Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

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.