Saint Mazie: A Novel (14 page)

But we have a little problem here in New York with authority. The cops are not afraid to use their fists or their weapons.

Early morning, the coffee stinging more than most days.

Rosie down on the floor, washing away specks of nothing. Louis’s eating eggs at the table, fork after fork, not breathing in between.

I said: The kitchen’s clean.

Rosie kept scrubbing.

I said: Did you hear me? The kitchen’s clean, Rosie.

Rosie said: It’s clean when I say it’s clean.

I got down on my knees next to her. I grabbed her hand and she slapped me away. Louis came behind me and lifted me up by my waist. All of this was done in silence, as if we were performing our own lunatic ballet.

I ran to the train in the rain. I ruined my new hat. I threw it on the ground in front of the theater, and watched it suck up the water from the skies until one of the ushers dashed out with an umbrella and threw it away.

It goes both ways though, this problem with authority. You bear down too much, someone fights back.

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness.

This morning, we’re sniping at each other, me and Rosie, like usual. She won’t rest till she gets me off that train.

Louis said: Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace? The two of you are like children.

Rosie said: She’s the child.

Louis said: Take it outside. I can’t stand another minute of it.

We went to the porch. Rosie slammed the door behind her. I felt bad for Louis, that he’d be getting it later from her. He must have thought it was worth it. Every once in a while it must be.

The sky was that brilliant early-morning violet I’ve only seen since we moved to Coney Island. I swear the ocean has a different sky than the rest of the world.

I said: Could we look at the sky for just one moment, sister?

Rosie said: Why won’t you do as I wish?

I said: Look at the sky. Look at it.

Rosie said: It’s your safety I’m worried about more than anything.

She started to say something else, but then suddenly the fanciest car I’ve ever seen pulled up in front of the house. I don’t give a rat’s ass about cars, but this was something special. It was a Rolls-Royce, silver. The air changed around it. For a moment I believed Louis had bought me this car. I pictured myself being driven to and from the Venice in it. What kind of ticket taker has a car like that? Me, that’s who. I felt this stir of arrogance. Even writing this now is making me laugh out loud. A-ha, I thought. My ride is here.

But it wasn’t my ride at all. A driver got out of the car, a proper one, wearing a special cap and gloves. He opened the rear door of the car and leaned inside. Someone slid an arm around his neck. Finally he stood, a body in his arms. I saw the casted leg first, and then I saw her face.

Jeanie’s back.

Some of these bums are singers—every morning outside my cage I could hear them singing their Irish folk songs, or even a sea shanty or two. There were others who liked to draw, sketches of the park where they’re sleeping, that filthy noisy train overhead, or pictures of the other bums, just being bums. I’ve got hundreds of them, swapped for a nickel, swapped for a drink. There’s real artistic souls out there on the streets. A passion for something vivid and beautiful, not everyone has that. The bottle dims the passion, though, ruins the talent, too. If you let it. But I think you have to want to ruin it in the first place.

Mazie said to write my story down, it’s too long for her to tell, and that it’ll be good for me, it’ll clear my head, and I’m the one who lived it, not her, anyway. Then she said start at the beginning until you get to the end, tell the truth, no point in lying to the page, to the diary, to yourself, and then she handed me this diary and this pen, and away we go.

I skipped town a year and a half ago because I wanted to make my own fate, choose my future myself, rather than accept what Louis & Rosie wanted for me, what Ethan wanted for me, too. I would have been married by now, I would have been working at the candy shop or at the track or at Luna Park, or cooking and cleaning like Rosie, or making babies with Ethan. And it’s not that I’m too good for any of that, or even that there’s anything wrong with that. Only I wanted to dance, I wanted to use these legs, these arms, my body, my gifts, my weapons. I didn’t want to waste them on sitting still, at least not yet.

So I started dancing with the Folsom brothers, Skip & Felix, two white-blond-haired boys from Pennsylvania, escaped from a milk farm, no teat squeezing for them, just throwing me around in the air instead. A better fate, they said, more fun to throw the pretty girls in the air than touch the cow’s titties. They were tall and strong, strong enough to toss me and catch me, and make me feel like I could disappear forever. If they just kept spinning me, I’d turn into a whisper and I’d be gone.

Felix is the elder brother, older by a year, and he still reads the Bible every night, but says it’s only a habit, and the stories put him to sleep. He’s married to Belle’s girl Elizabeth, who does all her hair and makeup and sits by her side. She’s a cherub from Philly, round cheeks, big eyes, and a real pleaser, yes’s rather than no’s any day of the week. And Skip’s the dreamboat that everyone else falls in love with, and so I did, too.

I didn’t fall in love with Skip until we were out on the road together. I swear on my life, on the air that I breathe, I wouldn’t treat Ethan like that, never lied to him, never cheated, only loved and respected that boy, him being my first sweetheart and all. But Belle says tour love’s as common as the flu, highly contagious, and I caught it, sleepless nights and dizzy daydreams and all the rest. I fell in love with the world we built together, the nerves before the curtain opens and Skip squeezing my hand for luck, the applause at the end taking my breath away every single time, whiskey & wine after the show, me on Skip’s knee, Elizabeth with her hands in Felix’s hair, Belle barking at all of us to do as she bid. Belle’s always telling me she’s the one who gave me a shot, like she’s twenty years older than me instead of two, and didn’t grow up three streets away from me. I let her say what she wants though, because she’s more right than wrong. Without her I’d have been nowhere at all, or at least in the same place as always.

We started our tour in Philly, where Belle’s husband’s from, and where his father has a theater of his own. We stayed there for a month, reworking our act for the road, testing it out on those audiences that already loved Belle, she could do no wrong. Then we went to Cleveland to see what they thought, and they liked us there, they liked us a lot, and we liked them too, Cleveland was a gas. The theater was brand new, and we had crowds every night, on and on, all the applause thrilling me, until suddenly it seemed like everyone in town had already seen us once, and once was enough. Belle said it was time to move on, and what Belle says goes, because Belle runs the show, because Belle is the show.

There was more money to be made in Chicago, bigger crowds, more Jews, Jews who wanted all the Yiddish songs as much as the English songs, more than the English songs, never tired of them, and they were always Belle’s favorites too. Belle’s husband left us there, back to Philly, back for the spring, a relief for Belle because the only one who barks more than Belle is her husband. She told us she got us to Chicago but now we were on our own. So we did two shows a night with her on the weekends but nothing during the week, and we were worried we’d go broke, but Skip, my baby, my talker, my charmer, got us work at White City. I loved White City, with its twinkling lights all over the place, crowds of jolly Chicagoans, clean streets, wide skies. Three nights a week there, plus two with Belle and we were set.

Oh, everything was such a laugh! Rushing to the theater, hustling in a cab, breathless, tumbling out the door, but never tripping, never falling, we were dancers and we would never fall. I could have kept going across America, I liked the driving, I liked the road life, I liked setting up house for a spell in a hotel or a boardinghouse and then taking everything apart again. I could have looped and looped around this great country of ours forever. I liked these people, these performers, and I liked being buddies on the road. Skip & Felix & Elizabeth & Belle & Jeanie, that’s me, the girl in the air.

But if I had to stay in just one place, Chicago was as good as anywhere else. They got a mayor there who’s a real hoot, puts on a good show, even if he’s bad news. He makes his own rules, doesn’t give a damn about Prohibition, lines his own pocket from booze money. I read the papers, and I spent enough time there to know, Chicago is one wild town.

I never met that mayor, but I met a lot of people who worked for him. It seemed like half the town was either coming or going from his office. One of his special assistants came backstage once, a man named Paul, a gentleman in a fine suit, tall and meaty but with long sweet eyelashes and enormous, plush lips. Paul was an American but the child of Italians, so he was Paulo once, he told me, that very moment we met, sharing a new secret between friends, we shook hands on it, and the minute we touched I thought only one word: Yes.

Paul loved our work, loved our show, all three of us, me & Skip & Felix, and he offered to show us the town. He was one of the mayor’s special assistants in enforcing Prohibition, which made him an expert in exactly where you weren’t supposed to go but sometimes could. There was a wink after that, a wink just for me. Yes, we will go with you, Paul, wherever you go, yes.

He had his own car, the fanciest I’ve ever seen, with a driver who tipped his hat at us once when we got inside, and then never spoke to us again, quiet as a ghost in the front seat, he might as well have been a puff of smoke. We went from speakeasy to speakeasy, Paul shaking hands with all the men in fancy suits hovering near doorways, surveying the scene, running the show. I’m in Skip’s arms the whole night dancing, but I can see Paul watching me, burning a hole through Skip with his eyes like he’s not even there, and I’m staring right back at him, and I know something’s going to happen because I want it to and all I have to do is say yes.

So yes, I say, yes yes yes, I scream it. He’s married, who cares, yes. He’s a criminal maybe, yes yes yes. You’re just a girl he tells me, I say yes yes yes. You’re so skinny I could slip my hand right through you, he says. Oh I’ll feel it, I say. A skinny pretty Yid from New York City, he said. Never did I know that was a thing that could be desired, but in fact it is a thing that he desired, and so he had it.

What about Skip? How did I get it past him? We shared a room, like a married couple, husband and wife, till the curtain closes for good, he used to say, but we were definitely not married. The answer is that I’m an excellent liar, I have lied for years, so long that it has become as easy as telling the truth.

It went on for a few weeks, me and Paul, sneaking around Chicago, seemed like he had keys to every door in town, hotels and warehouses and clubs, front rooms, back rooms, a key to my door too. He offered me money sometimes but I always said no, because I didn’t need his money, and also I might be a liar and I might be a cheat, but I’m definitely not a whore.

Every day my hair was a mess, messy sex hair, and Elizabeth hadn’t the time to get it right every day, the tight waves and curls, the two of us racing to get it done before Belle’s set. She said she didn’t know what to do with me, that the Chicago wind must be stronger than she knew, and I laughed, a dirty laugh, a good-time-girl laugh, and she gave me a look like maybe it wasn’t the wind, maybe it was Skip, and then she sighed, “Oh those Folsom boys.”

Then one day we were running later than usual and Belle was in a monstrous mood, her husband was in town and he was not a part of the road family, him being bossier than Belle herself, and there couldn’t be two bosses of the show. Belle started griping that Elizabeth was her girl and not my girl, and we were wincing hearing her voice, so beautiful when she sang but intimidating when she spoke, and Belle was right, it’s true, Elizabeth was hers and not mine. And Elizabeth said she’d rather just cut all my hair off and be done with it, and then I told her to do it and the very next day she did, it was a bob, and it was done.

Now the men in my life had even more ardor for me, this new me with the new hair. Paul liked it because it was different, spontaneous, a change of plans, and Skip liked it because it was smart and stylish and fresh. I liked my hair because it didn’t slow me down. I was a twirling, racing, breathless, desirable woman. I felt like I had everything I needed for one perfect week.

But one morning I woke up with a pain in my stomach, serious and low, slow and steady, and along with that my undergarments were stained with a white mess, and that didn’t seem right either. And I tried all the old wives’ recipes I’ve heard, gypsy recipes too, but alas and alack, the pain would not stop, the undergarments continued to spoil, and I knew I was ruined in some way.

I didn’t believe I could tell anyone in my road family about my pain, not Elizabeth or Belle or Felix and especially not Skip. This is the hard part when you’re a liar and a cheat and you have secrets, because you’re really alone when things are bad, then you’re really invisible. So I found a doctor for ladies and he stared at me down there for a while and coughed and hemmed and hawed and then, without looking me in the eye, told me I had the clap. The clap! Here I was, living for applause all this time, and boy oh boy, did I get it.

Now I knew I could have gotten the disease from either Skip or Paul, but I had an idea it was from Paul because I was sure I wasn’t his only girl on the side, that there were other girls, ones who took money from him, and those kinds of girls sometimes have the clap, although there I was with it too, so who was I to judge or say anything? I asked Paul about it, I asked him if he had a little something going on down there, and he said that when you lived a life like his, there was always a little something going on down there.

Then I had to tell Skip, and I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to, so I raced to the theater to tell him, to the backstage dressing room, and he was sitting there with Elizabeth looking serious, and when I looked at his face I saw that he already knew he had it too. I said I was sorry, awful sorry for everything, and that it was all my fault, and he said my name and shook his head and couldn’t look me in the eye, and then Elizabeth reached out and held his hand and I felt shame. And then I saw Elizabeth was crying and I realized that she had it too, and that she and Skip were lovers. Then I could really hear the crowds roaring in my head, an ocean of applause for me, Jeanie, the girl in the air, taking down everyone around me. It was only a few minutes later that Felix showed up, whistling, humming, ready for another show, and then we had to tell him, all of us, that our road family was sick, we had all given each other a case of something horrible, and the minute we told him he walked out and didn’t return until right before the show.

Elizabeth left to do Belle’s hair, I smoothed mine down on my own, Skip sat next to me in the mirror, I put on my lipstick, I kohled my eyes, I looked at him in the mirror and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling at all, who was this person next to me, this beautiful fair-haired boy, but he wouldn’t look back at me, somehow he was looking anywhere in the room but at me, and then I knew he was just as much a liar and a cheat as me, we were the same, me & Skip, and Skip & Elizabeth were the same, and it was only poor Felix who got the short end of it all, happy, whistling Felix, now on fire like the rest of us. And then it was showtime.

It took about five minutes into our act, the first real spin of the night, for me to fall. I can’t say as to which one of them dropped me, Skip or Felix, because when you’re in the air like me you lose track of who is supposed to be catching you. You just close your eyes and hope everyone’s doing their job, and this time they weren’t. Skip or Felix, Skip & Felix? I didn’t get a good look at their faces afterward, I was up in the air, and then I was down, and I felt a crack in my leg, a very particular crack, and I screamed, and all I saw was stars in my pain, stars and theater lights and then blackness, and then I passed out.

I woke up in a hospital, a doctor telling me if I had landed differently I would have broken my back. It’s how you fall, he said, that matters. Youth helps, fitness, and how you fall. He’s telling me how lucky I am, lucky with the cast up past my knee. I told him I didn’t believe in luck, I’d make my own fate, thanks.

No one came to visit me the first day, not Skip or Elizabeth or Felix, but then finally Belle, my old friend Belle, showed up at my bedside. She told me that she was sorry but that I would have to leave town, or at least leave the show, and that as soon as I was recovered enough to travel she would be happy to buy me a train ticket back to New York City, back where I belonged, with my family. She said she had taken a chance on me and I had failed because I had upset the balance of the road family. But also she said that she loved me like a sister and she bore me no ill will, would hold no grudge, and would be happy to keep all of this a secret amongst our mutual friends and family as long as I would agree to do the same. And when I looked deeply into her eyes, those hooded soulful eyes, I knew that she had the clap too.

Paul came to the hospital in an elegant wool coat with black leather gloves that smelled like the woods, and I will never forget how handsome he looked, my married Italian man. There he was, kissing both of my cheeks, holding my hands, kissing them too. He said he was sorry that it had come to this and that I was a beautiful girl and I would someday recover and dance again like an angel, and he would remember our time together fondly, and that it was a crime to break a leg like mine, as graceful as it was, and with all the joy it offered the world with my fantastic performances. Then he offered to kill someone for me as an act of revenge and I said no. Then he asked me if I needed a ride home and I sobbed yes yes yes.