The Boston Girl(52)

When he said, “Here we are,” I thought he was joking. “Here” looked like an empty brick factory. When he led me down a stinky alley, there was one second I wondered if I was doing something stupid.

But I knew I wasn’t. Not with him.

He opened a big metal door and I felt like Alice in Wonderland, but with chopsticks. The room was huge. It must have been a metal shop or some kind of factory. The machines were gone but you could see the wear on the wood floors. It was full of people—mostly Chinese—sitting at long tables on benches, putting food on each other’s plates, and talking loud. Louder than my own family, which is saying something.

Aaron said there weren’t any menus. You pointed to what was on a plate near you or let the waiter choose. But he had been there before and ordered some Chinese dumplings—like kreplach, but much better—and two plates piled with chopped vegetables, meat, and rice.

I couldn’t believe how delicious it all was. Maybe it’s something genetic, the Jewish Chinese food thing.

I asked Aaron if he knew what we were eating. “I don’t know but I’m sure it’s not cat.”

“Cat?”

He said there was a nasty rumor that the Chinese killed stray dogs and cats for meat. “It can’t be true, because I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food and I never wanted to chase mice afterward.”

Aaron was getting more adorable by the minute, and the way he looked at me made me feel like I was floating.

He started walking me back to my boardinghouse but I didn’t want the evening to end, so I said I knew where to get the best coffee in Boston—if he wanted.

Of course he wanted, so we went to Filomena’s favorite café in the North End, which was another long walk. The waiter sat us in a back corner where it was dark and quiet—as if he knew we wanted to be alone.

I asked Aaron if he liked his work. He said yes but also no. They had made a big mistake by writing the law to apply to everyone under the age of eighteen when all the state child labor laws were for fifteen-or sixteen-year-olds and younger.

“But I won’t give up yet. My parents think I should leave Washington, move back to Boston, and go into my brother’s law practice. It would be Metsky and Metsky until Rita passes the bar and then we’ll change it to Metsky, Metsky, and Metsky.”

He smacked himself on the forehead. “If Rita were here she’d tell me to shut up and let you talk.” He took my hand and said, “Tell me something.”

By that time, I was so comfortable with your grandfather that I talked about my sisters. I told him they had been child laborers when they came to America, and that after listening to what the German doctor said about how mental problems could show up years later, I understood Celia in a different way.

Aaron touched my cheek. He said the reason he’d gone to work for the child labor committee was his mother, who had worked in a cotton mill as a little girl. “There’s a famous picture of a barefoot girl standing next to a big loom. Her eyes look old and hollow, the same as my mother’s before she died. It was her lungs. The doctor said it was probably from the cotton dust.”

Aaron was fifteen when he lost his mother. I was sixteen when Celia died.

Oh, Ava, there is so much sadness in this life.

—

It was a Sunday night and so quiet we could hear our own footsteps down Commonwealth Avenue. I didn’t feel cold but under the streetlights I could see Aaron’s breath in the air and I wondered if he was going to kiss me good night.

There was no kiss. Not then anyway.

It turned out that we were so late, my landlady had turned off the porch light. That meant the door was locked, and I didn’t have a key. None of us did. It was the rule in a respectable house like Mrs. Kay’s: no late nights. She could throw me out for this.

I said, “Maybe I can take the trolley to my sister’s house in Roxbury.”

“The trains stopped running a while ago,” said Aaron. “But my cousin Ruth has her own place in the Fenway. I’m sure she’ll let you stay over.”

He said it was a good thing we had drunk all that coffee to stay awake, but it also made me need to go to the bathroom—not that I told him that. We did not take our time on that walk, let me tell you.

A girl in a robe opened the door. “What the hell is going on, Aaron? It’s almost one o’clock in the morning.”

He explained what happened. “Tell Addie I’ve never done this before.”

Ruth gave me the once-over and pinched Aaron’s cheek. “It’s true. As far as I know, he’s a straight shooter.”

I followed Ruth up to her flat, which smelled like cigarettes and spices. She gave me a nightgown, threw a blanket on the couch, and said good night.

I thought I’d never fall asleep, but I was gone the minute I closed my eyes. I guess falling in love makes you tired. Or maybe it was all that walking.

Ruth was still sleeping when I got up and tiptoed out of the apartment. The sun was just coming up but Aaron was already there, sitting on the steps with his suitcase. He hadn’t shaved and he was holding a bunch of daffodils he must have stolen from someone’s yard. He said, “God, you’re beautiful.” So I kissed him.





Luck. I’m telling you.

You know how people say that everything happens for a reason and that fate brings together people who are meant for each other? I don’t buy that.