He took off up the street with his shoulders bunched up around his ears and I really did have to run to catch up. Eventually he slowed down and put his arm around me. “I never stopped thinking about you, Addie,” he said, and when he leaned down to kiss me, I kissed him right back.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
I was his girl! He pulled me into a doorway and we kissed some more.
—
I didn’t have a telephone number to give him, so Harold and I decided to meet in front of the State House the next Saturday night.
Keeping that secret made me feel like I was living inside a novel. The week seemed like it would never end. I kept bumping into things at work and at home I was so touchy, Mameh said she was going to give me an enema, which was her cure for everything.
For our second date, Harold took me to a Charlie Chaplin picture. I loved Chaplin, but Harold seemed bored and after a few minutes he kissed me and then, well, he got fresh and I told him to stop it.
When we left the movie he asked if I was afraid of him.
I tried to make a joke out of it. “Should I be?”
He chucked me under the chin. “What do you think?”
It was still early, so we walked along Washington Street with all the other couples that were strolling along arm in arm. Harold said that on one of his walks around the city he had found a wood carving that looked exactly like the ships his family built. “It’s on the door of a bank, so nobody notices it,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite things in Boston. How about if I show it to my favorite Boston girl?”
We left the crowds and walked to a street where all the big banks and lawyers’ offices were. In the daytime it was crowded and noisy, but at night it was like a cemetery and I got a little nervous.
Harold knew a lot about the decorations on the sides of the buildings—what they stood for and when they were made. Then he stopped. “Here we are.”
The door he wanted to show me was at the end of a long entryway, where it was so dark I couldn’t see the carving at all. Harold took my hand and ran it over the outlines of the boats and the water. And of course, we started kissing.
Like I said, Harold was a really good kisser, and by then I was really getting the hang of it, so I closed my eyes and stopped thinking. But then he started getting rough. He bit my ear and pawed at my chest, and when I tried to push him away he pinned me against the wall. The next thing I knew, he had his leg between mine and was pumping against me hard, with his mouth clamped over mine so I couldn’t tell him to stop. I could hardly breathe.
It didn’t last long. When he pulled away he kissed my cheeks and my forehead, sweet as could be. Then he sort of growled, “Now I bet you’d like me to say that I love you.”
Not very nice, is it? Not the kind of thing you tell your granddaughter. I don’t think I ever told anyone about that particular experience. Who was I going to tell? Filomena would say not to see him again and I didn’t want to hear that. I thought I was in love.
—
I must have mentioned something about where I worked because that’s where Harold sent the letter. It started “Darling,” and was full of compliments. I was wonderful, I was smart, pretty, a good sport, and modern. He said he’d never met anyone like me—a real city girl but not hard. There was even a little pressed flower in the envelope.
He said he was going to Washington, D.C., for a few days, but I should pick a time and place for our next date and he would be there “or die trying.” I thought that was very gallant.
I wrote back for him to meet me at nine o’clock in the morning on the State House steps on the Thursday that was Thanksgiving. I had the day off to help Celia, but I could still get to her house in plenty of time. And since it would be broad daylight, I wouldn’t have to worry about him getting fresh.
I went a few minutes early but Harold was already there, waiting for me with a rose. It was the first time I’d ever seen him in the daytime and I was swept off my feet all over again. The brass buttons on his coat were gleaming and the sun made his black hair shine. He had grown a little moustache, which made him look dashing and older. “You look so handsome,” I said.
He laughed. “For that, you’re getting breakfast at the Parker House.”
I knew all about the Parker House. I asked if we could get some of their rolls.
He said I was adorable. “I don’t think they let you out unless you eat one of those things.”
There were Oriental rugs and a big chandelier in the lobby, which was as quiet as a library, but the restaurant was completely different—loud, and cloudy with cigar smoke from tables full of men wearing good suits. I was the only woman in the room except for a white-haired lady who was drinking tea and reading a newspaper.
A boy in a white jacket brought us coffee and a basket of those famous rolls, which were beautiful and warm.
Harold told me about all the important people he had met in Washington and how pretty the monuments were. “You have to see it sometime.”
When he finished his bacon and eggs, Harold put his hand on the inside of my knee and said, “Look at you—taking everything in with those big green eyes of yours. It’s just like the night I met you, I thought to myself, now, here’s a girl who’s on the lookout. You were free as a bird, Addie. The new woman.”
I tried to move my chair back and said, “How could you know all that about me from just a few dances?”