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