The Boston Girl

  But she didn’t call to tell me about an idea she just had or to ask if I wanted to have lunch with her tomorrow. She had a message from Katherine Walters, who wanted me to go to her apartment after work the next day. Before she hung up Gussie said, “And afterward, you are going to tell me everything she says.”

  I was praying that Katherine had a letter from Aaron and when she opened the door with an envelope in her hand, I did a little dance. “You’ll notice I didn’t open it,” she said, “but I was tempted.”

  Aaron was on his way home. He had to stop in Washington to pack but he would be in Boston as soon as possible. “Two weeks tops.” The letter was postmarked almost a week earlier, which meant he could be home any moment. It also meant he left before he got my wire about being fired.

  I let Katherine read the letter. She said she couldn’t wait to meet him and she had some other news for me. “I didn’t want you hearing it from anyone but me.”

  Cornish had caught her in the mailroom with Aaron’s letter to Miss Cavendish. “When he told me to hand it over, I stuffed it down the front of my dress, wished him a lovely day, and quit.”

  I was horrified. “I made you lose your job?”

  Katherine said I had nothing to do with it. “It was just a matter of time before he fired me and I was more than ready to go.” She said that helping me with the child labor story had made it hard for her to keep writing about hats and hairdos.

  “Especially with everything going on these days, I need to do something important. The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee needs a person who doesn’t sound like a maniac to talk to the newspapers. Someone like me.”

  Even though Katherine kept saying she was glad to leave the Transcript, I felt responsible and working for the Sacco-Vanzetti group could be dangerous. They had just lost an appeal for a new trial and there had been a bombing. Some of the hotheads were talking like bombs were a good thing.

  I did a lot of worrying after that. How was Katherine going to manage? What if the child labor people roped Aaron into staying in Washington again? What if Aaron was hit by a car?

  I was sitting in my room driving myself crazy when Betty came downstairs and said there was another telephone call for me. “If this keeps up, you’re going to have to start paying me to be your secretary.”

  But when I got there, the phone was on the hook.

  Betty yelled, “Herman, I’m back.”

  He yelled back, “I’m coming.” But it was Aaron who walked in.

  First I was speechless. Then I said, “Why are you here?”

  He laughed, “Why do you think?” I started crying and we held each other until I pulled away and looked at him. “It really is you.”

  Then he got all teary-eyed and I laughed.

  Levine and Betty and the boys watched our big reunion and Eddy said, “Is Auntie Addie sad or happy?”

  Betty said, “She’s very happy. This is Auntie Addie’s fella.”

  Aaron put his arm around my shoulder and made it official. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to be her husband.”

  Betty shrieked and grabbed me. Levine shook Aaron’s hand and poured the last drops out of a secret bottle of whiskey. Prohibition wasn’t over yet. He lifted his glass: “Mazel tov and may you be as happy together as me and my bride.”

  What’s his name?

  Betty thought the whole thing with Aaron was so romantic, she wasn’t even mad that I hadn’t told her sooner, and she decided a Friday night supper at her place was the best place to introduce him to our parents. She told Mameh that Levine was bringing a young man, the brother of someone he knew from business. “A lawyer,” Betty said. “Herman thinks he’s a catch.”

  Just as those words were coming out of her mouth, Eddy walked into the kitchen and said, “Are you talking about Uncle Aaron? He promised to play stickball next time he’s here.” If Betty had been the kind of mother who smacked her kids, he would have gotten it, but she changed the subject and just told him to go outside.

  My mother was not going to ignore the fact that we had been sneaking around behind her back. So Aaron started with one strike against him.

  It wasn’t so easy with Papa either, not after he heard that ­Aaron’s family belonged to Temple Israel. “That’s a church, not a shul. I wouldn’t step a foot in the place.”

  “You already did,” I said. “It’s where Betty got married.”

  “Once was enough.”

  Jake was the one who softened Papa up a little. My father was tutoring him for his bar mitzvah, which was probably the first time the two of them spent more than a minute together. Papa said Jake was smart and a serious student and Jake started calling him Rav Baum. So when Jake said Aaron was a good guy, it counted for something.

  I wasn’t looking forward to that dinner. I was going to marry Aaron no matter what my parents said. I didn’t want them to hate him, but I was probably more worried what he would think of them. You never marry just one person; you get the whole family as part of the deal.

  As soon as Aaron arrived, Betty made us go right to the table—no chitchat. She lit candles and Papa made kiddush with one eye on Aaron to see if he knew when to join in; he did. After we passed around the challah, and they schmoozed a little, he told Aaron that he spoke a good Yiddish.

  But Mameh looked at him like he was a sick cow someone was trying to trick her into buying. She shook her head when she saw him pick up his spoon with his left hand and she winced when he unfolded his napkin and put it on his lap. To her, left-handed people were dishonest or unlucky or both, and doing anything but wiping your mouth with a napkin was putting on airs.

  She even smirked at his bow tie, which he had bought to make a good impression.

  Betty did her best to build him up. “Papa, did you know that Aaron’s first cousin is a big doctor at Beth Israel Hospital?”

  Levine said, “And his brother is a very successful attorney.”

  Mameh pretended she hadn’t heard any of that and asked Betty, “Vas iz zaneh nahmin? What’s his name? Where does he work?” As if Aaron hadn’t been talking in Yiddish to Papa since he got there.

  Levine said, “Michael Metsky is one of the biggest real estate lawyers in town. Very successful. We’ve had dealings with him.”

  Mameh shrugged. “That’s the brother.”

  Aaron laughed but I wanted to scream. Wasn’t her whole purpose in life to get me married to someone exactly like him?

  I went to the kitchen to make coffee and calm down. When I got back, Aaron was on the floor and playing tiddlywinks with the boys.

  Betty said, “Look how good he is with children. He’ll be a wonderful father.”

  To no one in particular my mother said, “They all think I’m stupid.”

  From as long as I could remember, Mameh talked to herself under her breath. She muttered spells to ward off the evil eye and kvetched about how Betty never made the tea hot enough. But her hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be, so she didn’t whisper anymore and that time you could have heard her from the other room.

  “He didn’t eat a thing. What’s the matter with him? Her meat was a little dry, but nobody makes better carrots than me. When you visit someone, you eat.”

  Betty tried to shush her, but Mameh didn’t notice. “She turns up her nose at a man who owns a store? This one doesn’t even have a job.”

  Eddy said, “Bubbie, why are you talking to the saltshaker?”

  That seemed to wake her up. She said. “Come eat your compote.”

  Aaron said, “Mrs. Baum, my father owns a hardware store and I worked there when I was growing up. But Pop wanted us to go to college. I think he was hoping for doctors or maybe pharmacists, but he says he’s proud of his lawyers anyway.”

  Betty said, “Aaron’s sister is going to law school, too.”

  “A lawyer is not a job for a woman,” Mameh snap
ped. Then she pointed at Aaron and said, “Young man, eat the fruit at least.”

  I walked Aaron outside and made excuses for the meat—it really was dry—and for my mother. But he thought it all went well.

  “Your father was nice to me. Betty and your brother-in-law are in our corner and their boys are terrific. Eight out of nine ain’t bad. And maybe if I clean my plate next time, your mother will come around, too.”

  Aaron never gave up on people. Sometimes it drove me crazy, but it’s a good way to live.

  —

  The next Saturday, we all were invited to Aaron’s family for supper. Betty promised that Mameh would behave. “She was probably nervous about meeting him, and anyway, everyone is more polite in someone else’s house.”

  We squeezed into Levine’s car to get to Brookline. You remember that house, don’t you? Around the corner from where JFK was born?

  The front yard at the Metskys’ was like nothing else on the street. There was no grass, just flower beds and roses climbing up the porch like the ones at Rockport Lodge.

  The flowers were Mildred Metsky’s doing. She was Aaron’s stepmother and the opposite of evil stepmothers in the fairy tales. Murray Metsky married her five years after Aaron’s mother died, and the three kids were as devoted to “Mom” as she was to them.

  She opened the door and hugged us like we were long-lost cousins. The Metskys were all big huggers: Aaron, his father, and his sister, Rita. Even his brother, Michael, who was kind of stiff, put his arms around each of us. My mother looked like she was being licked by cats, and she hated cats.

  When we sat down to eat dinner, which they didn’t call supper, Mameh asked the name of the kosher butcher where Mildred Metsky had bought the meat. She’d never heard of the place and leaned over to Papa and whispered in a voice that everyone could hear, “It smells funny, no?” Aaron said, “That’s rosemary, Mrs. Baum. Mom grows all kinds of herbs in the backyard.”

  Mameh said, “So, herbs and flowers. Me, I grow cabbages and potatoes. Things you can eat.”

  Thank God, Mildred didn’t understand a lot of Yiddish.

  Rita and Mildred gushed over the boys, which was all Betty ever wanted to hear. Levine and Michael figured out they knew a lot of the same people. Murray and my father went outside and smoked cigars. Aaron and I held hands under the table.

  When Mildred put out coffee and cake, Murray stood up and made a speech about how happy they were that Aaron had found me. “When he went off to Washington, I was afraid he’d find a girl from there and never come back. When he went to Minnesota, I worried he’d meet a girl there and she wouldn’t want to leave her family.”

  He said they liked me not only because I was a Boston girl but also because Aaron was so happy and I was so lovely and my father was a chacham, a scholar, and the boys were extraordinary. Murray shook his finger at me and gave me one of those “naughty-naughty” looks. “These boys only need some cousins to play with.”

  I swore I would never embarrass my own children like that. And I never did—at least not in public.

  When it was time to go, the Metskys started again with the hugging, which took a while, because everyone had to hug everyone else. It was as if they thought we might crash into an iceberg and disappear on the way back to Roxbury.

  My mother hated all the “grabbing.” When we were back in the car she said, “It feels like they’re trying to pick my pocket.” It was strange for me, too, but I got used to it.

  Remember when I used to chase you and your sister around the house to get my daily minimum requirement of hugs? I said if I didn’t get one hundred hugs I would float up into the sky like Mary Poppins and you would never see me again. We stopped playing that game when you started school, but we never stopped hugging.

  Look at me, I’m becoming a Metsky!

  I wanted a wedding like Betty’s: small, quick, and simple, but that wasn’t in the cards. For one thing, there was no rabbi’s office big enough for all of Aaron’s relatives, so “small” was out. Maybe we could keep it simple, but it wasn’t going to happen quickly because Jake’s bar mitzvah was coming up in October and Betty was already up to her eyeballs getting ready for that.

  Bar mitzvahs weren’t the productions they are today with caterers and hotels and flowers, but they were still a big deal and Betty wanted it perfect. She tried out I don’t know how many recipes for strudel and cookies, painted the dining room, and made new curtains for the living room. Everyone got new clothes and Levine took Jake downtown to buy him his first grown-up suit, with long pants and a vest. Like I said: a big deal.

  On the morning of the bar mitzvah, my mother got up on the wrong side of the bed. Usually she was the first one up, drinking her tea, washing her cup, and putting it away before my father and I even got to the kitchen. But on that day of all days she didn’t even have her shoes on when it was time to go. When I asked if she was feeling all right, she answered like I had insulted her. “When am I ever sick?”

  By the time we got to the synagogue, which was only three blocks away, she was practically shuffling and holding on to my arm. She closed her eyes when we sat down in the synagogue and I was sure she was asleep but when my father was called up to sing the blessings, she sat straight. And when Jake chanted his portion from the Torah, she was smiling.

  “Wasn’t he wonderful?” I whispered.

  “Not bad,” she said.

  Jake still looked like a chubby little boy but he did a wonderful job. He didn’t stumble or slow down and he chanted everything loud and clear. I was so proud of him I had tears in my eyes, but Betty just about collapsed from the naches. You’ll understand naches when you have children: there’s nothing like the feeling you have when your child stands in front of a crowd and shines. It was like that when your mother made the speech at her high school graduation, and how I felt at your bat mitzvah, and your sister’s.

  After the service, everyone went downstairs for sponge cake and wine. My mother was not the old lady I had helped down the street anymore. She moved fast enough to avoid most of the Metsky hugs and when someone asked if she was proud of her grandson, she said, “Of course. What do you think?” For once she didn’t mention that Jake wasn’t really “her” grandson.

  —

  Aaron and I took our time getting to the party at Betty’s house. It was one of those perfect fall days when the air is cool enough to wake you up but the sun is also kissing your face. Aaron kicked around in the leaves and I made a bouquet out of red and gold ones; we were like a couple of kids. It felt wonderful to be alone and we had a lot to talk about.

  Someone at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had heard Aaron had moved to Boston and offered him a job but his brother was trying to talk him into staying at his firm. Michael said if he stayed put, we could buy our own house in a year or two.

  Aaron had been working in Michael’s office since he got back to Boston, but he hated it. Writing contracts and arguing with bankers made him grumpy and grouchy like I’d never seen him.

  But after one meeting with the children’s society committee, he was glowing. “These are the same people who started the National Child Welfare Committee,” he said. They were his heroes and they wanted to hire him to help the governor’s office make better laws to help children and families. It was a dream job and I knew that the only reason he didn’t say yes on the spot was because they couldn’t pay him the kind of money he was making in private practice. But I said what good is a house if I have to live in it with a crab?

  It wasn’t hard to talk him into doing what he wanted. Besides, I was working, too.

  Gussie, God bless her, had found me a full-time job at Simmons. The minute she heard that the vice president’s secretary was leaving, she called him and said not to bother looking for a replacement. Betty joked that I got my wish. I was finally going to college. But it wasn’t a joke, because I
could take classes after work for free.

  Once we decided that Aaron was going to take the job he wanted, he couldn’t wait to get back and tell the families that we were setting a date for our wedding. It couldn’t be soon enough for me; every time I walked into my parents’ house, I felt like I was putting on a corset.

  Betty’s place was mobbed. She had invited the neighbors, Jake’s friends, and my father’s synagogue friends, everyone from Levine’s office, and all of Aaron’s family. His brother had surprised everyone by bringing Lois Rosensweig, the woman he’d been seeing for five years. Rita said he’d never brought her to a family event before. “That’s Michael for you. Now that Aaron’s got a fiancée, I bet he pops the question any day.”

  Levine was running around with a new camera asking people to say “cheese” and driving everyone crazy. But as usual, the pest with the camera turned out to be a hero. He had a terrible time getting my parents to cooperate, but he didn’t leave them alone until he got some good shots of them. That picture you put on the cover of your family history paper in seventh grade? That was from Jake’s bar mitzvah.

  When I finally found Betty, she winked and asked if we’d gotten lost.

  I winked back and said, “What are you doing December nineteenth?”

  “Why?” she said. “Am I going to a wedding?” All I had to do was smile and she threw her arms around me and gave Aaron a kiss and a hug. “Look at me,” she said, “I’m becoming a Metsky!”

  Betty said she had to round up the boys before the announcement and we had to find Mameh, too.

  Betty said she’d never seen Mameh in a better mood. She had been friendly and eaten everything without any complaints until Betty put out store-bought cherry preserves for tea. “Then she made that sourpuss face and said she had to show everyone how much better homemade was. I told Herman to go downstairs and get it but she said he didn’t know where to look. Maybe she got lost, like you two.”