Aaron was running with his suitcase in one hand, his coat in the other, and a dopey smile on his face. “It’s Addie, right? Rita didn’t get your last name. I’m Aaron Metsky, her brother.”
I said, “It’s Baum.”
“What is?”
“My name.”
“Baum?” he said.
I laughed, he laughed. Then he asked if he could take me to supper, but only if I was hungry, or maybe I was already busy. Or was someone waiting for me? A fiancé? Or did I think it was too early to eat? Did I know what time it was?
He was adorable. But he kept on talking and talking, so I put out my hand and said, “Nice to meet you.”
His hand was warm and he didn’t let go of mine. We stood there grinning at each other like we’d hit the jackpot. Finally, I said, “Where do you want to eat?”
He asked if I liked Chinese food.
I said I’d give it a try. Did you know there was a time before all Jews loved Chinese food?
It was quite a long walk to the restaurant, but it went by in a flash. I had never had a conversation like that with a man. Not that it was profound or personal; it was just easy. We went from one topic to another, we interrupted each other, and we laughed.
Aaron used to tell people he fell in love with me at first sight, which sounded ridiculous the first hundred times I heard him say it.
When he said, “Here we are,” I thought he was joking. “Here” looked like an empty brick factory. When he led me down a stinky alley, there was one second I wondered if I was doing something stupid.
But I knew I wasn’t. Not with him.
He opened a big metal door and I felt like Alice in Wonderland, but with chopsticks. The room was huge. It must have been a metal shop or some kind of factory. The machines were gone but you could see the wear on the wood floors. It was full of people—mostly Chinese—sitting at long tables on benches, putting food on each other’s plates, and talking loud. Louder than my own family, which is saying something.
Aaron said there weren’t any menus. You pointed to what was on a plate near you or let the waiter choose. But he had been there before and ordered some Chinese dumplings—like kreplach, but much better—and two plates piled with chopped vegetables, meat, and rice.
I couldn’t believe how delicious it all was. Maybe it’s something genetic, the Jewish Chinese food thing.
I asked Aaron if he knew what we were eating. “I don’t know but I’m sure it’s not cat.”
“Cat?”
He said there was a nasty rumor that the Chinese killed stray dogs and cats for meat. “It can’t be true, because I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food and I never wanted to chase mice afterward.”
Aaron was getting more adorable by the minute, and the way he looked at me made me feel like I was floating.
He started walking me back to my boardinghouse but I didn’t want the evening to end, so I said I knew where to get the best coffee in Boston—if he wanted.
Of course he wanted, so we went to Filomena’s favorite café in the North End, which was another long walk. The waiter sat us in a back corner where it was dark and quiet—as if he knew we wanted to be alone.
I asked Aaron if he liked his work. He said yes but also no. They had made a big mistake by writing the law to apply to everyone under the age of eighteen when all the state child labor laws were for fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds and younger.
“But I won’t give up yet. My parents think I should leave Washington, move back to Boston, and go into my brother’s law practice. It would be Metsky and Metsky until Rita passes the bar and then we’ll change it to Metsky, Metsky, and Metsky.”
He smacked himself on the forehead. “If Rita were here she’d tell me to shut up and let you talk.” He took my hand and said, “Tell me something.”
By that time, I was so comfortable with your grandfather that I talked about my sisters. I told him they had been child laborers when they came to America, and that after listening to what the German doctor said about how mental problems could show up years later, I understood Celia in a different way.
Aaron touched my cheek. He said the reason he’d gone to work for the child labor committee was his mother, who had worked in a cotton mill as a little girl. “There’s a famous picture of a barefoot girl standing next to a big loom. Her eyes look old and hollow, the same as my mother’s before she died. It was her lungs. The doctor said it was probably from the cotton dust.”
Aaron was fifteen when he lost his mother. I was sixteen when Celia died.
Oh, Ava, there is so much sadness in this life.