The Boston Girl(44)

Betty said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Look who’s talking? The big shot! I blame you for this—you and that husband of yours. All you care about is money and making a big impression. I know you think I’m a nothing, a greenhorn. But you two are peasants, climbers. I only hope your children treat you the way you treat me.”

Betty told me, “Don’t pay attention.” Levine slipped me five dollars and said, “She doesn’t mean it.”

I used to dream about how wonderful it would be on the day I went to live on my own but what I remember about that day is running to the curb and throwing up.

—

The boardinghouse was cheap and clean but my room was dark and smelled like mothballs. Actually, the whole building smelled like that, even the dining room. I was the youngest person there by thirty years and the only one who went to work. The rest were spinsters or widows living on pensions and all of them were lonely.

If I took a book into the parlor, one of them would sit down by me and complain about the landlady, or an ungrateful niece who never visited, or how awful the other women’s table manners were.

They all agreed that things were better in the old days. Some of them were sad about it and some were bitter, but it was always “Nothing is as good as it used to be.”

I swore I would never talk like that and you know what? Now that I’m an old lady myself, I think that most things are better than they used to be. Look at the computers. Look at your sister, the cardiologist, and you, graduating from Harvard. Don’t talk to me about the good old days. What was so good?

Even with the old ladies and the mothballs, I loved not having to explain where I was going or where I’d been. It was like being on a vacation from my family. I talked to Betty a lot. She and Levine got a telephone for the house and the two of them talked at least three times a day. She called me, too, and asked what I was up to and when was I coming for dinner, which I didn’t do too often.

I knew I should have been looking for another job, but I couldn’t stop hoping that Tessa Thorndike would rescue me when she came back to Boston. From the society pages I found out she was home. Mrs. Thorndike had been seen at a tea wearing a strange black dress, “very French for New England,” which meant that everyone hated it.

A week after that, Serena’s column returned to the Evening Transcript with a note about Mrs. Thorndike’s recent appearance in a très chic Parisian ensemble by the world-famous designer Coco Chanel. Not that anyone in Boston was familiar with Chanel or even knew how to pronounce her name.

You had to admire the chutzpah of how she praised herself, but I finally realized that she was never going to call me. If I wanted a change, I’d have to do it myself.

For months, Irene and Gussie had listened to me talk about Serena and how she was going to hire me, a little too much, I guess. Because when I said I wasn’t waiting around anymore, Irene said, “It’s about time.” Gussie said she’d make some calls and told me to start looking at the Help Wanteds. There were a lot of openings for typists and some of them looked interesting. I wanted to apply at Wellesley College, but it would have taken hours on the trolley. I inquired about working in a doctor’s office—that would get me into a whole different world—but when I called the job had already been filled.

Irene said she’d keep her ears open, too, which meant listening in on calls she thought might lead to something. Not entirely kosher, I know, but Irene said nobody was going to give girls like us anything, so we had to take our chances wherever we found them.

She didn’t even say hello when I picked up the phone. “The typist in the Transcript newsroom just quit. Put on your coat and get over there now.”





It made me feel like a real Boston girl.

It was already four in the afternoon when Irene called so I didn’t get to the Transcript building until after five. The lobby was almost deserted, but I thought, What the heck, I’m here, so I asked a man about where I’d go about a typing job in the newsroom. He said go to the second floor and see if Mr. Morton was still around but not to bother if I couldn’t type fast. Then he winked. “It won’t matter to him how pretty you are.”

I was always surprised when people told me I was pretty. I couldn’t see it then, but when I look at old pictures of me, I have to say I was kind of cute. After I lost the baby fat on my face and cut my hair, my eyes seemed bigger and my nose looked smaller. And I was very lucky with my teeth.

When I look at my eighty-five-year-old face in the mirror today, I think, “You’re never going to look better than you do today, honey, so smile.” Whoever said a smile is the best face-lift was one smart woman.

Anyway, the man saying I was pretty made me smile and I went upstairs feeling a little less nervous.

I walked into a big room that looked like a hurricane had been through it. There was paper all over the floor. The trash cans and ashtrays were overflowing and it smelled of cigar smoke. It looked like the newsrooms you see in the movies—only with cockroaches.

Nobody was there. The Transcript was an evening paper, which meant that everyone would be long gone. In my head I was saying, Damn, damn, damn, but one of those damns must have come out of my mouth because I heard a voice say, “Ha!”

A fat man with a hat pushed back on his head walked out from behind a glass door at the far end of the room. I said I was looking for Mr. Morton about a job. He gave out another “Ha,” and said, “You’re looking for me.”