The Boston Girl(15)

I’m not sure how much you want to know about your grandmother’s love life. Not that I had so many boyfriends.

My first kiss was that summer in Rockport when I was sixteen. There was a dance, and since there was a coast guard training camp in town, there were always more men than women, so all the Rockport Lodge girls knew they’d be dancing.

I had never been to a dance so Rose taught me the fox-trot and the waltz. She said I was a natural. “If anyone asks you to do anything fancy, just say you’re out of breath and would he like to sit this one out with you.”

Of all the girls, I really did not have anything to wear, but Filomena tucked and basted one of Helen’s dresses so it looked like it had been made for me. Irene pomaded my hair and piled it on top of my head and Gussie pinched my cheeks for color.

When they were finished, I went to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. It was like one of those before-and-after pictures. When I looked in that mirror on the first day I was there, I saw a pale, scared girl with circles under her eyes. But here was a grown-up woman with a daisy behind her ear, smiling to beat the band.

My brown hair was lighter from the sun and with it pulled back and all fancied up, I could see that Celia wasn’t the only Baum girl with an oval face and wide eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t be a wallflower after all.

The dance was in an empty barn that smelled of bleach and horses. There was a Victrola in the corner playing a waltz, but the town girls were all bunched up in one corner, whispering and staring at the coast guard cadets in their sharp white uniforms, who were leaning against the opposite wall, smoking cigarettes.

“Elegant, ain’t it?” Irene said.

When we walked in, the cadets straightened up, and right away Helen, Irene, and Filomena were out on the dance floor. Rose took me to the refreshment table, where a very tall cadet was standing near the punch bowl. “Allow me, ladies,” he said and filled us each a cup.

He was so tall that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. His hair was as black as Filomena’s but very fine and parted on the side. His eyes were dark blue—almost purple—with the kind of long eyelashes girls dream about. He looked me over and said, “Green suits you.”

I was so nervous I almost said, “You, too.”

He asked if I liked to dance.

Rose said, ‘‘Addie can really cut a rug. What about you?”

“I’m not bad, if I say so myself. My mother taught me. By the way, I am Harold George Weeks from Bath, Maine.”

Rose shook his hand. “I’m Rose Reardon and this is Addie Baum. We’re from Boston.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Reardon. First time in Rockport, Miss Baum?”

Just then the record changed and he grabbed my hand. “The turkey trot is a snap. Four steps in a box and then you hop.”

Before I knew what was happening, we were on the dance floor and he had his hand on my back. He leaned down and whispered, “Don’t think,” and the next second, I was hopping and spinning around the room and having the time of my life. We were practically flying in circles but somehow I wasn’t getting dizzy.

I was completely out of breath when the song ended but Harold didn’t let go when a fox-trot started playing. I was counting the steps in my head, but I kept losing track and stumbling. Harold pulled me closer to him—he smelled like lemons and leather—and said, “You’re thinking. Just follow me and you’ll be fine.” He really knew what he was doing, because the way he steered me around the floor made me look good.

When that song ended, he bowed and strutted over to the other cadets, who shook his hand and slapped him on the back. My friends ran over to me and Gussie said, “I thought you didn’t know how to dance.” Helen asked what his name was. Irene said he was the best-looking man in the room.

But Filomena made a face. “He knows it, too.”

“How can you say that?” I said. “You didn’t even talk to him.”

“I know a wolf when I see one.”

Rose pinched Filomena’s cheek. “Oh, she’s just jealous that he asked you instead of her.”

I danced with a few other cadets, but they were flat-footed and clumsy compared to Harold Weeks. I kept hoping he’d come back but he was dancing with one of the local girls who knew how to tango and wore rolled stockings and a lot of rouge.

I’d given up on dancing with him again when he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Can you spare a waltz?”

I didn’t want to sound like I’d been dying for him to ask, so I said, “I could ask you the same question.”

“Jealous, eh?”

I just smiled and tried to flirt like the other girls. I tilted my head to one side and opened my eyes really wide. Someone had told me that men like it when you let them talk about themselves, so I asked him why he joined the coast guard.

“I was supposed to take over from my father at the ironworks, but I hated the idea of building ships and never going to sea.”

“What did he say when you enlisted?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell him.”

“You mean you ran away?” I was thrilled to think we had so much in common.

He said, “I told my mother so she wouldn’t worry. I’m a lot like her and she has a mind of her own. You should have seen the looks in church when she walked in with her hair chopped off, like Irene Castle.”