The Shoemaker's Wife(66)

Ciro’s heart felt heavy. He began to cry.

The news that Mama is alive is a blessing to me. I feared that we’d never look upon her face again, not even learn what became of her. We must be grateful for this news, and pray that we will all be reunited someday. I keep you in my prayers, my best and only brother, and remember how proud I am of you. Nor am I penitent about that pride. I know what you are made of.

Yours, Eduardo

Remo stood in the doorway to the garden and watched as Ciro wiped his eyes, carefully folded the letter, and placed it back in the envelope. He remembered the day Ciro had come off the ferry from Ellis Island. Despite his size and abundance of energy, Ciro had been an innocent boy. As Remo observed Ciro now, he saw a man in the wicker chair, a man any father would be proud to call his son.

In the intervening years, Remo had grown to find as much purpose in the exchange of knowledge from master to apprentice as Ciro. This experience would be as close as Remo would ever come to being a father himself, and he savored the role.

“Ciro, you have a visitor,” Remo said softly. “He says he’s an old friend.”

Ciro followed Remo back into the shop.

“You never write,” Luigi Latini said to Ciro. Luigi had cropped his black hair, slicked it back with pomade, and grown a small, fashionable square mustache under his small nose.

“Luigi!” Ciro embraced his old friend. “You could’ve written to me! Where’s your wife?” Ciro looked over Luigi to see if he had brought her.

“I don’t have one.”

“What happened?”

“I went to Mingo Junction as planned”—Luigi nodded sadly—“but I knew the photograph was too good to be true. I couldn’t get past her nose. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it. So I made up an excuse. Said I was dying and that I had weak blood. I told her father that his daughter did not deserve to be a young widow. I practically climbed into an empty casket and clutched a lily to my chest. Before they could figure out I was lying, I’d hopped a freighter and gone to Chicago. I’ve worked there ever since, on the roads, mixing cement. Six years I’ve been working on a crew. And I could work another twenty out there. They’re building roads all the way to California.”

“How did you find me?”

“I remembered Mulberry Street,” Luigi said. “We worked so well together aboard ship, I thought maybe we could work together again.”

“How touching.” Carla stood in the doorway and fixed a red bandana in her white hair. “You can’t stay here.”

“Mama,” Ciro teased, winking at Luigi. Ciro only called Signora “Mama” when he wanted something. He knew it, and so did she.

“I’m not your mother,” Carla said. “There’s no room here.”

“Look at him. You can see the bones in his neck. Luigi barely eats. He’ll have one spoon of cavatelli and no more.”

“Not likely. When he tastes my cavatelli, he’ll eat a pound.”

“See that? Signora has invited you to dinner,” Ciro said to Luigi.

“There’s a boardinghouse on Grand,” Carla said as she wrote down the address. “Go get a room there and be back in an hour for dinner.”

“Yes, Signora,” said Luigi.

Enza’s sixth anniversary on Adams Street in Hoboken came and went without a glass of champagne or a slice of cake, and there was surely no acknowledgment from Signora Buffa.

A few months after Enza settled in with the Buffa cousins in Hoboken, Marco Ravanelli left Hoboken for the coalfields of Pennsylvania to take a job in the mines. He was six hours away by train, and sent his pay to Enza faithfully. She, in turn, would take the money to the bank, deposit it with her own paycheck, and send a money order to her mother in Italy.

Each Christmas, Marco managed to visit his daughter. They would celebrate quietly, attend a mass, share a meal, and he would return to work, and so would she, making overtime on the holiday shifts.

A lucky break came a year into their plan. Giacomina had been willed a small parcel of land above Schilpario. The plot was just large enough to accommodate a house, but Marco seized on the opportunity. Instead of buying one of the modest storefront houses along Via Bellanca, Marco and Enza decided he would keep working in America until they had saved enough to build the kind of house Marco had dreamed of. Not a grand home, but one with a deep hearth and three windows for sunlight and five bedrooms so that Enza and her siblings could all stay and raise their families under one roof. Enza knew this change in plan would keep them in America longer than they had hoped.

Six years of combining Enza and Marco’s salaries, less their expenses, was slowly beginning to fill Giacomina’s money box in Schilpario. Battista and Vittorio carried on Marco’s carriage route and picked up small jobs wherever they could, but without the money made in America, they would never have survived.

The letters on thin blue paper that crossed the Atlantic were filled with details of the home that was to be: a porch with a swing; two gardens, one facing east for vegetables and herbs, and the other facing west, where a patch of sunflowers would tilt their heads toward the setting sun; a common kitchen with a long farm table and many chairs; a basement to make and store wine; a deep brick oven with a hand-turned rotisserie.

Enza and Marco’s venture to America would make it all possible, down to the small grace notes like handmade lace curtains. The Ravanellis were brilliant savers, used to deprivation, only spending money on their basic needs in America; everything else went to Giacomina and the house fund. The house would be the castle that would shield them from want, hurt, and further loss.