“This is living,” Laura said.
“Great friends and good wine,” Colin agreed.
Vito settled on the arm of Enza’s chair. She held a glass of champagne, and he picked up his glass. “To us,” he said.
Colin, Laura, and Enza raised their glasses.
“I wish this night would never end.” Enza sighed. Sometimes she was so deeply in the moment of the present, Enza forgot the pain of the past and was free to enjoy herself without guilt. The scaffolding of her new life was sturdy, but she wanted the contents to be light, just like the colors of Dawn Gepfert’s apartment.
“It doesn’t have to,” Laura said.
“I like where this is going.” Colin pulled Laura close.
“Me too.” Vito put his arm around Enza.
“I propped the Milbank’s basement door open with an old shoe.” Laura toasted herself and took a sip of wine. “Now we can stay out as late as we want without having to wait on the front steps in the morning like we’re on a first-name basis with the milkman.”
“I go with the smartest girl on earth.” Colin laughed.
“And don’t forget it.”
This had been a good week for Laura. At long last she had met Colin’s sons, and she found them as rambunctious as the brothers she helped raise. They went to Central Park where Laura proved herself to them. She thew a baseball, ran fast, and played hard, which engaged the boys and impressed Colin. Laura approached her love life just as she did her sewing. She was careful in the pattern stage, so there were no surprises later. But she would have to be flexible if she married Colin and became an instant mother to his boys because that family plan was already well in place.
Enza settled back into the chair, resting her head against Vito. She was overwhelmed with a feeling of contentment, attending their party in the clouds, the glittering city at her feet, with her friends who she had come to rely upon and treasure.
“Did you tell Vito what Signor Caruso said about you?” Laura nudged Enza.
“No,” Enza said softly.
“What did he say?” Vito asked.
“He asked Enza when she was going to design costumes instead of just sewing them.”
“He did?” Vito was impressed.
“He thinks I have a good eye,” Enza said with a shy smile.
“Come up with some sketches,” Vito said.
“She already has two hatboxes full at the Milbank,” Laura said.
“And that’s where they will stay.” Enza sipped her champagne.
“All of a sudden, the tireless Italian girl is shy about her work. I don’t believe it.” Vito shook his head.
“I still have a lot to learn,” Enza said.
They heard applause and cheers from the living room.
“He’s here,” Vito said. Enza, Colin, and Laura followed him out to the living room, carrying their drinks.
The living room of the Gepfert home was filled like a church on a feast day. The revelers faced Enrico Caruso, who stood under a chandelier, taking in their love like sweet cream in his coffee. Vito pulled Enza close in the doorway as Colin and Laura sneaked through the crowd to get closer to him.
“You know how much affection I have for each and every one of you. I want to thank you for all the hard work you did on Lodoletta. Gerry and I are grateful for your dedication.”
Geraldine Farrar held up her glass. “Thank you all for making us look so good. And I would also like to thank the United States Army, who is making fast work of putting the Germans in their place—”
The revelers cheered loudly.
“We look forward to having the heat back on in the opera house. It’ll be a long winter without it. We’re doing our bit and keeping the furnace on low, to send our coal to the front for a good cause. But there’s only so many times I can embrace Enrico Caruso onstage and pretend it’s a love scene. Frankly, I needed his body heat to keep me from frostbite.”
Caruso made his way through the crowd, shaking hands, embracing his dresser, bowing deeply to the hostess in gratitude. As he passed Vito, Vito leaned in and whispered in Caruso’s ear, “Don’t forget your seamstresses.”
“My Vincenza and my Laura,” he said, embracing them both at once. “You have been so kind to me. I will remember your invisible stitches on my hems and your macaroni.”
“It was an honor to work for you, Signore,” Enza said.
“We’ll never forget it,” Laura assured him.
Caruso reached into his pocket and placed a gold coin in each of their hands. “Don’t tell anybody,” he whispered, and moved through the crowd.
Enza looked down at the coin. It was a solid gold disc with Caruso’s profile etched on it.
“It’s real,” Laura whispered. “I’m gonna buy myself a mink.”
“I’ll never spend it,” Enza whispered back.
And that was a promise Enza Ravanelli kept her whole life long.
Ciro found a small room available at the Tiziano Hotel, close to the Campo de’ Fiori, where the peddlers sold blood oranges, fresh fish, herbs, and bread. He had only the uniform on his back, a change of underclothes in his knapsack, a document guaranteeing him free passage home on any ship departing from Naples, and his final paycheck from the U.S. Army. The war had officially ended a few weeks ago, and after all he had withstood, he was eager to return to his life on Mulberry Street. But first, he had to find his brother.
The last letter he had received from Eduardo explained that he was scheduled to be ordained as a priest into the Franciscan order in Saint Peter’s Basilica at the end of November.
If Ciro thought the U.S. Army had layers of bureaucracy, he knew now that they had nothing on the Roman Catholic Church. No information was available regarding the ordination ceremonies. When Ciro went through the proper channels to obtain details, he was turned away, or the response was vague and veiled in secrecy.
Ciro knew, when his brother left for the seminary so many years ago, that they would have little contact, but they both had hoped that would change when Eduardo became a priest.
On the advice of a Vatican secretary, who by chance had ties to Bergamo and took pity on him, Ciro addressed letters to every deacon, priest, and prelate in the general directory, hoping to find someone who had information regarding his brother’s final orders.
Ciro was careful not to smudge the ink as he addressed the last envelope. He laid the sealed letters in the bright sunshine of the hotel windowsill so they might dry as he dressed. As he pulled on his boots, he saw a split in the seam where the upper met the sole. He examined it, then looked around the room for supplies to fix it. He pulled scissors and a large sewing needle from his backpack. The last time he’d used either was to dress a wound incurred by his friend Juan when he stepped on a spike of barbed wire buried in a trench’s mud.
The surgical thread wouldn’t hold the leather, so Ciro looked around the room for string with heft that might work. He was prepared to take the pull string from his windowshade when his eyes fell on his knapsack. Instead, he clipped a six-inch portion of the pull cord from the knapsack, knotting the end. Then he threaded the cord through the needle and sewed his torn shoe together, deftly securing the thinning leather to the sole. He tidied up the end, looping it through the upper so it might hold.
Ciro slipped into his boot, pleased with his temporary fix. The patch job should last until he was back on the machines at the Zanetti Shoe Shop. He gathered up his letters and left the hotel.
The side streets of Rome were packed with foreigners who had been siphoned through Italy on their way home from France. Ciro saw an occasional American soldier, who would nod at him, but for the most part, the men wearing uniforms were with the Italian army.
Wherever there were soldiers, there were the parasol girls, like the redhead who had greeted Ciro when he first arrived in New York. He looked at those girls differently now, understanding that they needed work, just as he did. There seemed to be so many more of them on the streets of Rome than there had
been in New York.
Ciro was comfortable as he walked the streets of the city, not because he was a native Italian, but because the noise reminded him of Manhattan. He found himself looking into the faces of those he passed, hoping he might recognize a priest or a nun who might be able to help him find his brother.
The addresses on the envelopes took him to various parts of the city, requiring a good deal of walking to deliver them. He had one to deliver to the center of the city, and one a mile away, at the basilica within the gardens of Montecatini. He learned that he must hike up beyond Viterbo to the small chapel on the hillside outside of Rome, where the Franciscans stayed when they traveled through. Having delivered the last letter, Ciro lingered outside the chapel until nightfall, hoping that his brother might miraculously pass through on his way to the Vatican. But with hundreds of priests and seminarians in Rome at any given time, Ciro knew his chances of getting to Eduardo were slipping through his fingers with each passing day.
Ciro walked back toward the city, stopping at a crowded restaurant, a simple open-walled structure with a loggia shaded with olive branches. Jugs of homemade wine were filled to the top, splashing purple tears onto the white tablecloths as the waitresses set them out for customers. There was much chatter and laughter as hearty bowls of risotto speckled with mushrooms and chestnuts, with a side of hot, crusty bread, were served to the locals, farmers, construction workers, and day laborers. Ciro was the only soldier in the restaurant. His uniform drew some curious stares.
Ciro tore into the feast hungrily, having spent the day on foot, unable to stop to eat, because he wanted to deliver every last envelope to the correct address. He hoped the meal would fill him up, and even ease the heavy burden he felt in his heart. He had all but given up hope that he would see Eduardo again. He sipped the wine, which soothed him as the warmth of the smoky grapes spread through his body. He knew that when he sailed back to America, it would be many years before he would return to Italy.
The waitress placed a bowl of fresh figs on the table. Ciro looked up at her. He guessed her to be around forty. Her black hair was streaked with white, pulled off her face in a low chignon. She wore a linen apron over a black muslin skirt and red blouse. She had an attractive face, with black Roman eyes. She smiled at Ciro, and he nodded respectfully. He sipped his espresso, and remembered a time before he was a soldier when he would have smiled back at her, prolonged her stay at his table, suggested they steal away for a few minutes later in the evening. Ciro shook his head. It seemed that everything about him had changed; his reaction to the world and the things that went on in it was as unpredictable as the moods of a Vatican secretary.
Ciro stood at the front desk of the Tiziano Hotel, looking at the mail cubbies behind it. Most were stuffed with letters and newspapers, but when he gave the attendant his room number, there was nothing. Not a single response to any of the letters he had delivered.
Ciro climbed the steps to his room. Once inside, he sat and unbuckled his boots. He slipped them off and leaned back on the bed. What a fool’s errand this trip to Rome had been! Ciro’s face flushed with embarrassment when he thought about the long story he’d told the attendant at the Vatican rectory, dropping in the names of priests and the orders of nuns that he knew from his days in the convent. It had been a disingenuous exercise, a waste; no soldier in mended boots could possibly impress any watchman to the pope. Ciro chided himself for forgetting to bribe them with money—that might have worked.
There was a soft knock at the door. Ciro got up to answer, expecting the night maid. Instead, his heart filled with joy as he looked into tender brown eyes he had not seen in seven years. “Brother!” Ciro shouted.
Eduardo embraced Ciro and slipped into the room. Ciro closed the door behind him and looked at his brother, who wore the mud brown robes of the Franciscans. A belt of white hemp rope was knotted around his waist. Upon his feet, he wore sandals with three bands of plain brown leather across the top of his foot. Eduardo threw the hood off his head; his black hair was cropped short. The glasses once used only for reading were perched on his nose. The round lenses trimmed in gold gave Eduardo a sober, professorial look.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Ciro said. “I left letters in every rectory in Rome.”
“I’ve heard,” Eduardo said. He sized up his brother and couldn’t believe what he saw. Ciro was terribly thin, and his thick hair was shorn, but more shocking to Eduardo were the dark circles under Ciro’s eyes, the hollow spaces where there once had been robust, full cheeks. “You look terrible.”
“I know. I don’t make a very handsome soldier.” Ciro looked around the room. “I have nothing to offer you.”
“That’s all right. I’m not even supposed to be here. If the monsignor finds out, they’ll kick me out of the order. This visit is not allowed, and I must hurry, and be back at the rectory before they realize I’m gone.”
“You’re not allowed to spend time with your only brother?” Ciro said. “Do they know you’re all I have in the world?”
“I don’t expect you to understand, but there’s a reason for it. To become a priest, I have to separate from all I love in the world, and sadly, that includes you. I have something to occupy my heart in a wholly different way now, but I understand that you don’t. If you love me, pray for me. Because I pray for you, Ciro. Always.”
“Any racket but the Holy Roman Church. You could have had any career in the world. Writer. Printer. We could’ve bought the old press and bound books and sold them like the Montinis. But you had to put on the robes. Why, Eduardo? I would have been happy had you been a tax collector—anything but the priesthood.” Ciro fell back on the bed.
Eduardo laughed. “It’s not a career, it’s a life.”
“Some life. Cloistered away. Vows of silence. I could never shut you up. How can you live that way?”
“I’ve changed,” Eduardo said. “But I see you haven’t. And I’m glad.”
“You just can’t see it. But I’m different now,” Ciro said. “I don’t know how I could be the same after what I’ve seen.” He sat down next to Eduardo. “Sometimes I get a good night’s sleep, and I wake up and think, Anything is possible. You’re not in the trenches. You don’t have a gun. Your time is your own again. But there’s a heaviness inside me. I don’t trust that the world is better now. And why else would we have gone to war? What reason could there possibly be to behave like a bunch of animals? I’ll never know the answer.”
“You’re an American now,” Eduardo said.
“True—I will be a full citizen soon. And at least I was on the side of the mighty. I wish you could come with me and live in America.”
“You’ll have to be in the world for me, Ciro.”
“I wonder if I still know how to do that.”
“I hope you will have a wife and a family, the way you always dreamed of. Give them the childhood you always wanted. Be the father we didn’t have. There has to be a special girl. You wrote to me about the May Queen at your church.”
“I only wrote about Felicitá to impress you. I wanted you to think that I’d found religion through a pious princess. I found a lot, but not God. She married a nice Sicilian.”
“I’m sorry. Is there anyone else?”
“No,” Ciro replied, but even as he spoke, an image of Enza Ravanelli appeared in his mind’s eye, and his body filled with a sad ache.
“I don’t believe it. No one loves women more than you do.”
“Is that an achievement?”
“You had a knack for it. There was never any question that marriage would be your calling. It’s not really that different from my own calling. We both reached out for what we needed. Whether it’s spiritual or emotional sustenance, we both went looking for our heart’s fulfillment.”
“Except you have to live in a cell.”
“I am leading a good life in that cell.”
“What about Mama? Have you learned anything else since you wrote to me?”
Eduardo reached into his pocket. “The sisters at San Nicola forwarded this letter to me.”
“What does it say?”
Eduardo unfolded the letter. “She’s had a hard time, Ciro.”
Ciro’s heart was pierced with pain at the thought of his mother suffering.
“All I ever wanted was for the three of us to be together again. Papa was taken from us, but you and me and Mama, that could have been.” Ciro wiped the tears from his eyes.
“I pray every day for Papa’s soul, Ciro. We can’t forget all the effort that went into securing our happiness and safety. Mama tried her best to protect us. No matter what happened, we have to be grateful to her for knowing what was best for us.”
“I wanted her,” Ciro cried. “And even now, she doesn’t want us to know where she is. Why?”
“She tries to answer that in the letter. She was ill when she left the mountain, and she thought she would return.”
“But she didn’t,” Ciro said. “We lost Papa, then we lost Mama. And tomorrow I’m going to lose you.”
“You will never lose me, Ciro. I risked my ordination to come to you tonight. I came to tell you to be strong. Don’t be afraid. You’re my brother, and you will always be the most important person in my life. As soon as I’m ordained, I will find Mama, and I’ll keep her safe until you can see her again. It’s all I can do.”
“Do you really want this life?”
“I want to be useful. To use my mind. To pray. To know God.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“To know God makes sense of life, I don’t know how else to say it. Come to my ordination tomorrow, Ciro. I want you to be there. Ten o’clock at St. Peter’s Basilica.”
Eduardo stood and opened his arms to Ciro. Ciro remembered scrubbing the statue of Saint Francis, and how careful he had been with the folds of the robe, where the artist had carefully drawn slim lines and painted them with gold leaf. Now, standing before him, was his humble brother, the finest man he would ever know in the same brown robes of the Franciscan order. Ciro embraced him, and felt the billowing sleeves of Eduardo’s robes enfold him like wings.