Saint Mazie: A Novel (11 page)

If Mazie was the wild sister, then Jeanie was the free one. I couldn’t forget either of them if I tried.

It’s been three days since we’ve seen her now.

Rosie says: Where’s Jeanie?

Louis says: Where’s Jeanie?

Ethan says: Where’s Jeanie?

No one knows. But me.

So many of these lads came from chaos and tragedy. They didn’t have a fair start in life. Your heart would have to be made of granite not to feel something for them, give them a nickel or a dime after you hear a story or two. Families who didn’t care about them or beat them. Nothing to hold on to but the bottle. I never realized I was one of the lucky ones, having a family who loved like mine did. Maybe they held on too tightly, but they never let me fall into the gutter.

I haven’t written in all this time. We packed, we moved, we left Grand Street behind. Rosie said living by the ocean would heal us all. But what does she know about getting well?

And then I lost you in the move and it felt like I lost my life. All the things that happened till now, I’m not sure they were real unless I wrote them down. You held all the secrets. You’re the most precious thing I own. I didn’t know it till I lost you. I didn’t know it till I found you.

You were in that last box, sealed off in Rosie’s closet. I didn’t know the box was in there and I didn’t dare tell Rosie I was looking for you. I didn’t want her to know all my secrets were kept in one place. But yesterday Louis was taking us to the track, and he told us both to get dolled up. We were looking for a pair of Rosie’s high-heeled shoes for me to wear. They were midnight blue, and had an open toe and a heart-shaped jewel in the center. I remembered once I had worn them and felt like I was walking in the sky, alongside the stars. I kept on Rosie about them and finally she said she’d hunt them down. No one had seen them since we moved to Surf Avenue. Another treasure lost with the move. I was thinking about how we were leaving a trail behind us of our favorite things. Rosie was on her knees, digging through her closet. She ripped open the box with her bare hands, and there you were.

Rosie said: What’s this?

I snatched at it, and she clutched it to herself, over her heart.

I said: It’s mine. Give it now.

Rosie said: Still with this old thing?

I said: Why don’t you worry about your own business?

She looked down at her hands. I was waiting for her to say one of a million things. You’re my business, is what I was waiting for her to say. But she didn’t.

She said: You’re right. It’s yours.

Our blood barely stirred in us, no yelling, no fighting. That’s the way it’s been for months. I feel sorry for her, losing Jeanie like that. She feels sorry for me, losing the baby. She thinks I’ll never have love in my life. I can see it on her face. I never minded her pity before if it meant she would leave me alone. But some days I miss the spark of it. Fighting meant we were both still alive. Now I’m not so sure.

Still, she has her claws in me in one way. And Louis too. She makes Louis drive me to work and pick me up every damn day. I go from house to car to cage, then back again. No room to move. No shot at freedom.

Brooklyn is my passion, so I’m happy to help. Born and raised, Bay Ridge represent! [Laughs.] I’m impressed with your project, too. You got what, an essay and a few newspaper articles and that’s it? And no pictures, right? Amazing. I should have you come talk to my classes. I don’t think they get to meet too many writer-researcher types, let alone someone putting together a book. They don’t even know what it means to do research. They just want to sit there and get all the information handed to them. Then they memorize it just long enough for the test and then poof! It’s gone! Like it never even existed.

So all right, let me give you some information. Coney Island in the 1920s was mostly middle and upper class, and it really lived like its own separate entity from the rest of New York City—because there was no train there yet. Now you said Mazie was living on Surf Avenue, which was very different from one end to the other. The east end was where all the action was. Luna Park was there, for example. You know bumper cars and roller coasters and all of that. It’s where people came to play.

But from what you’ve told me Mazie was living on the west end, which had a quieter neighborhood vibe—except in the summer, where there were these bungalow colonies. My grandfather actually grew up closer to that end, and in the summer his family used to charge fees to visitors who needed a place to change their clothes before a day at the beach. They had this locker setup in the backyard they hauled out every year. He said it was the best job he ever had, taking quarters from all the girls. Sometimes they changed right in front of him. My grandfather, he remembered it
fondly
. [Laughs.]

There’s plenty of pictures of it, I can show you sometime. I’ve got all kinds of photo albums. My mother, she keeps everything, and so did her parents. She used to sit me down with albums filled with scraps of memorabilia—a hundred years of it. Not just pictures, but ticket stubs, napkins, menus, every little thing. She’d sit me down—imagine a little version of me, I was very serious then, thick glasses, a little nerd [Laughs.]—and we’d flip through them. “This is your history,” she’d tell me. “History is important, there’s lessons to be learned there.”

I liked looking at the pictures the best, I guess. There’s a lot of impressive facial hair in my family’s history, twirling mustaches and all that. But I liked all the detritus too. And my mother was no fool. She knew if I felt connected to something it would help keep me on the straight and narrow. I’d be less likely to be looking for trouble out there on the streets and there was plenty of it to be found when I was growing up, right outside my front door. But I think most of all though she wanted to give me a sense of culture, that I was Italian, and I was American, and I was a New Yorker. All of these things at once. I come from a family of flag-wavers. For those of us who have learned how to work within the system, we love it.

I’ll admit I don’t mind living in this house itself, even if I don’t like Coney Island. There’s a brand-new kitchen. The sink is white, the counters, the cabinets, too. Peppermint-pink flowers painted along the edge of the cabinets, little teacup roses. New matching dishes, all white, too, with green and pink flowers. The floors are white-and-black-checked tiles.

But Rosie can’t stop cleaning it.

She said: Dirt’s the enemy. Every little mark will show.

I said: A scuff here and there, that’s what makes things lived in.

She said: That’s what the table’s for.

It’s true, she hauled that same old wooden kitchen table all the way from the Lower East Side to Coney Island. Holding on to it thinking Jeanie will come back and we can all sit around it again. Holding on to air is what she’s doing.

I’m getting distracted here, talking about my family, when we’re supposed to be talking about Surf Avenue. So yeah, in the summer, everyone wanted to go to the beach. But the rest of the year that end of Surf Avenue was a peaceful neighborhood, empty except for the people who lived there. When you walk out your front door and have the ocean right there? I guess you could feel like you’re living in the safest place around. Either that, or that you’re living in exile.

This morning in the car with Louis.

I said: How’s business?

He said: You tell me. You run my business.

I said: You got more businesses than that, Louis.

He said: Why you so worried about it?

I said: I’m making conversation.

He said: Let’s think of something else we can talk about. Out of all the things in the world, Mazie, we got more to talk about besides business.

He sounded angry, so I didn’t push.

He said: Look out the window. It’s a beautiful winter day.

Some days he just doesn’t want to talk to me. Some days I don’t want to talk to him. But still we’re together, no matter what, in the goddamn car.

This morning there was Rosie at the sink again, rag in hand. How does she always have something to clean? Why does she need to clean this early in the morning?

I said: It’s clean.

She didn’t hear me. She never listens to anyone, especially not me.

I couldn’t watch her scrub for another minute so I just kept on walking, past the lunatic in the kitchen, past the quiet man at the table, out the front door. The outside of the house is bright pink, like half the houses around us. I turned and stared. False cheer.

Then I walked to the end of the block, straight onto the sand. All before me was the ocean and the sky, gray clouds aswirl with violet air. I want to like it here, on Coney Island. I want to believe I’m living in the right place at the right time. A line of winter lightning cracked across the sky. There I was, at the end of the world. But out there, somewhere else, something was happening. Something was crackling in the distance, far away from me.

Another postcard from Jeanie today at the theater. This one’s from Cleveland. That makes three.

It said: All’s well in Ohio. We’re selling out every night. A big hit!

She drew a long vine of roses with sharp-looking thorns around the edge of the card. The front of it was a picture of downtown Cleveland.

It said: Welcome to the sixth city!

What’s the fifth city, I thought. There’s only one city that matters anyway, and that’s New York City.

I put the postcard up in the cage next to the others she’s sent and the postcards from the Captain too. A wall of places I’ll never visit.

When I got home I told Rosie I’d gotten another postcard from Jeanie.

She said: I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it!

She went back to cleaning the kitchen. I’ve seen her scrub that sink a thousand times since we’ve moved.

I said: You can’t get it any cleaner.

But she didn’t hear a thing I said.

Sister Tee visited me today. It’s been an age since I’ve seen her. I’d been worried she was ignoring me. I decided to tease her. No reason, I wasn’t being cruel, only having a laugh.

I said: You must be bored these days. No booze, no trouble.

She said: Funny how people always find a way to the trouble.

I said: Idle hands, idle minds, Sister Tee! Maybe you’re finding your way to the trouble.

She said: Faith’s where I put my energy.

I said: Fun’s where I put mine.

She said: If you’d seen the things I see.

I said: I see exactly what you see.

I heard myself for a second. My voice sounded like the grind of the train on steel that I hear all day above my head. I didn’t like it, neither did she. She looked more like a young girl than ever, soft and big-eyed. Baby Sister.

She said: How are you doing, Mazie? Are you feeling better?

I said: Better than what? What are you talking about?

She said: I didn’t mean a thing, my friend. Only I heard you’d been sick.

I said: Look at me. I’m healthy as a goddamn horse.

And that was that. I don’t tell anyone my secrets, especially no nun. I shut the cage, and didn’t even say good-bye.

Morning ride with Louis.

I said: Teach me about gambling.

He said: Never bet more than you have to lose.

I said: Boring.

He said: You should never gamble, Mazie. You’re too hotheaded. You, your sisters, none of you would be any good at it. You’d bet it all on your gut. And you can’t keep straight faces neither. You’d be out at the poker table in a heartbeat.

I said: We can’t help it if we feel things.

He said: It’s why I keep you around. You think I want to look at serious mugs all night long? Talk about boring.

I got good instincts, I don’t care what he says.

He said: All right, all right. I got one tip. Losing streaks. If you get on one, you can’t let it throw you off. You have to ride it out. We all go through them.

I said: Even you?

He said: Everyone. No one is so special in this life. We all lose sometimes. Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning. It’s what you do when you’re down. That’s the real test.

I said: I used to think I was special.

He said: I know.

I wanted him to tell me I still was. I would have eaten my left pinky to hear it. Torn it off with my teeth. But you can’t ask someone to tell you that.

Our mother finally passed on to the next life, wherever that is. I’d like to say she lived a good life, but she didn’t. I’d like to say she lived a long life, but that’s not true either. I barely knew her. I won’t miss her. You can’t miss a thing you don’t know. Still when I heard I wept like a baby fresh to this world. Rosie, too. We howled and held each other. Louis didn’t know what to do. We just stood in that kitchen and cried.

Later I said: We should tell Jeanie. She’ll want to know.

Rosie said: I’ll have nothing to do with that.

I sent her a letter anyway. Care of a boardinghouse in Chicago. Last known address.