The Boston Girl(30)

I didn’t believe her but she said if she stayed, she couldn’t be the invisible maiden aunt who disappears into the kitchen when company comes. “Something like this always comes out,” she said. “It’s better this way.”

Not for me, it wasn’t.

I made her promise to write, but artists are artists, not writers. She did send postcards, though: a lot of postcards—sometimes four a month. I have two shoe boxes full of them: pictures of mountains and rivers, of Indian men on horses and women weaving blankets. Filomena wrote like she was sending telegrams. “Moved into small house.” “Sold pottery. Bought silver bracelet.”

She always ended the same way: “I miss you. Come visit.”





You may kiss the bride.

My father believed that Celia would be alive if she hadn’t married “that ganef.” So when Betty announced she was going to marry Herman Levine, Papa called Levine every bad thing you can call a person. In Yiddish that’s a lot. “He buries one daughter and he wants another one? Your sister’s body isn’t cold.”

“It’s a year,” Betty said.

“I forbid it.”

Betty lowered her head like she was a bull, which is what she did when she was really mad. “You can forbid all you want but Herman and are I getting married next Thursday afternoon at three o’clock. I would like you to be there, but if you’re not, that’s okay.”

Then she stood up, put both of her hands on her belly, and raised her eyebrows.

Mameh’s reaction was almost as shocking to me as the idea that Betty and Levine had been, you know, shtupping. I was waiting for her to call Betty a whore and tell my father “I told you so,” but all she said was, “We’ll be there.”

I had no problem with Levine anymore; he’d been like a brother to me in a lot of ways. But the marriage took me completely by surprise. He never let on and neither did she. Betty was always telling me about going out to dinner with one fellow or another, but when I stopped to think, I realized it had been a while since she’d mentioned anyone.

Betty said it happened “naturally.” She had run into Levine on the street and found out that Jacob, the little one, had been having nightmares ever since Celia died. “But Herman was even more worried about Myron,” Betty said. “He was doing terrible in school and getting sent home for fighting. I felt sorry for them.” She took the boys out for ice cream a few times and cooked them a few meals. She said, “One thing led to another and I just became part of the family,” as if there weren’t any difference between making soup and getting pregnant.

“You’re not going to give me any grief, are you?” she said. “He makes me happy.” The next time I saw her with Levine, it was obvious that he loved her, too.

Betty’s wedding was one hundred percent different from Celia’s. First of all, it was in Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue, which meant we had to take a streetcar to get there. Levine was waiting for us in the foyer, which was twice the size of Papa’s whole synagogue. We were a little early, so he showed us around.

The sanctuary was huge. There was a high dome ceiling and an arch of golden trumpets hanging over the pulpit; Levine said that was to make it look like Solomon’s Temple. Mameh said it was beautiful. My father didn’t say anything, but with all the tongue-clucking and snorting, he didn’t have to.

The ceremony wasn’t in the sanctuary, thank goodness; we would have felt like ants. It was in the rabbi’s study, which wasn’t a closet either, believe me. I remember a big vase of flowers and books up to the ceiling.

The rabbi was younger than the groom and he didn’t wear a beard or a yarmulke. He shook all our hands and asked my father something in Hebrew, which changed the sour look on his face to complete confusion. I guess you should never judge Jewish books by their covers, either.

Betty came in from a side door wearing a tan suit and a hat with a little veil that stopped just under her nose. She looked beautiful. Myron and Jacob were in matching suits she’d picked out for them and Jake carried the ring for the ceremony.

The wedding was quick and half in English, but there was no way to break a glass on the Oriental rug in that room, so it ended when the rabbi said, “You may kiss the bride.”

A secretary brought in a tray with a decanter of wine and a sponge cake, the rabbi asked Papa to say the blessing, and seven months later, Leonard Levine was born.

He was a cute, good-natured baby, but I hardly ever got the chance to hold him because my parents wouldn’t put him down. To them he was a miracle. Mameh lit up like a candle when she saw him and grabbed him out of Betty’s arms the minute they came over. She covered his face with kisses and pretended to eat his fingers. “Look how delicious,” she said. “Look how handsome! Has there ever been such a boy?”

My father couldn’t get enough of his grandson, either, and even stopped going to shul in the evening in case Betty brought the baby to our house. Lenny was named after my father’s brother, Laibel, and Papa called him “my Kaddish”; he didn’t have a son to say the prayer for him after he died and that was ages before women could do it.

But Kaddish didn’t have anything to do with the way my father played peekaboo with Lenny or laughed at every sneeze and yawn. Papa was a completely different person with him. It was the only time I ever heard him sing.