Free The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani

greet them in white light, wearing robes of purple, blue, and green, their smooth, long-fingered plaster hands indicating where to go.
    Don Gregorio may have found Ciro’s lack of devotion odd, but Ciro thought the believers were the strange ones, with their relics, incense, and holy oils whose mystical powers did more to raise questions in his mind than provide answers.
    Ciro mixed the special cleaning paste he had invented in an old tin drum. Through trial and error, Ciro had created this paste to clean and polish the statues and delicate ornamentation of the church. For this special chore, Ciro mixed a cup of fresh, wet clay from the riverbed of Stream Vò, a few drops of olive oil, and a handful of crushed lavender buds in a drum. He put his hands in the mixture and squeezed it through his fingers until it became a soft putty. After rinsing his hands in a bucket of cold water, he picked up a moppeen, twisted the end around three fingers, and dipped the cloth into the paste.
    “ Va bene , Saint Michael, you’re first.” Ciro made small circular motions, gently rubbing the paste onto the base of the statue. The gold lettering, “San Michele,” gleamed as Ciro polished the surface.
    Of all the statues in San Nicola, Ciro felt the closest kinship with Saint Michael. His strong legs, broad shoulders, and silver sword raised high to battle evil appealed to Ciro’s sense of adventure and aspirations for courage. Plus, Saint Michael’s sandy hair and blue-green eyes reminded Ciro of his own. As he buffed the golden jaw of the saint, he decided that of all of God’s army, this was the man who could win Concetta Martocci. The rest of the male saints, holding doves or walking with lambs or balancing a baby on one arm, would not be as effective. Saint Anthony was too gentle, Saint Joseph was too old, and Saint John, too angry. No, Michael was the only warrior who could have wooed a beautiful girl and won her heart.
    Ignazio Farino rounded the corner, pushing a small handcart loaded with small blue river stones. Slight of build, with a long nose and thin lips, Iggy wore lederhosen with thick wool knee socks and an alpine hat with a merlo feather stuck in the faded band. He looked more like an old boy than an old man.
    “ Che bella .” He looked up at the statue of Mary perched upon the globe and gave a whistle.
    “Is she your favorite, Iggy?” Ciro asked.
    “She’s the Queen of Heaven, isn’t she?” Ignazio sat down on the garden wall and looked up at the statue. “I used to gaze—I mean, gaze —at her face when I was a boy. And I used to pray to God to send me a beautiful wife that looked like the Virgin Mary in the church of San Nicola. The prettiest girl in Vilminore was taken, so I took a hike up the mountain and married the prettiest girl in Azzone. She had the golden hair. Pretty on the outside, but”—he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his pocket—“so complicated within. Don’t marry a beautiful woman, Ciro. It’s too much work.”
    “I know how to take care of a woman,” Ciro said confidently.
    “You think you do. Then you get the ring on her hand, and the story changes. Women change. Men stay as they are, and women change.”
    “How so?”
    “In every way. In manner.” Iggy bowed from the waist. “In personality. In their desire for you.” He thrust his body forward as if to stop a runaway wheelbarrow. “At first, oh, si, si, si , they want you. Then they want the garden, the home, the children. And then they weary of their own dreams and look to you to make them happy.” He threw up his hands. “It’s never enough, Ciro. Never enough. Believe me, eventually, you run out of ways to make a woman happy.”
    “I don’t care. It would be my honor to try.”
    “You say that now,” Ignazio said. “Don’t do as I did. Do better . Fall in love with a plain girl. Plain girls never turn bitter. They appreciate their portion, no matter how meager. A small pearl is enough. They never long