Saint Mazie: A Novel (16 page)

Sister Tee’s been telling me about some of the saints. She says every kind of person has their own kind of saint to watch over them. I told her about my date with Mack and it made her titter.

She said: Saint Liberata, patron saint of unwanted suitors and marriages.

She stands at the cage and rattles off their life stories. Better than the gossip rags sometimes. Better than my life anyway. Some saints begin their lives imperfect and then turn into something special. Sister Tee says we are the sum of our imperfections. We sin and then we learn from our sins.

Sister Tee said: You can do wrong and then turn right.

I said: You believe that?

Because I truly needed to believe it, too.

I want saints for everything. Saint of Free Spirits. Saint of Dancing Fools. Saint of the Ocean. Saint of the Sky. Saint of the Moon. Saint of the Lovers. I want to feel watched over and safe, but from afar. I like to think about all the saints looking over me. They’re above and I’m below.

I know they’re not real. I’m no fool. Only it’s sweet to have something to dream about in that cage of mine.

Jeanie’s health is much improved. She walked down to the ocean with me this morning. Scarves and hats and in the wind, wrapped so tight we could barely move our mouths. We stood together in the sand. It wasn’t a far distance. But it was the end of the block. It was somewhere.

A teacup overturned, the stain of leaves on the kitchen table. Rosie seemed excited when I got home. A visit from the gypsies. Rosie’s probably trying to secure Jeanie’s fate. Like a good life’s something that can be paid for. Like our future’s up for purchase.

Sister Tee found Al Flicker in an alley today, down off Bayard Street. Beat up bad. She wasn’t looking for him. She doesn’t look to help the men. But she couldn’t step over his body, couldn’t just leave him there bleeding. I saw her walking him along on Park Row, his arm around her neck, her bending from the weight. I ran from my cage. I hollered that I knew him, and she stopped. I know him, I know him. Screaming like a loon. We walked him into the theater. Rudy grew pale from the blood. Rudy’s useless sometimes. I told him to get some towels. We sat Al on the balcony stairs. There was a cut under his eye that was gushing, and his nose was off center, mushed up, and bloody. His long legs and arms were bunched up, still in fear, and I remembered him crammed into his bed beneath the stairs, surrounded by his books. I asked him who had done it and he said it was the police. Told me it wasn’t a crime to speak or think or be aware of the world.

He said: I didn’t bomb anything.

We pressed a towel against his wounds, and it soaked through, and then we pressed another and another, until finally he stopped bleeding. I sent one of the ushers to find his sister, and she came and took him away. I think she might have even said thank you, words I never thought I’d hear from that woman’s mouth. Slighted me since childhood. We’re all the same when our loved ones are injured though.

This is when my mother called me back, when Al started getting in trouble. I didn’t want to come. In France the girls found me charming and they were free with their bodies in a way American girls would never be with me. In New York City I knew I’d be just another schmo from the Lower East Side. I had the same nose as everyone else and eventually people would forget I’d served my time; they’d forget that they were supposed to respect me. In France I was an exotic Jewish American soldier, an enemy and a savior at the same time, and I swung my cock like a champion.

I’m one hundred years old, and every morning I get up and read the paper and have coffee and a roll and then I take a walk through the garden here and then I come home and lie down in bed and I often spend the rest of the morning thinking about my time in France, which was one of the best times of my life. But my mother sounded scared in her letters, and there was one phone call in particular that rattled me. She cried the entire time. This was a woman who never cried, a tougher human you’ll never meet, so when she cried, it meant something. All the French pussy in the world couldn’t compete with my mother’s tears.

I always know Ethan’s around before I even see him. Laughter and flowers, Ethan’s around. There were the lilies, drooping in a vase in the kitchen, smelling faintly of piss, like a dog had gotten too friendly with them. Then there’s Jeanie laughing over nothing, just to have a good time with him.

They were dancing in the living room. I stood and watched them, Louis and Rosie, too. Two left feet, Ethan has. Suppose that’s why he fell in love with a dancer, admiring that which is not his. He nearly dropped her when he dipped her and we all gasped.

She said: It’s all right. It doesn’t matter really.

He said: I’ll take lessons.

She said: You’re sweet.

He said: Sweet on you.

She said: You don’t need to take lessons.

He said: Do you think I’m getting better?

She said: You couldn’t get any worse.

He stepped on her foot and she yelped. He was all apologies. Rosie nearly went to her. Those precious legs.

She said: It’s fine, I promise.

He said: Truly it doesn’t matter?

She said: Truly.

I think we were all watching her to see if she was telling the truth.

Al Flicker got beat again last night, and it was bad. I heard it from Rudy who heard it from one of the ushers who heard it from a friend on the force who was there while it was happening.

I saw Mack in the afternoon, walking his beat. I yelled at him that I wanted to talk about Al. At first he ignored me, but people started looking at us and he couldn’t dodge it. Lousy coward is what he is. He sauntered over to the cage, dragged his nightstick slowly across the bars. He didn’t scare me. He’d never scare me.

He said: How about you show some respect?

I said: How about you and your thug friends respect the people in your neighborhood? And not pummel innocent men for no reason.

He said: I wasn’t there and I don’t know what you’re talking about anyway.

I said: He’s not a criminal.

He said: Mind your own, Mazie.

He doesn’t understand a goddamn thing though. These streets are my business.

Al kept getting beat up, and we were pretty certain he had developed some kind of brain damage. Al started calling them “Bad luck nights.” Poor guy would come home early in the morning, blood on his clothes and on his face, wobbling and dizzy. Half the time he’d tip over into the furniture. And then—always with a smile on his face—he’d say, “Had another bad luck night!” I don’t know why he didn’t just stay home but we couldn’t stop him for nothing. He thought it was his right to walk the streets when he pleased. Which it was.

A few times I tried to talk to him about it and he shook me off. Finally my mother insisted I corner him, and so we took a walk to Washington Square Park where he liked to play chess on occasion. I said, “Al, we’re all so worried.” Then he very carefully explained to me that because of the color of his skin he was much better off than many people in this country, and if he had to take a little bit of beating he could survive it. Because in the morning he would wake up free to walk the streets again. He could sit where he wanted to sit, eat where he wanted to eat. He was free. He said, “None of it bothers me because I always remember it could be worse.” Which was a beautiful notion in a way, but at the same time, something an impaired man would say too.

But then another time I asked him about it and he said, “George, I’m making a point.” And I said, “What point?” And he said, “If you have to ask, you don’t get it.” And he waved his arms around at nothing. Now this was nonsense of course. Just tell me the point already. I want to know the damn point. It was hard not to write him off as damaged goods. My best guess is he was somewhere in the middle.

Louis drove me to work today. No reason why. We just missed each other, our time alone together. We didn’t even discuss it. He was up early and so was I and away we went.

He said: So what do you think about Ethan?

I said: I like him just fine.

He said: He’s asked for Jeanie’s hand in marriage.

I said: Quite the surprise.

He shifted a little bit in the seat, squeezed the wheel with his giant hands. His voice dipping down deeper than usual. A little bead of sweat emerged from his fedora.

He said: I’m not her father. She can do what she likes. But what do you think? He’s good to her, yes?

I said: If she loves him too, she should marry the poor guy. It’s obvious he’s smitten for eternity.

He said: He’ll provide for her.

I said: Yes! Oh, Louis, she means the world to him. He’s got a good job. He’s not going anywhere.

He said: All right, I was just checking. Rosie thinks so too. It’s not that I don’t trust her opinion. There’s no one sharper than your sister. Only I know she’d rather see all of you married off sooner rather than later. And I’d just like for you girls to be happy.

We were quiet for a long time after that. My mind went somewhere dark, and I tried to pull myself out of it, but I was sunk with sadness.

I said: You know there’s no hope for me. No husband in my future.

He said: You’re better than all that anyway.

He said it without thinking, and it made me think that it was true, or at least that he believed it was true. That was good enough for me. Good enough for now.

Walked down to the water this morning and Jeanie was already there. Not whole yet, but closer to who she used to be. Leaping and skipping. A tumble in the sand but she laughed as she fell. Still lean, always lean, but healthier. One leg matches the other now. She was nodding in the wind. Seagulls scattering. I waved at her and she waved back. We didn’t join each other. But I was satisfied that we were both bearing witness to the same sunrise.

I know where Mazie hides this, but I swear I don’t read it, only needed to write down one more thing, shed this skin, bleed this blood. No one wants to talk to me about Mama. She’s dead, I know it, what’s the point anyway? And it’s true I’ve not thought much about Mama & Papa in my life, not knowing them, barely remembering even very much about them. But I have something to say.

Rosie & Mazie told me Papa was bad, and so I believe it to be true. He hit her, for years he hit her. Rosie says he’s a bastard, I believe it. Mazie says I should be grateful to Rosie for saving us, and I believe that, too. Our mother was once beautiful, they’ve both told me that. I let that roll over in my imagination and accept it as fact even though my only memory of her was dark circle eyes and clumps of hair that came out in her hands. I squeeze my eyes shut and she becomes a whole woman again, because they say it, and I want it to be true.

But when I think of him, I only remember him dancing. He danced with me when I was a little one, held me high in his arms and swayed me around the room. And I remember once, only once, going to a fair, all of us as a family, and seeing him dance there. We were there for hours, we lost him, and I slept in my mother’s lap while she stroked my hair. It was safe there, the comfort of her lap, her thighs, her hips I remember it all as soft and bounteous, and that’s all I wanted was her touch. Stroke my hair, hold me close, dance me around the room.

And when we found him there was music like I had never heard and strings of lights everywhere. It seemed like millions of them, but only now I realize that wasn’t true, it was only because I was little, and so everything seemed bigger. But oh it was dazzling! All those lights. And the crowds of people dancing. And there was our Papa, dancing with a stranger, and I looked at how happy he was. But Rosie stopped him, made him stop dancing with the woman. The last thing I remember about this was thinking: Why is Rosie making Papa stop when he’s so happy?

Later I knew it to be true that it was bad that Papa left us all alone, and bad that he had his hand on this woman, and especially bad that later on he hit Mama and Rosie, I know all of that. But one of the most beautiful things in life is seeing someone else happy. Isn’t that the most we can dream of?

I only saw what she wrote just now. We all forgot about everything after she left again.

Life is full of lies just waiting to be told.

Walking wounded, and we never even went to war.

She had someone who loved her and it didn’t even matter. She threw it all away like it didn’t mean a goddamn thing to her. I want love. I want it, and I can’t have it, and she throws it away.

I got a postcard from Jeanie today, at last.

It said: I’m not done yet.

They’re not criminals, they’re just drunks. Still they spend half their time in jail. The police are always roughing them up. I’ve watched it with my own eyes, every day for decades. But rich folks, they commit all kinds of crimes and nobody ever blinks. Hell, I drank straight through Prohibition, and that’s the least of my crimes. I knew the rules, and I knew how to break them without getting caught. No one ever threw me in jail.