When Celia saw me she jumped out of her chair and ran to give me a hug. She was wearing maybe the first new dress I’d ever seen her in—with flowers that brought out her blue eyes. She looked beautiful.
Mr. Levine stood up. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Miss Addie. Celia says such nice things about you.” He was a small man—maybe an inch taller than me—with a narrow face and a reddish-brown goatee that made him look like a fox.
He said, “Aren’t I lucky to marry into a family of such pretty girls? It will be nice for Myron and Jacob to have a sister, too.”
I said I would be their aunt, not their sister.
He laughed and said, “You must be the smart one.”
Celia took my hand and said I got all As in school.
So Mameh had to say that she was sure Mr. Levine’s sons were even smarter.
“You have to start calling me Herman,” he said.
“What is your real name?” Papa asked. “I need it for the ketubah—the marriage contract.”
Levine waved away the question like he was brushing away a fly. “Hirsch, I suppose.”
Papa made a sour face. This was the kind of man my father called a gantze ganef—a real thief.
Levine reached for the whiskey bottle and said, “Let’s make a toast to August twenty-second.”
“I still don’t know what’s the hurry,” Papa said.
“What should they wait for?” said Mameh. “They aren’t youngsters.”
My mother and Levine started talking about the wedding. The ceremony was going to be in Papa’s little shul around the corner. Levine said he’d pay for honey cake and wine.
“But I will buy the herring,” Papa said. “You can’t have a wedding without herring.”
Levine smiled in the snobbish way Miss Holbrooke did when one of the Italian girls had said her mother’s cooking was better than the food at the lodge.
Levine said he was thinking about joining Temple Israel and Papa gave him the same look back. “You mean the big German synagogue where they throw you out if you wear a yarmulke?”
“The rabbi there is very smart,” Levine said. “I can make good connections for business and my sons will meet a better class of people.” He winked at me. “And Addie will like it because the women sit with the men, like human beings.”
“If you want a church, go to a church,” Papa said, and the words hung in the air like a bad smell. My mother got nervous and said that maybe the bride and groom would like to go for a walk together.
Celia said, “And Addie can come with us.” See how she looked out for me?
I walked a few steps behind them and watched. Celia looked comfortable holding his arm, and he patted her hand a lot but they didn’t say much to each other and I couldn’t tell if there was any feeling between them.
We were on Hanover Street, which felt like a carnival after Rockport. There were a lot of people walking and talking at the top of their lungs—in three or four languages, mind you. We walked past a shop window where a group of girls were watching a man take the clothes off a dress dummy. One of girls said, “That’s what I call fresh,” which made me wonder if Celia knew anything about the birds and the bees. She was so shy about everything.
My mother never told me about sex. When I got my period, she slapped my face and showed me how to wash the towels we had to use. You don’t know how lucky you are in that department. I found out about what happened between men and women from a couple of girls in the schoolyard—and they had different versions.
—
On our cot that night Celia said, “At least you’ll have more room when I go.”
“But I’ll miss you,” I said.
She said we would see each other all the time. “Mr. Levine’s apartment is only a few blocks from here.”
“You don’t call him Herman?”
She said she wasn’t used to it yet. For three years she had known him as Mr. Levine.