The Shoemaker's Wife

  Ciro woke early and looked over at his brother, who was fast asleep. He dressed and went to the convent kitchen. Sitting on a stool at the worktable was Caterina, dressed and ready for the day. She poured Ciro a cup of coffee.

  “Good morning, Mama.” Ciro kissed her on the cheek.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Like the old convent cat,” Ciro said. “It’s so peaceful here.”

  “It’s good to be together. You’re a fine man, Ciro. I mean that. And I’m proud of what you have become.”

  The words that Ciro had hoped to hear all of his life had now been said. The strong boy who became a strong man had done so because goodness lived within him. He might not have ever left the mountain if his mother hadn’t, and when he looked back over his life, the greatest joy he knew had come as a result of taking a risk. He couldn’t change the past, but he could own it.

  “Mama, do you know I call my shop the Caterina Shoe Company?”

  Caterina’s eyes filled with tears. “But I didn’t do anything,” she said sadly.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mama. Everything was for you. Everything.”

  Caterina poured Ciro a cup of coffee. She sat up straight. “Tell me about Enza.” Caterina placed the bread and butter next to Ciro.

  “She’s beautiful and strong. Dark like the girls from Schilpario. Honest like them, too.”

  “Does she love beautiful things?”

  “She creates beauty everywhere, Mama. She sews wool with the same care as she does satin. She’s a good mother . . .” Ciro’s voice trailed off.

  “I want you to give Enza something from me. When your papa died, I sold everything. And I thought then that I only needed one thing to remember my mother by. And I hoped that someday my sons would have a daughter, and it would go to her. But all I have heard about your wife leads me to believe that I’ve had a daughter all along.” Caterina reached into her pocket and gave Ciro a velvet box. He opened it, and saw the blue cameo his mother had worn when he was a boy.

  “She will like this very much, Mama.”

  “If I could give you the mountain for her, I would. But for now, this necklace will have to do.” Caterina placed her hand on Ciro’s; he let the soft warmth of her touch fill him up.

  Enza waited at the harbor in lower Manhattan as the SS Conte Grande docked, and watched the passengers disembarking. When Ciro emerged from the gangplank, he looked handsome and robust. She waved to him.

  Ciro made his way through the crowd and scooped Enza up in his arms. He kissed her a hundred times, and she him. As they walked to Colin’s car, she told him about baby Henry, and how beautiful a boy he was, and how she had painted the nursery, sewed the layette, and taken care of Laura like a nurse.

  Ciro told her about her parents, and the house in Schilpario—the house that Enza built. He told her it was yellow, and clean, and that it was high on the hill, set like a diamond in a crown. He told her about Eduardo and his mother, then reached into his coat and gave Enza a velvet box.

  “From my mother,” Ciro told her. “For the woman I love.”

  Chapter 28

  A SKYLIGHT

  Un Lucernario

  Ciro was able to work through the new year of 1932, but Luigi did most of the heavy lifting, and when long hours were required, he also picked up the slack. Ciro napped every afternoon, and could work at the table as long as he could sit, but standing was difficult.

  Luigi tried to keep the chatter in the shop light, doing impressions of difficult customers and oddball salesmen to make Ciro laugh. Luigi also made sure the men came to play cards, as they had every Thursday since anyone could remember. Enza put out the grappa and the cigarettes as always, and late in the night would serve coffee and cake, but Ciro was getting worse, and everyone could see it. The poker games became shorter, but the players never acknowledged it.

  Saint Patrick’s Day was a big holiday in Chisholm because it held the promise of all things green, including the Minnesota spring. The bars on West Lake Street ran specials, and the stools were filled to overflowing, as the miners, from Eastern Orthodox to Lutheran, celebrated the Roman Catholic feastday.

  That night, the din from the street was so loud, Enza closed the drapes in the front room and closed the bedroom door. She climbed on the stool and snapped the open skylight shut. “It’s too cold, Ciro,” she said as she placed another blanket over his body. He was growing thinner by the day.

  “Grazie,” he said. “What would I do without you?”

  Enza lay in bed next to him. “You would have married the May Queen. What was her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Philomena? It sounded like that.”

  “I said, I don’t remember,” Ciro teased.

  “Felicitá! That’s it. The Sicilian bombshell. She would have made you buy her diamonds. No, no. That wouldn’t have been good enough. She would have made you dig for them, and when you brought her the biggest stone, she’d look at it and say, ‘I said a rock, Ciro. Not a pebble. A rock.’ ”

  “You would have married Vito Blazek.”

  “I would have been his first wife. He’s had three since.”

  “Really?”

  “Laura keeps up with him. So see, you saved me from a life of glamour and sophistication. I was rescued by the shoemaker.”

  “I feel sorry for you,” Ciro said.

  “Don’t you dare,” Enza said, leaning over to kiss him. “I have my dream.”

  On his deathbed, Ciro realized he’d chosen Enza because she was strong alone; she did not need him, she wanted him. Enza had chosen Ciro, forsaking her own sense of security, which, he had come to know, was the need that drove her. Everything his wife did, and every decision she made, was about holding life together, and creating safety in a world where there was little.

  Ciro was sad that he and Enza would never know what it might have been like to love each other their whole lives long, but the gift of what had been, the risks taken and endured, would have to be enough. They had received their portion. It was useless now to have hoped for more time.

  But what about their son?

  Ciro was bereft that his own son would live with the grief he had known all of his life. The loss of his own father had never left him.

  A man needs his father more as life progresses, not less. It is not enough to learn how to use a lathe, milk a cow, repair a roof; there are greater holes to mend, deeper wells to fill, that only a father’s wisdom can sustain. A father teaches his son how to think a problem through, how to lead a household, how to love his wife. A father sets an example for his son, building his character from the soul outward.

  Ciro sought his father in the face of every man he met—Iggy at the convent, Remo in the shoe shop, and Juan Torres during the war. Each man gave what he could, but none of them, despite their best intentions, could be Carlo Lazzari.

  In the last moments of his life Ciro realized that a truly good man is a rarity, a speck of gold in a mountain of slag. All around him during the war, Ciro saw men lie, engage in acts of cowardice, create feeble attachments to women, only to leave them—men acting in pursuit of their own comforts, men behaving without grace. And now Ciro was about to do to his son the terrible thing that had been done to him—die without raising him properly to adulthood. Ciro could not forgive himself for failing his son.

  “Thank you for taking care of me, Enza.”

  She turned to him. “You’ve been a terrible patient.”

  Ciro laughed. “I know. Come and sit with me. I just want to look at you.”

  Enza sat next to Ciro on the bed. He reached out and took both of her hands. She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of them. Enza loved Ciro’s beautiful hands; for all the hard labor he had done all of his life, he still had the long, lovely fingers of a musician or a painter.

  His hands had created art. She had watched when he measured leather, suede, and silk, cut patterns, sewed shapes, and pressed the assembled boot he had sewn against the brushes.
She could spend hours watching him make shoes. It was theater to her; every movement of his mastery had meaning and magic to it.

  His hands had fed them. She had watched as he deftly carved stelline in delicate quick movements to make soup for their baby. Sometimes he made cheese, an elaborate operation that turned milk and rennet into ropes of mozzarella.

  His hands had protected them. The hand that had first taken hers in the dark on the Passo Presolana was the same hand that eventually cradled her newborn son. The same hands that had encircled her body for the first time when she became his wife. “I’m going to miss your hands, Ciro. What will you miss?”

  He looked up through the skylight, as if some bird would sail past with a ribbon in its beak, an aphorism written upon it in Latin, like the scrolls held by the cherubs over the tabernacle in San Nicola. Ciro knew what he would miss about this world, but he didn’t want to share it with his wife. He didn’t want to acknowledge that the life he loved so dearly and desperately was ending. But there was also part of him that wanted her to know. So he said, “I love the straight seam of a cut of good leather. I like to make shoes with my hands. I like the feeling when I’ve polished a pair of boots I’ve repaired and the lemon wax is fresh, and I look at the boots and think, I’ve made some fellow’s long walk into that mine more comfortable. I’ll miss making love to you, and knowing, after all these years, that there’s always something new about your body that delights me all over again. I’ll miss our son, because he reminds me of you.”

  “I want you to pray, Ciro.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Please.”

  “When I was in France, I was talking with a man in my regiment that I respected so much. His name was Juan Torres, and he had a wife, and three daughters. He was Puerto Rican, and he talked a great deal about one of his girls, Margarita. He would tell stories about her, and we would laugh, and he would remember.”

  “You told me about him, honey. But you never told me how he died.”

  “One night, when we were talking, we could hear the grind of the tanks in the distance, and he stood up to see what was coming toward us. We were so involved in our conversation, he forgot he was in a trench, and that there was a war going on around us. He was just a father telling a story about the daughter he loved, as though we were at a bar, and passing time on any ordinary Friday night. I reached up to pull him back down, and he was shot.

  “He died soon after, and I buried him. On my way to Rome after the war, I wrote to Margarita and told her that the last thing her father said was how much she delighted him. I can’t pray to God to save myself, when others haven’t the luxury.”

  “Papa.” Antonio appeared in the doorway. He took in his mother and father, and a look of concern crossed his face. He didn’t know whether to enter the room or run away, and a great part of him wanted to run. The moment Antonio had dreaded was approaching.

  “There’s room here.” Ciro patted the side of the bed.

  Antonio slipped off his shoes and lay next to his father. Enza reached across Ciro’s frail body and held her son’s hand. Ciro placed his hand on theirs.

  This was the legacy of the only child: no matter how old he grew, there was always room in the bed for him. Antonio was the sole focus of the mother and father, as much a part of their relationship as they were for one another. Their small trinity had been sacrosanct, and it would always remain so. They had keenly observed their boy, and they had been better for it.

  “Antonio, be good to your mother.”

  “I will.”

  “And take her home to the mountain. My brother will help you. Write to him.”

  “I will, Papa.”

  “Enza, you’ll go home with our son?”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Good.” Ciro smiled. “Antonio, I am proud of you.”

  “I know, Papa.”

  “And remember that I always will be. I can’t believe that out of all the angels in heaven, God decided to send you to me. I’m the luckiest man you will ever meet.”

  Antonio nestled against his father, as he had when he was small. He buried his face in his father’s neck, not thinking his father very lucky at all.

  Enza got up and went to the kitchen. She lifted the sterile needles from the pot, filled the syringe with morphine, snapped the needle into place, and went back to her husband.

  Antonio wept quietly into his father’s shoulder now, as Ciro encircled his son with his arms to comfort him. Ciro was now so weak, he could barely hold his boy.

  “I’m going to give Papa a shot, honey,” Enza told her son. Antonio sat up and looked away, holding his father’s hand. Antonio had not been able to abide the needles these last weeks, and was heartsick as his father needed them administered more and more.

  Enza gently cleaned a patch of skin on what were once had been Ciro’s muscular arm and administered the morphine. A look of serenity crossed her husband’s face as the medicine took over.

  Enza climbed back into bed with her husband and son, and gently ruffled Ciro’s thick hair, now fringed with a few gray hairs at the temples.

  “So many things I didn’t do,” Ciro whispered.

  “You did everything right, my love,” Enza told him.

  “I never learned how to make women’s shoes.” He tried to smile.

  “It doesn’t matter. I never learned how to dance.”

  “It’s not so great.” He smiled.

  Ciro did not speak again. He lived through that night. Enza administered the morphine through her tears. The chore she was loath to learn became the only thing she could hold on to as her husband slipped toward death. The routine of the boiling of the needles, pouring the liquid into the syringe, checking it, and walking it back to the bedroom had given her a purpose in the final days of Ciro’s life. It made her feel useful, and it also made her feel that she was helping him as the morphine eased his pain.

  That night, Antonio slept in the chair, facing his father in bed. Enza would check on her son as she watched Ciro sleep.

  That night she cried about all the things she did not have. She had hoped for more children; as her husband lay dying, she realized that there should be more aspects of him in the world, not less. She had done the best she could, but in those hours, she did not believe it.

  When the sun came up, she bathed her husband, cut his hair and nails, and gently shaved his face. She massaged his feet with lavender oil, and patted his face with a cool cloth. She lay beside him and listened as his heartbeat became more faint with each tup, tup, tup. She looked up through the skylight at dawn that morning, saw a pink sun in a blue sky, and took it as an omen.

  Antonio woke up and sat bolt upright in the chair. “Mama?”

  “Come,” she said to her son.

  Antonio climbed into the bed with his father and mother. He put his arm across his father’s chest and, placing his cheek next to his father’s, he began to cry.

  Enza reached across, and with one hand on her son’s face, she placed the other on Ciro’s, leaned down, and put her lips to his ear. “Wait for me,” were the last words Ciro Lazzari heard as he took his last breath.

  March 18, 1932

  Dear Don Eduardo,

  This is the most difficult letter I have ever had to write. Your beloved brother Ciro died in my arms today at 5:02 a.m. Monsignor Schiffer came to anoint his body and administer last rites. Antonio was with us in the room when his father passed away.

  Eduardo, my heart is full of so many feelings, and so many images and stories of things that Ciro told me about you. I hope you know that he looked up to you, and if ever an example of piety and honesty was needed in any situation, Ciro would always look to you.

  I wish you could be here for the funeral. Already, the stairs up to our home are filled with flowers; I had to create a path to navigate them. The veterans hung a flag outside our house, and the drum and bugle corps played on the street when they heard he was gone.

  Your brother made me the happie
st woman that ever lived. I had loved him since I was fifteen years old, and the years did not diminish the depth of my feelings. I cannot imagine life without him, so I humbly beg you to please pray for me, as I will for you, and your mother. Please share this terrible news with her, and send her my deepest condolences.

  Your sister-in-law,

  Enza

  Chapter 29

  A PAIR OF ICE SKATES

  Un Paio di Pattini da Ghiaccio

  Enza pulled on her gloves as she stood next to the Chisholm ice rink and watched as Antonio sailed on the outskirts of the silver ice with such dexterity, it looked as though he was building up speed to fly. The dark woods beyond the rink hemmed the oasis of ice lit by the bright white floodlights. It was as though the full moon had embedded itself in the ground of the north woods. The scent of roasted chestnuts and buttery baked sweet potatoes filled the air.

  Every teenager in Chisholm seemed to be at the rink that night, skating to popular music piped over the ice. The kids spun to “The Music Goes Round and Round” by Tommy Dorsey; waltzed to “These Foolish Things” by Benny Goodman and created a daisy chain; and snaked around the rink to “Moon Over Miami” by Eddy Duchin.

  Enza purchased a roasted sweet potato from a girl who was raising money for the high school band. She unwrapped the tin foil and took a bite without taking her eyes off her son.

  Antonio was seventeen, at the top of his class at Chisholm High School, but every bit as athletic as he was brilliant at his studies. Skates felt as natural to his body as snow skis. Even the slow sport of curling—“chess on the ice,” Antonio called it—was mastered. His basketball skills were famous throughout the Iron Range, and he was in line for scholarships to attend university.

  At the age of forty-one, Enza could look back over her life confident that she had raised her son well, especially under the circumstances. She knew Ciro would be proud of their son. It had been five years since her husband died, and yet it seemed as though it was yesterday.