The Shoemaker's Wife (62 page)

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 happiest 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

E
nza 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.

Enza wrestled with the promise she had made to Ciro to return to the mountain to raise Antonio among family and friends in the Alps. She gave it serious consideration, but the world had changed quickly in the months after Ciro’s death. Italy was in the midst of political tumult, and it would not have been prudent to take her American son back to where she came from. Observing the social changes in her homeland, she knew she had made the right decision to stay in Minnesota. She chose America because it had been good to them.

Enza was loyal to the town Ciro had chosen for them, and business was steady. She did alterations for the department stores and built wedding gowns, coats, and dresses for the ladies of Chisholm. She sewed draperies, slipcovers, and layettes. Customers marveled at her skill and returned time and again.

Luigi ran the shoe shop alone. The constant flow of company provided by the Latinis, especially Pappina, but also their sons and Angela, who was now nearly ten years old, had been a tonic for Enza. Only when she climbed the stairs and closed her bedroom door at night did her loneliness at the loss of Ciro consume her. Eventually her tears stopped, giving way to a dull ache that Enza accepted as the natural pain of widowhood, one for which there was no cure.

Antonio skated by, grinning and waving at his mother. Enza leaned against the wall and watched as Betsy Madich, also seventeen, in a short red velvet skating skirt, white tights, and a matching sweater, took Antonio’s hands and skated with him. Enza smiled, remembering when the pair had gone roller skating together down West Lake Street when they were children.

Antonio was madly in love with Betsy, a willowy Serbian beauty with her mother’s chestnut hair and blue eyes. She planned to attend nursing school at the University of Minnesota, one of the schools where Antonio hoped to play basketball. Enza had many talks with her son about girls, but she always found them difficult. During those conversations, she felt Ciro’s absence like a missing limb. Sometimes she even felt annoyed at her husband for leaving her behind to raise their son alone. It seemed that she needed Ciro more as time went by, not less.

Antonio and Betsy skated over to the wall where Enza stood.

“Mama,” Antonio said, “I’d like to go Betsy’s after skating.”

“Mom is making
povitica
,” Betsy added.

“Aren’t you going to help Mr. Uncini flood the rink?”

“Yeah. After that, I’d like to go to Betsy’s.”

“Okay. You have your key?”

“Yes, Ma.”

“Not too late,
va bene
?”

“
Va bene
, Mama.” Antonio winked at his mother. Her native Italian had become a secret language between them. When they closed the door at 5 West Lake Street, mother and son spoke as though she had never left the mountain.

Later that night, Mr. Uncini, nicknamed “Oonch,” played “Goodnight, Irene” and closed the rink for the night. The teenagers piled into their cars to go home, or to Choppy’s Pizza, which had just opened on Main Street.

“Clear the ice for me, Antonio,” Mr. Uncini said.

Antonio lifted a long-handled wire broom from the storage bin next to the rink and skated in a circular pattern, clearing the loose shavings and chunks of ice off the rink. While Antonio smoothed the surface as best he could, Mr. Uncini unspooled the fire hose.

Antonio came off the ice and removed his skates. He pulled on his work boots and helped Mr. Uncini crank the wheel to release water onto the rink. Flooding the rink took some time. Antonio would sit with his father’s old friend and talk.

“How are you doing in school?” Mr. Uncini asked.

“Great except for calculus. I might get a B,” Antonio said.

“You’re getting serious with Betsy.”

“Have you been talking to my mom?”

“I have eyes, Antonio.”

“I’d like to marry her someday.”

“That’s pretty serious.”

“Not yet. After college.”

“That’s a good plan. A lot of things will change in four years. It’s a lifetime.”

“That’s what Mama says.”

“You know, your father came to see me before he died. And now that you’re going off to college, I think there are some things I should tell you. You know, he wanted me to look out for you.”

“And you always have, Oonch.”

“I hope I haven’t been too obvious.”

“You cried when I sang ‘Panis Angelicus’ at Saint Joseph’s—that was pretty obvious.”

“I just wanted you to know I was standing in for your father. It’s not the same, I know, but I promised him I would be there for you.”

“What was he like, Oonch? Mama cries when I ask her. I remember a lot about him, but I wonder what I would think of him now that I’m older.”

“He was a decent man. But he loved to have fun. He was ambitious, but not to the extreme. I liked him because he was a true Italian.”

“What’s a true Italian?”

“He loved his family and he loved beauty. For a true Italian, those are the only two things that matter, because in the end that’s what sustains you. Your family gathers around and shores you up while the beauty uplifts you. Your father was devoted to your mother. He made boots like I make scrambled eggs. You’d be talking to him, and he’d be measuring and pinning pattern paper on a sleeve of leather, and in no time, he was sewing and then polishing and buffing. It was as if it was nothing. But it was hard work.”

Antonio looked out over the ice as Mr. Uncini turned the water pump off by cranking the wheel in reverse. The clear water had settled above the old layer of blue ice, filling in every pit and crack. The air was so cold, the surface had already begun to harden, making patterns that under the lights looked like lace. The woods were quiet, and once the water was turned off, there was no sound.

Antonio’s nose burned, and tears came to his eyes as he thought about his father, and how he’d gone around Chisholm, hat in hand, asking his friends to fill in for the times to come when he could not be there. The realization of this made Antonio long for his father and miss him more. He wiped his tears on his sleeve as he closed the gate to the rink.

“You all right?” Mr. Uncini asked.

“Just cold,” Antonio answered.

“You are six-three, Antonio,” Dr. Graham said, scribbling on the report. “You weigh two hundred and fifteen pounds, all muscle.” The doctor chuckled. “Have you decided where you’re going to go to school?”

“The University of Minnesota offered me a four-year scholarship.”

“Of course they did.”

“But I’m going to Notre Dame.”

“Good for you.”

“I want to play professionally once I graduate.”

The phone rang in Dr. Graham’s office. “I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone. “Antonio, please, go get your mother. Tell her Pappina Latini is in the hospital.”

Antonio ran a mile swiftly; in a matter of minutes, he’d pushed the shop door open, called for his mother, and told her to come with him to the hospital. By the time they made it up the hill, Luigi and his children were in the waiting room. They were holding one another, weeping. Angela let out a wail, and called out for her mother.