The Shoemaker's Wife (57 page)

“Come here,” Ciro said softly.

“No. You come to me,” she said to him.

Ciro went to his wife and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I want you to be secure. I didn’t mean to insult you. Of course you can take care of yourself. You survived Hoboken without me.”

“What would help you get better, Ciro?”

“A miracle,” he said softly.

“I think I know of one.”

“Monsignor Schiffer already dropped off a vial of holy water from Lourdes. Only a German priest would bring an Italian French holy water,” Ciro joked.

“Not that kind of miracle in a bottle—the real thing. I want to take the money we’ve saved and send you to the mountain. You should go home and see your brother. Your friends. The convent. You should swim in the water of Stream Vò. It would heal you faster than the water from Lourdes.”

“What are you talking about, Enza? My place is here with you and Antonio.”

“No, Ciro, listen to me.” She pulled Ciro close. “Remember the berries in late summer? The way the juniper trees had pale green shoots underneath the branches, and they’d turn velvety and dark as they grew closer to the sky? If anything can make you well, it’s the place you come from and the people that loved you. Your friend Ziggy—”

“
Iggy
,” he corrected her.

“Wouldn’t you like to see him again?”

“He taught me to smoke.”

“You have to thank him,” Enza said wryly. “And the nuns—”

“My nuns.” Ciro laughed. “I wonder who is left at the convent of San Nicola?”

“You must go and reclaim your home again. That mountain is as much yours as it is anyone’s. That rotten priest banished you, and you never returned. It’s not right.”

“Is my beautiful wife at long last turning on the Church of Rome?”

“No. But a bad priest is a bad priest.”

“I used to dream of building a home on the mountain like the one you helped your family build. I wanted a garden.”

“Where was I in this picture?”

“You were always there. I just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t know the woman I would love all of my life was you.”

“If you love me, you’ll go back to the mountain and let it heal you.”

In the days that followed their conversation, Pappina and Luigi met with Ciro and Enza, and they agreed to consolidate the business. The Latinis would move to Chisholm that summer and rent a home on Willow Street. The men would pull together and build an inventory, making work boots and fur-trimmed winter boots for snowshoeing.

Enza took in alterations from the Blomquist’s and Raatamas department stores, and Pappina helped in the shop when she could. Enza expanded the dance shoe business to provide the shoes year-round, not just by special order.

Ciro and Enza began to argue frequently about her desire to send him home to Italy. When Enza moved the tin money box from the kitchen to the dresser in the bedroom, Ciro would put it back in the cabinet. When she brought it down to the shop to leave it on the worktable, he would gently put it aside. When she left it on the kitchen table at breakfast, he ignored it.

Ciro told Enza that he would never go home, until one day, in the heat of the last day of August, a letter came from Eduardo.

My Dear Brother,

I said a mass for you this morning.

After a long search, more prayers have been answered on our behalf.

I have found our mother. She is safe, but I fear she is beaten down from years in a convent with terrible conditions. She would like to see you, and so would I. Perhaps a trip could be arranged?

My love to you, E.

At first, Ciro didn’t tell Enza about the letter. He kept it in his pocket, and in stolen moments would reread it as though there was a line in it that would help change his mind. He was relieved that his mother was alive, and soon after the relief subsided like the waves on Longyear Lake, the pain came through anew, and his broken heart filled him with a deeper and more profound regret. He wished to be angry at Caterina and abandon her, the way she had abandoned them. But his heart, having grown in the tender care of Enza, would have none of it. He loved Caterina and wanted to see her again. He needed his mother now more than ever.

Ciro agreed, at long last, to go home to the mountain. He wanted to see his family before he died.

When Ciro told Enza he had made the decision, she leaped out of her chair and threw her arms around him. “How will we pay for the trip?” Ciro asked her.

“Remember the Burt-Sellers stock money? You wanted no part of it. But I’ve saved it. Your father is paying for your passage home.” Enza beamed.

Ciro had been stalwart in the face of every decision regarding his health. The idea, that his father, who had died so young and failed to provide for his family, would in fact, with his death benefit, pay to reunite his wife and sons was almost too much for Ciro to bear. He collapsed in Enza’s arms.

“All those years ago, you told me to spend the money on hats. And I’m so glad I’m not vain about hats.”

That afternoon, Enza stood in the telegraph office and dictated a telegram to Laura H. Chapin of 256 Park Avenue, New York City:

BOOKED ROUND-TRIP PASSAGE TO ITALY FOR CIRO. LETTER FOLLOWS TO EXPLAIN. I WILL BRING HIM TO NEW YORK TO SEE HIM OFF. MAY WE STAY WITH YOU BEFORE DEPARTURE? E.R.L.

The train from Minneapolis to New York City sped through the night as Enza and Ciro sat in the reading car. She read
The Sheik
by Edith M. Hull as Ciro smoked a cigarette and watched her as her eyes scanned over the words.

Enza pulled the blue wool wrap she wore over her suit tightly, without taking her eyes off the page. Ciro took delight in watching Enza when she read; it was as if she were consumed by the words, and the world outside the one on the pages ceased to exist.

“You’re staring at me,” Enza said without looking up.

“Are you imagining Rudolph Valentino as you’re reading?”

“No.”

“John Gilbert?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

She put down the book. “If you must know, whenever I read a character described as a handsome man, I think of you.”

“Then why don’t you stop reading and join me in the sleeping car?”

Ciro closed the door softly and joined Enza in the berth. The reverence of their wedding night was long gone, and had been replaced with the glorious familiarity that came from years of marriage. They knew everything about one another, and each surprise revealed along the way had only served to make them closer.

Pappina and Luigi had taken Antonio until Enza could return home. This gave her peace of mind, as she knew that her son would be happy with his friends, who were nearly brothers to him.

As Ciro kissed his wife, he remembered the train ride from New York after they were married, and the memory of it gave him a feeling of peace, the first he’d had since he went to the Mayo Clinic. He was enthralled by Enza all over again when he thought back to the night they first made love. But soon the dull ache in his stomach returned, and the feeling of doom that accompanied the knowledge of his fate. He put those thoughts out of his mind, though, and kissed his wife, and made love to her as he had so many years before, when they were young and everything was new.

Chapter 26

A CARRIAGE RIDE
Un Giro in Carrozza

C
olin Chapin greeted Enza and Ciro on the platform of the train at Grand Central Station. Colin’s hair was completely gray now, and his suits were Savile Row, but his smile was as open as it always had been.
He is a solid white brick of a man,
Enza thought. Colin was the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and with the job had come speaking engagements and lucrative coproductions with opera companies around the world. Colin and Laura were in the top tier of high society in New York, but Enza wouldn’t have known it when he threw his arms around them. He acted like he was still the office runner in accounting that he had been when they first met.

Colin took their bags and led them to his car, a midnight blue and maroon Packard, custom made and the height of chic opulence. As he turned onto Fifth Avenue and Seventy-ninth Street, Enza saw Laura waiting in the lobby of the apartment building. Colin pulled up to the awning and Enza jumped out of the car and into the arms of her best friend.

“Autumn in New York,” Laura said.

“Our favorite time of year!” Enza took in her friend, who opened her velvet opera coat to reveal a pregnancy so advanced, it appeared the baby could be born that same evening.

“You’re having a baby!” Enza threw her arms around Laura. “And soon!”

“I know. Forgive me, Enza, I wanted to tell you. But it’s been a very difficult pregnancy. The last week things have been so much better, but we’ve been on guard the whole time. The doctor said I would never have a baby, but here we are. It was a shock to Colin, to me, to the doctor, to the entire medical community as it stands in New York City. But it’s true, and we’re thrilled.”

“I have sons in college, and soon we’ll have a baby in the crib. We don’t know whether to be thrilled or . . . cry,” Colin teased.

Laura was at the peak of her beauty, the contrast of her pale skin and red hair were now softly dramatic. Her lovely profile had taken on the lines of aristocracy, and the sharp angles of her youth were gone.

“You should be on bed rest,” Enza told her.

“How could I rest? My best friend was on her way.”

Ciro and Colin joined them, and Laura embraced Ciro. “All right, all right, upstairs with you,” Colin said. Ciro reached to help Colin with the luggage, but a bellman whisked it away. Ciro turned to see a valet drive the Chapin Packard to the parking lot. Ciro shook his head. They were a long way from Chisholm.

The elevator opened into the foyer of the penthouse apartment. Laura had decorated the apartment in soft greens and yellow, obeying the rule Mrs. DeCoursey always proclaimed back at Milbank House: paint your rooms the colors you look best in
.

The spacious rooms were well appointed with polished Chippendale furniture, Aubusson rugs, crystal sconces, milk-glass chandeliers, and oil paintings of pastoral settings, including the farm fields of Ireland, the black rage of the North Sea tossing a boat in its milky foam, and tasteful miniatures of single flowers, a daisy, a hydrangea, and a gardenia.

“You’re a long way from Hoboken,” Enza said.

Ciro and Colin had gone out on the terrace. “Back in bed, Mama,” Colin called out.

“I am!” Laura hollered back. She showed Enza the guest room, a cheery room with a canopied bed covered in chintz. “Come with me.” Enza followed Laura to the master bedroom, a cool blue room with trellis-patterned wallpaper and a satin-covered bed. Laura pulled off her cape, revealing a nightgown underneath. She climbed back into bed.

“When are you due?” Enza fluffed the pillows.

“Any minute.”

“Where’s the nursery?”

“I haven’t put it together.”

Enza sat on the bed. “Superstitious?”

“The doctor is concerned.” Laura wiped tears from her eyes. “And I’m scared.” Laura cried because at long last, in the arms of her longtime and best friend, she could be honest.

“Before I had Antonio, I had terrible feelings of doom. I’m sure your baby is fine.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’ve learned one important lesson in my life, and I’m going to share it with you. Don’t worry about bad things that haven’t happened yet. It will save you a lot of anxiety.”

Colin brought a tray of tea in for the ladies. “You girls catch up, but as soon as you do, it’s bedtime for the little mother here.”

“He’s so bossy,” Enza teased as Colin went. “So what’s the gossip? You said you had a lot.”

“Vito Blazek left the Met, and now he works at Radio City Music Hall. He’s on his third divorce. ”

“Can’t be!”

Laura nodded solemnly. “The three stages of romantic love for a flack: marry a showgirl, divorce her, marry the daughter of a producer, divorce her, marry a younger showgirl, and divorce her once you’ve come to your senses.”

“How awful.” Enza sipped her tea.

“Don’t you want to know how he looks?”

“Every detail,” Enza said.

“Gorgeous.”

Enza laughed. “That figures.”

“He’s no Ciro Lazzari. Honey, in the sweepstakes of the acquisition of handsome men, you got the golden ticket. The man you married is one in a million. But you know that.”

“And I’m going to lose him, Laura.”

“He looks well,” Laura said hopefully.

“I pray for him. I keep hoping that maybe the whole thing is a mistake. And when I say to that Ciro, he looks at me like I’m crazy. He knows the truth, and he’s accepting it. He’s never been a religious man, but he has an inner strength that defies faith itself.”

“Maybe the trip will cure him,” Laura said gently.

“That’s what I tell him. And I’m going to say the same thing to you. Your baby is fine. Believe it, and all will be well.”

Colin woke early to go to the Met for an early call. New scenery for the production of
La Bohème
was being delivered. Ciro left Enza and Laura after breakfast and went for a walk. His plan was to walk through Central Park, but he found himself walking south, down Fifth Avenue toward Little Italy. He thought about taking the trolley, but he felt good, and decided to see how the city had changed in the twelve years since he left.

Broadway widened out in lower Manhattan. The sidewalks were full of fruit vendors, flower carts, and newsstands. When he reached Grand Street and took the turn into Little Italy, he remembered the buildings, and was surprised that while upper Manhattan seemed to change, his old neighborhood had stayed the same.

He found his way easily to 36 Mulberry Street. The Zanetti Shoe Shop sign was gone, as was the Italian flag. The storefront was empty, with a sign that said, “For Rent.” Ciro stood back and took in the place where he’d worked when he first came to America. He moved closer and looked through the window. The same bowed floors and tin ceiling remained, and he could see the place where his cot used to be. The privacy curtain was gone. The door to the back garden was open wide. Ciro peered through. The old elm that he loved had been chopped down. The tree that had given him comfort and hope was gone, and with that, Ciro left the past and returned to the present. He took the tree and its absence as an omen, and with a heavy heart, turned to walk back to the Chapins’.