The Shoemaker's Wife(157)

“She will like this very much, Mama.”

“If I could give you the mountain for her, I would. But for now, this necklace will have to do.” Caterina placed her hand on Ciro’s; he let the soft warmth of her touch fill him up.

Enza waited at the harbor in lower Manhattan as the SS Conte Grande docked, and watched the passengers disembarking. When Ciro emerged from the gangplank, he looked handsome and robust. She waved to him.

Ciro made his way through the crowd and scooped Enza up in his arms. He kissed her a hundred times, and she him. As they walked to Colin’s car, she told him about baby Henry, and how beautiful a boy he was, and how she had painted the nursery, sewed the layette, and taken care of Laura like a nurse.

Ciro told her about her parents, and the house in Schilpario—the house that Enza built. He told her it was yellow, and clean, and that it was high on the hill, set like a diamond in a crown. He told her about Eduardo and his mother, then reached into his coat and gave Enza a velvet box.

“From my mother,” Ciro told her. “For the woman I love.”





Chapter 28

A SKYLIGHT

Un Lucernario

Ciro was able to work through the new year of 1932, but Luigi did most of the heavy lifting, and when long hours were required, he also picked up the slack. Ciro napped every afternoon, and could work at the table as long as he could sit, but standing was difficult.

Luigi tried to keep the chatter in the shop light, doing impressions of difficult customers and oddball salesmen to make Ciro laugh. Luigi also made sure the men came to play cards, as they had every Thursday since anyone could remember. Enza put out the grappa and the cigarettes as always, and late in the night would serve coffee and cake, but Ciro was getting worse, and everyone could see it. The poker games became shorter, but the players never acknowledged it.

Saint Patrick’s Day was a big holiday in Chisholm because it held the promise of all things green, including the Minnesota spring. The bars on West Lake Street ran specials, and the stools were filled to overflowing, as the miners, from Eastern Orthodox to Lutheran, celebrated the Roman Catholic feastday.

That night, the din from the street was so loud, Enza closed the drapes in the front room and closed the bedroom door. She climbed on the stool and snapped the open skylight shut. “It’s too cold, Ciro,” she said as she placed another blanket over his body. He was growing thinner by the day.

“Grazie,” he said. “What would I do without you?”

Enza lay in bed next to him. “You would have married the May Queen. What was her name?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Philomena? It sounded like that.”

“I said, I don’t remember,” Ciro teased.

“Felicitá! That’s it. The Sicilian bombshell. She would have made you buy her diamonds. No, no. That wouldn’t have been good enough. She would have made you dig for them, and when you brought her the biggest stone, she’d look at it and say, ‘I said a rock, Ciro. Not a pebble. A rock.’ ”

“You would have married Vito Blazek.”

“I would have been his first wife. He’s had three since.”

“Really?”

“Laura keeps up with him. So see, you saved me from a life of glamour and sophistication. I was rescued by the shoemaker.”

“I feel sorry for you,” Ciro said.

“Don’t you dare,” Enza said, leaning over to kiss him. “I have my dream.”

On his deathbed, Ciro realized he’d chosen Enza because she was strong alone; she did not need him, she wanted him. Enza had chosen Ciro, forsaking her own sense of security, which, he had come to know, was the need that drove her. Everything his wife did, and every decision she made, was about holding life together, and creating safety in a world where there was little.

Ciro was sad that he and Enza would never know what it might have been like to love each other their whole lives long, but the gift of what had been, the risks taken and endured, would have to be enough. They had received their portion. It was useless now to have hoped for more time.

But what about their son?

Ciro was bereft that his own son would live with the grief he had known all of his life. The loss of his own father had never left him.

A man needs his father more as life progresses, not less. It is not enough to learn how to use a lathe, milk a cow, repair a roof; there are greater holes to mend, deeper wells to fill, that only a father’s wisdom can sustain. A father teaches his son how to think a problem through, how to lead a household, how to love his wife. A father sets an example for his son, building his character from the soul outward.

Ciro sought his father in the face of every man he met—Iggy at the convent, Remo in the shoe shop, and Juan Torres during the war. Each man gave what he could, but none of them, despite their best intentions, could be Carlo Lazzari.

In the last moments of his life Ciro realized that a truly good man is a rarity, a speck of gold in a mountain of slag. All around him during the war, Ciro saw men lie, engage in acts of cowardice, create feeble attachments to women, only to leave them—men acting in pursuit of their own comforts, men behaving without grace. And now Ciro was about to do to his son the terrible thing that had been done to him—die without raising him properly to adulthood. Ciro could not forgive himself for failing his son.