The Shoemaker's Wife(148)

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’.

Laura was taking a nap. Enza sat and waited for Ciro to return. When he came through the door, her heart leaped in her chest as it always had. Now, though, that joy was soon crushed by a feeling of impending doom. She went to his side and took his hands in hers. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. “Are you tired?”

“Not at all,” he said.

Enza grabbed her hat, coat, and gloves and pushed Ciro out the door.

Many nights when Ciro couldn’t sleep, Enza would tell him stories of her days at the Metropolitan Opera House. He had only been twice; once for a concert when he was young, and the second time when he saw Enza before he left for the Great War. Both visits burned in his memory, and for him, there was no greater thrill than to see those of wealth and privilege stand in awe of the Great Caruso, a poor Italian boy who’d made good.

Enza took Ciro’s hand as they climbed the steps into the entrance foyer of the Metropolitan Opera. Years later, she remembered in vivid detail what she and Laura had been wearing the day they came for their interviews. She remembered what she’d had for breakfast, and what it had been like when they walked into the theater together for the first time.

Enza took the same steps on this day with her husband. And when they entered the dark opera house, the lingering scents of expensive perfume, grease paint, lemon oil, and fresh lilies filled the air, just as they had the first time she set foot inside. She led her husband down the aisle and up to the stage, where the ghost lights glowed along the upstage brick wall. The scenery, delivered in bundles, was stacked against it like giant envelopes waiting for the mailman.

Ciro turned and looked out at the red velvet seats and up into the mezzanine. Enza took him center stage. Ciro stood on the exact spot where the Great Caruso had sung the night before Ciro left for New Haven. He closed his eyes and imagined the send-off all over again.

Enza led him backstage and down the stairs to the costume shop, which buzzed with activity. No one noticed them as they walked through. Enza stopped to point out the places she remembered. The fitting room where Geraldine Farrar had tried on the first gown Enza ever made, the ironing boards where she and Laura would gossip long into the night, and finally, her sewing machine, the sleek ebony Singer with the silver wheel and the gold trim. A young seamstress was busy sewing a hem at Station 3, Singer machine 17. She might have been twenty years old; watching her, Enza was a girl again. She saw herself on the work stool. When she looked up at Ciro, she was certain he did too.

After a few days of visiting their old haunts, including having pie and coffee at the Automat, Ciro was packed and ready to depart for Italy. His suitcase rested by Laura’s front door. Ciro was asleep, but Enza could not bear to close her eyes. She felt the great ticking of the clock: every moment that she slept was one less awake with Ciro.

If she could just delay the worst, if she could savor these moments, when Ciro still felt good enough to walk to Little Italy and back, and enjoy a meal, and smoke a cigarette, she believed it would be all right. She didn’t want to imagine what it would be like when he couldn’t do the things he wanted to do. That was why the trip to Italy was urgent. Enza believed that it would change the course of Ciro’s life, just as it had changed his life to leave it. It might not save his life, but it would shore up his soul.

Sometimes Enza tried to imagine what life would be without Ciro, believing it would help her accept it when the time came, but she couldn’t. The well of pain was too deep to imagine. There was a rap on the door, an urgent one that woke Ciro. Enza went to the door and opened it.

“It’s Laura.” Colin entered the bedroom. “She’s in labor.”

“Call the doctor,” Enza told Colin calmly. “Tell him to come here.”

“She should go to the hospital,” Colin said in a panic.

“Send him here.”

Enza abided with her best friend and gently coached her through the labor pains. Soon the doctor arrived, with a nurse assistant, who took one look at the space and began to transform it into a birthing room.

The doctor asked Enza to wait outside, but Laura cried out for her to stay. Enza took a seat next to Laura and gripped her hand, just as she had her own mother’s on the night that Stella was born. The memory of her baby sister’s birth came flooding back with every grip, heave, and sigh that Laura endured. Tears began to flow freely down Enza’s face as she stayed in the moment while holding the memory of what she remembered from the mountain.