The Boston Girl(25)

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.”

A loaf of bread fell on the floor and Leslie spilled a bag of peaches as she went to pick them up. “I got us some lunch,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up. I’ll just be opening some cans, as usual.”

“I’ll help,” Filomena said, but Morelli put his hand on her elbow. “Wouldn’t you like a try at the wheel?”

“Come on, Addie,” Leslie said. “Let’s let them play in the mud. We’ll make our own fun.”

And I did have fun. Right off, Leslie talked me into trying on a pair of pants, which is all she seemed to own. It turned out to be much more than playing dress-up. When I put them on, my whole body felt different and I wanted to see what it could do. I took giant steps around the room and sat cross-legged and rolled around on the floor. I ended up in front of a mirror.

I never wanted to take them off, and it wasn’t just the physical feeling. I told Leslie, “It makes me want to try riding a bicycle and ice skating and all kinds of things.”

She asked what other kind of things. And do you know what popped out of my mouth? “I’d go to college.”

She asked if I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse or something like that.

I said, “I’m not sure what I want to do.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll figure it out when you’re there,” she said, as if going to college were as easy as walking into town.

When I told her I hadn’t even finished high school, she said, “You know the Ayer School? Uncle Martin could put in a word if I asked.”

Ayer was a girls’ prep school in Boston. “I doubt they’d be interested in a Jewish girl.”

She said, “Oh dear. I thought Baum was German. Not that it matters a bit to me. I have loads of friends who are . . . why, half of the instructors at the Art Institute in New York are . . .” she stopped. It wasn’t polite to use the word Jew back then. So she said, “There must be other places.”

“There’s Simmons College,” I said. “They even accept the Irish, if you can imagine.”

That got her back up. “Don’t try to pin that kind of snobbery on me. There are lots of reasons women don’t go to college—if they’re Irish or Hottentot or whatever. Nobody gives a damn if a girl goes—in fact, it’s easier not to. But that shouldn’t stop someone who’s prancing around in trousers and telling her innermost thoughts to a complete stranger.”

—

When Morelli and Filomena came in to wash up, she laughed at the sight of me in Leslie’s pants. I said, “Leslie thinks someday all women are going to wear them.”

Morelli said, “The serious potters already do.”

Leslie brought out a tray with peaches, crackers, and boiled eggs, but Filomena was too excited to eat. “It was so hard at first,” she said. “I made some colossal messes, and one of them flew off the wheel and all the way across the room. I was ready to give up but Bob wouldn’t let me. And then, just like that, I got the hang of it and he’s going to fire the last little bowl I made.”

He said, “She’s a quick study.”

She said, “He’s a good teacher.”

They seemed more relaxed with each other. He wasn’t staring at her anymore and she couldn’t stop talking about the feeling of clay spinning between her hands. Maybe I’d been wrong to think they’d been flirting. Besides, Filomena was too smart to fall for a married man.

Morelli stood up and walked to the balcony door. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

Filomena picked at the clay under her fingernails, brushed the dust off her skirt, cleared her throat, and followed him outside.