her through the plate-glass windowsbecause the next thing she knew, he was standing next to her. You must be the model, he said.
Marie was sixteen years old and easily embarrassed. Oh no, Iâm just the student, she said. Al put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. But your waist is so small, youâve got to be the model, he insisted. Marie struggled between feeling flattered that an older man was paying attention to her and terrified that it was a form of attention she couldnât stop. Right at the point when she began worrying what was going to happen next, my mother walked in. Thereâs Ellen! she said and broke from Alâs weird hug. She ran over to my mother and told her what had happened, and my mother got her settled at her easel and then went outside and told Al that she didnât like what she had heard.
Aw, sheâs just a kid, sheâs so cute, Al said. I just wanted to hug her.
My mother told him that she didnât want anything like that to ever happen again. It was the last time she left Marie alone in the house with Al.
The studio was finished in mid-March, the day after Bessie Goldberg was murdered. There are photographs, however, of the studio with an open metal toolbox on the roof and an oak tree fully leafed out in the background. That means that some sort of work went on into May, though my motherâs memory is that Al was not involved. My motherâs memory is that the day after Bessie Goldberg was killed, Russ Blomerth took the photograph of his crew and my mother and me in the finished studio, and then Al left the job for good. The studio had a flagstone entry and a lovely winter garden that took in sunlight from the southwest through floor-to-ceiling French doors. It had a tile floor and big triangular windows in the eaves and a domed Plexiglas skylight that brightened the room even in midwinter. Along the south wall my mother set up her bigwooden easel, and along the east wall she had a worktable with a glass top on which she could mix her colors. Marie continued to come in the afternoons for lessons, and I have dim memories of her struggling with charcoal and paper while my mother simultaneously kept an eye on me and on her and got dinner going in the kitchen.
SEVEN
B ELMONT WAS CARVED in 1859 from lands formerly belonging to neighboring towns in an area of upland meadow and forest that once belonged to the Pequuset Indians. Early Belmont was a rugged little outpost laced with old Indian footpaths that connected the fields and boggy meadows where colonists grazed their cattle. Fish weirs were built on the Charles River, gravel operations were started in the numerous deposits of glacial till, and, in winter, ice was cut from the kettle ponds that had been left behind when the glaciers retreated from Massachusetts Bay thirteen thousand years ago. Belmont owed its existence as a modern town to a railroad that was built westward from Cambridge in the 1840s. Decades earlier a young Boston merchant named Frederick Tudor had started cutting ice out of a large glacier-formed pond called Fresh Pond and selling it to Bostonians. In order to sell ice all year round, Tudor started packing his ice in sawdust, and that worked so well that he was soon shipping Fresh Pond ice to the West Indies. The costs of moving so much ice byhorse and cart to the Boston waterfront were prohibitive, so Tudor built a railroad that was eventually extended to what was then known as Wellington Hill Station.
A village formed around the railway station, roads were built to the village, and newcomers built homes along the roads. Within a decade the community that had formed around Wellington Hill started clamoring for recognition. It was finally incorporated in 1859 and named after Bellmont, an English-style estate built by the townâs top taxpayer, John Cushing. With cool summer breezes on the hill, light industry on the flats, and a railroad line running straight into Boston, it became
Marie was sixteen years old and easily embarrassed. Oh no, Iâm just the student, she said. Al put his arm around her waist and pulled her close. But your waist is so small, youâve got to be the model, he insisted. Marie struggled between feeling flattered that an older man was paying attention to her and terrified that it was a form of attention she couldnât stop. Right at the point when she began worrying what was going to happen next, my mother walked in. Thereâs Ellen! she said and broke from Alâs weird hug. She ran over to my mother and told her what had happened, and my mother got her settled at her easel and then went outside and told Al that she didnât like what she had heard.
Aw, sheâs just a kid, sheâs so cute, Al said. I just wanted to hug her.
My mother told him that she didnât want anything like that to ever happen again. It was the last time she left Marie alone in the house with Al.
The studio was finished in mid-March, the day after Bessie Goldberg was murdered. There are photographs, however, of the studio with an open metal toolbox on the roof and an oak tree fully leafed out in the background. That means that some sort of work went on into May, though my motherâs memory is that Al was not involved. My motherâs memory is that the day after Bessie Goldberg was killed, Russ Blomerth took the photograph of his crew and my mother and me in the finished studio, and then Al left the job for good. The studio had a flagstone entry and a lovely winter garden that took in sunlight from the southwest through floor-to-ceiling French doors. It had a tile floor and big triangular windows in the eaves and a domed Plexiglas skylight that brightened the room even in midwinter. Along the south wall my mother set up her bigwooden easel, and along the east wall she had a worktable with a glass top on which she could mix her colors. Marie continued to come in the afternoons for lessons, and I have dim memories of her struggling with charcoal and paper while my mother simultaneously kept an eye on me and on her and got dinner going in the kitchen.
SEVEN
B ELMONT WAS CARVED in 1859 from lands formerly belonging to neighboring towns in an area of upland meadow and forest that once belonged to the Pequuset Indians. Early Belmont was a rugged little outpost laced with old Indian footpaths that connected the fields and boggy meadows where colonists grazed their cattle. Fish weirs were built on the Charles River, gravel operations were started in the numerous deposits of glacial till, and, in winter, ice was cut from the kettle ponds that had been left behind when the glaciers retreated from Massachusetts Bay thirteen thousand years ago. Belmont owed its existence as a modern town to a railroad that was built westward from Cambridge in the 1840s. Decades earlier a young Boston merchant named Frederick Tudor had started cutting ice out of a large glacier-formed pond called Fresh Pond and selling it to Bostonians. In order to sell ice all year round, Tudor started packing his ice in sawdust, and that worked so well that he was soon shipping Fresh Pond ice to the West Indies. The costs of moving so much ice byhorse and cart to the Boston waterfront were prohibitive, so Tudor built a railroad that was eventually extended to what was then known as Wellington Hill Station.
A village formed around the railway station, roads were built to the village, and newcomers built homes along the roads. Within a decade the community that had formed around Wellington Hill started clamoring for recognition. It was finally incorporated in 1859 and named after Bellmont, an English-style estate built by the townâs top taxpayer, John Cushing. With cool summer breezes on the hill, light industry on the flats, and a railroad line running straight into Boston, it became
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