The Shoemaker's Wife(162)

“Leave her with me,” Enza said. “I’ll take care of her.”

“Grazie, Enza. Grazie.”

“Pappina would have done the same for me.” Enza was sure of it.

Enza prepared the spare room for Angela. She painted it pink, sewed a white chenille coverlet, and made lampshades with some leftover chintz. She made sure that Angela had photographs of her mother, father, and brothers on the dresser. Knowing what it was like to live in someone else’s home, Enza vowed that she would make Angela comfortable and secure; it would be nothing like her own experience in Hoboken with the Buffa family.

Enza went to the school to make certain that the teachers were aware of Angela’s needs. Angela stayed in her room a lot, but that was to be expected. The ten-year-old girl was making the transition from life with a big family to the serenity of the Lazzari home. Luckily she had been in and out of the shop all of her life, and had many happy memories of shared holidays upstairs in the Lazzari apartment. Enza checked on her, and would find Angela reading, or sitting quietly and looking off in the middle distance. It was heartbreaking for Enza; she understood every nuance of what the little girl was feeling. At least Enza knew her mother was alive, and she could write to her. Angela did not have that luxury.

One Sunday afternoon, Enza was making pasta in the kitchen when she heard singing. Enza smiled, happy that Angela felt comfortable enough to play the phonograph without asking.

As the recording continued, Enza realized that the orchestra was not joining in after the first a cappella stanza. A single voice continued to cut through the quiet. Enza stopped kneading the pasta dough, wiped her hands on the moppeen, and followed the sound down the hallway. Enza moved toward Angela’s room, then stopped, frozen by what she saw. Angela was singing. Enza had not heard a voice like it since Geraldine Farrar back at the Met.

Angela did not slide into a note as she sang, she hit it and held it. The crystal quality of her tone was natural and God given. Enza closed her eyes and followed the sound, picturing the moment she first heard the same aria at the Met years earlier. Enza stepped away and listened until Angela finished singing the phrase, then tiptoed back to the kitchen.

Enza pulled on her coat and gloves and her best hat and walked up West Lake Street for her appointment with Miss Robin Homonoff, Chisholm’s only piano and voice teacher. Her first name was not written out on the mailbox, rather it was a sketch of a tweeting bird.

Miss Homonoff answered the door. She had soft gray hair, and was in every way prim. She invited Enza to sit in the parlor by the baby grand Steinway piano, the only shiny object in her blue cottage.

“I want to talk to you about Angela Latini,” Enza began.

“I think she has talent. If she begins to study now with me in earnest, and works very hard, I think she could be a professional singer someday.”

“I think she sounds like Geraldine Farrar.”

“You studied opera?”

“I worked at the Metropolitan Opera when I was a girl.”

“You sang?”

“Sewed. But I love music, and I think this would be good for her. She’s endured a lot in her young life, and I think this would give her confidence.”

“We’ll get started right away, then.” Miss Homonoff extended her hand.

“How much are the lessons?”

“Not one penny. In a matter of months, she’ll be teaching me, Mrs. Lazzari; that’s how good she is.”

Miss Homonoff closed the door and smiled. She lived for these moments, when raw talent was entrusted to her to refine and shape. She would make a world class soprano out of Angela Latini.

Angela knelt in the living room at 5 West Lake Street. She fiddled with the dial on the radio until WNDU out of South Bend, Indiana, came through clear and sharp without static. Enza shook the pan on the stove in the kitchen, and soon the popcorn was crackling inside. She held the lid down as the puffs exploded.

“Hurry, Zenza! Antonio is in the starting five!”

Enza threw the popcorn into a bowl, and just as they had every Saturday since the Notre Dame basketball season had begun, she and Angela listened to the game on the radio. Notre Dame was playing Army in South Bend.

Angela and Enza listened as Antonio scored. They laughed because the announcer mispronounced Lazzari. Angela corrected the announcer. “I know he can’t hear me,” Angela said, her eyes flashing. “But I wish he could.”

When Antonio graduated with honors from Notre Dame in 1940, Veda Ponikvar, the editor of the Chisholm Free Press, wrote a profile about him, with his picture. The headline read:

HIS FATHER’S SON

As soon as Antonio arrived home to Chisholm with his diploma, a letter from the draft board was waiting for him. Antonio was summoned to appear with his mother in Hibbing. Angela was in school when Enza took the trolley with Antonio to Hibbing. She had a heavy heart, knowing that her son would be sent to fight in the second world war. She thought of the stories Ciro had told her about the Great War, and she couldn’t help but feel that history was repeating itself. She tried not to show her apprehension to Antonio, but it couldn’t be helped.

“I’ve called you here today because you’re in a unique situation.” Corporal Robert Vukad looked at Enza, then Antonio, in the small, spare storefront office on the main street of Hibbing.

“I understand that your father served in the Great War. You’re the only son in the family, and your mother is a widow. We don’t have to send you into action. In fact, you can be exempt from it entirely. It’s the government’s way of holding families under these circumstances together.”