The Shoemaker's Wife (61 page)

Eduardo’s look of concern softened to a smile. He held up his hands as the priest does during a blessing, giving up winning his brother over to the ways of the rosary. “Tell me about your son.”

“He’s glorious. He’s his mother. Approaches life sensibly. Women will never be his downfall.”

“And the sports?”

“Brilliant. Like a dance. But he is so even-tempered, even in the heat of competition. They call him a good sportsman. He has dignity even on the basketball court.”

“And Enza? Tell me about my sister.”

“Enza wanted me to come to Italy so I could keep the image of the juniper trees and the waterfall and the asters in the front of my mind through the dark days to come. But when I close my eyes, brother, all I ever see is her face. There is no place or time without her. Where I am doesn’t matter when we’re apart. All I want is her.”

“You really love her.”

“I don’t know why she loves me, but she does.”

“What are you afraid of, Ciro?”

“Now?”

“Now, in a few months—”

“When death comes,” Ciro said practically.

“When the moment of your death comes.”

“Well, I imagine I won’t want to go. The doctors have told me this is a painful death. But Enza has learned how to boil the needles and fill the syringe, and I will have all the medicine I need to get through it. That, the doctors have promised me. But what do you say to God when you don’t want to die? What if I want to raise my son and love my wife and live to be an old man?”

“I’m sorry, Ciro. I would do it for you if I could.”

“I know you would.” Ciro wiped away a tear. He had never doubted that his brother would die for him.

“You’ll see the face of God before me.”

“I’m sorry about that. I know how hard you worked to get there first.”

Eduardo laughed. “There is no justice.”

“True.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Someday I hope you can show my son the mountain. I want him to know these roads, hike these trails, own these cliffs like we did. I want you to give him religious instruction—I want him to know God, even though his father doesn’t.”

“You know Him,” Eduardo assured Ciro. “You know Him because you are part of Him. You always have been. Even when you tried your best to be bad, you were good. You’re made of God’s light. I didn’t become a priest because I had this light; I became one because I saw it in you.”

“Then why am I not the pope?” Ciro asked Eduardo. They laughed and laughed, the sound of one brother’s laughter only making the other laugh harder, just as it had when they were boys, when they looked out for one another and believed no harm would ever come to them as long as they were together.

Through the convent wall, Caterina heard her sons’ laughter. She listened at the wall for a few moments, taking in the sound, reminded of all she had lost. But a child’s joy is doubled for the mother, and the sound of her sons’ laughter began to heal her heart, a feat she had never believed possible.

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

C
iro 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.