The Boston Girl(37)

I never saw Ernie again. His parents sent him to a sanitarium in Colorado. I heard that they sold everything and moved out there to be with him.

Betty said, “I hope you aren’t taking this too hard. I never thought he was right for you.”

“I should have ended it a long time ago,” I said. “I was going out with him for something to do. God, that sounds so awful.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He wasn’t in love with you, either.”

That didn’t make me feel any better, and it was a long time before I even thought about going out again. First Harold, then Ernie? It was pretty clear I didn’t have any talent at picking men.





| 1922–24 |





If I wasn’t so busy, I would have felt sorry for myself.

Levine went into business with Morris Silverman, who was a much bigger fish in Boston real estate and also a very nice guy. Everybody liked Mo Silverman. The only problem was that he already had three girls in his office and there wasn’t enough work for four secretaries. Betty wanted him to fire one of his girls. “I’m sure you’re a better typist.”

But to me, it wasn’t a problem at all. I had wanted to change jobs for a long time. I hadn’t done anything about it because no one was going to pay me as much as Levine and also it would have made a big stink at home.

So this was a good thing. Gussie was always saying she could get me a job with a judge or one of her businesswomen. And Miss Chevalier was working for the Boston Public Library, so I could ask her to recommend me for a job there. When Silverman said he wanted to talk to me about “the situation,” I was ready to tell him there were no hard feelings.

But instead of letting me go, he asked if I could just wait a few months. One of his girls was getting married and leaving in September but he didn’t want to let her go sooner because she was paying for the wedding herself. “She’s an orphan,” he said, and he offered to pay me a little something on the side. It would be our little secret and I would start again in the fall. That was a mensch, even if he did ruin my escape plan.

Betty thought it was perfect timing. She said I could spend the summer at home with her and the boys. “It will be good practice for when you have your own children.” She needed the help with the twins, who were two years old at the time—I guess they would have been your second cousins—Richie and Carl. Eddy was still a little kid, too. Jake was ten by then. I think he was Betty’s favorite and I don’t think anybody in the neighborhood ever knew that he wasn’t her natural son.

But spending three months with them—and around my mother—would have given me a nervous breakdown. Mameh never let up: I read too many books, I had too many friends, I dressed like a floozy, it was selfish to waste money on movies, and I was an ingrate because I wouldn’t answer her in Yiddish like Betty. Mameh didn’t call her Betty-the-whore anymore, although behind her back it was “Betty-the-climber” and “Betty-who-thinks-she’s-better-than-you-and-me.”

Once, as a kind of peace offering, I asked her in Yiddish if she needed anything from the store, and all she did was make fun of my pronunciation. Betty let that kind of thing roll off her back, but it always got my heart racing like I was being chased, and if she started in at night, I couldn’t fall asleep.

There was nothing I could do to please my mother, never mind that I was paying most of the rent.

When I told Gussie what was going on and that I might get stuck babysitting for Betty until September, she said, “You could go to Rockport Lodge for the summer.”

I thought she was joking. I hadn’t been to Rockport since the summer Filomena fell in love with her sculptor. Gussie not only went every year, she knew half the women on the lodge’s board of directors, which is how she knew that the girl who had been hired to make the beds and sweep the halls had quit at the last minute. “It’s not a great job and the pay is lousy but it might be better than staying home and changing diapers. By the time you get back, I’ll have something better for you.”

It sounded too good to be true: room and board, living away from home for the summer in the most beautiful place I’d ever seen? Gussie made a phone call and I was hired.

I told my parents I had a job as the assistant to the director at Rockport Lodge, which was sort of true and sounded better than “cleaning lady.” My father had no opinion but of course my mother thought it was terrible. Why would I do such a thing when my sister needed me? Who would be watching me? She used two Yiddish words for “tramp” I’d never heard before.

Betty told me to go. “You’re only young once. Never mind what I said; you don’t need to practice on my kids; they already love you to pieces.” But because Betty was Betty she also said, “Of course, they’d like to have some cousins already.”

I started crossing off days on the calendar. I got a valise and repacked it a hundred times. Buying that train ticket made me feel like a world traveler.

—

The director of Rockport Lodge that summer was Miss Gloria Lettis—not a youngster, that one. She had tiny eyes and the biggest bosom I’d ever seen. She was also very full of herself. Before I could put down my suitcase she said, “Come along,” and showed me to a closet full of buckets and mops—some for the bathroom only, some for the stairs and hallways. I was still carrying my bag when we went to see the linen cabinet, which I had to keep in the same exact order at all times, and then outside to the garbage bins, where I would empty wastebaskets every morning. I had never seen the annex, which was a new one-story building behind the main house, like a long cabin with unpainted rooms for twenty or thirty more girls. That’s when I started to realize how much work I was in for.