The Shoemaker's Wife(34)

Eduardo laughed. “Do you take nothing seriously?”

“It hurts too much.”

“I know,” Eduardo said.

“Do you really want to be a priest?”

“Yes, Ciro, I do. Though I’m not worthy of it.”

“They are not worthy of you.”

“Well, either way, they’re about to find out.” Eduardo’s wry tone made Ciro laugh.

“I suppose there were signs. You served every morning mass, and you never missed vespers. And I saw you read your missal every night.”

“I’ll do my best to be one of them. I’ll become a priest, and then I’ll be able to help you should you ever need me. It doesn’t hurt to have a brother with an education and a good position in the church.”

“I would have been proud of you no matter what you became.”

“You are pure of spirit, Ciro. You always have been.”

“Right,” Ciro joked. “And what does it say in the Beatitudes? The pure of spirit inherit what? The shoes?”

“I didn’t think you knew what the Beatitudes were.”

“I guess some of your dogma soaked in after all.”

“There’s another reason for me to become a priest. I can find Mama and take care of her. The church provides for the families of the clergy.”

“You’re going to give up everything for the chance it might help Mama?” Ciro asked.

“Yes, Ciro. It’s the first vow I ever took.”

“If I could, I would help. That was always our plan. But now the Holy Roman Church has ruined that, too,” Ciro said. “I miss her.”

Eduardo got up, went to Ciro’s cot, and lay down on the floor next to him, as he had every night when they first arrived at the convent. The nearness of Eduardo was all it took to soothe Ciro. And tonight, it still did.

“When you find her, no matter where I am, I will come home to you,” Ciro said.

Spruzzo jumped up on Ciro’s cot and nestled at his feet. Ciro lay back and crossed his arms behind his head, staring at the wooden beams on the ceiling, with their spikes and hooks sticking out where pots and tools and loops of rope once hung. He wondered how soon the nuns would put all the equipment back into this room after they had left. The sisters reconfigured the space inside the convent like wealthy women in the city changed their hats.

This old room wouldn’t be empty for long.

The winter bulbs asleep in pots, the urns, the buckets, the wreaths of wire, the spirals of rope, and the bowed wooden frames of the grape arbors would find their way back onto the shelves, as the trowels, rakes, and shovels would dangle from the hooks once more. It would be as though the Lazzari brothers had never lived at San Nicola.

One day, when Ciro took a walk up the hill to Via Bonicelli, he had seen that a new family had moved into the house where he and Eduardo were born. Sometimes Ciro would climb the hill just to look at the house, so as not to forget the details of the only place his family had ever lived. Eventually, he stopped going, and now he knew why.

Memories take the place of rooms. The sisters would fold up the cots, roll the rug, and put the lamp back into the office. The ceramic washbasin and pitcher would be returned to the sisters’ quarters in the guest room. Will the nuns even think of us when we are gone? Ciro wondered as he lay in the dark.

Ciro knew every street in Vilminore, every house and every garden. He would study their architectural details, creating his own perfect home in his mind’s eye. He’d imagine a staircase here, a veranda there, windows with small panes that swung out, a garden with an arbor for grapes, and a patch of sod to grow a fig tree. He preferred a house built of stone to one of stucco and pine. He’d live at the end of the street, high on the mountain, with a good view of the valley below. He’d open his windows in the morning and let the fresh breeze through, as the sunlight filled every room, as bright as the petal of a daffodil. Light would fill every corner, and happiness would fill every room. The love of a good wife and children would fill his heart.

All Ciro knew of America was what he had heard in the village. There was a lot of boasting about the potential there, the money to be made, the fortunes to be built. But for all its promise, America had not returned their father home to the mountain. America had become, in Ciro’s mind, almost like heaven, a place he could only see in his dreams. He had longed for his father and pictured him alive still, imagined their reunion. Maybe his father was filling his purse to return to the mountain to buy them a fine house. Maybe his father had had a plan, and something had prevented him from seeing it through. Anything but death in the mine, anything but that. Ciro still believed his father was alive. He vowed to find his father and bring him home. Maybe his father had grown to love America and didn’t want to return to the mountain. That particular thought always brought Ciro pain. Ciro imagined America loud and crowded, and wondered if there were gardens and sun.

Southern Italians had flocked there to America to find work; fewer had emigrated from the Alps. Maybe that trip down the mountain was long and treacherous because it should be made rarely, if at all. It seemed to Ciro that a man had all he needed in the shadow of Pizzo Camino, so long as he was lucky enough to find love and a job to sustain his family.

Ciro was sure of one thing; he would only stay in America until the scandal blew over, not one day more. He vowed that he and Eduardo would return to Vilminore together, someday, to live on the mountain where they were born. Nothing would separate them, not even the Holy Roman Church. The Lazzari boys were blood brothers, and as their mother left them on that winter day, together, so they would remain, even when an ocean separated them.