The Boston Girl (7 page)

It was my fault.

It was barely eleven o’clock when I got to Celia’s house but the kitchen was already a disaster. There were pots and dishes on every surface and a hill of unpeeled potatoes on the table, where Celia was standing over some thick and sticky syrup that was dripping onto the floor. Jacob ran toward me, his hands and face smeared with the spill but Celia stared at me as if she wasn’t sure why I was there.

And then she started to sink, as if her knees were letting go in slow motion, until she was sitting on the floor between the table and the stove. That must have been when I realized that the pool on the floor was blood because I screamed, which scared Jacob, who started crying.

Celia’s hands were bleeding from cuts on her fingers and palms, all the way to her wrists. “What happened?” I said. “Does it hurt?”

She didn’t seem to be in pain. She smiled at me and watched me try to wrap her hands with the dishcloths as if it had nothing to do with her.

Meanwhile, I was begging her to tell me what happened. She just shook her head.

I tried to lift her onto the chair, but even though she was nothing but skin and bones, for some reason I couldn’t budge her. I kept saying, “Celia, stand up. Celia, please. Celia, talk to me.”

By then, her eyes were closed and I’m not even sure she heard me.

Finally I propped her up so she was leaning against the stove. I picked up Jacob, who was sobbing, and told Celia I was going to get help.

That’s when she opened her eyes and said, “I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”

I said, “It’s okay. Stay still. I’ll be right back.”

People were standing on the sidewalk to see what was going on with Jacob screaming and when they saw him and me covered with blood, someone hollered, “Murder!”

I tried to tell them about Celia but they were yelling “Call a cop! Get that kid away from her!”

A policeman pushed through and said, “Hand me the boy.”

I told him Jacob wasn’t hurt. “It’s my sister. She cut herself but I can’t carry her. She needs a doctor. Hurry.”

He ran inside and I stood on the stoop with Jacob, who was whimpering and shivering in my arms. I could feel the blood starting to harden between my hands and his shirt.

The cop came flying out with Celia in his arms, her head folded against his chest like a sleeping baby. “Out of my way,” he said, and ran to the saloon across the street. He kicked the door open and yelled, “Riley, I’m taking your beer cart!” He wrapped Celia in a horse blanket and set her down on the seat beside him. When I tried to climb in back, he said, “You get the little boy someplace safe and go fetch the husband.” He sounded calm but I could see his hands were shaking; he wasn’t much older than me.

As he was driving away, I yelled, “Where are you taking her?”

Someone behind me said, “He’ll go to the Mass General on Fruit Street.”

Someone else said, “No. Mount Sinai is closer.”

“I don’t think it matters. Did you see the color of her?”

A woman crossed herself and said, “Poor thing.”

I ran home, handed Jacob to Mameh, said Celia had had an accident and I was going to get Levine.

I was still covered with blood when I walked into his office and before he could ask I said, “Jacob is fine. Celia cut herself.”

“What are you saying? Where is she?”

“Mount Sinai, I think. I’m not sure. A policeman took her.”

He told me to get Myron from school and wait for him at my house. But first, I went for Papa and I swear the lines on his face got deeper when I told him what happened.

When I got back with Myron, Jacob was wrapped in a towel, his hair wet from a bath, and my mother was feeding him carrots. Papa sat across from them with a prayer book in his hands, rocking back and forth.

I stood by the window to wait for Celia. I imagined the cop carrying her through the door but now her eyes would be open. Her hands would be covered with clean white bandages. Mameh would scold her for being so clumsy. Papa would take her face between his hands and kiss her forehead and I would become the sister that Celia deserved.

Celia wouldn’t have let me apologize for being late. She would have said, “An accident can happen anytime.” Nobody could forgive like Celia. She was the only person in my family who ever kissed me.

I closed my eyes and prayed, “Come home now, come home now.”

The afternoon dragged on and on. Jacob fell asleep on my bed. Myron went out to the stoop and no one tried to stop him. When it started to get dark, Papa turned on the light and stood in a corner with his prayer book while Mameh stared at the door, chewing her lips and wringing her hands. I heard the neighbors whispering on the landing, and as much as I wanted to go out there and chase them away, I was afraid to leave the window. I got it into my head that I had to stay there or Celia wouldn’t come home.

The chatter on the other side of the door stopped and Levine walked in, red-eyed and stooped, followed by Betty, who looked scared and lost, still carrying a cake box for Thanksgiving. Then the policeman who had taken Celia to the hospital came in. The front of his uniform was black with blood but his arms were empty.

He took off his hat and walked over to Papa. “Sir, I’m sorry to bring such terrible news. The doctor said your daughter lost too much blood and there was nothing they could do.”

“Sima!” Mameh fell on her knees. “My jewel!” she screamed. “She was like gold, that one. Pure gold.”

“I’m sorry,” said the policeman. “Maybe if I had gotten there sooner . . .”

“It was not your fault,” Papa said. “My daughter said how fast you were to help. I want to thank you.” Levine leaned his forehead against the wall and cried without making a sound. Betty held on to Papa.

I opened the door for the policeman, Michael Culkeen—I’ll never forget his name. He said, “Can I have a minute, miss?”

He led me past the neighbors and we walked down the block until there was no one to hear us. He took off his hat again and sighed. “I feel real bad about this, but I have to ask if you saw what happened with your own eyes. The doc says I have to make a report because of the way she had those cuts across her wrists. He said it would take a while for a person to bleed like that.”

I said it wouldn’t have happened at all if I’d gotten there earlier. I said my sister could sew the wings on a butterfly, but in the kitchen she was always cutting her fingers. I couldn’t stop talking; “She was the sweetest person you’d ever meet. This is all my fault.” I told him he should arrest me.

Officer Culkeen sighed and said, “Don’t you go blaming yourself.” He had kind blue eyes and an Irish lilt that reminded me of Rose. “It was you that gave her a fighting chance.” His next sigh turned into a groan. “I’ve been on the force just a year and I got to think it’s like the priest says: God wants the good ones with him. I shouldn’t have said anything. Your sister was such a little slip of a thing. Put me in mind of a cousin of mine,” he said. “You go back inside now. You’re shaking like a leaf.”

—

Celia was buried in a cemetery in someplace called Woburn—way outside the city. Levine made arrangements for the plot, the coffin, and a hearse. He paid for a car to take the family to the burial, too, but I stayed home with Myron and Jacob.

I couldn’t decide which was worse, watching them put Celia into the ground or not being there to see it. Either way, I was sure there was no punishment I didn’t deserve.

It wouldn’t have happened if I had been there.

That’s what I thought about first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Celia would still be alive if I hadn’t been with that horrible man, if I hadn’t been such a fool.

It was my fault.

All week, neighbors and strangers walked in and out of the apartment. The men were quiet when they came for prayers before work and again in the evening. In between, women walked in and out with food and stayed to drink tea, wash dishes, and talk.

They never ran out of stupid things to say. All of them had a sister or a cousin who lost a child and never got over it. Mrs. Kampinsky had heard of a woman who dropped dead exactly one month after her son was hit by a car.

Mameh repeated the story of Celia’s accident again and again: the plans for a big meal, the knife that slipped, the policeman, the funeral in a terrible ugly place too far away to ever visit. Then she would burst into tears and scream “Ai, ai, ai,” and they would have to grab her hands to keep her from tearing her hair out. They said how sorry they were and then they raised their eyebrows behind her back.
Whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.

On the last day of shiva, the men hung around afterward, eating and drinking, talking about layoffs, the price of coal, the weather—as if it didn’t make any difference that Celia was under the ground.

I hated them.

Betty and Levine took the boys for a walk and Mameh went to lie down on my bed late in the afternoon after the last cup was washed and put away. Papa fell asleep, sitting up on the sofa.

I stood at the window without seeing the color of the sky or the people on the street. Celia was dead and I had no right to think about anything else. I would keep her in my mind forever. I would stop going to Saturday Club and get a second job. I would give my parents every nickel like Celia used to. I would be a better person. I would be a different girl.

Someone knocked on the door.

Papa woke up. “It must be Gilman,” he said. “Addie, go tell him he’ll get his rent next week.”

But it wasn’t the landlord.

Rose held out a little bouquet of violets. “It’s from all the girls at the club,” she said. Her fair skin was chapped from the wind. Gussie wore a checkered scarf wrapped all the way to her nose. Helen had a new red hat. Irene took my hand and wouldn’t let go. Filomena kissed me on both cheeks.

I felt like I was seeing them for the first time and I couldn’t believe how beautiful they were.

“Get your coat,” Filomena said. “We’re taking you out for some fresh air.”

| 
1917–18
 |

It was like waking up from a bad dream.

If it hadn’t been for Filomena I don’t think I would have gone out of the house after work or on weekends all that winter. She dragged me to Saturday Club a few times, but I really wasn’t ready to be in a room full of happy girls, so she took me to Sunday movie matinees instead. I only wanted to see sad pictures, which meant we saw a lot of people cough themselves to death; Filomena always picked a comedy. “Life is hard enough,” she said.

She took me to the art museum, too. It was free admission in those days. I had never been, but Filomena knew where everything was. She knew something interesting about a lot of the paintings, and when no one was around, she ran her fingers over the sculptures. She said it let her see them better.

When it got to be spring, she said we should pick a week to go to Rockport Lodge. I told her I wasn’t going.

“If it’s money, I’ll help,” she said.

When I said it wasn’t the money, she said, “Is it Celia?”

The sound of her name made me flinch. I hadn’t heard it in months. I think my parents were always bickering about stupid things—about nothing, really—because they were afraid of saying it. Levine and I talked only about work.

“Celia would want you to go with me,” Filomena said.

Hearing her name wasn’t any easier the second time and I snapped at her. “You don’t know what Celia would want. Even I don’t know. I never asked her how she was feeling or what her day was like. I treated her like she was . . . a chair.”

She knew I felt responsible for Celia’s death and I’m almost positive that she had figured out that I was late getting to her house that day. She might have suspected that I’d been with a man, because when she asked me where I’d been the two Saturdays that I had missed club meetings, I fumbled and muttered something and probably didn’t look her in the eye. Maybe she even guessed it was Harold.

Filomena touched my hand and said, “You know that she loved you and she wanted you to be happy, right? No matter what you think you did.”

I couldn’t argue with that so I didn’t answer.

“Addie, if you don’t go, then I’m not going, and I’ll be heartbroken. You wouldn’t want that, would you?” Italians are just as good as Jews when it comes to guilt.

Eventually I gave in and Miss Chevalier put us down for July.

Levine said of course I could have a week off and for the first time since Celia’s shiva, he came to the apartment and told Mameh and Papa that because I was such a good worker he was sending me on a vacation. Whatever else he was, my brother-in-law was a mensch.

I couldn’t be one hundred percent happy about going to Rockport Lodge because of its connection to Harold Weeks and what happened because of him. But it would be good to get away from the disappointment on my parents’ faces whenever the door opened and it was me who walked in and not Celia.

We took the train this time—cheaper than the boat. And the minute I stepped onto the Rockport station platform, smelled the air, and felt the sun on my face, it was like waking up from a bad dream.

We got to the lodge, and I loved how everything looked the same: the blue plates, the dust on the parlor chairs, the white curtains on all the windows. Mrs. Morse was just as wide as I remembered and there was still butter on the table for every meal.

Filomena and I had a room to ourselves again, which was wonderful. When we were putting our things away—this time I had extra clothes and even a valise—she said, “I want to ask you for a favor.”

I said, “I’ll think about it,” as if I wouldn’t have jumped off a cliff if she asked me.

Miss Green had given her a letter of introduction to an artist who had a summer place nearby. “I was thinking of going tomorrow when the others are at church. She lives on Old Garden Road.”

That was the street with all the mansions. I said, “Try and stop me.”

We walked up and down the block looking for the number on the envelope until Filomena lost her nerve. “Maybe it’s the wrong address,” she said. “It’s probably too early to call, and anyway this woman probably went to some fancy New York art school and thinks I’m just someone who paints flowers on china plates like an old lady with no talent and nothing better to do.”

But I found the house. It was hard to see from the road because you had to climb down a set of steep granite steps on the bluff facing the water. It was nothing like the fancy castles on the other side of the street. It was small and covered with unpainted gray wood shingles, which you only saw on fishing shacks in those days. The door was painted bright red—Filomena called it Chinese red—and it was wide open.

We could see inside all the way through to a wall made of windows, with a glass door and a little balcony that looked like it was floating over the water. The walls were bright yellow and there were wooden beams on the ceiling that a not-too-tall man could reach up and touch. Very
artistique
.

Filomena knocked a few times and when nobody answered, she said, “Let’s go.” But I was dying to see what kind of person lived in a place like that, so I hollered, “Anybody home?” A woman answered right back, “Come in, come in, come in,” like she was singing a song.

I almost laughed when I saw her, because she was practically a cartoon of a flapper. Her eyes were smudged with kohl and her hair was short and wet, which made her look like a seal. Her toenails were painted a weird shade of orange and she was wearing a man’s sleeveless undershirt and a pair of trousers rolled up over her knees. I thought she might be about Filomena’s age.

“Sorry I’m such a mess,” she said. “But who are you?”

I said I was Addie Baum and this was Filomena Gallinelli.

“Filomena?” she said. “What a spectacular name. I’m Leslie Parker but I’m trying to get people to call me Lulu.”

Filomena handed her the letter. “You met my teacher, Edith Green, in New York last summer and made her promise that I’d call on you when I was in Rockport.”

Leslie wrinkled her nose. “Edith Green? Can’t place her.”

“You were talking about glazes.”

She remembered: “Oh, the lady
potter
! But look at us standing around like a bunch of horses. Sit down, sit down.” She waved us toward the couch and stared at us with smudgy raccoon eyes and asked me if I was a potter, too.

Filomena said no, that I was staying at the lodge with her.

“Did you bring her along for protection in case I was some kind of crank? And I suppose I am. But why don’t you tell me all about yourselves: your work, your love life.”

I had never seen Filomena act so stiff or talk so formally. “I work with Miss Green in the Salem Street Pottery. Miss Green is an instructor at the Museum of Fine Arts school and a published illustrator of books for children.”

“I remember her perfectly,” Leslie cried. “She works in the style of William Morris, n’est-ce pas? Arts and Crafts. Very sweet, but I’m really crazy about African ceramics. The masks, and those figurines: shocking, don’t you think?”

I could almost see smoke coming out of Filomena’s ears—not that Leslie noticed. She was digging through a pile of magazines and papers on the coffee table. “Thank God,” she said, holding up a pack of cigarettes. “Addie, dear, do you see my lighter anywhere?”

It was still unusual for women to smoke in those days, at least for any of the women I knew, so I asked if her family minded about the cigarettes.

Leslie answered as if being an orphan was a little detail, like losing her keys. “My parents died when I was a baby. My uncle has taken care of me ever since; wonderful man and devoted to me. He’ll be back next week.

“But it’s so perfect that you’re here now. Uncle Martin bought a potting wheel and a kiln a few months ago. He lost interest after ten minutes, as usual, but the whole kit and caboodle is sitting out back, and I hope you don’t mind, Filomena, dear, but would you give the studio a once-over? A friend is coming up this afternoon. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Robert Morelli? He works mostly in bronze, but he mucks around with clay, too.”

Filomena was on her feet. “I’d be glad to.”

“It’s out the side door through the kitchen, to the left,” Leslie said. “Do you want me to show you the way?”

“We’ll find it,” said Filomena. “Come on, Addie.”

When we got outside I said, “What a character.”

Filomena was furious. “She’s horrible. Did you hear how she talked about Miss Green? Who ever heard of Leslie Parker? And what a chatterbox. I thought she’d never shut up.”

The “studio” was nothing but a shed, a ten-foot-square wooden box so stuffy and dusty that we both sneezed when Filomena opened the door. She peeked into barrels of clay and looked over the tools and dried sponges. “Most of these have never been used.”

When she took the cover off the potter’s wheel, she gasped. “It’s brand-new.” She pushed the stone disk and it started spinning. “Miss Green hires men to work the wheels and the kiln; I’ve never even touched one of these before.”

Leslie poked her face through the door and asked, “What’s the verdict?”

Filomena said, “I’d kill for the chance to work here.”

“Exactly whom would you kill?” Leslie said. “Don’t answer that. Do you think the place is up to snuff?”

“It seems fine, but you should make sure the lids on those barrels are tight; it would be a shame for all that clay to go to waste.”

Leslie thanked Filomena and told her to use the place all she wanted. “Don’t be a stranger.”

When we were walking back to the lodge, I said, “Leslie really rubbed you the wrong way, didn’t she?”

“Don’t tell me that you liked her?”

I waved an imaginary cigarette and tried to imitate her voice. “You have to admit she was entertaining.”

“She is so full of herself. And she has that whole house to herself while my sister is raising five kids in two rooms. Not to mention all that equipment going to waste. It’s not fair!”

So I told her to go and use the studio.
“Don’t be a stranger.”

“I can’t think of anyone stranger than her,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t believe a single word she said.”

—

The next day was rainy and cool, which meant we were stuck inside. Filomena said, “I hope they won’t make us play charades all day.” She hated games.

At breakfast, Miss Case came to our table and handed Filomena a thick envelope. “This just arrived,” she said quietly. “I hope it’s not bad news.” We ran upstairs to open it in private, but the only thing inside was a pencil sketch of a bird.

“What is that supposed to be?” I asked.

“It’s a sketch of something I made yesterday when I was fooling around with a piece of clay. I meant to put it back in the barrel.”

“Did Leslie do it?”

Filomena pointed at the initials in the corner:
R.M.

“Let’s go meet him,” I said. “We’re not going to do much in this weather and I promise to protect you from Leslie.”

The front door was closed but it opened the second I knocked, as if someone had been waiting for us.

He needed a shave, there was powdery white dust all over his clothes, and his hair was starting to go gray. But he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in person.

He shook Filomena’s hand and said, “You must be Filomena, daughter of light, virgin martyr, protector of all innocents.” He smiled a movie-star smile. “Don’t look so surprised. It was my grandmother’s name.”

He took my hand next. “You must be Addie. Leslie tells me you’re very deep, which means she didn’t let you get a word in edgewise so she has no idea who you are.”

He introduced himself as Bob Morelli and said Leslie had gone to town for burnt sienna and bread and would be back soon. “But come to the shed in the meantime; I want to show you something.”

The place had been aired out and every inch dusted and scrubbed. The tools were clean and laid out in a straight line, and a little sculpture of a bird—the one from the drawing—was on the window ledge, sitting on a nest made of fine clay threads.

Filomena picked it up. “No eggs?”

“You didn’t make a papa bird,” he said. “She’s waiting for him.”

She stared at him for a moment and shrugged.

“What’s that?” she asked and pointed to the wet burlap bag sitting on the pottery wheel. Morelli lifted it and said, “Just don’t tell me a six-year-old could have made it.”

That’s exactly what I would have said. It was a bowl, I guess, smooth and round at the bottom but square and off-kilter on top.

He ran his thumb around the edge. “It’s supposed to look rustic. The Japanese don’t always insist on symmetry. Sometimes they fire things so they look scorched.”

Filomena seemed offended. “I am not familiar with Japanese art.”

“Yes you are! Some of Edith Green’s lines are very
japonais
. And they share a kind of serenity, I think.”

She said, “I think what we do is beautiful.”

“Of course it is,” he said. “Leslie doesn’t know her ass from her elbow when it comes to ceramics. She might turn out to be a decent painter someday—not great, but good. The kid’s only twenty, after all. How old are you, if I may ask?”

“You’re not supposed to ask,” she said and then she told him she was “going to be twenty-one.”

“
Miss
Gallinelli. Unwed, twenty years old, and traipsing around on your own, hmmm,” he said. “That means your parents are dead and you don’t have any brothers.”

Filomena laughed. “I guess you really are Italian.”

He said, “What can I say to make you like me?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “How old are you?”

“I’m going to be thirty-five. An old man.”

“Still unmarried?”

“My wife and I no longer live together.”

Filomena closed her hand around the little clay bird and crushed it.

He said, “Ouch.”

I wasn’t sure what was going on and tried to think of something to say. Luckily, Leslie barged in with a bunch of overstuffed string bags. “The gang’s all here,” she said. “Bob told me I was all wet about your pottery, Filomena. How did he put it? ‘Will withstand the test of time.’ Unlike my pitiful efforts—he didn’t come right out and say that, but I know what he thinks.”