Very Valentine

9. The Hudson River

LAST WEEK, GRAM LEFT for her annual two-week Lenten retreat with the women’s sodality of Our Lady of Pompeii. The ladies stay at a convent in the Berkshires during the ides of March, and find inner peace through participation in daily masses, group rosaries, hikes in the woods, and meals so loaded with starch that when Gram returns home she has to juice for a week to clear out the gluten. However, she considers the sacrifice well worth it because, while her body may take a health hit, her soul is cleansed. Mezzo. Mezzo.

I’m aiming to have my sketch of the shoe design for the competition at Bergdorf’s finished by the time Gram returns. I want to have a clear notion of what we’ll need to build the shoes before we go to Italy. While Gram has left the design of the shoe up to me, she promised to weigh in with any refinements or corrections before we turn it into a pair of real shoes and deliver them to Rhedd Lewis. I have become obsessed with the sketch of the dress, studying it so often, I see it when I sleep. I’ve come to appreciate the design, and the strange charm of it. The Rag & Bone gown has grown on me.

It’s helpful to have the house to myself. I’m one of those people who actually savors being alone. I like to get up in the middle of the night, turn on the lights, put on a pot of coffee, and get to work without fear of waking Gram. There is nothing more peaceful than New York City at three A.M. It’s the rest period before the madness begins at dawn.

I relish a big space with nobody in it but me. Virginia Woolf celebrated a room of one’s own, but I’ve learned that I require a house of my own. When I’m designing, I fill all available surfaces with offbeat objects that inspire me: a marble bocce ball that’s the exact shade of vanilla ice cream, a small watercolor of a cloud that has hues of lavender on a field of white, wheels of paint chips, boards of fabric swatches and skeins of silk trim. I like to create a circus of ideas, which I can walk through and live with, until something speaks to me. Slowly, I winnow out the claptrap until I’m left with just a few things that move me the most. This is how my mind works, several concepts at play at once, all advancing toward an unknown conclusion; disparate pieces becoming a new whole, in this case, a pair of shoes for a wedding gown that may, on the surface, appear to be in tatters, but is actually, after hours of study, a dress design that is forward thinking and new. My laptop is propped open, ready to record any ideas I have, and to provide available research when I need a goose in a particular direction.

The dining table is covered in fabric folded neatly in rectangles, a few old shoes I’ve saved from yard sales, a crocheted bride doll that belonged to my mother in the 1950s and a large collage that I’ve been making since we first met with Rhedd Lewis. I started the collage on an enormous sheet of butcher paper. I pasted images, photographs, scenes, and words from old magazines, then textured the whole by gluing on artful bits of lace, buttons, and loose crystals. Somewhere in this wild stew, which my subconscious directed, lies my design, or at least, the impulse that will guide me through the process of designing our shoe.

Using Rhedd’s sketch as a jumping-off point, my collage is a landscape of women, collected from couture photo shoots, advertisements, and newspaper stories, most of whom are in repose or turned away from the camera’s lens. I imagine the woman in the Rag & Bone sketch, who she might be and why she chose this particular design above all others to wear on her wedding day. My instincts say this dress isn’t for a first-time bride. It’s for a woman who has been down the road of true love more than once; she’s jaded and even a little ambivalent, hence the unfinished details and frayed chiffon. If the bride is not committed, her gown isn’t either.

Gram has taught me that, as custom cobblers, we have succeeded only when we have taken something a client needs and turned it into something she desires. I have to think like the bride who chooses to wear this gown and design shoes to complement her style.

We use line to accent and play up the individual customer’s physical attributes, we use balance to make the shoe comfortable and provide a seamless fit, form is mandated by personal taste and silhouette, shape is about taking current trends and making the shoe contemporary, color is about working with the dress design so both elements flow as one, pattern is used to accent the fabric of the gown, while texture is about the overall statement of the shoe. Is the leather or fabric appropriate for the time of year the bride is married, and do all the elements feed seamlessly into the overall presentation?

Gram says to keep it simple but not to be afraid of dramatic elements. These are the arenas an apprentice must master. All these notes must dance in the head of the artist as she creates; one element cannot take precedence over another, rather, the goal is a harmonious confluence of all of them. This harmony creates beauty.

I look at the shards of chiffon on the sketch. I prop it up against the candlesticks on the dining room table and walk to the kitchen and look at it from across the room. It reminds me of something. Something specific. And then I remember. I climb the stairs to Gram’s room.

Gram was married in 1948 in an eggshell silk-georgette gown with a scoop neck and sheer, short, puffed sleeves of organza with a wide band of fabric around the upper arm. The natural, fitted waist flowed out to a full circle skirt. There were accents aplenty: ornate handmade Italian cutwork lace was sewn on every seam. There was spider lace on the bodice, facing, and tips of the voluminous ruffles on the hem of the skirt. A photograph of Gram tossing the bouquet shows the gown from the back, where there are wings of tulle fashioned like a capelet, which must have trailed behind Gram like a mist when she walked. It was a typical postwar, pre-New Look ensemble, overtly feminine and deliberately overdone. The war was over and, evidently, one of the great prizes was the sea of femininity that awaited the soldiers as they returned home.

Today the design looks cluttered and homemade, like the crocheted bride doll my mother loved as a girl. Gram’s gown has small seed pearls on the bodice, whereas the doll has pearls on the clunky layers of yarn skirt. Gram wears the bright red lipstick and pencil-thin eyebrows of the postwar era, whereas the doll’s face is piquant, with red Cupid’s bow lips and no eyebrows at all. The look on both faces is pure domestic contentment. I can even picture Gram the following morning, lipstick matte, eyes sparkling, flipping pancakes, wearing a starched sheer organza apron with a frilly pocket shaped like a heart. A joyful wife the morning after her blissful wedding night begins a new life.

As I flip through the black-and-white photographs of my grandparents’ wedding, I look for clues. There’s something I remember about these photographs that will help me with the design. I’m just not sure what.

Finally, I find a photograph of Gram’s wedding shoes as she lifts the hem of her gown slightly to expose the garter. Gram wears a pair of cream-colored, leather platform sandals. The folds of the leather on the vamp are tufted into diamond shapes accented with small leather buttons.

How interesting: boot buttons on an open sandal.

The gown in the sketch, with its seemingly haphazard layers of ripped material, needs a substantial shoe, but not a boot, to stabilize it. Platforms are out, but hefty straps, large buckles, and bows are in. Somehow, I have to make the eye go to the feet and not to the dress. I’m beginning to understand the point of the Rhedd Lewis challenge. This dress is all about not looking at it, but directing the eye to the shoe. And here it is, the epiphany, the beam of clarity, the moment of truth I have been waiting for: make the shoe drive the dress.

I get out my sketchbook and begin to draw my grandmother. I copy the expression on her face in the photo album, her wide eyes, her hair in sausage-roll curls.

Then I take the dress in the sketch and draw it anew, on Gram’s body. I create a new silhouette, feminine but strong. Gone is the fussiness, replaced with modern restraint. The wide streamers of ripped chiffon now seem fresh, not haphazard.

I flip the page in my sketchbook. I draw the shape of the foot, then fill it, with wide straps and a tongue of soft leather anchoring the straps. Then I add texture on the straps, some of smooth leather, others with the striae of silk, a combination of materials that gives it a new-century feeling. I’ll worry about how to execute this later. Right now, it’s about the freedom of letting the idea loose on the page. The gown exposes leg, so I follow that line down to the ankle of the shoe, creating an oversize bow around the ankle, a touch of femininity that looks powerful, like the boot laces on the Mighty Isis in the comic books I loved as a girl. The condition of the fabric gives me license to create a shoe that uses scraps, pieces of luxe materials, soft leathers, offbeat embossing on the leather, whimsical braiding, bold embellishments, and oversize pearls on the strap anchors.

I draw and erase and draw and erase. I sketch again. Soon, I take my putty eraser and reshape the heel. It’s too definitive, it needs to be more architectural to read modern. Right now, it’s too similar to Gram’s stacked heel in 1948, so I add half an inch to the height of the heel and sculpt it until the heel comes into focus to match the rest of the shoe.

My cell phone rings. I pick it up.

“You online?” Gabriel asks.

“No, I’m drawing.”

“Well, get online. You’re on WWD flash.”

“No way!”

I pull the laptop over. Women’s Wear Daily has an online board that announces changes in the fashion industry, acquisitions and sales.

“Scroll down to ‘Rhedd Lewis Windows.’”

I scroll down:

Rhedd Lewis shook up the Fifth Avenue aesthetes by announcing a contest among handpicked (by her) shoe designers who will vie to have their line in the Christmas windows. Stalwarts include: Dior, Ferragamo, Louboutin, Prada, Blahnik, and Americans: Pliner, Weitzman, and Spade. Tory Burch is also said to be in the running. Custom Village shop Angelino Shoes is also said to be under consideration.

“You made it!”

“Made what? We’re misspelled. Angelino?”

“Maybe they’ll think you’re Latino. That’s a good thing. Anything Latino is hot. You know, you’ll be ValRo. Like JLo is JLo. There you go. You’re in the moment.”

“We are in the moment, Gabriel,” I say, defending my fledgling brand.

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

I hang up and close the screen on the laptop. I put my head down on the table. I liked this process better when I didn’t know the competition. Those huge, multimillion-dollar corporations have the resources of the universe at their disposal, and I’m sitting here with rubber cement, some old shoes, and a crocheted doll for inspiration. What was I thinking? That we could win? My brother, Alfred, is right. I’m a dreamer, and not a very good one.

I pick up my pencil and go back to work. I started this process, so I must finish it. It’s funny. As I shade the buttress, I can see the shoe in completion in my mind’s eye. Will my vision carry me through? Or is this a real fool’s errand?

The front door buzzer startles me, and I get up to buzz Roman in. The oven clock says 3:34 A.M. I hear Roman’s footsteps on the stairs. When he reaches the top of the stairs, he stands in the doorway, leaning against the sashes, propping his body up with both hands.

“Hi, hon,” he says.

I keep sketching. “I’ll be right there.” I want to fill in this heel before I forget what I saw in my mind’s eye.

He comes into the kitchen and runs the faucet, filling a glass of water. He comes and stands over my shoulder. I finish the oversize pearl button and put down my pencil and paper. I stand and put my arms around him. He is exhausted, weary from the long hours. I don’t even have to ask, but I do anyway. “How was work?”

“A disaster. I fired my sous-chef. He’s just not up to speed, and he’s extremely temperamental. I can’t have two hotheads in the kitchen.”

He sits down. “I don’t know how my parents have done it, how they’ve stayed in business this long. Running a restaurant is impossible.” Roman puts the glass down and puts his head in his hands. I rub his neck.

“You’ll figure it out,” I whisper quietly in his ear.

“Sometimes I wonder.”

I move my hands down to his shoulders. “Your shoulders are like cement.”

I continue rubbing his shoulders, feeling the pain in my right hand from sketching for too long. I stop and rub my wrist.

“Come on, let’s go to bed.” I lead him up the stairs. He goes into the bathroom while I turn down the covers. I dim the lights in the bedroom. Roman comes into my room, undresses, and climbs into bed. I fluff the covers around him, and he burrows into the pillows. Soon, he’s snoring.

I lie back on the pillows and look up at the ceiling, as I have every night since I moved in. My eye travels around the crown molding, here since the place was built, its Greek-key design reminding me of icing on a cake. The spare white center of the ceiling is like a fresh sheet of sketch paper, empty and longing to be filled. I fill the space with the living image of my grandmother in the Rhedd Lewis gown, wearing the shoes I created. She moves across the expanse of white deliberately and willfully. She is wearing the shoes, the shoes aren’t wearing her, even though they are ornate and structured, they are also wily and fun, as couture shoes should be.

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.”

“My sister wants a family someday.” Tess puts the hyacinth in the front window where the sun can get to the clusters of starburst petals. “She’s traditional,” Tess says.

“Am I?” I ask aloud. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly traditional. I guess I appear to be one of my tribe, but the truth is, whenever I have the opportunity to walk the hard line of tradition, I balk.

The entrance door creaks open. “Hi-yo!” Mom calls out in the vestibule.

“In here, Mom,” I holler.

Mom comes into the shop roaring like a March leopard in a spotted trench coat fit for the random rainstorms of spring. She’d be a March lion but she looks pasty in solid beige, and besides, leopard print is her trademark. Mom wears black leggings, shiny black rubber rain demiboots, and a wide-brimmed patent leather rain hat tied under the chin with a bow. “Are the girls ready?”

Tess goes to the foot of the stairs and calls for her daughters. They don’t answer. We hear her shout, “Okay, I’m coming up.” Tess goes up the stairs.

“She really needs to get a grip on those children,” Mom says softly.

“She’s hoping you will. Where’s Dad?”

“Home. He’s not feeling so hot today.” Mom forces a smile. “He’s exhausted from the treatments.”

“They’re working, aren’t they, Mom?”

“The doctor says they are. The radiation team at Sloan is very optimistic.”

For the first time since Dad was diagnosed, Mom looks tired to me. The constant appointments have taken a toll on her. When she’s not running my father to the doctors, she’s educating herself about his illness. She reads about what he should eat, how often he should rest, and which holistic supplements to take and when. She has to go out and find all the stuff, the organic food and medicinal herbs, then go home and prepare the dishes, strain the tea, and, then, the hardest part of all: force my father to follow the regimen. This is a man who would sprinkle grated cheese on cake if he could. He’s not exactly a compliant patient, and it shows on my mother’s face. She hasn’t had a good night’s rest in months, and it’s clear to me that she needs a break.

“Mom, you look exhausted,” I say gently.

“I know. Thank God for Benefit’s LemonAid. I smear that concealer on the dark circles under my eyes like I’m buttering bread.”

June pours Mom a cup of coffee. Mom takes the mug and is about to put the cup down on my sketchbook. I push it aside and give her a rubber cat’s-paw heel for a coaster instead.

“What can you do?” Mom sighs and sips her coffee, holding the mug with one hand and opening my sketchbook with the other. She absentmindedly flips through it. Then, she focuses and stops on my recent sketch for the Bergdorf shoe. I’m just about to pull the notebook away when Mom says, “My father was so gifted.” She holds up the sketch and shows it to June. “Look at this.”

June looks at the drawing and nods. “That man was ahead of his time. The wide straps, the button details. Look at the heel. Wide at the base, into a spindle at the tip. Completely courant and the man has been dead ten years.”

“That’s not Grandpop’s sketch.” I take a deep breath. “It’s mine.”

“What?” June takes the sketchbook. “Valentine. This is brilliant.”

“That’s the shoe we’re going to make for the Bergdorf competition. At least, that’s the one I’m going to show Gram, and if she likes it, we’ll build it.”

“You really have the gift.” June puts the sketchbook down on the table. “Wow.”

“Genetics. It’s all in the DNA. Good taste cannot be learned or bought.” Mom tightens the belt on her trench coat. “It is inborn of natural talent and honed with hard work. Valentine, all the hours you’re putting in here are paying off.”

“That’s quite a shoe,” June says. “Complex. How are we going to build it?”

“Well, I’m hoping I can find some of the elements in Italy.”

“Good, because we don’t have embossed leather like that in this shop. And that braiding-I’ve never seen anything like it.” June shakes her head.

“I know. I just…dreamed it up.”

Charisma and Chiara run into the workroom. “Aunt June, do you have any candy?”

“What did you give up for Lent?” June, the fallen-away Catholic asks them.

Chiara stares at June. Charisma, no fool, steps forward and answers her, “Well, we don’t give up candy, we just try and do good deeds.”

“And what would those be?”

“I’m nice to the cat.”

“How kind of you.” June opens her purse and gives each of them a peppermint candy.

Charisma makes a face. “But these are free at the Chinese restaurant.”

“Yes, they are. So stop and thank them sometime,” June says. “The Chinese are the backbone of civilization. They invented macaroni and flip-flops.”

Unconvinced, Charisma and Chiara, holding their lousy candy, look at each other.

“Okay, kids, let’s go. Grandpop is waiting at our house.”

Tess helps the girls into their coats. “Mom, thanks so much for taking them for the weekend.” Mom herds the girls out the door.

June is happy to see them go, though only I would know it. “Aren’t they delightful.”

“Sometimes.” Tess says, pulling on her coat. “I’m late. I’m going to meet Charlie at the Port Authority. We’re taking the bus to Atlantic City.”

“Romantic weekend planned?” June asks.

“His company has a convention. I’m going to play the slots while he looks at the latest smoke alarms,” Tess says as she goes. The entrance door snaps shut.

“Smoke alarms? To put out what fire?” June whistles low. “I say buyer beware and run. There’s your best advertisement for marriage, Valentine. Take a good look.”

A cold draft from the open window wakes me. I sit up in bed and look out, pulling the cotton blanket and down comforter around me. Snow. Snow in March. The West Side Highway is a carpet of white, with black zippers of tire prints made by the early morning delivery trucks. There’s a doily of frost on the windowpane, and a layer of icy flakes on the sash.

I slept peacefully through the night. Alone. Roman was busy with a sold-out seating, and had to finish the prep work for a private party, so he crashed at his place instead of coming over and waking me. Gram comes home tomorrow night, and while I’ve enjoyed my run of the place, I have to admit I miss her.

I spent most of yesterday cleaning and putting things back where they belong. I did some research for our trip to Italy and found some new suppliers to visit in addition to Gram’s old reliables. I found some interesting new-guard talent who make braids and trims. I’m hoping to meet them on our trip, and add them to the roster of suppliers we currently use. I want to deliver a shoe to Bergdorf with embellishments that Rhedd Lewis has never seen before. Italian designers have recently been influenced by the in-flux of talent from a new sweep of immigrants, so I’ve come across lots of Russian-, African-, and Middle European-inspired accents in buttons and trim. I can’t wait to show Gram the new stuff.

When I finished my research, I scrubbed the bathroom, cleaned the kitchen, and made lasagna. The work in the shop is up to speed. Gram will return home to a clean house and a first-rate operation, with all existing deadlines met and orders filled.

I get up and pull on some comfortable sweatpants and a hoodie, and go into the bathroom. I pat on some of the rich botanical face cream that Tess gave me for Christmas. Might as well have a spa day, as I won’t be seeing anyone. It’s Sunday, and I have the day to myself.

I go down to the kitchen, take out the coffee press, and put a kettle of water on the stove. I get the milk out of the fridge and pour it into a small pan, putting the burner on low to steam it. I open the wax-paper sack from Ruthie’s, at the Chelsea Market, and pull out a soft brioche sprinkled with glassy raw sugar. I place the brioche on a frilly dessert plate and take a cloth napkin out of the drawer. My cell phone is beeping in the charger, so I flip it open and play the message.

“Hi, honey.” Roman’s voice is raspy. “It’s me. It’s five o’clock on Sunday morning. I’m still in the kitchen. It’s snowing. I wish we were together. I miss you. I’ll call you later.”

“Yeah, it would have been nice, Roman,” I say aloud. “But you have a wife. Her name is Ca’d’Oro and she comes first.”

I realize that I’m willing to overlook a lot because whoever is with me has to do the same. But I also remember how Roman made it his business to find out who I was in the very beginning, when the only clue he had was a glimpse of me on the roof. And now that I’m here for him, I might as well be a pair of those clunky clogs he keeps in the restaurant kitchen. Always on hand. Available. Comfortable. Reliable. The hunt is over.

I pour the boiling water into the coffee press, inhaling the rich earthiness of the dark espresso. I pick up the pot of foaming milk on the stove and pour it into a wide ceramic mug. I add the espresso until the milk turns the color of chocolate taffy.

I take my breakfast and climb the stairs to the roof, stopping in my room to pull on my boots, down coat, hat, and gloves. Pushing the door open and stepping out onto the roof covered in fresh snow, it’s as if I’m standing in a well of soft white candle wax, the shapes of everything familiar gone, replaced with smooth edges, rounded corners, and drapes of silver ice. I place my coffee and brioche on the snow-covered Saint Francis fountain, shake off a lawn chair, and open it to sit.

The sun, behind the thick, white clouds, has the luster of a dull gray pearl. The river has the texture of old, speckled, forest green and beige linoleum as the wind gently ruffles the surface. The walkway on the river is empty except for a couple of park attendants in their blue overalls sprinkling rock salt along the crosswalk at Perry Street.

A seagull hovers overhead, giving my brioche a studied look. “Shoo,” I say to him. He flaps away, his gray wings matching the morning sky. I nestle the mug between my hands and sip. I feel a pang of guilt as I remember Sunday mass. A good Catholic girl usually becomes a guilty Catholic woman, but I say a quiet prayer, and any nagging guilt about my whereabouts at the eight A.M. express mass at Our Lady of Pompeii is exhaled and sent out to sea. Doing the best I can, I remind God.

Snow begins to tumble down, throwing a white net over lower Manhattan. I pull the hood of my coat up over my head, put my feet up on the wall, and lean back.

Why is it, in the story of my life, that the moments I remember with the deepest affection are the times when I have been alone? I can line them up like faceted perfume bottles on an antique dresser.

When I was ten, I went to work with my father at the park. At the end of the day, when the summer sky over Queens was turning the color of smashed raspberries, he went into the supply shed and left me alone on the swings a few feet away. I had the whole of LaGuardia Park number fifteen to myself. I swung as high and as fast as I could, climbing higher and higher, until I swore I could see the blue lights on the top tier of the Empire State Building.

When I was a nineteen-year-old sophomore in college, I went to check my grade at two o’clock in the morning outside Sister Jean Klene’s advanced class, Shakespeare: The Comedies. And I got an A. I stood and stared at that letter A until the reality of it set in: I had achieved the impossible. The solid B student had broken the barrier and earned a perfect grade.

And I’ll never forget the night Bret dropped me off at my apartment in Queens, before leaving on his first business trip to some outpost like Dallas, Texas. I was twenty-seven years old and he had asked me to marry him. Sensing my uncertainty, he said, “Don’t answer now.” After he left to go to the airport to catch his flight, I felt the great relief that comes with being alone. I needed to seek my own counsel, to think things through. So I made a dish of spaghetti with fresh tomatoes from this garden, olive oil from Arezzo, and sweet white garlic. I made a salad of artichokes and black olives. I opened a bottle of wine. I set my own little table and lit candles. Then I sat down to eat a glorious meal, slowly savoring every bite and sip.

I realized that my answer to his proposal, upon his return, would not be the great moment; the great moment had already happened. He had asked. This was the first time in my life I recognized that I delight in the process and not necessarily the result. I was a good girlfriend, but wife? I couldn’t see it. But Bret could. And now, he has it, the life he dreamed of even then. The only difference? He’s with Mackenzie, not me.

I don’t crave a traditional life. If I did, I assume I’d have one. My own sister thinks I want a life like she has, with a husband and children. How can I explain that my thirties may not be about reaching some finish line everyone seems to be rushing toward? Maybe my thirties are about the precious time I have left with Gram and deciding which path to take in my life. Stability or the lark? Very different things.

When I observe Gram, I see how fragile the notion of tradition can be. If I take my eyes off the way she kneads her Easter bread, or if I fail to study the way she sews a seam in suede, or if I lose the mental image I have of her when she negotiates a better deal with a button salesman, somehow, the very essence of her will be lost. When she goes, the responsibility for carrying on will fall to me. My mother says I’m the keeper of the flame, because I work here, and because I choose to live here. A flame is a very fragile thing, too, and there are times when I wonder if I’m the one who can keep it going.

A wind kicks up. I hear the snap of the old screen door. I turn around, my heart pounding a little faster, hoping for a second that Roman made it over after all. But it’s just the wind.

That evening, I’m debating as I pace behind the kitchen counter. Do I heat up the lasagna now or wait until Gram gets home tomorrow night? One of the rules of etiquette my mother insisted upon on is that you never cut a cake before the company comes. You present it properly and whole to the guests, like a gift. The lasagna will become a leftover instead of a welcome-home gesture if I eat a square tonight. So I put it back in the refrigerator.

The buzzer sounds. I press the intercom. “Delivery,” Roman says. I buzz him in. Then I go to the top of the stairs and turn on the track lights.

“Hi, Valentine.” Roman smiles up at me from the bottom of the stairs.

His face is about the best thing I’ve ever seen. “I thought you were working tonight.”

“I’m playing hooky so I can be with my girl.” He climbs the stairs two at a time, wielding an enormous tote bag. He drops the bag when he reaches me, scoops me up in his arms, and kisses me. “You’re surprised?”

I kiss him tenderly on his cheek, his nose, and then his neck, hoping each kiss will make up for the doomed thoughts I had about us on the roof this morning. I’m not a good liar, so I fess up, “I’m surprised. I totally gave up.”

Roman looks at me, concerned. “Gave up what?”

“That I’d see you before Gram came home.”

“Ah.” He looks relieved. “Well, I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.” He kisses me again. I let the words I’m not going anywhere play in my head like a simple tune. Roman picks up the bag and follows me into the living room. “I’m going to make you dinner.”

“You don’t have to. I made a lasagna.”

“I don’t think so.” He pulls a bottle of wine out of the bag. “We’re starting with a Brunello, vintage 1994.”

“I wasn’t even legal drinking age then.”

“You were plenty old enough.”

Roman laughs as he pulls the cork out of the wine and places it on the counter. He takes two wineglasses from the shelf and fills them. He brings me a glass. He toasts and we sip. Then he kisses me, the lush wine on his lips making mine tingle. “Like it?”

I nod.

“Get ready. I have a wine for each course.”

“Each course?”

“Uh-huh,” he laughs. “We’re having two.”

I pull out the stool under the counter and climb onto it. I watch him as he unpacks the tote, which is like one of those boxes in the circus where you think the last pup in a skirt has danced out, but another jumps out of the box and gets in line. There is box after box, tray after tray, container after container, until most of the counter is filled with unmarked delicacies.

Roman opens the cabinets, pulling out a large skillet, and a smaller one. He puts the flames on low underneath the empty pans. Quickly, he throws butter in one and drizzles olive oil in the other.

He reaches into the tote and hands me a small white box. “This is for you.”

I shake it. “Let me guess, a truffle?”

“I’m boring you with my truffle dishes. No, it’s not fungi.”

“Okay.” I open it. A branch of coral the color of a blood orange lies on a pad of white cotton. I pull it out of the box and place it in my hand. The solid fingers of the waxy jewel make a lovely shape that curls as it rests in my hand. “Coral.”

“From Capri.”

“Have you been there?”

“Many times,” he says. “Have you?”

“Never.”

“Well, I’m taking you for your birthday. I worked it out with Gram. When you fly to Italy next month, you’ll get your work done, and then we’re going to Capri for a week at the end of your stay. We’re going to stay at the Quisisana. An old friend is the chef of the restaurant there. We’ll eat and swim and relax. How about it?”

“You’re serious?”

“Very.” Roman leans across the counter and kisses me.

“I’d love to go to Capri with you.”

“I’m taking care of everything. Just the two of us, and that ocean and that sky and that place. This will be the first time I’m in love when I’ve gone there.”

“Are you in love?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“I was hoping.”

“I am.” Roman puts his arms around me. “Are you?”

“Definitely.”

“There’s an old trick that I learned from the locals on Capri when I was there. Everybody wants to go into the Blue Grotto, and it gets overrun with tourists. So they came up with a sign that says Non Entrata La Grotto. When the sign is out, the tour guide tells the people on the boat that the surf is too rough to enter, but in fact, the locals put the sign there to keep the tourists out while they’re inside swimming.”

“That’s a cheat. What if it’s the only time the poor tourists can visit Capri and they miss out on the Blue Grotto?”

“The tour guides circle past the grotto and return later, when the sign is gone, and they row inside.”

“What’s the grotto like?”

“I’ve tried in every place I’ve ever lived to paint a room that color blue. And I’ve never found it. And the water is warm. Some old king used it as a secret passageway through the island to the other side. A lot of decadent stuff went on in there.” Roman pulls me close. “And there will be more of that this spring.”

The kitchen fills with the scent of hot butter. Roman quickly turns and lifts the pan off the stove, throwing in garlic and herbs, swishing them around in the butter, creating a smooth mixture. “Okay, I’m gonna let this set. First up: caviar. From the Black Sea.”

He snaps open a container and places a wafer-thin pizzelle, which looks like a flat, circular waffle, on a plate. “You know the pizzelle cookies from when we were kids? This is my version. Instead of sugar, I make these with lemon zest and fresh pepper.” He opens the tin of caviar and scoops a spoonful onto the pizzelle. Roman adds a dab of crème fraîche on top of the Black Sea beads and gives it to me.

I take a bite. The combination of the tart lemon in the pizzelle, the rich caviar, and the rush of sweet cream melts in my mouth.

“Not bad, right?”

“It’s heavenly.”

I watch as Roman throws medallions of beef into the large skillet with the olive oil. He chops sweet onions and mushrooms onto the meat, dousing it in splashes of the red wine from the bottle we are drinking. Slowly, he adds cream to the pan, and the sauce turns from golden brown to a pale burgundy.

“I spent a few months on Capri in the kitchen of the Quisisana. Best thing I ever did. They have an open oven outside, behind the kitchen. In the morning, we’d build the fire with old driftwood from the beach and then we’d keep it going all day, slow-roasting tomatoes for sauce, root vegetables for side dishes, you name it. I learned the value of taking time when cooking. I roasted tomatoes down to their essence, the skins turning into silky ribbons, while the pulp turns rich and hearty in the heat. You don’t even have to make a sauce out of them, just throw them on pasta, they’re that sweet.”

In the small pan, where the herbs are glazed in butter, Roman empties a container of rice, loaded with olives, capers, tomatoes, and herbs. As steam rises off the rice, and the steak sizzles, he sets the counter for dinner.

Roman has the most beautiful hands (people who work with their hands usually do), long fingers that move with grace, artfully and deliberately. It’s mesmerizing to watch him slice and chop, the blade rhythmic as it glints against the wood.

“The nights on Capri were the best. After work, we’d go down to the beach and the ocean would be so calm and warm. I’d lie in that saltwater and look up at the moon, and just let the surf wash over me. I felt healed. Then we’d build a big fire and roast langoustines, and have some homemade wine with it. That’s my idea of bliss.” He looks up at me. “I can’t wait to take you there.”

Roman is very neat when he works, straightening the kitchen as he goes, maybe his tidiness coming from the necessity of working in small spaces. Nothing is wasted in Roman’s cooking, he respects every stalk, leaf, and bud of an herb that he uses, examining it before mincing it or rubbing it into a recipe. In his hands, common foods become elements of delight, crackling softly in butter, steaming in cream, and drizzled with olive oil.

Roman opens a container filled with finely chopped vegetables-bright green cucumbers, red tomatoes, yellow peppers-and broken bits of fresh parmesan cheese. He sprinkles the vegetables with balsamic vinegar from a tiny bottle with a gold stopper. “This is very special. It’s twenty-two years old. Last bottle! It’s from a farm outside Genoa. My cousin makes it himself.”

Roman fills two bowls with the chopped salad. I remember telling him how much I love raw vegetables finely chopped; he remembers and he delivers. He opens a second bottle of wine, this one earthy and hearty, a Dixon burgundy 2006. He turns to the stove and flips the steaks, which make a cloud of steam. A misty cloud rises from the pan of rice. He lifts it off the burner and spoons the hot rice mixture onto the dishes. He throws the moppeen over his shoulder and lifts the other pan. He places the lean steak artfully on top, my dish of rice first and then his. Then he drizzles the sauce from the pan on top of the steak and rice.

“Should we sit at the table?” I ask him.

“No, this is better.” He pulls out a stool and sits down across from me. “I feel like I’m at a board of directors meeting when I sit over there.”

I pick up the knife to cut the steak, but I don’t need it. I break off a piece with the fork. The savory sauce has cooked through the meat in an explosion of flavors that are magnified by the sweet grapes that turn hearty and earthy to taste. I chew the delectable bite. “Marry me,” I say to him.

“And here I thought you were breaking up with me.”

I put my fork down and look at him. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“Come on, Valentine. I’m the worst. I really blew it the past two weeks. Teodora is gone, and I planned to come over every night and spend a lot of time with you.”

“It’s okay,” I stammer. It’s as if that seagull delivered to Roman a message from my epiphany on the roof this morning. He really can read my mind.

“No it isn’t. I wanted to be with you, but then things went wild at the restaurant and I blew it. That’s all there is to it. But I’m sorry about it. I wanted to make this time special for you.”

“I hate that we spend a lot of time apologizing to each other for working hard. It’s the way it is. We’re both trying to build something.” I love how I was ready to kill him this morning and now, I’m making excuses for him. This surely falls under the category Be Adorable, doesn’t it?

“I don’t know how else to do it. I don’t know how to run a restaurant and not be there twenty-four hours a day. I don’t think it’s possible. Now, down the line, when it’s established and I’ve paid back my investors, and I find the right chef to replace me in the kitchen, then this becomes a different discussion.”

It’s funny that Roman uses the word discussion, when we haven’t had one. I attempt to be understanding when I say, “I guess I don’t know where I fit in your life right now. And I don’t want to ask you to put me first, because that’s not fair either.”

Roman folds his arms on the counter and leans forward. “What do you need to hear from me?”

“Where do you see this going?” There it is. I put it out there. The second it’s out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back. But it’s too late. The last thing I wanted to do was turn our last night together into one of those talks.

“I’m serious about you,” he says. “I don’t have a high opinion of myself when it comes to being a husband, because I tried and failed at it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to try again.”

“How do you feel about my career?”

“I’m in awe of you. You’re an artist.”

“And you are, too.” I sip my wine. “You are also the Emergency Glass Box guy.”

“What’s that?”

“At the first sign that we’re going down in flames, you break the glass and pull the lever and save the day. Like coming over here tonight. Cooking for me. Taking me to Capri without leaving the dinner table. Kissing me with great wine on your lips. Telling me you’re in love with me. That was the crème fraîche on the caviar.”

“I want this.”

“Roman, you have fallen in love with me.”

“I wouldn’t waste caviar from the Black Sea on a fling.”

“What does the fling get?”

“Potato chips.”

I laugh. “So that’s how I tell?” I smooth the napkin on my lap. “The caviar test?”

“There are other ways.” Roman comes around the counter to my side. To be honest, I don’t want to stop eating this dinner, but sometimes a woman has to choose between food and sex, and it’s the idiot who chooses food. I can reheat the steak later, but letting Roman know that I’m in love with him, too, is a moment that won’t come around again. Well, it might. But it would be different. So, I push the plate away as he lifts me off the stool and into the moment. Desire definitely has a shelf life. Delay love or the expressing of it, and it dies. Take it for granted, and it goes away, like the morning snow on the roof during the ides of March.

Roman carries me up the stairs, marking each step with a kiss. My feet drag along the hallway wall like handles on an old suitcase as he carries me to my room. As we make love, every doubt I have, every question that enters my mind about us, who we are, where we’re going, and what we will become, disappears like the quarter moon behind the low clouds of spring.

I have fallen more deeply in love with this man on the very day I was planning to say good-bye to him. I may need my solitude, but I also want to be with him. I may not always see this clearly when he is away from me, but it’s what I’m most sure of when we’re together.

“I love you, Valentine,” he says.

“You know, I get that a lot.”

“You do?” he asks as he kisses my neck.

“‘I love you, Valentine’ is actually a popular phrase used in greeting cards.”

“If you were sending me one, what would it say?” he asks.

“I love you, too, Roman.”

And there it is, words that I dread to say and do mean, because with them comes the responsibility of owning it, moving forward together and deciding for real who we are to each other. Now we’re not just lovers discovering what we like and sharing what we know. In this mutual declaration, we’re accountable to each other. We’re in love, and now, our relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead.

He places the tip end of his nose on the tip end of mine. I almost feel he’s looking so deeply into my eyes, he’s seeing the rest of my life play out in slides clicking through on a carousel. I wonder what he’s looking for, what he sees. Then he says, “Our children would be blessed, you know.”

“They would never go without good food or pretty shoes.”

“They’d have brown eyes.”

“And they’d be tall,” I say.

“And they’d be funny. A house of laughs we’d have.” He kisses me.

“That’s my dream,” I tell him.

We get tangled up in the down comforter and the pillows that fly around the bed like doors opening and closing, and as we settle in to make love, we begin to make plans. I no longer wonder where this is going. Now, I know.