Saint Mazie: A Novel (10 page)

Rosie says I can wear an overcoat to work every day and no one on the streets will be able to see my tummy. Rosie says I’ll be behind a counter in the cage all day and no one will ever know and that won’t ruin my reputation and someday a nice man will still want to marry me. Rosie says I’ve got to go straight to work and home again and get plenty of rest and she’ll bring me meals every day to make sure I’m well fed. Rosie says that I’ve got to cut down on the drinking and the smoking so this baby will be born healthy and strong. Rosie says Rosie says Rosie says.

I remember my mother telling me, “She thinks we didn’t know? We knew.”

Now there’s a lot of talk in this house. New kinds of talk. There’s no room for a baby in this apartment, Rosie keeps saying. We got more room than anyone on this block, says Louis. Rosie wants a house somewhere far away in the country, but Louis says it’s impossible with all his business dealings. What about Coney Island, that’s the newest talk this morning. What about living near the ocean? Jeanie says she’d die if she lived far away from the city. Rosie tells her if she gets married she can live anywhere she likes. We sit around the kitchen table and plot. I light a cigarette, and Rosie pulls it from my fingers. This is what we are doing now, every day. Talking.

Twenty-one years old today. Old enough to do anything I like.

I know that I’m supposed to feel something alive inside of me but it feels only like a weight I have to carry with me wherever I go.

Rosie puts her cold hands on my warm belly at night. She says I warm her up. She says it’s like I’m her furnace. She stares at my belly. She wonders what it looks like on the other side. She holds her hands there until I tell her to stop.

They announced the end of the war today and the whole city cheered at once. I’ve never seen anything like it. I probably won’t again in my lifetime. The end of the war! We shut down the Venice. No one was bothering with the pictures today. I roamed the streets with Jeanie and Ethan. One parade bled into another. People kissing and hugging on the corners. Bottles of booze in the air. Children with lollies in one hand and balloons in the other. I couldn’t stop laughing for nothing, none of us could. It was one kind of relief at last. Do you see this, I whispered to myself, but I knew I was talking to my belly.

By the time we made it home though, the radio was saying it was a fake armistice. We had a party for nothing.

Today the war was really over. The papers said so. No more war. I can’t believe the whole city celebrated again, but they did. Any excuse. We laughed all day, but then tonight we cried. Too exhausted to be anything but grateful.

I never believed these words could come out of my mouth, but I’m ready for the party to be over.

I suppose I had this idea that I might try to seduce her, or toy with her. In my devastation from his death she seemed to be at fault for something. I was nineteen years old—that’s a good age to blame the wrong people for your problems.

I wanted to see her face. That I know. I had seen some of the others. A few women from the club, these boozy, bored wives, and there had also been this young widow down the block who was constantly breaking things in her house that only my father could fix, of course. And I am nearly certain he slept with my seventh-grade math teacher, although I’ll never be able to confirm it.

But she seemed mythic to me. The woman from New York. The famous Mazie Phillips. She’d been in the papers. He’d met all manner of politicians and war heroes, and he was an important part of the Republican Party in Connecticut. But Mazie was a real celebrity to him, and she had known him in his prime, during that war, the one he had actually fought in as opposed to watching Stateside. Everything after that war bored him, I suspect. Or maybe he really loved her. He could have loved her. I’ll never know that either.

I’ll tell you, I plumb my feelings regularly, but I can’t seem to define this moment precisely, though I can see it in my mind, everything about it. I had a bottle of whiskey at my side in the car, and the more I drank the less upset I became. My sadness began to solidify into an angry darkness. I arrived at the theater at midday. There she was in her ticket booth. I stood in line and waited my turn. She waited for me to say something and I had prepared nothing. The whole car ride there I’d just been having a conversation with my father in my head instead.

Then she said, “Step aside if you’re not buying a ticket, kid.” I
was
a kid then. I was nineteen years old. I said, “Are you Mazie Phillips?” She said, “Yeah, who’s asking?” I said, “I’m the son of Benjamin Hazzard.” She didn’t say anything, but she lit a cigarette. And then all I could do is blurt out that my father was dead. And then I remember this vision so specifically I can squint my eyes right now and see it: This quiver started in her hand, the one that was holding the cigarette, and the cigarette began to shake, and then this quiver sort of rolled through her body if that makes sense, all the way up to her face, and then she began to cry.

The baby died. Rosie keeps throwing her arms around me like that will change what happened. Like her arms can bring it back.

She says I should say something, anything. I don’t want to talk about it ever. No one can make me.

They took the mattress away while I was at the Venice. I slept on the couch the last ten days, and Jeanie slept next to Rosie. No one wanted to be in the same room as it.

I came home from work tonight and Louis was sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a glass of something strong in front of him. He looked like he’d been waiting for me to show up all night. Rosie was stretched out on the couch. She had a small pillow over her eyes. Louis told me to come join him. His voice was crumbling. I sat next to him and put my hand on his arm. I said his name.

He said: I am devastated for you and for this family.

I said: I’m going to be fine.

He said: They made us memorize poems in school. They just sit there in my head waiting for me, waiting for me to need them. My favorite was always Wordsworth. Do you like Wordsworth?

I said: I’ve never read him.

He said: You should read him. He was smart. I’ll buy you a book of his.

I told him I would like that.

He said: I can’t stop thinking of this one line of his from a poem called “Intimations of Immortality.” Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. And I believe that baby slept right through it, and doesn’t remember a thing now. I’ve got to be right. Don’t you think I’m right, Mazie?

He was crying then. These big gusts of tears from this big man. He was nearly choking on it. His whole body shaking. Rosie rose, I did too. We threw our arms around him. Our dear Louis.

I don’t know if we will ever be happy again. It doesn’t feel that way. I can’t imagine what that looks like anymore. Happy.

But I think we will feel better than this someday. We have to feel better than this someday.

What did I do? I went home. When she began to cry I realized instantly that I had made a terrible mistake, and that I was not where I was supposed to be. Of course I should have been with my mother all along. So I went home.

I dyed my hair blond. New year. I will leave the past behind. Jeanie didn’t recognize me when I walked in the door.

I said: Good.

She ended up being sort of tough-looking in the end, which surprised me a little bit. Certainly you could tell she had once been enormously sexy. I was admittedly a randy nineteen-year-old when I met her, but I can assure you she filled out that cage nicely. And having any attraction to her when she was my mother’s age makes me feel a level of discomfort I refuse to parse.

I will say this: Most of the other women in my father’s life were a bit better maintained. I haven’t used this word in a long time, but she was a real broad. I imagine she had bleached her hair for many years, and it was wiry, and the ends were split. All of the smile lines around her mouth were pronounced, and there was this pinkish color to her skin. She was somewhere between rosy and boozy. We all fall apart no matter what, obviously, but some of what we consume leaves a more vivid trail behind than others.

They passed Prohibition today. Just what all those soldiers fresh home from the war need—sobriety! Sister Tee came by the cage, pretending like she just happened to be in the neighborhood, but I knew she wanted to brag about it a bit.

I said: You got anything to do with this Prohibition business?

She said: Just said a prayer or two.

I said: Great, now I’ll know who to blame when I’m thirsty.

It won’t make a lick of difference though. People will find booze if they want it bad enough. This is New York City. We like our drink here. I know I’m not planning on giving it up.

We’re moving to Coney Island soon. Rosie told us tonight. Louis has business there now. Just like that, he has business. They’re looking for a house near the ocean.

Rosie said: And I think it’ll bring us all closer together. There’s too much city out there, getting in the way of this family.

Jeanie said: I feel plenty close to you right here.

Rosie said: I can’t keep track of you girls anymore.

Jeanie said: But I’m happy here.

I couldn’t bring myself to argue either way. I haven’t slept through a night since I lost the baby. Maybe this home was ruined for Rosie as much as it was for me.

Rosie said: You can work for Louis out there, it’ll be fun.

Jeanie said: Doing what?

Rosie said: He bought some bumper cars at Luna Park.

Jeanie lurched a little bit, like she was going to be sick.

Rosie said: You don’t like it, you got ways out.

She was talking about Ethan. We’ve all been waiting for him to propose.

Jeanie tried one last time.

She said: Didn’t you raise me to be something more than the girl who runs the bumper cars?

Rosie said: I raised you to be a part of this family. Don’t be putting on any airs with me. You came from the same house I did. You’re not too good for anything.

Jeanie said nothing after that. I thought she’d put up a fight, being far away from her beloved theater. But she just kept calm. Quiet face, quiet hands, still and calm. Give in like the rest of us, was what I was thinking. It won’t hurt but for a minute.

The Captain is here.

I looked up this morning in the cage, and he was smiling at me, and then he laughed. Was there a joke that was funny because I hadn’t heard it.

He said: Happy May Day.

There he was, as if nine months hadn’t passed at all, and it was perfectly normal for him to be waiting in line to buy a ticket for the matinee. I had thought of him so often it was like he had become some kind of dream.

He said: Did you get the postcards I sent?

I wished I didn’t have them hanging up behind me in the cage.

I said: I might have seen a postcard or two. Bragging about your travels while I’m just sitting here in this cage.

He said: I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you the whole time.

First time I met him, I knew he was full of lines. Second time I met him, it still didn’t matter. They all just sounded so good coming out of his mouth.

My hands were in fists and I didn’t even notice it until he slid his hand through the cage and on top of them. His voice got real soft.

He said: I don’t write just everyone.

I looked up at him and I kept my mouth tight but then I batted my eyelashes at him anyway. I couldn’t help it. He stirred something in my loins, or at least close to that area.

He said: Come on, how could I forget a girl like you? The most famous girl downtown. I bet people come from all over just to see that pretty face of yours.

I said: Well I do get a line.

I couldn’t let him touch me for a second longer. I pulled my hand away and lit a cigarette, and then held my other hand to my wrist to keep it from shaking. I was feeling so much and I couldn’t tell if it was hate or love or both.

He said: I’d stand in line to take you out to dinner. Dinner and a show, show and a dinner. Whatever you want, whatever order. You’re in charge, Mazie.

I had no excuse not to, except maybe then I’ll have to tell him the truth about what happened. But I told him I’d meet him tomorrow.

When I got home I told Rosie she’d have to stead me the next night at the theater. She can’t deny me a thing right now.

What a night! I can’t figure out if I should have seen it coming or not. If I should blame myself for not knowing what was going on in my own home.

I met the Captain on the corner by the theater, far out of Rosie’s sight. We walked together to Little Italy. I didn’t put my arm through his at first, but I did let him make me laugh. He took me to the Blue Grotto. I ate one of his meatballs. I nearly let him feed it to me, but then I took the fork from his hand. It felt too close, too fast. I liked how nervous he was. I was wearing my fuschia-colored silk dress I bought on Division Street last spring before I’d met him, before anything sad had happened. He tried hard not to stare down the front of it. After dinner he held my hand to his face. He wanted me to touch him. We could have been in love for all anyone knew.

I thought about telling him the truth, but I didn’t know if he would care or not. He never saw my belly grow. He never held my hair back when I was sick in the mornings. He didn’t bring me gumdrops from the candy shop when that was all I craved. That was Rosie, that was Jeanie. He didn’t know about any of it. He didn’t weep like a child, weep for me when I couldn’t. That was Louis.

What did he have to do with any of it?

So I decided to pretend it was the first time all over again. I pretended I was just a flirt, a good-time girl. It’s not a lie, anyway. I switched over. I felt myself doing it. I let myself be that person for the night. And it was a relief.

After dinner, we walked to the Thalia Theater. I’d been meaning to see Belle’s show that we’d lost Jeanie to these past months, and it was closing night. Belle’s leaving town, headlining her own national tour. I wanted the Captain to know that I was connected to a famous person. Oh how I wanted him to love me.

The show had already started. The theater was dark except for a light on the stage. A skinny magician was dangling silver hoops from his fingertips. There was a haze of smoke. The Captain pulled out a flask from his pocket.

He said: A little treat for you and me.

The tang of it was delicious. He put his hand on my knee, and it felt like it was supposed to be there, so I let it stay. I was dizzy with whiskey. Flames and fuel.

Next up were three tap-dancing sisters from Philly. It made me smile, thinking of me and Rosie and Jeanie, how we used to be thick as thieves, the Phillips girls. I started to forget for a second that our lives weren’t perfect, that no tragedy had struck or would ever strike, and that we had everything we needed. Just as long as this man in uniform sitting next to me kept handing me his flask with one hand and tickling my knee with the other. As long as we didn’t move, everything would be divine forever.

Then there was a tipsy juggler who kept dropping his pins, and then a comedian telling dirty jokes that didn’t make either of us blush. The Captain’s arm was draped around the side of me then, and then his other hand was clasped in mine. It was so comforting to be touched. I took another sip from the flask. The sting in the back of my throat was as perfect a pain as a girl could hope for.

The curtain opened again. Two white-blond men dressed in white sailor suits came out into the spotlight, a woman in a fluttery white gown hoisted on their fingertips. They threw her up in the air, and she spun in a circle once, twice, three times, her dress whirling all around her, and then she landed again in their hands. It was a goddamn sight. We all burst into applause.

The men lowered the dancer to the ground and spun her around again on her toes, passing her from one to another, the men spreading out farther apart on the floor. Eventually she was just whirling around everywhere. I worried she might pass out, but just when I thought she couldn’t take it anymore, one of the men stopped her spinning and dipped her backward. The dancer’s dark hair was wrapped up in a braid around her head, and her lips were brighter red than mine, but she looked like me. I rubbed my eyes and leaned forward in my seat. Well, I knew it wasn’t me. It was Jeanie.

I watched the men flip her, back across back, to the next man. They tossed her through the air like she was nothing. I had seen her practice her ballet moves a thousand times but never knew she could move like this. Oh god, I thought. She’s free. And there’s no way she’s coming home.

I couldn’t spend the night with the Captain after that. I was too shocked. I asked him to walk me home instead. I kissed him only on the cheek. He grabbed me firmly at the end. He told me he’d be up late if I changed my mind.

He whispered in my ear: Why?

I didn’t know him well enough to tell him the truth, and what would I have said anyway? My sister’s a liar. And I am too.