Adriana Trigiani - Brava, Valentine

“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.

“WHEN I TELL YOU TO look, open your eyes,” Gabriel says.

I take my hands away from my face and drink in Gabriel’s handiwork, the newly decorated living room and kitchen at 166 Perry Street. “Oh, my God-or should I say, Oh, my William Haines.”

“I knew you’d get it. I knew you’d see old Hollywood in the new decor!”

“I saw it immediately!” My mother beams from the kitchen. “Like bang! Bang! Bang!” She shoots an imaginary gun around the room at the window treatments, the paint, the re-covered, and sometimes replaced, furniture.

“Very elegant,” Tess comments.

“I’m gonna have you do my house,” Jaclyn promises. “I love the blue.”

“I’m so happy the Sisters Roncalli concur.”

“You’ve got a flair, Gabriel,” my mother practically purrs.

“Yes, I do. And I have the taste to back up the pizzazz. The blue, Jaclyn, is because this level is just a floor away from the sky itself. The sky was my inspiration. I want you to feel uplifted when you enter.”