The Shoemaker's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  His moment of greatest clarity had come on the day he was certain he would die. Word had reached his platoon that the Germans were bombing with mustard gas, and their intention was to leave not one man, woman, or child alive in France. Their goal was total annihilation, soldier and civilian. In what the men believed were their final moments on earth, many prayed; some wrote letters to their wives, tucking them carefully next to their field orders and identification, hoping that their allies would deliver the message after burying their bodies. Young men wept openly at the knowledge that they would never see their mothers’ faces again.

  But to Ciro, it seemed disingenuous to ask God to save him, when so many soldiers deserved life more—men with children, wives, families, lives. Let them pray. They had someone at home waiting for them.

  Ciro hoped his mother, Caterina, was safe somewhere.

  The red robes of Rome would protect Eduardo; Ciro was certain his brother would be all right.

  There was only one other face that he pictured. He remembered her at fifteen in a work smock, at sixteen in traveling clothes, and at twenty-two years old, in a pink gossamer dress. He imagined her at fifty, gray, yet still strong and sturdy, with grandchildren. His grandchildren.

  Ciro knew in that instant that there was only one thing worth dying for, only one person for whom he would lay down his life. Enza Ravanelli. She had owned his heart all along.

  How ironic that Enza had told him not to write and not to think about her. Ciro could not stop thinking about her. If he were lucky enough to live through this carnage and chaos, the love of one good woman would be all he needed to sustain him. Starving, wasting away, falling sick and dying, fighting fevers and fending off lice and rats, filth and dysentery, all the guarantees of war—all of it was worth it if he could live out the rest of his days with Enza.

  It had always been Enza. Life without her would be as grim as the trenches he’d called home during the war, where a piece of bread was like a diamond, and a cup of clean water, a dream fulfilled. In that instant he knew that nothing—not even the acid scent of mustard gas in the air or the decay of the dead around him—could keep him from going home to the woman he loved. And as he stood on the deck of the SS Caserta, he knew how lucky he was to have survived, and he hoped to take the gift of his great fortune and pledge his life to a deserving woman. He could only hope that she had waited for him.

  Laura helped Enza make her wedding suit. She had chosen a Tintoretto-inspired cinnamon brown wool, piped with black velvet and finished with black buttons. The earthy red-brown tone of the bouclé wool was the exact hue of the earth on the Passo Presolana. Enza thought about her mother, and how many times she had made her tell the story of her wedding day. Now it was Enza’s turn. How she wished her mother could be here! She would have appreciated every detail. Enza built a hat of matching brown felt with a wide brim, tucked with a black satin knot and set with a black pearl.

  Vito wrote to Marco in California and Giacomina in Schilpario for permission to marry their eldest daughter. He wrote pages about why she was a wonderful girl, and described the life he hoped to give her.

  When Giacomina read the letter from Vito, she wept. She knew this meant that Enza would never return to live on the mountain. Her beloved daughter had a new life. Giacomina prayed to be happy for the girl who had worked for so many years to make their lives secure. She did not worry about Enza, because she believed she would make the best choice in a husband. But she did worry about the Ravenellis, who would not be as strong without Enza’s leadership.

  When Marco received his letter from Vito, he also cried. Longing to return to his family, he had hoped Enza would go with him despite her terrible ordeal on the passage over. He had spent seven years in America working to make enough money to build their home. The house was finished, and when Marco returned, he would sit before the fire in the house his sacrifices and those of his daughter Enza had made possible. It was a bittersweet realization that Enza would never share the family hearth with him.

  Choosing to marry Vito meant that Enza accepted that she would never go home again. She had put her illness out of her mind, but now she admitted to herself that she would never be able to show her husband or her future children with him the frescoes in Clusone or the fields above Schilpario; nor would they ever hear the orchestra in Azzone. Vito had brought her to the best doctors, who made it clear there was no cure for her particular motion sickness. They would have to learn about her family through her, and it would be her responsibility to keep them close in her heart despite the distance.

  The sun was pink that November morning, embedded deep in a pale blue sky. Enza thought it odd, but didn’t take it as a sign. Her mother always checked the sky over Schilpario and took every movement and color change as an omen. There would be none of that today. Enza had a calm sense about her, a serenity Laura noticed that morning when they dressed at the Milbank House.

  “You’re so quiet,” Laura said.

  “I’m about to change everything about my life,” Enza said, pulling on her gloves. “I’m sad to leave you. Our room. I’ll never be a young unmarried woman again.”

  “You knew we had to grow up and fall in love and marry,” Laura said. “It’s a natural progression. And you’re happy with Vito, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.” Enza smiled. “It’s just a shame that whenever life is good, things can’t stay the way they are. Every decision leads you forward, like when I used to step across the stones to cross streams in the Alps. I’d take a step, and another, and another, and soon I’d be safely across.”

  “As it should be.”

  “But there were times when I took a step and there was no stone to step onto. And the water was so cold. ”

  “You’ll get through the bad times,” Laura assured her.

  “Because we know they’ll come.”

  “For all of us.” Laura smiled. “This is not a day to be solemn. It’s a day to celebrate. Leave serious Enza right here in this room. You’re a beautiful bride, and this is your moment.”

  Enza and Laura said good-bye to the girls of the Milbank House, who gathered on the front steps to wish Enza well. The future dancers, playwrights, and actresses were enthusiastic about Enza’s new life, an affirmation that all the stories told on the stage with happy endings were somehow true. Enza was a walking symbol of success to them that morning. They were giddy with delight for her.

  Enza and Laura traveled the few blocks to Our Lady of Pompeii from the Milbank House on foot. Vito and Colin Chapin, his best man, would meet them in the sacristy. The small ceremony would take place with Father Sebastianelli officiating at the Shrine of the Blessed Lady.

  Enza and Laura walked past the fruit vendors, the street sweeper, the men in felt hats on their way to work. Everything in Greenwich Village was in its place, as it was every morning, reliable and predictable. The only people for whom this day was special were Enza and Vito. The world outside was spinning as it always had, and two lovers exchanging rings was not going to change it.

  “You wait here.” Laura gave Enza a hug. “I’ll go inside and make sure everything is ready for you.”

  “Thank you, Laura.” She gave Laura a warm embrace. “Always be my best friend.”

  “Always.” Laura smiled and went into the church.

  Enza stood on Carmine Street. She remembered Signora Buffa, and how hard her first months in America had been, how those months had turned into years, and how homesick she had been. She looked back and remembered her room at Saint Vincent’s Hospital, just a few blocks from where she stood. She reviewed the forward movement of each year of her life since, the decisions made and steps taken, sewn like small stitches with care and consistency. Enza could step back to see, at long last, a finished garment. Her life was something beautiful to behold, and she had built it herself.

  “Enza,” a voice said from behind her. She smiled and turned, thinking it was Vito, with her flowers.

  “Enza,” Ciro Lazzari said again.
He wore the dull brown uniform of the doughboys, the belt notched tight, the knee boots laced with precision, though Enza could see where the laces had been knotted together several times to make them long enough. Every hem on his uniform was ragged, each cuff turned from wear. He was thin, his face etched with exhaustion and worry, but he was clean, his thick hair cut short, and his eyes were more blue than the sky that morning. He held a bouquet of violets in his right hand, his helmet in his left. He gave her the flowers.

  “Ciro, what are you doing here?”

  “I made it.” He managed a smile, knowing he was not too late. The girls at the Milbank had filled him in. “I went to the Milbank House. They said you’d be here. You’re always in church. Is it a Holy Day of Obligation?” He asked knowing for sure her purpose in attending church that morning.

  She shook her head that it wasn’t.

  He saw the worry in her eyes. “You’re so beautiful.” Ciro leaned forward to embrace her, and she stepped back.

  “I’m getting married,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “I should go inside,” Enza said. “The priest is waiting.”

  “Padre can wait. He has nowhere else to go. It’s a Monday. Who gets married on a Monday?”

  “There’s no opera tonight,” she explained. “We . . .” Enza stopped herself. We suddenly sounded selfish, as if to exclude Ciro.

  They stood and looked at one another. Laura pushed the church door open, but they didn’t hear it. Enza didn’t hear Laura when she whispered her name. Ciro took his hand out of his pocket and motioned for her to close the church door. Laura slipped back inside and quietly pulled the door behind her.

  “You can’t do this,” Ciro said.

  “I most certainly can. I’m getting married.”

  “He’s not the right man for you, Enza. You know it.”

  “I made a decision, and I’m going through with it,” she said firmly.

  “You make it sound like you’re taking a punishment.”

  “I don’t mean it to sound that way. It’s a sacrament. It requires thought and reverence.” Enza wanted to walk away, but she couldn’t. “I have to go.” She checked her wrist. She had forgotten to wear her watch. Ciro reached into his pocket and opened his watch. He showed her the time. “There’s no rush,” he said calmly.

  “I don’t want to be late.”

  “You won’t be,” he promised. “Let him go.”

  “I can’t,” Enza replied, but she couldn’t look at Ciro when she said it.

  “I said, let him go.”

  “I made a promise.”

  “Break it.”

  “What am I to you, if I break my word to him?”

  “You would be mine.”

  “But I’m his.” Enza looked to the door. Where was Laura? Why didn’t she come outside and take her into the church, where she belonged? “I belong to him.”

  “Don’t say it again. It’s not true.”

  “This ring says I’m his.” She showed him her hand, the ruby and diamond ring sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Take it off. You don’t have to marry me, but you can’t marry him.”

  “Why not?” Her voice cracked beneath the strain of emotion.

  “Because I love you. And I know you. The man in that church knows the American Enza, not the Italian girl who could hitch a horse and drive a carriage. Does he know the girl who sat by her sister’s grave and covered it with juniper branches? I know that girl. And she’s mine.”

  Enza thought of Vito, and wondered why she’d never told him about her sister Stella. Vito only knew the seamstress to Caruso; he didn’t know the Hoboken machine operator or the eldest in a poor family who made it through the winter eating chestnuts, praying they would last until the spring came. She hadn’t told Vito any of her secrets, and because she hadn’t, Vito was not really a part of her story. Perhaps she had never wanted Vito to know that girl.

  “You can’t come back here and say these things to me.” Enza’s eyes filled with tears. “I have a life. A good life. I’m happy. I love what I do. My friends. My world.”

  “What world do you want, Enza?” Ciro said softly.

  Enza could not fight the past. Life is a series of choices, made with the best of intentions, often with hope. But she knew in this moment that life, the life she’d always dreamed of, was about the family, not just two people in love. It was a fresco, not a painting, filled with details that required years of collaboration to create.

  A life with Ciro would be about family; a life with Vito would be about her. She would have the apartment with the view of the river, a motorcar to take her places, beautiful gowns to wear, and aisle seats to every show. There would be such ease to life with Vito! But was she a woman meant for that life? Or was she meant to be with a man who understood her, down to her bones?

  For a fleeting instant, her heart filled with affection for the girl she had once been. The girl who’d left her village, and worked hard, and week after week faithfully sent the largest portion of her pay to her mother, enough money, over time, to build the family home, a gift in honor of the gift of her very own life. And she would do it all over again. Didn’t she deserve a prize for it? Wasn’t the prize a New York City life with all its sophistication and shine, on the arm of a man who loved her?

  Why couldn’t she marry Vito Blazek? He was a good man.

  Enza realized that she was meant to be married; it wasn’t her fate to be alone, she wasn’t like Gloria Berardino or Mia Grace Lisi or Alexis Rae Bernard or any of the girls who worked in the costume shop at the Met. She was not to grow old over a sewing machine, making costumes for fantasy characters, building capes, fastening collars, and gluing wings, nor was she meant to live with her mother until the day she died, in service to the family, devoted to the whole instead of her own piece of it.

  Enza would not be the meticulous aunt, steam-pressing dollar bills with starch to place inside greeting cards for baptisms, missalettes for first communions and confirmations. She would never sign a card, “With love, Zia Enza.” She was not destined to wear the small, simple hat or the gold knot pin, the marker of the single woman, the spinster, the unadorned and the unloved, good enough for the gold but not the diamond chip.

  Enza lived to love.

  But she hadn’t known it until she saw Ciro Lazzari again.

  Enza was meant to carve out her own way, and be with a man who loved her. She thought it was Vito, with his kind heart and good taste. Vito would give her a proper address, friends of his social standing, and a view from the heights. Until this moment, she’d thought every need she had was met, and all roads to possible happiness had been mapped out; all she had to do was put on her best shoes and follow him.

  Vito would not count on her to have children, or fill his world with anything but the joy that comes from two careers, quiet breakfasts in the morning, dinner on the town at night, and glorious Mondays, when the doors of the Metropolitan Opera House would be closed, the stage would be dark, and they could walk in the park and have a late dinner in one of those glazed brick rooms lit by candlelight, its shadows punctured by the scarlet tips of cigarettes.

  That was meant to be her life, the sole focus of a man who adored her, in a city that celebrated the best life had to offer. Why would she leave the stability of the world Vito had created for her, to go back in time to the man who’d claimed her heart before he even knew her? What did Ciro Lazzari know about the woman she was now? It seemed reckless to believe Ciro all over again, foolish to consider his pleas, and ill-advised to do as he wished.

  But Enza thought that was the nature of love, to catch you unaware and play the notes of your past in a haunting melody over and over again, until you believe it is your aria, your future, too.

  But how could she break Vito Blazek’s heart?

  And yet she knew that the only thing that had got her this far was listening carefully to her own heart and keeping her own counsel in every situation. When Enza dug deep within her
self, she always found the truth. So, as if it were a rope slipped off its mooring, dropping without a sound into the water, setting the boat free, Enza quietly took off Vito Blazek’s engagement ring. She held it between her fingers and looked down at the blood red ruby as it gleamed in the morning light.

  The truth was, Enza had never stopped loving Ciro Lazzari from the first moment she saw him, surrounded by four walls of earth in the cemetery at Sant’Antonio. She’d let him go and mourned him when he loved other girls, thinking he wanted something altogether different, and who was she to present herself as an alternative? Enza had grieved for what might have been, and turned away from the pain of it by inventing a new self.

  New York City, the enchantments of the opera, the friendships she made, the homes she was welcomed into—why would she ever leave the satisfying and wide-open world Vito had shown her to fall into the arms of Ciro Lazzari? This poor, penniless, motherless soldier, with nothing to recommend him but his words—why would she ever gamble her future on Ciro Lazzari? What thinking woman would?

  Enza looked down at the ring in her hand.

  Ciro took Enza’s face in his hands. “I have loved you all of my life. I was a boy who knew nothing, but when I met you, somehow I understood everything. I remember your shoes, your hair, the way you crossed your arms over your chest and stood with one foot pointed right and the other left like a dancer. I remember your face over the pit of your sister’s grave. I remember that your skin had the scent of lemon water and roses and that you gave me a peppermint from a dish on the table in your mother’s house after your sister’s funeral. I remember that you laughed at a silly joke I made about kissing you without asking. I remember when you received communion at Stella’s funeral mass and how you cried because you missed her already.

  “I took in every detail of you, Enza. I know I disappointed you when I didn’t come for you, but it wasn’t because I didn’t love you, it’s because I didn’t know it yet. I never once forgot you. Not for a single day. Wherever I went, I hoped to find you. I’ve looked for you in every village, train station, and church. I once followed a girl in Ypres because she wore her braids like you. When I sleep, I imagine you there, beside me. And if I was ever with another, the purpose wasn’t to love her, but to remember you.