Saint Mazie: A Novel (15 page)

So last week I was driven from Chicago to Coney Island in Paul’s fancy car, and he gave me some money and this time I took it, and I did not feel like a whore, I only felt like a person in need. Paul’s driver, Mauro, is a friend of his father’s from the old country, their old country anyway, and he is my friend now, too. I told him everything that happened, start to finish, from Chicago to here, and it felt so good to tell the whole truth to someone.

He said it’s not the worst thing in the world the things that I did and that I had a little fun and there’s nothing wrong with that. I said that yes I had had my fun. He told me it’s fine to be young and entertain myself, but that I should stop lying so much because no one likes a liar and that I’ll keep all my secrets stored inside and it’ll show in my face, and I’ll end up an ugly old woman that no one will want to touch or love. He said there was a woman like that back in his village in Italy and she was a witch, and all the young boys threw stones at her until she bled. He said don’t be that way, don’t let the boys throw stones at you. He told me to be nice, he told me to be good, I said I would try. But already it felt like another lie. I’ll be good and bad, I’ll be right and wrong. I’ll be just like everyone else.

Mazie was the hero to my family, but I’ll admit I daydreamed about being Jeanie once or twice. Obviously there was absolutely no possibility I’d live her life. I’m not a risk taker. I seek no thrills. But still I thought about it. Jeanie, the dancer, traveling the country, fluttering in and out of everyone’s life. It was a point of contrast more than a pleasant distraction. If I were not that kind of girl, what kind of girl was I?

My life right now is back and forth on the train, home to work, work to home, not a moment free in between. Jeanie begged me to be with her as much as possible, and I’m living up to my promise. She’s a cracked egg, a sticky mess on the ground before us all. Every day Rosie tries to clean it up.

She said: Don’t leave me alone with her.

I said: I gotta work, sister.

She said: You don’t know what it’s like, being trapped with her all day long.

I said: Oh, I know.

Jeanie’s got six more weeks left in the cast, and even then it’ll be a while longer till she gets around on her own. Meantime, I’m counting the cash, shutting the cage, and rushing home every night so I can crawl into bed right next to her. And every night she asks me the same thing.

She says: Tell me the story of your day.

Some days are more interesting than others, but most of them are exactly the same. People stand in line, they slap some cash in front of me, I give them a ticket and tell them to enjoy the show. The line’s not the interesting part. It’s the people on the streets, just hanging around. Too much time on your hands means trouble. Good kind, bad kind, both. But the streets seem cleaner these days. Now that most of the bars are closed, some of these bums have cleared out. You need money to have a good time in this town right now. The kind of fun I’m thinking about anyway.

Last night she clung to my arm, nuzzled her face up against it, desperate for attention.

She said: Tell me that people are still having a good time out there.

I said: I wouldn’t even know if they were. I’m right here with you in bed every night. You want me to have fun, let me go.

Sister Tee came to the cage this morning and I was glad to see her. Jeanie spends all her time feeling sorry for herself, high and dreamy, and Rosie spends all her time indulging her every whim. It’s no game I’ll play. So it was nice to talk to Tee, a woman sincerely devoted to helping others. She was looking for some help for a few more women.

She said: These girls, they have bad husbands. It’s not their fault.

She wanted more help than I had in my purse. I thought of the bag Louis had dropped off just a few hours before. I stuck my hand in and grabbed a fistful of bills. I tried not to look too close at how much was there. It was full, though.

I thrust the money at her. I said I didn’t want to know. It makes me sting thinking about my own mother still. When does that sting die? Does it die when I die?

Last night Jeanie was passed out on the couch, snoring, one arm flopped to the side. There was the tiniest line of drool sliding from her mouth. Rosie was sitting in front of the hearth, reading the paper. I saw a tin of whatever Rosie’s been feeding Jeanie to keep her quiet. I pointed to it.

I said: You gotta stop with that business.

She said: I’ll stop when she’s better. She’s in pain. Her legs itch. Her nerves tingle. You’re not here all day. You don’t know how she moans. I’m the one who’s taking care of her, not you.

I put the back of my hand on Jeanie’s forehead. She was cool. I said her name. She fluttered her eyelids open.

I leaned over her and whispered in her ear.

I said: Do you want to sleep forever? I don’t think you do.

I rubbed her neck for a second.

I said: Did you hear me?

She mumbled that she did.

Rosie said: What did you say?

I said: I told her to wake up.

Ethan’s come courting again. I guess he forgives easily. Can’t say I’d do the same. I could hear Jeanie tittering from up the street as I approached the house. Nice to hear her happy anyway. She was sprawled on the couch by the hearth, a bag of chocolates next to her, her casted leg balanced on a pile of pillows.

She said: Ethan brought me treats.

She held up a stack of gossip papers.

He said: She sounded so bored, I couldn’t help myself. We can’t have our Jeanie bored.

I said: Oh brother.

Rosie called me from the kitchen, and I left the two of them with their sweets and gossip. Louis was seated at the table, Rosie behind him rubbing his shoulders.

She said: Leave them be. Let them get reacquainted.

I said: He’s a fool.

I repeated myself, said it louder.

I went out onto the porch, lit myself a cigarette. My throat’s been sore lately from yelling at all the holiday crowds above the noise of the city. Is it possible the city is getting louder? Could it be that the streets are fuller? More cars, more trains, more people, more noise. I can’t stop smoking to save my life though. Often it feels like it’s the only joy I have.

Ethan soon joined me on the porch. So tall, yet somehow he still seems like the runt of the litter. A stretched-out baby face.

I said: I thought you were clever. Doctors are supposed to be clever.

He said: I’m an animal doctor.

I said: So you’re not clever?

The both of us were trembling in the moonlight from the winter chill, made more deadly by the wind blasting off the ocean.

He said: My heart can’t help it, Mazie. She’s a rare breed.

I said: No she’s not. She’s a street cat, can’t you see? The kind who’ll only rub against your legs long enough till you feed her.

He said: I see an injured creature who needs my love and support.

I waved my hand in front of his eyes a few times.

I said: Just checking to make sure they work.

He thinks he can handle a Phillips girl, let him try.

We closed the theater last night till the New Year. Gave everyone the day off, paid.

Louis said: Thank god this year is over, let’s hope the next one is better.

He handed everyone bottles of this and that and a hundred-dollar bill each. One of the ushers wept and hugged him, and sweet Louis hugged him back.

In the car ride home I smiled at Louis.

I said: You could have given them a tenner and it would have been fine by them, more than they expected.

Louis said: I could have given them a hundred more and it wouldn’t have been enough.

Now it’s lunchtime and we’re all lazing about the house. Rosie and Louis rose early and drove into the city and spent a fortune at Joel Russ’s shop. There’s an abundance of food before us. Jeanie’s eyes are clear. She’s got just a few days till the cast comes off, and she’s counting them down. She swears she feels healed. We’ve been picking at the whitefish, slicing off chunks of sour pickle, too, for the last hour. I’ve been flipping through the pages of this diary, looking at how lousy the past year has been.

Jeanie said: Anything good in there?

I said: You were someone else for a while it seems.

She said: Who was that girl?

I said: I missed you while you were gone.

She said: I missed you too.

I didn’t quite believe her though.

I said: So you and Ethan are back on, are you?

Jeanie said: It’s the oddest thing. He’s right where I left him.

I couldn’t help but think of the Captain. I’m right where he left me.

Jeanie said: This year’s going to be your year.

I said: For what?

Mack wants to take me out on a date. He’s insisting on it.

He said: A proper date for a proper lady.

I laughed.

He said: I’m an officer of the law. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?

I said: Oh really, Mack Walters?

He said: I’m being a straightforward, honorable man.

I laughed some more. Mack, the biggest boozer I know, and that’s a lot coming from this boozer. Mack, with his oversized head and that extra chin and that beard that changes colors all year round, red to yellow to gray lately, like it can’t decide what looks best on his face. Maybe none of it does.

I said: Maybe.

He said: Mazie, Maybe’s what I’ll call you from now on. And I’m planning on calling.

Walked off whistling, like he knew something I didn’t.

Jeanie came back from the doctor’s, still on crutches, Ethan and Rosie helping her through the door. She’ll be hobbling for a while yet.

She said: I don’t know why I thought I’d be better. I was dreaming the cast would be gone and I’d be leaping through the streets, dancing in circles beneath the sun, whirling and twirling.

She waved her arms so gracefully in the air that I could nearly see her dancing myself.

Ethan said: You’re young and strong, you’ll heal just fine. Just do those exercises the doctor told you about.

I looked to see if Ethan was telling the truth and I could see that he was. Then Jeanie showed us her leg, scrawny and yellow and bruised.

Jeanie said: I nearly passed out when I saw it.

Rosie said: If that were a chicken leg I wouldn’t serve it for dinner.

All of Jeanie is thinner now, I noticed for the first time. Her dress was falling off her shoulders, her petticoat dragged on the ground. Bones poking from her neck. Her braids were loose. Somehow her hair has turned from black to brown.

I said: No point in feeling sorry for yourself now. You’re on the way to well.

She said: I’m not, I can’t do anything at all.

Ethan helped her to the living room, and there she began to weep. I could hear it from the kitchen. I could hear him comforting her. Nurse Ethan.

I could not bring myself to embrace her. I said I had to go to work. A train to catch. The wind was bitter off the ocean. By the time I arrived to the station my eyes were full of tears. On the train I had to assure several old nosy women nothing was wrong. I told them I only had a chill.

He was four days late, missed Valentine’s Day, and I don’t care because I’m not thinking about him at all, because who needs to bother with a lousy skunk? I put the postcard up in the cage anyway because the picture was pretty. The ocean, the other ocean across America. Mountains in the distance. I don’t know if I ever need to see a mountain in person, but I like knowing they’re out there. I’ve been turning and looking at it all day. I don’t know why, but it gave me a kind of faith in the world.

Doesn’t matter what it said on the other side of it, though. His words are so slippery they might slide right off the paper.

There was Jeanie in the living room this morning before I went to work, bending and stretching, trying to stand on her tippy toes. Desperate. Half squatting. Wobbly, leaning on the walls, breathing like a wretched old woman. I watched her from the doorway and she gave me a glance but kept huffing away. Then she fell backward and I rushed to her. There she was, tender in my arms. I kissed her forehead.

I said: You can do whatever you put your mind to.

She said: I want to be better right now, not later.

I said: You will. You’re from a family of tough broads even if you think you’re a fairy princess.

I hugged her, and she hugged me back.

I said: I didn’t realize I was jealous of you until you came home.

I didn’t even know where it came from, but now at last, there was a real truth hovering between us.

She said: I bet you’re not jealous now.

I said: No, I’m not.

So we’ll work on this for a while. We’ll work on getting our Jeanie stronger. Whatever she needs, I’ll give her.

Told Mack he could pick me up tomorrow in the early evening just to get him to shut up already. Rudy said he’d stead me. Rudy wishes I’d fall in love more than I do, more than Rosie, more than anyone.

She did not have the best of luck with men. Dating in New York City has apparently always been terrible throughout history. You know: A good man is hard to find, and all that jazz.

Well, that was a flop.

First, the weather was cursed last night. Blustery spring wind, the kind that shakes up all the dirt and debris. I kept having to hold my skirt to my legs while waiting in front of the theater.

Then Mack showed up three sheets to the wind. He stumbled into a trash bin a half block away, and then struggled to right it. I laughed while I was watching him and then I remembered that was my date for the evening and it wasn’t funny at all.

I said: Oh brother, here comes trouble.

For his one and only act of chivalry of the night he removed his hat, but then promptly dropped it, and the wind grabbed it. I watched him chase it down the block. I turned to Rudy in the cage. Rudy whistled and looked away.

Eventually he got ahold of his hat and ran back slowly, then stood in front of me, breathless for a moment.

I said: Are you completely sloshed, Mack Walters?

He said: I am, ma’am.

I said: I took a night off work for this?

He said: I got nervous.

I was fuming. I started flapping my hands around and giving him the what for. I can’t even remember all that I said except for the last bit.

I said: And now Rudy’s got to stay late. He’s got a wife and children who’d like to see him one of these days.

He said: I didn’t know what else to do. You’re just so lovely, Mazie Phillips. You’re a pretty, pretty girl. Look at your pretty hair.

He reached out and touched my hair, the creep. I swatted his hand away, and gave him a good shove to boot. His eyes got larger, and for a moment I was terrified. I had just hit a police officer. In or out of uniform those lads still rule the streets. But instead his eyes filled with tears.

He said: I’ve been waiting for years for this and now I’ve gone and messed everything up.

I said: All right, all right, don’t go crying, especially not on your beat. You don’t want anyone to see you like that.

He let out a sob.

I said: Come on, you fool.

I dragged him down the street and the spring wind soon cooled him off. Finny’s was the only place I could take him. A drunk for a drunk’s joint. When we walked in the door Finny raised his hands in the air and everyone in the bar slid their drinks behind their backs or in their coats. As if that would make a goddamn difference. I snorted at them.

I said: Put your hands down, Finny. He’s off duty.

Finny said: I never know what to expect from the long arm of the law anymore.

I shoved Mack up to the bar and told him he’d better start buying, and he spilled some change on the counter, and paid into the wee hours. It wasn’t all bad, last night. I stayed late, so I must have been having some kind of fun. There was a laugh or two, once he calmed down. I wouldn’t let him touch me though. Funny, I’ll let any old fella passing through for the night grab me and squeeze me, but the men who’d stick around, I won’t let them near me.

Also he told me something that scared me—that they’re looking at Al Flicker for the Wall Street bombing last year.

I said: Al Flicker wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s an intellectual.

Mack said: What do you know of intellectuals?

I said: I know enough to know they’re too caught up in their heads to worry about bombing J. P. Morgan. They’d rather just talk about it all day instead.

Mack said: Well Al Flicker’s the one we’re watching.

I said: If it was me and I killed all those people, I wouldn’t stick around. Whoever did it is long gone.

At the end of the night Mack poured me into a cab. He had somehow drunk enough to be sober again, while I was finally as drunk as he’d been when he first arrived. I let him kiss my hand. I did let him do that. His lips were like cool jelly on my skin and I knew he was not the one for me.