Анита Диамант - The Boston Girl

In the dining room, there were six big oak tables all set with plates, glasses, silverware, and white cloth napkins—which I’d only ever seen in movies. Filomena pointed me to where Rose was sitting with Helen and Gussie Frommer. “See you later,” she said, and went to a table full of dark-haired girls who could have been her cousins.

Rose was sitting next to a pale, skinny girl with green eyes, carrot-colored hair, and a million freckles. Rose said, “This is my roommate, Irene Conley. She’s from Boston, too.” I said hello but Irene shrugged and looked right past me. Rose, who always had a smile on her face, glared at her. “Do you have a toothache or something?”

Irene shrugged again and crossed her arms.

Helen asked if I was settled in my room and did I need anything. She was like a mother hen, as nice as she was pretty, and that day she was wearing a pink shirtwaist that made her look like a flower. But when I started to say how good she looked, she stopped me. “Has my sister introduced you to everybody? Gussie is the mayor of Rockport Lodge.”

Gussie was plain as a brick but people liked her because she made them feel important. Whenever she met someone new, she wanted to know everything about them. Helen teased Gussie about her “cross-examinations” but it was flattering to be asked to talk about yourself. At my second Saturday Club meeting, Gussie got me in a corner and asked about school, my favorite movie stars, my family, and what I thought about the temperance movement. When I said I didn’t understand it very well, she explained how it was a good idea that couldn’t work.

Gussie never forgot a name or anything you told her. She would have made a great politician.

When she noticed me looking over at Filomena’s table, she said, “They’ve been friends forever. The Italians stick together, like everyone. The girls behind us all come from one club in Arlington. The table next to them is one hundred percent Irish. Sometimes there’s a Jewish bunch, but our table is like the Saturday Club, all mixed together.”

I said, “Like mixed nuts.”

Rose laughed. “I love that. We should call ourselves the Mixed Nuts—crazy enough to talk to anyone who talks to us.”

Gussie made a toast with her water glass. “To the Mixed Nuts.”

—

Before lunch, we met the women who were in charge of Rockport Lodge that year. Miss Holbrooke and Miss Case reminded me a little of Miss Chevalier and Miss Green. They were much younger and didn’t look anything like the Ediths, but they were smart and wore sensible shoes. And no lipstick.

Miss Holbrooke had on a pair of navy-blue bloomers that were so out of date it looked like she was wearing a costume. She had big, gray teeth and a long mane of coarse sandy-colored hair that made her look like a horse, and she wore a whistle around her neck on a string that hung straight down her chest. She was in charge of all the outside activities: lawn tennis, archery, croquet, visits to town and other “attractions” as she called it, and bicycling.

Miss Case was so blond that her eyebrows and eyelashes were practically invisible. She was smaller and quieter than Miss Holbrooke, but she was the boss. I remember she carried around a ledger book and held it out flat in front of her, like it was a desk.

Miss Case said that we would say grace before eating. Rose and Irene bowed their heads and folded their hands, but Gussie, Helen, and I sort of froze. Miss Case closed her eyes and thanked God for the food, for the people who gave money so we could enjoy the blessings of God’s green earth, for good health, and the United States, and that we owed it all to Jesus Christ.

I asked Gussie if they always did that.

“They always pray,” she said, “But I never heard anyone say that last part.” Jews never said “Jesus” or “Christ” out loud. We weren’t supposed to go inside a church, either. Like it was a contagious disease.

I actually didn’t think much about being Jewish as a kid. In my neighborhood, there were Jews and Italians and Irish and everyone got along pretty well. Sometimes the boys got into fights and some of it had to do with religion. But it was pretty much live and let live, as I remember it.

I got a little self-conscious when I saw Helen and Gussie take the ham out of their sandwiches and eat just bread with mustard.

But I was hungry and I ate the meat, and it wasn’t the first time. I was hungry a lot when I was young and I never turned down food—including things I knew were not kosher. Nothing bad ever happened to me and a lot of it was delicious. So I ate everything they put in front of me at Rockport Lodge. Except for the pickles. Who ever heard of a pickle that was sweet and soft? Feh .

—

After lunch, they sent everyone upstairs to put on shoes and hats to get ready for a hike. I didn’t have a dictionary so I asked Rose what a hike was.

She said, “Hiking is the same thing as walking, only hotter and twice as far as you want to go. But usually, you’re glad you went.”

I didn’t have a hat or another pair of shoes so I just went to wait on the porch. The only chairs out there were made out of wooden twigs woven together. I couldn’t believe something like that could be comfortable, which shows you what a greenhorn I was; all excited about a wicker chair.

Rockport Lodge was on the road between Gloucester and Rockport, but I only saw one car pass by. It was so quiet that I could hear the bees buzzing around the roses and a bird singing from far away. Someone upstairs called, “Has anyone seen my hairbrush?” In the kitchen, there was chopping. Every sound was separate—like framed pictures on a wall. I thought, Aha! This is what you call peace and quiet.

—

Rose came outside wearing an old straw hat and canvas shoes. Irene was with her, but it was obvious that she didn’t want to be there. Rose told me, “I promised if she came with me this one time, I wouldn’t bother her again.”

Miss Holbrooke brought a stack of newspapers and started folding them into three-cornered hats. She tried one on and some of the girls giggled. “I know it’s not à la mode, but I will not have any of you fainting from heatstroke on your first day.”

It turned out that the only girls without hats were Irene and me. She got stuck in one with advertisements for ladies’ corsets on all three sides. I was lucky: I only got the baseball scores.

Miss Holbrooke blew her whistle and said, “Away we go.” She had a loud, high voice that carried just as far as that whistle.

There were about twenty of us girls. We followed her through the orchard next to the lodge and onto a dirt road with fields planted in long rows on each side. Miss Holbrooke told us which were squash plants and which were corn, but she was even more interested in the stone walls. She called them relics. “An American Stonehenge, if you will.”

I looked it up later.

At the end of the road, we found ourselves right on the coast, looking straight out to sea. The sun was so bright on the water it was like staring at a million tiny mirrors.

I heard Irene whisper, “Holy mackerel.”

I whispered back, “Amen.”

She smiled in spite of herself, and you never saw a cuter pair of dimples.

—

Miss Holbrooke led us past a row of mansions, most of them with two or three balconies that faced the ocean. One of them had a fairy-tale turret. Rose sighed. “You’d never get me off that porch.”

We took a path around the back of Rockport and up a hill to Dogtown, which is a big woods right in the middle of Cape Ann, where Miss Holbrooke said she had something very special to show us.

The farther we got from the water, the hotter it was. I was wearing a long-sleeved shirtwaist and my shoes were pinching, so I hoped her special treat involved ice cream or lemonade.