Saint Mazie

1. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

People ask me why I spend so much time on the streets. I tell them it’s where I grew up. These streets are dirty, but they’re home, and they’re beautiful to me. The bums know about the beauty of it. The bums love it like it’s their own skin. The ruddy dust from the streets, the mud in the parks where they sleep, sunk deep in the lines in their foreheads, jammed up under their fingernails. The sun and the dirt mixed up with their sweat and the booze. All the dirt. It’s the earth. If you can’t see the beauty in the dirt then I feel sorry for you. And if you can’t see why these streets are special, then just go home already.

George Flicker, Mazie’s neighbor, 285 Grand Street

Before she was the Queen of the Bowery, walking around in those brilliantly colored dresses, with her floppy felt hat and dangling bracelets and walking stick, helping all those homeless men for years and years, and before people started writing about her in magazines and newspapers, calling her an important New Yorker, a hero is what they said, before all that, she was just Mazie Phillips, the girl who lived upstairs from me who maybe I had a little crush on but wouldn’t give me the time of day.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1907

Today is my birthday. I am ten. You are my present.

I am the daughter of Ada and Horvath Phillips. But they live in Boston, far away. I never see them anymore. So are they still my parents? I don’t care. My father is a rat and my mother is a simp.

I live in New York now. Rosie says I am a New Yorker. You are my New York diary.

George Flicker

First it was just Louis Gordon in the one big apartment on the third floor, alone for a long time, I remember. He was a giant man, filled with red meat. You could smell it in the hallway. Him cooking it, I mean. And he was a sweaty man, too. Dead of winter, he’d be sweat-stained before noon. He always wore this brown fedora with a blue feather in it — that was the flashiest thing about him, that feather. He was not a man who liked to draw attention to himself, but that feather let you know there was a little something going on there. So there was Louis, the big man, all alone, right above us.

Now there were five of us in our family, my mother, my father, my aunt, my uncle, all crammed into one small room. Plus another uncle, Al, my mother’s brother, he lived under the staircase and he was always up in our apartment, taking up more of what little space we had. I see your face, but those days we really packed them in there. And actually Mazie was of great service to my uncle Al later on, so he’s important to this story. He’s not just my crazy uncle Al who lived under the stairs.

Okay, so sometimes there were six of us in this one room, but Louis, he had two rooms to himself. It’s oppressive, living in a small space like that. On the one hand, we were used to it. I never knew anything else but that room; I had been born into it. And we had our small joys. We all had food. No one got sick, no one died. All around us tenements were soiled and reeking. But we got lucky with this one building. Even if we were crammed together we were still safe and clean. The family remained intact. But we envied those with more room.

So there was a little jealousy, but still, he was our neighbor. Be nice to your neighbors was what we were taught. My mother used to call him “The Quiet Giant” on account of him being so tall but never making a noise. You never heard the floor creak once, and this is one creaky building we’re talking about. Every ache and pain you could hear. Sometimes she’d go upstairs and knock on his door just to make sure he was still alive. She was worried about him being single; she worried about that all the time.

Then he marries Rosie. The story goes he met her at the track, out of town, in Boston. Oh, let me think…the track was called Readville, which was a big deal at the time, but it hasn’t been around for many years. It’s not much of a story is it? [Laughs.] So he marries her and brings her to New York. And Rosie’s a real knockout when she shows up, this fine, dark hair wrapped around her head, her eyes are lined with kohl, her lips are dark red. She looks exotic, like a gypsy, but she’s a Jew, of course. And she smiles at everyone, because everyone’s smiling at her. She’s just a good-looking girl.

And now there’s two people in two rooms, and now the floor is creaking. Every night! Now he’s not so quiet, and my mother never knocks on his door. This goes on for, I don’t know, a year? But then the creaking, we start to not hear it so often anymore, and Rosie, who had been so happy, now we see her around the neighborhood, and she’s never smiling. She’s shopping, and she’s sad. She’s taking a stroll with Louis, and she’s sad. You say hi to her in the hallway, and she is joyless in her greeting. I remember my mother saying, “The Quiet Giant and The Royal Sourpuss.”

Once I was in their apartment. Only once though. I was running down the stairs in our apartment building and I tripped and fell, skinned my knee right open. Kids do this kind of stuff all the time. Well Rosie was walking up the stairs with groceries and saw me fall. So she hauled me into her apartment to tend to me. The thing I really remember was this giant wooden table with all these chairs around it, this beautiful shiny wood. When Rosie was in the bathroom finding a bandage for my knee, I walked around the table, counting the steps, sliding my hand against it. What did they need that big of a table for?

Anyway, Rosie took good care of me. She cooed over me, took me into her arms, pressed me against her chest. She held me so tight, and then she very suddenly let me go, sent me downstairs to my mother. I remember it very distinctly. She said, “You belong with your mother.”

After that, I don’t know, a month or two maybe, Louis and Rosie leave town for a week. They ask my mother to keep an eye on the place. They say they’re going on the honeymoon they never had. My mother thought he had money buried in the floorboards. “Ill-gotten gains.” She joked about pulling up the floors while he was gone, but she wasn’t kidding. She thought he was pretending to be something he wasn’t so that no one would suspect him. She never thought they were ill-gotten before Rosie got there. Look, I liked Louis. He had legitimate business too. He owned the movie theater, he owned the candy shop. He invested in the community. And he was always giving everyone a nickel. Ill-gotten, who is anyone to talk?

Then when Louis and Rosie come back to town, they have two girls with them, Rosie’s little sisters. This is when I meet Mazie and Jeanie, the Phillips girls. About six months after the girls arrived, the whole family, Louis and Rosie and Mazie and Jeanie, moved across the street to a bigger apartment, a whole floor, five rooms I heard, but never saw. And then you should have heard my mother.

Mazie’s Diary, December 3, 1907

I lost you! And now I found you. But I don’t have anything to say.

Mazie’s Diary, March 13, 1908

I’m no good at this. Remembering to write in you.

Mazie’s Diary, June 3, 1908

I ain’t no liar, I don’t care what anyone says.

George Flicker

When they first got to town, Mazie was probably ten years old, Jeanie’s four or five years old. I must have been nearly seven by then. The two girls were always very nice to look at, although they weren’t necessarily prettier than anyone else. They looked not so different than the rest of the curly-haired, dark-eyed Jewesses on the Lower East Side.

But Rosie bought them beautiful dresses, and bows for their hair, and they were well fed. So they were not sick or sallow like those who could not get enough to eat, which was more than a few people on the streets those days. And Jeanie took ballet classes when she was very young, which seemed crazy to my whole family when there were no extras for the Flickers, and Uncle Al was sleeping under the staircase. But there she was walking around dressed up like a tiny ballerina, which we could all admit was at least nice for us to see, a little girl looking pretty.

Mazie had no use for me. I bored her. She always was looking for excitement, looking ten feet behind you like there was something better out there. And she seemed so much older than me. I guess there’s a big difference between seven and ten, but now I think it was just that she had been through more than the rest of us. Mazie was very smart. It wasn’t like she was book smart, none of us were. And she was street smart, but all of us were that, being city kids. It just seemed like she knew more about the world, and always did. She ran with the older kids on the rooftops of the tenements. They were a tough gang. Of course, my mother wouldn’t let me anywhere near them.

So no, I didn’t play with the Phillips girls. I just admired them from afar. Or from across the street, anyway.

Mazie’s Diary, July 8, 1909

I can run faster than any of those boys from the block. I told them I would prove it and I did. I raced them all tonight on the roof and won. I beat Abe and Gussy and Jacob and Hyman and not a one of them were even close. They were all spitting in my dust. Even in my dress I can beat those boys. Gussy said I cheated but how could I cheat? He’s a cheater for even saying that. He’s a crummy lying jerk. After, Rosie yelled at me for getting dirty but I told her I didn’t care. It was only a dress.

Louis told her to leave me alone, it’s what kids do, they get dirty. Rosie told him not to say another word about children, not one more word. That clammed him up. Then she started crying. Jeanie was hugging her, begging her not to cry. I started yelling that it was just a stinking dress. I ran outside, they couldn’t catch me. I ran a block, I ran another. I ran as fast as I could. It was just a dress. Why did she have to cry?

Mazie’s Diary, August 8, 1909

Gussy got a piece of my fist tonight. Call me a cheater one more time, I told him. Just one more time. Well he did and now he’s sorry.

George Flicker

She drew blood more than once. This scared us, and it impressed us. She was beyond being a boy or a girl.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1911

You’re where the secrets go. I mean to write in you all this time. I mean to tell you everything. I mean to tell someone everything about my life but I forgot until now. I got all these secrets inside me. Only I just forget to let them out.

Mazie’s Diary, February 3, 1913

I wouldn’t let Rosie throw you away. She’s got nothing better to do than go through my personal private things all day. But you’re mine.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1913

I turned sixteen today, and I’ve already fought with Rosie twice. I can’t listen to her another minute. She’s always yelling and screaming when I come home late. Treating me like I’m a brat. I’m not a brat! She’s an old cow. And I’ve been good for weeks. I’ve been doing everything she’s asked for days and days and weeks and weeks and years and years. One night I go out, and it’s my birthday. One night I come home late. One night!

George Flicker

Of course then she grew those bosoms of hers and everything changed.

Mazie’s Diary, May 12, 1916

I dug you out of my closet so I could scream at the top of my lungs without anyone hearing.

Rosie doesn’t understand what it’s like to love the streets. She doesn’t see the shimmering cobblestones in the moonlight, she just wonders why the city won’t put in another street lamp already. She doesn’t see floozies trying to sweet-talk their customers, earning every nickel they get, working as hard as the rest of us. She just sees crime. She doesn’t see the nuns and the Chinamen and the sailors and barkeeps — the whole world full of such different people. It’s just crowds to her, blocking her way. She sees a taxi whisking by and she thinks, what’s the hurry? And I think, where’s the party?

This is what I want to tell her! There’s a party.

Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1916

All the girls I know have a fella except for me. But why would I want just one person loving me when I can have three?

George Flicker

Was she any wilder than the rest of us? She was wilder than me, I can tell you that much. But that wasn’t hard. I was a good boy, and she was a good-time girl. You see the difference. She was very…touchy-feely. What does that mean? You seem like a smart person. You know what it means.

She was still a brunette then, and she wore her hair in waves. Sometimes she pinned it up, but most of the time it was loose, though still tidy. Her eyebrows were plucked thin, and she powdered her cheeks white. She wore bright pink and red dresses, the brighter the better — she’d have liked to burn your eyes when you looked at her, I think. New dresses all the time. She was always swirling them around, flirting with her body. Day or night you couldn’t miss her. She wouldn’t let you.

She did a little of this, a little of that. Once in a while she worked in this candy shop Louis owned during the day, but not anything you could count on if you were trying to find her.

But mostly you’d see her on the streets, looking for fun. She went to all the bars on the Bowery, even the bars where the girls weren’t allowed. My mother used to say she had no sense of propriety, but I’ve always thought propriety’s for people who need rules. And Mazie had been making her own rules for too long.

Lots of times she’d come home right when my father was leaving for work in the morning. I should explain that my other uncle, my uncle Barney, had a terrible back and he’d get laid up from time to time, so eventually my father had to take on a second job, this one at a pickle factory. I didn’t get to see him that much after that, so I’d started watching him leave from the window. I wanted to see him every last possible second. Isn’t that crazy? All of us were packed together in that apartment, one bed next to another, no privacy, no quiet. Half the time you’d wake up in the morning under someone else’s covers. And still the minute he left I was missing him. But he was a good man, of course I missed him. He liked his pipes, he had a nice set, and I would watch him pack the tobacco in there. He’d let me pack it too, and then my fingers would smell like tobacco. I loved that smell. I smoked a pipe well into my eighties. I thought about him every time I smoked. He was a workingman — life was work to him — but he had his small joys.

Anyway, he’d be walking down the steps when Mazie’d be walking up hers. She’d wave, he’d nod. Now she was an adult, so all the grown men were scared of her too. No men in the neighborhood would be caught dead talking to her while she roamed the streets like she did. The mothers didn’t like her, the fathers didn’t want to talk to her. But once upon a time she used to be a little girl they all loved. It was not hypocrisy, but it felt something like it.

Mazie’s Diary, June 14, 1916

I sat on the front stairs before I went home. I knew what was coming. Oh boy did I know. I could be standing across the East River and know when that woman opens her mouth. So I waited for a minute. I wanted to see the daylight hit the stairs. I like watching it spread across the street and then the sidewalk. I smoked. I closed my eyes. I let the sun hit me. The sun’s some kind of gift. Another day we’re all alive. I wish she could understand. I’m just happy to be alive.

She was asleep on the couch when I came in, tucked into a quilt. When she’s quiet, she looks like a girl again, with that pudge around her chin. Louis was in the kitchen like always. He had a plate of hot eggs and leftover steak in front of him. He was peppering the steak. He just gave me a nod. He wants nothing to do with the arguing. Poor Louis. He’d give us every cent he has just to keep the peace.

I stumbled into my room. I knocked into a wall. All right I was drunk I guess. So it was my fault I woke her up. My fault, my fault. Everything’s my fault. A minute passed, then there’s Rosie in my room. Didn’t even knock! Just walked right in. Started talking about the neighbors knowing too much, worrying about them being in Louis’s business. Nobody wants anybody’s nose in anything. I couldn’t argue so I didn’t. I just shushed her for Jeanie’s sake.

But then Jeanie was up. She had slept in one of her ballerina outfits again. No one could sleep then so it was into the kitchen with all of us. Rosie got back on the couch, stuffed in her quilt. I braided Jeanie’s hair while Louis made us eggs. Jeanie told us jokes and made us laugh. Louis went to work and I did the dishes while Rosie stared at me from the couch. She looked mean.

Rosie said: One day that door won’t be open.

I told her I’d crawl through the window. I told her she’d never ever get rid of me.

Jeanie danced in circles around the room. Fast, spinning. Jeanie’s braids came out. Rosie was wishing ill on me. I wasn’t going to change a thing.

Rosie said: Enough, Jeanie.

But you can’t stop that girl from dancing.

Lydia Wallach, great-granddaughter of Rudy Wallach, manager of the Venice Theater (1916–1938)

First of all, obviously this is all secondhand information. I’m certainly fine with speaking on the record, but most of this was told to me by my mother and by my grandmother, and a lot of this information came, I believe, from my great-grandmother, whom in fact I never met, or if I did I don’t recall it. There’s a chance she held me when I was just a baby. I vaguely recall having heard that she did once from my mother.

But anyway, essentially, this is all rumor and gossip, family lore, I suppose you could call it, although I don’t know how interesting any of it is. I guess we take what we can get for family lore. And Mazie was the closest thing to a celebrity any of them knew. She was a celebrity because she was written about, and was sort of known about town as this downtown fixture, but beyond that she was a celebrity in my family because she was charismatic and generous, and led a very big life for someone who barely left a twenty-block radius.

One little thing I can tell you for a fact is that Louis Gordon bought the Venice Theater in 1915, and my great-grandfather became the manager of it the following year. For the first few years Louis’s wife, Rosie, worked the ticket booth. There were some other employees here and there, but Rosie was the one who ran the show.

George Flicker

After Louis bought the movie theater, the girls really started running around on the streets. Rosie was too busy working the ticket booth to keep an eye on them. Always Jeanie had been a good girl. But then she became a handful too, in her own way. Sometimes you’d see her dancing on the streets, hustling for change. Bella Barker sang, Jeanie danced. We all clapped and threw a penny or two at them.

And what a pair they were. Jeanie had a smile as long as Broadway. And Bella, even when she was a little girl, had these dark, heavy, sexy eyes that made her look older than she was, and of course that wise woman’s voice. She was born ready for something big. Her voice made everyone stop and listen to her.

Of course Bella was always more of a solo act. She left the neighborhood for a while when she was a teenager. She was off to Pennsylvania for a year or two, working the vaudeville circuit out there. When she came back she was married to a man named Lew, her manager, who seemed like an old man next to her. And she has a new name, a grown-up name. So she’s Belle Baker now, and that’s when she started to get famous. But Jeanie was still just playing at dancing. Nobody believed for a second she had the same hunger in her as Belle did.

Mazie’s Diary, September 12, 1916

On the way home from work who did I see but our little Jeanie twirling around on a street corner. I stood off to the side and watched her for a while in her candy-colored tutu. Our little sweetheart. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the sun. Our father loved to dance, is what I was thinking. You can’t dance on the street forever, is also what I was thinking. But I want her to anyway.

Mazie’s Diary, September 23, 1916

Tonight I met two sailors from California. San Francisco seems so far away, how can it even be real? One was tall and one was short and that’s all I can remember. Names, I don’t know. I got so many names in my head all the time.

They said New York reminded them of home, it being so close to the water. But in San Francisco the mist and the fog come off the ocean so thick you can’t see one foot in front of you, that’s what they told me.

I said they were lying, and they laughed.

I said: What’s so funny?

But then they never answered.

I danced with the tall one while the short one watched us, smiling hard. He looked like he was burning up. When the tall one dipped me, the tie from his uniform tickled my face. I love a man in uniform. Any kind. I think they walk taller when they got something formal to wear. When they got a place to go. The tall one asked me how old I was.

I said: Old enough.

He said: Old enough for what?

Then they both laughed at me some more. But I’m old enough for anything. They don’t know but I know.

The tall one tasted salty when I kissed him but later I saw him holding hands with the short one. They were so slim and pretty in their uniforms. Sometimes I just want a uniform of my own.

George Flicker

She was unapologetic about who she was and haughty to those who questioned her, even if they didn’t say anything out loud. Like my mother for example. The two of them did not like each other at all. People sometimes think “chutzpah” is a compliment but not the way my mother said it. Sometimes she would cross to the other side of the street when she saw Mazie coming, and she did not do it quietly. She coughed and she stomped. My mother was a tremendous noisemaker. If Mazie cared she didn’t show it. Once I heard her shout, “More room for me,” after my mother had sashayed her way across the street.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1916

Jeanie bought me a birthday present, a pretty dark purple bow, nearly the color of the night sky. I asked her where she got the money, and she told me she saved every penny from dancing next to Bella.

She said: She lets me keep a penny for every ten we make.

I said: That doesn’t seem fair.

She said: It was her idea to have the show in the first place. Bella says people with the brains make the money.

I said: You got brains.

She said: I just love to dance.

I asked her how much change she had and she told me it was a lot. I told her I’d show her where I hid you if she’d show me where she hid her change.

I said: We could trade secrets.

Jeanie showed me all the change she had, a few bills at least. Hidden in her suitcase in the closet, the same suitcase we used when we came to town from Boston. I asked her if she was saving for anything. She didn’t say anything. I told her she could tell me anything, that she was my sweetheart, my little girl. Finally she got very close to my ear.

She said: I wouldn’t want to go forever, but I’d like to join the circus.

I told her I’d come with. I’d ride on top of a horse with a crown on my head and she’d be an acrobat and fly high up above me. The Phillips Sisters, the stars of the show. All the men would swoon at our feet. That part I liked the best but I didn’t tell her that.

Jeanie said: But what would Rosie say?

I said: She wouldn’t say anything. She’d just be in the audience clapping like everyone else.

Jeanie said: Do you think that’s true? Wouldn’t she miss us?

I said: We’re just daydreaming here, Jeanie. Don’t ruin it.

Jeanie said: All right. I guess she’d be in the front row then.

I said: She’d be our biggest fan.

Mazie’s Diary, November 7, 1916

I have to work in the candy shop again today. Boring. Only little kids coming in there all day long, dirty change, sticky paws. The bell rings on the front door and I look up and it’s the same thing over and over. I feel like a dog when that bell rings. Waiting for someone to feed me with something interesting to look at.

I’d rather be running errands for Louis at the track. I like the track. There’s grass and trees, blue sky cracking above us, but then everyone’s smoking cigars, too. I like the way it smells clean and dirty at the same time. Plus everyone’s having a nip of something. The flasks those men have, jewels crusted in them. Whatever it takes to hide the money. But they’re generous though with sharing what they got. Makes it so I don’t even mind the horseshit.

But Louis doesn’t like it when I come. The track’s no place for a woman, that’s what Louis says. Of course he says that. He doesn’t like the way the men there look at me. I thought he wanted me to get married, but Louis doesn’t trust any of those men, at least not with me. But he’s one of those men. I like to kid him.

I said: Rosie found you at the track. How’d she find you?

I poke him with my finger.

I said: Is it cause you’re so tall, Louis?

He doesn’t answer me.

I said: Cause you stick out like a giraffe?

Nothing. Louis keeps his cards so close it’s like there’s no deck at all.

I think I’ll eat all the chocolates in the shop today. All the chocolate kisses, all the chocolate bars. I’m going to tear off their wrapper with my teeth. And I’ll eat all the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Tootsie Rolls. Chew till my jaw hurts. And all the caramel creams and butterscotch twists and peanut butter nuggets and those sweetie almond treats. I’ll suck on all the hard candies, cherry, strawberry, grape, orange mint. Lick all the lollies till they’re gone.

I’ll eat and I’ll eat and I’ll eat just so I never have to look at any of those stinking candies ever again.

Mazie’s Diary, January 3, 1917

Last night Rosie and I split a bottle of whiskey. This was after I came home, on time for once. I came in to say good night and the bottle was next to her in bed. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been drinking. All I knew was she was already knee-deep in it. She was mourning something, I didn’t know what. Louis was nowhere. Jeanie was sleeping. I got under the covers with Rosie, and she handed me the bottle.

I said: What are you thinking about?

She said: Our parents.

I said: Well that’ll do it.

She said: Do you remember what happened in Topsfield?

That story again. She and I had talked about it before, when Jeanie wasn’t around. Topsfield, that was right before she left us behind.

We were all out together, a real, happy family for the day. Papa holding me with one hand, Jeanie in his other arm, Rosie wedged between him and Mama. Papa was not handsome. His eyes drooped, and his skin was the color of cold, watery soup. And those lines around his mouth and eyes made him always look furious, which he was. Lines don’t lie. But he was tall and young and had so much hair, and I remember him as strong. That day, out in the world, he was our father.

We walked together like that. A ruddy-cheeked barker called us close and bragged about the world’s skinniest man and his wife, the world’s fattest woman. There was the dark-skinned rubber man, skinny as stretched taffy. His face was so calm, like turning himself inside and out was nothing to him. He was born to bend. I remember the sun was bright, and it was nearly fall, but it was still warm. I was squinting, seeing the world between tiny slits in my eyes. Men with low-slung hats waved hello to Papa. Everyone knew Horvath Phillips, for better or for worse.

But to Rosie I said: I remember that he left us that day.

Because I knew that she wanted that to be my only memory.

He told us to stay put, said he’d be back, sliding that flask from his pocket as he walked away. There were men in white face paint pretending to tug on an imaginary rope. The sun began to set. Jeanie was tired and we found a bench and Mama took her in her lap. My skin stung from the sun, my stomach was sick from sweets.

Mama said: Should we try to find him? I don’t know.

She was talking to Rosie, who was the only one of us old enough to understand that the question was not a simple one. But I can’t remember her saying anything. She was just simmering.

Mama said: Yes, we’ll wait.

Then it was dark and the mimes were gone, most of the families too. Just young people floating around, also some lonely-looking men. Mama still kept turning her head around, thinking he’d come back.

Rosie said: If you don’t go find him, I will.

They argued about Rosie wandering around at night by herself. Rosie started fighting for us to just go home already. Mama didn’t want to walk the roads by herself. She was still scared of this country, had been since the day she got here. Found the most terrifying man in town to marry, that couldn’t have helped much either.

Mama finally gave in to Rosie, and agreed we should try to find him. I remember this sigh of her shoulder, and then Jeanie nearly rolled off her lap.

She wasn’t pretty anymore then, Mama. Her hair was thin. She pulled clumps of it out, and so did he, when he was mad. She still had the knockout hips though. I walked behind her as we went to find him and I remember those hips, because I have those hips too. A little girl with her arms around her mama, her face sunk in her hips.

Rosie had known where he was all night. Mama did, too. Those two had just been playing a game with each other for hours. Because back behind the big top was an open field lit up with lanterns and white candles, and filled with people dancing in a frenzy. There was a small stage in the middle of it, packed with men playing all kinds of instruments, accordians, fiddles, guitars, a washboard and spoons. A man sang in a deep growl, French, now I know, but I didn’t then. There was a sign at the front of the stage, the Cajun Dancers is what they were called.

The audience was so caught up in the moment, moving faster and faster, laughing and grinning, they were almost hysterical. I could feel the heat coming off their bodies, and then I was nearly hysterical too. The lust of those people is a lust that I hold in my heart. They were gorgeous and free.

Mama put Jeanie down next to me, and we held hands, and then we looked at each other. While Rosie and Mama scanned the crowd, we began to dance our own dance. We were never going to sit still, Jeanie and me. Not like good girls did. I twirled her around until she fell, dizzy, and then I fell, too. The grass tickled the backs of my legs.

I looked up and there was Rosie, pulling away from Mama, and working her way through the crowd. She had found Papa. He looked happy, is what I remember thinking. His eyes were closed, bliss, and his face was relaxed, the lines erased for the moment. He embraced a young, plump, black-haired woman in a long green gown. The dress rose and crashed while they danced. I don’t know if he knew the woman or not, if she was the reason why he was so content, or if it was just the dancing. Maybe he just loved the freedom. More than once I have wondered if it would have been easier to forgive him for all that he did if he had just up and left our home, rather than stayed put and laid his cruelty upon us.

I said: I remember you grabbing his arm, and I remember you pointing to us. You shamed him. You were so bold.

Papa bowed to the woman he had been dancing with, and then walked with Rosie back through the crowd, which somehow managed to keep moving and part for them at the same time. Or at least that’s how I remember it: Everything faded into the background except for Rosie and Papa.

I said: It was a long ride home.

Rosie said: I felt like I aged ten years in that time.

I said: She tucked us in so quietly that night. She kissed every part of our face.

Rosie said: I didn’t get to go to sleep. He took me out back.

I said: I know.

Rosie said: Until I passed out from the pain.

I said: Oh, Rosie.

Rosie said: Was I wrong that day? Did I deserve it?

She was too drunk. She sounded confused.

I said: You were right, and he was wrong.

Rosie said: I’m sorry I left you there.

I said: We didn’t blame you for leaving us. I didn’t, anyway. Jeanie didn’t even know what was happening.

Rosie said: And I came back for you didn’t I?

I said: You did.

Rosie said: I was always trying to do the right thing by us even if she wouldn’t.

I said: You did.

She said: I take care of you, right?

I said: Rosie, we love you. You know we love you.

Rosie said: I’m not bad, am I?

I said: You’re not. You’re a good girl.

We drank until we slept. Rosie more than me. When I woke, there was Jeanie, sleeping between us. I don’t know if she heard us. I wouldn’t want her to hear it. I wouldn’t want her to remember any of it.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1917

The sun was rising when I took off my shoes this morning. Rosie stood at the door and stared me down. I turned my back on her and wrapped the covers around me, put my head on the pillow, and prayed for peace. God heard me.

I don’t know much about praying. It feels like you could be trading on one thing for another, and maybe the thing you’re trading isn’t really yours in the first place.

Rosie just crawled into bed with me. No yelling. We started whispering to each other.

We curled our hands together. They were cold like always. I remember when Jeanie and I were little we used to crawl into bed with her and Louis and rub her blue-tinted fingers and toes, breathing on them with our hot breath. All I wanted was to be warm and close like that forever.

She said: What if you get a baby in there?

She rubbed my stomach. When she touched it I felt ill. The last thing I wanted was a baby to lug around all day. And I’d never fit into my pretty dresses again.

She said: Then no respectable man will ever want to marry you.

I didn’t want nothing to do with marriage with a respectable man or any other kind of man. Not once in my life did I ever dream of my wedding day, no white dresses, no goddamn diamond rings. I only ever dreamed of freedom. The love I have is with the streets of this city.

Mazie’s Diary, March 20, 1917

Oh, Rosie. My poor, dear Rosie.

This morning she took us girls to a dusty little gypsy parlor on Essex, empty except for a few plants and a folding table and chairs and a vase with a peacock feather in it. I didn’t want to be there, and neither did Jeanie. Golly, Jeanie’s so pretty now, skinny and pretty, with her pale skin and puffy lips and moony eyes. I swear she floats when she walks. Still she had a sour face, just like I did. After being sweet for so long, turns out she’s a Phillips girl, after all.

The gypsy pushed aside some curtains and came in from the back room. She was wearing a chain of thick gold coins around her neck, and the coins clinked together as she moved. Dark hair, dark skin, her skirts flowing around her. Some people find that glamorous. To me it’s just another gypsy, but Rosie has always had a thing for them.

At first she acted like we weren’t there. We could have been ghosts. She lit some incense on the table in front of us, watered some plants in the front window. Then I noticed the plants were dead, gray leaves, stems tipped over. I felt like I was nowhere all of a sudden.

The gypsy sat down at the table with us, told us her name was Gabriela. She smiled at Rosie, and Rosie smiled at her. There was a love there. She looked into my eyes and held them there. The long stare. Searching for something, but I didn’t give her a damn thing. Then she looked at Jeanie’s eyes, and then back into Rosie’s eyes. We were just sitting there waiting, all of us. All right already, is what I was thinking. We get it. You know how to hold a room.

She told us we were there for our sister, like I needed to be reminded Rosie existed. How can I forget?

She didn’t have an accent, like other Roma I’d met. She had thick eyebrows, and they made her look serious. She could have been old, she could have been young, I couldn’t tell.

She said: I needed to meet you in order to help your sister. You are all in the same home. You are living one life together. You are family. You are sisters. You are connected in this life, and the last one, and the next one, too.

A scam if I ever saw one, I thought. I couldn’t wait to tell Louis when I got home. I looked at Jeanie, thinking she’d be on my side. But she was drooling over everything the gypsy said. What a sucker.

Then she held out both of her hands toward me. I sighed and I groused, but finally I put my hand in hers. With her index finger, she traced a few lines on my hand.

She said: Life, money, good.

She was nodding her head.

She said: Well, money will come and go. Mostly come though.

Her hands were cool and soft. Her nails were clean. I admire a well-kept hand. She rubbed a thumb along a line across the top of my hand, and then a line beneath that.

She said: But this is no good.

She squeezed my hand tightly and released it.

She said: No love for you. You will spend your life alone.

I pulled my hands back.

I said: I got company whenever I like.

Rosie shushed me. I don’t care, I don’t need anyone telling me about my life.

Jeanie said: Now me.

She shoved her hands in the gypsy’s. Gabriela smiled at Jeanie like she loved her. The warm glow of a con artist. She told her she had a strong love line, and she pointed to something on her head. She told her she will marry well. A rich man. She asked if she liked rich men. As if she wouldn’t want a rich man! I watched Jeanie’s face. She was considering it, though she didn’t answer. But she smiled. Maybe she smiled like it was funny. I would have said, Who cares? But nobody was asking me. Nobody was telling me I was going to marry someone special.

Gabriela turned to Rosie, and Rosie slid her hand in hers so easily it was like they were husband and wife.

Rosie said: You already know what it says.

Gabriela said she did. Rosie asked her to look again. I didn’t know why it was so serious.

Rosie said: Now that you’ve met them, look again.

Gabriela said: They are strong these two, as you said, but who they are will not change what will happen to you. They love you. I don’t need to look at their palms to see that. They’re going to be who they’re going to be.

Then she brought Rosie’s hand to her lips and kissed it. It was a sweet vision.

She said: I still think it can happen, Rosie.

Rosie started crying and then Gabriela swept herself up into the back room, and came back with a handful of bottles. She smacked each bottle down in front of Rosie.

She said: I’ve asked everyone I know, and they’ve asked everyone they know too. I went uptown, I went downtown, I went across the river, and I gathered these for you.

She handed Rosie a piece of paper.

She said: I wrote down instructions. How much, how often. And there’s an address on there, a Chinaman. He sticks needles in you and they say it lights a fire within your womb.

She held Rosie’s hand again.

She said: I lit candles for you, my friend.

Now Rosie was sobbing, and then we held her. So our poor Rosie can’t have babies. I never knew, but how could I? We were her babies all along, I thought we were enough for her. I didn’t know she wanted anyone but us. She watched over us better than our own mother ever did. She’s our sister and our mother. Oh, all this time her heart was breaking and we didn’t even know.

George Flicker

Oh you want to know about the gypsies? What do you think you know about the gypsies? That they’re a bunch of criminals, probably. That’s what people always thought about them. My mother swore they spoke the truth. My friends from Little Italy, they wouldn’t go anywhere near them. They’re superstitious, and they were afraid of the curses. I have only ever been afraid of what I could see right in front of my face. Because I have seen enough. I don’t need to imagine anything worse.

But the gypsies were just the same as you and me. They lived here just like everyone else. They walked the same streets. It’s true that some of them were criminals. But you can’t judge a whole people by the actions of just a few. But that’s what we do here in this country. We do it in this world. I’ve lived such a long life. I thought things would be better by now. Every day I still watch the news. I listen to people talk. Things are not as bad as they once were, but not as good as I had hoped they would be someday. It’s the year 2000 already, and there’s still all kinds of messes in this country. I had higher hopes for this world. Eh, but what are you going to do about it anyway?

Mazie’s Diary, June 16, 1917

Rosie’s sick on the couch again. Hands on her belly. She swings from happy to sad in a heartbeat. We wrapped her up in blankets. I told her to stop taking whatever the gypsy gave her. Rosie, please stop, I was begging her.

She told me I was a fool and didn’t know what I was talking about, that things take time, life takes time. But it doesn’t seem right, this much pain.

What would anyone do to hold on to a dream for a little longer? Gypsy con or not, it doesn’t change Rosie’s dream.

I can’t blame her for having one, though. I would never blame anyone for wishing for something more from this life.

George Flicker

Then I was old enough to go to war, or at least I told them I was. I was a few months shy of legal but they didn’t check too hard. I would have said anything though to get out of that cramped apartment! The taller I got, the smaller it seemed. And I wanted to see the world. That I would be fighting in a war didn’t scare me for some reason. Maybe I wasn’t so brave, maybe I was just stupid instead. I won’t talk about what happened though, what I saw there. You know, we’re not like your generation where we need to talk about every little thing. Sometimes a bad thing happens and then you’re done with it.

But anyway I didn’t see Mazie again for five years, so I can’t help you out during that particular time period. Because I went to France and then I stayed there when the war was over and lived there and worked there and had a life there. I lived with a French girl for a year even. And she was really something, I’ll tell you. Ooh-la-la, I know. [Laughs.] I’ve had my fun, I’ve had my fun. Eventually I had to come back though. My mother got sick, and of course, there was all that trouble with Uncle Al.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1917

Twenty years old. I’m sure I should be having more fun.

What is this pull in me that makes me want trouble? Months I’ve been quiet and good, even though the heat on the streets was making me feel sexy, wanting to dance and drink. To kiss someone. Passing by alleys at night and seeing girls and boys playing. Fingers on lips, fingers on tits, I miss it. It’s been so long since I’ve lain down with someone. Most nights are with Rosie now. I lost this summer to her belly.

Mazie’s Diary, December 13, 1917

Rosie lost another baby. This time it felt like she was pregnant for only a minute.

Now she’s flat on her back again in the living room. Weeks and weeks of it, and there’s a dent in the couch now, I can see the mattress sagging beneath her. I swear the springs will sink straight through the floor.

She grabs my hand but squeezes too hard and it hurts but I try not to make a noise. She asks me to stroke her head but shifts her head, squirms beneath my fingers. Rub my feet, she tells me.

But then she says: No, you’re doing it wrong. No, don’t touch me.

Watches me with her eagle eye, thinking I’ll leave her.

Louis sits in the kitchen, head down, in the food. He closed the theater for a few days this week. Jeanie’s nowhere I can see, smart girl.

I take nips in the bedroom. I can’t go to the whiskey, but the whiskey can come to me.

Mazie’s Diary, December 16, 1917

Something’s going to break soon. I got no control over myself and I like it.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1918

I wasn’t ready to go home yet but there was nobody left in the bar worth talking to. Talked to a bum on the street instead, an old fella. We split whatever was in his bottle and I gave him a smoke. I was feeling tough. I asked him how long he’d been on the streets.

He said: Longer than you’ve been alive, girlie. You gotta be tough to last that long.

He beat his chest.

I said: I could survive out here.

He said: You don’t want to try.

I said: I could do it. You wanna see me?

He said: You got a home, you’re lucky.

I said: Why don’t I feel that way?

Then he got gentle with me.

He said: If someone loves you, go home to them.

A bad wind blew in and I grew suddenly, terribly cold. I couldn’t bear the night for another minute. I handed him the rest of my smokes and wandered home.

Mazie’s Diary, January 5, 1918

Rosie was trying to sweet-talk me early this morning. A nice change from yelling I guess.

She said: Don’t you want a sweetheart?

I said: The whole world’s my sweetheart.

Mazie’s Diary, January 18, 1918

Now she’s sharp and angry. She told Jeanie the dancing was done. No more classes, she said. And she told me I’d be on the streets if I came home late one more time. A month ago she didn’t want to lose me, now she’ll throw me on the streets?

I said: I know the streets. I’ve been there before.

She said: You can’t take those dresses of yours on the street.

I said: I don’t need none of it.

She said: You’d be nowhere without me.

Jeanie and I looked at Louis but there was nothing, no help. His heart is broken too, I think. His giant heart, exploded.

Mazie’s Diary, January 21, 1918

Took a few turns at the snuffbox of some rich man slumming downtown tonight. I can’t say I didn’t like it. Slapped his hand away from my tit though — he didn’t earn nothing just by sharing. He’s no hero like the sailors. Just a spoiled rich prick.

Everything started tumbling around me. I left when the fistfights started. I couldn’t help but laugh even as I lifted my skirts over the drunks bloody on the floor. That was not the right bar for a girl like me, though I couldn’t say it was the wrong one either.

But then I was walking down the streets and the moon was judging me, it was staring at me and judging me, I swear it was. I stood on the corner, and I let it judge me. I’ll judge you back, too, moon. What do you know? Stupid moon. Horrible moon.

I came home and got down on my hands and my knees in front of Rosie, still on the couch. She put her hands in my hair.

She said: Why can’t I have a baby?

I said: I don’t know.

She said: Why won’t you be a good girl?

I said: I don’t know.

We stayed like that until I came in here to write this down. She clawed at my neck when I walked away.

It’s her pain, not mine.

Mazie’s Diary, January 22, 1918

I was gone all day and all night. No candy shop, no track. Just the streets and the bars and the men and the women and the whiskey and the beer and the smokes and the snuff. Nothing but these things, and then more of these things, and then bed.

Mazie’s Diary, January 24, 1918

When I woke up this afternoon I went into the kitchen and Rosie was sitting at the table with Louis. Maybe the fever broke, I was thinking. I looked in her eyes and they seemed clear. But my eyes were hazy, so what did I know? I couldn’t trust what I saw for nothing.

She sounded clear though.

She said: I’ve tried everything with you. Louis, you know I’m right.

He didn’t want no part of it, I thought, but he nodded. He was pressing his fork against his eggs.

She said: Something’s gotta change. You know I’m right too, Mazie.

I felt bad about interrupting his eggs. Louis loves his eggs.

He said: Here’s the thing.

At last! The big man speaks.

He said: It’s a favor more than anything else.

Favor’s a word I can’t refuse when it comes to Louis, and he knows it. He’s taken care of us forever and he didn’t have to. He waited to say that word. He waited till he couldn’t wait anymore. Kept the favor in his pocket. Bet he’s got more than a few in there.

He said: Rosie’s been sick and I’ve been needing help down at the theater.

He put down his fork and then he took Rosie’s hand. Or did she take his? I couldn’t tell. They were propping each other up now. That’s what it meant. That’s how that works when you’re together with someone. I get it, even if I don’t have it.

He told me he wanted me to work the ticket booth, that it was true that the hours were long but it was important work to him. He had put a lot of money into the theater.

He said: You’re good with numbers. There’s money coming in and out all day. And I need someone I can trust there. There’s sticky fingers all over this city, you know that.

He told me it would just be for a little while and when I asked how long he told me he didn’t know, and I don’t think he was lying, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

I said: It’s a cage and you know it. You’re putting me in prison.

He said: Tell me what I ever ask you for.

Rosie said: He gives you everything!

I could not argue with either of them about anything. I know they were right. They had me cornered. Finally, Rosie had me.

I said: Death is upon me.

They laughed at me like chickens.

Rosie: It’s good that you’re funny. It’s good that you find things so funny. You’ll be needing that sense of humor.

But I wasn’t kidding around. That ticket booth! All day, hours and hours, the whole world going on around me. I’m going to miss everything. The world will pass me by. I will grow old and then die in that cage.

2. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

I chose only to help the men, not the children. Men, I can help. I can give them some change, a place to sleep. I can call an ambulance. Their needs are simpler. And if they still fail, there’s no one they can blame but themselves. But the kids I steer clear of. There’s people better at it than me, who have the time to give. I’ve got a jar full of lollies for them, and that’ll do. I got nothing to say to them. Every kid on the Bowery knows they can come to me and I’ll give them a treat, and that’s all. Give them a treat and then shoo them away.

Lydia Wallach

So she and my great-grandfather Rudy Wallach worked together for two decades at the Venice Theater. I have seen pictures of the theater, both the interior and the exterior, but none of these pictures are in particularly good condition. I know that the theater was beneath the tracks of the Second Avenue elevated train line, which I imagine made it quite noisy. I can also tell you the theater was in the style of the era, which is to say it was a classical-style movie palace, with European design influences. There were velvet seats — I presume they were red, though it was obviously impossible to tell from the photos I saw — and high ceilings with some ornate decor. The theater seated approximately six hundred people, and there was a ground floor as well as a balcony level. In its initial conception, it was, for lack of a better description, a very classy joint.

Mazie’s Diary, February 1, 1918

Today was my first day at the ticket booth in the theater. Glass cage is more like it. Prisoners would complain if it were their cell, that’s how small it is. A chicken would squawk if it were his coop.

I said: A dead man would complain if he knew this was his coffin.

Rosie was moving things around lightning quick, a lockbox, a roll of tickets, a tin can full of sharpened pencils. She slapped a notebook on the counter.

She said: Then I guess you’d better rest in peace.

She stepped outside of it and ushered me inside. I bruised my hip on the countertop squeezing in there. That countertop had already marked me for life.

I flopped down on the swivel chair and spun myself slowly around. There was just enough room for that. There was a heater in one corner, already blowing like it had been waiting for me all along. A clock ticking off the minutes before nine in the morning. A calendar on the wall. One month gone, February lay blank. Life was going to happen all around me. The truth of the moment struck me. I started to tear up like a stupid baby girl.

Rosie said: Oh, you poor thing, putting in a hard day’s work

I said: It ain’t that. I’m not afraid of work.

She knew I was telling the truth. I’d always done what Louis had asked me to do.

I said: It’s just that I’ll be all alone in here, and everyone else will be out there.

I suppose I was being a little dramatic and I flung my arms out. Of course they bumped right up against the window, only proving my point further.

Rosie started laughing at me, and it just sounded so good, to hear her laughing. I almost didn’t care what she was going to say. Even if she was teasing me, I was happy to hear her laugh.

She said: Mazie, there’s one thing you’ll never feel in this job, and that’s alone.

She squeezed in next to me, and showed me my tasks. How I’d keep track of how many tickets I started with in the morning, and how many I ended with in the evening. She taught me the combination to the lock. She slid open a small drawer underneath the countertop. Inside was a flask. She looked at me and shrugged.

She said: It does help move the day along.

I said: Well, well.

Then it was ten all of a sudden and there was a line of people building up in front of the theater.

She said: Don’t let anyone give you any trouble.

She left me with a small paper sack, lunch for the day. I settled myself. My hips and chest and belly all shifted into some kind of position and I tried to sit up straight but I knew I’d be slouching by the end of the day. The train rumbled on by over my head again, a thundercloud rolling through. I couldn’t even hear myself think but what was there to think about anyway? It was just me and the line. Rosie was still standing there, off to the side, watching everything. She was smiling so hard I thought her face would split in two, straight down the middle, two cheeks floating off in the sky. She had rearranged me. I was a movable part to her. And now I was in this cage.

I slid aside the front guard to the cage and slotted it into place. The whole of the line took a step forward all at once, like they were taking one big breath together. I looked at them all. Women holding hands with their little ones, a few sailors and soldiers, more than a few men in suits looking like they might be trying to sleep off their night out on the Bowery.

Then I got a little dizzy for a second. It’s just a job, is what I was thinking.

Finally, Rosie spoke.

She said: This is Mazie, and she’s in charge now.

And damn if they didn’t all wave at me and say hello.

Lydia Wallach

My great-grandfather was responsible for the movie selection, staff management, concessions, and the care of the theater itself. Basically anything that was contained within the doors of the theater, he managed. And Mazie sold the tickets and handled the money, and if anyone got out of line, she also ran security. Rudy was a tiny, gentle man. I have seen pictures of him and he looks much shorter than everyone else around him. He had immaculate skin and hands, as did my mother, and I do, too. Look at my hands. Look at how tiny they are. [Holds up hands.] Those are the Wallach hands. So Rudy wasn’t in any place to be roughing up any of the bums. Also he was the child of intellectuals. That’s right, I always forget that part. My great-great-grandparents were Russian intellectuals escaping some sort of persecution I never quite understood, and they moved to New York when he was just a baby. He was just this fine, sensitive man, fair to everyone, and he wasn’t interested in any of that rough-and-tumble business. So I guess it happened quite naturally that it fell to Mazie.

Mazie’s Diary, February 5, 1918

The movies make me sick in my gut.

I knew this before and then I forgot but now I remember, oh buddy do I remember.

I shut down the cage last night early. All day long I’m sitting there, wondering what’s going on inside. So I wandered through the theater. The high ceilings made the place feel like a castle out of a storybook, somewhere far away. Europe is what I was thinking, although what do I know of Europe?

I wanted to watch the last show of Tarzan. I slipped into the theater, onto those bruised red velour seat cushions, soft under my fingertips. There was a romance to it, I could see it. All those rows of big, beautiful, round bulbs that lined the walls. Rosie shows up once a week and tells the ushers to dust the lights. Sweep and dust, dust and sweep, she repeats it. She should ask that gypsy of hers if she were a general in a past life.

The movie was just starting, and everyone hushed up. At first I liked seeing all the animals, the giraffes and the lions and the snakes and the alligators. They looked like trouble. It was dreamy, watching something wild and alive and different than my own life, up high, so much bigger than anything I know.

But it only took a minute till I started to feel wobbly. The animals on the screen swelled up, then they floated and waved around in front of my eyes. Something gooey started to boil in my stomach. I turned my head away from the screen but it was too late. I was retching in the aisle like a bum on the corner after the bars closed for the night. Someone shushed me, but then there was someone else by my side, a small hand holding my hair. Some lady, I figured. When I stopped retching I looked up and there was Rudy.

I said: I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

He said: Let’s get you outside, Miss Mazie. Get some air in you.

I put my arm around his neck and we stumbled together through the lobby and out the front door, and then he leaned me up against the cage.

He asked me if I was sick and I said no. He asked me if anyone in my house was sick and I said no.

He said: Sometimes one of the boys gets sick, and then we all do. Just out of nowhere.

I said: It’s not that, I’m fit as a fiddle. It’s looking up at the movies. I don’t know what to tell you. All that jumping around.

He said: No more movies for you.

I said: Who needs to go to the movies anyway? Real life’s more interesting. Flesh and blood.

I was getting my spunk back in the cold air. I was feeling a little humiliated too. Bending over that like that, him seeing me weak, I didn’t like any of it.

I said: It’s just a movie, who cares.

He said: So you stick to tickets and I’ll stick to the movies. Front of the house, back of the house, that kind of thing.

I said: It seems fair.

We shook on it and it was like his hand nearly disappeared in mine. He’s a strange little doll of a man, that Rudy.

Mazie’s Diary, February 8, 1918

It’s one thing to walk the streets, and it’s another thing to watch them. I used to be just one of the crowd, stretching my legs, mixing with the rest of those lugs. But now I’m sitting still while the world moves on around me, and I’m seeing things a little differently through the bars of this cage. Hustlers and cons I knew here and there but not so much. Now I watch them every day and I’m learning. They don’t care where they land as long as they get what they’re looking for. Maybe they never hit me up before because I was always on the run on the streets, but now I’m a sitting duck and they won’t leave me alone. I must have a bright red target on my forehead that says Easy Mark. But that sign would be wrong. I’ll teach them soon enough not to mess with me.

Mazie’s Diary, February 10, 1918

A charmed life’s what I’ve had up till now I see.

Thirteen-hour days, and all I can do is drink myself to sleep lately. Rosie says it gets easier. Rosie’s got it easy herself right now. Jeanie’s been going to the track instead of Rosie. I can’t say I’m not jealous. How long could it go on though, me sitting here? It’s been two weeks. I’m sure they won’t want me to stay here forever. Whatever lesson they want me to learn I’ll swear I learned it.

Jeanie doesn’t even like the track that much. She says there’s a man there who’s sweet on her though, always tipping his hat at her, running after her, opening doors she didn’t even know needed opening.

She said: It’s like he made these doors up out of thin air.

She told me he was a horse doctor from Long Island. His name’s Ethan Fallow.

I said: What kind of name is that?

She said: I don’t know, but he’s taller than me, so I don’t care.

Mazie’s Diary, February 12, 1918

That train, that goddamned noisy train. I have to yell all day long to be heard over it. People lean in with their hands on their ears to hear what I have to say. At least I’m making them pay attention to me.

Mazie’s Diary, February 22, 1918

I don’t know what to make of that fella Rudy. He’s nice and respectful, so I can’t say as I mind him. But he’s always creeping around late. I can’t wait to leave when it’s closing time, and he’s still there after dark. He’s free to do what he likes. He’s not ripping anyone off I don’t think. Only what about his family? All those little boys running around afoot. He and that wife of his are baby machines. You’d think he’d want to go home to them. Or maybe not.

Lydia Wallach

As I said, he was dead long before I was born. I’m sorry I don’t have a “he bounced me on his knee in the theater” story or anything like that. But yes, he was a legendary cinephile at that time, as legendary as one can be for that sort of thing. I know what you’re thinking. Oh he really liked movies, good for him. But he was part of a network of movie theater managers who had late-night screenings of art films imported — or sometimes smuggled, depending on the state of war — from Europe. Of course it’s not really a big deal to anyone. He’s not in any history books, or anything like that. It was just this sort of very cool thing that he did — cool if you find people being obsessive about things cool, that is. Which I do, a bit.

But I don’t know terribly much beyond that. I do know that it was something that drove my great-grandmother crazy, because she had wanted him home more with his sons. It became something that my grandfather and his three brothers treasured because eventually they were permitted to attend these late-night screenings. It was influential on them to a certain extent. One of my great-uncles did move to Hollywood for a short period of time, I think just a few years, and he was an extra in movies though he never got a speaking part. And then there was another brother who eventually ended up in the Midwest, in Madison, where he helped to start a film archive, and he stayed there until he died, which was not that long ago actually. I did not go to the funeral, because I had a lot of funerals last year, and one more seemed unnecessary.

And, of course, I work as a lawyer for a cable company, the name of which I don’t feel comfortable stating in this interview, on rights and issues for their original programming. I minored in film at NYU — we were in a class together there, right? I thought you looked familiar. And I always thought I would do entertainment law, the whole time I was in law school. There was really no question I would do otherwise. My family has always relaxed by watching movies. When I think of my childhood, I think of my hand in a bucket of popcorn. It’s quite visceral, this memory. Whenever I smell butter I feel small and comforted and safe. Just talking about it now makes me want to lick my fingers.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1918

I met a nun today. Holy moly, my first nun.

It’s not like I’ve never seen a nun before. They’re all over the place, those Catholics, trying to save everyone’s soul on the Bowery, all the people having too much fun for their own good. But they’ve always left me alone before. I don’t know why. Maybe my dresses are too fine for them to bother with me. But I’m sitting in that booth all day, a working stiff, doing what I do. So now they’re after me I guess.

All right, I was taking a nip from the flask, it’s true. A nip and a cigarette, no one can blame me. I’d read all my True Romances, and there wasn’t another show for twenty minutes. Jeanie had already stopped by to drop off my lunch, she was off to the track. People were hustling by on the sidewalk, but no one stopped to say hello. Cars choking on the street, cursed train rumbling above. Nothing left to do but drink.

So I lift the flask to my mouth, and then out of nowhere, there she is, her face pressed up against the glass of my cage, her hands to the bars. I screamed.

She said: Before you drink, think.

I caught my breath, but then I was seeing red.

I said: I’m thinking just fine.

I tipped the end of the flask into my mouth. She shook her head, judging me on behalf of Jesus. She had honey-blond hair, a little wisp of it sneaking out from her habit. Her eyes were like blue glass, they had a shimmer to them. No makeup, just her face. She wasn’t much older than me, and she was short like me, but I didn’t know if she had the same curves under that habit. There we were, two girls on Park Row. Only one of us was showing a lot more skin.

I said: I ain’t hurting anyone.

She said: Except yourself.

I said: Oh brother.

I started blowing smoke in her direction and she took a step back.

I said: What’s your name, sister?

She said: Sister Tee.

I said: What’s the Tee for?

She said: It’s T-e-e not T. Tee’s for Theresa but there’s ten Theresas in the church so we all have different nicknames and I’m just Tee, because I’m wee.

This made me like her. She’s just a kid, I thought. I’m one too, I guess.

She said: We’re not talking about me though. We’re talking about you. And your soul.

I said: I’m Jewish so you can stop worrying about my soul.

She said: Everyone can be saved.

I said: Sister Tee, you wouldn’t even know where to begin with me.

It made her laugh a little bit. She was sweet. I’d have liked to see her out of that habit, all dolled up, in a club on Second Avenue, dancing up a storm with the sailors. Slap some rouge on those baby cheeks of hers and she’d grow up real fast. But it was not to be, me and Sister Tee.

A line started to build for the next show.

I said: All right, go find another drunk to help. I got work to do.

She said: Remember to think about what I said.

I said: Scram.

I waved her off with my hand.

She swished off in her skirts, and I was missing her already.

I said: But come back sometime. Come back and say hi.

She was bold, and I liked it. For a nun, she had flair. And I liked how she seemed both old and young. I thought maybe she would be my first friend on Park Row. Even if she thinks I’m no good, I bet she’d still be my friend.

Mazie’s Diary, May 3, 1918

The war’s coming to an end, everyone’s saying it, on the radio, in the papers. I’ll believe it when I see it. But it’s putting everyone in a good mood. There’s a parade every other day. I think folks think we throw enough parades we can make anything happen. There’s been soldiers coming home, for weeks and weeks now. Hurrahs floating in the air. I can sometimes hear them. It’s all off in the distance, though. It’s out there and I’m in here.

In here I deal with the bums and the stragglers and the cons. The men in suits sleeping off the night before. Why they don’t just go home I’ll never know. I have to say they’re all starting to make me laugh. Except the ones with the children. The mothers with the kids for the funnies, that’s fine, that don’t get to me. I’ll give them a lolly, sure. I’ve got a jarful just sitting there. They pay full price and move along. But the cons with the kids, saying they’re begging on their behalf, using them. I can’t tell what’s true or not.

This woman Nance has been coming around more lately, I’ve seen her for a few weeks. I’d heard of her before, back when I used to have a lot more free time on my hands and I knew all the gossip from the bars. She says she has children but I’ve never seen them. I shoo her away from my line.

Off with you, I tell her. Stay away from my paying customers. We’re running a business here.

She scatters from the theater. Park Avenue, across the street to the King Kong Bar, a pause at the window, around the corner and she’s gone. Just a skirt in the distance. Too old to be a street urchin, too pretty to be a common whore. Only thing left’s a con.

Mazie’s Diary, May 10, 1918

Where’s our Jeanie, we’ve all been wondering lately. In the arms of Ethan Fallow, I suppose. He came by Grand Street last night. He brought her a bouquet of tea roses, and she held them in her lap for an hour, and then they went for a walk and I didn’t see her again before bed. There’s a first, me beating Jeanie to bed.

It seems like it takes a lot of time, courting. You sit and wait for them to call you. Then you sit and wait for them to come to your home. Then you sit and wait for them to tell you how beautiful you are. Then you sit and wait for them to fall in love. I’ve no patience for any of it. I want instant love.

Jeanie’s been spending a lot of time at the track, too. Making up errands she needs to run. And she’s been hanging out with Bella Barker now that she’s back in town again. Only now her name’s Belle Baker, like that makes any difference. She’s still got the same voice, the same eyes, those pits of sadness. Barker or Baker, you are who you are.

Jeanie does whatever she wants now. She works Rosie and Louis like a con. She took all my tricks and made them perfect. I’m not jealous of most of it. I wouldn’t want to hold Ethan Fallow’s hand for hours on end. I wouldn’t want to nod my head at everything Belle says.

Only the freedom I envy.

Jeanie gets to do whatever she wants, I told Rosie last night.

Rosie said: Jeanie I don’t worry about.

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1918

That little Nance came back again today. She stood in front of me after the line for the last show had died out. A dried-up girl, younger than me. The bottom of her dress was in tatters. Her hair was long and unbrushed. Her tan overcoat was stained with something purple. Still, I wasn’t buying what she was selling. She was no beggar. There was lipstick on those lips.

She said: Please, ma’am, please. I’m broke and hungry and I’ve got two little ones at home and we haven’t had food in a week and can you please please please help us. A penny, a nickel, something, anything.

Her voice was too singsongy for me to trust her. She’d made that speech too many times before.

I said: Scram, little miss. I know what you’ll do with any scratch I give you.

She said: I swear on my life it’s for my kids.

She reached down the front of her dress and pulled out a rusted locket on a chain. She struggled to open it, and it was then that I could see her hands were shaking. But when she finally released it, she pressed it up against my glass cage. There were photographs on both sides, a boy and a girl. Two faded babies.

Looking at the pictures, I got a choke in my throat. I might have lost all the air in my body if I didn’t go to these children straightaway and help them. I couldn’t help but think about Rosie. All the sadness. Her on the couch all those months.

I had a bag of chocolates sitting in the cage and I slid them to her. She grabbed it and stuck her filthy fingers in it. Keep it, is what I was thinking.

I said: Where’s their father?

She said: Their father went to war and never came back.

I said: My condolences.

She said: No condolences. He’s in France, the bastard. He met some girl there, surprise of the century.

I felt sorry for her. It’s easier to let things go when there’s no reminder of someone. But she had two babies in a locket.

She said: He couldn’t wait to get away. He got me hooked, and then he joined up to get away from it and from me and he left me behind with those two babies. Isn’t that funny? Easier for him to go fight the Germans than spend another minute with me.

She started licking her fingers.

She said: Sweet Jesus, it’s good.

I watched her eat. She put one chocolate after another in her mouth. She was a greedy child, is all. A hungry brat.

She asked me for money but I said no.

She said: They’re real, I swear on my life.

I said: Then let me see them. I’ll lock up right now and go there. Last show’s nearly over.

She had eaten all the chocolate. She could have run. But she didn’t.

So I gathered together all the food I had in my cage, another bag of candy, half a sandwich. Then I followed her home through the pitch-black streets. We didn’t talk about her problems, we talked about the city instead. How different it was now that there were cars everywhere you looked. Can you believe the noise? Can you believe the dirt? We talked about how we both loved the rain because it washed the streets clean. Even for a few hours New York City would sparkle again.

She said: What I wouldn’t give for the rain to clean me up.

We picked up our skirts over some garbage in a back alley off Mulberry Street, and she led me to a metal door, brass buttons around the edges, the center painted red. There was a thick, rusty keyhole. Nance pulled a key from the front of her dress. I guess she kept everything down the front of her dress.

She said: It’s Mama.

She stood there for a moment, as if she were afraid to enter. Which made me afraid to enter, too.

It was quiet, and it was quiet, and it was quiet, and then suddenly there was squawling and screeching, and I covered my ears.

Nance said: Oh come on now.

There was one candle lit and she walked toward it. There was the smell of piss and I breathed through my mouth. My eyes adjusted and I could see where the howls were coming from. There was a boy with white-blond hair, a thin sliver of flesh in the dark.

He said: You’ve been gone all day.

She said: I was getting you food, wasn’t I?

She gathered the boy and a little girl to her.

She said: This nice lady brought you some candy.

I opened my purse and handed them the chocolates. My eyes grew used to the dark, and I could see the girl was frail and curly-haired, a sprout of a thing. She stopped wailing when she took the candy. Even by candlelight I could see they ate just as their mother did, with greedy desperation, salivating like animals.

All I wanted to do was steal them and give them to Rosie. She would have loved them. She would have fed them.

Later Nance and I shared a cigarette outside in the alley.

I said: They can’t live on candy forever.

She wasn’t paying attention to me, though. She had her eyes on my cigarette. She wanted her own.

I told her I’d bring her food tomorrow, and I asked her what she’d do after that. I gave her a cigarette and she didn’t say thank you. I told her I couldn’t help her forever.

She said: Are you sure you can’t? Come on, Miss Mazie.

She stroked my arm for a second. She had this sleepy smile. The lipstick held steady.

She said: I can tell you’re a girl who likes to have a good time. Everyone knows Mazie Phillips likes to have a good time.

I swatted her hand away. Then I shoved her up against the wall. I could have punched her. The only reason I didn’t was because of those babies.

I said: You better be thinking of your children now. Else you’ll end up like the garbage in this alley. All of you.

She started to cry.

She said: I’m sorry, it’s the only way I know how to be. I ain’t bad, I swear it.

I felt bad for shoving her. She wasn’t much different than me, just like Sister Tee wasn’t different either. Just a turn here, a twist there. No one to love you.

I said: That’s how I feel too. I ain’t a bad girl.

She said: I’m just hooked. It makes you desperate.

I said: Stop thinking about you. Think about them.

I promised to bring them food tomorrow morning. I left the stinking alley behind. It was past midnight when I got home and Rosie wasn’t happy about it. She had her arms crossed, and a cup of tea in front of her at the kitchen table. She was squinting at me. She didn’t look pretty. Louis was slouched back in his seat, his hands behind his head, just waiting for it.

But I had a good reason! I was sad and full of life at the same time, thinking I could help this family. For once they couldn’t be mad at me for coming home late.

So I told them the story, about Nance and these children, locked in this dark basement all day long with nothing but a candle to light their way. I asked them if there was something we could do to help. Louis, with all his connections, had to know someone. I was looking back and forth between the two of them. I was waiting for them to tell me I did something right for once.

Then Rosie stood up from the table.

She said: I don’t want to have nothing to do with it.

She was calm and icy. She picked up her cup of tea and left the room.

Louis sat there for a minute, just shaking his head at me.

He said: Why are you telling this story in this house? I don’t understand you.

He wasn’t talking much louder than a whisper.

He said: After everything we’ve been through. After everything she’s been through. You’re just throwing it in her face.

Then he got up and left me there. It stung me all over. I’m crying now while I’m writing this. Sitting in the candlelight, while in the other room the two of them are thinking I’m some cruel, vile girl. When all I want to do is help.

I won’t mind them, though. I won’t. I will help those children.

Lydia Wallach

Part of Mazie’s legend within my family can be attributed to her charitable contributions, not within the community where she lived, although my understanding was that she was ultimately exceptionally charitable, but more specifically, she was giving to my great-grandmother, and to my uncles after Rudy passed away. “Legendary” [puts her fingers in air quotes] doesn’t cover it actually. There were pictures of her on the wall, framed photos of her and my great-grandfather. My mother said there was a shrine in the living room. Sadly, none of them exist anymore, or if they do, I don’t know where they are. There have been too many apartment moves along generations. Things get thrown away. I know you’ve been trying to find a picture of her. I wish I could help you. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say.

I think it meant a great deal to my mother to hear all these stories about Mazie and Rudy. She loved her uncles very much and they didn’t have any other family around — they were the only relatives that made it over. My great-grandparents were trying to create their own universe by the force of procreation. But none of my great-uncles had children except for my grandfather, and then it was just my mother, and then she only ended up having me. So their grand experiment to populate the world with Wallachs failed and ends with me as I have no intention of having any children because number one, there are too many people on this planet already, and number two, who has time for it? You have to really want it, and I do not.

It broke my mother’s heart when I told her that I was uninterested in childbearing, but, to be fair to me, she had a heart that was easily broken. But that was because she had a beautiful soul. A gorgeous, gorgeous soul. I think this was because she grew up with all that attention from her uncles. There is something about being beloved by men from a very young age, being made to feel special, that makes a girl blossom in a particular kind of way. I did not have that same kind of attention. I had just my father, and he loved my mother most until he did not love her at all.

You know I think I was always fond of hearing these stories about Mazie in part because she went down an unconventional path. Marriage and children, they just weren’t important to her. It’s important to be exposed to alternate lifestyle possibilities, even if you don’t embrace them for yourself. It’s just good to know the possibility exists.

Mazie’s Diary, May 16, 1918

Jeanie worked my morning shift for me today.

I said: You don’t need to mention it to Rosie.

She said: Oh I wouldn’t dare.

Her tone was sweet but I’ll likely have to repay the favor someday. A sister knows the difference between a gift and a favor.

Then I went shopping on Hester Street for the babies and Nance. I bought a loaf of bread, a jar of strawberry jam, a bushel of crisp, rosy apples, and a fistful of dirt-lined carrots still on their stems. I wanted to give them the earth. More chocolates, butter, milk. I tried to buy food that would keep. Food they wouldn’t have to cook. Food they could just shove in their hungry little mouths. I was delivering to them a wish with this food. A hope for good health.

The door was open an inch when I got there. I pulled it wide open and let the sunlight stream in. There was no stove in the room, no fireplace, no icebox, no sink, nowhere to wash. It was nothing more than a box, and inside it this small, sad family.

The children ran toward me saying my name over and over again. Nance told them to give me a hug. She was jammed up in a corner, her knees pressed against her, a cigarette in her fingers. She was blocking the light from her eyes with the other hand. The little girl reached up toward my waist and rested her head along my backside. She felt like a feather. The boy grabbed the food from my hands. He tried to rip the loaf of bread in half but his hands were too small, and he was weak. I took it from him and broke a hunk off and handed it to him, and another to her. The whole world disappeared for the children while they ate. In the sunlight I could see that both of their eyes were runny and pink, with crusts around the edges. Oh I’m crying now writing this, just as I was then.

I realized I didn’t even know their names, and I asked Nance. Rufus and Marie, she told me.

I handed them the jug of milk from my purse, and I told them to drink it. The boy let the girl go first. She drank until she spit some milk down the front of her dress, and then she started retching, and everything she ate started coming up. Nance stayed in the corner. I burned. I pulled a handkerchief from my purse, and I tried to clean her up as best I could. She was crying. I told her it was going to be all right, and so did her brother. I told her to eat slowly, and she did.

I have no plans beyond but to keep feeding them. Before I left I handed them a fistful of lollies, a box of crayons, and some paper. I told Nance I’d be back tomorrow.

She said: What about me?

I said: What about you?

She said: Don’t I get any lollies? Don’t I get anything?

She sounded no older than her children.

I threw one at her.

Mazie’s Diary, May 17, 1918

They were spread out all over the floor coloring when I got there. Marie had drawn a circle with swirling rays surrounding it. I asked her what it was.

She said: It’s the sun. It’s the outside.

I asked Rufus what he was drawing and he told me it was a forest of lollies.

I’d steal them if I could. I would.

Mazie’s Diary, May 18, 1918

I only had a few moments before work today. I was thinking I’d show up and everything would be better, that some magic would have healed Nance. But I was a fool of course. A sick person doesn’t get better overnight.

The door was locked when I got there and I had to bang on it for a while. Finally Nance pushed it open. The room smelled of retch. She crawled on her knees back to the corner where she had made a nest of blankets. Her children were curled up with her.

I asked her how I could help. I said I’d call a doctor.

She said: There’s no doctor’s going to help me. I’m just going to feel this way for a while until I don’t anymore.

I said: Maybe I should take them home with me. Just so they’ll be safe.

She said: You’d love that, wouldn’t you? Taking my babies away from me.

I said: I only meant to make it easier. I’m here every day trying to help you, missy. You don’t want my help, fine. But you should be looking after those children of yours. They didn’t do a thing wrong. They don’t deserve this.

Christ, maybe I was yelling too loud, I don’t know.

I said: You asked me for help, remember?

She said: Well now we don’t want it.

She struggled her way to standing. Her legs were quivering but still she stood.

She said: You don’t come in here and tell me how to live my life. You don’t tell me how to love my children.

I said: Nance, I didn’t say you didn’t love them.

I was trying to be softer with her. I didn’t want her to throw me out.

She said: You think I don’t know what you think of me? I know the truth.

Marie started crying, and then Rufus did too.

I said: You’re just sick right now. You’re not thinking straight. I’m here to help.

Nance pulled those babies tight. It was the strongest I’d seen her.

She said: Say good-bye to Miss Mazie. Saint Mazie’s more like it. Thinks she’s better than all of us.

I said: I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll bring you more milk.

She said: We don’t want it.

I said: I’m coming anyway.

She said: See what I care. I don’t have to open the door for nobody.

I’ll throttle her with my own two hands if she hurts those babies.

Mazie’s Diary, May 19, 1918

I went early this morning to Nance’s. The alley outside their front door was quiet except for the strays, the rats, and the cats, scuttling, tussling. The door was shut tight. I pressed my face up against it. It was early and quiet. I was sure I could hear Marie crying inside. I had milk with me, and lollies, too.

I started pounding on the door.

I said: I’ll leave the milk outside. You don’t have to speak to me, only please take the milk.

I hid around the corner to see if Nance would open the door. Finally two enormous stray cats, spotted gray and filthy, knocked over the jug and took to lapping it. Then cat after cat came out of every corner of the alley, and the milk was gone. Nance had never opened the door.

I took it upon myself to do a little nosing around today — as best I could from that cage. I talked to a beat cop, Officer Walters. He’s stopped by a few times to share a nip from the flask, and to flirt. He’s an old dog. His hair’s turning gray and he’s got a big belly. I’d worry he’d crush me if I let him hold me. But he’s good for a laugh and he’s got a nice set of thick lips on him, so all right, he can have a nip. He tells me to call him Mack but I never do.

I asked him if he knew about Nance. He knew Nance, oh yes he did.

He said: Sorry to tell you this, Mazie, but if she wants to keep her door locked she’s entitled to it.

I said: But those children are living in darkness all day I’m telling you. And she’s not feeding them right. Can’t you just go knock on her door?

It occurred to me that his breath was thicker with liquor than mine.

He said: I think we know how to handle this. It’s our jobs to know.

I said: Well then I know how to handle you.

I snatched the flask from his hand.

I said: Go on, get out of here. I’ll find someone else to help me. What are we paying our taxes for?

I yelled and yelled, but there was not a hint of guilt in his step. Just another man in a uniform, just another man with a swagger.

All day I asked those who came to my cage their opinions on the matter. Everyone said the same thing: It’s her door. I reminded them about the children but it didn’t matter. All you can do is knock, they told me.

A rule-breaker on my side is what I need.

Mazie’s Diary, May 20, 1918

Sister Tee! Sister Tee.

Mazie’s Diary, May 21, 1918

I tracked Tee down last night. I saw one of the other Theresas on the street. Sister Terry, this one was called. She was older, with a thin gray mustache. I suppose they don’t give a care what they look like when they’re married to Jesus. I called her over and told her I’d give her free tickets for a week if she’d go find me Sister Tee. She said I didn’t need to bribe her, and that salvation was right around the corner and it was always free, no matter what. She rushed off, her habit in ripples. Ten minutes later, there was my Sister Tee, loose strands of golden hair coming out of her wimple. I didn’t even know I had missed her until I saw her again, and I think she felt the same. She smiled like she knew me well. Maybe she already does.

I said: I know I’m technically a sinner and all. But I could use a little help.

She said: God has love for everyone.

I told Sister Tee everything, ending with the part about the big red door being locked. I told her Nance no longer trusted me, that she’d never open the door for me again. The whole time her eyes were set tight, her face too. I told her I couldn’t stop wondering what was happening in there. Locked behind the door. At last, Sister Tee cried out in some kind of pain. I put my hand on hers, I asked her if she was all right.

She said: I’ve been grinding my teeth lately. I used to do it at night, and now I’ve started doing it during the day. When things are bad. When I hear a sad story. A story of ungodliness.

I said: A story of unfairness.

She said: A story of injustice.

I said: A story of inhumanity.

Her eyes were wet with inspiration. The air between us churned into something new.

She said: We must save those children.

Tomorrow, she promised, she would return with news.

Mazie’s Diary, May 22, 1918

Not a peep.

I might die from the waiting. Stuck in a cage, waiting.

After dinner Rosie was teasing Jeanie about Ethan, and Jeanie didn’t even blush.

I wonder if he’ll propose someday. An engagement. Rosie would be beside herself. Then it’d be just me left for her to worry about.

Mazie’s Diary, May 23, 1918

It was hot today, too hot, spring’s gone already, and I never even had a chance to love it. I sent one of the ushers to get me a beer from across the street, and then another after that, and then another before closing, and I let Officer Walters buy me one to take home with me, which I’m drinking right now by the open window. There’s a big pack of pigeons cooing on the roof across the street. The moon is nearly full. I’ll drink until I know I’m done. What else am I supposed to do with myself? No Sister Tee. The waiting is killing me.

Mazie’s Diary, May 24, 1918

Louis won big at the track and bought us all new purses. Mine’s pink and has a jeweled clasp and it’s very pretty and I don’t care because I haven’t heard anything.

Mazie’s Diary, May 25, 1918

Sister Tee brought me no good news today. I can’t stop crying to save my life.

She and some of the other Theresas were switching off shifts, all day and all night. Some sisters from an uptown church relieved them twice. The first two days the red door didn’t open. They knocked and they waited. There they all were, huddled amongst the rats in the alley, waiting for this hophead to open the door. I can’t believe I asked them to do this. I was feeling shame all over me. I apologized and Sister Tee told me not to worry. The weather was so pleasant they didn’t mind at all. And then finally, the third day, the door opened.

Sister Tee said: It creaked and moaned like a waking demon.

There was Nance, blinking in the sunlight. She was staggering. Her head hung down, and her arms drooped, and she was swaying. Sister Tee imitated her. Like a dead woman risen, is what Tee told me. The nuns rushed from their corner nest and pushed past her into the spoiled room.

Sister Tee said: The stench.

I asked if the children were dead.

Sister Tee said: Not dead, but not much alive either. The littlest one is too small for her age, and it might be too late, is what the doctors are saying.

She started talking about malnutrition and bruises and bad blood. I couldn’t pay attention to the details through the sting of my fury. I know what it means now to see red. I could feel the hellish flames within me. It was blinding me. I punched my fists against the counter and I couldn’t even feel a thing. Sister Tee took a step back. I had scared her, and I was sorry for it. I tried to calm down but couldn’t.

Sister Tee said: I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner to see you, Mazie. We had some praying to do.

I said: Where’s Nance? I’ll kill her.

Sister Tee said: Mazie, you need to be more forgiving. She’s an ill woman.

She told me Nance was in the hospital drug sick, her two children on a different floor. The little girl’s dying, the little boy’s fighting.

I started to cry. The faded babies, fading.

I said: What can I do?

She said: Same as us, just pray.

I didn’t tell her I wasn’t one for prayer but I’d give it a shot. I’m saying it now, this counts as my prayer. Please let them get well.

Mazie’s Diary, May 29, 1918

The youngest one died. Little Marie. Sister Tee says Nance will go to jail as soon as she’s able. She says the nurses won’t even look at her. They’d sooner throw her on the street. I’d do the same if I could.

Red-eyed in the cage all day long.

Lydia Wallach

Everything’s packed away in the guest room and I can’t bring myself to dig through the boxes. I’d have to unpack them all. I just can’t leave them half packed, or half unpacked, as it were. Once I start I’d have to finish the whole project. So it would be a whole thing I would have to do. And I don’t really have the time for it now. Or I guess the space, the mental space. It was enough to come downtown to meet with you. I’m happy to do it, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to make you feel bad. It’s just an exertion. Like there’s taking the train to work, and then there’s work, and then there’s taking the train home again, and that’s all I’ve got in me. When I think of all those boxes it seems insurmountable. It could take days. And I’d have to find a place for everything. How will I know exactly where things will go? I’m just not prepared to make that kind of decision. This is why I can’t help you. It’s the boxes’ fault.

I know you wanted a different answer than that. I don’t think there’s much in there. I’m certain I’ve only ever seen one picture of her, and I have the faintest memory of it in my mind. But it’s been decades since I’ve seen it.

I’m sorry. I wish I could do this for you, but…right now I can’t. I’ve just moved into this new house in Westchester. I’m divorced. The marriage was brief, shockingly so. His mother died last year, and mine did as well, and a friend of ours who was very sick, suddenly, pancreatic cancer, and was given three months to live, and then was gone. And we just looked at each other at the end, and we should have been holding each other through all of it and instead we were separate, we were in opposite corners of the room, and we simply couldn’t find our way back to each other. It felt physical. There were all these ghosts between us. Everyone always thinks of ghosts as being invisible or like air but they take up so much space in a room, you’ve no idea.

I know you didn’t ask about this, I’m just offering this as an explanation. So there’s all these boxes from my mother in the guest room, and my husband would have been the one to unpack them. I’m organized, of course, but I can’t face my mother’s things right now. Another thing to face. All I have done is face things for months and months. So there they sit, in this room, I guess it’s a guest room. Maybe it will be a study. Honestly, I have so many rooms. This house is much bigger than I needed. It feels a little preposterous and self-indulgent. But there’s this deck out back, and I sit there in the mornings with coffee, and the birds are chirping in the trees, and there’s a little stream past the trees, etcetera, and it feels like a thing that I wanted, I’m sure I wanted it, and now I have it, but I do not think I wanted it all alone.

Mazie’s Diary, June 15, 1918

Sister Tee can’t find Rufus. She thought he was at an orphanage uptown, and she went up there looking for him, but he’d never made it there. She’s going to check three more orphanages tomorrow. She says there’s no point in calling. She says you’ve got to go there and see for yourself. I offered to go with her, but she says she can get more done looking the way she does.

At least he’s been released from the hospital. At least he’s well enough. But where has he gone to?

Lydia Wallach

I was a child when I saw the picture. I can imagine how frustrating it is for you to not be able to secure any photographic evidence of her. Truly. My entire job is to deal with evidence and facts. But my memory won’t help you much, because I only saw the picture for a moment. Okay. Let me think. The one thing I can recall is this — and I’m not sure it will be much help to you at all — I had heard many times that she was a bottle blonde. Brassy, sassy blonde. That was supposed to be her schtick. But in my memory, in the photo I saw, she was a brunette. She was young, and a brunette. She was standing in front of a ticket booth, her ticket booth, I am assuming, and my great-grandfather is standing next to her. They’re both saluting, as if they were soldiers. Oh, and there was a cross around her neck. That’s in my memory, but I don’t know how it could be true. Because she was Jewish.

Mazie’s Diary, July 3, 1918

I thought if I waited to write until I had good news it would make the good news happen. But there’s nothing good to report. I’ve been drinking cold beer all day long for weeks, waiting for Sister Tee to come back into my life. But she had disappeared until today.

She said: We’ve lost him.

I gasped.

She said: No, no, no! Not passed away, lost. But lost in the system. He could be anywhere.

She told me she would keep trying to find him. I thought, well, I won’t hold my breath.

I was sweating. I wasn’t even going to cry. I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I’ve been holding it all in. I didn’t cry. I feel like I’ll never cry again.

She put her tiny hand into the ticket booth.

She said: I brought you something.

I put my hand out and she opened hers and dropped a chain of light blue beads into it. I saw the cross immediately. It was a rosary.

I said: I told you this soul’s not yours for the saving.

She said: I’m not worried about your soul. I’m worried that you’re sad. You could just think of this as a pretty thing you could hold on to sometimes that will make you feel better. Sometimes that’s all it is to me. But please, Mazie, don’t tell anyone I said that.

I promised I wouldn’t. My promise is gold. I said she was my friend now, and she agreed I was hers, too.

And it is a pretty thing to hold on to, it’s true. I left it behind in the cage though. It’s becoming a home of a kind to me. I didn’t mean to get comfortable there. I didn’t mean to be there so long. But there I am. Here I am.

3. Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

Heartbreak’s one thing that leads these bums to the streets. But by the time they get there, the bums don’t care about loving nothing but their booze. Coupling up is good for a night or two. It’ll keep you warm, if warming up is what you’re looking for. But when you’re a drunk you never want to share that bottle for too long with anyone. Love requires you to share. To these bums, love looks prettier from afar. They believe they’re better off in their sad lives with just the memory of love — and they’re probably right.

Mazie’s Diary, July 12, 1918

Rosie got word from Boston. Our mother’s sick. I haven’t seen her since I was a little one, Jeanie either. She never came to see us, though I’m sure he wouldn’t let her. We weren’t angry when we left, just scared.

So Rosie’s off to Boston for a few days to check on her. Nobody knows how bad it is, or what’s wrong. It could be anything. Just a telegram from him saying she wasn’t well.

This morning she and Louis were back and forth on whether she’d be traveling alone.

He said: May I remind you about the last time we saw him?

She said: May I remind you you’ve got businesses that need your attention?

He said: I could send a guy with you.

She said: What guy?

That was what I was wondering, too. Since when does Louis have guys he can send out of town?

I said: I could go with her.

But no one even listened to me — when do they ever? So I just smoked another cigarette and watched the two of them hash it out.

It’s been ten years! More maybe. How old are they? I wonder if they’d look the same. I wonder if she was even quieter now, if that was even possible. I wonder if he got meaner.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr., son of Captain Benjamin Hazzard

So what Johanna told you is true. I did meet Mazie Phillips once. I had this wild hair for a moment after my father died, and I thought I should meet this woman I had heard about. I felt very much that I’d been living my life to impress, or sometimes not impress him. Because he was the kind of man you wanted to impress, either way, good or bad. And I think in my sadness I started to resent that desire. Oh I don’t know…it’s probably even more complicated than that but I can’t even remember my exact feelings about that time in my life, and frankly I’m not even sure if it matters anymore. I only know that I hopped in my car after my father’s funeral — leaving my mother behind, mind you, still wiping her eyes at the loss of my father — and drove to New York to meet this woman my father never stopped talking about, even in front of my mother. He was so brazen, so insensitive. Who talks about another woman in front of his wife and kid? What kind of man is that?

Mazie’s Diary, July 14, 1918

Cat’s away, and this mouse is putting on her dancing shoes. I’m going out on the town after work. Forgetting everything I’ve seen these past few months for just one night. Louis can’t do nothing about it, and he knows it. Rosie knows it, Jeanie, too.

Mazie’s Diary, July 15, 1918

My eyes are green. I’ve been told they sparkle in the sunshine and glitter in the moonlight. Also they look like jewels, emeralds, and tiger’s eyes, too. Captivating, mesmerizing, hypnotic. Every fella’s got a little something they like to say. But they’re just plain green. And the truth is, in the dark you can’t tell anything at all. That’s what I always want to say to these men with all their fancy ways of talking about a very simple thing. You know you won’t care when the lights are out. They’re just green, you fools.

So last night this man starts asking me about my eyes, and I could not give two good goddamns. He sat down next to me, taps two fingers on the bar, like he was announcing his arrival. I was drinking gin, which was making me feel pretty and mean. I should know better, but some nights nothing but gin will do. I pulled out a cigarette and tried to light it myself, but he was quick on the draw. I nodded a thank-you. I wasn’t giving him anything more than that, but I did give him the smallest of glances. He was in uniform. Me and the men in uniform.

He said: Now are those eyes green or blue?

I said: The color of money.

He said: The color of luck.

I said: I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Then he sucked in his breath. His chest was broad and mighty. His uniform fit him snug, fit him bold. There was not a speck of dust on it. He was a handsome, big man. His hair was wavy and slick at the same time. He had worry lines on his forehead and between his eyes. What did he have to worry about? Oh, and his eyes were green, too.

I said: The color of trouble.

He waved his hands at himself, then made like he was praying with them. Begging for permission to exhale.

I said: All right. Breathe.

He was docked at Chelsea Piers, and had wandered through the city looking for a good time, which is not what he said, but what I believed to be true anyway. I asked him if he was a hero. He said everyone serving overseas was a hero. I touched his arm for a second. Oh lordy, it was a nice arm. I went from mean to smitten fast.

He said: I’m a sailor. I sail ships. Big ones.

I said: I run the Venice Theater. I sell tickets, I count the change, I keep the books. When there’s trouble, I kick out the riffraff. I’m the first thing you see when you come to the theater, and the last thing when you walk out the door. You can’t miss me. I’m always there.

I hate that I wanted him to see me in my cage, but it’s the only thing I can call my own, even if it’s really Louis’s place. I know they’re there to see the movies, but lately I’ve been pretending the crowds have been lining up to see me.

He said: You’re a businesswoman then.

I said: That’s right I am.

He said: You run the show.

I said: Yes.

He said: I run the ship.

I said: Yes.

He said: Both of us are used to being in charge. How will we ever get along?

I said: I don’t know. I never give an inch.

He said: Not even one?

So we set to drinking, and we did an excellent job of it for many hours. We were real professionals. Then the barkeep kicked us out for our own good and we decided to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge because he’d never done it before. I gave him the business about it, teasing him for missing out on something special.

He said: I guess I’ve just been waiting for a pretty girl to take me.

It didn’t even matter what he’d said or if I’d heard those lines a hundred times before. He was twice my size and he was handsome and he was a hero and I wanted to throw my arms around him and feel him against me. The pop of those brass buttons against my chest.

We reached the middle of the bridge and leaned against the railing. We were all alone. The smell of the river stung my nose. The Captain put his arm around me and pointed out the stars, and even though I already knew them all I pretended that I didn’t, which I only hate myself for a little. I thought he needed to teach me something so that whatever would happen next would happen next. I kept calling him Captain. Captain Captain Captain. I couldn’t stop myself for nothing.

He said: Call me Benjamin. We’re getting to know each other here. No need to be so formal.

I said: Captain, don’t ruin the best thing you got going for you.

It was nearly a full moon. That moon was watching me and I didn’t even care. Watch me, just watch, I was thinking.

He talked and talked. Now I knew he was part Mick, part Italian, and part parts unknown. Now I knew his mother had passed last year, and his father was heartbroken, and he was too. Now I knew he had gone to the Naval Academy, and that someday he hoped to teach there.

He said: I’ll slow down in ten years. Maybe five. But right now I’ve got the lust for adventure.

Now I knew all the countries he’d been to, and all the oceans he’d sailed. Now I knew how many men were on his ship, and that they were good men, except for the few who were only just fine.

He said: Not every man’s meant to be a hero. Doing the right thing’s different than being noble. But at least I can count on them to be right.

Now I knew he had been engaged once, but it was over. She had started working for the first time in her life while he was away at war, and he said it had changed her.

He said: She forgot about me.

I said: How could she? I would never.

He took a step back on the bridge and turned me to face him. Those meaty hands warm on my shoulders. I blushed and looked down at the ground.

He said: Aw shucks, Mazie. Come on and look at me. Now you’re shy? You’ve been bold all night. You get me all the way out here on the middle of this bridge and now you can’t look at me?

I looked at him. Trouble meets trouble.

He moved his hands up to the sides of my face and he pulled me toward him and kissed me. I kissed him back. We pecked at each other for a minute, figuring each other out. Finally he kissed my upper lip, and then my lower lip. I opened them a little bit. Then he forced them open entirely. He put his tongue where he liked. I could not argue. I did not even try. Then he moved his hands slowly from my face down my neck and to the top of my dress. There was a gentle swell of cleavage there and he put his finger in the space between my breasts. He stroked up and down. He looked around and then bent his head down and started kissing the tops of them. Then he licked them, dipped his tongue between them. I put my hand on the back of his head. I did not want him to ever stop.

He said: Oh, Mazie, these are beautiful. You’re beautiful. All of this. Beautiful.

There was his hand ruffling up my dress, and my hand on the waistband of his uniform. I’ve lain down with men before. Not many, not as many as Rosie thinks. Not many at all, really. But the point is I’ve lain. In a bed. Now I was pressed up against the bridge. He lifted me up easily and I wrapped my legs around him. I felt common and special at the same time. We were both laughing because it felt so good. He kept pushing and pushing into me. I was delirious. But I told him to stop. I had the good sense. I told him I didn’t want a baby in me.

He said: I can’t. Don’t make me.

I said: I won’t. But be careful.

He told me he’d be careful. We kissed. It was a deep, long kiss, and then we were laughing again. He pulled away from me, and pushed even harder, very quickly, and then he wasn’t looking at me at all. He was looking over my shoulder, maybe at the river, maybe at his ship, maybe at the moon, maybe at nothing at all. Then he closed his eyes, groaned, and pulled out of me lightning quick. Then there was a mess on my legs. He said he was sorry and I told him not to be sorry. Then he dropped down on his knees and buried himself beneath my dress and licked me. He didn’t miss a spot. It felt brutal. Eventually I made a noise and out there, in the middle of the river, in the middle of the night, I thought it almost sounded like a cry for help.

He’s gone now, back to his ship. Louis wasn’t at the kitchen table when I got home, Jeanie wasn’t in bed either. Looks like I’m not the only mouse in town.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

He was a particularly likable man, my father. He was a war hero, of course, and Americans love their heroes, and I think he felt that love in our community. He was received in a certain way, shall we say. But also he was warm and charming, not your typical stiff military type. Of course he cheated on my mother for years. Not just with Mazie, but with women in many different cities, as well as in our own town. Over the years he did little to hide his infidelities, and he gave me terrible advice about how to treat women, which haunted me for much of my life. He had a sense of entitlement to women. He just sort of took as he pleased. It was really remarkable and nearly admirable if it weren’t so goddamn despicable.

I’ve been married twice before Johanna. Three wives! Johanna’s had me in counseling for years though. She seems to feel this will keep me on track. I’m seventy-four years old, and I’ve insisted to her that I’ve had all the kinds of feelings I’m ever going to have. But still I go because she has asked, and I would prefer not to die alone.

I thought I had lived long enough that I had earned the right to some peace and quiet, but it turns out I have not; not yet, anyway. I also thought I was too old to change, but again, I am wrong, as my wife frequently informs me. I promised myself I’d live longer than my father, and I have; much, much longer, though that wasn’t hard, because he died when he was sixty. We think of that as young to die now, though people did die younger then.

Would I prefer not to be in therapy? No. Would I rather just live the rest of my life happily in retirement, reading the works of the presidential scholars, sailing on the weekends, gazing at my bride, those plummy lips, that petite derriere, and telling her how lovely she is and how lucky I am to have her? Instead of discussing my feelings? Absolutely. I would like to eat steak every night for dinner, and that is not to be either. Another doctor entirely. [Laughs.] All these doctors, destroying my dreams.

Mazie’s Diary, July 16, 1918

Delirious and decadent all day. Seemed like everyone in line had a gag or a funny word for me. All I wanted to do was think about the Captain, and the two of us on the bridge. I could dream about it for days and never get bored. Today was the first time in weeks I hadn’t started the morning by crying and thinking of that little girl.

Mazie’s Diary, July 17, 1918

Tee came by the cage, told me a sob story about a war widow she found sleeping in front of her settlement house, three babies wrapped up in her arms.

I said: I ain’t getting involved ever again. No way. I learned my lesson.

But I handed her everything in my purse. Tee’s the con and I’m her sucker.

Mazie’s Diary, July 18, 1918

Rosie’s not returned home yet. She sent a telegram to Louis but he wouldn’t tell us what it said. Only that Rosie was fine. If we were waiting for a tragedy, he had nothing to report.

I was still feeling sort of dreamy so I stuck around late. No point in going home to an empty house, and I’ve cooled on saloons for the moment. Nothing can match my night with the Captain, why bother looking?

I saw the late-night lineup of Rudy’s people in front of the theater. I guess they’re the other theater managers in town. They were still tidy in their uniforms. Not my kind of uniform exactly, but at least they wore them with pride. They were sharing cigarettes, sipping from flasks, talking in low voices. I finished counting up the money for the night. I teased them.

I said: We’re closed for the night, gentlemen. There ain’t no more shows till morning.

One man said: Aw, you know us, Miss Mazie. We’re waiting on Rudy.

I said: Don’t you boys have anything better to do than stare up at a big screen all night? You spend all day in front of it. Go chase some girls!

They all laughed at me. They don’t care nothing for girls. They just like to watch movies. They’re hypnotized by them.

Rudy came and let them in and they all shuffled off. Silent and mysterious creatures of the night. That part I understand. I locked up my cage and wandered through the lobby. What could be so good, I was thinking.

I stuck my head in the theater. I tried not to look up for too long. But I’d never seen anything like it before. The movie was in color! Of course it wasn’t much of a movie. There weren’t any actors in it. It was just a bunch of circles and waves moving across the screen. But it was definitely in color. I know color when I see it.

Two seconds later, I was hunched over, retching up my guts all over again. Rudy came over to help me, walked me out front when I could make it.

He said: You trying to make yourself sick?

I said: Being nosy always gets the best of me. But Rudy, that was color up there.

He said: Someday there’s going to be color all the time. People talking too.

I said: Then you boys will never go home.

He said: Speaking of nosy, I forgot something.

He pulled a letter out of his pocket.

He said: Who’s this captain friend of yours?

I grabbed it from him. Postmarked the day after he met me. It was addressed to Miss Mazie Phillips, The Beautiful Proprietress of the Venice Theater. No return address.

There wasn’t much to it. Just that I was special and lovely, and that he would think of me whenever he saw a bridge, and that in his line of work, he saw a lot of bridges.

I hurried home after that. The house was empty. I read the letter again and again and then I got under the covers and put my hands between my legs and thought about bridges.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

I understand from an intellectual perspective why he had such fond memories of her. They met at a moment in time where everything was perfect. He looked at her and told her she was gorgeous and then sailed off on his boat. They were both allowed to be perfect for each other forever.

Mazie’s Diary, August 2, 1918

Rosie’s home now, came back late last night, angry and weary from her travels. Jeanie and I wrapped ourselves up under a quilt on the couch. Then Rosie said our mother’s brain was slowly bleeding. We found each other’s hand under the quilt.

She said: I barely recognized her. Her face doesn’t look the same anymore. It’s all mashed up.

Rosie was holding on to the arms of the chair. Claws into fabric. She was tough and grim, and she was breaking my heart with her pain.

I said: Do you think he did it to her?

Rosie said: Of course he did! Of course he did. He said she fell, the liar. Fell a hundred times, more like it. She’ll die for sure and then he’ll be a murderer too. And he’ll never be held responsible for his actions.

Jeanie said: I don’t even remember her. I wish I could remember her.

I was thinking about when Rosie came to get us, when she brought us to New York. I could see it, still, even though it had been at night, and late. Jeanie had been a toddler, what did she know? But I could close my eyes and see it. The house had dirty floors…or made of dirt, maybe. We’d lived somewhere nicer once, closer to the city. He drank us into the country, that’s what Rosie said once. Maybe the floors were made of dirt after all.

There was Rosie picking me up whole from my bed, blanket and all. She shushed me, took me through the kitchen, and it was light and I opened my eyes. I saw Louis and my father standing there. Louis was counting out cash. The trees in front of the house bent with the wind, and there was a rushing noise in the leaves. Then we were all in the car, and then we were driving. All night we drove. I wasn’t scared, because I was with Rosie.

My mother was nowhere in all of this. I don’t think she said good-bye. I can’t remember it if she did. I can’t remember what she looked like either. Except maybe like the rest of us girls. A hazy, dark-haired lady. I can see her eating quietly by herself in the kitchen. A dark head hunched over a bowl. I don’t remember her smiling. A mother is supposed to smile at her babies.

We don’t even have any pictures of her here. Rosie walked out with us, and that was it. She didn’t want nothing from them but us girls.

I said: I wonder what would have happened if we had stayed.

Rosie said: I would never have let that happen.

Jeanie said: How did you know when it was time to leave? When you left the first time?

Rosie didn’t want to answer any more questions. She just sent us off to bed. Told us she’d be tightening the screws again now that she was back.

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1918

Nothing but drinking and working for days and days. Not a letter for the Proprietress, not a one. The drinking’s making me sick I think. I’m waking up queasy. But I can’t seem to stand a second of my lonesome life without it.

Mazie’s Diary, August 18, 1918

Last night Jeanie and Rosie got into it. Oh boy did they ever. I can’t say I enjoyed the yelling but at least it wasn’t me causing a fuss for a change.

Jeanie wants to work for Belle Baker. She doesn’t like traveling to the track, it’s too long a journey, she’s bored on the train, bored when she gets there. Belle’s got a new show on the Bowery. She’s a headliner now. She’s the queen of the Thalia Theater. She needs a lady-in-waiting, says Jeanie.

Rosie said: You’ve got a job.

Jeanie said: A job you picked for me, not a job I picked for myself. Why do you get to pick everything all the time?

Rosie said: Maybe because I know what’s best.

Jeanie said: Please let me do this one thing. Please, Rosie. I’m always on time, I’m always where I say I’ll be. I’m always pretty, I’m always sweet, I don’t drink, I don’t stay out all night, I’m a good girl. Please, Rosie.

She got down on her hands and knees on the kitchen floor. I saw it with my own eyes. She put her hands in Rosie’s lap. She was begging her.

I said: Go on, let her have some fun.

Jeanie started to wail. This is the end of your childhood, I was thinking. You are using it up right now. Rosie reached out to her, put her hands on her head. Promised she would talk to Louis.

I know I’ll be jealous of Jeanie, doing what she likes. But at least she knows what she wants. I can’t begrudge a soul their desires.

Mazie’s Diary, September 1, 1918

I was a little queasy this morning. I’m a sturdy wench, strong as an ox. I keep hoping the whiskey will kill whatever germ is inside me.

Mazie’s Diary, September 15, 1918

Rudy told me this morning about this influenza, it’s been spreading across the country and it’s hit New York. He’s got his entire family wearing surgical masks, and he handed one to me too. He told me there were too many strangers in our midst, and I was handling all their money, breathing all their air. I told him I’d look a fool if I wore it. In my mind I was thinking that maybe I already did have it. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.

Mazie’s Diary, October 4, 1918

There’s new rules now for theaters, courtesy of our public health department. They’re closing us down during the day and staggering our openings at nights. Rumor is they’ll start shutting us down if we’re not up to snuff. More and more people on the streets in surgeons’ masks.

I retched again a few times. They’re quarantining people all over the place. I might offer myself up for it. I don’t want to, but I’ll do it.

Mazie’s Diary, October 8, 1918

Rudy came to the cage this morning, just to tip his hat to me. We were making our pleasantries and then the sickness in my stomach started up again and I retched in front of him. Just once, it was violent and it was over. I had time enough to make it out of my cage.

I said: It comes and goes. Just for a few weeks now.

He said: Is it in the mornings?

I didn’t say anything and then he didn’t say anything. I watched him control his mouth until he couldn’t anymore.

He said: I got four kids at home. Four times I’ve seen my wife have morning sickness. I don’t want to make any assumptions or assertions of course.

I said: Of course you don’t.

He said: I’m just telling you. Sometimes when women get sick in the morning it means something.

I didn’t say a goddamn thing after that. He told me he’d send someone to clean up my mess. I just wanted him to leave and then he finally did.

Mazie’s Diary, October 11, 1918

More rules for the theaters. We’re to leave our doors open during the day, and the building must be well ventilated and clean. We have to instruct all our patrons not to cough, sneeze, or smoke. Good luck with all of that.

Rudy saw me retching again. Told me if I had the influenza I’d be dead by now.

He said: All I’m saying is, maybe it’s something else.

I said: Shut up, Rudy.

Lydia Wallach

The other reason why my family was so enamored with Mazie was her scandalous existence. This was a group of people in love with the drama of the cinematic experience. They loved a good show. And, from what I heard, Mazie put on a really good show for a while there.

Mazie’s Diary, October 12, 1918

It ain’t the flu. Well at least I ain’t dying. At least there’s that.

Mazie’s Diary, October 15, 1918

There are two kinds of doctors for babies. I asked around. I got names of both kinds. I could walk out my front door and walk five blocks one way or ten blocks another. One way I got a baby for life, the other way I got nothing in my belly but room for the next drink.

Mazie’s Diary, October 16, 1918

I’m a fiend for cigarettes right now. I can’t take a lick of booze so the cigarettes are the only thing keeping me calm. Rosie doesn’t like the cigarettes in the house.

She said: You’re a chimney these days! Your teeth’ll turn yellow before their time. You’ll be a young woman with an old woman’s smile. Think about that before you light another one.

I try to steer clear of her when I can. I don’t want her to know. I don’t want to hear it from her. I can’t bear to hear it from her.

Mazie’s Diary, October 18, 1918

Goddamn that captain. Goddamn him to hell for showing up and screwing me and leaving. His postcards don’t mean a thing to me.

Mazie’s Diary, October 21, 1918

She knows. They all do.

I came home tonight, hoping to hide. There’s a chill out there now, a fall chill, but still I was drenched through and through. I’m a mess lately, nothing to be done about it. But they were all sitting around the living room, Louis and Rosie and Ethan and Jeanie, playing cards. Louis was showing them some sleight-of-hand tricks. A bottle of something or other was open. The two happy couples coupling. I had someone once too, I wanted to say. But I didn’t even know if that was true. It was only for a night. Rosie called to me, told me to come sit with them.

I said: I’m tired.

Rosie said: Come on now, we’re having a good time.

Jeanie said: We never see you anymore.

I sat down next to Ethan on the couch. He and Jeanie were holding hands, and she had her head on his shoulder. Aren’t they sweet, I was thinking, but I was being sour in my mind. Ethan grinned at me. He has so many teeth in that mouth of his, and he’s so eager with his smiles. He’s like a giant child. Sometimes friendly is too friendly if you ask me.

Then I smelled him. I wasn’t trying to, but the scent came right off him. Earth from a stable. I don’t mind that smell usually, but tonight it seemed like death, like a dead body was sitting right next to me on my own couch. I started to gag. Somehow I kept it down. But when I looked up, everyone was looking at me.

Rosie said: Are you sick?

I said: I’m not sick.

Rosie looked me up and down. Oh that woman is so sharp! Why does she have to be so sharp?

She said: You look fat.

I said: No, you’re fat.

She said: Even if I am fat, I am the exact same fat as always. You, however, are not the same as always, Miss Mazie.

I said: Why don’t you mind your own weight and leave mine out of it?

She said: I’ve heard you retching too, not just now. You think I don’t hear what’s going on in my own home?

Ethan pulled back and stared at me, and Jeanie too. Louis was just shuffling and cutting the cards, not looking at a thing. I was not holding up my end of the argument.

Rosie said: I never knew anyone who liked her pretty dresses as much as you, Mazie. What happens when you can’t fit in them anymore?

I said: I suppose I’ll be buying some new dresses then.

Rosie said: Why are you getting fat, Mazie?

And then we came to the end, I thought.

Louis said: Ethan, did I ever tell you about the time I met Rosie?

Ethan said: Not as far as I can recall, Louis.

Louis said: It was a beautiful day at the track.

Rosie said: We’re talking about Mazie here.

Louis ignored her. He was having his say.

He said: It was a beautiful day at the track. Rosie was seventeen years old, and she had her hair up in braids around her head and a dress that fit just so.

Louis outlined the shape of Rosie’s body with his hands.

He said: I could not have ignored her if I tried. Girls didn’t wear makeup then like they do now, but she had her face on. You were like a young tigress is what you were, Rosie Phillips.

He said this in such a passionate way it was like his desire for her became physically present in the room. Maybe it was my heat and maybe it was my hormones but I swore I saw little heart-shaped arrows darting from his eyes in her direction. Oh lord, he’s a sweaty, bald, fat man, but I would have melted for him too. All anyone ever wants is to be desired, but especially girls like us, the ones with the meanest father in the world.

He said: You were a beer wench. I was there on business.

Rosie said: I was the boss of all the other beer wenches.

He said: You were the boss of me is what you were. A bossy bitch. And I loved you from the start.

Rosie said: You did. You chased me the whole season.

He said: I did, and I caught you. And do you remember what I told you when I finally caught you? When you finally agreed to be my bride? I said that your family was my family, and your joys were my joys, and your problems were my problems. And that I would take care of you.

Rosie said: I remember that.

Louis said: And you liked that about me.

Rosie said: I loved that about you.

Louis said: Everybody hear that?

We all said we heard it.

Louis said: So, Mazie, you sick?

I said: No, I’m not sick. I’m pregnant.

Louis said: Mazel tov. A new member of the family. What a blessing. Now let’s let her get to bed. She’s tired.

It’s not as simple as that, though. And we all know it. I hear Rosie in the other room right now talking about how I don’t want a baby, how I’ve never wanted a baby, how there’s no mother in me. And why her and not me. And why is life this way and not the other.

And she’s right.

Louis says: Sometimes blessings are indiscriminate.

I whisper: Good night.

Mazie’s Diary, October 22, 1918

Rosie brought me lunch today at the cage, between the first and second shows. It was a bowl of beef stew. She walked it all the way from our home. Brought me a spoon and a napkin and everything. That spoon was shined up nice. And she nearly tucked that napkin right into my blouse till I slapped her hand away.

I said: What do you want?

She said: We need to talk about it.

I said: Can’t you see I’m working here?

She said: I know you don’t want it.

She doesn’t know anything. I don’t want it, it’s true. But sometimes I think about the Captain and then I do. I never wanted anything to love before. It’s all mashed up in my head. All I’m doing is crying when no one’s looking.

She said: But I do want it. I want this baby. Have this baby for me, Mazie. For me and Louis. Give us the baby. We can all live together and be one family.

How desperate was my Rosie? I was thinking about that time she took us to the gypsy, all those months she spent on the couch all clutched up in pain. Today she looked just as desperate, but now there was an extra layer of fire. She was nearly murderous.

I said: You can have it.

She was looking at me so steadily I thought she might break in two, two Rosies collapsing before me on Park Row.

She said: Are you sure?

I said that I was. She finally gasped. And then I did, too. I guess I’ve been holding it in for months and months, what was happening, what I’ve been thinking. What was I going to do, I didn’t know that whole time. But now I know. One kind of choice over another, it didn’t matter. But at least with this one I please someone else.

Mazie’s Diary, October 28, 1918

Rosie says I can wear an overcoat to work every day and no one on the streets will be able to see my tummy. Rosie says I’ll be behind a counter in the cage all day and no one will ever know and that won’t ruin my reputation and someday a nice man will still want to marry me. Rosie says I’ve got to go straight to work and home again and get plenty of rest and she’ll bring me meals every day to make sure I’m well fed. Rosie says that I’ve got to cut down on the drinking and the smoking so this baby will be born healthy and strong. Rosie says Rosie says Rosie says.

George Flicker

I remember my mother telling me, “She thinks we didn’t know? We knew.”

Mazie’s Diary, October 31, 1918

Now there’s a lot of talk in this house. New kinds of talk. There’s no room for a baby in this apartment, Rosie keeps saying. We got more room than anyone on this block, says Louis. Rosie wants a house somewhere far away in the country, but Louis says it’s impossible with all his business dealings. What about Coney Island, that’s the newest talk this morning. What about living near the ocean? Jeanie says she’d die if she lived far away from the city. Rosie tells her if she gets married she can live anywhere she likes. We sit around the kitchen table and plot. I light a cigarette, and Rosie pulls it from my fingers. This is what we are doing now, every day. Talking.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1918

Twenty-one years old today. Old enough to do anything I like.

Mazie’s Diary, November 3, 1918

I know that I’m supposed to feel something alive inside of me but it feels only like a weight I have to carry with me wherever I go.

Mazie’s Diary, November 5, 1918

Rosie puts her cold hands on my warm belly at night. She says I warm her up. She says it’s like I’m her furnace. She stares at my belly. She wonders what it looks like on the other side. She holds her hands there until I tell her to stop.

Mazie’s Diary, November 7, 1918

They announced the end of the war today and the whole city cheered at once. I’ve never seen anything like it. I probably won’t again in my lifetime. The end of the war! We shut down the Venice. No one was bothering with the pictures today. I roamed the streets with Jeanie and Ethan. One parade bled into another. People kissing and hugging on the corners. Bottles of booze in the air. Children with lollies in one hand and balloons in the other. I couldn’t stop laughing for nothing, none of us could. It was one kind of relief at last. Do you see this, I whispered to myself, but I knew I was talking to my belly.

By the time we made it home though, the radio was saying it was a fake armistice. We had a party for nothing.

Mazie’s Diary, November 11, 1918

Today the war was really over. The papers said so. No more war. I can’t believe the whole city celebrated again, but they did. Any excuse. We laughed all day, but then tonight we cried. Too exhausted to be anything but grateful.

I never believed these words could come out of my mouth, but I’m ready for the party to be over.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

I suppose I had this idea that I might try to seduce her, or toy with her. In my devastation from his death she seemed to be at fault for something. I was nineteen years old — that’s a good age to blame the wrong people for your problems.

I wanted to see her face. That I know. I had seen some of the others. A few women from the club, these boozy, bored wives, and there had also been this young widow down the block who was constantly breaking things in her house that only my father could fix, of course. And I am nearly certain he slept with my seventh-grade math teacher, although I’ll never be able to confirm it.

But she seemed mythic to me. The woman from New York. The famous Mazie Phillips. She’d been in the papers. He’d met all manner of politicians and war heroes, and he was an important part of the Republican Party in Connecticut. But Mazie was a real celebrity to him, and she had known him in his prime, during that war, the one he had actually fought in as opposed to watching Stateside. Everything after that war bored him, I suspect. Or maybe he really loved her. He could have loved her. I’ll never know that either.

I’ll tell you, I plumb my feelings regularly, but I can’t seem to define this moment precisely, though I can see it in my mind, everything about it. I had a bottle of whiskey at my side in the car, and the more I drank the less upset I became. My sadness began to solidify into an angry darkness. I arrived at the theater at midday. There she was in her ticket booth. I stood in line and waited my turn. She waited for me to say something and I had prepared nothing. The whole car ride there I’d just been having a conversation with my father in my head instead.

Then she said, “Step aside if you’re not buying a ticket, kid.” I was a kid then. I was nineteen years old. I said, “Are you Mazie Phillips?” She said, “Yeah, who’s asking?” I said, “I’m the son of Benjamin Hazzard.” She didn’t say anything, but she lit a cigarette. And then all I could do is blurt out that my father was dead. And then I remember this vision so specifically I can squint my eyes right now and see it: This quiver started in her hand, the one that was holding the cigarette, and the cigarette began to shake, and then this quiver sort of rolled through her body if that makes sense, all the way up to her face, and then she began to cry.

Mazie’s Diary, December 1, 1918

The baby died. Rosie keeps throwing her arms around me like that will change what happened. Like her arms can bring it back.

She says I should say something, anything. I don’t want to talk about it ever. No one can make me.

Mazie’s Diary, December 11, 1918

They took the mattress away while I was at the Venice. I slept on the couch the last ten days, and Jeanie slept next to Rosie. No one wanted to be in the same room as it.

Mazie’s Diary, December 13, 1918

I came home from work tonight and Louis was sitting quietly at the kitchen table with a glass of something strong in front of him. He looked like he’d been waiting for me to show up all night. Rosie was stretched out on the couch. She had a small pillow over her eyes. Louis told me to come join him. His voice was crumbling. I sat next to him and put my hand on his arm. I said his name.

He said: I am devastated for you and for this family.

I said: I’m going to be fine.

He said: They made us memorize poems in school. They just sit there in my head waiting for me, waiting for me to need them. My favorite was always Wordsworth. Do you like Wordsworth?

I said: I’ve never read him.

He said: You should read him. He was smart. I’ll buy you a book of his.

I told him I would like that.

He said: I can’t stop thinking of this one line of his from a poem called “Intimations of Immortality.” Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. And I believe that baby slept right through it, and doesn’t remember a thing now. I’ve got to be right. Don’t you think I’m right, Mazie?

He was crying then. These big gusts of tears from this big man. He was nearly choking on it. His whole body shaking. Rosie rose, I did too. We threw our arms around him. Our dear Louis.

I don’t know if we will ever be happy again. It doesn’t feel that way. I can’t imagine what that looks like anymore. Happy.

But I think we will feel better than this someday. We have to feel better than this someday.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

What did I do? I went home. When she began to cry I realized instantly that I had made a terrible mistake, and that I was not where I was supposed to be. Of course I should have been with my mother all along. So I went home.

Mazie’s Diary, January 1, 1919

I dyed my hair blond. New year. I will leave the past behind. Jeanie didn’t recognize me when I walked in the door.

I said: Good.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

She ended up being sort of tough-looking in the end, which surprised me a little bit. Certainly you could tell she had once been enormously sexy. I was admittedly a randy nineteen-year-old when I met her, but I can assure you she filled out that cage nicely. And having any attraction to her when she was my mother’s age makes me feel a level of discomfort I refuse to parse.

I will say this: Most of the other women in my father’s life were a bit better maintained. I haven’t used this word in a long time, but she was a real broad. I imagine she had bleached her hair for many years, and it was wiry, and the ends were split. All of the smile lines around her mouth were pronounced, and there was this pinkish color to her skin. She was somewhere between rosy and boozy. We all fall apart no matter what, obviously, but some of what we consume leaves a more vivid trail behind than others.

Mazie’s Diary, January 16, 1919

They passed Prohibition today. Just what all those soldiers fresh home from the war need — sobriety! Sister Tee came by the cage, pretending like she just happened to be in the neighborhood, but I knew she wanted to brag about it a bit.

I said: You got anything to do with this Prohibition business?

She said: Just said a prayer or two.

I said: Great, now I’ll know who to blame when I’m thirsty.

It won’t make a lick of difference though. People will find booze if they want it bad enough. This is New York City. We like our drink here. I know I’m not planning on giving it up.

Mazie’s Diary, March 16, 1919

We’re moving to Coney Island soon. Rosie told us tonight. Louis has business there now. Just like that, he has business. They’re looking for a house near the ocean.

Rosie said: And I think it’ll bring us all closer together. There’s too much city out there, getting in the way of this family.

Jeanie said: I feel plenty close to you right here.

Rosie said: I can’t keep track of you girls anymore.

Jeanie said: But I’m happy here.

I couldn’t bring myself to argue either way. I haven’t slept through a night since I lost the baby. Maybe this home was ruined for Rosie as much as it was for me.

Rosie said: You can work for Louis out there, it’ll be fun.

Jeanie said: Doing what?

Rosie said: He bought some bumper cars at Luna Park.

Jeanie lurched a little bit, like she was going to be sick.

Rosie said: You don’t like it, you got ways out.

She was talking about Ethan. We’ve all been waiting for him to propose.

Jeanie tried one last time.

She said: Didn’t you raise me to be something more than the girl who runs the bumper cars?

Rosie said: I raised you to be a part of this family. Don’t be putting on any airs with me. You came from the same house I did. You’re not too good for anything.

Jeanie said nothing after that. I thought she’d put up a fight, being far away from her beloved theater. But she just kept calm. Quiet face, quiet hands, still and calm. Give in like the rest of us, was what I was thinking. It won’t hurt but for a minute.

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1919

The Captain is here.

I looked up this morning in the cage, and he was smiling at me, and then he laughed. Was there a joke that was funny because I hadn’t heard it.

He said: Happy May Day.

There he was, as if nine months hadn’t passed at all, and it was perfectly normal for him to be waiting in line to buy a ticket for the matinee. I had thought of him so often it was like he had become some kind of dream.

He said: Did you get the postcards I sent?

I wished I didn’t have them hanging up behind me in the cage.

I said: I might have seen a postcard or two. Bragging about your travels while I’m just sitting here in this cage.

He said: I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you the whole time.

First time I met him, I knew he was full of lines. Second time I met him, it still didn’t matter. They all just sounded so good coming out of his mouth.

My hands were in fists and I didn’t even notice it until he slid his hand through the cage and on top of them. His voice got real soft.

He said: I don’t write just everyone.

I looked up at him and I kept my mouth tight but then I batted my eyelashes at him anyway. I couldn’t help it. He stirred something in my loins, or at least close to that area.

He said: Come on, how could I forget a girl like you? The most famous girl downtown. I bet people come from all over just to see that pretty face of yours.

I said: Well I do get a line.

I couldn’t let him touch me for a second longer. I pulled my hand away and lit a cigarette, and then held my other hand to my wrist to keep it from shaking. I was feeling so much and I couldn’t tell if it was hate or love or both.

He said: I’d stand in line to take you out to dinner. Dinner and a show, show and a dinner. Whatever you want, whatever order. You’re in charge, Mazie.

I had no excuse not to, except maybe then I’ll have to tell him the truth about what happened. But I told him I’d meet him tomorrow.

When I got home I told Rosie she’d have to stead me the next night at the theater. She can’t deny me a thing right now.

Mazie’s Diary, May 2, 1919

What a night! I can’t figure out if I should have seen it coming or not. If I should blame myself for not knowing what was going on in my own home.

I met the Captain on the corner by the theater, far out of Rosie’s sight. We walked together to Little Italy. I didn’t put my arm through his at first, but I did let him make me laugh. He took me to the Blue Grotto. I ate one of his meatballs. I nearly let him feed it to me, but then I took the fork from his hand. It felt too close, too fast. I liked how nervous he was. I was wearing my fuschia-colored silk dress I bought on Division Street last spring before I’d met him, before anything sad had happened. He tried hard not to stare down the front of it. After dinner he held my hand to his face. He wanted me to touch him. We could have been in love for all anyone knew.

I thought about telling him the truth, but I didn’t know if he would care or not. He never saw my belly grow. He never held my hair back when I was sick in the mornings. He didn’t bring me gumdrops from the candy shop when that was all I craved. That was Rosie, that was Jeanie. He didn’t know about any of it. He didn’t weep like a child, weep for me when I couldn’t. That was Louis.

What did he have to do with any of it?

So I decided to pretend it was the first time all over again. I pretended I was just a flirt, a good-time girl. It’s not a lie, anyway. I switched over. I felt myself doing it. I let myself be that person for the night. And it was a relief.

After dinner, we walked to the Thalia Theater. I’d been meaning to see Belle’s show that we’d lost Jeanie to these past months, and it was closing night. Belle’s leaving town, headlining her own national tour. I wanted the Captain to know that I was connected to a famous person. Oh how I wanted him to love me.

The show had already started. The theater was dark except for a light on the stage. A skinny magician was dangling silver hoops from his fingertips. There was a haze of smoke. The Captain pulled out a flask from his pocket.

He said: A little treat for you and me.

The tang of it was delicious. He put his hand on my knee, and it felt like it was supposed to be there, so I let it stay. I was dizzy with whiskey. Flames and fuel.

Next up were three tap-dancing sisters from Philly. It made me smile, thinking of me and Rosie and Jeanie, how we used to be thick as thieves, the Phillips girls. I started to forget for a second that our lives weren’t perfect, that no tragedy had struck or would ever strike, and that we had everything we needed. Just as long as this man in uniform sitting next to me kept handing me his flask with one hand and tickling my knee with the other. As long as we didn’t move, everything would be divine forever.

Then there was a tipsy juggler who kept dropping his pins, and then a comedian telling dirty jokes that didn’t make either of us blush. The Captain’s arm was draped around the side of me then, and then his other hand was clasped in mine. It was so comforting to be touched. I took another sip from the flask. The sting in the back of my throat was as perfect a pain as a girl could hope for.

The curtain opened again. Two white-blond men dressed in white sailor suits came out into the spotlight, a woman in a fluttery white gown hoisted on their fingertips. They threw her up in the air, and she spun in a circle once, twice, three times, her dress whirling all around her, and then she landed again in their hands. It was a goddamn sight. We all burst into applause.

The men lowered the dancer to the ground and spun her around again on her toes, passing her from one to another, the men spreading out farther apart on the floor. Eventually she was just whirling around everywhere. I worried she might pass out, but just when I thought she couldn’t take it anymore, one of the men stopped her spinning and dipped her backward. The dancer’s dark hair was wrapped up in a braid around her head, and her lips were brighter red than mine, but she looked like me. I rubbed my eyes and leaned forward in my seat. Well, I knew it wasn’t me. It was Jeanie.

I watched the men flip her, back across back, to the next man. They tossed her through the air like she was nothing. I had seen her practice her ballet moves a thousand times but never knew she could move like this. Oh god, I thought. She’s free. And there’s no way she’s coming home.

I couldn’t spend the night with the Captain after that. I was too shocked. I asked him to walk me home instead. I kissed him only on the cheek. He grabbed me firmly at the end. He told me he’d be up late if I changed my mind.

He whispered in my ear: Why?

I didn’t know him well enough to tell him the truth, and what would I have said anyway? My sister’s a liar. And I am too.

George Flicker

If Mazie was the wild sister, then Jeanie was the free one. I couldn’t forget either of them if I tried.

Mazie’s Diary, May 5, 1919

It’s been three days since we’ve seen her now.

Rosie says: Where’s Jeanie?

Louis says: Where’s Jeanie?

Ethan says: Where’s Jeanie?

No one knows. But me.