The Shoemaker's Wife (53 page)

A honeymoon baby.

Their wedding-night baby.

Somewhere between Paoli, Pennsylvania, and Crestline, Ohio, on the path of the Broadway Limited to Chicago, Enza had conceived their child. Ciro went to her, lifted her up off the ground, and held her tight. “I thought I couldn’t be any happier.”

Ciro felt a joy within his heart that he could not describe, filling him up in a way he had never thought possible. It was instant, and would last for the rest of his life.

A baby of their own was his highest dream. Ciro remembered imagining his wife and children before he met them, and the house he would build in Vilminore for them. But all those dreams were beside the point, now that it was really happening. He had so much love for his wife and the baby within her that he felt a new fire within him, stoking a greater ambition to provide for them. All he hoped for in this moment was many children, and a long life to take care of them.

Chapter 24

A TRAIN TICKET
Un Biglietto per il Treno

T
he Minnesota summer was as glorious as any Enza remembered as a girl in the Italian Alps. Longyear Lake dazzled like a sapphire, reflecting the cloudless sky that was saturated in deepest blue, like Marrakesh silk. The evergreen trees fringed the horizon, while low green thickets were speckled with the first buds of sweet blackberries. The loons wailed in the morning light, calling across the water.

Enza propped open every skylight in the house. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, she had nested with a vengeance; she had washed every window, scrubbed the floors, and perfected the details of the nursery. She had sewn a layette for the baby in snow white chamois and soft cotton. She trimmed the bunting in white grosgrain ribbon, and piped the hood in silk. Ciro had built a crib and painted it white. He stenciled the walls of the nursery in alternating stripes of cream and sandy beige, to give the effect of wallpaper—a trick Enza had learned watching Neil Mazzella as he directed the scenery load-ins at the Metropolitan Opera.

When the bells on the shop door jingled that morning, Ciro had looked up from his work. He was so surprised, he dropped his shears onto the table with a thud.

Laura Heery stood in the doorway, a suitcase in one hand and a hatbox in the other. She wore a navy crepe suit, a matching straw hat, and white gloves. “I couldn’t very well let your girl have a baby without me.” She grinned.

Ciro embraced her and called up the stairs to Enza. Laura removed her gloves and placed them in her purse. She walked the length of the main room, peering through the window to Enza’s sewing room as Ciro ran up the stairs to bring Enza downstairs. Laura could hear them chatting in the stairwell, so she raced to the front of the shop. When Enza appeared in the doorway and saw Laura, she squealed with delight. Laura embraced her, and soon, both of them were weeping. Laura stood back and took in Enza’s full and lush beauty.

A customer, a miner of around forty-five, pushed the door open, saw the women weeping, pivoted, and left.

“Girls, you’re costing me business,” Ciro joked. “How about we show Laura the apartment?” He picked up Laura’s luggage.

“You must be exhausted,” Enza said to Laura as they followed Ciro up the steps.

“No, I’m loaded with pep. I went stir-crazy on the train. I hope there’s lots for me to do.”

“You can put your feet up and rest, and maybe my wife will do the same,” Ciro said.

“We have everything ready, and I’m glad. We can have a good visit before the baby comes,” Enza said as she pushed the door to the guest room open. “Make yourself at home, I’ll put on coffee.”

“I’d like that,” Laura said.

Enza closed the door behind her and stood in the hallway motionless, as if she was in a dream. Ciro put his arms around her.

“Did you know?” Enza asked him.

“I wouldn’t have been able to keep it a secret.” Ciro kissed her.

Enza took her handkerchief from her wrist, where she had tucked it in her sleeve, and dried her eyes. “As happy as I am about the baby, I was afraid of being alone. I am so happy Laura is here.”

“Well, I may stay forever. I love my room!” Laura said as she joined them.

“I’m going to get back to work,” Ciro said. “You girls let me know if you need anything.”

“Let me show you the nursery,” Enza said.

“The girls in the costume shop made some things for the baby. I’ll get them.” Laura went into her room and came out with a box. She followed Enza down to the nursery across from the master bedroom. Enza sat down in the rocking chair while Laura pulled up a stool, handing Enza the box.

Enza unfolded a satin baby blanket. There was a hand-knit cotton cap and baby mittens, and a black felt crib pillow shaped like a musical note. Laura had embroidered “From your friends at the Metropolitan Opera House” along the staff.

“How is Colin?” Enza asked.

“Who?” Laura pretended not to hear.

“What’s wrong?”

“He hasn’t asked me to marry him, and I don’t think he will.”

“Why?”

Laura shrugged. But then she tried not to cry. “I left without knowing why.”

“You didn’t talk to him about it?”

“It’s very difficult to bring it up. Remember the girls who would issue ultimatums? They ended up with their ultimatums and not much else. Colin is wonderful to me at work. I thought I was good with his sons. I try to be. I take them to the park and the show. When they come to the Met, I clear a work space in the costume shop and help them do their homework while Colin is busy in the box office. I’ve really grown fond of them.”

“So what’s the matter?”

“It’s his mother. She doesn’t want her widowed son to marry a costume shop seamstress.”

“That can’t be,” Enza said softly.

“Yes it can. I’m
shanty
Irish—and how do I know I am? I heard her say it to the help in the kitchen of her Long Island home. I was helping clear the dinner dishes, as a matter of fact, when I overheard it.”

“Did you tell Colin?”

“I couldn’t wait. I told him on the drive back into the city. And he made excuses for his mother. He said she was an Edith Wharton character. She had airs, and she always would. I shouldn’t take it personally.”

“You have to take it personally,” Enza said.

“That’s what I told him! There’s no other way to take it. But I don’t know what to do. I love him.”

“And he loves you.”

“But I’m without pedigree. I’m not a Vanderbilt or a Ford.”

Enza couldn’t help but think that Laura’s work ethic had given her pedigree. After all, she had worked her way across the Hudson River to eventually gain a position at the Metropolitan Opera House. That had to account for something. So Enza said, “The Fords were Irish farmers, and the Vanderbilts were from Staten Island. They became wealthy because they worked hard in a country that let them. So you just tell Mrs. Chapin that the Heerys are on the way up, and you’re taking them with you.”

“His mother has another girl in mind for him,” Laura said softly, “And Colin is taking her to a regatta in Newport this weekend.”

“How do you know?”

“He told me. And that’s when I decided to take my vacation days and come up and help you. There’s nothing in New York for me. It’s over.”

That night, Enza made sure that Laura was comfortable in her room before she joined Ciro in their bedroom and climbed into bed. Ciro stacked the feather pillows around Enza like sandbags in a trench until she was comfortable. “Emilio and Ida offered to drive you and Laura to Lake Bemidji.”

“I don’t know if anything will lift Laura’s spirits.”

“I didn’t know that Americans made matches like our people do back on the mountain.”

“It’s worse. You match up the ladder, never down. You not only have to be rich, you have to be educated. Laura is so smart, but she didn’t go to finishing school. I guess that’s a requirement, to marry a Chapin.”

“I don’t want you to have any anxiety.”

“I can’t help it. She’s my best friend. And she’s unhappy.”

“So try and have some fun. You have time before the baby comes. There’s Serbian Days, you can show her Canada, the lakes—there’s lots to do.” Ciro kissed Enza good night.

Enza leaned back on the pillows and stared at the ceiling. Laura was a few years older than she, and knew that her friend felt pressure to marry. Laura was not meant to be an old maid, but she already felt like one. The new baby would go a long way in helping Laura feel useful, but Enza wondered if it might also make her sad, knowing that her future with Colin was no longer a possibility.

Serbian Days was a celebration that filled the Mesabi Range with visitors from northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and as far south as Chicago. Most families held their reunions and took their summer vacations during the festival week, and as a result, the range doubled its population. The stores on West Lake Street had sidewalk sales; eager to be a part of the action, Enza put out baby bibs, crib blankets, and flannel buntings she had made to sell. Laura marveled at the foot traffic, and promised Enza she would have the costume shop girls make all kinds of items to sell the following year.

Longyear Lake had a bandstand on the green, featuring a different group every night. There were fireworks over the lake, and shows that would highlight numbers from the dance contest that was held on the final night of the festival. Pappina and Luigi brought their son, John, who at five months old was already an active baby, a first class squirmer. Laura and Enza spread a blanket on the ground, while Ciro went for pierogies and soda.

“I could get used to this.” Laura smiled. “The fresh air, the lake, good friends.”

“Stay, then!” Pappina said.

“Do you know how hard it is to keep a room once you get it at the Milbank House?”

“It’s like gold,” Enza said.

“I was never a working girl, and I wish I could’ve been. But I went straight from my mother’s house to an apartment with Luigi. What did I miss?”

“If you like not knowing where your next paycheck will come from, if you’re able to make your own clothes from the ends in the factory, and if you like warm champagne in a paper cup on opening night at the opera, then the working-girl life is for you.”

“I’ll never know what it’s like, but I sure love hearing all about it,” Pappina said.

“It seems that girls always want what they don’t have.” Laura stretched her long legs out in front of her on the blanket, smoothing her skirt over them. “I wanted to be a petite brunette, and I’m built like a string of red licorice. I wouldn’t mind having my own baby on my lap, but I’m unmarried, not by choice but circumstance. So you see, we don’t necessarily get what we want, but we get
something
.”

Enza laughed, as she always did when Laura was philosophical. She tried not to think about what it would be like when Laura went back to New York. It had been a wonderful two weeks, more of a vacation for Enza than for Laura, who had waited on her, anticipating her needs and encouraging her to rest.

Ciro placed a sack of pierogies and a box of cold sodas on the blankets. Enza, sitting on the blanket, felt a low, deep pain across her belly. She shifted on the blanket, thinking it was how she was sitting, until a few minutes later, the pain came again.

“Are you all right?” Laura asked Enza.

The band began to play, its brass section braying a patriotic march. Laura reached across the blanket to Ciro, nudging him. He turned and looked at Enza, his face turned ashen. “Is it time?” he said, though he didn’t have to ask.

She nodded that it was. Laura handed baby John back to Pappina. Ciro helped Enza stand, and as the band played, he and Laura slowly walked Enza to the edge of the park, where he asked the policeman for a ride to the hospital. Luckily Officer Grosso played poker at the shoe shop when he was off duty, and was happy to give the anxious trio a lift up the hill to Chisholm Hospital.

Ciro pushed through the door of Enza’s room at Chisholm Hospital. He stopped when he saw her, in a white chenille robe, holding a small blue bundle. Her beauty had taken on a new dimension now that she was the mother of his firstborn son. July 28, 1919, would be a date he would remember all his life, no matter what other details had slipped his mind. This was the day he and Enza became
una famiglia
.

Laura smiled and patted Ciro on the back as she left the room. Alone with their baby, Ciro went to Enza, slid his hand under the small of her back, wrapped the other around her and the baby, and pulled his small family together in a single embrace. His son had the scent of new skin and clean talc. He was long and pink, and his fingers poked the air as if he was trying to grab it.

When it came to naming their son, Enza had wanted to call him Ciro. Her husband had other ideas. He had thought to name the boy Carlo, after his father, or Marco after Enza’s, or Ignazio, who had been good to him, or Giovanni, after Juan Torres, who had died in the trenches. But while all these men had shaped him, he decided to name his first son Antonio, after the patron saint of lost things.

He remembered the night he first met Enza, and as an orphan, he had always felt the vague rootlessness of abandonment, a quiet displacement that echoed loudly in the chambers of his growing heart. It was a hollow feeling of regret that he’d thought might never leave him. But after Enza’s short labor, he had been found again. He was a father now.

Enza handed the baby to Ciro as if she were passing him a fine china teacup, fearful she might drop it.

“I am your father, Antonio. I will never leave you,” he promised as he held his son. And as the words left his lips, which found themselves gently placed on the sweet, smooth cheek of his newborn son, he believed them and would do everything in his power to make certain they would always be true.

“He looks just like you,” Enza said. “Imagine, two of you in the world.”

Laura made a pot of vegetable soup with lots of diced potato, knowing it would give Enza strength. She had everything in the apartment ready, so when Ciro brought her home, all Enza had to do was nurse the baby and rest.