Saint Mazie: A Novel (28 page)

I saw Ben again at our regular spot, this all-night no-name diner by the Brooklyn Bridge. He asked about me helping the bums again. I don’t know why he’s so interested.

He said: I could never do it.

I said: Helping people’s the easy part. It’s the rest of life that’s hard.

About six months after we moved in to Knickerbocker Village I met this nice woman named Alice. She was a nurse at the time, and I had a small accident at a construction site, a brick falling on my hand, and I ended up in the hospital. There, you can still see it, the scar, right there. Alice tended to me with great care. She was from Vermont and had served in the first war and landed in New York City after. She was a very brave and bold woman. We talked about our service and I cracked a joke about people forgetting all the work we did for our country but I wasn’t really kidding, of course. And she said, “Forget about what you did already, what have you done lately?” And it was this real kick in the pants that I needed. I’ve always been a hard worker, but she was right, I needed to stop worrying about the past. Maybe I needed to let it go. Then she told me that she was applying to medical school, she was going to be a doctor. She had her heart set on University of Michigan because they were the first in the country to accept women to their medical school. She had been watching the doctors for years now and she felt that she could do what they did, though she wasn’t so sure they could do what she did. And at the end of this I realized she had cleaned and bandaged my hand and I hadn’t even noticed. She had a magic touch, that Alice. So I said, “But if you go away to Michigan how will I ever see you again?” And she said, “You’ll just have to wait for me to come back.” Well, I married that girl six months later. I wasn’t taking no chances on anyone else snapping her up.

Maybe I had a little roll in the hay with George Flicker last night. Maybe it was all right. Maybe I didn’t mind it one bit.

Are you married? I don’t see a ring on that finger. What are you waiting for? Are you in love? I know, I know, I’m a nudge. Only I loved being in love so much, I only wish the same for the good people I meet.

It was the strangest thing, seeing George tonight, late, after I got home from the streets. He’d waited up for me. I closed my front door and I heard him knocking a minute later. His face seemed more familiar than it ever had before, even though I’ve known him all my life. All of a sudden he was glowing like there was a spotlight on him. He looked so handsome. Every part of his face seemed perfect. I don’t even know where it came from, I never expect to feel anything for any man anymore, at least not in that way. All I knew was I saw a good man next to me in bed.

Fannie said, “I know a woman of greater compassion than any I have known before.” Someone shouted, “Does that include you?” She said, “I’m not compassionate, I’ve just got a lot of guilt.” Everyone laughed, and she continued. “I know a woman who works long hours in a tiny cage all day long, dealing with the public, which is something none of you could do, you ill-tempered, pampered artists. Then, after fourteen hours in this box, she walks the streets of the Lower East Side helping the homeless and suffering wherever she goes. No matter how filthy or drunk or evil-smelling a bum may be, she treats him as an equal. Just an average woman doing something quite extraordinary. What have you done for humanity lately? Agonize over the placement of a semicolon? This woman gets off her derriere and actually does something important with her life. Mazie Phillips for mayor, I say.” There was probably more to this speech, but this is what I can recall, drunk as I was, old as I am. Everyone hear-hear’ed and cheered, and then moved on to the next subject. I had an idea, though. I told Fannie I wanted to meet her. I said it sounded like she would make a great book, and I wasn’t lying to her when I said that. But also I wanted to get in Fannie’s good graces because I wanted to go to every single dinner party she threw for eternity.

We had a mind to take over the world, Alice and me. She was going to help provide better medical care to women in New York City. She had seen so many immigrants on the Lower East Side show up at her hospital, in her emergency room, with all kinds of diseases that could have been tended to much sooner, if they had spoken English, if they’d had someone to look out for them. A clinic for women; that was her aim. My plan was to own every building on the Lower East Side and to make them livable. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that was impossible. If I could even own one in my lifetime I was going to be one lucky fellow. But if I could just have one to start with I promised myself I’d be the best landlord this city had ever seen. Which I assure you most landlords out there, that is not their mission. So I married my girl and off she went to medical school and we saw each other when we could. We worked very hard for a long time to achieve our dreams. She was my best friend. She was beautiful and brilliant. Her mind and my mind together, we were the tops.

It’s all over with George but he won’t tell me why. He’s never home when he used to be home. I’m not going to track him down. I’ve got better things to do with my time, places to go, people to see.

Fine, he doesn’t want me anymore. I won’t chase after a man.

Closer to forty than thirty. What happens when I get to the other side? Do I tip over?

Cold snap. I bought twenty warm wool blankets and handed them out to whoever needed them on the streets. It was pitch dark, only a handful of stars in the sky. Jeanie came with me to help. She brought with her a floppy, coffee-colored hat, a silky red ribbon gathered at the side of it in an enormous bow. It was a real party, this hat. She told me she hadn’t brought much home with her from out west, but somehow it had made the trip. She had no occasion to wear it anymore, though. She couldn’t bear to look at it any longer, but she couldn’t throw it away either. I put it on, and the sides of it collapsed gently around my face and neck. Musk, smoke, California.

Jeanie said: You look very fetching.

She was wearing her hair in braids like she used to when she was a teenager. Her skin looked better, it glowed like the moon again. She rambled on about her life, how everything was fine, great, better than ever, and I was nodding and believing her. She asked me if I was listening and I snapped to it. She’s helping Ethan out with the horses, and by the end of the day, she smells like dung.

She said: But so does he, so that makes two of us, smelling like shit.

I asked her if she missed dancing and she told me she doesn’t even remember who she was before, and it’s easier that way. I got distracted for a second, trying to remember what the moon used to mean to me. Now it’s just another light to guide me while I look after these fellas.

George told me he’s in love with a woman named Alice. A good woman. She’ll be a doctor someday.

I said: You find love, you take it.

In the spring of 1939 I met Fannie Hurst across the street from the Venice Theater, at a place called the King Kong Bar & Grill, the name of it being the most significant thing about the establishment. The bartender seemed to know Fannie. I asked if she were a regular patron. She said she stopped in from time to time when she was downtown. She said, “I like to have a quick one by myself sometimes. They don’t seem to mind what you do down here. In my neighborhood they whisper a bit more. I wouldn’t call it whispering so much as talking loudly to anyone who might listen. It’s not very polite. Not that I can complain, I’m a gossip like the rest of them, like all writers, like all people with too much time on their hands. And I don’t mind anyway. You get to a certain age, let them whisper, let them talk, let them scream. Fannie Hurst likes to hang out downtown in bars by herself. Doesn’t everyone wish they could do that?”

I said that I could and did all the time, and she said, “But you’re a man.” And even though she was nearly thirty years older than I was, and an affluent, successful woman, she recognized a gap between our privilege. “Sometimes a girl likes to have a quiet drink away from it all. Read into it however you like.” I noticed then she was drinking whiskey, straight. It was one in the afternoon. “Mazie understands,” she said. “She’s a solo artist. A diva. And she’s a warrior queen. Did you know they call her the Queen of the Bowery? I’ll never be the queen of anything.”

“I’ve been to one of your dinner parties,” I said. “You’re a queen, don’t worry.”

Mazie had just had her appendix out and was no longer drinking hard alcohol, so we purchased her some beer, which at the time you could take away in a cardboard container. Together we crossed the street to this run-down theater Mazie called home. A group of bums shifted around in front of the theater. Before we approached the cage Fannie said to me, “Prepare for greatness.”

I’ll fill you in on the good stuff, if you care to know it. The good stuff of my life. I married Alice, as I said, and she became a doctor, an obstetrician. She worked at Presbyterian for a long time, decades, but also she volunteered at a clinic downtown one day a week, working with immigrant women. She did that until we had our son, Mel, named after my father, and once he was old enough she went back to volunteer work again, and there’s a fund set up there now in her name because she was so instrumental in developing its growth. So I couldn’t be any prouder of my wife, Alice. She was a personal hero of mine.

Mel went on to have three children, Max, Miranda, and David, and they each have had two children and they are all gorgeous, just gorgeous. It is never a dull moment at the holidays, I’ll tell you that much. I went on to own not one, not two, not three, but five apartment buildings on the Lower East Side. I know, can you believe it? I wouldn’t believe it myself only I know what kind of work I put into it.

One of the buildings I bought was actually the tenement I grew up in, all crammed into that tiny apartment with my family. It was the fourth building I bought. I had to wait that long for it to be up for sale. I had my eye on it forever. I probably had my eye on it when I was five years old and didn’t even know what that meant yet.

And what I did when I bought it is, I tore everything out. I gutted the place, and I made each floor its own apartment, except for the top two floors, which were joined together in one duplex, which is where Alice and I lived for many years. Each apartment is full of light and space and air. All the things we’re entitled to, or should be anyway.

Oh, it’s tremendous, you should see it. Call my grandson, sweetheart, and have him invite you over. Tell him I sent you. The skylight in the bedroom is something else. When we finished construction and finally moved in, Alice and I would just sit in bed for hours staring up at the sky. We’d go to bed a few hours early and just lay there looking at the moon and the stars, holding hands and talking. She passed in that bed exactly that way. I was next to her. My beautiful Alice, my gorgeous girl. She was blind by then so I told her what I was seeing. There were clouds that day. Winter clouds. It was January. I said, “Alice, the sun is out barely, and the clouds are gray and blue and they’ve got a kind of outline around them and there’s a bit of white from the sun and it looks like it’s going to be a cold, cold day.” And then she let go of my hand and was gone.

People have different definitions of greatness. Was she wry and funny? Yes. Charismatic certainly. Beauty—and I won’t apologize for this—is part of my definition of greatness, and she wasn’t beautiful anymore, although I suspected she had been. Her hair was straw yellow, bleached for too many years. And she wore this green celluloid shade, which looked ridiculous. I suppose it was to block the sun, but it wasn’t flattering in the slightest. Her face seemed sort of hazy around the edges, as if her chin were on the verge of melting into her neck. She was well put together otherwise though. Although she was hunched over, she had a wonderful bosom, which she showed off perfectly, and I come from a family of women obsessed with their personal lighting. And she was direct and sharp and I liked her, and I had been told to admire her and so I did.

It all happened very quickly. Fannie gave her the beer, and they greeted each other like they were sisters; it was all very familiar and loving. Then Fannie said, “You must meet this young upstart in the publishing world.” And I said my name and introduced myself and then I lit a cigarette and gave it to Mazie. She eyed me, and I got the sense she trusted absolutely no one on first impression. Yet I could tell it was very clearly a positive appraisal. Perhaps she was flirting with me, I don’t know. She was a little long in the tooth for me, but if it hadn’t stopped any of the older gentlemen who took me out for drives in the country, why should it stop her? Then it seemed like she caught herself. I wish I could remember more of our conversation. I was quite captivated by her looks even as I rejected them. She was not beautiful but she was a presence. I suppose that could have made her great in someone’s book.

Anyway I razzle-dazzled her with the idea that she should write the story of her life and she seemed uninterested at first, but I assured her that she—and I stole this phrase instantly from Fannie, of course—she, as the Queen of the Bowery, should tell her story to her subjects. I don’t know if that appealed to her ego but it had a hook to it. She still was uncertain, but I felt that I had gotten under her skin, so I resolved to pursue it.