Chapter 25
A LUCKY CHARM
Un Ciondolo Portofortuna
Ciro followed his son up the hill on their way to see Doc Graham. Antonio skipped up the steep incline like a gazelle.
The sight of his son reminded Ciro of the days when he and Eduardo were boys, and Ciro had to run to keep up with his older brother. There were other reminders of the past in the present moment. Antonio had his uncle’s dark good looks, his height, and dexterity.
At eleven years old, Antonio had grown to five foot nine, and showed no signs of stopping. Ciro shook his head and smiled as he watched Antonio, who had proven to be a prodigy in every sport he attempted, whether it was basketball, baseball, speed skating, or alpine skiing. Ciro remembered his strength as a young man, but it paled in comparison to his son’s natural athletic ability.
“Come on, Papa, we’ll be late,” Antonio chided him from the top of the hill.
Ciro wondered why he was winded as he took the hill. He smoked infrequently now, only one cigarette when he played poker, but suddenly he felt the full brunt of his years. He was shocked that the physical changes he had always noticed in men twenty years his senior had come on so fast.
“Go ahead, son, I’ll be right there,” Ciro said.
Antonio pushed the door open to Doc Graham’s office and took a seat in the waiting area. The nurse called for him. “Can you tell my father—,” Antonio began.
“Of course, I’ll let him know you’re already in with Dr. Graham.”
Antonio followed the nurse into the examination room. Antonio jumped on the scale, the needle of which finally came to rest at 152 pounds. When the nurse told him how tall he was, Antonio clapped his hands together triumphantly. Ciro joined them in the examination room, removing his hat.
“The doctor will be with you in a moment,” the nurse said, taking Antonio’s file.
“Papa, I’m almost five foot ten!”
“You’re going to hit six feet soon,” Ciro told him. “You’ll be as tall as your Zio Eduardo. He’s six foot three. I’m the short one at six foot two.”
“I want to be taller than both of you.” Antonio smiled. His resemblance to Eduardo was striking. The thick black hair, wide brown eyes, and straight nose were just the window dressing in their similarities. There was also the serene countenance, the sense of fair play, and the good heart. Ciro recognized that Antonio might have the name Lazzari on his file, but he was all Montini.
Doc Graham pushed the door open. At middle age, Doc had white hair and jet black eyebrows, and thin lips that parted to reveal a warm smile.
“So you want to play junior varsity basketball, Antonio?” Doc wanted to know.
“They say I’m good enough, even though I’m young.”
“Coach Rukavina knows talent when he sees it,” Doc Graham said as he took Antonio’s blood pressure.
“Dottore, I worry he’s growing too fast.”
“No such thing if he wants to keep up with the Finns,” Doc said.
The Scandinavian boys were known as power towers. Tall, strong, quick, and bright, they were stunning athletes. The sons of the local Italian immigrants had to work hard to compete with them.
Doc Graham checked Antonio’s lymph glands in his neck, then peered down his throat, into his ears and eyes, and took his pulse. “I pronounce you perfectly healthy.”
“I can play?”
“You can play.”
Antonio thanked the doctor and pulled on his shirt. “I’ll see you at home, Papa. I have practice.” Antonio bounded out the door quickly. Ciro stood, placing his hands on his lower back.
“How’s your back?” Doc Graham asked.
“Not any better than the last time,” Ciro said. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. I take the aspirin, I lie on the floor with my legs in the air, and I soak in Epsom. I just don’t get any better, and sometimes it’s manageable, but the pain is always there.”
“Let me take a look.”
“Grazie, Dottore.” Ciro slipped back to his Italian, as he often did when a kindness was extended to him.
Doc Graham had Ciro remove his shirt. He pushed pressure points on Ciro’s back. One, right above the kidneys, caused Ciro to cry out.
“How old are you, Ciro?”
“Thirty-five.”
“Were you in the war?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Mostly in Cambrai.”
“Were you hit with mustard gas?”
“It was not significant.” Ciro straightened his back as best he could and pushed his shoulders back. He had long avoided discussing the war, and the last place he wanted to do it was in a doctor’s office. “I saw the men badly burned from it. My platoon was not. We died in more traditional ways. Stray bullets and barbed wire.”
Dr. Graham studied the skin on Ciro’s back, and followed it with a small blue light. He stopped and asked Ciro to breathe. “Ciro, I want to send you down to Saint Mary’s Hospital in Rochester. It’s part of the Mayo Clinic. They’re experts when it comes to health problems with veterans. I’ll call them, and call my friend in the clinic. He’ll see you right away.”
Doc Graham ripped the sheet from his pad and handed it to Ciro:
Dr. Renfro, oncologist
Saint Mary’s Hospital, the Mayo Clinic
Enza couldn’t sleep the night before Ciro went for his tests in Rochester. She was nervous for so many reasons. Ciro had never complained of pain in his body, just the occasional ache that comes with hard, repetitive work. But lately he had been hurting. There was a night a month ago when she had to help him out of the bathtub. There was another time when he woke up in the middle of the night with shooting pains radiating down his leg. She didn’t know if this was typical of growing older, though he was not yet forty, but all of it was of deep concern to her. She didn’t know where to put her feelings and she didn’t want to alarm her husband, so she wrote a letter to the doctor at the Mayo Clinic.
September 6, 1930
Dear Dr. Renfro,
Thank you for seeing my husband Ciro Lazzari. He will not give you much information, so my hope is that my letter might answer any questions you have. We have a young son and a shop to keep open, or I would have made the trip with my husband.
He has been suffering from back pain since we were married in 1918. Over the past year or so, the pain has escalated. The old remedies of camphor packs and Epsom salt soaks no longer bring him much relief. He is a shoemaker, so he often works on his feet ten hours a day, and that may contribute to the problem.
My husband is very intelligent. He will not, however, ask you important questions, nor will he inquire in any detail about how to follow whatever treatment you might prescribe. So please, if you don’t mind, send him home with an explicit list of things, and I will make sure they are done properly.
Sincerely yours,
Mrs. Lazzari
Rochester, Minnesota, was built on a raging river whose behavior was so precarious it took Franciscan nuns to defy the natural habitat and have the guts to build a hospital.
Saint Mary’s Hospital, operated by the Mayo Clinic, had grown from a small operation into the best medical center in the Midwest by the time Ciro Lazzari entered its pristine lobby. The stately red-brick campus, with new additions hiding beneath wings of scaffolding, was filled with state-of-the-art labs and examination rooms and the most sought-after doctors in the country. It resembled a bustling honeycomb.
The nuns, their black-and-white habits so similar to those of the sisters of San Nicola, gave Ciro a feeling of familiarity that completely relaxed him and gave him confidence. He joked with the sisters as they put him through the arduous tests.
Ciro was handed a file, and throughout the day he was moved from one small examination room to another. X-rays were taken, dye was drunk, he was poked and prodded and placed on a gurney, blood was drawn, bones were scanned; there was not a cell in his body that the doctors did not examine or discuss, or at least it seemed that way to Ciro.
At the end of the day, he was brought into an office to meet with Dr. Renfro. When a young man of thirty came into the room, Ciro was surprised. He had been expecting an older man, like Doc Graham.
“You’re a young man,” Ciro said.
“Not in this job. You feel every day of your age.”
“Why did Doc Graham send me here?”
“He saw a place on your back that concerned him. You’d never notice it yourself, but under your shoulder blades the texture of the skin is different from that of the surrounding area. Only a doctor who was looking for it would have seen it.”
“See what exactly, Dottore?”
The doctor laid out the reports on the desk, flicked a light board, and put up X-rays of Ciro’s spine. Ciro looked with wonder at the shadowy gray picture of the inside of his body, without any inkling of what the doctor was seeing.
“That is me?” Ciro asked.
“It’s your spinal column.” The gray shadows of Ciro’s spine looked like a string of black pearls on the X-ray. The doctor pointed to the darker areas. “Here’s your trouble.” He circled a black area with the eraser of a pencil. “This black pool is a tumor. It’s small, but it’s cancerous.”
Dr. Renfro pulled the shadowy images from the board and put up more. Ciro’s lungs resembled the black leather bellows he used to use to make fire in the convent kitchen.
“Mr. Lazzari, as a veteran of the Great War, you were exposed to mustard gas.”
“But I didn’t burn like the other soldiers.” Ciro’s voice caught.
“No, but this particular kind of cancer is insidious. The mustard gas you inhaled has a long incubation period, usually ten to twelve years. The poison causes a slow cellular burn that alters the very nature of how the human body fends off disease. I can show you . . .”
“No—no, thank you, Dottore. I have seen enough.” Ciro stood.
“We do have a few promising treatments,” the young doctor said eagerly.
“How much time will your treatments give me?”
“It would be hard to say,” Dr. Renfro said.
“Ten years?”
“No, no, not ten years.”
“Ah, so I have very little time.”
“I didn’t say that. But the prognosis isn’t good, Mr. Lazzari. I think you should try our course of treatment.”
“Given all you know, from everything you took from my body today, do I have months?”
“A year,” Dr. Renfro said quietly.
Ciro stood, pulled on his coat and then his hat. He extended his hand to Dr. Renfro, who took it. “Thank you, Dottore.”
“I’ll send your reports to Dr. Graham.”
On the train north to Duluth, Ciro settled back in his seat. He watched the flats of southern Minnesota turn inky blue in the twilight. Somehow—Ciro thought this silly—as long as it was daylight, he could handle the bad news; somehow, the idea of knowing the truth in the dark made him panic. The train could not go fast enough. He wanted to get home, where life had order and made sense. He didn’t know how to tell Enza, and certainly had no idea what to say to Antonio. It was as if an old enemy had shown up to ambush him. He thought he had buried all traces of the Great War and the horrors he had witnessed. He sensed that Dr. Renfro could have talked for hours on the subject, but Ciro wasn’t interested in the countless variations of being poisoned by mustard gas that the good doctor wanted to share. As in war itself, the outcome was the only thing that counted. It turned out Ciro had not survived the war, he had just been given a brief reprieve.
His soul had fended off the spiritual damage of war; the beauty of his life with Enza had erased the terrible images of loss. But his body had sustained the harm that Ciro believed he had spared his psyche. Ciro sighed. There was no winning. The pain of losing Enza and Antonio overwhelmed him.
As he took the stairs up to his home at 5 West Lake Street, Ciro loosened his tie and inhaled the scent of sage and butter. He saw a pool of light pouring from the kitchen, and heard his wife humming inside. He stopped on the landing and leaned against the wall, knowing that he was about to bring incalculable sadness to his wife and son. Let them be happy a few moments longer, he thought. He leaned against the wall, summoning his strength, before he went in to face them.
Ciro dropped his duffel at the top of the stairs.
“Ciro!” Enza called out. She came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a moppeen. She was wearing a new dress she had made, a simple navy-and-white polka-dot shirtwaist. She had done her hair, and her cheeks were pink with a sheen of rouge. She was more beautiful in this moment than she had been the moment that Ciro married her.
“What did the doctor say?” She smiled hopefully.
“I have cancer. They tell me I got it from the mustard gas in the Great War.” As Ciro made the announcement, it was as if his very breath had been taken from him. He crumpled, gripping the back of the chair in the hallway.
Enza was stunned. The drastic news took her totally by surprise, as she had said her rosary throughout the day with a feeling of complete vindication that Dr. Graham’s concerns were nothing to worry about. She put her arms around Ciro. He was sweating, and his skin was cold and clammy, as though he were facing the worst and there was no help on the way. “No,” was all she could say, and then she cried. He held her a long time. He inhaled the scent of her hair, fresh and clean like hay, while she buried her face in his neck.
“Where’s Antonio?” Ciro asked.
“He’s at basketball practice.”
“Should we tell him?”
Enza led Ciro into the kitchen. She poured him a glass of wine, and then one for herself. As in every crisis she had ever faced, Enza, practical and centered, dried her tears, owned the truth, and made a decision to be strong in the face of the challenge. Inside, her feelings tumbled over one another. She was at once desperate, fearful, and angry. She sat forward in the chair and gripped her knees.
“I thought we were the lucky ones, Ciro.”
“We were. For a while.”
“There has to be a doctor somewhere who can help you. I’ll call Laura.”
“No, honey, the doctors at the Mayo Clinic are the best in the world. People come from New York to see doctors there. And I know that for sure, because I spoke with some of them as I was waiting for my tests.”
“You can’t just give up,” Enza cried as her mind reeled. All those backaches, for all these years—she should have known. She thought he was working too hard, and all he needed was rest. But she and Ciro never took the time to go on vacation; they were always worried about the mortgage, and then Antonio’s schooling, and sports. They were running so fast they hadn’t seen the signs. Or maybe they didn’t want to see them. Maybe Ciro had suspected he was doomed all along and just wanted the peace of being left alone until he absolutely could not be. The time had come to be X-rayed, poked, prodded, blood drawn, veins in collapse at the prick of a needle—all of it was coming at them in a dizzy tornado of concerns, options, and treatments. She could not help but punish herself, admonish herself for not moving more swiftly. Why hadn’t she sent him to Doc Graham sooner? Maybe he could have helped. She put her face in her hands.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Ciro said, reading her. “Nothing.”
“What do we tell Antonio?” Enza asked. “I will do whatever you want.”
“We tell him everything. I have answered every question he has ever asked me honestly. He knows about my father and my mother, his uncle and the convent. He knows what I saw when I was banished from Vilminore, and he knows why. I am not about to start to spin fables to my boy now. If I am going to die, I want him to know that I thought enough of him to share everything.”
Enza wept. “Everything?”
“Everything,” Ciro reiterated.
They heard the snap of the key in the lock of the front door opening downstairs. Enza looked at Ciro with desperation.
“Are you sure?”
Ciro didn’t answer.
Antonio bounded into the living room, recounting the day’s events as he dropped his gear. “Ma, I scored twelve points, and had four assists in practice. Coach says I’m first team JV. Isn’t that great?” Antonio entered the kitchen. “Papa, you’re home!” he said when he saw his parents sitting side by side at the small table.
Ciro extended his arms out to his son. They embraced.
“How did it go in Rochester?” Antonio went to the counter, took a heel of bread, slathered it with butter, and bit into it. Ciro smiled, remembering doing the same in the convent kitchen of San Nicola. It occurred to him that this is what he would miss when he died. His son as he ate bread.
“Want some?” He extended the bread to his father.
“No, Tony, I don’t.”
“So, what’s the skinny?” Antonio looked at his mother, whose eyes filled with tears. The news had just taken root in her heart, and the pain overwhelmed her, more for her son than for her own broken heart.
“Mama. Papa. What is it?”
“Remember when I told you about the Great War?”
“You were in France, and you said the girls were pretty, but not as pretty as Mama.” Antonio poured himself a tall glass of cold milk from the icebox.
“Yes, but I also told you about the weapons.”
Enza took the glass of milk from Antonio and pulled out a chair. She indicated that he should sit.
“Listen to your father.”
“I am. He just asked me about the weapons in the Great War. There were tanks, machine guns, barbed wire, and mustard gas.”
“Well, I got hit with the mustard gas. So I have a little backache that comes and goes,” Ciro explained.
“You look fine, Papa. Doc Graham can help you. He helps everybody. And when he can’t, he sends you to Dr. McFarland.”
“It’s worse than that, son. I’m very sick. I know I look fine today, but as the days go by, I’m going to get worse. The mustard gas went through to my bones, and now I have the kind of cancer that it gives you. In a matter of time, I will die from it.”
Antonio took in the words, but shook his head as though what he was hearing could not possibly be true. It was when he looked at his mother that he knew. Slowly, Antonio stood up and put his arms around his father. Ciro was shaking, but so was Antonio, who couldn’t believe the terrible news. Enza got up from the table and put her arms around both of them. She wanted to say something to comfort Ciro, and something more to galvanize Antonio, but there were no words. They held one another and wept, and that night, there was no further conversation, or music on the phonograph, or even supper. The house was as quiet as it could be with a family living in it.
Later that night, Antonio buried his face in his pillow and wept. He had looked at a stack of his father’s papers in the living room and seen the diagnosis. He had seen a sketch of his father’s spine, and the strange circles with the words tumor and metastasize written next to them in ink.
Antonio had studied the Great War in school. He remembered a question on the quiz about mustard gas, and when he asked Ciro about it, he said it had the scent of ammonia and garlic. At the time, it hadn’t registered with Antonio that if his father could identify the scent, he too had been hit with it. But now he knew it was true.
He rolled over and dried his eyes on his pajama sleeve and stared at the ceiling. His greatest fear had come true. He and his mother would be alone; how would they go on without his father?
Antonio had never argued with Ciro. Some said it was because Antonio was an only child, with little cause for conflict. Others said it was because Antonio was unusually serene, with no need to defy authority. But it was deeper than that. Antonio had visited the cemetery on every feast day and prayed near his grandfather’s gravestone. He had stood beside his father as Ciro wept. Antonio had promised himself that he would never add to his father’s sadness.
Antonio had heard the stories. He knew about his father’s life in the convent without any parents. He knew that Zio Eduardo had been placed in the seminary, and Ciro had been forced to come to America when he was scarcely older than Antonio himself. The stories broke Antonio’s heart, and they also made him realize that the last thing his father needed was a rebellious son. Enza was the disciplinarian, leaving Ciro free to love his son and coddle him in a way Ciro himself had never known. Antonio had always known he had a happy home. What would become of them now?
Silver moonlight poured through the skylight of Ciro and Enza’s bedroom. The clean Minnesota breeze carried the pungent scent of spring. The wind off Longyear Lake was cool. It relieved them.
Ciro and Enza were entwined in one another, having made love. Their bodies were like two skeins of silk, woven together, inseparable. Ciro kissed his wife’s neck, and closed his eyes to remember every detail of it.
“Should I draw the shade?” Ciro asked, and Enza knew he was thinking of the old wives’ tale from the mountain.
“The bad luck is already here. The moon won’t change it,” Enza said.
“How do you think Antonio is doing?”
“He would never let you see how scared he is,” Enza said. “It’s good to keep his routine. We’ll go to the games, and we’ll be here when he comes home from practice. All we can do is be here for him.”
“I wish he had a brother. Eduardo was always able to help me through things. I wish he had that.”
“He is close to the Latini boys.”
“Luigi and Pappina are going to tell the older boys, so that they can help Antonio. I didn’t know what to say,” Ciro said.
“I’m sure you said the right thing.” Enza kissed him.
Pappina and Enza centered the navy-blue-and-white-striped tablecloth on the ground, anchoring the edge with a picnic basket on one side, the children’s shoes along the other.
John Latini and Antonio were the same age, soon to turn twelve.
The Latini boys—Robert was ten, and Sebastian nine—waded in the lake, skimming stones and tossing a ball. The rose of the family, baby Angela, was now four. Angela had glossy black hair, wide brown eyes, and tiny rose-petal lips. In stark contrast to her rambunctious brothers, she played quietly on the edge of the cloth with her doll.
“What’s it like to have a little girl?” Enza asked.
“She’s my lucky charm. At least I can teach her my mother’s recipes. Someone will know the old ways when they’re grown.” Pappina offered Angela a fresh peach. The little girl took it and then offered a bite to her doll.
Ciro and Luigi decided to walk along the shore of the lake. In the distance they looked like two old men, huddled close, talking as they went.
Enza unwrapped chicken cutlets, while Pappina sliced tomatoes from her garden, added fresh mozzarella, drizzled them in lemon, and shredded basil on top. They brought loaves of crusty bread, wine for the adults, and lemonade for the children. Pappina made a peach cobbler and a thermos of espresso.
“I talked to the boys. They know what to say to Tony,” Pappina said.
“He’ll need them. They’re like brothers.”
“They’ll be there for him. And we’ll be there for you.”
“Pappina, I look at him and I can’t believe he’s sick. He eats well, he still works hard, he has some aches and pains, but nothing terrible yet. I keep hoping that the tests were wrong. I even went up to see Doc Graham, but he explained what’s ahead for us. Pappina, I don’t think I’ll be able to get through it,” Enza cried.
Pappina leaned over and comforted her. “That’s when your friends will help you. I’m here for you.”
“I know, and I appreciate it. I try not to cry in front of Ciro.”
“You can cry to me anytime.”
“I have so many regrets,” Enza said.
“Why? You have a good marriage.”
“I didn’t have another baby.”
“You tried.” Pappina looked over at Angela, feeling sad that her dear friend could not know the joy of a daughter.
“Ciro wanted another child so much. It was his dream. And I just accepted that I couldn’t. You know, I’m not one to pine for what I don’t have. But my husband is.”
“Remember something—children come into your life in many ways, all the days of your life. Antonio may be an only child today, but someday he’ll marry and who knows? He may have a house full of children.”
Luigi and Ciro made their way back from the shore of the lake. “Okay, girls, what did you make to eat?” Luigi asked. “I need to feed the beast.”
“Your beast could do with a little less feeding,” Pappina said as she prepared her husband a plate.
“Am I fat?” Luigi asked, patting his stomach.
“The third hole in your belt hasn’t seen the prong in two years,” Pappina said.
Ciro laughed.
“Not so funny.” Luigi sat down on the tablecloth.
“Luigi and I were talking about the old days at Zanetti’s.”
“Signora could cook,” Luigi said as he took a bite of a chicken. “Not as good as you, Enza, but pretty good.”
“We’d like to be in the same shop again.”
Enza and Pappina looked at one another.
“I like this town. Hibbing is getting too big. The boys like the lake, and they want to go to school with Antonio. They want to be Bluestreaks.”
“Oh, the kids came up with this?” Enza asked.
“No, we came up with it on behalf of the kids.”
“Well, Pappina and I would love nothing more than to be neighbors.”
“That’s true,” Pappina agreed.
“So we’ll close Caterina One and consolidate with Caterina Two,” Ciro said.
Pappina handed her husband a cup of wine, and gave one to Ciro. She picked up her own cup, while Enza raised hers. “One God. One Man. One shoe shop,” Pappina toasted.
Enza propped feather pillows around Ciro’s back until he was comfortable. “You take good care of me.” Ciro pulled Enza close and kissed her.
“Do you think I’m a dope?” Enza asked. “Consolidating the shop. Working under one roof. I understand what you’re up to. You’re shoring up the shop. You’re putting a plan in place. A man in place.”
“I’m being practical,” Ciro said.
“I have a say in this. But you went ahead and made a plan without me. Luigi will keep things running, and you can die in peace, knowing there is someone to look after us.”
“But I’m just trying to take care of you!” Ciro said, bewildered. “Why does this make you angry?”
“Because you’ve accepted your fate when you can change it! You’re not going to die. But if you think you are, you will.”
“Why do you insist every day that I have control over this?”
“Because you do! And you’re just giving up! You’re giving up on me, your son, and our family. I would never give up on you. Never.”
“I wish things were different.”
“If you want to bring Luigi here because it’s good business, then do it. But don’t bring him to take care of me. I won’t have it. I can take care of myself. I can take care of our son.” Enza began to cry.
“Come here,” Ciro said softly.
“No. You come to me,” she said to him.
Ciro went to his wife and put his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I want you to be secure. I didn’t mean to insult you. Of course you can take care of yourself. You survived Hoboken without me.”
“What would help you get better, Ciro?”
“A miracle,” he said softly.
“I think I know of one.”
“Monsignor Schiffer already dropped off a vial of holy water from Lourdes. Only a German priest would bring an Italian French holy water,” Ciro joked.
“Not that kind of miracle in a bottle—the real thing. I want to take the money we’ve saved and send you to the mountain. You should go home and see your brother. Your friends. The convent. You should swim in the water of Stream Vò. It would heal you faster than the water from Lourdes.”
“What are you talking about, Enza? My place is here with you and Antonio.”
“No, Ciro, listen to me.” She pulled Ciro close. “Remember the berries in late summer? The way the juniper trees had pale green shoots underneath the branches, and they’d turn velvety and dark as they grew closer to the sky? If anything can make you well, it’s the place you come from and the people that loved you. Your friend Ziggy—”
“Iggy,” he corrected her.
“Wouldn’t you like to see him again?”
“He taught me to smoke.”
“You have to thank him,” Enza said wryly. “And the nuns—”
“My nuns.” Ciro laughed. “I wonder who is left at the convent of San Nicola?”
“You must go and reclaim your home again. That mountain is as much yours as it is anyone’s. That rotten priest banished you, and you never returned. It’s not right.”
“Is my beautiful wife at long last turning on the Church of Rome?”
“No. But a bad priest is a bad priest.”
“I used to dream of building a home on the mountain like the one you helped your family build. I wanted a garden.”
“Where was I in this picture?”
“You were always there. I just didn’t know it yet. I didn’t know the woman I would love all of my life was you.”
“If you love me, you’ll go back to the mountain and let it heal you.”
In the days that followed their conversation, Pappina and Luigi met with Ciro and Enza, and they agreed to consolidate the business. The Latinis would move to Chisholm that summer and rent a home on Willow Street. The men would pull together and build an inventory, making work boots and fur-trimmed winter boots for snowshoeing.
Enza took in alterations from the Blomquist’s and Raatamas department stores, and Pappina helped in the shop when she could. Enza expanded the dance shoe business to provide the shoes year-round, not just by special order.
Ciro and Enza began to argue frequently about her desire to send him home to Italy. When Enza moved the tin money box from the kitchen to the dresser in the bedroom, Ciro would put it back in the cabinet. When she brought it down to the shop to leave it on the worktable, he would gently put it aside. When she left it on the kitchen table at breakfast, he ignored it.
Ciro told Enza that he would never go home, until one day, in the heat of the last day of August, a letter came from Eduardo.
My Dear Brother,
I said a mass for you this morning.
After a long search, more prayers have been answered on our behalf.
I have found our mother. She is safe, but I fear she is beaten down from years in a convent with terrible conditions. She would like to see you, and so would I. Perhaps a trip could be arranged?
My love to you, E.