When she saw Miss Green, Filomena took both of her teacher’s hands in hers and said, “Thank you for giving me my life.”
It was such a sweet moment. Katherine said it reminded her of how students in India honored their teachers by touching the ground at their feet. I didn’t feel quite up to that, but before the afternoon was over I thanked Miss Chevalier for everything she had done for me since I was a girl.
I wish I’d had a camera. Not that I need pictures to remember that day.
I’ve forgotten a lot more than I like to admit, but I have all the details memorized: the pink icing, Katherine’s beautiful yellow shoes, the lilacs, and the sound of Filomena’s bracelets when she threw her arms around me. Like a wind chime.
You never looked at me with anything but love.
Sometimes friends grow apart. You tell each other everything and you’re sure this is a person you’ll know the rest of your life but then she stops writing or calling, or you realize she’s really not so nice, or she turns into a right-winger. Remember your friend Suzie?
But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there. That was Filomena and me.
The day after the wedding shower we got together in the North End. She had to go to a big family lunch after church so she wasn’t sure exactly what time she’d get away, but I didn’t mind waiting. I was sitting on a bench in front of St. Leonard’s in the North End on a beautiful day and people were strolling on Hanover Street. Old ladies in black dresses were feeding the pigeons and watching their grandchildren play. It was exactly how I remembered it from when I was growing up, except the hats were different.
There isn’t enough room to say much on a postcard, so I had a hundred questions for Filomena. I knew that some of her New Mexico friends were painters and that she spent a lot of time with an Indian potter named Virginia. I knew she was living by herself and watched the sunset every day. She was selling enough of her pottery to scrape by. But that was about it. It was like I had an empty coloring book for her to fill in.
At first, I didn’t recognize the frumpy woman in a baggy black dress who was waving at me. Filomena’s sisters had made her take off her “costume” before church and dressed her like a grandmother. They were furious at her. How could she come to Boston for a friend’s wedding when she hadn’t bothered to make it to her own nieces’ and nephews’ first communions and graduations? They calmed down a little when she told them her friends had paid for her tickets. I guess they forgot she’d been sending them money ever since she moved to Taos, and believe me, she never had much to spare.
Filomena unpinned her braid, pulled a woven sash and some bracelets out of her bag, and in one minute was back to looking beautiful. She said she was dying for an espresso. “I’ve been dreaming about coffee ever since I got on the train.”
We went to a café where not even the hats had changed. I never saw a person enjoy anything more than Filomena enjoyed that espresso. The waiter must have noticed, too, because he brought over a second cup before she could ask.
She said, “Grazie,” and it was like they were long-lost cousins, talking with their hands and interrupting each other, just like Jews, except everything sounds better in Italian.
Filomena had brought a stack of pictures to show me and laid them out on the table in rows, like she was playing solitaire. There were a few of her sitting at a table with Morelli and three couples who were making silly faces at the camera. They had been his friends in art school and shared a big house on the outskirts of Taos. Filomena said, “We stayed with them at first, but it was like living with the Keystone Cops.
“They loved each other but they fought all the time and I could never figure out who was mad at who. Crazy people, but they were always good to me.” Eventually she and Morelli moved into a cottage on their land.
I had always imagined her living in a little shingled house like the ones in Rockport, but the house in the picture looked like a big anthill. Filomena explained what adobe was and how cool her house was on hot days. I said it sounded like living inside of a clay pot.
She got a kick out of that.
There was a picture of Bob Morelli sitting at a pottery wheel, looking down at a lump of clay between his hands. It made me remember how handsome he was.
“That’s an old picture,” she said. For the first few years, Morelli had gone to New York to visit his son in the summer, but one fall he didn’t come back. He said his son needed him, but Filomena knew that wasn’t the only reason. He couldn’t work in bronze in New Mexico and he missed the city. “Did I write that he died last year? Car accident. I’m still getting used to the idea.”
I said I was sorry and I meant it.
Filomena was excited to show me pictures of her work and there were a few vases that reminded me of Miss Green’s designs. But most of it had a different shape: round at the bottom, sharper like a tulip bulb, and mostly very dark. To me, it looked like streamlined modern art, but it was an old Pueblo style called blackware.
She said the minute she laid eyes on it she had to find out how to make it. She handed me a picture of an Indian woman with wrinkled cheeks and white hair bending over a fire. She said, “This is my teacher, Virginia; my Pueblo Miss Green.”
Virginia was one of the few people who still made blackware but when Filomena asked to study with her, she said no. “The Pueblo people don’t have much use for the whites. To them, we’re like badly behaved children.”
But Filomena kept pestering until Virginia let her dig the clay for her pottery and collect the manure she burned in her kiln. It sounded to me like work that the slaves did in Egypt but when I asked if she got paid, she laughed. “Virginia thought I should be paying her and she’s probably right. She only started teaching me how to build the pots when she broke her arm. But now that she’s getting older, I think she keeps me around because she knows I’ll keep the tradition alive. Not that she’d ever say so.”
Virginia called Filomena’s first attempts “half-breeds” and “bastards.” But once she stopped smashing them when they came out of the kiln, Filomena knew she was making progress.
“I’m really getting the hang of it now, but the tourists aren’t interested.” People want colorful souvenirs that people back home would recognize as “Indian.” So she was giving art lessons to make ends meet. “Of all the Mixed Nuts, I always thought you’d be the teacher. It turns out I like teaching.”
—
Filomena was in Boston for a few weeks before the wedding and we saw each other a lot. Irene had a dinner party for us with Gussie and Helen, who brought her husband and kids. One evening, Aaron took Filomena and me out for ice cream. She had a lot of family obligations, but we made sure we had time alone and we never ran out of conversation because nothing was too trivial or painful to talk about. I don’t know how many times we each said, “I never told anyone but . . .”
I told her how I wished I’d been more sensitive and sympathetic to poor shell-shocked Ernie and how I had a dream about trying to save that poor farm girl in Minnesota. I confessed that I was relieved my mother wouldn’t be at my wedding, and how sad I was about feeling that way.
Somehow, telling Filomena about those things made them seem lighter and less terrible. I remember asking her if that’s what it was like after going to confession in church. She said “God, no. When I was a girl I thought I’d get in trouble if I didn’t say all the Hail Marys and Our Fathers. But nothing bad happened if I didn’t say them and I didn’t feel any better when I did. It was like putting a penny into a slot and nothing comes out. By the time I was twelve, I only went to church when my sisters made me.”
She said she felt better talking to someone she could see, someone who cares about her. “The time I almost died in that bathtub, what kept me going was the look on your face and Irene’s and that wonderful nurse. I could see how worried you were, not mad or angry
or disappointed. You just didn’t want me to die. And afterward, too, you never looked at me with anything but love: no pity, no judgment. I’ve thought about this a lot, Addie. You made it possible for me to forgive myself.”
I had no idea it was so important to her, just like she was surprised to find out what I remembered from our conversations that first week at Rockport Lodge. She changed the way I thought about myself. “You told me I had a good eye and that I was good listener. You laughed at my jokes and took my ideas seriously.”
You know, Ava, it’s good to be smart, but kindness is more important. Oh dear, another old-lady chestnut to stitch on a sampler. Or maybe one of those cute little throw pillows.
—
I guess I hadn’t written much about the classes I’d taken, because Filomena wanted to know about college and my teachers and the subjects I’d studied. When she asked what I was taking in the fall, I said I wasn’t planning to sign up. I already felt like an old lady with all the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds and anyway, once I had children, I wouldn’t have the time and I’d really be too old.
It wasn’t like today. In those days you never heard of a married woman going to college. But you’d have thought I’d said I was going to join the circus or enter a convent. Filomena gave me a lecture about women in Taos who started businesses at fifty, even sixty. She said Virginia’s niece was in her forties when she left her kids with her mother and moved to Albuquerque for three years to become a nurse.
She said, “You’re not even thirty years old, which means you’ll be in your fifties when your children are grown up, and you don’t have to wait anyway. When they go to school, you can go to school, and you don’t even have to move to Albuquerque.”
I said maybe, but that wasn’t enough for Filomena. “Give me one good reason why you shouldn’t keep taking classes at least until you have a baby.”
The reason was that I still didn’t know why I was taking classes at all. It would have been different if I wanted to start a business or be a lawyer. But I was still just “dabbling” and I wasn’t even enjoying it.
I had taken literature classes thinking maybe I should be an English teacher like people had been telling me since I was a kid. It was true that I loved reading stories and novels. But the only courses I could take were about Milton or Dryden or Chaucer. They weren’t easy to understand. And the professors? They didn’t care whether we understood the poems, much less loved them. None of my homework was as interesting as the writers I was reading in the magazines or books I took out of the library: Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis.
Filomena said she was going to talk to Aaron about my staying in school. “He’ll be all for it. You still don’t know how smart you are, just like you don’t know how pretty you are. But Aaron knows. He also thinks the sun and moon revolve around you. What wouldn’t I give to have someone care about me that way.”
I said, “But I thought you didn’t want to get married.”
“That has nothing to do with wanting to be loved,” she said. “I know you never liked Bob and things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, but he was the love of my life. The time we spent in Taos was the happiest I’ve ever been. He found us a studio and made me believe in my talent. We were together day and night. He used to say we were made out of the same clay.”
Filomena said she was “keeping company” with someone. “He’s very nice, but you only get one great love in a lifetime.”
Then it was my turn to make a speech. “Who made that rule?” I said, and ticked off the war widows I knew who were happily remarried.
Filomena said she wasn’t complaining. She liked her independence and privacy and the fact that nobody judged what she did or didn’t do.
She admitted that she got lonely for her family—and for me. She missed Italian food and good coffee and the smell of the ocean. “But I belong to that landscape now, to the sky and the mountains. I wouldn’t be happy anywhere else.”
From the moment Filomena walked into my wedding shower, I had wanted to ask if she was ever coming back to live in Boston. That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but I meant it when I said, “Then I’m happy for you.”
Don’t let anyone tell you things aren’t better than they used to be.
It wasn’t a fancy wedding. No long gown or veil, like Betty wanted, but I think I looked pretty great in my tan dress with the pearl beads, and I wore the most beautiful hat I ever owned. There was no music and no dancing the hora, but it was much bigger than I’d imagined and not only because there were so many Metskys. Between my family, all of my friends, and their families, there were plenty of people on the Baum side, too.
Levine held one of the poles for the huppah. He almost cried when I asked him. Aaron’s brother held another and I don’t remember who the other two men were. It never occurred to me to ask Betty or Rita. Fifty-eight years ago, asking a woman to do that would have been like asking when a man was going to walk on the moon—something only a crazy person would say.
Don’t let anyone tell you things aren’t better than they used to be.
—
We had lunch in the synagogue because there were too many people to fit into Betty’s house. There were long tables with white tablecloths, big platters of herring, rye bread, salad, and pickles—the usual. There was plenty of wine and even a bottle of whiskey with a real label, a wedding present from someone. Since we were in a temple, we didn’t even have to put it in a teapot so we wouldn’t be raided. Prohibition didn’t end until ’33, which I only remember because it was the year your aunt Sylvia was born.
After we ate, there were toasts and jokes about how Aaron and I met. Filomena stood up and asked us to open her present in front of everyone because there was a story to go with it.
Her gift was a big blackware vase with two spouts. “It’s called a wedding pitcher,” she said. “The two openings stand for the bride and groom and the handle in between makes them into one.”
At an Indian wedding, the bride drinks from one side, the groom drinks from the other, and then they’re married. If the husband or wife dies, the other one is supposed to give it to a young couple getting married. It sounded sort of Jewish to me.
Anyway, I’m giving mine to the grandchild who gets married first. I don’t think you should rush into anything with Brian just to get a nice piece of pottery. But it’s something to keep in mind.
—
I wish Levine had taken a picture of me with Aaron and Filomena and the pitcher. He took a dozen of us in front of the wedding cake Mildred had baked—four layers and white frosting. My mother would have called it goyishe, but it was delicious and there wasn’t a crumb left over.
I noticed my father bringing a slice to an older lady I didn’t know. I figured she was with the Metskys, but it turned out that she was a member of the synagogue. Betty said, “She was at Mameh’s shiva, but there’s no reason you would remember her.” There had been a whole flock of widows at the house after the funeral and they brought pots of soup and kugel over to the house for weeks afterward. Betty called them “the vultures,” which was kind of mean but kind of true. Whenever an older man lost his wife, there was a competition to get him. Of all the widows, Edna Blaustein had brought strudel as well as casseroles. She was one of the younger ones and kept herself looking nice. She was also the only one with the chutzpah to invite herself to the wedding party. I’m pretty sure that she asked Papa to marry her.
Betty thought it was terrible that Papa didn’t wait a whole year to marry her, but he said there was no law against it so they did and he moved into her house, a triple-decker that gave her a nice little income.
It turned out that Edna had expected Papa would take care of the building like her first husband had, but my father didn’t know anything about fixing sinks or putting glass in a broken window. And after a few years of reading and teaching in shul all day, he wasn’t a
bout to shovel coal for the furnace.
“I almost feel sorry for her,” Betty said. “Almost.”
You’re that Addie, aren’t you?
Aaron and I went on a little honeymoon: three nights at the Hotel Edward in Rockport, Massachusetts. Our room faced out to the sea and the full moon on the water was so bright that we had to close the curtains to sleep. It was very beautiful, very romantic.
During the day, I showed him everything. We took the train that used to run around Cape Ann. We walked on the beaches and up to the big rocks in Dogtown. We poked around in the art galleries and bought taffy to bring to our nephews. We ate fish every day and ice cream two times a day.
The cliff house where Filomena and I had met Morelli was gone. Washed away in a storm, I guess. All that was left were the granite steps and the slab that used to be in front of the red door.
Of course, I took Aaron to see Rockport Lodge. The woman who answered the door didn’t want to let us in but I kept saying that I had been a lodge girl myself and please could we just look around. She finally said I could come into the parlor for a moment but not Aaron. The house was quiet, so I knew the girls had to be on an outing; there was no good reason to keep him out. “We won’t be long,” I said. “It’s our honeymoon. It would mean so much to me.”
I didn’t stop talking until she let us both inside, where she didn’t let us out of her sight, as if we were going to steal something. I don’t know what she thought when the first thing I did was head straight to the kitchen.
The closet I’d slept in was back to being a pantry and there was a big new refrigerator and fresh linoleum on the floor. The cook was standing at the door, blowing cigarette smoke through the screen. Mrs. Morse would have thrown her out for sure. But when she turned around, I realized it was her sister, Mrs. Styles. She was thinner and grayer but she still had that “Who do you think you are?” look on her face.
The Boston Girl Page 21
