The Shoemaker's Wife(62)

“What’s it like?”

“Crowded.”

“Is every place in America crowded?”

“No, there are places in America that are just wide open spaces, with nothing but rolling hills and fields. There are lots of farms in places like Indiana and Illinois.”

“I’ll never get that far,” Enza says. “We came to make money to buy our house. As soon as we do, we’ll go home.”

“We all come here thinking that we’ll go home. And then, this becomes home.”

The driver hopped down from his perch and helped Marco with his luggage. Marco looked up at the hospital entrance; the sandstone building took up an entire block. Marco reached in his pocket for his money.

“This is on me, buddy.” The driver smiled.

“Please,” Marco said.

“Nope.” The stranger climbed back on his perch. “Arrivederci, pal.” He drove off into the darkness whistling, with the light heart of a man who’d just done a good deed.

Marco approached a young Irish nun who managed the arrival desk, outfitted with a telephone and a large black leather-bound book with an inkwell. A row of low benches around the outside walls of the room were filled with patients.

“Parla Italiano?” Marco said.

“Who are you looking for?” she replied in English.

Marco did not understand.

“Are you ill?” she asked. “You look all right. Is it a job you’re after?”

Marco indicated that he didn’t understand her. He grabbed a fountain pen off the desk, wrote down his daughter’s name, and frantically waved it at the nun.

She read the name and checked it against her ledger. “Yes, she’s here. I’ll take you up to three.”

Marco bowed and said, “Mille grazie.” He followed the nun up the stairs to the third floor, taking them two at a time. As he passed the second-floor landing, the door opened as Ciro, Remo, and Carla turned to descend the stairs.

“That guy just landed,” Ciro said, watching Marco bound past them.

“Remember your first day?” Remo asked. “We almost lost you to the port hustlers wearing French perfume.”

Ciro and Remo made their way down the stairs.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Carla asked Remo and Ciro as she stood on the landing above them.

“Back to the shop,” Remo said.

“Oh, no. We go to the chapel and give thanks for the speedy recovery of Ciro’s hand.”

“Carla, I have orders to fill,” Remo argued.

Carla gave Remo a withering look.

“Ciro, we go to the chapel,” Remo said. “Follow the padrone.”

As Marco burst through the door to Enza’s hospital room and took his daughter into his arms, his heart filled with a joy he had not known since the day she was born. For the first time since they left the mountain, he felt their luck changing. The registrar on Ellis Island had taken his information without question, the man with the gold tooth had given him a ride, and now, his daughter had recovered.

“What did the doctor say?” Marco asked.

“He wants me to stay in the hospital until my headache is gone.”

“Then we’ll stay.”

“But I have to get to work.”

“You get well, and then we’ll go to Hoboken.”

“The doctor wants me to walk.”

Marco helped Enza into her robe. She was shaky as she stood up, but it helped to lean against her father. With his assistance she walked out into the hallway, feeling grateful to be on her feet again.

The polished aqua and white floor tiles glistened. There wasn’t a corner of the hospital that was not scrubbed clean, not a handprint on the painted wall or a pile of sheets in the hallway. The nuns moved swiftly as they tended to the patients, their veils gently fluttering behind them as they went.

The doctors of Saint Vincent’s were confident, not like the old man who came over the mountain on horseback from Azzone when Stella fell sick. These men were young, robust, and direct. They did their work thoroughly and quickly, weaving in and out of rooms like whip stitches. They wore crisp white lab coats and moved through the sea of nuns dressed in blue like the sails on a ship.

Against the bright walls of the hospital corridor, Marco appeared wizened. Enza felt a wave of remorse for what she had put him through. On the mountain, Marco had been like everyone else’s father, a hard worker, intelligent, and devoted to his family. Here, he was just another man in need of a job. Enza felt responsible for him, and sorry that she had convinced him to come to America.

Marco and Enza reached the end of the hallway, where they found the etched glass doors of the chapel entrance. Beams of streetlight filtered through the stained glass, casting a rosy tint over the pews. A few visitors were scattered throughout the chapel; some knelt before the votive trays, while others sat in the pews and prayed. The altar was golden in the candlelight, like a lost coin on a cobblestone street.

Marco pushed the door open gently. They entered the chapel and walked up the center aisle. Enza made the sign of the cross and slid into a pew as Marco genuflected and followed her.

At last, something familiar, something that was just like home. The scent of beeswax reminded Enza of the chapel of Sant’Antonio. Over the altar, a large stained-glass mural in three parts told the story of the Annunciation in shards of midnight blue, rose red, and forest green. On the ceiling, in a china blue inset framed in gold leaf, were the words: