pristine condition. There must be a dozen envelopes. The black fountain pen ink has faded to charcoal gray. The U.S. postage stamps are dated from 1922 to 1924. At the bottom of the stack is a series of empty envelopes, addressed to Rafael and opened with a letter opener.

“Those were the envelopes with the checks. My great-grandfather opened them and deposited the money. But he did not open the letters. He did, however, leave a note that said, ‘Marker paid in full.’ I think that’s important,” she says.

Roberta and I appear to be very different. She’s a mass-production shoemaker and not a custom cobbler-but she is every bit as particular as I am when it comes to her product. Roberta’s keen artistic eye follows all the same principles that I follow when constructing a pair of high-quality shoes: it’s about design, line, shape, and execution. It’s about seeking the finest of materials from around the world-leather, suede, and silk-procuring them, and insisting upon the best techniques to build the shoe, so when it goes to be sold, the craftsmanship will showcase the value.

I saw firsthand how Roberta demands the same quality in the production of her machine-made shoes that I do in my custom line. As I grow the brand, I will need the best manufacturer I can find to build the Bella Rosa. I believe I have found her, here in Buenos Aires. And the best news: she’s family. So, three generations later, we meet again, this time on Rafael’s terms, and with the hopes of Michel that went unrealized because two brothers could not find a way to forgive one another, and accept one another’s choices. Maybe we can be better; maybe we can even do better.

After lunch, Roberta took me to the textile mill where the new microfiber fabric has been created from cotton and hemp. It’s thick and luxurious, and a strong possibility for construction of the Bella Rosa. As I head back to the hotel, I’m far later than I thought I would be, but the trip to the mill was informative and important. I feel guilty that I leave Gianluca on his own day after day, but he doesn’t seem to mind. And after all, I’m here to work, I remind myself.

I check my BlackBerry. My heart sinks when I see that I’ve missed three calls from Gianluca. I hope he received my message and spent the day by the pool. I’m looking forward to his strong arms around me. I call the hotel to let him know I’m on my way. The phone rings through, but he doesn’t answer. The operator comes on and asks if I’d like to leave a message. I don’t leave one.

I’m in the habit of getting business done whenever I can, even in the car between the hotel and the factory. I don’t want to lose a minute of play time with Gianluca, so I have to hustle when I have a spare moment. So I text Bret:

Me: Amazing factory in BA. Cousin wants to sign on. Details pending.

Bret: Great news.

Me: If not for you, for the loan, for everything, this would not have happened. How can I thank you?

Bret: Close the deal!

Me: XOXO

Bret: XOXO

I text Alfred.

Me: Looks good with Roberta. Go ahead and connect. I will send numbers.

Alfred: How did it go?

Me: I think you can carve out a deal! The factory is first-class.

Alfred: Unbelievable.

Me: How are you?

Alfred: Better.

Me: Hang tough, brother.

Alfred: I will!

I cut and paste Roberta’s numbers into the phone and send to Alfred. I quickly return e-mails to Tricia Halfacre, my button salesman, who found some oversize patent leather medallions she thought would be “fetching” on the Bella Rosa. There are messages from Gabriel, who misses me, and Tess, who wants to know, oddly enough, about Argentinian food. I swear sometimes my family doesn’t understand that I have a real job. Somehow, they still see me as a ten-year-old girl sewing a pair of felt boots in the shop for my teddy bear. If only they could see me now.

When I push the hotel room door open, there are no lights on. How strange. I move to go into the living room. “Gianluca?” I call out. I look in the bedroom, and then the bath; no sign of him. When I return to the living room, I trip over his suitcase. Then I see that the French doors to the balcony are open.

Gianluca sits on the balcony with his back to the doors. I put my arms around him from behind. He pulls away.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, knowing full well what’s the matter. I’m hours late when I promised to be home early.

“It’s ten o’clock at night,” he says.

“Did you get my message?”

“I received a message that said you wouldn’t be back for lunch, but that you would be home for an early supper. I called you three times. I’ve been waiting here for hours, and I did not hear from you.”

“I would have called you back right away, but Roberta took me to the textile mill, and I didn’t hear my phone. I didn’t realize that you had called.” My gut fills with guilt. I could’ve called him, many times. And when I was in the car and didn’t get him on the phone, I should have sent the porter. Instead, I answered e-mails and texts-and even communicated with my button salesman. As a girlfriend, I am about as low as you can get.

“I was worried about you,” he says tensely. “I don’t know this cousin of yours, or the barrio the factory is in-you left me here with no information, no other way to reach you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve apologized a great deal on this trip. You say ‘I’m sorry’ often.”

“That’s because I am sorry.”

He is really angry. And he’s not buying my contrition for a second. I know I’ve crossed the line. He knows I could have connected with him-he knows I put the shoes first. And he’s absolutely right. I have really screwed up here. Gianluca sits in silence.

“I can’t help it,” I whine. “Roberta had been frosty, and today she thawed-and invited me to her home for lunch with her mother. I got the whole story about my family. And then I had to see where they make the microfiber.”

Gianluca looks off, uninterested.

“You couldn’t care less,” I say, more a revelation than an accusation.

“I didn’t come this far to be treated poorly,” he says.

“You knew I had business here. This isn’t a vacation for me-it’s work. I’m sorry…” I stop. I am apologizing all the time to him. He’s right on that count. What am I sorry for exactly? Putting him out? “No, I’m not sorry, Gianluca. You surprised me here, and I’m not going to apologize for doing the work I came here to do. I thought you, of all people, would understand that.”

“You have your priorities in place. I am not one of them.”

“How can you say that? I thought we were at the start of a good thing here.”

“I’m not interested in ‘a good thing,’ as you call it. I want more from you than that. Valentina, I want more for you than that. But what I want does not seem to matter to you.”

“I don’t think you should assume what matters to me-or what doesn’t.”

“That’s correct. I have no idea what matters to you. For all I know, there’s someone else.”

“There is no one else!”

“Then why do you treat me this way?”

“Am I treating you badly?” I place my hands on my chest. I can feel my heart beating.

“I don’t spend enough time with you to know.”

“I’m doing the best I can. Give me a break here. I’m working all day and coming home to you at night. But that’s not the issue, is it? I think our real problem is that I’m not the girl in the pool in Capri.”

“What do you mean by that?” he asks.

“You fell for a sad sack who’d been abandoned by her boyfriend. You swept in and made it all better. Well, this go-round, I’m on a different track. I have a purpose here-and it’s not love first and foremost. But you were changing my mind about that.”

“Was I? Then why do you leave me here? Why don’t you ask me along, to be with you? You hide me in the hotel like a gigolo.”

“Are you serious?”

“Even your response insults me. I am not your tanner. I was your lover.”

“Was?”

“This is not going to work, Valentina.”

“Hold on a second. Don’t tell me what works and what doesn’t. If you would live in the 21st century, we might have a chance! I could text you and tell you that I’m going to be late, but you refuse to text-you don’t even have a cell phone that works, you have one of those cheesy international models for emergencies. Well, guess what, it’s an emergency to me when I can’t get hold of you. I’ve got news for you, Gianluca. There aren’t any carrier pigeons with heart-shaped vials carrying handwritten notes through the air that say, ‘Hang on honey, I’m gonna be late for dinner.’”

“It has nothing to do with phones.” Gianluca raises his voice.

“Then what is it?”

“You don’t trust me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You say you love me, but it isn’t possible to make love and mean it unless you trust.”

“I don’t understand!” I shout, but it’s unconvincing. Even I can hear the uncertainty in my voice.

“If you trusted me, you would honor me. You would put me first. You would tell Roberta that I was here, waiting. Did you tell Roberta about me?”

I shake my head that I didn’t. And now I’m forced to ask myself why I didn’t. I’m not ashamed of him. I’m not hiding him. But I am just beginning to sort out what he means to me-do I have to announce that I’m falling in love with Gianluca to everyone I see? Am I required to call my mother and ask her? I begin to explain my logic, but he cuts me off.

“You see, you aren’t really in love with me. The sex is good, and you like coming back to the hotel and having a good time, but you don’t want more than that. You say you do, but you don’t.”

“You’re the one who said you didn’t want any children!” I blurt. Now, why would I bring that up? This man is forcing me to look at things I would rather not confront. I feel myself getting angrier.

“I said it was up to you,” he says quietly.

“What kind of a commitment is that?” I yell.

“I told you, it’s up to you. But even that, even the decision to have a baby, you want me to make for you. You don’t want to decide anything for yourself, Valentina. I don’t like this wait-and-see-what-happens attitude that you have. I find it cowardly.”

“You don’t make me feel very secure.” I don’t know where this is coming from either. I’m not the woman that needs a man to make her feel confident. I am confident!

“How can I? You’re insecure within yourself. You tell me you cried when you caught your chef with another woman, but you were in fact relieved.”

“Do not bring up Roman!”

“He is part of this! He did to you what you expected-he chose someone else over you, because in your mind that’s what all men eventually do. They leave. So why not show them the door first? Why not mistreat them until they are forced to go? Why not honor your word and show up when you’re supposed to? You can’t. Because you don’t want to!”

“I didn’t mean to mistreat you. I’m trying to be here for you-and get my work done. I don’t have the luxury of taking time off to fall in love and cruise around town with you!”

“And I do? I will go home to Arezzo and a backlog of work that will take me weeks to complete.”

“Oh, now you have to sacrifice for me-”

“What do you think a relationship is, Valentina?”

“Evidently, I have no idea!”

“Finally the truth! You’ve treated me poorly. Maybe you expected me to take it, but I’ve had far too good a life to spend what’s left of it waiting around for you to grow up.”

“You are wrong! I am a grown-up!” I sound about thirteen years old.

“No, I am exactly right about this. You are a child. You have not grown up-you have not made your life your own.”

“Yes, I have!”

“How?”

“I took over the business. I…” I can’t think of any other grown-up things that I’ve done.

“You took over the business because you had to, not because you chose it. Don’t you see that you never choose?”

“I left teaching to become a shoemaker. I chose that.”

“And now, that’s your excuse for everything. Work. Work is always the excuse. I hoped that you were the kind of woman who wanted love as much as work. You don’t. You cannot be a real artist if you turn away from love. Without love in your life, you will be a journeyman, never a master.”

“Now you’re the expert on me?”

“No, I’m not. Far from it. I have no idea who you really are, because you won’t show yourself to me. You don’t trust me, Valentina. And I cannot be with a woman who doesn’t.”

“I don’t think you’ll cheat on me,” I say quietly.

“This is not about infidelity. It’s about trusting me with your heart. You don’t. I see you act upon it in small ways-you don’t believe me, for example, when I say it’s cold outside, you go to the balcony and check for yourself. When you ask if there are any messages when you come in the door after work, and I tell you there are not, you call the front desk and check anyway. When I ask you to meet me and you agree to, when you don’t show up, it tells me that you don’t really want to be with me.”

“I don’t know what to say.” And I don’t, because he’s right. I’m so used to being on my own that I don’t know how to let him in-or if I even want to.

“You say you love your father and you forgave him for how he treated your mother-but you haven’t forgiven men in general for being human. You have high expectations, and then when we aren’t perfect, you say, See, there it is, you disappoint me. You make love to me, but you won’t make love a part of your life.”

Gianluca makes his way to the door.

“So that’s it. You invent me in your romantic letters, and then when I’m a human being and make a mistake, or a few of them, you leave. Now who isn’t being real?”

He picks up his suitcase. “I’m going back to Italy. Is that real enough for you?”

“Now you’re being cruel.”

“I believe it’s cruel to dismiss someone that you have feelings for.”

“But I didn’t do it deliberately! Okay, I’ve made about a million mistakes with you. But, you can’t just bail on me at the first sign of trouble. It might be Italian, but it’s not American. We fight for what we want.”

“I don’t believe you want me.”

“Oh, come on. I never said I was perfect, Gianluca. You made me that way in your letters. I’d fall in love with me the way you described me! But I’m more than a rendering of your imagination. I’m a mess.”

“I see you as a woman who has everything. Why would I pretend otherwise when I wrote to you?”

“Because I don’t have everything. Not even close! I know I can be horrible and selfish and single-minded and judgmental. I’m just hacking my way through this forest trying to get to daylight. I don’t know everything-but I was learning a lot from you. And if you do decide to leave me, you should know that.”

“I do know that,” he says quietly.

“I don’t know why I didn’t jump in the cab and come back here when I couldn’t reach you. And I don’t know why I didn’t bring you to the factory. And I don’t know why I didn’t check my phone! I’m so used to separating my work and my love life-because I’ve always had to. And maybe I saw, when I was a kid, that my grandparents’ marriage suffered because they worked together, and then they went up the stairs every night and lived together-it was just too much.”

“Or maybe they were happy.”

“Maybe they were.” I throw up my hands. That possibility is not one I ever contemplate.

“You cannot love me in the shadow of what you come from. You have to love me in cold, hard light. You have to trust me,” he says insistently.

“You have to meet me in the middle. You have to look at how different we are, or this will never work. You feel a great longing for a time that’s passed. But I’m not from another time. I am right now. I’m of the moment, and I have to stay in the moment. And it’s not just about being hip, or young-it’s survival. It’s the big stuff, and then the little things too. Like…it matters if I pick purple or green for the color of the fall collection in 2011. I have to invent what comes next, or my company will fold. I will fold. I can’t live in 1812 in my love life or my work life. I know I’m asking you for a lot. I know I am a conflicting combination of the traditional and the modern-but do not mistake my honor of tradition as an excuse for me to look to a man to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”

“Then what is my role in your life?”

I put my hands on my face to think. I haven’t thought about this. I simply try to take Gianluca a day at a time and hope that our time together is building toward something. I’ve looked forward to seeing him each night when I return home. But I don’t know what his role is. I haven’t defined it, in a relationship where it is a requirement of his to know where he fits in the big picture. And I don’t know yet. But I can’t say that to him; he will think it’s just another excuse for me to avoid falling in love and committing myself to him. So I say what I’m feeling.

“I love you,” I tell him. And then I think for a moment before I say, “And you love me. Equal. Reciprocal. Back and forth. Give and take. Not one of us idolizes the other, and then the other fails to live up to some standard that doesn’t even exist. I’m made of sturdy stuff. I promise you.”

My eyes sting with tears. I have never knowingly hurt anyone in my life, but I know I’ve hurt Gianluca. I have been hiding him away-I don’t talk about him to my sisters, I didn’t even tell my mother he was here. But I find the time to call her, don’t I? If Gram brings Gianluca up on the phone, I’m the ultimate in casual disregard. I share very little about him with Gabriel. It’s almost as if I’m planning the breakup before I commit to the relationship.

Dear God, I’d go into therapy and figure this out if only I had the time!

But I have to sort this out with him, because he’s right, and I know he’s right. I don’t believe he’ll stay when he sees who I really am. I will invent some way to undermine it. I’ll blame my work, I’ll blame my family, I’ll even blame the weather. I pretend to want love because I don’t want to end up old and bitter like Aunt Feen. But that’s the path I’ve been on all along-in refusing to grow up and own my life. I know exactly what will happen to me if I stay on course, if I choose to never trust anyone. I’ll wind up all alone in assisted living wearing a muumuu and bunion pads, nursing a highball with nothing but my bitter thoughts to keep me company.

Real love requires surrender-and I’ve been faking it.

Gianluca puts down his suitcase. He puts his arms around me and gives me a warm hug, one you would give your mechanic when he fixes your transmission for free. I step back and look at him. I almost can’t believe it. It’s a final embrace.

“I’m going home,” he says. “Take care of yourself.” He picks up his suitcase and goes.

I stand in the spot where he held me for a very long time. I think of the words he wrote in the first letter he sent to me: Love builds in a series of small realizations. Well, he was right about that. And now, I have one for Gianluca. Love also ends in a series of small realizations.

The full moon over La Recoleta shimmers like a pale pink sequin. I close the robe tightly around me and pull the sash. I love a balcony. I like to be high above the ground, up and away from people, from noise, from clutter. I can think so much more clearly with an endless sky overhead. And I’ve done a lot of thinking tonight. And a lot of weeping.

I’ve cried on and off for hours. Ending a love affair in a foreign country is worse than breaking up at home. A woman needs familiar things around her when her heart has been broken. This hotel room is beautiful, but there’s no comfort for me in the opulent bed and the bath. I see Gianluca everywhere, and when I do, I just feel worse. Only Gabriel made me laugh; when I called him, he said that his mother always warned her children “to never get involved with anyone from the other side.” I guess there’s a history of Italian Americans dropped by Italians from across the ocean. Well, tonight, add me to the list.

The colors of Buenos Aires are saturated like hand-dyed silk, especially after midnight, when the candy colors fall into shadow and striae of ink tones emerge, deepest violets, berry blues, ruby reds, and burnished gold. The green foliage seems to be cut from velvet, framing the autumnal buds that sparkle like beads in tiny bursts of indelible color.

My particular lover’s dream has ended badly in one of the most beautiful places in all the world. And while I’m tempted to stay another day, another week, or another month in hopes that this sadness will fade amid such beauty, that’s just a fantasy. It’s time for me to go home too. Whatever I will become will be decided under a different night sky, somewhere else in the world. I imagine anything is possible, except a future with Gianluca Vechiarelli, and even if that was a possibility, I know I would need the stars and so much more to find my way back to him.

I’m organized in my seat on the plane back to New York when I call Roberta one last time before I leave Buenos Aires. “I just want to thank you for everything. And Lupe, too. Please give her my love.”

“I will. I am so happy we met. Your brother and I are talking. I find him charming.”

“Good for you.”

She laughs. “He’s family.”

“Right, right,” I agree. I can’t believe how far Roberta and I have come on this trip. I feel as though I am just getting to know her, but the future is promising. That’s all that matters. “Before I let you go, Roberta, there’s just one thing I failed to ask you. Why did your great-grandfather name the company Caminito? Why didn’t he name it after himself?”

“Simple. There was already an Angelini Shoe Company,” she says.

Long airplane flights are truly the last bastion of electronic disconnection in the modern age. No phones allowed, so planes become bubbles transporting unknowing passengers from Point A to Point B in a general fog. It’s great-I needed an eight-hour blackout to think things through before landing in New York. I have my sketch pad out, my pencil at the ready, and the stack of letters that Michel wrote to his brother Rafael for reading material.

If my love life has been a disaster here, my work made up for it. I have sketched an addition to the Bella Rosa line, a flat called La Boca, made of deep blue suede, with gold knots scattered on the vamp-very simple, but inspired by this new place that I’ve come to love.

I bought Tess a local cookbook. Let’s see if she can re-create some of Lupe’s dishes. Argentinean food, created from a Mediterranean base but kicked up with Spanish spices-cumin and chili pepper and saffron-has changed my palate. I’ve eaten soft buds of yellow rice flecked with fresh hot pepper, an alternative to our sweet, creamy risotto. There are apricot glazes and guava nectar drizzled on moist cake instead of a powdered sugar finish.

And after dinner, they serve the blackest coffee and the darkest chocolate. The wines are smoky and hearty, with an intensity to them that you don’t find in Italian varieties.

Buenos Aires takes the best of European and African culture and reinvents it in the heat. The breads, soft, spongy bagels and honey-soaked cake, from the Jewish section; the pastas tossed with herbs and butter from the Italians; the tender filets of beef rubbed with spices and slow-cooked Spanish style; and the fresh syrups reduced from mangos and coconuts, pure African. The mélange of all these cultures somehow works together, proving that if it can be done with food, surely people can follow suit.

The greatest lesson I have learned in Buenos Aires is that tradition and the moment can live side by side in complete harmony. One does not have to pull against the other.

This trip has given me a worldview. I realize now that I didn’t have one before. I was content to become a master shoemaker, perfecting designs as old as my family itself, with my head down at the worktable hours a day, years on end, concentrating on technique and detail: making a straight seam, and sewing leather together in stitches so small, they are practically invisible. That was my goal-to mimic what had come before me, and work at the same excellent level my grandfather and grandmother had achieved.

But that was their level-not mine. I want more.

I wonder. Did they ever imagine more? A hundred years came and went, with the company working off Michel’s original sketches, the tried-and-true styles-classic, yes, but did we challenge ourselves? Did we keep dreaming? Did we even acknowledge the present, and all it has to offer?

Looking back, our company was fearful of change. To be fair, my great-grandfather and my grandparents had to make a living-and survive immigration, the Great Depression, and then a postwar economy that favored industrial manufacturing. Challenge after challenge, the Angelini Shoe Company prevailed. But did we commit to growth? I must build the brand to save the company in this economy. It’s not really that different from what Rafael Angelini had to do so many years ago; he had to leave everything he knew in order to reinvent his life and his craft.

I unwrap the letters he received from his brother Michel carefully from the stack.

I unfold the first letter, and in my sketchbook, clear a page to translate Michel’s letter to Rafael.

August 5, 1922

Dear Rafael,

My brother, I do not receive a response to my two letters, and now wonder if you are alive. I pray this is true. I do not forget your kindness to me when my Jojo died. I do not forget your kindness to my son, who is without his mother. My son Michel asks for you. He went to the Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel and paid an indulgence for your return. Brother, we must make amends. We must make peace, for our sakes and for my son, who only has you and me in the world. I fear that I am raising a cold son, one who cannot know love because he has been so bitterly disappointed.

Please help me help my son. Come home and be with your brother and nephew. I wish the coin we tossed had been in your favor. It was a mistake to ask you to go. Come back and we will be partners again. The shop is thriving, I am very busy. The Dutch who come to work here, no good. Kind people, but not good with leather. Only the Italians can work the leather. I think of you, brother. Please write to me and let me know that you are well.

Your brother,

Michel

I put down my pencil and pick up the letter. I close my eyes, all the while holding the delicate paper in my hands. It took guts for Michel to write letters to his brother especially when he didn’t receive a reply.

I’m ashamed that I thought Gianluca’s old-fashioned letters, written on similar onionskin paper, were somehow less relevant than a text message, which can be delivered instantly.

A handwritten letter carries a lot of risk. It’s a one-sided conversation that reveals the truth of the writer. Furthermore, the writer is not there to see the reaction of the person he writes to, so there’s a great unknown to the process that requires a leap of faith. The writer has to choose the right words to express his sentiments, and then, once he has sealed the envelope, he has to place those thoughts in the hands of someone else, trusting that the feelings will be delivered, and that the recipient will understand the writer’s intent. How childish to think that could be easy.

It wasn’t easy for my great-grandfather or for Gianluca.

I used to believe that people don’t change, that it’s impossible, that we just become more of who we are as life goes on. But that’s not true. When we’re loved, we’re presented with options to change. We can hold on, we can forgive, we can sever ties completely. We can disappoint one another, or celebrate the best of ourselves-but what we can’t do is turn away. The truth is right here on paper.

How ironic that the love letters I received from Gianluca, and doubted, or even dismissed, now seem to have been written in a whole different light. He fell in love with me when he chose to describe his feelings on paper. And then, he came to Buenos Aires to convince me that I was worth loving. And what did I do? I didn’t believe him, and I didn’t trust him, because what are words? Facts? But when I read this letter written brother to brother, the truth becomes apparent. And the truth, when it’s all over, is the only thing that remains.