The infamous grapevine. Too often a day late and a dollar short. To be exact, it was three years too late before Craig heard the news from a friend who happened to mention her death in a text message, while informing him of a more recent death.
Afterward, he looked up the obituary in the Boston Herald. Brenda, a woman he dated long ago, died in an assisted living facility, just two streets away from where she lived most of her life after college. He later learned she died alone, without a partner, close relatives, or friends at her side when her time came. The first thing what crossed his mind was she died an old maid.
The next thing he thought was, Who uses that term today? Growing up in a different era, he remembers how older single women who never married were referred to as spinsters or, worse, old maids. It was a term you heard from the older generation of grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Craig couldn’t remember the last time he heard the term, not lately and certainly from no one in his age group.
Although Craig no longer lived in Boston, it was where he spent much of his professional career, so he often checked the newspaper’s online edition to peruse the headlines and the obits. It’s a routine that becomes a habit after a person reaches a certain age. Checking the obits to see which old friends and others he knew died.
Craig met Brenda at a jazz concert one night at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge. He had recently relocated to Boston to work at a publishing house. By coincidence, Brenda managed a bookshop in Cambridge. They hit it off immediately, and one date led to another. During that time, Brenda didn’t speak much about her family life, only that she grew up in Baltimore, where her father worked at the Bethlehem Shipyard from WWII until he retired. She described her mother as a homemaker and mentioned a sister, but little more than that.
After high school, Brenda moved to Boston to attend Boston State College, intending to become a teacher after graduation. But once she graduated from the college, she spent the summer working two jobs to save enough money to travel to Europe. Before she left, she and two girlfriends traveled to Woodstock in a beat up VW to attend the legendary rock festival. She traveled in Europe for a few months before she found a job at an expat bar in Paris and stayed for a year before returning to Boston.
Initially, Brenda shared an apartment in Somerville with two college friends. She found jobs working in small retail shops during the day and waitressing at night. Tall and Nordic looking, Brenda attracted men like a magnet. You rarely saw her without a man at her side. That changed when she met Thomas Winthrop, who everyone called Tom, despite his old-money New England heritage. Tom was a rugged six-footer, with a wild mane of shaggy brown hair and full beard. He was multitalented, who earned a living freelancing as a writer and reporter, as well as doing voiceovers for radio commercial spots. On top of that, he was a skilled carpenter and builder, who helped family and friends with home renovations and related tasks.
Brenda had never met a man like Tom. He swept her off her feet by just being his cheerful self. Before she knew it, they were living together and moved into a roomy and affordable second floor tenement in Somerville, within a reasonable walking distance to Harvard Square and the Redline T- station.
When Tom heard the landlord was thinking about selling the property to move to Florida, he convinced Brenda that they’d probably never have an opportunity to buy a home close to Cambridge at the current asking price. They told the landlord they’d pay the asking price, managed to combine their savings for the down payment, and became homeowners. They also became landlords the day their former landlord moved to Florida. The rent helped pay their mortgage as well as toward the property tax and upkeep. Tom also had a plan to convert part of the basement and the attic into two additional apartments, which would allow them added income.
Meanwhile, they both became active in the community and became part of a group of local writers, artists, and other creatives who couldn’t afford to live in Cambridge, or even on the dark side of Beacon Hill, as some residents there referred to that neighborhood. The Somerville Starving Artists Collective, or SAC, organized events, which promoted the work of it members at exhibitions in galleries, coffeehouse readings, and the like, as well as raised funds for scholarships and grants. Even though neither Brenda nor Tom were creatives, they supported the arts in any way they could.
Brenda’s job at the bookstore provided an opportunity for her to announce SAC’s events with a strategically placed poster in the store on in the front window. The bookstore also sponsored poetry readings, book signings, and related activities.
As relationships too often do, juggling life’s challenges creates conflicts that interfere with individual interests, desires, and time. Brenda and Tom began to drift apart. They were comfortable and honest enough with each other to discuss their differences rationally and calmly. They agreed to go their separate ways while still sharing the house they bought together. Tom moved into the basement and worked in his spare time to convert the attic into a spacious apartment, which would add to their joint income.
Brenda resumed dating other men, but the relationships rarely endured for more than a few months, as Craig discover himself when he dated her. That relationship began in late fall and ended in early spring. She said she felt as if their relationship began in dazzling technicolor with quadraphonic sound but devolved into an old monotone B&W film.
As Craig quietly contemplated Brenda’s death, he wondered for the first time whether Brenda used the same words when she broke up with other men. Did she feel claustrophobic and trapped in any relationship that threatened to become permanent, that a man might propose to her? Her time living together with Tom and buying the house together was the perhaps the closest she ever came to a semblance of married life.
Whether she intentionally ended her relationships or not, there was a forlorn irony to her life. She died alone and, as people once said, an old maid.
I had a one-time date with a guy after college- he was devastatingly handsome and we had a fun night. Said he would call next day, never did, oh well. Years later, I saw his obit in the ProJo. He was only in his mid-40s at the time. So sad.