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.