Adriana Trigiani - Very Valentine

Gianluca brings me a caffè latte, while he carries a bottle of water for himself. “My wife drank caffè latte, never espresso.”

“My kind of girl.”

Gianluca sits down next to me.

“I feel bad that you got stuck with me. I’m sure you have all kinds of important things to do.”

“I do?” He smiles.

“Sure. You have a daughter and a family in Arezzo. You probably have a hobby or a girlfriend.”

He laughs.

“What’s funny about that?”

“There is no subtlety with you.”

“Well, forgive me. I’m just trying to make conversation.”

He swigs his water, and leaves my question lying on the table like the rejected pile of flimsy silk linen. But I am curious about this man, I don’t know why. I have nothing to lose, so I get personal with him. “Why did you get a divorce?”

“Why aren’t you married?” He answers with a question.

“You first.”

“My wife wanted to move to the city. But she knew I couldn’t leave my father. So we agreed that she would live in Florence while I stayed on in Arezzo, and I would visit, or she would come home on weekends. Orsola was going to university, and it seemed like the arrangement could work. We were doing what we needed to do, what we wanted to do. But that doesn’t make a marriage.”

“Sounds ideal to me. Very romantic to have two lives that come together once in a while and sparks fly.”

“It’s no good. You take each other for granted.”

“I know all about that.” The reasons behind Gianluca’s divorce sound an awful lot like the excuses I use when Roman disappoints me. Sometimes I feel that we put our relationship on hold in order to do our work. Somehow, though, I think love fixes all of this. Isn’t love the most practical of all emotions? Isn’t it a constant? “Do you still love her?”

“I don’t believe you can love someone who doesn’t love you.”

“Sometimes you can’t help it.”

“I can,” he says simply. “Now tell me about you.”

My phone pulses. I fish it out of my purse. “Saved by technology.” I check the phone. “It’s Gabriel,” I say aloud. I’ll text him later.

“Your boyfriend?” he asks.

“No, no. Just a friend.” I snap my phone shut and put it back in my purse. “We should get back to work,” I say.

I follow Gianluca back through the atrium to the hallway that leads to the workroom. There’s a set of glass doors that separate the hallway from the atrium. Gianluca dials the security code. I look at the reflection of the two of us in the glass.

“Nice couple, eh?” he says, meeting my eyes in the glass.

I nod politely. I remember something Gabriel told me back in college. He said a man never spends time with a woman unless he wants something. Gianluca is spending an awful lot of time with me. I wonder what he’s after. More business? Maybe. But we make only so many pairs of shoes a year. It’s not likely I’d double my leather order. It’s almost as if he wants an excuse to be away from the tannery. I heard the yelling. It isn’t all fun and games at Vechiarelli & Son. Maybe I’m his excuse to take some time away from the shop.

We return to the workroom and take our seats at the table. Sabrina left a new pile of swatches on the table.

“It is still your turn,” says Gianluca. “I want to know about you. Tell me about your boyfriend.”

“Well, his name is Roman. He is a chef in his own restaurant. He makes rustic Italian cuisine.”

Gianluca laughs. “All Italian food is rustic. We’ve been eating the same food for the past two thousand years. Will you marry this Roman?”

“Maybe.”

“Has he asked?”

“Not yet.” The look on Gianluca’s face annoys me. “Hey, for the record, I was asked once before.”

“Of course, you had many suitors.”

I just look at him. Is he joking or does he actually believe I’m a femme fatale? Let him think whatever he wants. My romantic past, my pre-Roman era, seems historic to me now. A woman can reinvent or erase her history entirely when she travels. This is one of the great benefits of leaving home.

“Do you want children?” he asks.

“You know, for the longest time I didn’t know. But now, I think I might.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty-four at the end of this month.”

He whistles low. “You’d better hurry.”

“Who are you? The fertility police?”

“No, it’s that I’m older and I have experience. You need energy to raise children. You should do it soon. It’s the best thing I ever did.”

“Orsola is beautiful and has a big heart. You should be very proud of her.”

“She is the best thing to come out of my marriage.”

“Do you think you’ll marry again?”

“No,” he answers quickly.

“You’ve made your mind up about that.”

“I have my daughter. What would be the purpose of getting married again?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Love, maybe?”

“Love is not what makes a marriage,” he says. “Love starts one, perhaps, but something else finishes it.”

“Really.” I put down my swatches and lean forward. “Please. Explain.”

“Marriage in Italy used to be about two families coming together,” he begins.

“Yes, and merging their assets,” I say, nodding. “A business of a sort.”

“Correct. And their beliefs, too, about how to live and how to build a life together. But sometimes, families don’t mesh. My wife, I believe, loved me, but she thought I would achieve great things. And when I didn’t, she left.”

“What was she expecting?”

He waves his hand in the air. “A city life.”

“You know, Gianluca, a city life is not so bad.”

“I don’t want it.”

“How could you not ? It’s the best. Gram and I live in Greenwich Village in New York City. And we have a roof garden where we grow tomatoes, and sometimes, at night, it’s so quiet you’d think you were by the lake you showed me this morning. Really.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Maybe it’s because there are so many buildings, and we live so closely together, but we appreciate nature more. Every tree is fascinating. Flowers are treasured. City people love flowers so much they’re sold in bunches on street corners year-round.”

“I prefer a field of flowers.”

“Well, you can have that, too, if you take a train ride up to the botanical gardens in the Bronx. You notice the sky more, too. Of course, I don’t think you can beat the colors of the Italian sky, but what we have is also very beautiful. The pollution makes for some gorgeous purple sunsets over New Jersey.”

He laughs. “Just don’t breathe it.”

“Best of all, our building looks out over the Hudson River. The river is wide and deep and flows out past Staten Island to the Atlantic Ocean in a grand sweep. When winter comes, the river freezes and creates a great expanse of silver ice. It never freezes all the way across, like a lake-where you could skate on it-instead it breaks into big gray puzzle pieces of ice that bob in the water until the sun melts them. But for days, when it’s freezing, you can see these gray blocks of ice bumping up against each other where they used to fit together. And at night, if you walk by the river’s edge, the only sound you’ll hear is the soft tapping of the pieces of ice as they float on the surface as water rushes underneath.”

“That quiet?”

“Almost silent. During the winter, the parks and the walkway are empty. I take walks over there, and it’s all mine. I wonder, how can this view be free? But it is.”

“It belongs to you.”

“I pretend it does. I was walking alone on a pier one morning last winter. The river was frozen, but something new caught my eye. It was a flash of ruby red bobbing on a slab of ice. So I walked out to the end of the pier. Three seagulls had caught a fish, a big one. They had gored it and were eating. The red I saw at a distance was the blood of the fish. I turned away at first. But then I had to look back. There was something so compelling about the palette of the black river, the silver ice, and the maroon blood of the fish. It was horrible, and yet beautiful. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”