Authors: Anita Diamant
It pays to be nice. She took the story and said her mother started working when she was eleven years old. “She still gets sad when she talks about leaving school. I’ll put it on the editor’s desk myself.”
When I went back a week later, the same girl handed it back to me. She said she was sorry. “I told you they don’t publish unknowns.”
Katherine said rejection was part of the business and to try
The Nation,
where she knew one of the editors. It was published two weeks later. I opened and closed that magazine over and over for the thrill of seeing my name on that page:
By Addie Baum.
I’d never been prouder of anything.
I sent a copy to Aaron—special delivery, no less. Irene and Joe were very impressed and asked what I was going to write next. Gussie bought a dozen copies and said she always knew I had it in me.
Katherine took me out for dinner to celebrate and Miss Chevalier called to ask if I would speak at one of her Sunday afternoon gatherings. “I seem to remember that you can be very effective in front of an audience.”
I wanted to show it to my family. Betty would have made a huge fuss and told everyone in the neighborhood and all of her clubs and organizations. Even my parents might have been impressed. Maybe. But since I didn’t know how to explain how I knew about Martha without mentioning Aaron, I decided to wait.
I was walking on air all week and I guess I didn’t hide my feelings very well because Betty asked if I’d met someone, Eddy told me I looked pretty, and my mother said, “Since when do you whistle?”
I was in such a fog that when Mort said he wanted to talk to me in his office, I thought he was going to give me a raise. But when he pointed at the chair across from his desk, I knew I was in trouble. Sitting down in there was never a good sign.
Mort’s face was usually easy to read, but not that time. He said Cornish had seen my story in
The Nation
and sent it to the owner of the
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“What were you thinking, Addie?” Mort said. “You must have read the paper’s editorials against the amendment—a plot against states’ rights and the sanctity of the family and all that. This was like spitting in the owner’s eye. I was upstairs all afternoon getting my ass handed to me.”
I told him I never meant to get anyone in trouble, especially him.
“I’ll be all right, but it took some doing to talk him out of firing Katherine Walters. I told him she didn’t know a thing about it and I never want to know otherwise, you understand?”
I apologized. I asked if there was anything I could do. Would it help if I wrote the owner and told them it was completely my fault?
Mort shook his head. “Why the hell did you have to use your own name? If you’d signed it Sally Smith, you could have made your point and we wouldn’t be sitting here. I thought you were smarter than that.”
He looked like his dog had just died.
“I have no choice, Addie. I have to let you go.”
This is Auntie Addie’s fella.
I didn’t tell them at home I’d been fired. Betty would push for the details and Levine would tell me to come work for him again. Most of all, I didn’t want to see the “I’m not surprised” look on my mother’s face.
The next morning, I left the house at the usual time as if it were a regular workday. First I went to the telegraph office to let Aaron know not to send any more letters to the newspaper. Then I went to see Gussie about her offer to help me get another job. It was so early, her office was still locked. I leaned against the wall in the hallway to wait and I guess I closed my eyes because the next thing I knew, she was next to me. “Addie, what’s wrong? Did somebody die?”
Gussie asked me if I wanted an aspirin or a cup of tea. I kept telling her I was okay but she said she was getting me a glass of water, which was good because it gave me a minute to take in the decor.
Did I already tell you about how Gussie dressed? Boxy suits, flat shoes, no lipstick. But her office looked like the powder room at the Ritz. There were embroidered pillows on all the chairs and pictures of flowers on the walls. Even the lampshade on her desk was pink. It was hard to keep a straight face when she came back and asked what was going on. This being Gussie, it turned into a real cross-examination. She was up-to-date about the story I’d written, but I hadn’t said much about Aaron other than how we’d met and that we were writing letters to each other. Since Gussie saw Betty at Hadassah meetings, I didn’t want her spilling the beans before I did. It’s not that Gussie was a gossip, but sometimes she got excited.
When I finished telling her the whole story, she let me have it. Her feelings were hurt. She was mad that I didn’t trust her. What did I think friends were for, anyway?
And then, before I could say I was sorry, she asked if I wanted to start working right away for a lawyer down the hall. One of his secretaries had sprained her wrist and he was in a jam.
That was Gussie in a nutshell: full of herself
and
ready to give you the shirt off her back.
I started working for the lawyer that morning, and even though typing contracts and letters was not nearly as interesting as newspaper work, I made a lot more money for fewer hours than I had at the
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There was a phone on my desk at the lawyer’s, and Gussie called every few hours to see how I was doing and to tell me what she was up to. She had done the same thing when I was at the newspaper until I said I’d get fired if she didn’t stop.
Gussie loved the telephone like nobody else. She had one at home as well as in her office, and whenever a new model came out she bought it. She said everyone was going to have a telephone sooner or later, but not soon enough for her.
Betty and Levine had a phone at home, too, though I think they only used it to talk to each other during the day. Nobody ever called at night, so when Betty came downstairs and said there was a call for me, I knew it had to be Gussie.
But she didn’t call to tell me about an idea she just had or to ask if I wanted to have lunch with her tomorrow. She had a message from Katherine Walters, who wanted me to go to her apartment after work the next day. Before she hung up Gussie said, “And afterward, you are going to tell me everything she says.”
I was praying that Katherine had a letter from Aaron and when she opened the door with an envelope in her hand, I did a little dance. “You’ll notice I didn’t open it,” she said, “but I was tempted.”
Aaron was on his way home. He had to stop in Washington to pack but he would be in Boston as soon as possible. “Two weeks tops.” The letter was postmarked almost a week earlier, which meant he could be home any moment. It also meant he left before he got my wire about being fired.
I let Katherine read the letter. She said she couldn’t wait to meet him and she had some other news for me. “I didn’t want you hearing it from anyone but me.”
Cornish had caught her in the mailroom with Aaron’s letter to Miss Cavendish. “When he told me to hand it over, I stuffed it down the front of my dress, wished him a lovely day, and quit.”
I was horrified. “I made you lose your job?”
Katherine said I had nothing to do with it. “It was just a matter of time before he fired me and I was more than ready to go.” She said that helping me with the child labor story had made it hard for her to keep writing about hats and hairdos.
“Especially with everything going on these days, I need to do something important. The Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee needs a person who doesn’t sound like a maniac to talk to the newspapers. Someone like me.”
Even though Katherine kept saying she was glad to leave the
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, I felt responsible and working for the Sacco-Vanzetti group could be dangerous. They had just lost an appeal for a new trial and there had been a bombing. Some of the hotheads were talking like bombs were a good thing.
I did a lot of worrying after that. How was Katherine going to manage? What if the child labor people roped Aaron into staying in Washington again? What if Aaron was hit by a car?
I was sitting in my room driving myself crazy when Betty came downstairs and said there was another telephone call for me. “If this keeps up, you’re going to have to start paying me to be your secretary.”
But when I got there, the phone was on the hook.
Betty yelled, “Herman, I’m back.”
He yelled back, “I’m coming.” But it was Aaron who walked in.
First I was speechless. Then I said, “Why are you here?”
He laughed, “Why do you think?” I started crying and we held each other until I pulled away and looked at him. “It really is you.”
Then he got all teary-eyed and I laughed.
Levine and Betty and the boys watched our big reunion and Eddy said, “Is Auntie Addie sad or happy?”
Betty said, “She’s very happy. This is Auntie Addie’s fella.”
Aaron put his arm around my shoulder and made it official. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to be her husband.”
Betty shrieked and grabbed me. Levine shook Aaron’s hand and poured the last drops out of a secret bottle of whiskey. Prohibition wasn’t over yet. He lifted his glass: “Mazel tov and may you be as happy together as me and my bride.”
What’s his name?
Betty thought the whole thing with Aaron was so romantic, she wasn’t even mad that I hadn’t told her sooner, and she decided a Friday night supper at her place was the best place to introduce him to our parents. She told Mameh that Levine was bringing a young man, the brother of someone he knew from business. “A lawyer,” Betty said. “Herman thinks he’s a catch.”
Just as those words were coming out of her mouth, Eddy walked into the kitchen and said, “Are you talking about Uncle Aaron? He promised to play stickball next time he’s here.” If Betty had been the kind of mother who smacked her kids, he would have gotten it, but she changed the subject and just told him to go outside.
My mother was not going to ignore the fact that we had been sneaking around behind her back. So Aaron started with one strike against him.
It wasn’t so easy with Papa either, not after he heard that Aaron’s family belonged to Temple Israel. “That’s a church, not a shul. I wouldn’t step a foot in the place.”
“You already did,” I said. “It’s where Betty got married.”
“Once was enough.”
Jake was the one who softened Papa up a little. My father was tutoring him for his bar mitzvah, which was probably the first time the two of them spent more than a minute together. Papa said Jake was smart and a serious student and Jake started calling him Rav Baum. So when Jake said Aaron was a good guy, it counted for something.
I wasn’t looking forward to that dinner. I was going to marry Aaron no matter what my parents said. I didn’t want them to hate him, but I was probably more worried what he would think of them. You never marry just one person; you get the whole family as part of the deal.
As soon as Aaron arrived, Betty made us go right to the table—no chitchat. She lit candles and Papa made kiddush with one eye on Aaron to see if he knew when to join in; he did. After we passed around the challah, and they schmoozed a little, he told Aaron that he spoke a good Yiddish.
But Mameh looked at him like he was a sick cow someone was trying to trick her into buying. She shook her head when she saw him pick up his spoon with his left hand and she winced when he unfolded his napkin and put it on his lap. To her, left-handed people were dishonest or unlucky or both, and doing anything but wiping your mouth with a napkin was putting on airs.
She even smirked at his bow tie, which he had bought to make a good impression.
Betty did her best to build him up. “Papa, did you know that Aaron’s first cousin is a big doctor at Beth Israel Hospital?”
Levine said, “And his brother is a very successful attorney.”
Mameh pretended she hadn’t heard any of that and asked Betty, “
Vas iz zaneh nahmin?
What’s his name? Where does he work?” As if Aaron hadn’t been talking in Yiddish to Papa since he got there.
Levine said, “Michael Metsky is one of the biggest real estate lawyers in town. Very successful. We’ve had dealings with him.”
Mameh shrugged. “That’s the brother.”
Aaron laughed but I wanted to scream. Wasn’t her whole purpose in life to get me married to someone exactly like him?
I went to the kitchen to make coffee and calm down. When I got back, Aaron was on the floor and playing tiddlywinks with the boys.
Betty said, “Look how good he is with children. He’ll be a wonderful father.”
To no one in particular my mother said, “They all think I’m stupid.”
From as long as I could remember, Mameh talked to herself under her breath. She muttered spells to ward off the evil eye and kvetched about how Betty never made the tea hot enough. But her hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be, so she didn’t whisper anymore and that time you could have heard her from the other room.
“He didn’t eat a thing. What’s the matter with him? Her meat was a little dry, but nobody makes better carrots than me. When you visit someone, you eat.”
Betty tried to shush her, but Mameh didn’t notice. “She turns up her nose at a man who owns a store? This one doesn’t even have a job.”
Eddy said, “Bubbie, why are you talking to the saltshaker?”
That seemed to wake her up. She said. “Come eat your compote.”
Aaron said, “Mrs. Baum, my father owns a hardware store and I worked there when I was growing up. But Pop wanted us to go to college. I think he was hoping for doctors or maybe pharmacists, but he says he’s proud of his lawyers anyway.”
Betty said, “Aaron’s sister is going to law school, too.”
“A lawyer is not a job for a woman,” Mameh snapped. Then she pointed at Aaron and said, “Young man, eat the fruit at least.”
I walked Aaron outside and made excuses for the meat—it really was dry—and for my mother. But he thought it all went well.
“Your father was nice to me. Betty and your brother-in-law are in our corner and their boys are terrific. Eight out of nine ain’t bad. And maybe if I clean my plate next time, your mother will come around, too.”
Aaron never gave up on people. Sometimes it drove me crazy, but it’s a good way to live.
—
The next Saturday, we all were invited to Aaron’s family for supper. Betty promised that Mameh would behave. “She was probably nervous about meeting him, and anyway, everyone is more polite in someone else’s house.”
We squeezed into Levine’s car to get to Brookline. You remember that house, don’t you? Around the corner from where JFK was born?
The front yard at the Metskys’ was like nothing else on the street. There was no grass, just flower beds and roses climbing up the porch like the ones at Rockport Lodge.
The flowers were Mildred Metsky’s doing. She was Aaron’s stepmother and the opposite of evil stepmothers in the fairy tales. Murray Metsky married her five years after Aaron’s mother died, and the three kids were as devoted to “Mom” as she was to them.
She opened the door and hugged us like we were long-lost cousins. The Metskys were all big huggers: Aaron, his father, and his sister, Rita. Even his brother, Michael, who was kind of stiff, put his arms around each of us. My mother looked like she was being licked by cats, and she hated cats.
When we sat down to eat dinner, which they didn’t call supper, Mameh asked the name of the kosher butcher where Mildred Metsky had bought the meat. She’d never heard of the place and leaned over to Papa and whispered in a voice that everyone could hear, “It smells funny, no?” Aaron said, “That’s rosemary, Mrs. Baum. Mom grows all kinds of herbs in the backyard.”
Mameh said, “So, herbs and flowers. Me, I grow cabbages and potatoes. Things you can eat.”
Thank God, Mildred didn’t understand a lot of Yiddish.
Rita and Mildred gushed over the boys, which was all Betty ever wanted to hear. Levine and Michael figured out they knew a lot of the same people. Murray and my father went outside and smoked cigars. Aaron and I held hands under the table.
When Mildred put out coffee and cake, Murray stood up and made a speech about how happy they were that Aaron had found me. “When he went off to Washington, I was afraid he’d find a girl from there and never come back. When he went to Minnesota, I worried he’d meet a girl there and she wouldn’t want to leave her family.”
He said they liked me not only because I was a Boston girl but also because Aaron was so happy and I was so lovely and my father was a chacham, a scholar, and the boys were extraordinary. Murray shook his finger at me and gave me one of those “naughty-naughty” looks. “These boys only need some cousins to play with.”
I swore I would never embarrass my own children like that. And I never did—at least not in public.
When it was time to go, the Metskys started again with the hugging, which took a while, because everyone had to hug everyone else. It was as if they thought we might crash into an iceberg and disappear on the way back to Roxbury.
My mother hated all the “grabbing.” When we were back in the car she said, “It feels like they’re trying to pick my pocket.” It was strange for me, too, but I got used to it.
Remember when I used to chase you and your sister around the house to get my daily minimum requirement of hugs? I said if I didn’t get one hundred hugs I would float up into the sky like Mary Poppins and you would never see me again. We stopped playing that game when you started school, but we never stopped hugging.