The Shoemaker's Wife(167)

“Mama, I’ve never been to New York. Aunt Laura and Angela want to show me the town.”

“Good, good, make sure they take you to the opera.”

“I will. Mama, what can I bring you?”

“Just you.”

“That’s easy, Mama.”

“Let me know when you’ve made your plans. Should I call Betsy?”

“Oh, Mama, I didn’t write to tell you. She fell in love with a doctor in Minneapolis and married him.”

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“No, no, it’s all right, Mama. I’m fine with it. I just want to come home and see my favorite girl.”

Enza wept for joy. This terrible day had just become wonderful, with one phone call from her soldier son.

Enza went into the kitchen, cleared the table, and began to make fresh pasta. She needed to do something, before getting on the phone and calling everyone from Ida and Emilio Uncini to Veda Ponikvar to Monsignor Schiffer. Everything felt wonderful in her hands, the silky flour, the eggs—the well was deep as she kneaded the dough. She delighted in the textures as she never had before.

She played the radio as she worked, leaving fingerprints of flour on the dial when she raised the volume. She was thrilled when a recording of “Mattinata” sung by Enrico Caruso poured out of the cloth speakers. It was a sign—everything good was a sign; the war was over, Antonio was coming home, he was alive, he had made it through, he’d done the right thing and it had paid off, for him, his character, and the country of his birth. Her mother had kept Antonio safe for her. She was sure of it now. There were no coincidences.

If only Ciro had been here to share this day with her. He knew exactly how to manage sadness, and he knew how to embrace joy. If only he were here.

Enza set about freshening up the house. She opened the skylights and let in the spring breezes as she changed the sheets, scrubbed the floors, put out plants and photographs, and made the entire place shine. She flipped the sign on the shop door every day at lunch and locked up. The sign read, “Back in one hour,” and everyone in Chisholm knew exactly where she was; Enza went up and down West Lake Street buying all the ingredients to prepare Antonio’s favorite foods and returning home to prepare them. She baked anisette cookies, rolled fresh skeins of linguini, baked bread, and made his favorite chicken pastina soup. She was sure he would be thin, and as anxious as she was for him to come home, she was happy that Laura and Angela were showing him New York, which gave her an extra week to prepare for his homecoming.

“Mama!” Antonio took his mother in his arms, after the four longest years of her life. She kissed her son’s face over and over again, unable to believe her good fortune.

“Mama, I got married,” Antonio said.

“What?” Enza put her hand over her mouth. She imagined a war bride, an Asian beauty, a girl rescued from an island, a place that Antonio found enchanting and therefore wanted to possess forever in a romantic way. “Where did you get married?”

“In New York.”

“Well, where is she?” Enza’s happiness turned to trepidation.

“She’s downstairs.”

“Well, I’d love to meet her.” Enza’s heart raced. She had not counted on this. What if she wasn’t a wonderful girl? What if he’d married his version of Vito Blazek? What if, in the thrill of having made it through the war, he simply snap-judged the biggest decision of a person’s life? She couldn’t imagine it. And yet as she turned to go down the stairs to meet her new daughter-in-law, she remembered that Ciro had raced from the pier to the Milbank House to the church to claim her before she married another man. War, evidently, makes a man think and spins the hands of a clock speedily as if the inner springs are broken.

Antonio, who knew his mother so well, read her expression of worry.

“Mama, I know for certain you will love her.”

“How?”

Antonio called down the stairs, “Honey?”

Angela Latini, in a crisp periwinkle wool suit and matching hat, walked up the stairs in her high-heeled pumps. She was beautifully turned out, a New York deb gracing the Iron Range.

“Zenza!” Angela put her arms around the woman who’d filled a void so deep that the job seemed impossible. Enza was her mother and her friend, and now, she was her mother-in-law.

“But, how did this—”

“We were at Aunt Laura’s apartment and we looked at one another . . . ,” Antonio explained.

“And we realized how similar we are,” Angela said. “And we spent a long week on the town, talking.”

“And we decided to surprise you.”

“I’m surprised—and I’m so happy!”

“Zenza, I was afraid you wouldn’t be happy.”

“Why?”

“Because no one would be good enough for Antonio.”

“Ah,” Enza said. “You are.” She put her arms around Angela.

Angela, who had never felt that the loss of her own mother had healed, began to cry in the arms of the woman who had stepped in to fill that void and love her. “I’ll be a good wife. I learned everything from you.”

“No, you came to me well trained in all things. Pappina was your mother, and she was the best mother any girl could ever have.”