Saint Mazie: A Novel (17 page)

Twenty-four years old today, though I feel like I’m a hundred.

Louis requested my presence in the car this morning. I said yes because I say yes to everything they want lately. We didn’t even drive anywhere. We just sat. The seagulls were screeching at the end of the block.

He said: Hey, sis.

I said: Yes, brother?

He said: I’m thinking you should become part of the family. Legally. Be a Gordon like your sister and me.

I said: I’m already your family. You raised me, you fed me, you took care of me.

He said: I want you to be blood. I’ve been watching over you forever, let me call you one of mine. That other one, there’s no telling what she’ll do, when she’ll be here, even if she’ll ever be here again. But you’re here, you’re our girl, you’re not going anywhere. So be one of the Gordons.

I thought about what it meant to be a Gordon versus a Phillips. My father is a violent rat bastard. A man who hits women is the worst kind of man. Still I am part Phillips, always will be. There’s no denying the truth of your blood. But I’m a Gordon too. When Jeanie left, everything shifted again. Our family rejiggered.

I said: It’s an honor that you ask me, Louis. But I don’t know if I can give up my name.

I prayed he didn’t take it as an insult.

He said: Maybe you could be both names. A Phillips and a Gordon. Make one of them your middle name.

I said: That sounds like something I could do.

He said: I’ll adopt you like you were my own.

I said: I’m yours, Louis.

Then we hugged, me and the big guy, until we cried.

This is the safest I’ve felt in years, knowing I’ll be his. Knowing he’s claimed me for his own.

Louis spoke to me yesterday about signing the theater over to me. He told me it’ll make his life easier in taxes, and that I’ll get more of a share of the money we bring in. He makes too much money, but not enough, whatever that means.

He said: It’ll be good for you to have it in your name. You practically run the joint anyway. Someday it’ll be yours for real.

I said: I’ll do whatever you ask. Give me a pen, tell me where to sign.

A postcard from the Captain, and I barely read it. Saw his name, looked at the lake, the mountain, somewhere in Oregon. Blue skies surrounding it all, a picture of a perfect day somewhere far away. He saw it, I didn’t. What do I care? I put it up in the cage with the rest of them.

These people who come and go can just stay where they are.

Saw Louis down the road from the theater with a dapper Jew. Nice suit, fine, narrow features, olive skin, doe eyes, thin. A tidy kippah pinned to his head. I could see how shiny his shoes were from half a block away. I don’t generally go for the religious ones but this one might make me change my tune. I’d slice some challah for him any old time.

I was hoping Louis would bring him over so I could give him a closer look. I waved at the two of them, but if Louis saw me, he was ignoring me. Finally he nodded at my future husband, no handshake exchanged, and the two of them parted ways.

Louis made his way over to the cage, hands in his pockets, stooped over, whistling.

I said: Who was that young fella you were chatting with?

He said: I wasn’t chatting with nobody.

I said: I just saw you. With that well-dressed Jew.

He said: That wasn’t anyone you should be worried about.

He smiled when he said it, all casual-like, but I felt prickly and cold. I never got a chill from Louis before, not my entire life.

Was Louis Gordon a criminal? I guess we should think about what it means to be a criminal. History teaches us that some of our most successful leaders engaged in illegal activities. Hell, all of our presidents are war criminals. And I got some tough guys in my family, even though I love them like crazy. I’ve seen fights. Growing up in Brooklyn, you see fights. But I don’t mean Mafia, just, you know, big guys, tough guys. Some do time. But sometimes it’s just people blowing off steam.

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.

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.

Saw that dapper Jew down the block today again.

Nobody knows Louis’s business except Louis, not even Rosie I don’t think.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.