The Shoemaker's Wife(59)
Ciro smiled. He found it funny that Signora Zanetti was a snob. She tried to distance herself from other immigrants despite the fact that they shared similar histories. They had all emigrated because they were poor and had to find work. Now that the shop was successful, Signora had begun the slow, careful climb of reinvention and had even more reason to look down on her struggling fellow Italians. “My background is not so different from yours, Signora,” Ciro reminded her.
Signora ignored the comment. “However you look at it, the nuns did right by you.”
“I had parents too, Signora.” Ciro put down the fork and napkin and placed the tray aside.
“But you were so small when they left you.” Carla poured herself a cup of coffee.
Signora’s comment cut through Ciro’s heart. “Don’t ever assume, Signora, that my brother and I were unloved. We probably got more than our portion.”
“I didn’t mean . . . ,” Carla stammered.
“Of course you didn’t.” Ciro cut her off as Remo joined them in the workroom.
Ciro treated Signora with respect, but he didn’t have affection for her. Her love of money offended him. In Signora’s eyes, those who had money were better than those who didn’t. She treated her husband, Remo, as a servant, barking orders and making decisions without consulting him. Ciro promised himself that he would never fall for a woman with a temperament like Carla Zanetti’s. She was a demanding boss, but as the American saying went, she was also a tough customer.
There were nights when he thought about leaving the Zanetti Shoe Shop and trying his luck working on the road crews in the Midwest, or going south to the coal mines. But he never seriously considered it. Something had happened over the past several months, a turn of events that Ciro had not counted on.
Ciro had fallen in love with the craft of shoemaking. Remo was a fine teacher, and a capable master craftsman. Through his instruction, Ciro discovered that he enjoyed the arithmetic of measurements, the touch of the leather and suede, the feel of the machines, and the delight of the customers when he made a boot that fit, after a lifetime of ones that didn’t. Ciro began to appreciate fine workmanship as an art form unto itself. The painstaking craft of building a proper boot or shoe from simple elements gave Ciro a purpose he had never known before.
Remo saw Ciro’s raw talent blossom under the techniques Remo had learned from an old master in Rome. Ciro was eager to learn everything Remo knew, and built upon that knowledge with his own insights and ideas. There were modern machines being developed, and new techniques that would take shoemaking forward in a progressive, exciting way. Ciro wanted to be a part of that.
But there were two sides to business: the creative side, handled by Remo, and the business side, closely guarded by Carla. Signora Zanetti was far less eager than her husband to share the details, or teach Ciro how to run a business. Was it her inborn sense of competition, Ciro wondered, or her secretive nature? Either way, she withheld all of her practical business knowledge. Nevertheless, Ciro picked up on Signora Zanetti’s techniques of salesmanship, customer payment plans, and dealing with the bank. This Italian woman knew how to make good American money. As Ciro gained confidence in his abilities, he had begun to hunger to take his own green bag to the bank. He was thinking about money, and it was in this moment that he lost focus. The metal lathe sliced into his hand.
“Aah!” he shouted, and looked down at the bloody puncture in his palm. Carla raced for a clean rag.
“What did you do, Ciro?” Remo asked, leaping from his stool to run to Ciro’s side.
Ciro wrapped a clean moppeen around his palm to staunch the bright red blood.
“Let me see the wound!” Carla insisted. She took his hand and unwound the tight cloth. A deep gash in his hand oozed fresh blood, a flap of blue skin dangling over it. “We are going to the hospital.”
“Signora, I have to finish these boots,” Ciro said, but his voice broke in pain.
“The boots can wait! I don’t want you to lose your hand to gangrene. Hurry! Remo! Hitch the cart!”
Enza opened her eyes in a hospital room that had the scent of ammonia. For the first time since she left Le Havre, the room did not spin, and her body did not have the sensation of free-falling. She had awoken to a pounding headache, and her eyes had trouble focusing, but she was no longer in the state of agonizing constant motion. She had no memory of the transport from the ship to Saint Vincent’s Hospital. She didn’t remember her first ride through Greenwich Village in the back of a horse-drawn ambulance. She did not take note of the trees in bloom, or the windowboxes stuffed with yellow marigolds.
As Enza attempted to sit up, a searing pain split her head from top to bottom. “Papa?” she called out fearfully.
A slim young nun in a navy blue habit eased Enza back down onto the pillow. “Your father is not here,” she said in English.
Baffled at the new language, Enza began to cry.
“Wait. Let me get Sister Josephine. She speaks Italian.” The nun turned to leave. “Don’t move!” The nun grabbed Enza’s chart and went.
Leaning back against her pillow, Enza surveyed the room.
Her travel clothes were neatly folded on a chair. She looked down at her white hospital gown. A needle was bound with a bandage into the skin of her hand. She followed the tube to a glass jar filled with liquid. There was a small pulsing pain in her hand where the needle met the vein. She bit her dry lips. She reached for a glass of water on the small table and drank it down in a single gulp. It was not enough.