The Shoemaker's Wife (63 page)

“What happened, Luigi?” Enza put her hands on his shoulder.

“She’s gone, Enza. She’s gone. There was trouble with the baby and they tried to save her, and they couldn’t. Pappina never came out of it . . . and our baby son died.”

Pappina was a year or two younger than Enza, and this baby had been a surprise. Pappina had been going through the change of life early, and hadn’t thought creating another life was possible. But the Latinis had been as happy with the news as they had the first four times. Enza, who had prayed for years for a sibling for Antonio, was always profoundly touched by the way Pappina included her at the heart of every pregnancy. Pappina never made a fuss, but she somehow drew Enza into the circle of happiness with her, involving Enza in every aspect of the new baby’s life, so Enza might be filled up with joy despite her longing.

After leaving the hospital and ensuring that Luigi was capable of handling the final arrangements, Enza took the Latini children back to 5 West Lake Street with her. John Latini was eighteen and an apprentice in the shop. The older boys were stoic, but Angela could not stop crying for her mother. As they walked along the sidewalk beneath the bare winter trees, Enza tried to comfort them.

“Children come to us in many ways,” she remembered Pappina saying. The thought sent a chill through her.

At home, Enza cooked for the Latini family, Antonio and John led them in games to distract them, and later on, Enza bathed Angela and prepared her school clothes. It was, of course, the least she could do for all the Latinis had done for her and Antonio when Ciro died. The children had always called her Zenza, a combination of Zia and Enza, and most of them had spent as many nights under her roof, playing with Antonio, as they had under their own.

Pappina’s funeral was held four days later in a standing-room-only mass at St. Joseph’s. Pappina had been beloved in the community, a wonderful baker, a beautiful wife and mother. Luigi was bereft at the loss of his wife and new baby. His life would never be the same, nor would his heart.

Each of her children took a turn reading the scripture. Enza knew her friend would have been very proud of her children that day.

Enza slowly eased the younger family back into their routine. After a few weeks, she moved them back to the Latini house, showing the boys how to do their own laundry and prepare meals.

Angela watched Enza carefully, and tried to do chores as her mother had done. Cleaning was not difficult, but cooking and baking for the entire family were too much for a child only ten years old, and she grew frustrated at the challenge. Enza stepped in and made the meals. She arranged to have the children come only on the weekends for lunch, and made sure they went to church on Sundays.

One morning, Enza had opened the shop and was sewing in the back. Luigi came in, and called out to her. He began to repair shoes as he had every morning. But something was different about him that day. He put down his tools, went back to the sewing workroom, and sat in front of Enza.

“I’m going back to Italy,” he said.

“Luigi, it’s too soon to make any decisions.”

“No, I’m going to do it.”

“You can’t run away from what happened to you.”

“I can’t bear it. I want to start over. And the only way I can do that is go back to the beginning.”

“But your children!”

“I’m going to take the boys with me.”

“But what about Angela?”

“I was hoping you would take her. I don’t know what to do with a girl,” he cried. “She needs a mother.”

Enza sat back in her chair. She understood Luigi’s concern. In the coming year or two, Angela would begin adolescence. Without a mother in the home, there would be no one to guide her in the matters of womanhood.

Antonio was leaving for Notre Dame in the spring, to begin training for the basketball team. Enza would be alone, and now, if Luigi left for Italy, she would have to rent the workroom out.

“Leave her with me,” Enza said. “I’ll take care of her.”

“
Grazie
, Enza.
Grazie.”

“Pappina would have done the same for me.” Enza was sure of it.

Enza prepared the spare room for Angela. She painted it pink, sewed a white chenille coverlet, and made lampshades with some leftover chintz. She made sure that Angela had photographs of her mother, father, and brothers on the dresser. Knowing what it was like to live in someone else’s home, Enza vowed that she would make Angela comfortable and secure; it would be nothing like her own experience in Hoboken with the Buffa family.

Enza went to the school to make certain that the teachers were aware of Angela’s needs. Angela stayed in her room a lot, but that was to be expected. The ten-year-old girl was making the transition from life with a big family to the serenity of the Lazzari home. Luckily she had been in and out of the shop all of her life, and had many happy memories of shared holidays upstairs in the Lazzari apartment. Enza checked on her, and would find Angela reading, or sitting quietly and looking off in the middle distance. It was heartbreaking for Enza; she understood every nuance of what the little girl was feeling. At least Enza knew her mother was alive, and she could write to her. Angela did not have that luxury.

One Sunday afternoon, Enza was making pasta in the kitchen when she heard singing. Enza smiled, happy that Angela felt comfortable enough to play the phonograph without asking.

As the recording continued, Enza realized that the orchestra was not joining in after the first a cappella stanza. A single voice continued to cut through the quiet. Enza stopped kneading the pasta dough, wiped her hands on the moppeen, and followed the sound down the hallway. Enza moved toward Angela’s room, then stopped, frozen by what she saw. Angela was singing. Enza had not heard a voice like it since Geraldine Farrar back at the Met.

Angela did not slide into a note as she sang, she hit it and held it. The crystal quality of her tone was natural and God given. Enza closed her eyes and followed the sound, picturing the moment she first heard the same aria at the Met years earlier. Enza stepped away and listened until Angela finished singing the phrase, then tiptoed back to the kitchen.

Enza pulled on her coat and gloves and her best hat and walked up West Lake Street for her appointment with Miss Robin Homonoff, Chisholm’s only piano and voice teacher. Her first name was not written out on the mailbox, rather it was a sketch of a tweeting bird.

Miss Homonoff answered the door. She had soft gray hair, and was in every way prim. She invited Enza to sit in the parlor by the baby grand Steinway piano, the only shiny object in her blue cottage.

“I want to talk to you about Angela Latini,” Enza began.

“I think she has talent. If she begins to study now with me in earnest, and works very hard, I think she could be a professional singer someday.”

“I think she sounds like Geraldine Farrar.”

“You studied opera?”

“I worked at the Metropolitan Opera when I was a girl.”

“You sang?”

“Sewed. But I love music, and I think this would be good for her. She’s endured a lot in her young life, and I think this would give her confidence.”

“We’ll get started right away, then.” Miss Homonoff extended her hand.

“How much are the lessons?”

“Not one penny. In a matter of months, she’ll be teaching me, Mrs. Lazzari; that’s how good she is.”

Miss Homonoff closed the door and smiled. She lived for these moments, when raw talent was entrusted to her to refine and shape. She would make a world class soprano out of Angela Latini.

Angela knelt in the living room at 5 West Lake Street. She fiddled with the dial on the radio until WNDU out of South Bend, Indiana, came through clear and sharp without static. Enza shook the pan on the stove in the kitchen, and soon the popcorn was crackling inside. She held the lid down as the puffs exploded.

“Hurry, Zenza! Antonio is in the starting five!”

Enza threw the popcorn into a bowl, and just as they had every Saturday since the Notre Dame basketball season had begun, she and Angela listened to the game on the radio. Notre Dame was playing Army in South Bend.

Angela and Enza listened as Antonio scored. They laughed because the announcer mispronounced Lazzari. Angela corrected the announcer. “I know he can’t hear me,” Angela said, her eyes flashing. “But I wish he could.”

When Antonio graduated with honors from Notre Dame in 1940, Veda Ponikvar, the editor of the
Chisholm Free Press
, wrote a profile about him, with his picture. The headline read:

HIS FATHER’S SON

As soon as Antonio arrived home to Chisholm with his diploma, a letter from the draft board was waiting for him. Antonio was summoned to appear with his mother in Hibbing. Angela was in school when Enza took the trolley with Antonio to Hibbing. She had a heavy heart, knowing that her son would be sent to fight in the second world war. She thought of the stories Ciro had told her about the Great War, and she couldn’t help but feel that history was repeating itself. She tried not to show her apprehension to Antonio, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I’ve called you here today because you’re in a unique situation.” Corporal Robert Vukad looked at Enza, then Antonio, in the small, spare storefront office on the main street of Hibbing.

“I understand that your father served in the Great War. You’re the only son in the family, and your mother is a widow. We don’t have to send you into action. In fact, you can be exempt from it entirely. It’s the government’s way of holding families under these circumstances together.”

“I want to be in the war, sir. I want to serve my country. I don’t want to be benched.”

“Your mother may disagree with you. Mrs. Lazzari?”

Enza wanted to tell the officer that she wanted her son to take the exemption. As a mother, she couldn’t imagine offering her only son to the war. She had already lived through the loss of her husband; the thought of losing her son as well was devastating. Enza looked at Antonio, who had the calm confidence that begat courage. So instead of taking the offer, she said quietly, “Sir, my son goes like every other young man. He should not be exempt from the war to take care of me. It means more to me as a mother that he wants to emulate his father. It means he understands the great debt we have to this country.”

“I’ll be all right, Mama.”

Enza and Antonio walked back to the trolley from the recruitment office. They didn’t say much on the ride back to Chisholm, and walked in silence from the trolley station. Enza’s heart was heavy as she unlocked the door. Antonio pushed the door open. The scent of tomato and basil gravy simmering on the stove permeated the hallway.

“Angela?” Enza called out.

“I made dinner, come on up!” she hollered.

Enza and Antonio entered the kitchen. The table was set with a cloth, candles, and china. Antonio’s girlfriend, Betsy—beautiful and collegiate in a Pendleton wool skirt, blouse, and loafers who was home from nursing school—was tossing the salad, wearing an apron.

Angela, now fourteen, had tied a moppeen around her head and wore faded blue jeans and one of Antonio’s old jerseys. “Sorry,” she apologized to Enza. “I didn’t have time to change. And I didn’t want to get tomato sauce on my good blouse.”

Betsy put her arm around Angela. “I told her she was beautiful just as she is.”

Antonio kissed Betsy. “And so are you.”

That night, they feasted on
spaghetti pomodoro
, fresh salad, and chocolate cake. They told stories of the ice rink, high school basketball games, and the night Betsy fell in the dance competition during Serbian Days. Enza sat back and watched her son, taking in every detail of him, wishing the night would never end and praying he would be very, very lucky and return home safely to her someday.

Antonio shipped out from New Haven with the navy the following summer. He called his mother the night before. She buckled under the anxiety of his decision, and hers. She fretted so much, and so deeply, that within a year of Antonio’s leaving, her raven hair had turned quickly and completely white.

Month after month, she waited for Antonio’s letters, opening them as soon as they were placed in her hands. She’d remove a hair clasp from her head, then rip open the envelope with the sharp metal end. After poring over the words a dozen times, she would carry each letter in her apron pocket until the next letter arrived. The most recent letter he sent had given her cause for concern. He spoke of his father in it, which he had never done before.

February 15, 1943

My dearest Mama,

I can’t tell you exactly where I am, but every morning all I see is blue. It’s hard to believe that something so beautiful could hide the enemy with such depth and dexterity.

I have been thinking of Papa a lot. I miss you terribly, and don’t like that you are alone in Chisholm. Mama, when I come home, let’s go to your mountain. I want to see the fields of Schilpario and see the convent where Papa lived. He wanted us to go, and we should. Please don’t cry yourself to sleep. I am safe and with a good regiment, very smart fellows. There are recruits from the University of Minnesota, a few from Texas, others from Mississippi, and one fellow from North Dakota who we call No Dak. He tells long-winded stories about the history of the moose in middle America. Sometimes we tell him we can’t take it, and other times, we just let him talk. It’s almost like the radio.

I love you Mama, you have my heart, and I will be home soon,

Antonio

P.S. Give Angela a hug for me.

Enza put aside her alterations, neatly folding a coat from Blomquist’s.

She checked the mailbox each morning, hoping for word from her son. When no letter came, she pulled on her coat and took the long walk up the street to the post office building to check the rosters of the war dead. She was not alone in this habit; every mother in Chisholm with a son or daughter in the war did the same, though they would pretend to be running an errand, or dropping off a package. But when one mother looked into the eyes of another, she knew.