The Shoemaker's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  “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.

  Laura sat with Enza as she nursed the first night, then took the baby and changed him, placing him in the bassinette, before she helped Enza across the hall to her bed. It was such an exciting time—Laura was such a good friend that any happiness Enza had, she felt doubly.

  When the morning came for Laura to begin her journey back to New York, she packed slowly as Enza sat with the baby.

  “Are you sure you don’t want my sweater?” Laura offered her classic navy cardigan.

  “Stop trying to give me things.” Enza smiled.

  “I don’t know when I’ll see you again.” Laura sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You can come back anytime.”

  “Maybe you can come to New York,” Laura offered.

  “Someday.” Enza smiled. “What are you going to do when you get there?” she asked.

  “Start over.” Laura’s eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away with her handkerchief. “I plan to leave my tears between here and Penn Station. Once I get off the train, I’ll be fine.”

  Ciro appeared in the doorway.

  “I know, I know, Ciro, I have to leave now or I’ll miss my train.” Laura stood and snapped the clasps on her suitcase. She lifted it off the bed.

  “I think you may miss your train after all.”

  “Why? Has there been an accident?”

  “No. There’s a delay.” Ciro leaned against the door frame.

  “What do you mean?” Laura looked at her itinerary, as if it would hold a clue.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” he said. “Will you girls come down to the shop, please?” He reached over and took the baby from Enza. “Follow me.”

  Laura was confused, and Enza didn’t know what to say, so they followed Ciro down the stairs. Ciro went through the door first with the baby, followed by Enza. Laura came through the door last. Standing by the worktable was Colin Chapin
, looking handsome but rumpled in a seersucker suit after the long journey. Seeing him, Laura was so stunned, it was as if she’d seen a ghost. She began to back out of the room toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Colin asked. “I came all this way for you.”

  Laura stopped. “Why?”

  “Because I love you, and we’re going to get married.”

  “We are?”

  “If you’ll have me.” Colin smiled. “And my boys. They’re part of the deal.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “I reminded her that her own mother was a Fitzsimmons who worked in a glass factory.”

  “Your mother is lace curtain Irish?”

  “The laciest.” Colin laughed. “Don’t make me beg. Will you marry me? The deal is on the table.”

  Ciro and Enza looked at one another, and then at Laura. Laura took a deep breath and said, “I’ll take the deal.”

  Colin laughed, and soon Enza and Ciro joined in. But Laura began to cry. “You’re all I ever wanted.”

  “Then why are you crying?” Colin went to her, pulled her close, and kissed her.

  “Because I never get what I want.”

  “You can’t say that anymore, Laura,” Ciro said gently.

  “Never again,” Enza agreed.

  Laura Maria Heery and Colin Cooper Chapin were married December 26, 1919, at the Chapel of the Blessed Lady at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Colin noted that it was Boxing Day, which meant they would either have lots of fights or none. They chose the day because the Met was dark through New Year’s, and the boys were on school break; William was eleven, and Charles was twelve. The four of them went on a vacation to Miami Beach, which doubled as a honeymoon. Laura sent a postcard to Minnesota with three words written in her perfect Palmer penmanship: “Never been happier.”

  Enza kept a playpen next to her sewing machine in the workroom. There was no separation between work and home life; Enza and Ciro happily blurred the lines. The baby liked to take his bottle and watch the light dance through the shade tree and into the window, throwing petals of shadow on the old tin ceiling. While Antonio napped, Enza was able to help Ciro as he finished the work boots. Enza would buff the leather, and place a wooden rod inside the shoe to stretch the leather under the metal toecap.

  Ciro often came from the front of the shop to play with Antonio, throw him in the air, or take him to the yard out back and let him crawl on the grass. They found their son endlessly fascinating. Now that Antonio was almost two years old, he had playmates who came by with their mothers. Enza’s experience taking care of her brothers and sisters held her in good stead as a mother. There were many experienced parents around them. Ida Uncini, whose children were grown, made it a point to stop in and help out. Friends like Linda Nykaza Albanase would drop off a coffee cake and take Antonio for a ride in his pram.

  Ciro’s shop on West Lake Street continued to be a magnet for the miners who were looking for a card game after a long shift. Ciro would make sandwiches of mozzarella and tomato; he made the cheese himself, as he had back in his convent days. Enza made fresh bread twice a week, and made sure that Ciro had his friends over on baking day to take advantage of the fresh rolls.

  Ciro and Enza took turns making lunch for one another. Ciro would flip the sign in the window, and for a half hour, they’d sit in the back under the shade tree, as their son played on a blanket close by. One warm August day, Enza joined her husband and son in the backyard with Ciro’s favorite meal, eggs poached in fresh tomato sauce over dandelion salad. The mail was tucked under her arm, tied with a string.

  “Here, Antonio. Catch.” Ciro threw a ball to his son, who waited for it. Antonio reached up and grabbed the ball from the sky. “Big hands,” Ciro said.

  “Like his father.”

  “He is very quick.”

  “Every father thinks his son is a great athlete.”

  “Every father doesn’t have a son like Antonio.”

  Enza handed the tray to her husband, who called Antonio to lunch. She gave her son a buttered roll, sat down on the bench, and sorted through the mail. “Bills,” she said.

  “Have your lunch, Enza.”

  She shuffled through the envelopes. “I will. After I read the letter from Laura.” Enza took the barrette from her hair and opened the letter carefully with it.

  August 2, 1921

  Dear Enza,

  It is with a heavy heart that I write to you on the death of Signor Enrico Caruso. I can hardly think of him without thinking of you. Remember how we made him macaroni? How about the time you pinned his hem and he jumped off the fitting stool and the pins went into his calves and he jumped around like a kid? You used to leave bowls of orange and lemon peels in his dressing room to soak up the fumes from his cigars. Remember when he called you Uno and me Due? “Always together, you two, like one and two,” he said.

  What a gift he was to all of us. I will miss him terribly, but will remember him the night of the bond benefit for the Great War, when he stood on the opera stage, his arms outstretched, and took in the love of five thousand fans on their feet, as if he were gathering roses.

  My heart breaks for you, as he was one of your own . . . a good man, a great singer, and the ultimate pride of the Italian people.

  Sending you, Ciro, and Antonio my love,

  Laura

  P.S. Signore died in Italy, as was his wish.

  Enza held Laura’s letter as she sat on the bench and cried. Ciro took the letter from Enza, read it quickly, and pulled Enza close. “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  Enrico Caruso’s death was the end of an era that had changed the course of Enza’s life. Her experience at the opera had brought rich friendships into her life and transformed her from a poor immigrant seamstress to a fine American artisan.

  As Antonio played on the blanket at her feet, Enza took time to remember the small details of the great singer. She recalled the way he smoked a cigar, blowing the smoke in orderly puffs, like musical notes. She remembered his strong calves and delicate feet, and how she’d tried to lengthen his torso to slim him. She remembered the night he’d put the gold coin into her silver glove, the last night she would ever see him.

  For the first time since they moved to Minnesota, Enza longed for New York. Somehow, to be with Laura at the opera house, with the machine operators in the costume shop, the footmen at the entrance, the painters and scenic artists, the musicians and the actors, would be a great comfort. Instead, she was here, with a family that barely knew the details of the life she’d had before she married.

  Enza wept, too, for Caruso’s Italy. They’d had long conversations in their native Italian about food—how to grow blood oranges; how to tear fresh basil, never cut it with a knife, to release the most fragrance; and how his mother sang all the verses of “Panis Angelicus” when she boiled pasta, and by the time she got to the last verse, she would lift it from the heat and it would be al dente, perfetta.

  The world would miss Caruso’s voice, and of course, Enza would too, but she would not think of his great artistry first and foremost; she would think of him. Caruso had known how to live; he extracted every drop of joy he could render from every hour of his life. He’d studied people, not to judge them, but to revel in their inimitable traits, and in so doing took in the best of them, only to give it right back when he performed.

  Enza couldn’t believe that Caruso was dead, because in so many ways he was life itself. He was breath and power, emotion and sound, with a laugh that was so loud, God Himself could hear it in heaven.

  Pappina held her new baby in her arms. It was her fourth child, but for the first time, the bonnet was pink. Angela Latini was just two weeks old when Pappina brought her to the shop to introduce her to the Lazzaris.

  Ciro and Enza were fussing over the baby when Antonio bounded into the shop.

  “Look, you have a new honorary cousin,” Enza said. “This is baby Angela.”

  “A girl?”
Antonio sniffed. “What are we going to do with a girl?” Antonio was a lanky seven-year-old with long legs and jet black hair. Ciro thought he looked a great deal like his brother Eduardo. No one on Enza’s side of the family was tall, but from the looks of her boy, he was going to be.

  “Someday you’ll find out, son,” Ciro said.

  Jenny Madich entered the shop with her young daughter Betsy in tow. Betsy went to school with Antonio, and from the first day, they had been sweethearts. Betsy was also tall for her age. Her white leather roller skates were knotted together and thrown over her shoulder. Her black hair, blue eyes, and small upturned nose gave way to a big smile that enchanted everyone she met.

  “Wanna skate, Antonio?” Betsy asked.

  “Can I, Mama?” Antonio looked up at Enza.

  “Yes, but stay on the sidewalk, not in the street.”

  Betsy followed Antonio up the stairs.

  Jenny Madich was around forty, a tall, slim, blue-eyed, raven-haired Serbian beauty with three daughters, one more beautiful than the next. She was known as the povitica queen on the Mesabi Range. Whenever she made a batch, she dropped one of the pastries off at the shop. Today, she’d brought two. “Did the shoes arrive?” she asked.

  “I have them,” Enza said. “They’re beauties.” She went behind the counter and gave the boxes to Jenny, who opened up the patent leather Mary Janes. The pair for her eldest daughter, who was sixteen, had a sleek, small heel. The others were classic with a stack heel. “Just like you ordered. They look like the ad in Everybody’s Magazine. They were right next to the Edna Ferber short story.”

  “Are you selling shoes now, Enza?” Pappina asked.

  “Special orders only.”

  “Enza saved my life with these shoes,” Jenny admitted. “We take the train down to the cities before Easter and get our shoes there. I can never find black patent leather shoes for the girls. And they need them for the competition during Serbian Days.”

  “You go all the way to Minneapolis for shoes?” Pappina asked.

  “What else can we do? It takes us months to make their costumes, and you don’t want to finish off the look with a cheap shoe.”