The Boston Girl (3 page)

I looked it up later.

At the end of the road, we found ourselves right on the coast, looking straight out to sea. The sun was so bright on the water it was like staring at a million tiny mirrors.

I heard Irene whisper, “Holy mackerel.”

I whispered back, “Amen.”

She smiled in spite of herself, and you never saw a cuter pair of dimples.

—

Miss Holbrooke led us past a row of mansions, most of them with two or three balconies that faced the ocean. One of them had a fairy-tale turret. Rose sighed. “You’d never get me off that porch.”

We took a path around the back of Rockport and up a hill to Dogtown, which is a big woods right in the middle of Cape Ann, where Miss Holbrooke said she had something very special to show us.

The farther we got from the water, the hotter it was. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirtwaist and my shoes were pinching, so I hoped her special treat involved ice cream or lemonade.

It was cooler when we got to the forest, and Miss Holbrooke said, “We’ll be there soon, girls.” We started walking faster and everyone tried to guess what wonder we were going to see. A waterfall? Blueberries?

But when she stopped and said, “Here we are!” I didn’t see anything special—just trees and shrubs and rocks.

“Where are we?” said Gussie.

Miss Holbrooke walked over to a huge boulder and patted it as if it were a puppy. “We have reached our first erratic and one of my favorite specimens. Isn’t it a beauty?”

Nobody said a word until Irene muttered, “We came all this way to look at a stupid rock?”

I was sweaty and thirsty, my legs ached, I had blisters on both feet, and I thought that was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.

Miss Holbrooke spun around and gave me the fish-eye but I couldn’t stop laughing. I covered my mouth and turned around but by then Rose was laughing, and she had one of those big belly laughs that got everyone else going.

Miss Holbrooke was furious. Then she was offended. And then hurt.

“I suppose not everyone has a taste for geology,” she said.

“Thank goodness she’s not the cook,” Irene said, and I cracked up all over again.

—

Irene didn’t come to supper that night. Rose said she’d gotten a bad sunburn. “But it’s her own fault for throwing away the hat. I’m washing my hands of that girl.”

I said, “She’s not so bad, but it makes you wonder why she’s here at all.”

Rose had found out that much. Her brother had sent her and paid her way. “I told Irene that makes him a saint in my book, and she gave me a look that would have boiled an egg.”

After supper, Miss Case opened her ledger to tell us about the schedule for the week, and it all sounded wonderful. There was going to be a breakfast cookout, a trip to Good Harbor Beach, blueberry picking, shopping in Rockport and Gloucester. We were going to a town dance, too, which got everyone whispering and giggling.

That’s when I noticed Irene peeking in from the hallway. She had a cloth pressed against her forehead and I went out and asked if she was okay.

She said she was fine. “If Mrs. Morse hadn’t sent into town for ice, I think my nose would have peeled off.”

“It looks like it hurts,” I said.

Irene shrugged, but then she hid her face in the towel and started to cry.

I sat down with her on the steps and she told me the story of how she had come to America with her older brother five years ago and the two of them had taken care of each other. But he’d gotten married and his new wife, “the cow, Kathleen,” wanted Irene out of their apartment right away. Without a word to Irene, the wife got her a job as a live-in maid in Worcester. “Do you have any idea how far that is from Boston?” Irene said.

The brother wouldn’t stand up against his bride, so he sent Irene to Rockport as a kind of peace offering. Irene called it “the old heave-ho.”

“I was in service once, and never again. The lady of the house thinks she owns you and calls you a thief if you eat the crusts she leaves on her plate, but it’s her who steals your days off. I’d sooner walk the streets.”

I said there had to be something we could do to help. She shook her head and said, “You’re a good kid,” and then she went upstairs alone.

I walked straight over to Rose and told her what was what with Irene. She called the brother a no-good bum and a few other things and said, “I feel terrible about what I said about the poor girl.” She went upstairs and told Irene that she would be staying with her until she got on her feet; no arguments and no thanks needed. “What are friends for?” Rose said.

And just like that, the chip on Irene’s shoulder disappeared. Her dimples became the envy of everyone and her impersonation of Miss Holbrooke had us rolling on the floor.

“Allow me to serve you a taste of scenery,” Irene said, in Miss Holbrooke’s voice, which was singsong and fruity, sort of like Julia Child’s, come to think of it.

“Now, who wants a piping hot slab of granite?”

It still makes me laugh.

You have a good eye.

The best part of that week was my time with Filomena.

We stayed up late every night talking, talking, talking. She seemed so grown up, I couldn’t believe that she was only nineteen—just three years older than me.

We started with our families and I still remember all of her sisters’ names: Maria Immaculata, Maria Teresa, Maria Domenica, Maria Sofia, and she was Maria Filomena—the youngest and also the only unmarried one.

Her parents died when she was a baby, so Mimi—Immaculata—raised her. The whole family lived within a few blocks of each other in the North End, and when I met Filomena, she was staying with Sophie—Maria Sofia—and sharing the couch with two of her three boys. Filomena said she looked forward to coming to Rockport Lodge just so she could sleep without a squirming child waking her up.

Filomena left school when she was twelve and went to work sewing in a factory. A few years later, she started going to the Salem Street Settlement House on Saturdays. “I told Mimi that I wanted to improve my English,” she said, “but really it was just to have a little time when I wasn’t at work or taking care of someone’s baby.” Miss Chevalier noticed her sketching in the library when she was supposed to be reading, “But instead of yelling at me, she took me to meet Miss Green. And here I am.”

Not so different from my story, right?

Miss Green sent her to the Museum School for a drawing class. “I owe her everything,” Filomena said. “She taught me pottery and design and gives me art books to look at. She says that being an artist is more than a job or a skill; it’s a way of walking through the world.”

I didn’t understand what that meant until a few days later, when we went to the Headlands, which Miss Holbrooke said was the most beautiful view on Cape Ann.

Irene rolled her eyes. “Stone soup, anyone?”

But Miss Holbrooke was right about the Headlands. It’s a special place—up high, maybe a hundred feet above the sea, with water on three sides.

You know where I’m talking about, right, Ava? It’s the place I always bring people who’ve never been to Cape Ann. You can see for miles up and down the coast. It’s got a nice view of the boats in Rockport Harbor and most of the town, too. The first time I saw all those white clapboard houses and the church steeple I thought about how much I owed to Paul Revere for getting me there.

Miss Holbrooke called it picturesque and I knew exactly what she meant without having to look it up. It was like one of those tinted picture postcards: a perfect blue sky and fluffy white clouds, sailboats, and even a few ladies with parasols.

The lodge girls scattered around to pick flowers or sit on the rocks and talk. Rose and Irene climbed halfway down the bluff, which almost gave Miss Holbrooke a heart attack. Filomena went off by herself to draw, but I tiptoed over and peeked at her sketchpad.

She was drawing the pile of rocks in front of her, which seemed like a dull subject. But when I looked again, I saw she had made the same shapes into a woman’s body, lying on her side, completely naked. I’d probably never seen a nude picture before and I must have gasped. Filomena turned around and held it up so I had a better view. “What do you think?”

Before I could answer, Miss Holbrooke came running toward us, yoo-hooing for Filomena to come with her. Two ladies had set up easels to do watercolors of the harbor. “You should meet them; they are painting the most charming little harbor scenes.”

Filomena wrinkled her nose. “Miss Green says ‘charming’ is a trap that women artists should avoid at all costs.”

Miss Holbrooke said, “These ladies are very accomplished, I assure you.”

Filomena stared her in the eye and said, “Miss Edith Green is an instructor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and she is the one who told me to focus all my attention on drawing this week. I’m sure you agree I should take her assignment seriously.”

Miss Holbrooke couldn’t say no to that and walked away with her tail between her legs.

“Did Miss Green really say that?” I asked.

Filomena laughed. “She could have. Edith Green thinks everything rests on drawing. You can see it in the designs on the pottery.”

“I like the way you do the trees,” I said. “It’s just a few lines but they seem alive.”

“That’s exactly right,” Filomena said. “You have a good eye.”

That was a compliment I never forgot—obviously.

Toward the end of the week, Filomena switched tables and joined the Mixed Nuts. Gussie teased her and asked if she’d gotten kicked out of the Italian club for hanging around so much with the Jews and the Irish.

“I just need to talk about something besides weddings,” Filomena said. “They’re getting married this year! All of them.”

Helen said, “Your time will come.”

“Not me,” said Filomena. “I’m never getting married.”

Rose said she was too pretty to be an old maid.

Gussie didn’t like that. “Filomena may want to do other things with her life. For example, I am going to college.”

“And after that, she’s going to law school,” said Helen.

“But don’t you want a family?” Rose asked.

Gussie said, “Helen’s going to have children; I’ll borrow hers.”

Helen blushed and Irene said, “Looks like she already knows who the father’s going to be.”

“Don’t embarrass her,” said Rose. “Besides, she’d tell us if there was someone, wouldn’t you, Helen?”

“My sister can have her pick,” said Gussie. “What about you, Rose? Irene? Any prospects? Addie?”

“Addie’s too young to think about that,” Filomena said.

I was too young but it was impossible not to think about marriage. Mameh talked about Celia’s “prospects” all the time, and at every Saturday Club meeting, there was talk about weddings the girls had been to or weddings they were going to. Even the Ediths, when they heard about an engagement, acted like it was some kind of victory—and they were all for women’s rights and education.

I wasn’t so sure about marriage. I knew my parents were miserable, and from what I heard in the air shaft, other married people said horrible things to each other all the time. On the other hand, who wouldn’t want to be in love and have a man look at me the way Owen Moore looked at Mary Pickford? I used to leave those movies feeling sad that nothing like that would ever happen to me, but I always went back for another happy ending.

In the magazine stories, I could imagine myself as one of the smart, spunky girls chased by men who loved them for their brains and gumption. Those girls were airplane daredevils, or race car drivers, or even doctors, but in the end they gave it up for love and marriage.

When I asked Filomena what she would do if she fell in love, she shrugged. “I know that being a wife would mean giving up art, which is what makes me happy. When I say I don’t want to get married, my sisters tell me I’m being selfish, and maybe I am. Or maybe there’s something wrong with me.”

I said I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her.

“I wish my sisters were more like you, Addie,” she said. “Betty and Celia are lucky to have such a good listener in the family.”

Actually, my sisters and I didn’t talk much. They were so much older than me, for one thing; Celia was so quiet, and as for Betty, I saw her once in a blue moon and only when she was sure Mameh would be out of the house and she could sneak in and visit. Even then, she mostly talked to Celia and Papa.

Like nothing I could actually touch.

I didn’t know my father very well. It wasn’t like today, when fathers change diapers and read books to their children. When I was growing up, men worked all day and when they came home we were supposed to be quiet and leave them alone.

Papa was a good-looking man; he had a long, thin face, with light-blue eyes and brown hair like Celia’s. He was particular about his clothes, that they should be clean and neat. Whenever he saw a Jewish man in the street dressed sloppy, he said, “They’ll think we’re all peasants.”

What I knew about him mostly came from Betty. He grew up in a little shtetl that was hardly even a town, just a place with an inn, a synagogue, and a market once a week where people bought and sold everything. Papa’s family had cows, so they weren’t the poorest, but they didn’t have enough money to send him or his brothers to school. Instead they learned with their father, my grandfather, who’d studied at some big yeshiva as a boy. I remember Papa had a very old prayer book; maybe it was from his family.

When Papa was eighteen or nineteen, there was a cholera epidemic that killed his father and brothers, so he was in charge of his mother and two sisters. He sold the cows so the girls could get married, and then his mother matched him up with Mameh, who was from a poor family but managed to get her a horse for a dowry, which meant Papa could make a living moving and hauling things around.

Betty and Celia were born over there, though they were called Bronia and Sima then. My mother was pregnant with a third baby when someone accused my father of stealing a silver cup from the church. In those days, that was the same as a death sentence for a Jew, so he came to America with the two girls. They were maybe ten and twelve years old but they went to work with him so he could keep an eye on them. When Papa got a letter that said Mameh had had a baby boy, he left them alone at nights and took another job to get the money for her ticket faster.

When Mameh came, she got off the ship alone. Nahum—she had named the baby for Papa’s father—had died on the trip over. They had thrown his body into the sea.

All around them, people were smiling and happy to be in America, but she was sobbing and Papa was tearing his clothes.

Betty and Celia were there, too. What an awful memory that must have been.

Mameh had another boy in America, but he died when he was three days old and I never knew his name—if they even gave him one. After I was born, there were no more babies.

My mother thought coming to America was a terrible mistake and she never let Papa forget it. “We should have stayed where we were,” she said. “Your son wouldn’t have died on that miserable boat. Our daughters would be married and I’d have grandchildren on my lap.”

Usually my father didn’t answer but sometimes he got fed up. “You would have been better off if they’d killed me?” he said. And then he would leave the house and go to his little shul, a few blocks away, where nobody yelled at him.

He was home in the evening, gone in the morning, like a shadow. Like nothing I could actually touch.