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