The Shoemaker's Wife

Chapter 21

A GOLD BRAID

Una Treccia d’Oro

As Ciro stood on the deck of the SS Caserta, the Atlantic Ocean was the color of green carnival glass. In the distance the depths turned a charcoal gray as the waves ruffled the surface in iridescent silver.

This was an entirely different view than it had been upon his passage from New Haven almost two years ago. Ciro was now twenty-four years old, a veteran of the Great War. The family he once knew was gone, the mother he longed for still absent, and his only brother, his last connection to Vilminore di Scalve and his dream of a house on the mountain, had left the comfort of the ordinary world and become a priest.

Ciro’s desire to remain a lifelong confidant to Eduardo and an uncle to his brother’s unborn children had disappeared into the air like puffs of smoke from the urn of burning incense with which the cardinal blessed the seminarians, who were turned into men of God with a drop of holy oil.

Eduardo was a far better person than any of the priests that Ciro knew. Eduardo was generous where Don Martinelli was stingy and chaste where Don Gregorio was not. Eduardo had the best heart that Ciro had ever known—man or woman—fair, competent, and contemplative. The seeds of wisdom were planted deep within Eduardo, just as an appetite for life—good food and beautiful women—was planted deep in Ciro.

Ciro mourned Eduardo’s new life, because it meant that he had lost his brother for good. Perhaps they would see each other a few times in the decades to come. There would be letters, but they would be infrequent. For two boys who had been inseparable, two brothers who were completely simpatico, to lead such separate lives was a terrible sacrifice. Ciro couldn’t help but feel cheated by the church; after all, with the recommendation of Don Gregorio, it had broken up two brothers who were the only living family each had. So much for the healing love of the Sacred Heart.

Eduardo’s devotion to Ciro would now be given instead to the priests of the order of Saint Francis of Assisi, and whatever was left beyond that would go to the Holy Church of Rome. Eduardo had given up any possibility of finding a wife and making a family when he became a priest. Ciro had wanted so much more for his brother. He wished that Eduardo could know the comfort, ease, and abiding serenity that came from the company of a good woman, and how the appetite for love and its simple but glorious connections made a man seek more in the world, not less.

Ciro imagined that Eduardo would try to save the world one soul at a time, but why would he want to?

Before the war, Ciro had thought he too was capable of great things. But now, with the landscape of France carved up and scarred forever by the trenches, filled with the broken dead, Ciro wanted no part of government and the men who ran it. Rome had been a great disappointment to him. The Italians were losing their way, he thought. There was something fragile about his Italy now. The Italian people had been poor for so long, they no longer believed they had any power to change the country they lived in. Even in the wake of victory, they couldn’t see better times. They no longer believed these were possible. They would grasp the next ideology that came along, just as a drowning man grabs at any sliver of wood. Anything is better than nothing, the Italians would shrug, an attitude that cleared the way for despots and their reigns of cruelty, for wars and their blighted landscapes.

Ciro had learned that life was never better after a war, just different.

He would always long for the Italy he knew before the war. The borders were soft; Italians traveled to France without papers, Germans to Spain, Greeks to Italy. Nationalism had now replaced neighborliness.

As a soldier, Ciro had learned that good men can’t fix what evil men are intent on destroying. He had learned to choose what was worth holding on to, and what was worth fighting for. Every man had to decide that for himself, and some never did. He had not survived the Great War to return home the same man.

Ciro had faced death. This was when a man was most likely to turn to the angels for intercession. Instead, Ciro had turned inward. He’d endured moments of paralyzing fear. He’d felt dread deep in his bones when the scent of the mustard gas permeated the fields in the distance, a pungent blend of bleach and ammonia that at first note seemed like something decent and familiar, the garlic herb simmering in Sister Teresa’s kitchen pot, rather than a death warrant as the cloud of gas snaked its way to the trenches that formed a border across France.

He remembered diluting bleach and cleaning the crevices of old marble with a small brush to remove stains from the stone. That same scent, stronger and more pungent, would linger over the battlefield with a thick stillness. Sometimes Ciro would be relieved when the wind carried the poison away from the front instead of toward it. But he also learned that a soldier could not count on anything—his commanding officer, his fellow infantrymen, his country, or the weather. He only had luck, or didn’t.

Ciro had discovered that he could go for days without much food; he’d learned to erase the image of a rare steak and potato, a glass of wine with purses of gnocchi and fresh butter, from his mind. Hunger too, it seemed had little to do with the body, but everything to do with the mind.

He didn’t imagine gathering eggs, as he had as a boy back at the convent, or the egg gently whisked in the cup with sugar and cream in Sister Teresa’s kitchen. He tried not to think of Sister Teresa, or write to her to pray for him. He was so hungry he did not want to imagine her in her apron, kneading sweet dough or chopping vegetables for stew. There was no comfort in happy memories; they just made it all seem worse.

Ciro had also thought every day at the front about women. What had soothed him in the past comforted him even more during the war. He remembered Sister Teresa in the convent kitchen at San Nicola, how she fed him and listened to him. He thought about Felicitá’s soft skin, the rhythm of her breath, the sleepy satisfaction that enveloped them after making love. He remembered women he had not met but had only seen on Mulberry Street. One girl, eighteen years old in a straw hat, had worn a red cotton skirt with buttons down the back from waist to hem. He thought about the curve of her calf and her beautiful feet, in flat sandals with one strap of pale blue leather between the toes, as she walked past the shoe shop. He imagined, over and over again, the power of a kiss, and he thought that if he made it out of these trenches, he would never take a single kiss for granted. A woman’s hand in his was a treasure; if he held one again, he would pay attention and relish the warm security of a gentle touch.

When his fellow soldiers visited a village known for their belles femmes, he’d made love to a girl with golden hair braided to her waist. Afterward, she had loosened her long braid and let him brush her hair. The image of her head bowed as he stroked her hair would stay with him for the rest of his life.

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 herself, 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.

“I could have gone home to Vilminore after the war. I stood on the road outside Rome and thought about going home, but I couldn’t bear the idea of the mountain without you.

“I don’t know what to say to make you believe me. I don’t believe in God so much. The saints have long ago left me. And the Blessed Mother forgot all about me, just as my own mother did, but none of them could give me what one thought of you could do. But if you come away with me, I promise to love you all my life. That’s all I have to offer you.”

Enza was so moved by his words, she couldn’t speak. She knew that a woman can only know two things when she falls in love: what she sees in the man, and what she believes he will become in the light of her care. But never once in the months of her betrothal had Enza felt for Vito what she felt when she looked at Ciro. Ciro’s height and strength reminded her of the mountain; she felt protected when she stood with him. Her body rose to meet his, and her spirit followed.

A group of children played stickball on Carmine Street. They chased the ball down the sidewalk in front of the church. They saw Ciro’s soldier uniform and gathered around. They inspected his helmet, his boots, and his backpack.

Enza’s desire for Ciro was so overwhelming, she put her head down so no one could read her thoughts. Her need to feel his body next to hers was so intense, it almost shamed her.

Enza knew that if she married Vito, she would lose her Italy forever. Even if she could have braved the ocean, Vito would hope to show her the island of Capri, the antiquities of Rome, and the enchantments of Firenze, not the mountains, lakes, and rivers of the north. She was from the land of the mandolin; the exquisite violins of La Scala were not hers to claim.

If Enza was going to create a new life, she had to build it with conviction, on her own truthful terms, with a man who could take her home again, even if that meant a new home of their own invention and not the mountain. Ciro had her heart; he was her portion of the mountain.

For Ciro, Enza would sacrifice, fight to put food on the table, worry and fret over babies, and live life in full. She had only one life to share, and one heart to give the man who most deserved it. If she took Ciro on, she was in for a struggle compared to her life with Vito, but the love of all loves was worth it.

Ciro pulled Enza close and kissed her. The children whistled and teased and fell away like sound across water. The taste of his lips was just as she remembered. His face against her own was warm; the touch of his skin healed her.

She would go to the ends of the earth for Ciro Lazzari, and she always knew it. Her wedding suit would become traveling clothes. It always seemed that her costumes were built for different intentions. The cinnamon suit was no different. She stuffed the violets Ciro had brought her into the waist of her suit jacket. They fit perfectly, as if the suit had been awaiting their finishing touch.

“I belong to you, Ciro,” she said. And with those words, Enza left one life behind to start a new one.