The Shoemaker's Wife (21 page)

“And you think the girls on Mulberry are lining up for Ciro Lazzari to take them away from their troubles?” Ciro smiled.

Remo smiled too. “There will be a few.”

“Well, sir, I’m here to work,” Ciro said solemnly. “I want no permanent part of this beautiful country. I want to save my money and go home to Vilminore, find a good wife there, and build a house for her with my own hands. I’d like a garden like this, and one cigarette a night in a deep, comfortable chair where I can sit and think after a hard day’s work. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but that would be the perfect life for me.”

“So you won’t be a Romeo in Little Italy?”

“I didn’t say that. But I won’t get serious, that I promise you.”

Carla pushed through the door with a tray of popovers and three small glasses of red wine. Ciro rose and gave her his chair.

“I thought we needed to toast our new apprentice,” she said.

“The Italian way,” Remo said, winking at Ciro.

Every May, Our Lady of Pompeii Church on Carmine Street held the Feast of Santa Maria, in honor of the Blessed Mother. The church bells chimed the tune of “Hail Holy Queen Enthroned Above” as the vestibule doors were propped open to reveal a church overflowing with baskets of white roses. This was the most important feast day for the girls of the parish who, at sixteen, were at the peak of their adolescent beauty.

The girls wore white silk gowns and tiaras of tiny satin rosebuds woven by the women of the church sodality. Across their gowns, they wore sashes in a demure pink called ashes of roses. The street was cleared as the girls processed single file from the church on Carmine Street to Bleecker Street and back again, following the priest, the altar boys, and the men of the church carrying the statue of the Blessed Lady.

This parade was a celebration of what it meant to be both Italian and American. As Americans, they were free to march through the streets, and as Italians, they could express their devotion to Mary, the mother of all mothers. They hoped the queen of heaven would shower them with health, good fortune, and strong families in exchange for their alms. The religious aspect was only part of the celebration. It was also a chance for the young men of the village to choose the girl of their dreams from the May court.

Ciro stood on the corner in the midst of the crowd as the girls passed. The May Queen was the most beautiful girl in the parade.
Felicitá! Felicitá!
The crowd chanted her name. She wore a sheath of white silk and, upon her lustrous black curls, a long lace mantilla. Her veil fluttered on her shoulders in the breeze.

Ciro remembered a similar mantilla worn by Concetta Martocci in the church of San Nicola, the afternoon he sat with her. Ciro no longer felt the sting of regret when he thought of Concetta, just the pang of rejection. The wise man leaves the past behind like a pair of boots he has outgrown.

Ciro set his gaze upon Felicitá, as did every young man in the crowd. Ciro watched as Felicitá pulled a white rose from her bouquet and handed it to an old lady in the crowd. This simple gesture was full of grace, and Ciro took it in.

Women move through the world never knowing their power.

The next time I fall in love
, Ciro thought to himself,
I will choose wisely
.
I will make sure that the girl loves me more than I love her
. It was in that moment, when he made that promise to himself, that he set his cap for Felicitá Cassio, the May Queen.

Chapter 11

A BLESSED MEDAL
Una Medaglia Benedetta

T
he quarter moon peeked through the alpine trees like a snip of pink ribbon in the purple night sky. By the first day of May 1910, a few weeks after their disastrous meeting with Signor Arduini, the Ravanellis were settled into another rental two streets away from the house where their six children had been born. Enza made fast work to find another house with the help of her boss at the dress shop.

The move from Via Scalina to Via Gondolfo meant less space and a higher rent. Instead of an entire house, Marco rented the bottom floor of the Ruffino homestead, which had a small garden in the back, a patch of green grass in the front, four rooms, and a fireplace. Even though they were lucky to find a house so quickly, leaving one landlord for another was not what Marco had envisioned for his family.

Marco kept the family stable on Via Scalina, refusing to sell it to Signor Arduini. He built a low fence between the two buildings and laid a new stone path to the entrance from the street. Signor Arduini was not pleased with the situation, but Marco would not sell the barn to the man who had forced him out of his home.

When Marco passed Signor Arduini in the streets of Vilminore, he continued to show his respect and tip his hat. Signor Arduini did not return the kindness. Enza’s words still burned in the padrone’s gut like the perpetual flames in the coke ovens below the village. It was a fire Arduini could not put out.

The final piece of the Ravenellis’ bad luck came one day while Enza was working in Signora Sabatino’s dress shop. Enza remembered the day the old lady from Lake Iseo came to pick up her dress for her son’s wedding. Ida Braido was small, slim and white haired, but she had the focus of a much younger woman with a project in mind.

Ida’s blue eyes were clear behind her eyeglasses as she sat in the window seat, waiting for Signora Sabatino to attend to her. Enza sat behind the sewing machine, carefully feeding two sides of a cotton placket under the bobbin. Ida watched her with interest.

“Is there anything a machine can’t do?” Signora Braido asked.

“Fall in love,” Enza replied.

“Or die,” Signora Braido mused.

“Oh, they can die all right,” Signora Sabatino said as she entered from the back of the shop. “I had a buttonholer give out last week. Enza and I have the bloody thumbs to prove it.”

Signora Sabatino held up the dress, a simple pale yellow sheath overlaid with organza embroidered in a pattern of small daisies around the hem.

“I did all the stitchwork by hand. No machines touched your gown,” Enza assured her.

“I like it,” Ida Braido said. “It’s fitting for a send-off.”

“I thought you were going to wear it to your son’s wedding.”

“I am. After the wedding he and his bride are leaving for Naples, where they are taking the SS
Imelda
to America. I am losing a son, gaining a daughter-in-law, and then losing them both.”

Signora Braido opened her change purse and handed the seamstress full and final payment for the daisy dress. She went out into the street, where her son awaited with a horse cart to take her home.

“All these
pazzo
people and their dreams of America,” Signora Sabatino said. “What do they think? If every Italian leaves to find a job in America, pretty soon there will be too many workers in America lining up for a few jobs. And then what? They’ve lost their home here, and any possibility of returning. Crazy dreams.”

Signora Sabatino lifted the bin of finished mending and went to the back room.

Enza pulled her small notebook and pencil from her apron and calculated her pay against what the girls made in America. She would have to work several years for Signora Sabatino to make what she could save in one year in America. Enza tucked the notebook with the figures back into her pocket.

Enza adjusted her work lamp over the needle of her sewing machine.

She flipped the bobbin switch and fed the fabric under the needle, guiding it with her hands. The silver needle pumped up and down along the chalk line of the placket. She released the bobbin switch, pulled the fabric away gently from the gears, and snipped the threads with her shears. She examined her work. She had created one flawless seam, quickly, with a sure hand, just like a master.

She had sat back in her work chair when she saw Eliana tap on the window. Enza went to the door.

“
Andiamo!
” Eliana said urgently.

“Is it Mama?” Enza’s heart sank in her chest.

“No, no. The stable.”

Enza called out to Signora Sabatini that she must go. She ran with Eliana from the shop to Marco’s stable.

Giacomina stood by the worktable, holding Alma, who cried into her apron.

“Mama? What is it?” Enza asked, fearing that something terrible had happened to her father. She turned and saw Marco kneeling in Cipi’s stall. Battista and Vittorio fought back tears as they stroked Cipi’s mane.

The grand old horse lay still on the clean straw as Marco covered him with a blanket. The day they dreaded had come. Cipi was old, and finally his heart had given out.

“He’s gone,” Papa said, tears in his eyes.

Enza went into the stall, Vittorio and Battista moving aside as she knelt next to Cipi, whom she had known all of her life. His shiny mane was still warm, and his brown eyes, even in death, had a sweet expression, one of surrender, where there once had been one of abiding patience. Enza remembered climbing up on his back when she was a girl, grooming him as soon as her hand had grown large enough to hold the brush, and, when she grew tall enough, feeding him slices of apples from her hands. She remembered loading the carriage lamp with oil in the winter, and making bouquets of fresh flowers to attach to the carriage in summer. Cipi had pulled the carriage that carried Stella’s coffin, and had taken every bride and groom from Sant’Antonio down the mountain to Bergamo after their weddings. She remembered braiding Cipi’s mane with ribbons on feast days—red on Christmas, white on Easter, and pale blue for Santa Lucia. She remembered leaving the house on the night of a snowstorm and going to the barn to throw an extra blanket over him. She remembered shaking the sleigh bells on the carriage at Christmastime as Cipi pulled the children through the streets while the snow fell. She had taken excellent care of this horse, and in return, he had served her family loyally and well.

The long shadows of her brothers, sisters, mother, and father looked like tombstones against the stable wall as they stood around Cipi. Enza rested her body against the horse she had loved all of her life, taking in the clean scent of his lustrous coat.

“Thank you, Cipi,” Enza whispered. “You were a good boy.”

Besides having been May Queen at Our Lady of Pompeii Church, Felicitá Cassio was also the privileged daughter of a grocer in Greenwich Village who had emigrated from Sicily with his bright, sturdy wife and built a small empire that began with a fruit stand on Mott Street and eventually spread to every corner below Fourteenth Street.

As her father loved peddling fresh fruit, strawberries and cherries, Felicitá loved boys. Ciro pursued Felicitá in the weeks after the festival, but he didn’t have to work too hard to win her; just as he had chosen her, Felicitá had chosen him.

She arranged to stop by and visit with her friend Elizabeth Juviler at the cheese store on Mulberry on a regular basis, with the goal of running into Ciro. When she discovered that Ciro made deliveries of boots and shoes he had repaired to the factory workers in the West Village, she made sure to take a walk across Charles Street when she knew she might run into him. Felicitá had a serious attraction to the mountain boy. She was taken with Ciro’s light hair and eyes, and he was enamored of her
bella figura
, the envy of every girl in Little Italy.

Felicitá was thinking how lucky she was as she brushed Ciro’s hair off his face and studied his profile as he napped. Her parents worked long hours in the business, and she had their apartment to herself during the day. An only child, she cooked and cleaned for her parents in exchange for everything a girl of sixteen desires.

Felicitá found Ciro more impressive than the compact Sicilian boys, who were attractive enough with their thick eyebrows and Roman noses, but only a couple inches taller than she. They were also too eager to please for her taste. She liked that Ciro didn’t fawn over her; he was remote, yet warm, and Felicitá saw those attributes as signs of maturity. Ciro was so tall he barely fit in her small bed. Her shoes, resting nearby, could easily hide inside his.

Ciro stirred and opened his eyes. She once had a party dress the exact blue-green color of his eyes.

“You should go,” she said.

“Why?” He pulled her close and rested his face in her neck.

“I don’t want you to get caught.” She sat up and pulled a small crystal bowl filled with her jewelry off the nightstand. She slid delicate rings—thin, embossed gold bands, others inlaid with round opals and shimmering chips of citrine—onto her fingers.

“Maybe I want to get caught,” Ciro teased.

“Maybe you ought to get dressed.” Felicitá fluttered her fingers, now sparkling with metal and stones. She flipped her long hair to the side and snapped on a necklace with a holy medal. “Hurry up. Papa will kill you,” she said without the slightest urgency.

Ciro pulled on his pants and then his shirt.

Felicitá grabbed Ciro’s hand. “I want that ring.”

“You can’t have it.” He pulled his hand away, laughing. They’d played this game before. “Your name doesn’t begin with a
C
.”

“I’ve always wanted a signet ring. They can scrape off the
C
at the jeweler on Carmine Street. Then they can size it and carve an
F
on it. It looks like good gold. 24K?”

“I’m not giving you the ring.” Ciro put his hands in his pockets.

“You don’t love me.” She pulled the bedsheet around her body as she kneeled on the bed.

“I’ll buy you a different ring.”

“I want
that
one. Why won’t you give it to me?”

“It belonged to my mother.”

Felicitá softened. Ciro had never mentioned this detail before. “She died?”

“I don’t know,” Ciro answered honestly.

“You don’t know where your mother is?”

“Where’s yours?” Ciro shot back.

“On the corner of Sixth Avenue, selling bananas.”

Ciro reached down and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll buy you something nice at Mingione’s.”