The Shoemaker's Wife(159)

Enza gently cleaned a patch of skin on what were once had been Ciro’s muscular arm and administered the morphine. A look of serenity crossed her husband’s face as the medicine took over.

Enza climbed back into bed with her husband and son, and gently ruffled Ciro’s thick hair, now fringed with a few gray hairs at the temples.

“So many things I didn’t do,” Ciro whispered.

“You did everything right, my love,” Enza told him.

“I never learned how to make women’s shoes.” He tried to smile.

“It doesn’t matter. I never learned how to dance.”

“It’s not so great.” He smiled.

Ciro did not speak again. He lived through that night. Enza administered the morphine through her tears. The chore she was loath to learn became the only thing she could hold on to as her husband slipped toward death. The routine of the boiling of the needles, pouring the liquid into the syringe, checking it, and walking it back to the bedroom had given her a purpose in the final days of Ciro’s life. It made her feel useful, and it also made her feel that she was helping him as the morphine eased his pain.

That night, Antonio slept in the chair, facing his father in bed. Enza would check on her son as she watched Ciro sleep.

That night she cried about all the things she did not have. She had hoped for more children; as her husband lay dying, she realized that there should be more aspects of him in the world, not less. She had done the best she could, but in those hours, she did not believe it.

When the sun came up, she bathed her husband, cut his hair and nails, and gently shaved his face. She massaged his feet with lavender oil, and patted his face with a cool cloth. She lay beside him and listened as his heartbeat became more faint with each tup, tup, tup. She looked up through the skylight at dawn that morning, saw a pink sun in a blue sky, and took it as an omen.

Antonio woke up and sat bolt upright in the chair. “Mama?”

“Come,” she said to her son.

Antonio climbed into the bed with his father and mother. He put his arm across his father’s chest and, placing his cheek next to his father’s, he began to cry.

Enza reached across, and with one hand on her son’s face, she placed the other on Ciro’s, leaned down, and put her lips to his ear. “Wait for me,” were the last words Ciro Lazzari heard as he took his last breath.

March 18, 1932

Dear Don Eduardo,

This is the most difficult letter I have ever had to write. Your beloved brother Ciro died in my arms today at 5:02 a.m. Monsignor Schiffer came to anoint his body and administer last rites. Antonio was with us in the room when his father passed away.

Eduardo, my heart is full of so many feelings, and so many images and stories of things that Ciro told me about you. I hope you know that he looked up to you, and if ever an example of piety and honesty was needed in any situation, Ciro would always look to you.

I wish you could be here for the funeral. Already, the stairs up to our home are filled with flowers; I had to create a path to navigate them. The veterans hung a flag outside our house, and the drum and bugle corps played on the street when they heard he was gone.

Your brother made me the happiest woman that ever lived. I had loved him since I was fifteen years old, and the years did not diminish the depth of my feelings. I cannot imagine life without him, so I humbly beg you to please pray for me, as I will for you, and your mother. Please share this terrible news with her, and send her my deepest condolences.

Your sister-in-law,

Enza





Chapter 29

A PAIR OF ICE SKATES

Un Paio di Pattini da Ghiaccio

Enza pulled on her gloves as she stood next to the Chisholm ice rink and watched as Antonio sailed on the outskirts of the silver ice with such dexterity, it looked as though he was building up speed to fly. The dark woods beyond the rink hemmed the oasis of ice lit by the bright white floodlights. It was as though the full moon had embedded itself in the ground of the north woods. The scent of roasted chestnuts and buttery baked sweet potatoes filled the air.

Every teenager in Chisholm seemed to be at the rink that night, skating to popular music piped over the ice. The kids spun to “The Music Goes Round and Round” by Tommy Dorsey; waltzed to “These Foolish Things” by Benny Goodman and created a daisy chain; and snaked around the rink to “Moon Over Miami” by Eddy Duchin.

Enza purchased a roasted sweet potato from a girl who was raising money for the high school band. She unwrapped the tin foil and took a bite without taking her eyes off her son.

Antonio was seventeen, at the top of his class at Chisholm High School, but every bit as athletic as he was brilliant at his studies. Skates felt as natural to his body as snow skis. Even the slow sport of curling—“chess on the ice,” Antonio called it—was mastered. His basketball skills were famous throughout the Iron Range, and he was in line for scholarships to attend university.

At the age of forty-one, Enza could look back over her life confident that she had raised her son well, especially under the circumstances. She knew Ciro would be proud of their son. It had been five years since her husband died, and yet it seemed as though it was yesterday.

Enza wrestled with the promise she had made to Ciro to return to the mountain to raise Antonio among family and friends in the Alps. She gave it serious consideration, but the world had changed quickly in the months after Ciro’s death. Italy was in the midst of political tumult, and it would not have been prudent to take her American son back to where she came from. Observing the social changes in her homeland, she knew she had made the right decision to stay in Minnesota. She chose America because it had been good to them.