It was still unusual for women to smoke in those days, at least for any of the women I knew, so I asked if her family minded about the cigarettes.
Leslie answered as if being an orphan was a little detail, like losing her keys. “My parents died when I was a baby. My uncle has taken care of me ever since; wonderful man and devoted to me. He’ll be back next week.
“But it’s so perfect that you’re here now. Uncle Martin bought a potting wheel and a kiln a few months ago. He lost interest after ten minutes, as usual, but the whole kit and caboodle is sitting out back, and I hope you don’t mind, Filomena, dear, but would you give the studio a once-over? A friend is coming up this afternoon. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? Robert Morelli? He works mostly in bronze, but he mucks around with clay, too.”
Filomena was on her feet. “I’d be glad to.”
“It’s out the side door through the kitchen, to the left,” Leslie said. “Do you want me to show you the way?”
“We’ll find it,” said Filomena. “Come on, Addie.”
When we got outside I said, “What a character.”
Filomena was furious. “She’s horrible. Did you hear how she talked about Miss Green? Who ever heard of Leslie Parker? And what a chatterbox. I thought she’d never shut up.”
The “studio” was nothing but a shed, a ten-foot-square wooden box so stuffy and dusty that we both sneezed when Filomena opened the door. She peeked into barrels of clay and looked over the tools and dried sponges. “Most of these have never been used.”
When she took the cover off the potter’s wheel, she gasped. “It’s brand-new.” She pushed the stone disk and it started spinning. “Miss Green hires men to work the wheels and the kiln; I’ve never even touched one of these before.”
Leslie poked her face through the door and asked, “What’s the verdict?”
Filomena said, “I’d kill for the chance to work here.”
“Exactly whom would you kill?” Leslie said. “Don’t answer that. Do you think the place is up to snuff?”
“It seems fine, but you should make sure the lids on those barrels are tight; it would be a shame for all that clay to go to waste.”
Leslie thanked Filomena and told her to use the place all she wanted. “Don’t be a stranger.”
When we were walking back to the lodge, I said, “Leslie really rubbed you the wrong way, didn’t she?”
“Don’t tell me that you liked her?”
I waved an imaginary cigarette and tried to imitate her voice. “You have to admit she was entertaining.”
“She is so full of herself. And she has that whole house to herself while my sister is raising five kids in two rooms. Not to mention all that equipment going to waste. It’s not fair!”
So I told her to go and use the studio. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“I can’t think of anyone stranger than her,” she said. “Besides, I didn’t believe a single word she said.”
—
The next day was rainy and cool, which meant we were stuck inside. Filomena said, “I hope they won’t make us play charades all day.” She hated games.
At breakfast, Miss Case came to our table and handed Filomena a thick envelope. “This just arrived,” she said quietly. “I hope it’s not bad news.” We ran upstairs to open it in private, but the only thing inside was a pencil sketch of a bird.
“What is that supposed to be?” I asked.
“It’s a sketch of something I made yesterday when I was fooling around with a piece of clay. I meant to put it back in the barrel.”
“Did Leslie do it?”
Filomena pointed at the initials in the corner: R.M.
“Let’s go meet him,” I said. “We’re not going to do much in this weather and I promise to protect you from Leslie.”
The front door was closed but it opened the second I knocked, as if someone had been waiting for us.
He needed a shave, there was powdery white dust all over his clothes, and his hair was starting to go gray. But he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in person.
He shook Filomena’s hand and said, “You must be Filomena, daughter of light, virgin martyr, protector of all innocents.” He smiled a movie-star smile. “Don’t look so surprised. It was my grandmother’s name.”
He took my hand next. “You must be Addie. Leslie tells me you’re very deep, which means she didn’t let you get a word in edgewise so she has no idea who you are.”
He introduced himself as Bob Morelli and said Leslie had gone to town for burnt sienna and bread and would be back soon. “But come to the shed in the meantime; I want to show you something.”
The place had been aired out and every inch dusted and scrubbed. The tools were clean and laid out in a straight line, and a little sculpture of a bird—the one from the drawing—was on the window ledge, sitting on a nest made of fine clay threads.
Filomena picked it up. “No eggs?”
“You didn’t make a papa bird,” he said. “She’s waiting for him.”
She stared at him for a moment and shrugged.
“What’s that?” she asked and pointed to the wet burlap bag sitting on the pottery wheel. Morelli lifted it and said, “Just don’t tell me a six-year-old could have made it.”
That’s exactly what I would have said. It was a bowl, I guess, smooth and round at the bottom but square and off-kilter on top.
He ran his thumb around the edge. “It’s supposed to look rustic. The Japanese don’t always insist on symmetry. Sometimes they fire things so they look scorched.”
Filomena seemed offended. “I am not familiar with Japanese art.”
“Yes you are! Some of Edith Green’s lines are very japonais. And they share a kind of serenity, I think.”
She said, “I think what we do is beautiful.”
“Of course it is,” he said. “Leslie doesn’t know her ass from her elbow when it comes to ceramics. She might turn out to be a decent painter someday—not great, but good. The kid’s only twenty, after all. How old are you, if I may ask?”
“You’re not supposed to ask,” she said and then she told him she was “going to be twenty-one.”
“Miss Gallinelli. Unwed, twenty years old, and traipsing around on your own, hmmm,” he said. “That means your parents are dead and you don’t have any brothers.”
Filomena laughed. “I guess you really are Italian.”
He said, “What can I say to make you like me?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How old are you?”
“I’m going to be thirty-five. An old man.”
“Still unmarried?”
“My wife and I no longer live together.”
Filomena closed her hand around the little clay bird and crushed it.
He said, “Ouch.”
I wasn’t sure what was going on and tried to think of something to say. Luckily, Leslie barged in with a bunch of overstuffed string bags. “The gang’s all here,” she said. “Bob told me I was all wet about your pottery, Filomena. How did he put it? ‘Will withstand the test of time.’ Unlike my pitiful efforts—he didn’t come right out and say that, but I know what he thinks.”
A loaf of bread fell on the floor and Leslie spilled a bag of peaches as she went to pick them up. “I got us some lunch,” she said. “But don’t get your hopes up. I’ll just be opening some cans, as usual.”
“I’ll help,” Filomena said, but Morelli put his hand on her elbow. “Wouldn’t you like a try at the wheel?”
“Come on, Addie,” Leslie said. “Let’s let them play in the mud. We’ll make our own fun.”
And I did have fun. Right off, Leslie talked me into trying on a pair of pants, which is all she seemed to own. It turned out to be much more than playing dress-up. When I put them on, my whole body felt different and I wanted to see what it could do. I
took giant steps around the room and sat cross-legged and rolled around on the floor. I ended up in front of a mirror.
I never wanted to take them off, and it wasn’t just the physical feeling. I told Leslie, “It makes me want to try riding a bicycle and ice skating and all kinds of things.”
She asked what other kind of things. And do you know what popped out of my mouth? “I’d go to college.”
She asked if I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse or something like that.
I said, “I’m not sure what I want to do.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll figure it out when you’re there,” she said, as if going to college were as easy as walking into town.
When I told her I hadn’t even finished high school, she said, “You know the Ayer School? Uncle Martin could put in a word if I asked.”
Ayer was a girls’ prep school in Boston. “I doubt they’d be interested in a Jewish girl.”
She said, “Oh dear. I thought Baum was German. Not that it matters a bit to me. I have loads of friends who are . . . why, half of the instructors at the Art Institute in New York are . . .” she stopped. It wasn’t polite to use the word Jew back then. So she said, “There must be other places.”
“There’s Simmons College,” I said. “They even accept the Irish, if you can imagine.”
That got her back up. “Don’t try to pin that kind of snobbery on me. There are lots of reasons women don’t go to college—if they’re Irish or Hottentot or whatever. Nobody gives a damn if a girl goes—in fact, it’s easier not to. But that shouldn’t stop someone who’s prancing around in trousers and telling her innermost thoughts to a complete stranger.”
—
When Morelli and Filomena came in to wash up, she laughed at the sight of me in Leslie’s pants. I said, “Leslie thinks someday all women are going to wear them.”
Morelli said, “The serious potters already do.”
Leslie brought out a tray with peaches, crackers, and boiled eggs, but Filomena was too excited to eat. “It was so hard at first,” she said. “I made some colossal messes, and one of them flew off the wheel and all the way across the room. I was ready to give up but Bob wouldn’t let me. And then, just like that, I got the hang of it and he’s going to fire the last little bowl I made.”
He said, “She’s a quick study.”
She said, “He’s a good teacher.”
They seemed more relaxed with each other. He wasn’t staring at her anymore and she couldn’t stop talking about the feeling of clay spinning between her hands. Maybe I’d been wrong to think they’d been flirting. Besides, Filomena was too smart to fall for a married man.
Morelli stood up and walked to the balcony door. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
Filomena picked at the clay under her fingernails, brushed the dust off her skirt, cleared her throat, and followed him outside.
“Love is in the air,” said Leslie.
I said, “But he’s married!”
She shrugged. “The wife is crazy as a bedbug—a real nightmare. They’ve been separated for years but he won’t divorce her because of the little boy. Bob is the last of a dying breed—a true gentleman.”
I couldn’t believe she was talking about adultery as if it was no big deal. As if Filomena wouldn’t get her heart broken—or worse.
When they came inside, I said it was time we got back to the lodge.
Instead of answering me, Filomena turned to Morelli, who looked at his watch and said, “I have to go into town to make the telephone call I told you about.”
Then she said, “Okay, Addie, let’s go.”
Filomena was silent on the way back so I rattled on about what it was like wearing pants and my conversation with Leslie about college. “I know you don’t like her,” I said, “but she’s not such a bad egg.”
When we got to the porch, Filomena stopped before we went inside and said she was going back later. “And tomorrow, too. I don’t need another hike through Dogtown.”
But the next day wasn’t a hike; it was a schooner sail around Cape Ann and we had talked about how much fun that would be.
Filomena just shrugged.
“He’s married,” I said.
“What does that have to do with me studying with him?”
I wanted to shake her and tell her not to be a fool and that it was going to end badly. I wanted to say, do you think he really cares about your pottery? Why can’t you see he’s a wolf, too, just like Harold Weeks?
But all of that stayed inside my head. What I said—and it came out sounding prudish and angry—was “What are you going to tell Miss Case?”
Her answer was just as chilly. “I am not going to miss the chance to learn from a master.”
It was awful. We never talked to each other like that, so I tried to lighten things up. “I suppose it doesn’t hurt that the teacher looks like Rudolph Valentino.”
Filomena didn’t think it was funny. “I know what I’m doing.”
—
I didn’t see much of her for the rest of the week. She left before breakfast and didn’t get back until right before the door was locked. There was one night she didn’t come back at all. I worried about her but mostly I was mad.
I had been looking forward to staying up late and talking—and so had she. We never ran out of conversation, and even when we talked about other people, it was never gossip. I always felt I understood myself better after we spent time together. And the way she laughed at my wisecracks and thanked me for my opinions made me think maybe I was as smart and funny as she said I was.
But she had chosen to be with Morelli instead of me.
I suppose I was more hurt than angry, but I walked around in such a foul mood, Irene handed me a bottle of Lydia Pinkham’s and said, “I figure you’re either constipated or you have cramps.”
“You don’t think this stuff works, do you?” I asked.
“Whatever’s bothering you, there’s enough spirits in there to cheer you up.”
I decided not to waste the rest of my vacation stewing about Filomena and threw myself into everything: lawn tennis, croquet, cards, charades, you name it. The only thing I didn’t do was go to the dance; I told everyone I had a terrible headache that night.
After Filomena disappeared, there was a lot of whispering and staring at our table. Gussie moved the empty chair—Filomena’s—and we sat closer together and acted as if nothing had changed. Someone saw Filomena walking with Morelli on Main Street and Miss Case stopped talking to any of the Mixed Nuts, as if it was our fault.
We didn’t talk about Filomena among ourselves until Friday morning, when Rose said, “Do you think there’s a chance she’ll show up for the banquet tonight?”
Gussie said, “I don’t know if she has that much brass.”
Irene said, “I bet she’d come if Addie asked her.”
Helen chimed in. “Would you?”
They were all looking at me when Rose said, “You know, Helen is getting married this year, so it would be the last time with all of us together at the lodge.”
I couldn’t say no to that and the truth was, I was glad for an excuse to see her.
Leslie’s door was open, so I walked in and found Filomena and Morelli sitting on one of the couches. Her head was on his shoulder and he was running his hand through her hair. He said, “Hello, Addie.”
I had never seen Filomena’s hair unbraided and loose like that, and it was as if she was naked. I kept my eyes on the wall behind her and asked if she was coming to the final banquet tonight. “The girls wanted me to ask you. Rose, especially.”
I looked at Morelli. “There’s a singing contest and skits.”
“It sounds like fun,” he said.
“It’s childish, but we enjoy it,” I said. “I’d better go; lots to do before tonight.”
Filom
ena gathered her hair and stood up. “I’m coming with you.”
She offered Morelli her hand. “Goodbye, Bob. I can’t begin to thank you.”
He drew her fingers to his lips and kissed them slowly, one at a time. I had never seen anything so sexy or so sad.
And then she ran out of there like she was late for a train.
—
Filomena didn’t touch her dinner and went upstairs before I read my poem. I didn’t get back to the room until late and she was already asleep.
In the morning, I found a note on her pillow and I remember every word because I counted them—all fourteen.
Dear Addie,
I’m taking the early train. I’ll see you soon.
Your friend,
Filomena
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Levine changed his business from ladies’ shirtwaists to men’s shirts. Mostly he sold local but some of his customers were Jewish shopkeepers in the South. The day he got a typewritten order from a small town in Alabama, he decided that sending out handwritten bills made him look small-time. So he bought a secondhand typewriter to keep up and told me I should take a class so I could use it “professionally.”
Typing was not what I had in mind for my first night school class, but it was a good thing to know and it meant a night out of the house without an argument. Even better, there was an English class that met right afterward.
The typing class was in a cramped room with a low ceiling on the basement floor of the high school I should have graduated from. All twenty seats were filled, and except for two American girls, the rest were daughters of immigrants like me.
The teacher was Miss Powder, a tall, skinny lady—I couldn’t tell if she was twenty-five or forty-five. She stood up straight as a broomstick all the way to her hair, which was pulled into a tight little bun on top of her head.
Before we even touched the machines, she talked like she expected us to be a disappointment. “None of you will take this advice seriously, but there is nothing more important for the typist than hand position and posture.” She said, “An erect spine translates into accuracy on the page. Slouching is slovenly. Also men will make certain assumptions about the kind of girl who slouches.”
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