Saint Mazie, page 15
And then there’s my cousin Joseph. He’s a gambler, and he got himself in all kinds of trouble, fell in a hole he couldn’t climb his way out of, but what he got caught for was credit card fraud. This is considered a victimless crime. He certainly felt that way, and for the most part, so did the judge. He’s in a halfway house now. His wife left him, took the three kids with her, left the dog behind. It was his dog. But he can’t keep it obviously, so guess who has the dog now? Me.
This is a beautiful dog, an Akita. Do you know about these dogs? They’ve got this soft, plush fur, and they’re sort of like stuffed animals. They don’t give a crap about anyone but their owners—they’ll basically ignore anyone else, maybe at best have a lazy interest in them—but they are loyal to the core to the hand that feeds them.
My cousin’s dog, she’s in perfect condition. Her teeth are as white as yours, like polished stones. This dog has been loved and cared for her entire life. Beautiful fur, shiny eyes, great disposition. And she sits by the door every night waiting for him to come home—even if his wife doesn’t. How bad could a person be if he took care of a dog this well? But he’s a criminal, I know it. Everyone in my family knows it. Thanksgiving was the worst last year. You know when everyone’s not saying someone’s name but you’re all hearing it anyway? It was like that.
There was a documentary that came out a few years ago on these guys, these Coney Island guys, not Louis specifically, though. I ordered it for the school library. Kids watch it sometimes for extra credit. I could get it from the school library and we could watch it together; I can fill in some of the blanks for you. A lot of these guys were heroes in their community. I think that’s an important thing to remember. They were legends and saints. Even if they broke the law.
Mazie’s Diary, June 15, 1922
Postcard from Jeanie. How’d she make it all the way to California?
Daydreamed about the Captain showing up one day at a performance of hers, just stumbling in there, an accident, maybe another girl on his arm. Jeanie and him never even knowing I loved them both.
Mazie’s Diary, July 2, 1922
Saw that dapper Jew down the block today again.
Nobody knows Louis’s business except Louis, not even Rosie I don’t think.
Elio Ferrante
My cousin I was telling you about last week, the one on the force, he took a look and there’s no record at all of any arrest of Louis Gordon, anytime before 1923. Now, if he had any aliases, it might be a different story. And that doesn’t include other states obviously. And to be honest, my cousin says the paperwork system from eighty years ago, maybe it’s not the most reliable in the world. But according to existing records, Louis Gordon was never arrested or convicted of any crime.
Mazie’s Diary, August 3, 1922
In my cage, counting pennies, a smack of hands against my booth. I looked up, and there was the Captain, forehead pressed on the glass.
He said: There she is, the most beautiful lady in the world.
I raced from my cage and embraced him, a girlish fool. I pretended he was mine to keep.
What else can I do but love him?
I don’t care if I’m supposed to care that he’ll never be here when I need him. Fleeting as a fly. I only know that I have a good time when I see him, that he makes me feel like a good-time girl again, back when I knew nothing of the world, back when all I cared about was a laugh. And I need that right now. I need a laugh. Squeezing both my hands. The kisses all over me, and his sweat on my flesh. All the world contained between us. Even that grunt he makes when he’s done that I know has nothing to do with me, it makes me laugh. He’s just him, he’s just a man. Weak and human and all it comes down to is a noise.
Mazie’s Diary, August 5, 1922
Last night, damp in his hotel room. I threw away everything for two days just to lie there sweating with this man. He gave me a dozen dangling gold bracelets and they dripped down my arm. The fan blew overhead, an open window, the breeze coming off the river, and still we were just stuck in each other’s sweat. I couldn’t move away from him, neither he from me.
He said: Come back with me to California.
I laughed at him. Not being cruel, just amused. How funny to think about that. How funny it would be if I left, too. What would my world be like somewhere else? I hadn’t thought about that in so long, being somewhere else, it felt almost like it was never. So I had all those thoughts at once, and his arms were around me and I was covered in his sweat, and so I laughed.
He said: Don’t be mean.
I said: I’m not being mean. It’s a lot to ask.
He said: It seems like nothing to ask. It seems like the simplest thing in the world. Marry me, Mazie.
I said: What would I do in California?
He said: This. Exactly this. Every day. For the rest of our lives.
I said: Life isn’t made of just this.
But I didn’t know what else it was made of either.
He said: This isn’t how I thought it would go, proposing to a lady.
I said: We don’t even know each other.
He put his fingers inside me, two of them, deeply.
He said: I know you.
Rosie would never get the kitchen clean enough if I left, is what I thought. If I’m so special to this man why don’t I see him but once a year, is what I thought. I don’t know how it works, that kind of love, is what I thought. I only know the temporary kind.
He said: The air is cleaner, the sky is bluer, and the trees are as tall as skyscrapers.
I said: That’s not possible.
He said: I’m telling you, Mazie, you don’t need skyscrapers when you have trees like these.
I told him no, but I was gentle and I kissed him and I whispered only that I was too scared to say yes. Which was not a lie, though not the whole truth. I have never been able to tell him the truth about anything though.
I know you, is what he whispered over and over in my ear all night. But this morning he seemed relieved I had said no. Or maybe I was just imagining it. Or maybe I wanted to imagine it. He told me I could change my mind if I liked. He said California would always be there, and so would he. A great big state far away, on the other side of the country. I gathered up my things and returned to my life. He went off on a ship. Tomorrow I’ll explain to everyone in my life where I’ve been. Today I’ll think about California.
Mazie’s Diary, August 6, 1922
I found Rosie on the floor in the kitchen, sobbing, when I came home early this morning. Hysterics. I couldn’t calm her. The sunlight lit up her face, those lines drawn in her forehead, her mustache untended to, eyes bulging and pink. I gave her a glass of water and she pushed it away. I tried to hold her and she shook beneath me. I shushed her, I stroked her hair, and it was no use at all, none of it. Finally I slapped her, and she looked as if she might murder me right there on the kitchen floor, but it was better than her sobbing like that.
She said: You can’t just do that to me. You can’t disappear on me.
I said: Rosie, I didn’t mean it like that. I got caught up on something. It was just a man.
I should have just told her everything then, told her I loved him, told her who he is to me, who he was to me. But he’s my secret goddammit. He’s all mine.
I said: Where’s Louis?
She said: He’s gone, doing whatever it is he does out there.
I said: Who ever knows what Louis does?
She said: I was fine when he left. It’s only when I’m left alone I get like this. I don’t mean to get like this.
I said: You’ve been better lately.
She said: I haven’t. Not truly.
She didn’t know what I was doing all day and I didn’t know what she was doing all day either. She could weep in the mornings and scream in the afternoons for all I knew.
She let me hold her then. Soon enough Louis got home. Maybe he could hear her howling from wherever he was. By then she had calmed. Still, we were slumped on the ground together. He whistled as he entered.
He said: The kitchen’s really sparkling today, wife of mine.
He leaned over her, kissed her on her head. Gave her his hands and she took them, and then she was up, standing. Gave me his, and I was up, too.
I’m in bed now, a flask next to me. There was something I was supposed to be dreaming about but I forgot already what it was.
George Flicker
When I came home I moved right back into the apartment I grew up in on Grand Street. I was a world traveler! I had fought in a war. I had saved people’s lives. I got a Bronze Star; do you see that over there on my mirror? [He points at a dresser.] A Bronze Star! And now I was crammed back into that same damn one-room apartment. It was not pleasant. My parents were older, and they were starting to smell like old people, just like I do now. With Al not being well, everyone’s nerves were frayed, and we were stepping all over each other. My mother swore I was half a foot taller than when I’d left, like I’d had some sort of growth spurt in France.
And I had to start all over finding work, building a career. Girlie, I’m telling you, it’s no fun to start over when you’ve already started over once or twice, and you’re doing it right under the nose of your mother. But in France I had worked for a tie manufacturer, and he had taught me how to make ties, and how to sell them, too. When I moved to New York I got a job at a tie factory for fifteen cents an hour. I started to save enough money to buy my own ties, which I sold on the streets. But what I was really thinking about was real estate. It was not an original thought, of course. I don’t know anyone in New York City who doesn’t think about it. It’s impossible to walk those streets and not think about real estate. Louis Gordon was in it, I remember. He owned a few buildings here and there, along with all his other…investments. You know, he was a dabbler.
Elio Ferrante
It’s pretty unlikely that he was solely a gambler based on what you’ve told me. Money laundering, sure, that was a possibility. Could have been a loan shark. Could have run booze, could have run drugs. There are myriad possibilities.
Mazie’s Diary, September 22, 1922
After breakfast this morning Louis asked us if we wanted to take a walk down to the ocean.
He said: Come on, nobody’s out there. The street is all ours.
Louis opened the front door and the most delicious ocean air came in, cool and moist. A gentle slap in the face. Rosie stopped scrubbing. She rubbed the back of her neck with her hands.
Louis said: Let’s pretend like we own it all. Like we’re the king and queen of Coney Island.
I said: I’ll play princess, Rosie. You’re the queen.
Rosie said no, and there’s no arguing with her after breakfast. All those dishes in the sink and everything. But I said yes.
I took his elbow, and we walked all the way to the end of the road. The seagulls in their loop de loops. When we got to the sand we stood quietly and I leaned against him. He took my hand and kissed it.
He said: What if we had a conversation about your sister? About her mental state.
I nearly keeled over. For years I’ve been waiting for him to want to talk about it. Rosie’s madness.
I said: I worry sick about her sometimes.
He said: She worries about you, too.
I said: But we’re not talking about me.
He said: No, we’re not.
I said: Do you think she’s crazy?
He said: You live with her, you know what I know. For weeks she’ll be fine. Months and months even.
I nodded, this was true. All had been quiet until I went off with the Captain.
I said: What about behind closed doors? That I don’t know.
He said: Behind closed doors, she sleeps like an angel.
He grimaced for a moment.
He said: Except when she doesn’t sleep at all.
I said: What can we do?
He said: Be there for her when she needs us. Show up when we’re supposed to. Schedules are important to her.
I said: But what about my life?
He didn’t answer me, he just shrugged. A tiny airplane dragged over the ocean, and he pointed at it, but didn’t say a damn thing. The wind that had felt so lovely before now stung my eyes.
I said: Haven’t I done enough? Don’t I do enough?
He walked off.
I said: But what about me?
George Flicker
Look, he was never arrested for anything, not that any of us knew of. In my book he was no worse than anyone else of his ilk. Likely he was much better.
I’ll tell you this story though. I remember I saw him one last time, right when I got back in town from France. It must have been two in the morning. I’d have done anything not to be in that apartment. The streets were empty, and I was marveling at how much cleaner they were than when I had left. Less riffraff, for starters. But there was no garbage either. I remember just the fall leaves beneath my feet.
And then he sort of startled me, and I don’t really startle easily. I’m small now, I’ve shrunk, my bones are tiny, but I was at my peak then. You know, I was this young, healthy, fit guy who’d served his country. I wasn’t so far away from battle that I wasn’t on my toes.
But Louis was an enormous man, and he tapped me on the shoulder and all I could see was this big figure behind me and I jumped. Well, he started laughing. He said, “It’s me, Georgie, your old neighbor Louis.” I said, “Louis! Of course!” My heart was racing, I had to bend over for a second. I was kind of half laughing, half breathing hard.
So he patted my back until I calmed down. He said, “Aw, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then we just shot the breeze for a while, it was no big deal. He thanked me for my service. He’d heard about the medal from my mother, I guess. Then he offered me his card and said if I ever needed anything, some work, money, anything at all, he’d be happy to help me out. “Two pals from the neighborhood,” is what he said.
And I remember thinking exactly this to myself at the time: George Flicker, no matter how bad it gets, you never call this man for a job. Because you are no criminal.
Elio Ferrante
I know it’s killing you that you’ll never know the real truth because it seems like he might be a criminal. You’ll just have to accept the fact that you’ll never really know. I mean there’s just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We’re not entitled to all the truth.
Mazie’s Diary, November 11, 1922
Louis’s in the hospital. He was at the track and he fell forward, his heart seized on him. He was talking to a trainer, one hand on the horse, and then down he slid. It scared the horse, who ran off to her stable, where she hid for the rest of the day. No one can get her out. This is what the trainer said to me in the hospital when he came to pay his respects. I made him tell me everything. Every last detail.
I said: What track was he at?
He said: The Empire City, miss.
I said: What color’s the horse?
He said: Chocolate brown.
I said: What’s her name?
He said: Santa Maria.
I said: Is she favored to win?
He said: Not anymore.
I’m only home to bathe because one of us should bathe, between me and Rosie. One of us should be presentable to talk to whoever needs talking to. Because it doesn’t look good for Louis.
Mazie’s Diary, November 13, 1922
Louis left us yesterday. We held hands with him, me and Rosie, one hand in each of ours. Ring Around the Rosie went through my head. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. We didn’t know what else to do but touch him for as long as we could before we couldn’t touch him anymore. Rosie sang to him in Hebrew, a song I never heard before. She said it was about being between two worlds, ending a life here, beginning a life somewhere else. I didn’t want him to go anywhere else. I held his hand against my cheek, felt his skin go from warm to cool to cold. All the wailing. A doctor, a nurse, another nurse, stuck their heads in the room, until finally they stopped looking and left us alone.
Mazie’s Diary, November 14, 1922
There were four of us, and then there were three, and now it is just two.
Mazie’s Diary, November 15, 1922
Rosie sits like a stone in the kitchen. Barely made of flesh. I nearly didn’t get her to the funeral. I couldn’t find Jeanie to tell her he was sick, let alone dying, now dead. She’s just…somewhere in California. She will always be somewhere in California. Louis will always be dead now.
So it was just the two of us, and Louis’s aunts and their husbands, wading through the fall leaves toward the grave site. All the Gordons weeping, and Rosie just stock-still, until she fell to her knees, the lower half of her collapsing where the top half of her could not. Her dress was covered with dirt and when she stood I dusted her off.
I said: You’ll be all right.
I must have said that a dozen times until I realized I was still saying it out loud and not just in my head. Everyone looked at me as I chattered. I put my arm around Rosie and said it one more time.
Mazie’s Diary, November 17, 1922
We sat shiva today. Neither of us wanted to, as we practice no faith, but Louis was a Jew, in his way. And so for Louis, we opened our doors to his aunts. They arrived like a squadron, a squat army of mourners. I was glad they were there for the help. One of his aunts had brought what looked like a wall of smoked fish. They were noisy and busy in their preparations. It was good to listen to their chatter, their huffing, the opening and slamming of cabinet doors as they found their way through an unfamiliar kitchen.
