The Boston Girl

“I only opened it to see if I should get out smelling salts for you,” she said. “Some people waste money like it was water.”

Aaron’s telegram said Tell Irene I will be there on Friday.

The four of us had a great time at dinner. Irene cooked a delicious meal. For dessert she went to the bakery and bought an apple pie. I said it was almost as good as Mrs. Morse’s.

“Oh no,” Irene said. “Once she gets started about those pies, there’s no stopping her.”

“But I want to hear what Addie has to say about pie,” Aaron said.

Joe winked at me. “He’s got it bad.”

Aaron said, “Guilty as charged.”

—

He had to go back to Washington on Sunday morning, so we really only had one day together.

I wanted to go to Rockport but it would have taken too long, so we got off the train at Nahant and walked on the beach for a couple of hours. We talked about where we might get married and how many children we wanted and we decided not to tell our families until Aaron moved to Boston. His plan was to be back by the Fourth of July or sooner if they could find someone to replace him.

That was the day he gave me the gold locket I always wear. Inside it’s engraved, March 29, 1926. The day we met.

You know,

if one of my daughters had told me she was going to marry a man she’d only known for a week I would have locked her in her room. But we weren’t kids. I was twenty-five and he was twenty-nine. We were completely sure. And obviously we were right.

Aaron didn’t tell his parents he was in town that weekend. Only Ruth knew. He slept on her couch Friday night, and Saturday night she stayed with a girlfriend so we could be alone, just the two of us, for the whole night.

I’ll leave it at that.

At least she didn’t suffer.

I was counting the days until the Fourth of July and thinking about the best way to introduce Aaron to my family. When should I tell Betty, and would it be better to have her tell Mameh that there would be company for a Friday dinner or should I just have him come to the house on a Sunday afternoon?

He wasn’t writing as many letters, but I didn’t mind. I knew he was working extra hours so he could leave his job knowing he’d taken care of everything he could.

Things were moving along nicely until the middle of June, when my landlady died in her sleep.

“At least she didn’t suffer.”

That’s what everyone said—in fact, that was all anyone said. Nobody disliked her; actually, nobody knew anything about her, including boarders who had lived in her house for ten years. She was a widow who didn’t have children—that was it.

It was the fastest funeral I’ve ever been to. The only people there were the boarders and two nephews. There wasn’t even a eulogy. After the service, the nephews asked us to meet them in the parlor that afternoon.

We all went. There wasn’t a cup of coffee or a cookie anywhere, but it turned out that we weren’t there for a shiva. It was a business meeting to tell us that they were selling the building and we had ten days to get out.

One of the old ladies fainted and the rest of them looked like they might keel over, too. There weren’t a lot of boardinghouses left for women in Boston; rents were high and what could you find in a week, anyway?

Some of the women had relatives to turn to, but there were five who seemed to be completely alone in the world. They had probably planned to leave the boardinghouse the same way as the landlady: feet first. I could hear them crying in their rooms.

My next-door neighbor stopped me in the hallway and begged me to help her. She said, “I don’t have anyone else to ask.”

I had no idea how to help but I figured that Miss Chevalier would, and by the time we had to move out, she’d gotten five beds at the YWCA on Berkeley Street.

I was embarrassed at the way they kept thanking me. I told Miss Chevalier, “You’re the one who saved the day. I didn’t do anything.”

She said of course they should thank me. “You took pity on them and you knew whom to ask. That’s more than half the battle, and you won it for them.”

It wasn’t a hardship for me. Aaron and I were planning to get married in the fall, so I’d only have to put up with my family for a few months. And I can’t say I was sorry to be leaving that dark, smelly house.