The Boston Girl(41)
Mrs. Morse never mentioned her son again in my hearing. But I had pie for breakfast every day for the rest of the summer.
By Addie Baum.
Remember when you were little and I let you stay up late so we could watch Upstairs, Downstairs? That show always made me think about Mrs. Morse’s troubles with George and how Miss Lettis never found out. It wasn’t because she was stupid or because we were so smart. She was just busy with “upstairs” dramas, like the girl who got appendicitis. But she went into a full panic when she was told to expect a newspaper reporter who was coming to do a story about Rockport Lodge.
It might not sound like a big deal, but publicity like that had never been welcome by the women who started Rockport Lodge; they grew up thinking that a lady’s name should only appear in the paper when she got married and when she died. But that had changed and those women—and their daughters—read the society pages whether they admitted it or not, especially in the Boston Evening Transcript, which ran a genealogy column every week and reported on the kinds of women’s clubs attended by Boston’s “First Families.” I’m talking about the Lowells and the Cabots and that set. The Transcript was like People magazine for Beacon Hill types, and the rest of us, too.
Miss Lettis got a phone call from the chairman of the Lodge board and was told to expect a certain “Miss Smith” and to make sure she left with a delightful impression. Everything had to look its best, which meant I polished the banister twice and dusted every damn book in the house. The night before the big visit Miss Lettis sat down in the kitchen—something she never did—and went over the lunch menu with Mrs. Morse.
She was nervous as a cat, folding and unfolding her hands, and telling us more than she was probably supposed to. She said our visitor was the most popular society writer in Boston so we had to put our best face forward or the whole world would hear about it.
Miss Lettis came from Pittsfield, so she didn’t know that “Miss Smith” had to be “Serena,” who wrote a column called Out and About. Everyone read it, not only because she had the juiciest gossip but also because sometimes she poked fun at the people she wrote about, like the time she said Beacon Hill ladies were such penny-pinchers they wore their shoes until the soles were thin as communion wafers.
Nobody knew Serena’s real name. There was a rumor that she was from a First Family herself, which would have made her a traitor to her class and even more fascinating. Some people argued that “she” had to be a man because a woman couldn’t be that witty. When the car pulled up in front of the lodge, I felt like a detective solving the mystery of Serena’s true identity. Reading all those newspapers paid off because the minute I laid eyes on her I knew it turned out that she was Mrs. Charles Thorndike. Case closed!
When a Brahmin like Tessa Cooper marries a Brahmin like Charles Thorndike, there was always an announcement in the paper and sometimes a picture of the bride. Miss Cooper had sent every editor in town a photo that showed off a bare shoulder. Very racy.
Miss Lettis had put on her best “welcome” face, but when she saw three cameras hanging from the driver’s neck, she gasped, “I didn’t get permission for pictures,” and ran inside to call Boston for instructions, leaving Miss Smith high and dry.
She perched on the porch railing and lit a cigarette.
The portrait didn’t do justice to her heart-shaped face and her big eyes. Her dark hair was almost as short as a man’s and parted on the side—a style you might have seen in a fashion magazine but much too much for Boston.
I must have been feeling very brave that morning because I went right out there and said, “Would you like something cold to drink, Mrs. Thorndike?”
She looked surprised at hearing her name, but then she smiled and shrugged. “You read the papers, do you? I could do with a drink but I don’t suppose you have a gin fizz handy.”
I didn’t know what to say: it was eleven o’clock in the morning and the middle of Prohibition.
She laughed. “Relax, child. I’m joking. Are you here from one of the girls’ clubs?”
I wasn’t about to tell her I was the maid, so I said I was a member of the Saturday Club, which was true.
She knew who we were. “Mother’s missionary society bought all their Christmas presents from your little shop a few years ago. Are you one of those adorable pottery girls?”
“Adorable”? She was getting on my nerves. I said no, that I was a secretary in a real estate office and taking classes at Simmons College. “That makes you a real go-getter as well as a fan of the gossip columns.”
That rubbed me the wrong way, too, so I said the society pages were a big waste of time, “except for Serena.” Then I looked her right in the eye and said, “I get a kick out of the way you poke fun at Boston’s high and mighty.”
That wiped the smug little smile off her face.
Miss Lettis reappeared, calmer now that she had her marching orders. There would be no pictures inside the lodge and no pictures of the girls.
“Doesn’t leave much, does it?” said Mrs. Thorndike. She stood up and flicked her cigarette out on the lawn. It must have taken all of Lettis’s self-control not to run over and pick it up. “Let’s get this over with.”
They went off on a grand tour that had been carefully laid out. They stopped at the tennis court, where it just so happened that the two best players were in the middle of a game, and from there paid a visit to a group of well-groomed girls who were reading poetry to each other. Another bunch was crocheting handbags—all of it phony as a three-dollar bill.