GRAM AND I ARE RIGHT ON TIME for our meeting with Rhedd Lewis at Bergdorf Goodman. Gram gets out of the cab and waits for me on the corner as I pay the driver. I scoot across the seat and join her on the corner of Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue.
Gram wears a simple black pantsuit with a chic, oversize sunburst pendant on a thick gold chain around her neck. The hem of her pants breaks in a soft cuff on the vamp of her gold-trimmed black pumps. She holds her black leather shoulder bag close to her. Her posture is straight and tall, like the mannequin posing in a Christian Lacroix herringbone coat directly behind her in the department store window.
The exterior of Bergdorf’s is stately; it was once a private home, built in the 1920s, with a soft gray sandstone exterior accented with lead-glass windows. It was one of several grand residences built in Manhattan by the Vanderbilt family. This corner lot is one of the most prestigious in all of New York City, as it overlooks the grand piazza of the Plaza Hotel to the north, while it faces Fifth Avenue to the east.
Gram smiles at me, her bright red lipstick applied beautifully. “I love your suit.”
I’m wearing a b michael, a navy silk-wool cropped jacket with a generous pilgrim collar and matching wide-leg trousers. I made the designer a pair of shoes for his mother, so this suit is a barter deal. “You look great, Gram.”
We enter the store through the revolving door at the side entrance. This part of the store resembles a solarium except that the glass cases are filled with designer handbags rather than exotic plants. The blond wood-parquet floor is lit by a chandelier drenched in honey-colored prisms. Gram and I head straight for the elevators and our meeting. I have high hopes, and Gram has done her best to temper my expectations.
As we get off the elevator on the eighth floor, it’s quiet, even the phones ringing on a soft pulse. There is no hint of the shopping bustle happening below us, in fact, it feels like we’re in a tony Upper East Side apartment building rather than a suite of offices. The tasteful décor is a wash of neutrals, with the occasional pop of color in the furniture and artwork.
I check in with the receptionist. She asks us to wait on the love seat, covered in apple green moiré and trimmed in navy blue. The coffee table is a low, modern Lucite circle, with copies of the Bergdorf winter catalog featuring resort wear fanned across its surface. I’m about to pick it up and peruse it when a young woman appears in the doorway. “Ms. Lewis will see you now. Please follow me.”
The young woman leads us into Rhedd Lewis’s office, which has the subtle fragrance of green tea and pink peonies. The desk is a large, simple, modern rectangle covered in turquoise leather. The sisal carpet gives the room the fresh feel of a Greek villa by way of Fifth Avenue. The lacquered bamboo desk chair is empty. Gram and I take our seats on Fornasetti chairs, two sleek modern thrones with caramel brown cushions. Gram points to the park, beyond the windows. “What a view.”
I rise up out of my chair. With the last of the autumn leaves gone, the bare treetops in Central Park look like an endless expanse of Cy Twombly gray scribbles.
“It must’ve been a dream to live in this grand house,” a woman’s deep voice says from behind us. I turn around to see Rhedd Lewis in the doorway. I recognize her from her profile on Wikipedia. She’s tall and willowy, wears red cigarette pants with a black cashmere tunic and a necklace that could only be described as a macramé plant hanger from the seventies. Somehow, the strange piece works. On her feet, she sticks with the classics, black leather flats by Capezio. She walks to the front of her desk, practically on tiptoe.
Rhedd Lewis is around my mother’s age, and her upright posture and grand carriage are the tip-off that she was a dancer in a former life. Her honey blond hair is cropped short in wispy layers, with a fringe of long bangs that sweeps across her face like drapery. “Thank you for slumming uptown.” She smiles, extending her hand to Gram. “I’m Rhedd Lewis.”
“I’m Teodora Angelini and this is my partner, Valentine Roncalli,” Gram says. “She’s also my granddaughter.”
I hide my delight at Gram’s announcement that I’m her partner (this is the first time she has ever said it!) by thrusting my hand toward Rhedd as if I’m handing her a flier for a sofa sale at Big Al’s in the East Village.
“I love a family business. And when a young woman takes up the mantle, it thrills me. The best designers inherit the skill set. But don’t tell anyone I said that.”
“Your secret is safe with us,” I tell her.
“And here’s another one. When it comes to craftsmanship, there’s nothing like the Italians.”
“We agree,” Gram says.
“Tell me about your business.” Rhedd leans against her desk, crosses her arms, and stands before us like a professor posing a challenge to her class.
“I’m an old-fashioned cobbler, Miss Lewis. I trust the old ways. I learned how to make shoes from my husband, who learned the trade from his father. I’ve been making wedding shoes for over fifty years.”
“How would you describe your line?”
“Elegant simplicity. I was born in December 1928, and my work is influenced by the times I grew up in. In the world of design, I like traditional trendsetters. I’m a fan of Claire McCardell. I admire the whimsy of Jacques Fath. When I was a girl in the city, my mother took me to the salons of designers like Hattie Carnegie and Nettie Rosenstein. It was a thrill to actually meet them. I didn’t end up making hats or dresses, but what I observed became important when I set out to make shoes. Line, proportion, comfort, all these things matter when you’re an artist making clothes.”
“I agree,” Rhedd says, listening intently. “Who do you like now?”
Gram nods. “In the shoe business, you can’t beat the Ferragamo family. They get it right every time.”
“And your inspiration?” Rhedd smooths the necklace around her neck.
“Oh, I’d say-my girls.” Gram smiles.
“And who would they be?”
“Let’s see. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Audrey Hepburn, and Grace Kelly.”
“Simplicity and style,” Rhedd agrees.
“Exactly,” Gram says.
Whenever Gram makes cultural references, she refers to her holy trinity of style for women of a certain age: the First Lady, the movie star, and the princess. Born around the same time as Gram, their lives, while they didn’t mirror her own, gave a context to her work. Jacqueline Onassis was all about cut and line, built from the finest fabrics; Audrey Hepburn was a waif, her style influenced by dance, then exalted in theatrical evening wear that was embroidered and beaded; Grace Kelly had the cool classicism of the debutante turned working girl, gloves, hats, A-line dresses, tweed coats.
Gram points out that her muses wore the fashions, the fashions didn’t wear them. Gram believes a woman should invest wisely and prudently in her wardrobe. Her philosophy is that you should own one gorgeous coat, one great pair of evening shoes, one good pair for day. She can’t understand why women my age power-shop, as she, Gram, believes in quality over quantity. However, in other ways, my generation is a lot more like hers than she knows.
Gram’s peers were born at the end of the Jazz Age. They had a certain inborn confidence in their abilities that my mother’s generation had to struggle to find. Even though my mom’s generation of women were rowdy feminists, Gram’s group really blazed the path for them in the workplace; of course they would say that they had to. Gram’s group included the young women who went to work in mills, factories, and shops when the men went off to fight in World War II. The jobs they held during the war went back to the men when they returned. Gram says that’s how women ended up back in the kitchen in the 1950s. She went back to the kitchen, too, but it was up a flight of stairs after a full day of work in the shoe shop. Gram was a working mother before that was a label. In her day, she said, she “helped her husband,” but in fact, we know the truth-she was his full partner.
Rhedd circles around her desk, sits down, and leans forward. She adjusts the Tiffany clock and the ceramic pencil cup before her. Her computer screen is recessed into the wall next to her desk. Her screen saver is a black and white 1950s photo of the great model Lisa Fonssagrives, smoking a cigarette in a New Look gown at the intersection where Gram and I got out of the cab a few minutes ago.
“Ladies, my good friend Debra McGuire told me about you. Debra has a great eye. She brought me the shoes you gave her for the movie. I was very impressed.”
“Thank you,” Gram and I say at once.
“And it gave me an idea.” Rhedd gets up and goes to a tea cart under the windows. She pours herself a glass of water, and then two more, one for me and one for Gram. As she serves us, she says, “We work about a year in advance on our holiday windows. And when I saw the shoe you made, it gave me an idea for the 2008 windows. I want to do brides. And a Russian theme.”
“Okay.” Gram thinks. “Cut velvet, boots, calfskin, fleece.”
“Maybe. I’m looking for a one-of-a kind fantasy shoe, something that would be shown exclusively in my windows.”
“Interesting,” Gram says, but I can hear the skepticism in her voice. “But you should know that we work from our company designs-”
“Gram, every pair of shoes we make is custom,” I interrupt and look at Rhedd. “We’ve done fantasy styles for weddings. We did a pair of riding boots in white calfskin and black patent leather for a bride and groom who were married on a horse farm in Virginia.”
“That’s true,” Gram admits. “And we did a pair of mules in fire engine red satinet for a bride who was married to a fireman on the Lower East Side.”
“And there was the bride who married a Frenchman and we did a Madame Pompadour pump with oversize silk bows.”
“To be perfectly honest,” Rhedd says, “I haven’t had much luck with small shops like yours. Small companies, exclusive custom shoemakers, stay small for a reason. Usually, they know what they know and they’re uncomfortable in a bigger venue. They lack a worldview, a vision.”
“We have a vision,” I assure her. I don’t look at Gram as I make my point. The salesman in me comes out. “We know we have to grow our brand, and we are taking a hard look at how we can do that in today’s marketplace. We approach every customer as an opportunity to reinvent our designs. However, and you should know this, we are proud of our legacy. Our shoes are the finest made in the world. We believe that.”
Rhedd looks off toward the closed door behind us as though she’s expecting some big idea to walk into the room, but lucky for me, I think she heard it already. “That’s why I want to give you a chance.”
“And we appreciate it,” I tell her.
“A chance for you and for other shoe designers to give me what I need.”
“There are others?” Gram leans back in her chair.
“It’s a competition. I’m meeting with several other designers, a custom shop from France, and a few well-known names who manufacture on a grand scale.”
“We’re up against the big guys?” I take a sip of my water.
“The biggest. But if you’re as good as you say”-her eyes narrow-“you’ll prove you have the talent and execution to pull this off.
“My creative director is going to come up with some sketches for the backdrop of the windows, the settings, if you will. I will select the wedding gowns for the tableaux, and from that group, we will choose one gown to send to you and the other designers. You will each design and build a pair of shoes for that gown. And then I will choose my favorite, and that designer will be brought on to do the shoes for all the gowns in the windows.”
My heart sinks a little. I was hoping that whatever she was going to offer us would be real, and timely. She’s not an idiot, and she senses my disappointment.
“Look, I know this feels like a long shot, but if you do what you say you can do, you have as good a chance as anyone to get the job.”
“That’s all we need, Ms. Lewis.” I stand and extend my hand to her. Gram rises and does the same. “A chance. We’ll show you how it’s done.”
After our meeting with Rhedd Lewis, I sent Gram home to Perry Street in a cab, while I took the crosstown bus over to Sloan-Kettering to meet Mom. I BlackBerried my sisters with a cc to Alfred about the Rhedd Lewis meeting, telling them of the competition. Tess is good for a novena (we really need the prayers now), Jaclyn will be supportive, and the cc to Alfred was to show him that I do have a vision about the future of the company. I included a snapshot of Gram in front of the store for Mom, who likes a visual with her news.
The sliding doors of the hospital open as I approach. Once inside, I see my mother sitting on a couch by the windows facing a sunlit sculpture garden, typing on her BlackBerry like a wild game of Where Is Thumpkin. Her sunglasses are perched on her head like a tiara, and she is dressed from head to foot in baby blue, with a wide swath of beige cashmere thrown across her chest like a flag.
“I’m here, Mom.”
“Valentine!” She stands and embraces me. “I’m so happy when it’s your shift.” Mom has decided, that instead of all of us showing up for every single one of Dad’s appointments, she would put her children on rotation so we wouldn’t burn out. Of course, she is in attendance at every poke, prod, and MRI.
My mother has never suffered from burnout, nor does she shy away from a project before it’s completed. I never saw her energy flag when it came to her family; she was and is eternally peppy, whether it was French-braiding three little girls’ hair before school, negotiating through the mayhem of the holidays, or pouring concrete to form a new front walkway, she is up for anything. These days, it’s getting my father well.
“I loved the picture. How did it go at Bergdorf’s?”
“We’re entering a competition to design a pair of shoes to win the holiday windows for Christmas 2008.”
“Fabulous! What a coup!”
“It’s a long way to winning, Ma. We’ll see what happens.” It doesn’t even dawn on my mother that we might not win. Another reason to love her. “So, how’s Dad?”
“Oh, it’s just boring test day. They’re going to put the seeds in after Gram’s birthday.”
Mom and I sit down. Instinctively, I put my head on her shoulder. Her skin has the scent of white roses and white chocolate. Her hoop earrings rest against my cheek as she talks. “He’s going to be fine.”
“I know,” I tell her. But I really don’t know.
“We stay positive and we pray. That’ll do the trick.”
I love that Mom thinks cancer is a trick that can be turned at will with a smile and a Hail Mary. When I lie in bed and think about my father and the future, I think of his grandchildren, and how, at the rate I’m going, he’ll never meet my children. Sometimes I swear Mom can read my thoughts, and she asks, “How’s it going with the fella you’re seeing?”
I lift my head off her shoulder. “He’s tall.”
“Excellent.” My mother nods her head slowly. In the pantheon of male attributes, my mother admires tall above full pockets or a full head of hair. “Handsome?”
“I’d say so.”
“That’s wonderful. Dad said he’s a chef. I love that name, Roman Falconi. Sexy.”
“He owns his own restaurant down in Little Italy.”
“Oh, I’d love a chef in the family. Maybe he could teach me how to make those fancy foams they’re doing at Per Se. I read about them in Food and Wine. Imagine the infusion of new ideas!”
“He’s got a lot of those.”
“When is the unveiling?” Mom asks.
“I’m bringing him to Gram’s birthday party at the Carlyle.”
“Perfect. Neutral ground. Well, my only advice in general is to take it easy. Don’t force it.” My mother bites her lip.
“I won’t.”
“I only hope you find the abiding happiness I have with my Dutch. Your father and I are nuts about each other, you know.”
“I know.”
“We’ve had our troubles, God knows, all kinds of storms and rough waters on high seas. But somehow, we rode through it all and made it back to shore. Sometimes we even crawled, but we made it back.”
“Yes, you did.”
“I can say that we prevailed.”
“You did.”
“And, you know? That’s what it’s all about. A great philosopher said, something like, you know I can never remember jokes or the exact words of philosophers, but basically, he said that love is what you’ve been through together.”
“It was James Thurber. The American humorist and author.” Sometimes my BA in English comes in handy.
“Well, whoever. My point is, it seems to me we keep going through it.”
“You do, Mom.”
“Your father wasn’t a saint. But I’m not the Blessed Mother either, am I?”
“I think you have more jewelry.”
“True.” She laughs. “But I know he never wanted to hurt me, or you children. He just lost his mind for a while. Men go through their own version of the change in their forties, and your father was no exception.”
“Roman is forty-one.”
“Maybe he went through it last year, before you met him,” Mom says brightly.
“We can hope.”
Mom goes into her purse; when she snaps it open, a clean whoosh of peppermint and sweet jasmine fill the air. Sticking out of the pocket where the cell phone goes is a clump of perfume testers from the Estée Lauder counter. That’s another of Mom’s elegant-living tricks, she tucks paper bookmark perfume samplers in lingerie drawers, evening bags, purses, and car vents, wherever ambience is needed, and evidently, in my mother’s view, you need ambience everywhere.
She finds the tinfoil sleeve of gum among the cancer pamphlets, punches a red square, hands it to me, then pops one in her own mouth. We sit and chew.
“Mom, how did you know you could get Dad back after the…incident?”
“I didn’t do a thing.”
“Sure you did.”
“No, really, I just left him alone. The worst punishment you can give a man is to isolate him. I’ve never seen one who can handle it. Look at what being alone did to our priests. Of course, that’s another subject entirely.”
“I remember when you and Dad fell in love again.”
“We were lucky, we got it back. Most people don’t.”
“How did you do it?”
“I had to do what a single girl in your position has to do when she likes a guy. Never mind that I had four children and a college degree collecting dust. I had to make myself desirable again. That meant I had to show my best self to him at all times. I had to figure him out all over again. I had to redo the world we lived in, including the house and my wardrobe. But mostly, I had to be sincere. I couldn’t stay with him for you, or for my mother, or for my religion, I had to stay with him because I wanted to.”
“So how did you know when you had succeeded?”
“One day, your father came home with a bag of groceries from D’Agostino’s. You kids were at school. It was a few weeks after we got back together. Big week. First week of school…”
“September 1986. I was in the sixth grade.”
“Right. Anyway, he comes into the kitchen. And I was sitting there, filling out some form for one of you kids for school and he opens the fridge and unloads food into it. And then he lights up the burner on the stove and puts a big pot of water on the flame. Then he gets out a saucepan and starts cooking. He’s chopping onions, peeling garlic, browning meat, and adding tomatoes and spices and all. After a while, I said, ‘Dutch, what are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m making dinner. I thought lasagna would be good.’ And I said, ‘Great.’”
“That’s how you knew he loved you?”
“In eighteen years, he had never made a meal. I mean, he’d help if I asked. He’d cut up melon for a fruit salad for a buffet or he’d pack the Igloo with ice for a picnic or he’d set up the bar for the holidays. But he had never gone to the store and bought the ingredients without asking and then come home and cooked them. That was left to me. And that’s when I knew I had him back. He had changed. You see, that’s when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you-without you asking.”
“The without asking is the hard part.”
“It has to come from the heart.”
“Right,” I say and nod.
Mom and I watch the people move through the lobby, patients on their way to appointments, staff returning from break, and visitors jostling in and out of the elevators. The sun bounces off the windows in the pavilion that faces the lobby, and drenches the tile floor with a gleam so bright, I close my eyes.
“Have I upset you?” Mom asks me.
I open my eyes. “No. You’re a font of wisdom, Mom.”
“I can talk to you, Valentine.” She fiddles with the gold post in the back of her hoop earring. “I just-” And then, to my complete surprise, she breaks into quiet sobs. “Why the hell am I crying?” She throws her hands up.
“You’re scared?” I say softly.
“No, that’s not it.” Mom fishes through her purse until she finds the small cellophane pad of tissues. She yanks one out. “These”-she holds up the tiny square-“are worthless.” She dabs under her eyes with the small tissue. “I just don’t want it all to have been a waste. We’ve come so far and I was hoping we’d grow old together. Now, time is running out. After all that, we don’t get the time? That would kill me. It’s like the soldier who goes off to war, dodges gunfire and bombs and grenades, makes it out of the war zone, only to return home and slip on a banana peel, fall into a coma, and die.”
“Have a little faith.”
“That’s coming from the least religious of my children.” Mom sits up straight. “I don’t mean that as a judgment.”
“I mean faith in him.”
“In God?” “No. Dad. He’s not going to let us down.”
Our family, like all the Italian-American families I know, is big on Excuse parties: birthdays and anniversaries that end in a zero or a five. We even have special titles for them, a twenty-fifth anniversary is A Silver Jubilee, a thirtieth birthday is La Festa, a fiftieth anniversary is called A Golden Jubilee, and a seventy-fifth anything is a miracle. So, imagine how thrilled we are to toast Gram, in good health, still with excellent vitality, in fine physical shape save for those knees, and having “all her marbles,” as she calls them, on this, her eightieth birthday.
I also thought, knowing my immediate family would be in full attendance, that this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce them to Roman. I know I’m taking a chance here, but I have learned, when it comes to my family, it is best to introduce a new boyfriend in a crowded public venue where there’s less possibility of a gaffe, slip, or chance that someone will reach for the photo albums and show pictures of me buck naked, wearing only angel wings, on my fourth birthday.
We offered Gram the standard big bash at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Forest Hills, with a DJ; a ceiling of silver balloons; the stations of the cross on the walls, covered with streamers of crepe paper; and a custom sheet cake with Gram’s age embossed on it. But she opted for this party instead, a chic night out, dinner and a show at the Café Carlyle. She’d seen enough and plenty of the extended family at Jaclyn’s wedding, plus, Gram’s favorite singer of all time, Keely Smith, the great song stylist and comedienne, is the headliner at the Carlyle. When Gabriel, my friend the maître d’, told us that she was appearing, we reserved a table.
Keely Smith and her music have a special place in Gram’s life. When my grandparents were young, they used to travel around to catch Keely singing with her then husband Louis Prima, backed by Sam Butera and The Witnesses. The act was a swinging cabaret alternative to the orchestras of the big band era. Gram will tell you that they personified hip.
Italian Americans revere Louis Prima, as we are married and buried to his music. Jaclyn, Tess, and Alfred danced to Louis’s chart of “Oh, Marie” at their weddings, and my grandfather was buried to Keely’s version of “I Wish You Love.” Prima is primo with the Roncallis and the Angelinis.
I check my lipstick in the cab on the way to the Café Carlyle, the Krup diamond of cabaret rooms. When a Village girl crosses Fourteenth Street and heads north, she had better be Upper East Side chic. Also, I want to look good for Roman, who hasn’t seen me gussied up since our first date. How can I look glamorous when I run over to the restaurant kitchen to help him make pasta by hand or shuck clams for chowder? Tonight, he’s getting the best version of his girlfriend.
I’m wearing a midnight blue coatdress with a wide embroidered belt that belonged to my mother. I’ve had my eye on it for years, and this summer, when she purged her closet, I got lucky. There’s a picture of Mom holding me at my baptism in the fall of 1975 and wearing this coatdress. Her long hair is secured with a headband, which is attached to a fall, giving her cascading curls to her waist. Mom looked like a Catholic Ann-Margret with one foot in the sacristy and the other on the Vegas strip.
I wear the coatdress with pants, as it’s much shorter on me. My mother wore it as a dress with sheer L’Eggs stockings, and I know that for certain because we used to collect the plastic eggs her hosiery came in and play farm.
Tess, Jaclyn, and I happily accept Mom’s secondhand clothes because we know how much she treasured them the first time around. Tess ended up with a few structured St. John jackets from the eighties, appropriate for PTA meetings, while I opted for coats and dresses she had made by a seamstress for special occasions. Jaclyn, with her tiny feet, inherited Mom’s collection of Candy platform sandals in every shade of fake python that was available during the Carter administration. Yes, tangerine snakeskin exists. Mom says that you know you’ve been around awhile when you own every possible variation of a heel in your shoe collection. She still has the Famolare Get There sandals with the wavy bottoms. My mother never needed the recreational drugs of her era, she just put on those sandals and swayed.
As the cab makes a quick turn off Madison and onto East Seventy-sixth Street, I see Gabriel outside the hotel entrance, talking on his phone. I pay the cabbie and jump out.
Gabriel snaps the phone shut. “You’ve got the best table ringside.”
“Great. Is Gram here yet?”
“Oh, she’s here all right. She’s on her second scotch and soda. I hope the show begins soon, because there will be a show, just not the one you’re paying to see.”
“Gram’s tipsy?”
“June is worse. The woman can put it away. Evidently, her legs are made of sea sponge. And your Aunt Feen looks stoned. What’s the deal with her anyway? Lipitor with an Ambien chaser? Do me a favor. Check her meds.” Gabriel motions for me to follow him inside. “Is Roman on his way? I hate latecomers.”
“Yep.”
“Have you had sex yet?”
“No.” I yank my belt tightly. Tonight may be the night, but I don’t have to tell Gabriel.
“You bore me. What are you waiting for?”
“I’d like to spend more time with him before I take him on my magical mystery tour. Our relationship is building beautifully, thank you.”
“Who said anything about a relationship? I’m talking about sex.”
“You know they are coffee and cream to me.”
“Go ahead. Have your high standards and enjoy them alone. Follow me, darling.”
I follow Gabriel through the lobby of the Carlyle Hotel. Art Deco mirrors conjure up a sophisticated era, a time of rumble seats, speakeasies, clean gin, and elbow-length satin evening gloves. The chandeliers dazzle, like open cigarette cases, sunbursts of silver, gold, and daggers of crystal glowing overhead. Every detail of the lobby is lustrous-the brass doorknobs, the hinges, and even the patrons gleam. The polished marble floors look like sheets of ice, pale silver marble in the center with crisp black hems of granite.
Gabriel leads me through the bar, where the frosted sconces throw low lights over the soft mushroom-colored walls. The neutral background shows off the stylish William Haines club chairs, covered in peach velvet and grouped around marble-topped bar tables.
We enter the Café Carlyle through etched glass doors. The room resembles a luxurious leather train case lined with sage green and pale pink bouclé. A series of murals painted by Marcel Vertes shows beautiful women flying, dancing, and leaping through the air, in a carousel of color; shades of strawberry, cream, sea green, magenta, and grass green fill the room in endless summer. The ceiling, painted dark blue, hangs overhead like a night sky. The neutral-patterned leather booths with a print of small circles, airy bubbles, seem inspired by Gustav Klimt. Small tables are grouped downstage, draped in crisp, midnight blue linens.
Gram and June chat shoulder to shoulder at our table, a large banquet shape to accommodate our family. Aunt Feen sifts through the mixed nuts in a silver dish, while June swishes the cherry in the bottom of her cocktail around like a pinball as the band members filter in and take their places onstage. A glossy black baby grand Steinway fills the small stage. A microphone and stand rests in the curve of the piano. Keely will literally be three feet from our table.
“You made it,” Gram says when she sees me, toasting me with her scotch. I give her a quick kiss.
“Happy birthday!”
“I love your ensemble,” June says.
“Thank you. And you look spectacular.”
“To old broads!” Gram raises her glass to June.
“We certainly are!” June touches her glass to Gram’s.
“Thanks to the cream at Elizabeth Arden, I am about a week younger than I was when I walked out of the house this morning.” Gram takes my hand and squeezes it. Tess, Jaclyn, and I treated Gram to a day of beauty at the Elizabeth Arden salon. She’s been pummeled, plucked, and primped since morning. “Thank you. It’s been a marvelous day, and now, we get Keely.”
Mom throws her arms around her mother from behind. “Happy birthday, Mama,” she cries in her black sequin tank with matching silk georgette palazzo pants and a wide hammered-gold chain-link belt that drips down her thigh with a fringe of rhinestones. She wears strappy gold sandals to complete the Cleopatra effect. Dad wears a black-and-white-pin-striped suit with a gray dress shirt and a wide black-and-white silk tie. They match, but of course, they always do.
June stands and gives Dad a hug. “Dutch, you look fantastic.”
“Not as good as you, June.”
“How’s your cancer?” Aunt Feen brays.
“My numbers are improving, Auntie.”
“I put you on the prayer wheel at Saint Brigid’s.”
“I appreciate it.”
“The last guy we prayed for died, but that wasn’t our fault.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.” Dad throws us a look and sits down next to Aunt Feen for more abuse.
Tess waves from the check-in desk, in a strapless red cocktail dress. She makes an entrance worthy of my mother and is followed by Charlie, who wears a matching red tie. There are some inherited traits not worth fighting.
Tess gives Dad a hug. “Hey, Pop. How are you feeling?”
Before he can answer, Aunt Feen says, “How should he feel? The man’s full of cancer.”
Charlie reaches down and squeezes my shoulder. “Hey, sis,” he says. “Can’t wait to meet the Big Man tonight.” Charlie smiles supportively. It’s funny that Charlie would call Roman the Big Man when it’s Charlie who’s big. He looks like Brutus in every Hollywood Bible epic ever made. He’s also Sicilian, so he tans in twelve minutes and takes twelve years to forgive a slight.
“I can’t wait for you to meet him. Be nice.”
“I’ll be adorable,” Charlie says and sits down next to Tess.
Gabriel brings Jaclyn and Tom to the table. Jaclyn wears a short cream-colored wool skirt with a matching cashmere sweater and pearls. Tom, in his Sunday suit, looks like he’s been spit-polished for his First Communion. As Jaclyn and Tom take their seats, Alfred and Pamela join us.
Pamela turns forty next year, but she looks about twenty-five. She’s slim and has long, sandy blond hair, with a few pieces bleached the color of white chalk around her face for contrast. She’s a mix of Polish and Irish, but she’s picked up on our Italianate details when it comes to prints, sequins, and the size of her engagement ring. Tonight she wears a long, flowing, orchid-print evening wrap dress.
Alfred plants his arm firmly around her. He came straight from work, so he’s wearing a Brooks Brothers suit with a red Ronald Reagan tie. Pamela greets everyone with a kiss, but she’s not comfortable doing it. After thirteen years of marriage to my brother, whenever we all get together it’s as if it’s the first time she’s met us. We’ve made repeated attempts to make her feel a part of things, but our efforts don’t seem to take. Mom says Pamela has an “aloof personality,” but Alfred told Tess that we’re “intimidating.”
My sisters and I don’t think we’re scary. Yes, we’re competitive, opinionated, and discerning. And yes, at family gatherings, we yell, talk over one another, interrupt, and basically become the children we were at the age of ten minus the hair pulling. But intimidating? Must be. Pamela sits at the table gripping her evening clutch in her lap like it’s a steering wheel, staring at the Steinway with a patient, if plastered-on, smile as Alfred orders her a glass of white wine.
The waiters arrive, filling our table with hors d’oeuvres, delicate crab cakes, tiny potatoes with buttons of sour cream and caviar, clams casino on the half shell on an artful bed of shiny seaweed, oysters on ice, and a silver platter of baby lamb chops. Aunt Feen stands up, reaches across the table, and grabs a lamb chop, holding it like a pistol. She takes a bite before sitting back down in her chair. She chews. “Succulent,” she says through the meat.
The lights in the café dim, and the crowd applauds and whistles. I look to the door, hoping to see Roman rush in to take his seat next to me. I scan the crowd, and there’s no sign of him. The band strikes up, into a fizzy intro, and the applause escalates as Gabriel announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, Keely Smith!”
The glass doors push open and Keely enters the room, looking exactly like the cover art on her albums. Her hair is bobbed and jet black, with two signature spit curls on her cheeks. Her pale pink skin is flawless, her black eyes shine like jet beads. She wears simple gold silk pants topped with a bugle-beaded Erté jacket. The three-quarter-length sleeves reveal chunky Lucite bracelets that offset a diamond ring the size of a cell phone.
Keely weaves through the crowd like a bride at her third wedding, greeting the patrons with warmth, but just a touch blasé. Her manner is casual and familiar, as though she’s getting up to sing a few songs in her living room after dinner. She takes the microphone and scans the crowd, squinting at us as if to examine who we are and why we came. “Any Italians here tonight?”
We whistle and cheer.
“Louis Prima fans?”
We applaud loudly.
“We’re Keely fans!” Gram hollers.
“Okay, okay. I see I’m gonna have to work tonight.” She looks to her conductor, behind the piano, and says, “Here we go…” The band launches into a high-energy rendition of “That Old Black Magic.”
Keely stands before the microphone in the curve of the baby grand piano and taps the beat on the waxy finish with her long red fingernails as she sings. She makes time with her feet in gold stiletto sandals with inlaid tiger’s-eye straps. Her toenails are painted maroon. She notices that I’m staring at her feet, and smiles. The song ends, the crowd bursts into applause. She takes a step downstage and looks at me. “You like my sandals?”
“Yes. They’re gorgeous,” I tell her.
“A woman cannot live by shoes alone. Though there have been times in my life when I had to. I’ve walked many miles in my lifetime. I’m going to be eighty years old.”
A ripple goes through the crowd.
Keely continues. “Yep. Eighty. And I owe it all to…” She points heavenward.
“Me, too!” Gram waves to her.
“Today is her birthday,” Tess shouts.
“It is?” Keely says and smiles.
“Yes it is.” Gram didn’t need the creams at Elizabeth Arden, she’s getting a total rejuvenation right here. “You’re my gift.”
“Stand up, sister,” Keely says to Gram.
Gram stands.
Keely shields her eyes from the stage lights overhead and looks down at Gram. “You know the secret, don’t you?”
“You tell me,” Gram says, playing along.
“Never go gray.”
My mother whoops. “Tell her, Keely!”
“And the big one: younger men.”
“I hear you!” June, three straight-up whiskeys down, waves her napkin like a flag of surrender, to whom I’m not sure, but she keeps waving.
Keely points to June. “Now, not for the reason you think, Red. Although that’s important.” She continues, “I like a younger man because the men my age can’t see to drive at night.”
The drummer snares a rim shot. “I want to sing something just for you. What’s your name?”
“Teodora,” Gram tells her.
“Hey, you really are a paisan.” Keely makes the international sign for “I’m Italian,” making a slicing motion with her hand without a knife. “You got a boyfriend?”
Her grandchildren answer for her. “No!” we holler. Then, a man wearing trifocals, at the next table, whistles like he’s hailing a cab. “Lady didn’t say she was looking,” Keely chides him. “Tay, you got a man?”
“I’m with my family tonight,” Gram says with a giggle.
“And the less they know, the better. Take it from me.” Keely smiles and waves her hands over us like she’s a priest giving the final blessing. “Anybody who gets in the way of Grandmom’s fun will have to deal with me.” Then she extends her hand forward to Gram. “This one’s for you, kid. Happy birthday.”
Keely sings “It’s Magic.” Gram leans forward, puts her elbows on the table, and props her face in her hands and closes her eyes to listen. My father puts his arm around my mother, who nestles into his shoulder like it’s an old pillow. Tess looks at me with tears in her eyes, Jaclyn reaches across and squeezes Tess’s hand. Their husbands smile, sip their drinks. Pamela sits ramrod straight and blinks as Alfred picks the parsley off the mini crab cake before sampling it. My phone vibrates in my purse. As the magic song ends, the crowd bursts into applause and Gram stands and throws Keely a kiss. I look into my purse and check my BlackBerry. The text message reads:
Flood in the kitchen. Can’t make it.
So sorry. Kiss Gram.
Roman
Tess leans over and whispers, “Are you okay?”
“He’s not coming.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I feel my cheeks flush. I built up this whole evening in my mind. I pictured Roman sailing in to meet my family, handsome and glib, charming them, and pulling my father aside to tell him how much I mean in his life, and then later, my father would tell me that he’s never been more impressed with a suitor, and I’d have that feeling of security in the pit of my stomach, the kind that allows you to surrender to love when it comes your way. Instead, I’m embarrassed. No wonder Alfred believes I’m unreliable. It seems things never work out the way I plan. Of course the kitchen flooded, and of course Roman had to stay and take care of it, but to read the words: CAN’T MAKE IT means so much more than Can’t make it tonight. Can we ever make it? At all? Will Ca’ d’Oro always come first?
Keely sings “I’ll Remember You,” Gram’s eyes fill with tears, June gets misty, and even Aunt Feen’s face relaxes in a smile as she goes back in time to her youth. A tear rolls down my face, but as good as she is, it’s not because of Keely. Tonight, I could cry her a river on my own terms, and it would not have to be set to music.