Saint Mazie: A Novel (4 page)

Oh you want to know about the gypsies? What do you think you know about the gypsies? That they’re a bunch of criminals, probably. That’s what people always thought about them. My mother swore they spoke the truth. My friends from Little Italy, they wouldn’t go anywhere near them. They’re superstitious, and they were afraid of the curses. I have only ever been afraid of what I could see right in front of my face. Because I have seen enough. I don’t need to imagine anything worse.

But the gypsies were just the same as you and me. They lived here just like everyone else. They walked the same streets. It’s true that some of them were criminals. But you can’t judge a whole people by the actions of just a few. But that’s what we do here in this country. We do it in this world. I’ve lived such a long life. I thought things would be better by now. Every day I still watch the news. I listen to people talk. Things are not as bad as they once were, but not as good as I had hoped they would be someday. It’s the year 2000 already, and there’s still all kinds of messes in this country. I had higher hopes for this world. Eh, but what are you going to do about it anyway?

Rosie’s sick on the couch again. Hands on her belly. She swings from happy to sad in a heartbeat. We wrapped her up in blankets. I told her to stop taking whatever the gypsy gave her. Rosie, please stop, I was begging her.

She told me I was a fool and didn’t know what I was talking about, that things take time, life takes time. But it doesn’t seem right, this much pain.

What would anyone do to hold on to a dream for a little longer? Gypsy con or not, it doesn’t change Rosie’s dream.

I can’t blame her for having one, though. I would never blame anyone for wishing for something more from this life.

Then I was old enough to go to war, or at least I told them I was. I was a few months shy of legal but they didn’t check too hard. I would have said anything though to get out of that cramped apartment! The taller I got, the smaller it seemed. And I wanted to see the world. That I would be fighting in a war didn’t scare me for some reason. Maybe I wasn’t so brave, maybe I was just stupid instead. I won’t talk about what happened though, what I saw there. You know, we’re not like your generation where we need to talk about every little thing. Sometimes a bad thing happens and then you’re done with it.

But anyway I didn’t see Mazie again for five years, so I can’t help you out during that particular time period. Because I went to France and then I stayed there when the war was over and lived there and worked there and had a life there. I lived with a French girl for a year even. And she was really something, I’ll tell you. Ooh-la-la, I know. [Laughs.] I’ve had my fun, I’ve had my fun. Eventually I had to come back though. My mother got sick, and of course, there was all that trouble with Uncle Al.

Twenty years old. I’m sure I should be having more fun.

What is this pull in me that makes me want trouble? Months I’ve been quiet and good, even though the heat on the streets was making me feel sexy, wanting to dance and drink. To kiss someone. Passing by alleys at night and seeing girls and boys playing. Fingers on lips, fingers on tits, I miss it. It’s been so long since I’ve lain down with someone. Most nights are with Rosie now. I lost this summer to her belly.

Rosie lost another baby. This time it felt like she was pregnant for only a minute.

Now she’s flat on her back again in the living room. Weeks and weeks of it, and there’s a dent in the couch now, I can see the mattress sagging beneath her. I swear the springs will sink straight through the floor.

She grabs my hand but squeezes too hard and it hurts but I try not to make a noise. She asks me to stroke her head but shifts her head, squirms beneath my fingers. Rub my feet, she tells me.

But then she says: No, you’re doing it wrong. No, don’t touch me.

Watches me with her eagle eye, thinking I’ll leave her.

Louis sits in the kitchen, head down, in the food. He closed the theater for a few days this week. Jeanie’s nowhere I can see, smart girl.

I take nips in the bedroom. I can’t go to the whiskey, but the whiskey can come to me.

Something’s going to break soon. I got no control over myself and I like it.

I wasn’t ready to go home yet but there was nobody left in the bar worth talking to. Talked to a bum on the street instead, an old fella. We split whatever was in his bottle and I gave him a smoke. I was feeling tough. I asked him how long he’d been on the streets.

He said: Longer than you’ve been alive, girlie. You gotta be tough to last that long.

He beat his chest.

I said: I could survive out here.

He said: You don’t want to try.

I said: I could do it. You wanna see me?

He said: You got a home, you’re lucky.

I said: Why don’t I feel that way?

Then he got gentle with me.

He said: If someone loves you, go home to them.

A bad wind blew in and I grew suddenly, terribly cold. I couldn’t bear the night for another minute. I handed him the rest of my smokes and wandered home.

Rosie was trying to sweet-talk me early this morning. A nice change from yelling I guess.

She said: Don’t you want a sweetheart?

I said: The whole world’s my sweetheart.

Now she’s sharp and angry. She told Jeanie the dancing was done. No more classes, she said. And she told me I’d be on the streets if I came home late one more time. A month ago she didn’t want to lose me, now she’ll throw me on the streets?

I said: I know the streets. I’ve been there before.

She said: You can’t take those dresses of yours on the street.

I said: I don’t need none of it.

She said: You’d be nowhere without me.

Jeanie and I looked at Louis but there was nothing, no help. His heart is broken too, I think. His giant heart, exploded.

Took a few turns at the snuffbox of some rich man slumming downtown tonight. I can’t say I didn’t like it. Slapped his hand away from my tit though—he didn’t earn nothing just by sharing. He’s no hero like the sailors. Just a spoiled rich prick.

Everything started tumbling around me. I left when the fistfights started. I couldn’t help but laugh even as I lifted my skirts over the drunks bloody on the floor. That was not the right bar for a girl like me, though I couldn’t say it was the wrong one either.

But then I was walking down the streets and the moon was judging me, it was staring at me and judging me, I swear it was. I stood on the corner, and I let it judge me. I’ll judge you back, too, moon. What do you know? Stupid moon. Horrible moon.

I came home and got down on my hands and my knees in front of Rosie, still on the couch. She put her hands in my hair.

She said: Why can’t I have a baby?

I said: I don’t know.

She said: Why won’t you be a good girl?

I said: I don’t know.

We stayed like that until I came in here to write this down. She clawed at my neck when I walked away.

It’s her pain, not mine.

I was gone all day and all night. No candy shop, no track. Just the streets and the bars and the men and the women and the whiskey and the beer and the smokes and the snuff. Nothing but these things, and then more of these things, and then bed.

When I woke up this afternoon I went into the kitchen and Rosie was sitting at the table with Louis. Maybe the fever broke, I was thinking. I looked in her eyes and they seemed clear. But my eyes were hazy, so what did I know? I couldn’t trust what I saw for nothing.

She sounded clear though.

She said: I’ve tried everything with you. Louis, you know I’m right.

He didn’t want no part of it, I thought, but he nodded. He was pressing his fork against his eggs.

She said: Something’s gotta change. You know I’m right too, Mazie.

I felt bad about interrupting his eggs. Louis loves his eggs.

He said: Here’s the thing.

At last! The big man speaks.

He said: It’s a favor more than anything else.

Favor’s a word I can’t refuse when it comes to Louis, and he knows it. He’s taken care of us forever and he didn’t have to. He waited to say that word. He waited till he couldn’t wait anymore. Kept the favor in his pocket. Bet he’s got more than a few in there.

He said: Rosie’s been sick and I’ve been needing help down at the theater.

He put down his fork and then he took Rosie’s hand. Or did she take his? I couldn’t tell. They were propping each other up now. That’s what it meant. That’s how that works when you’re together with someone. I get it, even if I don’t have it.

He told me he wanted me to work the ticket booth, that it was true that the hours were long but it was important work to him. He had put a lot of money into the theater.

He said: You’re good with numbers. There’s money coming in and out all day. And I need someone I can trust there. There’s sticky fingers all over this city, you know that.

He told me it would just be for a little while and when I asked how long he told me he didn’t know, and I don’t think he was lying, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

I said: It’s a cage and you know it. You’re putting me in prison.

He said: Tell me what I ever ask you for.

Rosie said: He gives you everything!

I could not argue with either of them about anything. I know they were right. They had me cornered. Finally, Rosie had me.

I said: Death is upon me.

They laughed at me like chickens.

Rosie: It’s good that you’re funny. It’s good that you find things so funny. You’ll be needing that sense of humor.

But I wasn’t kidding around. That ticket booth! All day, hours and hours, the whole world going on around me. I’m going to miss everything. The world will pass me by. I will grow old and then die in that cage.

I chose only to help the men, not the children. Men, I can help. I can give them some change, a place to sleep. I can call an ambulance. Their needs are simpler. And if they still fail, there’s no one they can blame but themselves. But the kids I steer clear of. There’s people better at it than me, who have the time to give. I’ve got a jar full of lollies for them, and that’ll do. I got nothing to say to them. Every kid on the Bowery knows they can come to me and I’ll give them a treat, and that’s all. Give them a treat and then shoo them away.

So she and my great-grandfather Rudy Wallach worked together for two decades at the Venice Theater. I have seen pictures of the theater, both the interior and the exterior, but none of these pictures are in particularly good condition. I know that the theater was beneath the tracks of the Second Avenue elevated train line, which I imagine made it quite noisy. I can also tell you the theater was in the style of the era, which is to say it was a classical-style movie palace, with European design influences. There were velvet seats—I presume they were red, though it was obviously impossible to tell from the photos I saw—and high ceilings with some ornate decor. The theater seated approximately six hundred people, and there was a ground floor as well as a balcony level. In its initial conception, it was, for lack of a better description, a very classy joint.

Today was my first day at the ticket booth in the theater. Glass cage is more like it. Prisoners would complain if it were their cell, that’s how small it is. A chicken would squawk if it were his coop.

I said: A dead man would complain if he knew this was his coffin.

Rosie was moving things around lightning quick, a lockbox, a roll of tickets, a tin can full of sharpened pencils. She slapped a notebook on the counter.

She said: Then I guess you’d better rest in peace.

She stepped outside of it and ushered me inside. I bruised my hip on the countertop squeezing in there. That countertop had already marked me for life.

I flopped down on the swivel chair and spun myself slowly around. There was just enough room for that. There was a heater in one corner, already blowing like it had been waiting for me all along. A clock ticking off the minutes before nine in the morning. A calendar on the wall. One month gone, February lay blank. Life was going to happen all around me. The truth of the moment struck me. I started to tear up like a stupid baby girl.

Rosie said: Oh, you poor thing, putting in a hard day’s work

I said: It ain’t that. I’m not afraid of work.

She knew I was telling the truth. I’d always done what Louis had asked me to do.

I said: It’s just that I’ll be all alone in here, and everyone else will be out there.

I suppose I was being a little dramatic and I flung my arms out. Of course they bumped right up against the window, only proving my point further.

Rosie started laughing at me, and it just sounded so good, to hear her laughing. I almost didn’t care what she was going to say. Even if she was teasing me, I was happy to hear her laugh.

She said: Mazie, there’s one thing you’ll never feel in this job, and that’s alone.

She squeezed in next to me, and showed me my tasks. How I’d keep track of how many tickets I started with in the morning, and how many I ended with in the evening. She taught me the combination to the lock. She slid open a small drawer underneath the countertop. Inside was a flask. She looked at me and shrugged.

She said: It does help move the day along.

I said: Well, well.

Then it was ten all of a sudden and there was a line of people building up in front of the theater.

She said: Don’t let anyone give you any trouble.

She left me with a small paper sack, lunch for the day. I settled myself. My hips and chest and belly all shifted into some kind of position and I tried to sit up straight but I knew I’d be slouching by the end of the day. The train rumbled on by over my head again, a thundercloud rolling through. I couldn’t even hear myself think but what was there to think about anyway? It was just me and the line. Rosie was still standing there, off to the side, watching everything. She was smiling so hard I thought her face would split in two, straight down the middle, two cheeks floating off in the sky. She had rearranged me. I was a movable part to her. And now I was in this cage.

I slid aside the front guard to the cage and slotted it into place. The whole of the line took a step forward all at once, like they were taking one big breath together. I looked at them all. Women holding hands with their little ones, a few sailors and soldiers, more than a few men in suits looking like they might be trying to sleep off their night out on the Bowery.

Then I got a little dizzy for a second. It’s just a job, is what I was thinking.

Finally, Rosie spoke.

She said: This is Mazie, and she’s in charge now.

And damn if they didn’t all wave at me and say hello.