Adriana Trigiani - Brava, Valentine

“He writes me letters, Gram.”

“That’s lovely.”

“They are.”

“He asks me a lot of questions about you.” Gram lowers her voice.

“Really? And do you present me in a fabulous light?”

“Always.” Gram laughs. “I may have married a Vechiarelli, but I’ll always be an Angelini.”

The Angelini Shoe Company resembles Santa’s Workshop in the North Pole on Christmas Eve, except it’s May and we’re on a deadline of a different sort. Boxes lie open everywhere, ribbons with the gold seal are spooled out on the table, and the sounds of packing tape ripping, tissue paper rustling, and our laughter thread through shipping day like music.

I run a tally on the computer as I count the finished shoe boxes and load them into the shipping boxes like I’m stacking precious gold bricks. Gram taught me that shipping is like presentation on the plate when preparing food. You want the recipient to open the box and gasp at the beauty of the contents before they even open a box of shoes. So we use bubble wrap around the edges to hold the boxes, and then over the top, we secure the boxes with a square of red velvet with an embroidered A in the center. Harlene Levin at the Piccardy shoe parlor makes throw pillows out of our packing materials-that’s how luscious the boxes look when she opens them.

Jaclyn and Tess are wrapping the pumps in tissue paper, placing felt shoe bags over the paper, and closing the lids. My mother affixes the gold medallion dead center on the red and white striped boxes. She is never a millimeter off-she’s been doing this since she was a girl.

My father does the heavy lifting. He checks my math, counts the boxes, and then weighs, seals, and closes them. Alfred then places the shipping label on the outside of the boxes and stacks them in the entry, ready for pickup by Overnight Trucks, who we hire to cart our shipment cross-country.

“Dad! Make her stop!” Tess hollers from the back of the shop. “Jaclyn’s rumpling the tissue paper.”

“Jaclyn, cut it out. You are not my favorite angel,” Dad chides her.

We laugh. My dad hasn’t used that line from the television show Charlie’s Angels since Jaclyn was a girl.

“What self-respecting Italian Americans name one of their children after the pretty one on Charlie’s Angels ?” June says.

“They were all pretty on that show,” Mom corrects her. “I will always love Farrah the most. May she rest in peace. She was in my group.” Mom considers any movie or television star within five years under or over her age one of “her group”-never mind that she’s never met them, she considers them her cultural equal. “We let the children name the baby.”

“We almost named you Wonder Woman,” Tess says.

“Yeah. That was our other favorite show,” I tell her.

“Don’t let us interrupt.” Pamela stands in the doorway with Rocco and Alfred Jr.

“Hey, buddies!” The boys run to their father.

“I need some help over here, boys,” Dad teases them.

“Can I help?” Pam asks.

I look at my sisters. Usually, we never take Pamela up on her offers to help, whether it’s yard work or the dishes. But now that Alfred works here, Angelini Shoes belongs to all of us. It may be time to treat her like one of the family and not an in-law.

“What do you like to do?” I ask Pamela.

“Anything.”

“I think you’re a medallion sort of girl. Right, Ma?”

“Come over here, Pamela, and I’ll teach you the fine craft of affixing the company logo to the company shoe box. This way, if I’m ever hit by a bus, God forbid, somebody will know exactly where the logo belongs.”

“Great.” Pamela smiles and puts down her purse. She goes to my mother, who shows her what to do.

Rocco and Alfred Jr. are being carried through the shop by Alfred, who laughs as he hauls them like sacks of flour slung over his shoulders. He catches my eye. My brother smiles at me with the same relief my father had on his face when he got the last “all-clear” report from the doctors at Sloan Kettering. They are more alike than they know.

“June, when are you taking vacation?” Mom asks.

“Right after we finish the shipment. I’m going to take off when Valentine goes to Buenos Aires.”

“Who’s going to Buenos Aires?” Tess asks.

“I am.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there!”

“Well, maybe next time. Although, if we’re going to be fair, it will be Alfred and Pamela on the next trip. My partner gets first dibs on international travel.”

“And we’ll take it!” Pamela smiles.

“Who would have thought it? Valentine and Alfred are true partners,” Mom says. My mother has replaced Saint Jude, the patron saint of impossible cases, with her son and daughter, the improbable partners.

“It’s a miracle,” Dad says. “You act like grown-ups. Well, you are, I guess. And I’m proud of youse guys.”

“Break time.” Gabriel enters the shop carrying a large tray of freshly baked chocolate-chip cookies. He places them on the desk. He checks the coffeepot. “Stone cold. How can we have cookies without coffee?”

Gabriel takes the pot back to the sink to wash it.

“This is like the old days,” Mom says.

“Yep, somebody always bitching about something,” Dad says.

“Now, Dutch,” Gabriel says. “Watch your language in front of the boys. And I mean…me.”

June spoons coffee grounds into the maker. “Let me make myself useful. I can’t teach my apprentice when the table is being used for shipping.”

“What apprentice?” Mom asks.

“Me,” Gabriel says. “That’s right, you Los Angelinis-you better look out. I’ve moved in, and I’m taking over. I started with the living room, and now, like a good Italian mold on veiny cheese, I’m seeping down into the workroom and into the shoe business. Soon you’ll all be wearing the Biondi.”

“He’s got a gift.” June breaks a cookie in half and tastes it. “And our lunches during the training sessions are to die for!”

The buzzer rings in the entrance. “It’s probably the truck.” I holler over the din of my family as they gather around the cookies, “Let them in, Dad.”

Dad goes to answer the door. He comes back into the shop, followed by Kathleen Sweeney. She wears a red trench coat. She stands out like a cardinal who lands on the roof in snow.

“Val, Alfred. Somebody here to see you.”

I look at Alfred. The color drains from his face. He doesn’t move. Luckily Pamela has her head down, concentrating on the medallions.

I spring into action. “Hi, Kathleen! Come on in. Everybody say hello to the patron saint of Angelini Shoes-Kathleen Sweeney, from the Small Business Administration.”

Kathleen stands next to the cutting table. She looks so small there, among the stacks of shipping boxes. She ignores the packing hoopla and focuses on the people, taking in my mother and father, sisters, Pamela, and the boys as if she’s parachuted into enemy territory and has to gather as much information as she can as quickly as she can before the searchlights come on and she is discovered. This can’t be easy for her. But as it is for all mistresses, exposure to the family of the lover is a learning opportunity, and she is taking it all in to better understand Alfred, or even to help her make a deeper connection to him.

Gabriel stares at Kathleen with a sense of wonder. No Italian comare that he has ever heard of would have the nerve to show up at the family place of business. But Kathleen is part of the Angelini Shoe Company-not directly, but she has helped us secure a loan we might not have gotten without her assistance. Whatever guilt I have about this, I’ll have to sort out down the line. I have enough to worry about when it comes to the welfare of the people in this room.