“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He wasn’t in love with you, either.”
That didn’t make me feel any better, and it was a long time before I even thought about going out again. First Harold, then Ernie? It was pretty clear I didn’t have any talent at picking men.
| 1922–24 |
If I wasn’t so busy, I would have felt sorry for myself.
Levine went into business with Morris Silverman, who was a much bigger fish in Boston real estate and also a very nice guy. Everybody liked Mo Silverman. The only problem was that he already had three girls in his office and there wasn’t enough work for four secretaries. Betty wanted him to fire one of his girls. “I’m sure you’re a better typist.”
But to me, it wasn’t a problem at all. I had wanted to change jobs for a long time. I hadn’t done anything about it because no one was going to pay me as much as Levine and also it would have made a big stink at home.
So this was a good thing. Gussie was always saying she could get me a job with a judge or one of her businesswomen. And Miss Chevalier was working for the Boston Public Library, so I could ask her to recommend me for a job there. When Silverman said he wanted to talk to me about “the situation,” I was ready to tell him there were no hard feelings.
But instead of letting me go, he asked if I could just wait a few months. One of his girls was getting married and leaving in September but he didn’t want to let her go sooner because she was paying for the wedding herself. “She’s an orphan,” he said, and he offered to pay me a little something on the side. It would be our little secret and I would start again in the fall. That was a mensch, even if he did ruin my escape plan.
Betty thought it was perfect timing. She said I could spend the summer at home with her and the boys. “It will be good practice for when you have your own children.” She needed the help with the twins, who were two years old at the time—I guess they would have been your second cousins—Richie and Carl. Eddy was still a little kid, too. Jake was ten by then. I think he was Betty’s favorite and I don’t think anybody in the neighborhood ever knew that he wasn’t her natural son.
But spending three months with them—and around my mother—would have given me a nervous breakdown. Mameh never let up: I read too many books, I had too many friends, I dressed like a floozy, it was selfish to waste money on movies, and I was an ingrate because I wouldn’t answer her in Yiddish like Betty. Mameh didn’t call her Betty-the-whore anymore, although behind her back it was “Betty-the-climber” and “Betty-who-thinks-she’s-better-than-you-and-me.”
Once, as a kind of peace offering, I asked her in Yiddish if she needed anything from the store, and all she did was make fun of my pronunciation. Betty let that kind of thing roll off her back, but it always got my heart racing like I was being chased, and if she started in at night, I couldn’t fall asleep.
There was nothing I could do to please my mother, never mind that I was paying most of the rent.
When I told Gussie what was going on and that I might get stuck babysitting for Betty until September, she said, “You could go to Rockport Lodge for the summer.”
I thought she was joking. I hadn’t been to Rockport since the summer Filomena fell in love with her sculptor. Gussie not only went every year, she knew half the women on the lodge’s board of directors, which is how she knew that the girl who had been hired to make the beds and sweep the halls had quit at the last minute. “It’s not a great job and the pay is lousy but it might be better than staying home and changing diapers. By the time you get back, I’ll have something better for you.”
It sounded too good to be true: room and board, living away from home for the summer in the most beautiful place I’d ever seen? Gussie made a phone call and I was hired.
I told my parents I had a job as the assistant to the director at Rockport Lodge, which was sort of true and sounded better than “cleaning lady.” My father had no opinion but of course my mother thought it was terrible. Why would I do such a thing when my sister needed me? Who would be watching me? She used two Yiddish words for “tramp” I’d never heard before.
Betty told me to go. “You’re only young once. Never mind what I said; you don’t need to practice on my kids; they already love you to pieces.” But because Betty was Betty she also said, “Of course, they’d like to have some cousins already.”
I started crossing off days on the calendar. I got a valise and repacked it a hundred times. Buying that train ticket made me feel like a world traveler.
—
The director of Rockport Lodge that summer was Miss Gloria Lettis—not a youngster, that one. She had tiny eyes and the biggest bosom I’d ever seen. She was also very full of herself. Before I could put down my suitcase she said, “Come along,” and showed me to a closet full of buckets and mops—some for the bathroom only, some for the stairs and hallways. I was still carrying my bag when we went to see the linen cabinet, which I had to keep in the same exact order at all times, and then outside to the garbage bins, where I would empty wastebaskets every morning. I had never seen the annex, which was a new one-story building behind the main house, like a long cabin with unpainted rooms for twenty or thirty more girls. That’s when I started to realize how much work I was in for.
In the kitchen, Miss Lettis handed me over to Mrs. Morse, who hadn’t changed at all. She took one look at me and sighed. “Not very strong, are you? I just hope you don’t run away after the first week like the last girl.”
I promised I’d be there all summer but I could tell she didn’t believe me. She showed me my “room,” which was the old pantry and only big enough for a cot, a stool, and a few pegs for my clothes. And it was right next to the stove, so when the oven was on I had to get out of there or I would bake, too.
After a week, I thought I might have been better off with four boys than sixty girls who never picked up their magazines and were always losing their socks and hankies. I didn’t understand how they could get the bathrooms so dirty or how they managed to track in pounds—and I’m not exaggerating—of sand. I never stopped sweeping. If I wasn’t so busy, I would have felt sorry for myself.
But it wasn’t until the first Saturday changeover that I understood why that other girl had run away. As soon as the group that was leaving brought their suitcases downstairs, I started stripping and making beds, dusting and mopping floors, and carrying out heaps of trash. I lugged baskets and baskets of dirty linen to the laundry shed, where a tall African-American lady with white hair was boiling a huge pot of water. I barely finished before the next group arrived. I was so pooped that I ended up sleeping straight through supper.
Mrs. Morse was offended that someone could be too tired to eat her food, so she told Miss Lettis that either she get me some help on Saturdays or she would not be back the next summer. “And I will tell the board that you were the reason why.”
Lucy Miller showed up the very next week. I couldn’t imagine how a bony thirteen-year-old kid with blond pigtails would be much help, but she’d been cleaning up after six brothers her whole life, so she could strip and make a bed in half the time it took me. Thanks to her I never missed a Saturday lunch out of tiredness again. And believe me, that was a meal I didn’t want to miss.
The food in the kitchen was better than what they got in the dining room—especially Saturday lunch. When we finished eating, Hannah, the washerwoman, tipped her chair back on two legs and said, “That was a real Sunday dinner we had, even if it is only Saturday.”
I had never sat down with a black person before and I was a little shy of her at first. I had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin, so what was I going to say to someone whose grandmother had probably been a slave? But Hannah was easy to be around and a great storyteller. She even got Mrs. Morse to laugh about the summer people in the big houses in town; they seemed to think that the locals were deaf, blind, and too stupid to see that Father was drunk every night or young Miss was doing mo
re than just talking to the gardener.
After a few weeks, my arms and legs were stronger and I wasn’t dead tired at the end of the day, so one evening when the girls were playing charades, I changed clothes and went to join in. There were a lot of puzzled faces when I walked into the parlor, but once they figured out that I was the girl who washed the toilets, nobody would look me in the eye.
I don’t think they were being mean. If the cleaning girl had shown up for charades when I was a guest at Rockport Lodge, I probably would have done the same thing—more out of embarrassment than snobbery, I hope. There must have been someone doing the cleaning when I was there on vacation, but I can’t remember seeing her. To this day whenever I lay eyes on a chambermaid, I smile and say hello.
After that night, if there was music or a lecture I wanted to hear, I pulled up a chair on the porch and listened through the window. On quiet nights when it was really dark, Mrs. Morse gave me an oil lamp so I could sit out where it was cool and read a book.
A girl should always have her own money.
Where I grew up, it would have been bad manners to sit in a woman’s kitchen without asking about her children and her parents, her opinion of the neighbors—even her digestion. Mrs. Morse and I talked about the weather and what was on tomorrow’s menu and that was it.
But on Friday nights, when she stayed late to get ahead on the weekend baking, I watched her make bread, rolls, cakes, and cookies and she’d tell me how she came up with her recipes and why she used butter for some things and lard for others. She kept her eyes on the dough or the batter and chatted away like a different person—a happier person.
Mrs. Morse made pie for the girls the first week, but Miss Lettis decided it wasn’t fancy enough for the dining room, so she baked them just for us in the kitchen. I told Mrs. Morse I’d eat her pie three times a day if I could. She said, “Too much of a good thing can make you bilious.” But after that, she always gave me the biggest slice.
I knew Mrs. Morse liked me, even if she didn’t say so. She told me to get out of the lodge in the evening sometimes: “Go into town, have an ice cream, look in the shops. Lucy can show you around.” But Lucy was too young and silly and I told Mrs. Morse that I was saving my money.
She approved. “A girl should always have her own money so she’s never beholden to anyone.”
I said that was very modern of her, but she didn’t think so. “As far as I can tell, common sense hasn’t been in fashion for a long time.”
What I knew about Mrs. Morse—and it wasn’t much—came from Lucy, whose grandmother was a second cousin or something. I think everyone in Rockport was related to each other.
Her first name was Margaret and her husband had died when she was young. She had a son named George, who was a “disappointment.” But Lucy forgot to mention that Mrs. Morse had a sister named Elizabeth, who I met when she stopped by one Sunday afternoon after church.
I saw the resemblance right away: high foreheads, close-set gray eyes, and thick iron-gray hair. But Margaret Morse was round and mild, where Elizabeth Styles was thin and suspicious. She looked right over my head when I said, “Nice to meet you.”
I went outside so the two of them could talk in private, but Mrs. Styles was so deaf, I might as well have been sitting at the table with them.
She shouted, “I can’t believe you’re back here again.”
Mrs. Morse said, “It suits me,” and that she couldn’t afford to stop working.
Mrs. Styles thought she could do better in one of the big summer kitchens out on Eastern Point. But Mrs. Morse liked being in charge of her own kitchen and going home to her own bed at night. “And don’t worry about the money. I’m doing just fine.”
Mrs. Styles said, “I still don’t know how you stand it around here. All those foreigners would give me the willies.”
Mrs. Morse lowered her voice a little. “At first, I thought the Italians would steal. I was sure the Irish would smell bad, and I was a little afraid of the Jews. But, after all these years, I tell you some of them are nicer than Americans.”
“These days, they’re all trying to be flippers.”
“Flappers,” Mrs. Morse said. “Our mother would have fainted dead away to see all the leg they’re showing.”
Mrs. Styles said, “Mother would have taken a stick to them. Things were better back then.”
Mrs. Morse said she thought some things were better nowadays, but Mrs. Styles didn’t see it. Summer people had ruined the town and it was taking your life in your hands to cross the street what with all the automobiles. “And those bathing costumes? You can see all the way up to you-know-where. It’s terrible.”
Mrs. Morse said, “Well, there’s nothing you can do about it so why don’t I cut you a nice piece of chocolate cake?” She could fix almost anything with a piece of cake—or pie.
It’s not your problem, Addie.
On the hottest nights, when my room was stifling, I took my pillow and blanket to the porch and made a bed out of chairs and little tables. When you’re young you can sleep anywhere. One night when I was out there, the sound of the kitchen door woke me up. We never locked it and I figured that one of the upstairs girls had been gallivanting. But when I went inside for a glass of water, Mrs. Morse was holding on to the back of a chair, shaking all over, and there was blood on her mouth.
I made her sit down and ran a washcloth under cold water for her face. I asked if she wanted me to get Mrs. Lettis or her sister, but she shook her head. After we both calmed down, I did a pretty good imitation of Betty and ordered her to stay over and sleep in my bed. I took the biggest knife I could find and went back to the porch to keep watch.
I didn’t have to ask who had hurt her. Hannah said that Mrs. Morse’s son was mixed up with the rum-running going on all over Cape Ann. Canadian boats full of liquor would unload onto smaller boats off the coast, and the locals who ferried the stuff in made good money delivering booze to hoodlums who came up from Boston. Men like George Morse skimmed bottles to sell to the rich summer people, who never gave up their cocktails during Prohibition, but if too much went missing, well, those suppliers were very tough characters.
Mrs. Morse stayed in the kitchen the next day and kept her head down, so I was the only one who saw her swollen lip and the bruise on her jaw. She went home after supper but she was back with a valise after lights-out. She said she was going to sleep on the porch, but I knew she couldn’t risk Miss Lettis finding her. That woman was like a one-woman vice squad. The summer before, a girl had been sent home for drinking and another had eloped from the lodge so she was taking extra care to protect our reputation. No hanky-panky of any kind would be tolerated, which was the reason I could talk Mrs. Morse into staying in my room.
I camped out on the porch and when I heard someone walking toward the house, I ran inside. Mrs. Morse was waiting at the door and I begged her to go upstairs. She wasn’t having that. “You go. I’m going to take care of this.” I wasn’t going to win that argument so I went, but only as far as the dining room, where I could keep an eye on her.
She let him in when he started kicking the door. George Morse was an inch or two taller than his mother and broad in the shoulders, with big meaty hands that he clenched and unclenched like he was getting ready to punch someone. I could smell the booze on him from the other room.
They argued in whispers for a few minutes and then Mrs. Morse sank into a chair with her face turned away from George, who hung over her. “You know they’re going to kill me if I don’t get them the money. What do you need it for anyway? I know about your goddamn nest egg, so don’t tell me you don’t have any. You’re just a stingy old woman with one foot in the grave anyway. What kind of mother won’t save her son? Do you want to see me dead? Is that it? If you don’t give me that money, I’m going to burn down the house.”
When he grabbed her wrist, I ran into the kitchen and said, “Leave her a
lone.”
He looked me up and down and got a sickening look on his face. “Who is this little dish?”
I told him to get out or I’d call the police. He just laughed. “You’re not bad-looking. Maybe if you come outside and play patty-cake with me, I’ll let it go for tonight.”
Mrs. Morse said, “Let her be, George.”
He let go of her wrist and came toward me. “Come on, missy. I’ve got a little rum left. Or maybe you like wine? I can get that, too. I’m not a bad guy. Just got myself into a little jam.”
He was right up against me, breathing into my face. “Tell her, Ma. Tell her I’m a nice guy.”
But Mrs. Morse had gotten a knife and was behind him, jabbing him in the back. When he tried to turn around, she poked him hard enough to make him yelp. “I’ll run you through if I have to,” she whispered, using the knife to get him to the door. Before he left he said, “Next time I’ll bring my own knife and I won’t be so polite with your little friend.”
I didn’t realize how scared I was until he was gone. My voice squeaked when I said we should call the police but Mrs. Morse said it wouldn’t help; the rum runners and the cops were in cahoots.
I said, “So what are we going to do?”
She patted my hand. “It’s not your problem, Addie. Go to sleep now. I’m going to sit here a while.”
There was no sleeping that night. I kept hearing the awful things George had said to me and to his mother. I could still see the ugly look on his face and the bruise on Mrs. Morse’s jaw and it made me remember a woman from Levine’s factory who came to work every Monday morning with a black eye or a swollen lip. Everyone pretended not to see it and no one said a word, including me.
What could I say? “Call the police”? If they did come, they were gone after a few minutes. “Leave the bum”? How could she feed her children on her own?