The Shoemaker's Wife(115)

The fire threw a soft glow onto the walls, illuminating the cracks in the old paint. There were no shapes or strange shadows to portend Enza’s future, no signs whatsoever. On what should have been the happiest day of her life, Enza cried silent tears so as not to wake Laura.

Ciro stretched out on his cot at the Zanetti Shoe Shop. He crossed his arms and stared up at the squares of the tin ceiling, as he had done for many nights before he left for the war.

Remo and Carla had gone to bed after a supper of steak and onions, fresh bread, coffee, and cake. Ciro talked for hours about the war and his travels to Rome. He thought about telling them about Enza, but decided not to, as Carla seemed to expect him to get back to work immediately. Her bank purse was never so thick as when Ciro made excellent-quality work boots at the pace of a machine. Signora wanted the old profits back, the sooner the better.

Ciro heard a key turn in the front door of the shop. He stood and looked out from behind the curtain.

“Don’t shoot,” Luigi said, holding up the key. He looked at Ciro. “My God, you’re thin,” he said as he embraced his friend.

“You’re not. How’s married life?”

“Pappina is expecting.”

“Auguri!”

“Grazie. Grazie. We’re living on Hester Street.”

“How is it?”

“It’s no good. It’s noisy. There’s no garden. I want to get Pappina out of here.”

“Where would you go?”

“We thought about going home to Italy, but there’s no work there. The war made it worse.” He lowered his voice. “And I’m tired of making money for them.” He pointed upstairs. “I work seven days a week, and she pays me for five.”

“Signora wants me back on the machines in the morning—at the same salary. Says times are tough.”

“For us. Not for her,” Luigi said. “She couldn’t wait for you to return. I’m surprised she didn’t rent a mule and do a search for you in the fields of France. Did she make you steak?”

Ciro nodded.

“That’s how she keeps us under her thumb.” He patted his stomach. “When she expects double time at the same rate, you get tenderloin. We need to make a break.”

“Remo says he wants to go home to Italy.”

“And you think they’ll sell us the business? It will never happen. Signora loves the cash too much. She’ll work him to death and then spend the rest of her time counting the money.”

“I’ve thought about opening our own shop,” Ciro said. “What do you think?”

“We work well together. I’d love it.”

“Where should we go? Brooklyn? New Jersey?”

“I want to get as far from the city as possible,” Luigi insisted. “I want land. Fresh air. Don’t you?”

Ciro had given a lot of thought about where to live during his endless nights in France. When Enza embraced him that afternoon, she had no idea the gift she had given him. Ciro was ready to make a life for her that he had never dared imagine alone. With Luigi as a partner, they could go anywhere. “How about California?”

“Half of Calabria is in California. There are more shoemakers than feet out west.”

Ciro nodded. “There are mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. Maybe they need shoemakers,” he offered.

“I don’t want to go south,” Luigi said. “I’m from southern Italy, and I’ve had enough heat and humidity to last me a lifetime.”

“We could go north. I’d love a place like Vilminore. Someplace green, where there are lakes.”

“There are plenty of lakes in Minnesota.”

“That’s where my father went to work,” Ciro said quietly, an expression of unresolved pain crossing his face. “And he never came back to us.”

“What happened?” Luigi asked gently.

“We don’t know. And you know what, Luigi? I don’t want to know. They say he died in a mine, but all we know is that he never came home. It broke up our family, ruined my mother’s health, and split up my brother and me.”

“All right. We’ll never go to Minnesota.”

“No, no, we should consider every possibility,” Ciro said slowly. Minnesota had always had a mythical quality to him. It was the place that had swallowed up his father without apology. Yet it held a certain fascination for Ciro because his father had chosen it. Would it be fate or sheer folly to offer up another Lazzari to the Iron Range? Choosing Minnesota might tempt fate—or maybe it could redeem the loss of his father.

“I heard some men talking at Puglia’s,” Luigi continued, oblivious to Ciro’s internal struggle. “The iron ore mines operate around the clock. Lots of guys are heading up there. We should think about it. The mines employ thousands, and somebody’s got to build the boots and repair them. We could make a good living. And you’d certainly have your lakes.”

Perhaps it was the memory of all the places Ciro had been during and after the war—the romantic hills of England, the pristine vineyards of France, and the stately antiquities of Rome—that gave him the desire to leave New York City. Or maybe it was sleeping in the same cot behind a thin privacy curtain, as he had done since he was a teenager, that made him long for a home of his own. Suddenly the old ways, the way things had always been, were not enough. He intended to give Enza a good life and a home of her own. He needed to be bold in his thinking, open to new ideas; and he hoped she, too, might think beyond the borders of Manhattan Island. He shook his head at the odds of his plan succeeding. “Enza will never leave New York City,” he said finally.