The Shoemaker's Wife (26 page)

“You won’t be forgotten, Remo.”

“You never know. That’s why I want to sell everything and go home to Italy.” Remo admitted, “I miss my village. I have family there. Three sisters and a brother. Lots of cousins. I have a small house. I have a crypt with my name on it.”

“I thought I was the only one who dreamed of home.”

“You know, Ciro, if there’s a war, we don’t know what side Italy will be on. It could make it very difficult for us here.”

“We’re Americans now,” Ciro said.

“That’s not what our papers say. We’re welcome to stay and work; beyond that, it’s up to them. Until you pass the test for citizenship, you are here at the whim and fancy of the United States government.”

“If they threw me out, I would be happy to go back to Vilminore. I liked that I knew every family in my village, and that they knew me. I remember every garden and street. I knew who owned the best ground to grow sweet onions and who had the best spot to plant pear trees. I watched women hang the wash and men shoe the horses. I even watched people pray in church. I could tell who was truly penitent and who was there to show off a new hat. There’s something to be said for life on the mountain.”

“You dream of your mountain, and I dream of the port of Genoa. I spent every summer there with my grandmother,” Remo said. “Sometimes I go through the leather and look for the exact blue of the Mediterranean.”

“And I look for the green of the juniper trees. Everyone on the mountain had the same view of Pizzo Camino. We looked at the world in the same way. I can’t say that about Mulberry Street.”

“So many layabouts here. They don’t work hard enough. They want the sparkle without doing the polish.”

“Some, not all,” Ciro said. Ciro heard the men leaving for construction jobs before sunrise, and watched the women tend their children. Most of the people in Little Italy worked hard to keep their families secure. “I’m lucky,” Ciro admitted.

“You made your luck. Do you know how many boys I tried to train in this shop? Carla never liked anyone I tried to apprentice here. But she’s never said a word against you. I think you work harder than she does.”

“Don’t tell her that.”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Remo looked at the doorway, hoping Carla was not coming through it.

“I am very grateful to you, Remo. You didn’t have to take me in.”

“Every boy deserves a second chance.” Remo shrugged.

“I didn’t think I needed one. I didn’t do anything wrong. But I learned that it doesn’t matter what I think. It’s what the padrone believes—that’s what counts.”

“We all have a boss.” Remo pointed up the stairs. “Thirty-seven years with her taught me to keep my mouth shut and follow instructions.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t marry a padrone, Ciro. Pick a quiet girl who likes to take care of you. An ambitious woman will kill you. There’s always something that needs to be done. They keep a list. They make
you
a list. They want more, more, more, and trust me,
more, more, more
leads to an ulcer.”

“Don’t worry about me. I make shoes for a living, and love . . . only when it suits me.”

“Smart boy,” Remo said.

“What are you two talking about?” Carla asked as she entered the room with the mail. She pushed the leather samples aside. “What are these doing here?” she barked, then glanced back at Ciro.

“We’re not going to make anything in this shop but work boots. Get those pipe dreams out of your head.”

Ciro and Remo looked at one another and laughed.

“It’s a good thing I keep the books,” Carla said, undeterred. “If I left this business to you two, I might come home one day to find you making cannoli instead of boots. You’re a couple of dreamers.” Carla gave Ciro a letter before she climbed back up the stairs.

Ciro was thrilled when he saw that the return address was Eduardo’s seminary in Rome. He excused himself and went out to the garden with the letter, put his feet up, and carefully opened the envelope. Eduardo’s perfect penmanship was a work of art. Ciro handled the letter reverently.

October 13, 1916

My Dear Brother,

Thank you for the work boots you sent. I laced them up tightly and tested the steel toes you mentioned like a prima ballerina. Our old friend Iggy would not have been capable of en pointe. Of course, I examined the boots as closely as Sister Ercolina would have and was happy to see that you are every bit the craftsman you claim to be in your last letter. Bravo, Ciro, bravissimo! Though I wear the sandals of Galilee, I can still appreciate a good pair of boots!

I have some news regarding our mother.

Ciro sat forward in the old wicker chair.

This information has been relayed to me by letter from the abbess in a convent near Lake Garda where our mother has been living for the past several years. I know this will come as a shock to you. Mama was so close to us, just a few kilometers from Bergamo. But she was very sick. She went to see a doctor in Bergamo the day she left us at the convent. He made his diagnosis and sent her to the nuns. They have a hospital and a sanitarium there. Our mama suffered from mental distress so severe she could not function. Papa’s death had put her in a grief state she could not overcome. Sister Ercolina made sure that Mama got the best care, and now, I am told, she works in the hospital there. I wrote to her and told her about you, and about the seminary. As you know, seminarians are not allowed any contact with family members except by letter. If I could fly over these walls to see Mama in this moment, I would, if only to write to you to tell you that I had seen her and was assured by my own eyes that she was safe and healthy. But, sadly, I have only the promise of the sisters to go on. We must trust that they are taking care of her, as they always did for us.

Ciro’s heart felt heavy. He began to cry.

The news that Mama is alive is a blessing to me. I feared that we’d never look upon her face again, not even learn what became of her. We must be grateful for this news, and pray that we will all be reunited someday. I keep you in my prayers, my best and only brother, and remember how proud I am of you. Nor am I penitent about that pride. I know what you are made of.

Yours, Eduardo

Remo stood in the doorway to the garden and watched as Ciro wiped his eyes, carefully folded the letter, and placed it back in the envelope. He remembered the day Ciro had come off the ferry from Ellis Island. Despite his size and abundance of energy, Ciro had been an innocent boy. As Remo observed Ciro now, he saw a man in the wicker chair, a man any father would be proud to call his son.

In the intervening years, Remo had grown to find as much purpose in the exchange of knowledge from master to apprentice as Ciro. This experience would be as close as Remo would ever come to being a father himself, and he savored the role.

“Ciro, you have a visitor,” Remo said softly. “He says he’s an old friend.”

Ciro followed Remo back into the shop.

“You never write,” Luigi Latini said to Ciro. Luigi had cropped his black hair, slicked it back with pomade, and grown a small, fashionable square mustache under his small nose.

“Luigi!” Ciro embraced his old friend. “
You
could’ve written to
me
! Where’s your wife?” Ciro looked over Luigi to see if he had brought her.

“I don’t have one.”

“What happened?”

“I went to Mingo Junction as planned”—Luigi nodded sadly—“but I knew the photograph was too good to be true. I couldn’t get past her nose. I tried. But I just couldn’t do it. So I made up an excuse. Said I was dying and that I had weak blood. I told her father that his daughter did not deserve to be a young widow. I practically climbed into an empty casket and clutched a lily to my chest. Before they could figure out I was lying, I’d hopped a freighter and gone to Chicago. I’ve worked there ever since, on the roads, mixing cement. Six years I’ve been working on a crew. And I could work another twenty out there. They’re building roads all the way to California.”

“How did you find me?”

“I remembered Mulberry Street,” Luigi said. “We worked so well together aboard ship, I thought maybe we could work together again.”

“How touching.” Carla stood in the doorway and fixed a red bandana in her white hair. “You can’t stay here.”

“Mama,” Ciro teased, winking at Luigi. Ciro only called Signora “Mama” when he wanted something. He knew it, and so did she.

“I’m not your mother,” Carla said. “There’s no room here.”

“Look at him. You can see the bones in his neck. Luigi barely eats. He’ll have one spoon of cavatelli and no more.”

“Not likely. When he tastes my cavatelli, he’ll eat a pound.”

“See that? Signora has invited you to dinner,” Ciro said to Luigi.

“There’s a boardinghouse on Grand,” Carla said as she wrote down the address. “Go get a room there and be back in an hour for dinner.”

“Yes, Signora,” said Luigi.

Enza’s sixth anniversary on Adams Street in Hoboken came and went without a glass of champagne or a slice of cake, and there was surely no acknowledgment from Signora Buffa.

A few months after Enza settled in with the Buffa cousins in Hoboken, Marco Ravanelli left Hoboken for the coalfields of Pennsylvania to take a job in the mines. He was six hours away by train, and sent his pay to Enza faithfully. She, in turn, would take the money to the bank, deposit it with her own paycheck, and send a money order to her mother in Italy.

Each Christmas, Marco managed to visit his daughter. They would celebrate quietly, attend a mass, share a meal, and he would return to work, and so would she, making overtime on the holiday shifts.

A lucky break came a year into their plan. Giacomina had been willed a small parcel of land above Schilpario. The plot was just large enough to accommodate a house, but Marco seized on the opportunity. Instead of buying one of the modest storefront houses along Via Bellanca, Marco and Enza decided he would keep working in America until they had saved enough to build the kind of house Marco had dreamed of. Not a grand home, but one with a deep hearth and three windows for sunlight and five bedrooms so that Enza and her siblings could all stay and raise their families under one roof. Enza knew this change in plan would keep them in America longer than they had hoped.

Six years of combining Enza and Marco’s salaries, less their expenses, was slowly beginning to fill Giacomina’s money box in Schilpario. Battista and Vittorio carried on Marco’s carriage route and picked up small jobs wherever they could, but without the money made in America, they would never have survived.

The letters on thin blue paper that crossed the Atlantic were filled with details of the home that was to be: a porch with a swing; two gardens, one facing east for vegetables and herbs, and the other facing west, where a patch of sunflowers would tilt their heads toward the setting sun; a common kitchen with a long farm table and many chairs; a basement to make and store wine; a deep brick oven with a hand-turned rotisserie.

Enza and Marco’s venture to America would make it all possible, down to the small grace notes like handmade lace curtains. The Ravanellis were brilliant savers, used to deprivation, only spending money on their basic needs in America; everything else went to Giacomina and the house fund. The house would be the castle that would shield them from want, hurt, and further loss.

Enza longed for satin shoes and elegant hats, like all young women, but when she thought of her mother, she put her desires aside for the family’s dream. She sent her father a letter each week, after she received his pay, in which she only wrote good news. She told humorous stories about the girls in the factory where she worked and the church she attended.

Enza said little about the Buffa family, because life with them was barely tolerable. She was mistreated, overworked, forced to do the cleaning, cooking, and laundry for Anna Buffa and her three daughters-in-law, who lived in the apartments above her own. While the Buffas were blood relatives of Giacomina’s, they were distant third cousins, only discovered when Enza and Marco looked for connections to help them make the move to America. Anna did not consider Enza family, and she let her know it.

Enza was given a small room in the basement, a cot, and a lamp. It was indentured servitude, and the only happy moments she knew came from the friendships she made at the factory. Enza promised herself each night before sleep that once the house money had been secured, she and Marco would return to Schilpario, and life would be as it once had been. Papa would manage the carriage, and Enza would set up her own dressmaking shop. She put aside thoughts of her illness on the voyage over, vowing that she could survive a return trip. Enza’s dreams of the mountain, her determination to return to the security of her mother’s arms, and the memory of the laughter of her brothers and sisters got her through each day—but just barely.

Enza sealed the envelope addressed to her mother carefully, then tucked it into her apron pocket.

“Vincenza!” Signora Buffa’s voice thundered from the kitchen.

“Coming!” Enza shouted back. She slipped into her shoes and climbed the basement steps.

“Where is my rent?”

Enza reached into her pocket and handed Signora one dollar in cash, for the rental of her basement room. The original agreement had been that Enza would work in exchange for her room and board, but that plan had quickly died when Pietro Buffa took a job in Illinois, taking his three sons with him, to build train tracks on a crew in the Midwest. Enza only stayed because she had heard stories of immigrant girls who left their sponsor’s homes only to find themselves in the street, without a position or a place to stay.

“You’re behind on the laundry. Gina needs the baby clothes.” Signora Anna Buffa had thin black eyebrows, a turned-up nose, and a cruel mouth. “We’re tired of waiting for you to finish your chores.”

“I hang the laundry when I leave in the morning. Gina could take it down.”