The Shoemaker's Wife (52 page)

“I don’t want it.”

“Why? It was your father’s. You always tell me that you wished you had something of his. This stock was given as reparations for his death.”

“And it wouldn’t change a thing, now, would it, Enza?”

“He would want you to have it.”

“Buy furniture with it. Or send it to my brother for the poor. That stock is blood money. It could have meant everything fourteen years ago, when my mother had to sell all our belongings to pay off our debts forcing her to leave Eduardo and me in the convent. But now she’s gone, and my brother is a priest, and I don’t need it.” He put down the boot and looked up at the shelves he had built, loaded with boots, laces tied together, each pair affixed with a small tag showing the customer’s name and a pick-up time. “This is my legacy. My hard work. You. Us. The rest of it doesn’t matter. It’s just money. And it isn’t money that I earned. It will just remind me of all I lost and will never recover.”

Enza stood for a moment, holding the certificate. She folded it and placed it in her pocket. She didn’t bring up the subject again. Instead, she cashed the stock and opened a bank account in Chisholm in their names. Then, like Ciro, she put it out of her mind.

Luigi opened the door of his apartment in Hibbing, festooned with fresh greens, tied with a bright blue bow. “
Buon Natale!
” Luigi embraced Enza and then Ciro. He helped Enza with the packages she carried.

Pappina had set their holiday table with candles and white china. The scent of butter and garlic simmering on the stove wafted through the three-room apartment. An empty bassinette in the corner was covered in small white ribbons. Pappina was in the kitchen, very pregnant and cheerful and delighted to see Enza and Ciro.

“What are you making?” Ciro asked.

“Escargot in butter and garlic.”

“Did you put the nickel in?” Ciro asked.

“Go ahead,” said Pappina.

Ciro fished in his pocket for a nickel and dropped it into the pan where the snails, in their copper-and-white shells, simmered.

After a few moments Pappina sifted out the nickel, still a shiny silver, returning it to Ciro. The Italians never eat escargot if the coin turns black. It means the snails are rotten. “They’re good.”

“They better be. We’re starving,” Enza said, pitching in to help Pappina with the pasta. Luigi poured Ciro a glass of wine in the living room, and they joined their wives in the kitchen.

“Ciro came to mass with me this morning.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Luigi.

“We went to Saint Alphonse,” Pappina said.

“We have to. If we want the baby baptized, we have to tithe,” said Luigi.

“Oh, you make it sound like all the church wants is your money,” Pappina said.

“They don’t mind your money, but they’d prefer your soul,” Ciro said.

“Your brother is a priest, and you talk like that?” Enza gently slapped her husband’s cheek. “You know you enjoyed it—you liked the kyries and the hymns. Right?”

“I did. And looking at the statues brought me right back to San Nicola. It’s funny how the things you do as a boy never leave you.”

“I hope some of the things you did left you,” Luigi joked.

“I’m a happy husband now. I only have eyes for Enza.”

“Smart man.” Pappina laughed.

“It’s
difficile
for a statue to change its pose,” Luigi said.

“I’ve changed for the better, brother.” Ciro smiled.

“We’ll take your word for it,” Pappina said to Ciro. “Would you take the platter to the table? I need a strong man, I left the bones in the turkey.”

Ciro lifted the platter and turned to take it to the living room. Enza watched him go. He seemed to get more handsome as time went on, and she imagined that when he was old, he would become even more attractive to her as his light brown hair turned white. She saw how other women looked at him, and knew that they were seeing on the surface what she had always known: there was no one else like him. She followed him into the dining room, where he placed the platter on the table. He stood up and rubbed his lower back with his hands.

“Honey, are you all right?” Enza asked as she massaged his lower back.

“He’s got the shoemaker’s stoop,” Luigi said. “Put blocks under your cutting table to make it higher. A few inches will save your neck and shoulders. My back was killing me until I put down the blocks, and now I’m much better.”

“I’ll try it,” Ciro said. “Can the blocks help me with my workload?”

“That they cannot do.” Luigi laughed.

“Wooden blocks really work?” Pappina asked.

“Absolutely,” Luigi said.

“Well, make me a pair of wooden shoes then.” Pappina laughed. “I’ve had a sore back for seven months.”

Enza went to early mass alone on Christmas Day. Ciro was tired from the long visit at the Latinis, and had made his once-a-year church appearance the previous evening. She let him sleep, leaving a note to tell him that she would be late coming home after mass.

Her Christmas gift to him was one she could not share until she was certain he would approve of it.

Enza tied the scarf around her neck and pulled her wool cloche over her ears. She set out on foot for Saint Joseph’s Cemetery, about a mile outside Chisholm. She loved to walk, and whenever she went far, she remembered doing the same on the mountain trails above Schilpario. There were small reminders of the place she came from everywhere.

Her feet crunched the dusting of snow on the frozen ground as she walked. The clean air had the scent of pine and, occasionally, the smoke of a hearth fire from a farm off the main road. The winter in Chisholm had a palette of white and gray, like the feathers of a snowy owl, or the gray jays that would return once spring came. As Enza walked along the plowed road, she thought how much easier it was to walk in Chisholm. There were no steep trails to climb, just long black ribbons of road leading to new destinations.

The fir trees along the road were dense and tall, with trunks so thick, she wouldn’t be able to put her arms around them. It was clear that this swath of forest had been untouched for a hundred years, just as they remained in the Italian Alps. She had seen the fields where the loggers had felled the forests along the road between Chisholm and Hibbing in the name of progress. It was only a matter of time before these old trees met the same fate. But this morning, they were all hers.

She pushed open the black wrought-iron gate to Saint Joseph’s Cemetery. There were barren shade trees scattered about, a few statues of the Blessed Lady and kneeling angels, but mostly she saw tasteful polished marble markers embedded in the earth, with carved inscriptions. Unlike in Schilpario, there were no marble mausoleums with altars, colorful frescoes, or gilded gates to house the granite sepulchers. This cemetery was as plain in presentation as a farm field.

The priest had given her a map. In the center of the cemetery, under a grove of leafless trees, were the burial plots of men who had died in the mines. She began to dust the stones with her glove to reveal the names: Shubitz, Kalibabky, Paulucci, Perkovich. These men, she had been told, had worked in the Mahoning mine, the Stevenson mine at Stutz, Burt-Pool, Burt-Sellers, and the Hull mine. The Catholics among them had been transported from Hibbing on the Mesaba Railway, where they received a funeral mass and proper burial. Photographs had been taken and sent back to the families in Europe, although in some cases, nothing had been sent because the miner had not left any instructions or forwarding information.

They had not found the remains of Carlo Lazzari. He had burned in the fire.

Enza leaned down and cleared a headstone with her glove.

Carlo Lazzari

1871–1904

She smiled. It was a smooth black granite stone with the engraving inset in gold. She made the sign of the cross.

“Enza!” Ciro said from the gate. He walked down the path to join her with a look of concern on his face. “You shouldn’t be out in the cold. Monsignor Schiffer said I would find you here.” He looked down at the gravestone and saw his father’s name carved into the polished black granite. “What is this?” he asked, perplexed.

“I had it placed here. I bought it with a portion of the money from the stock. I felt it was the right thing to do, even though they never found him.” Her voice broke, because she was afraid of his reaction. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to upset you any further, so I didn’t tell you.” Enza knelt next to the stone.

“Why would you place a gravestone when his body didn’t survive the fire?”

“Because he lived. Because he was your father. I buried a box with a picture of you and Eduardo, a letter from me, and a lock of your hair. The priest blessed it, and they placed the stone here a couple days ago. It’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

Ciro’s blue-green eyes stood out against the winter sky as Enza looked up at him. She realized she would never really know her husband; she was never sure what his reaction might be. He was a deeply emotional man, and his physical strength was in no way an indication of a strong resolve. He had lost so much in his life that he didn’t know where to put the grief.

Ciro knelt next to her at his father’s grave in the snow and began to cry like a boy of six. Enza leaned down and put her arms around her husband.

“All this time, I hoped it wasn’t true.”

“You had to hope,” Enza said. “I would have.”

“All my life I was told that I look like him and think like him—” Ciro’s voice broke. “But I never knew him. I can remember small things about him, but I don’t know if those are really my memories, or if Eduardo had told me the stories so often that I claimed them as my own. You would think a grown man wouldn’t need his father or have to hold on to the idea of him. I know it was silly for me to pretend that my father might still be alive, but I wanted him to be. I needed him to be. To admit that he’ll never see the man I’ve become or meet my wife or children . . . it’s almost too much to bear.”

Enza took a piece of pattern paper and a pencil out of her pocket. Asking Ciro to hold the paper against the stone, she rubbed the pencil against the engraving on the granite. Slowly, her father-in-law’s name and years of birth and death appeared on the sheer white paper, a palimpsest, proof that he had received a proper burial. She folded the paper neatly in her pocket, then helped her husband stand. “Let’s go home,” she said.

They walked out of the cemetery and closed the gate. As they made their way back to West Lake Street, they clung together against the bitter winter wind. If a stranger had seen them walk past on that Christmas morning, he would find it hard to tell if the husband was holding up his wife, or if she was shoring him up.

Enza worried Pappina would go into labor and have the baby before Enza could arrive to help her. So Luigi paid a runner in advance to take the trolley from Hibbing to Chisholm at the first sign of labor, to let Enza know that it was time.

For the two weeks prior to Pappina’s due date, not a flake of snow fell on the Iron Range. Though twenty-foot drifts remained from the January snows, the roads were icy, and the temperatures freezing, as long as the trolley tracks remained clear, Enza could be at Pappina’s side in minutes.

Enza had helped her mother and the midwife in Schilpario when Stella was born. Enza hadn’t been allowed to be with her mother for the birth of any of the other children, but by the time Stella came into their lives, Enza was like a second mother to her brothers and sisters. She helped with the wash, the meals, and taught them how to read. Giacomina was so confident in Enza’s abilities that she allowed her to watch the children when she left the house to run errands, or go up the mountain trails to gather herbs.

Giacomina had barely whimpered when Stella was born. In fact, Enza remembered that the room had been quiet and dark, and there was almost a sense of reverence to the way in which the baby slipped from her mother and into the arms of the midwife like a bouquet of flowers.

Enza held Pappina’s hand as she hollered and struggled throughout her long labor, until the moment her son appeared, perfect, long, and squawking. The nurses in the Hibbing Hospital were accommodating, so Pappina was able to recover over the course of several days before going home to the apartment Enza had prepared for her.

Enza fell into the familiar routine of a new baby in the house. She set up the layette, made sure that Luigi had regular meals, kept up with the laundry, bathed and washed Pappina’s hair, and made sure everything in the apartment was tidy. She made a large pot of soup, with tomatoes, root vegetables, orzo, and broth, that would help Pappina regain her strength. Enza felt a rush of giddiness, imagining that Pappina would do the same for her someday.

Enza took the trolley home to Chisholm after five days at Pappina’s side. She smiled as she looked out the window, remembering that nothing made a woman more bone-tired than looking after a baby.

She pushed the shop door open and smiled. Ciro looked up and placed his lathe on the table. “How is young John Latini?”

“Almost ten pounds, and I have the sore neck to prove it.” Enza laughed.

“A Valentine’s Day baby.” Ciro beamed.

“You should take the trolley over to see them.” Enza turned to go upstairs, then remembered she had a message to deliver, “Luigi said to tell you that the baby had a small nose. He said you would understand.”

“
Va bene
,” Ciro said, bursting into laughter at the private joke.

“He’s a healthy boy, small nose or not,” Enza assured him.

“All that milk she drank was worth it.”

“We’d better buy a cow,” Enza said.

“Where would we put a cow? That patch of ground in the back will yield some tomatoes, and that’s about it.”

“It could be a small cow,” Enza said softly, placing her hands on her hips and then the small of her back.

“Are you—” Ciro looked Enza up and down, in search of the lush fullness a woman carrying a baby would most certainly possess. She was as beautiful as ever; only her hand on her waist indicated a change.

Enza nodded that she was expecting a baby.