The Shoemaker's Wife

by Adriana Trigiani

  Sitting up in bed, she watched the storm through the skylight, slowly sipping the warm milk and brandy. Soon she became tired, put out the lamp, and placed the cup on the nightstand.

  Enza dreamed of her family. She was fifty-one years old in the dream, the age she turned on her last birthday, but her brothers and sisters were small. Stella was in the dream, as were her mother and father.

  Giacomina came through the door of the house on Via Scalina with a bouquet of white daisies and pink asters from the cliffs on the mountain. It was an enormous bunch of flowers, beautiful, fresh, fragrant.

  “I will see you again, my Enza,” her mother said.

  “Where are you going, Mama?”

  “I have a place now, and I must go.”

  “But you can’t leave me, Mama.”

  “Keep these flowers and think of me.”

  The phone rang on the nightstand. Enza sat up in bed, clutching her chest at the shock of the loud ring.

  “Enza? It’s Eliana. Mama died this morning.”

  Enza paced through the house alone, wishing that she were in Schilpario with her family, angry that she hadn’t braved the ocean and brought Antonio to the mountain as she had promised Ciro, and brokenhearted at the loss of her mother.

  Life was changing again, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The loss of one’s mother was devastating, and echoed in every chamber of her heart.

  The phone rang. Enza leaped for it.

  “Mama?”

  “Antonio!” The only balm for Enza in this moment of loss was her son’s voice, and it had been sent to her.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  “Your Nonna Ravanelli died, honey.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She loved you, Antonio.”

  Antonio swallowed. He had never met his grandmother and now he never would. He had been halfway around the world, and yet he had never been to the mountain.

  “I’m in New York, Mama. I’m home. Stateside. Safe as can be.”

  Waves of relief rushed over Enza. Every nerve within her released, and she had to sit down. “When will I see you?”

  “Mama, I’ve never been to New York. Aunt Laura and Angela want to show me the town.”

  “Good, good, make sure they take you to the opera.”

  “I will. Mama, what can I bring you?”

  “Just you.”

  “That’s easy, Mama.”

  “Let me know when you’ve made your plans. Should I call Betsy?”

  “Oh, Mama, I didn’t write to tell you. She fell in love with a doctor in Minneapolis and married him.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.”

  “No, no, it’s all right, Mama. I’m fine with it. I just want to come home and see my favorite girl.”

  Enza wept for joy. This terrible day had just become wonderful, with one phone call from her soldier son.

  Enza went into the kitchen, cleared the table, and began to make fresh pasta. She needed to do something, before getting on the phone and calling everyone from Ida and Emilio Uncini to Veda Ponikvar to Monsignor Schiffer. Everything felt wonderful in her hands, the silky flour, the eggs—the well was deep as she kneaded the dough. She delighted in the textures as she never had before.

  She played the radio as she worked, leaving fingerprints of flour on the dial when she raised the volume. She was thrilled when a recording of “Mattinata” sung by Enrico Caruso poured out of the cloth speakers. It was a sign—everything good was a sign; the war was over, Antonio was coming home, he was alive, he had made it through, he’d done the right thing and it had paid off, for him, his character, and the country of his birth. Her mother had kept Antonio safe for her. She was sure of it now. There were no coincidences.

  If only Ciro had been here to share this day with her. He knew exactly how to manage sadness, and he knew how to embrace joy. If only he were here.

  Enza set about freshening up the house. She opened the skylights and let in the spring breezes as she changed the sheets, scrubbed the floors, put out plants and photographs, and made the entire place shine. She flipped the sign on the shop door every day at lunch and locked up. The sign read, “Back in one hour,” and everyone in Chisholm knew exactly where she was; Enza went up and down West Lake Street buying all the ingredients to prepare Antonio’s favorite foods and returning home to prepare them. She baked anisette cookies, rolled fresh skeins of linguini, baked bread, and made his favorite chicken pastina soup. She was sure he would be thin, and as anxious as she was for him to come home, she was happy that Laura and Angela were showing him New York, which gave her an extra week to prepare for his homecoming.

  “Mama!” Antonio took his mother in his arms, after the four longest years of her life. She kissed her son’s face over and over again, unable to believe her good fortune.

  “Mama, I got married,” Antonio said.

  “What?” Enza put her hand over her mouth. She imagined a war bride, an Asian beauty, a girl rescued from an island, a place that Antonio found enchanting and therefore wanted to possess forever in a romantic way. “Where did you get married?”

  “In New York.”

  “Well, where is she?” Enza’s happiness turned to trepidation.

  “She’s downstairs.”

  “Well, I’d love to meet her.” Enza’s heart raced. She had not counted on this. What if she wasn’t a wonderful girl? What if he’d married his version of Vito Blazek? What if, in the thrill of having made it through the war, he simply snap-judged the biggest decision of a person’s life? She couldn’t imagine it. And yet as she turned to go down the stairs to meet her new daughter-in-law, she remembered that Ciro had raced from the pier to the Milbank House to the church to claim her before she married another man. War, evidently, makes a man think and spins the hands of a clock speedily as if the inner springs are broken.

  Antonio, who knew his mother so well, read her expression of worry.

  “Mama, I know for certain you will love her.”

  “How?”

  Antonio called down the stairs, “Honey?”

  Angela Latini, in a crisp periwinkle wool suit and matching hat, walked up the stairs in her high-heeled pumps. She was beautifully turned out, a New York deb gracing the Iron Range.

  “Zenza!” Angela put her arms around the woman who’d filled a void so deep that the job seemed impossible. Enza was her mother and her friend, and now, she was her mother-in-law.

  “But, how did this—”

  “We were at Aunt Laura’s apartment and we looked at one another . . . ,” Antonio explained.

  “And we realized how similar we are,” Angela said. “And we spent a long week on the town, talking.”

  “And we decided to surprise you.”

  “I’m surprised—and I’m so happy!”

  “Zenza, I was afraid you wouldn’t be happy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because no one would be good enough for Antonio.”

  “Ah,” Enza said. “You are.” She put her arms around Angela.

  Angela, who had never felt that the loss of her own mother had healed, began to cry in the arms of the woman who had stepped in to fill that void and love her. “I’ll be a good wife. I learned everything from you.”

  “No, you came to me well trained in all things. Pappina was your mother, and she was the best mother any girl could ever have.”

  “The truth is, I’ve loved Antonio since I was a little girl. I prayed that someday he would come back to me, and I would be old enough, and he wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone else. I prayed he would wait for me. I know it sounds crazy—”

  “No, it doesn’t. Not at all. Sometimes a childhood dream is the best dream of all.”

  Enza embraced her son and her new daughter-in-law. She thought about Ciro and how she’d loved him from the first moment she saw him, and how tradition, properly cared for, nurtured, honored, and respected, continues to feed the soul of a family. Antonio saw love so he could eventually choose it. So
had Angela, and she, too, recognized it and waited for it to find her just as it had found Luigi and Pappina.

  Enza wrote to Luigi Latini with the news. He had remarried in his village and was, by all accounts, happy. This letter would delight Luigi; he learned that Antonio and Angela would take their honeymoon in Italy and visit him and his sons and their families. Luigi would remember to tell Antonio all the stories about how Ciro became his partner, but in fact, Ciro had been the leader, and Luigi would have followed him wherever he wanted to go.

  Enza smiled when she thought of her son joining the Latini family, with its growing numbers, and climbing the Passo Presolana to see Vilminore and Schilpario, where Enza and Ciro’s story had begun. Enza would write to Eduardo and Caterina, who would know Antonio upon first sight, as Ciro always called his boy a Montini.

  “You wanted to see me, Zenza?” Angela stood in the doorway of Enza’s bedroom in her robe. Enza looked up at her and for a moment saw Pappina’s face, as she was the first time she’d met her on Mulberry Street. Enza remembered Angela as a little girl, and could hardly believe she was a woman now, and her son’s wife.

  “Yes, yes, honey, come and sit with me.”

  Angela sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I couldn’t be happier for you.”

  “I know.” Angela put her arms around Enza. “That means everything to me.”

  “I want to give you something.” Enza gave Angela a small velvet box.

  Angela opened the box and lifted out a delicate blue cameo, suspended on a string of pearls. “It’s exquisite.”

  “It belonged to my husband’s mother. She was once a privileged girl from a good family, and when she was widowed young, they lost everything. But through all her troubles, she managed to hang on to this necklace. This is the family you have married, Angela. They are strong, and resilient, and they hold on. Wear it and think of them.” Enza fastened the necklace on to Angela’s neck.

  “And I’ll wear it and think of you,” Angela said.

  “What are you girls talking about?” Antonio appeared in the doorway. Enza patted the bed next to her. Her son sat down beside her and watched his new bride look at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Zenza, I mean, Mama . . . gave me this cameo. It belonged to your grandmother.”

  “I don’t know if it’s beautiful on its own or lovely because you’re wearing it,” Antonio said.

  Angela kissed her mother-in-law on the cheek. “I’ll take good care of it,” she promised. She touched Antonio’s face before leaving the room.

  “You’ll never know what it means to me to see you so happy,” Enza said.

  “I want you to be happy, Mama.”

  “I’ve had so much.” Enza smiled.

  “I promised Papa that I would take you home to the mountain someday. Angela and I are planning a trip to Italy. She wants to see her family and then we planned a trip north to meet my grandfather and aunts and uncles. Papa’s mother. Papa’s brother. I have so many cousins.”

  “You go for me.”

  “Mama, they have medication now. During the war so many men got seasick, and they took a pill. You’d be fine.”

  Enza imagined the thrill of seeing her father and brothers and sisters again, but it wasn’t the Passo Presolana, or the lake at Endine or the stone bridge over the Stream Vò where the waterfall meets the rocks that she missed. It was the air on the mountain. The crisp, fresh Alpine air, that brought the scent of spring with fragrant freesia, or the scent of autumn with the pungent juniper nettles, or the scent of snow before the storm began in winter. That was what she missed, the air that filled her with possibility and yearning, the air that she breathed with Ciro the first night they kissed. That blue air. The night air as rich as a treasure chest of lapis, shimmering, inviting and made smooth over time.

  To breathe the mountain air would make the final days of her own life sweet in memory. It would be a priceless gift to look back on the trip with her son and daughter-in-law someday, when she too would breathe her final moments on this earth.

  “Please, Mama? Will you come with us?”

  Enza put her arms around her son. “I’d do anything for you. Yes, I’ll go with you.”

  Antonio kissed his mother good night and went to bed.

  Enza sat in the chair in her room and tried to read, but her thoughts interrupted the words on the page, and she imagined the past, and tried to make some sense of all the moments of her life that had built the days that became the years she shared with Ciro. She remembered that she had always felt an underlying urgency when she was with him, she never thought there was enough time. She had felt it that night on the pass when she drove him back to the convent. The trip went too fast, and there was so much more to say. In the years that followed, when they were apart, she’d see something that reminded her of Ciro, and she’d make a note to tell him about it someday, even when he’d fallen in love with another girl and she thought she’d never see him again. And once she married Ciro, and Antonio was born, the years sped by even faster, like the overtime clock in any of Antonio’s basketball games. When Ciro died, he was so young, but then again, so was she. And in the years since, she had not met a single man who could turn her head. The memory of Ciro had not faded. While she would like to think that she could return to the mountain, in her heart, she wondered if she could climb the pass without the man who had been and would remain her true love.

  Later that night, long after Antonio and Angela were asleep, Enza made herself a cup of tea. She brought it back to her bedroom. She propped open the skylight to let in the cool night air, looking around the room, and taking in the familiar walls and corners of it. Enza remembered Ciro there, and thought about the night he came home late from a party after dancing with a pretty girl. Those hours without him seemed an eternity. It was funny to her that when she thought she might lose him, time seemed to stop, yet, when they were happy, it flew.

  Enza did something she had not done in years. She opened Ciro’s drawer in the dresser, the one she hadn’t had the heart to empty when he died many years ago. Now, though, she felt lucky. Antonio was home safely, and he’d married a wonderful girl. Enza felt Ciro would be proud of her; she had done a good job raising their son alone and honored his memory by always doing her best for their family. She took in the lingering scent of cedar and lemon that still permeated the cover of her husband’s missal and his leather belt. She opened the leather pouch of tobacco, and inhaled the sweet remainder of the leaves, remembering Ciro’s face when he smiled and squinted at her through the puffs of smoke.

  Enza sorted Ciro’s socks, and held the leather belt, which had been wrapped neatly into a coil. She pulled out the small calfksin sleeve that contained his honorable discharge papers, which he had carried in his pocket every day of his life, as if to say, See how much I loved this country? As if anyone would have ever doubted it.

  Enza placed his passport on the dresser top. She lifted out the prayer missal that Eduardo had given to Ciro when they were parted as young men. Enza had carried it on her wedding day, and remembered how heavy it felt in her hands. She found a photograph of the Latinis and the Lazzaris tucked inside, taken by Longyear Lake when the children were small. How young Pappina looked, and how happy Luigi was as he held baby Angela!

  Enza also removed a photograph from her own wedding day, to give to Angela and Antonio as a gift. She looked at her stern young face in the photograph and wondered why she had been so serious. After all, it was the happiest moment of her life. If only she had been giddy with possibility instead of worried about all the things that might go wrong! She saw, as she looked back, that there would have been no stopping the terrible things that happened to them, any more than there was a way to contain all the joy they had known.

  Enza looked at Ciro’s face, and wondered how she had managed to marry a man so beautiful. His sandy hair, obvious even in sepia, was thick and wavy, as it was until the day he died. His straight nose and full lips fit beautifully with
her own, as if it was fated that they would become one.

  She missed her husband’s kisses most of all.

  Enza was about to close the drawer when she saw something shimmering at the bottom of the drawer, in a small cup where Ciro kept extra bolts and screws for the machines in the shop. An unused penny stamp peeked out of the cup. Enza pulled the small cup from the drawer.

  She emptied the contents onto the bedspread. An ivory collar stay, a few screws, a bobbin, a couple of buttons, and, finally, a gold coin tumbled out. Enza picked it up, taking the coin to the bedside lamp to examine it.

  It was the coin Enrico Caruso had given her on the closing night of Lodoletta. When Antonio was a boy, Enza had allowed him to hold it, and, when times were tough, she’d thought about selling it. But she needed one thing to remind her of where she came from and who she once knew, so she kept it, just as Caterina had held on to that blue cameo. Enza placed the coin on the nightstand next to the photograph, thinking Antonio would be thrilled to have it as part of his wedding gift. She twisted the gold ring Ciro had placed on her hand so many years ago on the day they were married. She had never taken it off. Enza remembered Ciro’s words: Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing.

  Love.

  Gold.

  Somehow, Ciro had managed to give Enza both, but the love had been the everything.

  Acknowledgments

  I had long been enchanted by my grandparents’ love story. Lucia Spada and Carlo Bonicelli were from villages in the Italian Alps five miles apart, but they met for the first time in Hoboken, New Jersey. This novel is being published during the 100th anniversary year of Carlo Bonicelli’s immigration. He arrived in New York City from Le Havre, France, on the S.S. Chicago on February 19, 1912. Imagine my elation when I first visited their villages on the mountain where they were born.

  My great uncle, Monsignor Don Andrea Spada, was the first person to show me the Pizzo Camino. I took in the snow-capped peaks and the Italian sky, which was so blue that I still look for the exact shade of it everywhere, in fabric swatches, on walls, and in books. Don Andrea was my grandmother Lucia Bonicelli’s baby brother. He was born in 1908 to a big, hardworking family. He left the mountain to be educated and was ordained a priest in 1931. He became a respected and renowned journalist in Italy, where his worldview was focused through a prism of compassion and a firsthand knowledge of what it meant to be poor. He returned to the mountain and Bergamo as soon as he could. He was editor of the L’Eco di Bergamo newspaper for fifty-one years. He was a padrone of language like no other. His newspaper articles were specific, clear, and truthful; his headlines plain and direct. He went on to write glorious books of power and scope. He died in Schilpario at the age of ninety-six in the house where he was born, in the shadow of the mountain he loved.