The Shoemaker's Wife(149)

Laura’s body soon opened up, and her son slipped into the hands of the doctor, who skillfully cut the umbilical cord, followed by the nurse, who took the baby to clean and swaddle him.

“You have a son, Laura. A son!” Enza told her joyfully.

She heard the nurse speaking with the doctor. The nurse left the room with the baby, and Laura cried out to her to bring her son back. The doctor went to Laura’s side. “We’re taking the baby to the hospital.”

“What’s wrong with the baby?” Laura cried out, and as she did, Colin came into the room.

“They have to take him, Laura. He’s having trouble breathing.”

“Go with them, Colin,” Laura cried.

Enza could see Ciro behind Colin in the hallway. “Go with him, Ciro. I’ll stay with Laura,” Enza said.

Ciro followed Colin out the door as Laura leaned against Enza and wept, then, depleted from the birth, fell asleep. Enza straightened the room, changed the sheets, bathed Laura, dressed her, and covered her in warm blankets. She lowered the lights, pulled up a chair, and sat by her bed. Enza began to pray the rosary. She held Laura’s hand, and soon she found herself on her knees, begging God again to change the course of events for someone she loved. Every prayer was a plea to bring good news by morning.

Henry Heery Chapin was placed in an incubator at Lenox Hill Hospital as soon as Colin arrived at the hospital with him. Through the muslin, Colin could touch his son’s pink fingers and brush his cheek. At five pounds, Henry was big enough, but his lungs weren’t clearing as he breathed. The doctor had suctioned his tiny lungs. Soon, they were working on their way to full capacity. It seemed to Colin that the baby was getting better as the hours passed.

When dawn came, the doctor checked the baby, and told Colin that the worst was over. They would keep the baby for a few days, to make certain that he was well enough to go home. Ciro stayed with the baby so Colin could go home with the news. The hospital was close to their apartment, but he stopped at the nurse’s station and called. Enza woke Laura up to tell her. She shed tears of joy at the news of her baby’s health. Enza tucked her rosary into her suit pocket, a believer once more.

The ship was leaving the port in lower Manhattan late that afternoon. Ciro thought about canceling his trip, but now that Henry was better, he felt he should go.

Ciro had watched baby Henry through the night, and as he watched the nurses in the hospital tend to him in his tiny, well-lit tent, and as he observed Colin, a new father again, yet alert to every detail of the infant’s progress, Ciro decided that life would go on. The baby, Henry, had survived. Maybe it was a sign.

That afternoon, when Ciro said good-bye to Enza on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue, before going to the pier to board the ocean liner for Italy, they held one another a long time.

“I want you to sleep on the boat. Take the fresh air and eat. Promise me you’ll eat,” Enza pleaded with him.

“And I’ll drink whiskey and smoke.” He laughed.

“You can have anything you want but the dance-hall girls.”

“But they’re so much fun,” he teased, pulling her close. “And they like me.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” She laughed. “Now, I want you to memorize every detail of my mother’s house. I want you to visit Stella’s grave and kiss the blue angel for me. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” Ciro promised.

“And will you look up at Pizzo Camino? I’ve forgotten it, and I want you to see it for me.”

“I’ll be your eyes and ears and heart in Schilpario. Take care of Laura, she needs you. Make the nursery. Help her with the baby. And don’t worry. Our mountain is a miracle,” Ciro said as he kissed her good-bye.

Ciro practically spent the entire voyage on a chaise longue on the second-class deck of the SS Augustus. At any other time, he would consider it lucky that his middle name was the same as the ship’s. But not this time. Whenever he heard the horns blow at sea, he remembered shoveling coal in the belly of the SS Chicago. He remembered meeting Luigi, and how no matter how much he scrubbed, his skin was gray from the coal dust after a week in the pit.

Now, he was an older man, and he led the life of one who has earned his way out of steerage. Ciro was not in first class, where the passengers were pampered, but his room in second class was comfortable, and the windows were above the waterline. He smiled to himself when he went to sleep the first night. He had never traveled across the ocean above the waterline.

Every moment of the journey brought back memories. When he heard his native Italian as the ship docked in the port of Naples, he was surprised to find that it moved him so deeply that he wept. When he boarded the train to go north, he couldn’t get enough of the people; he took in every detail of them and remembered when he too was Italian. He realized he had missed them, and his heart ached with the knowledge that he would not die in the country where he was born. Now he was neither Italian nor American; he was a dying man on a mission to make whole what never had been, and to heal a wound for which there was no salve or balm.

Ciro decided to climb the last bit of the Passo Presolana on foot. He sent his duffel ahead on the carriage to the convent of San Nicola, where the nuns had prepared the guest room for him.

Ciro buttoned his coat as he hiked up the hill to the entrance of Vilminore. He stopped at the top of a cliff and looked down into the gorge, where the green leaves of late summer had fallen away, leaving behind a tangle of gray. From his vantage point, the branches looked like a mass of childhood scribbles, a charcoal nest of intersecting lines and curves, made when a boy was just learning to write.