The Shoemaker's Wife(142)

“You’re a young man,” Ciro said.

“Not in this job. You feel every day of your age.”

“Why did Doc Graham send me here?”

“He saw a place on your back that concerned him. You’d never notice it yourself, but under your shoulder blades the texture of the skin is different from that of the surrounding area. Only a doctor who was looking for it would have seen it.”

“See what exactly, Dottore?”

The doctor laid out the reports on the desk, flicked a light board, and put up X-rays of Ciro’s spine. Ciro looked with wonder at the shadowy gray picture of the inside of his body, without any inkling of what the doctor was seeing.

“That is me?” Ciro asked.

“It’s your spinal column.” The gray shadows of Ciro’s spine looked like a string of black pearls on the X-ray. The doctor pointed to the darker areas. “Here’s your trouble.” He circled a black area with the eraser of a pencil. “This black pool is a tumor. It’s small, but it’s cancerous.”

Dr. Renfro pulled the shadowy images from the board and put up more. Ciro’s lungs resembled the black leather bellows he used to use to make fire in the convent kitchen.

“Mr. Lazzari, as a veteran of the Great War, you were exposed to mustard gas.”

“But I didn’t burn like the other soldiers.” Ciro’s voice caught.

“No, but this particular kind of cancer is insidious. The mustard gas you inhaled has a long incubation period, usually ten to twelve years. The poison causes a slow cellular burn that alters the very nature of how the human body fends off disease. I can show you . . .”

“No—no, thank you, Dottore. I have seen enough.” Ciro stood.

“We do have a few promising treatments,” the young doctor said eagerly.

“How much time will your treatments give me?”

“It would be hard to say,” Dr. Renfro said.

“Ten years?”

“No, no, not ten years.”

“Ah, so I have very little time.”

“I didn’t say that. But the prognosis isn’t good, Mr. Lazzari. I think you should try our course of treatment.”

“Given all you know, from everything you took from my body today, do I have months?”

“A year,” Dr. Renfro said quietly.

Ciro stood, pulled on his coat and then his hat. He extended his hand to Dr. Renfro, who took it. “Thank you, Dottore.”

“I’ll send your reports to Dr. Graham.”

On the train north to Duluth, Ciro settled back in his seat. He watched the flats of southern Minnesota turn inky blue in the twilight. Somehow—Ciro thought this silly—as long as it was daylight, he could handle the bad news; somehow, the idea of knowing the truth in the dark made him panic. The train could not go fast enough. He wanted to get home, where life had order and made sense. He didn’t know how to tell Enza, and certainly had no idea what to say to Antonio. It was as if an old enemy had shown up to ambush him. He thought he had buried all traces of the Great War and the horrors he had witnessed. He sensed that Dr. Renfro could have talked for hours on the subject, but Ciro wasn’t interested in the countless variations of being poisoned by mustard gas that the good doctor wanted to share. As in war itself, the outcome was the only thing that counted. It turned out Ciro had not survived the war, he had just been given a brief reprieve.

His soul had fended off the spiritual damage of war; the beauty of his life with Enza had erased the terrible images of loss. But his body had sustained the harm that Ciro believed he had spared his psyche. Ciro sighed. There was no winning. The pain of losing Enza and Antonio overwhelmed him.

As he took the stairs up to his home at 5 West Lake Street, Ciro loosened his tie and inhaled the scent of sage and butter. He saw a pool of light pouring from the kitchen, and heard his wife humming inside. He stopped on the landing and leaned against the wall, knowing that he was about to bring incalculable sadness to his wife and son. Let them be happy a few moments longer, he thought. He leaned against the wall, summoning his strength, before he went in to face them.

Ciro dropped his duffel at the top of the stairs.

“Ciro!” Enza called out. She came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a moppeen. She was wearing a new dress she had made, a simple navy-and-white polka-dot shirtwaist. She had done her hair, and her cheeks were pink with a sheen of rouge. She was more beautiful in this moment than she had been the moment that Ciro married her.

“What did the doctor say?” She smiled hopefully.

“I have cancer. They tell me I got it from the mustard gas in the Great War.” As Ciro made the announcement, it was as if his very breath had been taken from him. He crumpled, gripping the back of the chair in the hallway.

Enza was stunned. The drastic news took her totally by surprise, as she had said her rosary throughout the day with a feeling of complete vindication that Dr. Graham’s concerns were nothing to worry about. She put her arms around Ciro. He was sweating, and his skin was cold and clammy, as though he were facing the worst and there was no help on the way. “No,” was all she could say, and then she cried. He held her a long time. He inhaled the scent of her hair, fresh and clean like hay, while she buried her face in his neck.

“Where’s Antonio?” Ciro asked.

“He’s at basketball practice.”