Saint Mazie: A Novel (27 page)

Here she goes with the smell again. Chinatown in the summertime, it isn’t pretty I agree. I finally told her about George Flicker’s building.

She said: That’s a terrible block.

I said: I told you they’re tearing down those buildings.

She said: It’ll be as if we’re living on a cemetery.

I said: It’ll be as if we’re living in a brand-new apartment building. Rosie, it’s built from scratch. There will be a garden. It’ll be the fanciest in the neighborhood. We could live high up in the air, look at the bridge from our window. Look at the water. No bad smells, no street noises.

She was staring at me across the table, maybe for the first time understanding my desperation although I thought I’d been plenty desperate already.

I said: It’s a chance at a fresh start.

I said: It’s the best we can do.

I said: It’s the best I can do.

I dated a girl who lived in Knickerbocker Village once. This Chinese girl I went out with junior year at Hunter. Her name was Ella, which was not her real name but just what she wanted to be called. It’s weird but I don’t even know what her real name was, or maybe I did once and I can’t remember anymore. It’s not important, I know, my ex-girlfriends.

Anyway there’s lots of Chinese there. Chinese and Italians. The families get in there, and then they bring all their extended family members in, or sometimes the kids grow up and get their own apartment. People move in and just stay. It’s not totally impossible to get in the building otherwise, but it’s hard. The wait list is long. It’s like Stuy Town, only smaller, and with way more soul.

Ella took me on a tour of it once after a big night out on the town so yes that’s code for we were wasted. [Laughs.] There were two courts, an east court and a west court, and the buildings looked over these big courtyards. I don’t remember much more about it physically. The things I do remember have to do with the history. Of course. Like the Rosenbergs lived there before they were executed and there were all kinds of Mafia connections and of course the whole Lung Block thing. That’s the information my brain traps. You know what I mean; you get it. You’ve got a one-track mind, too.

I slept over that night actually. It was pretty dumb of me, her mother was in the next room. I snuck out early in the morning so I can barely tell you what the place looked like. But I could hear birds chirping in the courtyard from her window and I thought when I woke up, before I remembered where I was, that maybe I was in the country somewhere. It was quiet, it was early, and there were birds. And the ceilings were high. I don’t know why I remember that. Oh, and when I walked out the front gate I smelled bread. I followed the scent to an Italian bakery across the street. I bought a loaf of bread and ate hunks of it while I walked to City Hall to catch a train to Brooklyn. Ha! That was a night. Her mother found out and wouldn’t let her see me anymore. Maybe there was another guy involved, a long-term boyfriend. She thought I was a bad influence on her daughter. Me, can you imagine?

We walked by there, you and me, last summer, do you remember? We went to Chinatown for dumplings. You had just cut off all your hair and you asked me a hundred times if it looked good and I told you that you’d look good without any hair at all and then we were standing in front of it, looking inside the garden, and you wondered if we could just walk in…and you tried but the security guard stopped you. “Just a peek,” you said. And he said, “No peeking.” And you tried all your wiles on him and it didn’t work and then when we left I tried to make you feel better about it all and you said, “If I hadn’t cut my hair he would have let me in.” I told you you were so beautiful and you didn’t hear a word I said. Why do you never hear a word I say?

This morning’s crew came, scuffling feet, filthy overcoats. Then the lineup, hands out, wishing me a good morning. I was busy thinking about the move, hoping Rosie can hold out a little longer, so I wasn’t even looking in their faces, in their eyes. Here’s a dime for you, a nickel for you. Told them to get a move on, and I got in my cage. Then one more man said my name while I was pulling out the tickets and the cash box.

I said: Hold on, hold on, buddy.

He said: Mazie, it’s me.

I looked up and up and up because there was the tallest man I’d known in my life, Ethan Fallow.

I was confused for a second, thought he was looking for a handout like the rest of them.

I said: Not you, too!

He said: Not me, too, what?

I eyed him. His overcoat was clean, not a tear, not a tatter. He smelled like fresh soap and his hair was still damp and slickly parted to the side.

I said: You’re not looking for some change?

He thought that was funny.

He said: Change I got plenty of. I just came to talk to you about Jeanie.

I said: What about her?

He said: I’m worried about her.

I didn’t know he was talking to her. As far as I knew I was the only one from New York City she still kept in touch with. I asked him why he was worried and he gave me this long story, the short of it being that he’s been giving her money for a few years to help her out, which I found awful funny because I’ve been doing the exact same thing.

Anyhow he said she sounded sad lately, sad and lonely, and he wondered if he should try to get her a train ticket home, and if he did would I be willing to take her in? I told him she was my sister and I loved her and she’d always have a home with me but if he was going to go to the trouble of bringing her home he might as well just keep her for himself.

Well I’m over twenty-one, that much I know.

Today a truck pulled up in front of the Venice, just before the sunset. The driver left the car running and dashed over to my cage with a big sack of something. He dumped it on my counter.

I said: What’s this?

He said: A fella named Rufus sent it to you. He said to say thanks.

I peeked into the sack. Green apples.

Bums came out of nowhere all of a sudden, like they could smell the fresh air and sunshine on it. I handed them out, one by one, and then saved the last for myself.

Prohibition’s over, and this city’s yawning. We’ve been making our own rules for years. Someone announced it at Finny’s and there were a few cheers and one fella applauded until he realized he was the only one clapping.

Somebody said: I liked being illegal. It helped pass the time.

So the time came for us to move and I set everything up, and I was pretty chuffed about the whole thing, that I had maneuvered us in there. We were living on the twelfth floor, East Court. They had a two-bedroom corner apartment, Al and I had a one-bedroom next door. We both had great views of the bridge. I think there was a little talk at the last minute about trying to get a three-bedroom. Jeanie was supposed to come home. They didn’t really want her there though. Well Mazie did but Rosie didn’t. Or maybe Rosie did but Mazie didn’t. There was tension around her. I told them I didn’t think I could get them a three-bedroom and they backed down. Oh you know what? It was Rosie after all. Rosie was the angry one. Because now I remember her saying, “She’ll have to crawl back on her knees, she should know something about that.”

Jeanie’s back. She took a train from Chicago, no chauffeur this time around. We had coffee at the diner. Her hair’s down to her waist, and her eyes still glitter, and she’s still slender, all tree boughs bending in the wind. But her skin is off. It’s dull and yellow, porridge that’s been sitting out for too long. She’s not the same girl she was, but still she’ll always be beautiful to me. I told her if she didn’t feel like staying with Ethan she didn’t have to. He wanted to throw all that money at her for all that time, it was his problem, not hers. I said the minute she wanted out I’d find her somewhere to go.

She said: I don’t mind one bit. He’s been better to me than any of the rest of them.

I said: I don’t know any of the rest of them.

She said: And trust me you don’t want to.

I laughed. It was a joke I would make.

I said: Are you truly done now?

She said: I believe so. I can’t think of anything else I feel like I have to do. This might be the problem though. I can’t think of anything I even want to do.

I said: You haven’t sat still yet. You oughtta try that on for size.

I told her she could come and work for me whenever she liked. I told her not to worry, she’d find a way to survive on her own. And I would help her.

So we move in to the Knickerbocker Village in 1934. We didn’t have much, me and Al. We had our beds, some clothes, all of Uncle Al’s books. Those ladies showed up with an army of Russian movers carrying steamer trunks of clothes, boxes and boxes of tchotchkes, beds, lamps, desks, bookshelves, rugs, paintings, and that goddamn table I hit my head on when I was a kid. And there’s Rosie barking at all of them, move this here, move that there. Al and I are standing there watching all this. He probably hadn’t seen her in five years, ten, I don’t know how long. I mean maybe he had but he wasn’t acting like it. He’s watching her boss all these people around and then he just lets out this whistle. Not a wolf whistle but something like it. You could not have mistaken that sound for something innocent. I said, “Al, calm yourself down, man, these are our new neighbors.” He said, “I must have done something right to deserve this.” I said, “Al, it’s Rosie Gordon! You remember her. She used to live upstairs. What are you doing here? You can’t hassle this lady.” He said, “How did I miss that? How did I ever miss this woman before.”

I dug you out of this box just to write this down so that I never forget this moment. I came home last night to find Rosie sitting on Al Flicker’s lap at our kitchen table.

I said: Well.

She said: Well.

I said: What have we here?

She said: Mazie, you remember Al Flicker, don’t you?

I am cackling as I write this. Cackling at how dainty and ladylike she acted all the while she was sitting on his lap, her bottom on who knows what although I know what. And I am cackling at the two loons who are now singing little songs to each other in the next room. Every once in a while they clink glasses and toast each other and I just start laughing all over again. I am cackling at life. You’re funny, life. Real funny.

And then the thing we could never have predicted in a million years happened almost immediately after we moved in. Rosie and Al fell in love. Can you believe it? The two craziest people we knew fell for each other. Like someone knocked them over the head with it. Like someone knocked them over the head with love.

What kills me about these bums is that they die, they’re gone, and it’s like they never even existed on God’s green earth. Someone knew them once. A mother, a father, a doctor, a pal, somebody knew their name. But now they’re only known by each other, and then bit by bit, they’re forgotten. Quicker than they’d like, probably. And everybody wants to be remembered, don’t they? Everybody wants one little piece of them to be left behind. Well, I remember them. I remember them all. They were nobody to nearly everybody, but they were somebody to me. I knew all their names. Everyone’s names. I knew them.

I was twenty-one years old, and an editorial assistant at Knopf. It was 1939. I had heard about Mazie Phillips from a few sources, but Fannie Hurst was the first. I had been invited to a dinner party at her house by an older gentleman who I believe was endeavoring to make me one of his fancy lads, though he wasn’t quite sure if I would be amenable to that sort of thing. People have always wondered about my sexual proclivities, and I had just approached the moment where I recognized that the mystery surrounding that area of my life could be of benefit to me. That, in fact, I could and should cultivate that mystery even further. And it has certainly helped me in my life. There is power in elusiveness. Even just to be charming is, of course, great assistance to one. But to leave people guessing about you, that adds a whole new layer of memorability.

Fannie Hurst was charming also, professionally so. I felt like I could sit at her elbow for hours, days, weeks, and never tire of her. She was quite famous then, for her books, which were wildly popular, bestsellers always, though obviously quite mainstream, and not particularly literary. She was also famous for having famous friends. The Roosevelts, for example, adored her. I never met them, but we all knew. Anyway, she was extremely well known, even though barely anyone has heard of her these days. Her name pops up and then disappears again. If only the writing had been better.

But she was a delight! Dry as the day, funny, funny, funny. She was an activist, albeit sometimes a misguided one. For example she was supportive of the African-American literary community even if her books weren’t viewed as such necessarily, and she liked to slum downtown on occasion. She was fascinated with the lower class. Also the young. People of color, poor people, young people, anyone who didn’t have what she had, or had something she didn’t. The only people she didn’t really care that much for were the Jews—because of course she was a Jew herself.

So at dinner that night, I was a target for her because I was young and pretty and, as I said, indeterminate. Also I was rather handsome. I had inherited my mother’s looks—she was a fabulous, glamorous, well-crafted woman—and by then Fannie was on the southward slope of middle age and, to be honest, she had never been known for her great beauty. So there, I had something else she didn’t have, too. And I was certainly eager to please her. So she invited me to sit next to her at the table, even going so far as to switch cards at the last moment, sending an editor from Harper’s to the other end of the table. What did she care? She was Fannie Hurst.

It was a very long table. And you know, there were chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, a dozen uniformed maids dishing out the food, endless bottles of wine. Another young man might have felt intimidated, but I came from money, early Dutch settlers on my father’s side, and then my mother was a Spanish heiress. So I felt right at ease there. I had a trust fund that would secure me for many years. I had been waiting to meet these people for a while. I came from California and had only a few introductions. We were rich but my father marrying the Spaniard had turned him into a bit of an outcast in the family. My mother had wanted to be an actress, that’s how we had ended up in Hollywood. Oh, you don’t need to know all of this. It’s going in my memoirs right now, anyway. You can’t have it, it’s mine. What you do need to know is that many of the other assistants in publishing were struggling, and I had felt like I had to hide where I came from. And that night I had this sense that at last I was where I belonged.

Over dessert, everyone was arguing about the politics. At the time Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor, and it was his second round at bat. And he was a pretty good mayor, he had installed a lot of good programs, but we were still mocking him for some reason. He was very short. It might have even just been his height. God, who knows. We were very drunk. And Fannie was amused by all of our jokes. but then she very suddenly stopped herself and said, “You cynical bastards. For once I’d like to hear people talk about a New Yorker doing something right instead of wrong.” She was right of course. We were a very cynical lot.

So then we started talking about whom we would have liked to see run for mayor instead. When it was time for LaGuardia to go, who would be next? And then it very quickly turned into this kind of parlor game, everyone having to go around the table and nominate who’d they vote for. So there were professional athletes named, and a religious figure or two, and I believe Dorothy Day was in there, and Dorothy Parker too and I think Fannie was hoping someone would nominate her but no one did. And then when it was Fannie’s turn she said, “Mazie Gordon.” Of course we all said, “Who?” She really treasured it, being able to stump everyone. You know, took a significant sip of wine from her glass, licked her lips, that sort of thing. And then she spilled.