The Shoemaker's Wife(123)
“Have I taken you away from a life you loved?” Ciro asked her.
“I’ll miss Laura and the opera. And the candied peanuts on the corner of Fortieth Street and Broadway.”
“I’ll make sure you have your peanuts.”
“Thank you, husband.”
“How about Signor Caruso?”
“Yes, I’ll miss him, too. But I guess I understood the words in the arias he sang. A happy life is about love—every note he sang reinforced it. I’ll miss how he made every person he met feel special. He made us all laugh. I’ve come to appreciate a good joke and the conversation of intelligent people. But I have that with you.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Why would I be afraid?”
“We might get to Hibbing, and you won’t like it.”
“Well, if I don’t like it, we’ll have to move.”
Ciro laughed. “Va bene.”
“It wasn’t at all like I thought it would be,” Enza said.
“Getting married?”
“Making love. It’s really a blessing, you know. To be that close. It has a certain beauty to it.”
“Like you,” he said. “You know, my father said something to my brother, and I never realized what it meant until now. He said, ‘Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing.’ But now I know it’s better when it means everything.” Ciro kissed her. He traced the small scar over her eye. It was barely discernible, the width of a thread and as long as an eyelash. “Where did you get this scar?”
“In Hoboken.”
“Did you fall?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I want to know everything about you.”
“Well, there was a man at the Meta Walker factory who was awful to all the girls, and one night, he grabbed me. After months of putting up with his slurs, I fought back. I was so angry, I thought I could take him. I went to kick him, but I fell against the wood planks of the floor, and I cut my eye on a nail. But Laura saved me. She threatened him with a pair of cutting shears.”
“I would have killed him.”
“She almost did.” Enza smiled at Laura’s bravery, the moment that had cemented their friendship. “I look at the scar every morning when I wash my face. It reminds me of how lucky I am. I don’t think about the wrong that was done to me, I remember my friend and how brave she was. She taught me English, but I realize now, she taught me the words that I needed to know, not so much the ones I wanted to learn. Those would come later when she gave me Jane Eyre. She used to make me read it aloud to her. Sometimes she would make a comment when Rochester was surly, and we’d laugh about that. Like Jane, we had no connections, but Laura taught me to act like we did. Laura tapped my creative vein, pushing me to sew a straighter seam, choose a daring fabric, and to never be afraid of color. My world went from the hues and tones of our mountain to this great American palette, and I would have never had the guts to try if it weren’t for Laura. I walk in the world with confidence today because of her.”
“You must always stay close. And we’ll visit them, and they’ll come to our house.”
“Of course, I would like that. But we’ll be happy to write to one another, because that’s how we learned to be friends, on the page, with words. I imagine that won’t change.”
Ciro kissed her. “I don’t think a man could ever come between you. Or two, if you’re counting Colin.”
Enza looked through the window as Ciro fell asleep, his face nestled into her neck. She imagined there would be many nights like this ahead, just the two of them, holding tight in a world that was flying by.
Until she met Ciro, Enza had spent her spare time contemplating facts and figures, thinking up sensible solutions to her problems, estimating how many feet of fabric she needed for a particular garment or how to send a little extra money home to the mountain. Her dreams were about the safety and comfort of her family. This great romantic love shared with Ciro was mystical to her. He had finally made a dreamer of her, but at the same time, love felt as practical and durable as a sturdy velvet that only gets softer and lovelier with age. Without knowing the future, she was assured, in the deepest place in her heart, that this love would last.
There was something constant and reliable about Ciro Lazzari. He made her feel no harm would come to her as long as she loved him.
As Enza said her prayers that night, she pictured her father’s safe passage on the steamship to Naples, and a speedy train ride from the south to Bergamo in the north. She imagined the entire family there to greet him by the garden of their new home, built by the labor of their own hands and lit by the light of the winter moon.
Chapter 23
A LIBRARY CARD
Una Tessera della Biblioteca
Enza could barely make out the flats of the Iron Range under the snow from the window of the train as it pulled into the station at Hibbing. Low rolling hills covered in white drifts seemed untouched for miles. Close to the train tracks, there were gray zippers on the ground where flatbed and dump trucks had made impressions in the snow. Haulers and cranes were parked close by in an open field, plenty of equipment at the ready to plow, carve, and dig into the earth.
The mining operations were vast, decamped over two hundred miles of northern Minnesota terrain. The mouths of the mines were studded into the earth like nailheads along the range. Shifts went round the clock, as hundreds of miners extracted the ore with a mechanical vengeance. Iron ore, the key component in the manufacturing of steel, was valuable and in demand. Steel was the building block of the future, used to create motorcars, bridges, and airplanes. Iron ore fed the industrial boom, and the development of defense weaponry, tanks, and submarines. The range was split open wide and deep for the taking, the precious ore a lucrative business.