Saint Mazie

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 Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

So many of these lads came from chaos and tragedy. They didn’t have a fair start in life. Your heart would have to be made of granite not to feel something for them, give them a nickel or a dime after you hear a story or two. Families who didn’t care about them or beat them. Nothing to hold on to but the bottle. I never realized I was one of the lucky ones, having a family who loved like mine did. Maybe they held on too tightly, but they never let me fall into the gutter.

Mazie’s Diary, November 15, 1919

I haven’t written in all this time. We packed, we moved, we left Grand Street behind. Rosie said living by the ocean would heal us all. But what does she know about getting well?

And then I lost you in the move and it felt like I lost my life. All the things that happened till now, I’m not sure they were real unless I wrote them down. You held all the secrets. You’re the most precious thing I own. I didn’t know it till I lost you. I didn’t know it till I found you.

You were in that last box, sealed off in Rosie’s closet. I didn’t know the box was in there and I didn’t dare tell Rosie I was looking for you. I didn’t want her to know all my secrets were kept in one place. But yesterday Louis was taking us to the track, and he told us both to get dolled up. We were looking for a pair of Rosie’s high-heeled shoes for me to wear. They were midnight blue, and had an open toe and a heart-shaped jewel in the center. I remembered once I had worn them and felt like I was walking in the sky, alongside the stars. I kept on Rosie about them and finally she said she’d hunt them down. No one had seen them since we moved to Surf Avenue. Another treasure lost with the move. I was thinking about how we were leaving a trail behind us of our favorite things. Rosie was on her knees, digging through her closet. She ripped open the box with her bare hands, and there you were.

Rosie said: What’s this?

I snatched at it, and she clutched it to herself, over her heart.

I said: It’s mine. Give it now.

Rosie said: Still with this old thing?

I said: Why don’t you worry about your own business?

She looked down at her hands. I was waiting for her to say one of a million things. You’re my business, is what I was waiting for her to say. But she didn’t.

She said: You’re right. It’s yours.

Our blood barely stirred in us, no yelling, no fighting. That’s the way it’s been for months. I feel sorry for her, losing Jeanie like that. She feels sorry for me, losing the baby. She thinks I’ll never have love in my life. I can see it on her face. I never minded her pity before if it meant she would leave me alone. But some days I miss the spark of it. Fighting meant we were both still alive. Now I’m not so sure.

Still, she has her claws in me in one way. And Louis too. She makes Louis drive me to work and pick me up every damn day. I go from house to car to cage, then back again. No room to move. No shot at freedom.

Elio Ferrante, history teacher,

Abraham Lincoln High School, Coney Island, Brooklyn

Brooklyn is my passion, so I’m happy to help. Born and raised, Bay Ridge represent! [Laughs.] I’m impressed with your project, too. You got what, an essay and a few newspaper articles and that’s it? And no pictures, right? Amazing. I should have you come talk to my classes. I don’t think they get to meet too many writer-researcher types, let alone someone putting together a book. They don’t even know what it means to do research. They just want to sit there and get all the information handed to them. Then they memorize it just long enough for the test and then poof! It’s gone! Like it never even existed.

So all right, let me give you some information. Coney Island in the 1920s was mostly middle and upper class, and it really lived like its own separate entity from the rest of New York City — because there was no train there yet. Now you said Mazie was living on Surf Avenue, which was very different from one end to the other. The east end was where all the action was. Luna Park was there, for example. You know bumper cars and roller coasters and all of that. It’s where people came to play.

But from what you’ve told me Mazie was living on the west end, which had a quieter neighborhood vibe — except in the summer, where there were these bungalow colonies. My grandfather actually grew up closer to that end, and in the summer his family used to charge fees to visitors who needed a place to change their clothes before a day at the beach. They had this locker setup in the backyard they hauled out every year. He said it was the best job he ever had, taking quarters from all the girls. Sometimes they changed right in front of him. My grandfather, he remembered it fondly. [Laughs.]

There’s plenty of pictures of it, I can show you sometime. I’ve got all kinds of photo albums. My mother, she keeps everything, and so did her parents. She used to sit me down with albums filled with scraps of memorabilia — a hundred years of it. Not just pictures, but ticket stubs, napkins, menus, every little thing. She’d sit me down — imagine a little version of me, I was very serious then, thick glasses, a little nerd [Laughs.] — and we’d flip through them. “This is your history,” she’d tell me. “History is important, there’s lessons to be learned there.”

I liked looking at the pictures the best, I guess. There’s a lot of impressive facial hair in my family’s history, twirling mustaches and all that. But I liked all the detritus too. And my mother was no fool. She knew if I felt connected to something it would help keep me on the straight and narrow. I’d be less likely to be looking for trouble out there on the streets and there was plenty of it to be found when I was growing up, right outside my front door. But I think most of all though she wanted to give me a sense of culture, that I was Italian, and I was American, and I was a New Yorker. All of these things at once. I come from a family of flag-wavers. For those of us who have learned how to work within the system, we love it.

Mazie’s Diary, November 22, 1919

I’ll admit I don’t mind living in this house itself, even if I don’t like Coney Island. There’s a brand-new kitchen. The sink is white, the counters, the cabinets, too. Peppermint-pink flowers painted along the edge of the cabinets, little teacup roses. New matching dishes, all white, too, with green and pink flowers. The floors are white-and-black-checked tiles.

But Rosie can’t stop cleaning it.

She said: Dirt’s the enemy. Every little mark will show.

I said: A scuff here and there, that’s what makes things lived in.

She said: That’s what the table’s for.

It’s true, she hauled that same old wooden kitchen table all the way from the Lower East Side to Coney Island. Holding on to it thinking Jeanie will come back and we can all sit around it again. Holding on to air is what she’s doing.

Elio Ferrante

I’m getting distracted here, talking about my family, when we’re supposed to be talking about Surf Avenue. So yeah, in the summer, everyone wanted to go to the beach. But the rest of the year that end of Surf Avenue was a peaceful neighborhood, empty except for the people who lived there. When you walk out your front door and have the ocean right there? I guess you could feel like you’re living in the safest place around. Either that, or that you’re living in exile.

Mazie’s Diary, December 1, 1919

This morning in the car with Louis.

I said: How’s business?

He said: You tell me. You run my business.

I said: You got more businesses than that, Louis.

He said: Why you so worried about it?

I said: I’m making conversation.

He said: Let’s think of something else we can talk about. Out of all the things in the world, Mazie, we got more to talk about besides business.

He sounded angry, so I didn’t push.

He said: Look out the window. It’s a beautiful winter day.

Some days he just doesn’t want to talk to me. Some days I don’t want to talk to him. But still we’re together, no matter what, in the goddamn car.

Mazie’s Diary, December 3, 1919

This morning there was Rosie at the sink again, rag in hand. How does she always have something to clean? Why does she need to clean this early in the morning?

I said: It’s clean.

She didn’t hear me. She never listens to anyone, especially not me.

I couldn’t watch her scrub for another minute so I just kept on walking, past the lunatic in the kitchen, past the quiet man at the table, out the front door. The outside of the house is bright pink, like half the houses around us. I turned and stared. False cheer.

Then I walked to the end of the block, straight onto the sand. All before me was the ocean and the sky, gray clouds aswirl with violet air. I want to like it here, on Coney Island. I want to believe I’m living in the right place at the right time. A line of winter lightning cracked across the sky. There I was, at the end of the world. But out there, somewhere else, something was happening. Something was crackling in the distance, far away from me.

Mazie’s Diary, December 13, 1919

Another postcard from Jeanie today at the theater. This one’s from Cleveland. That makes three.

It said: All’s well in Ohio. We’re selling out every night. A big hit!

She drew a long vine of roses with sharp-looking thorns around the edge of the card. The front of it was a picture of downtown Cleveland.

It said: Welcome to the sixth city!

What’s the fifth city, I thought. There’s only one city that matters anyway, and that’s New York City.

I put the postcard up in the cage next to the others she’s sent and the postcards from the Captain too. A wall of places I’ll never visit.

When I got home I told Rosie I’d gotten another postcard from Jeanie.

She said: I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear it!

She went back to cleaning the kitchen. I’ve seen her scrub that sink a thousand times since we’ve moved.

I said: You can’t get it any cleaner.

But she didn’t hear a thing I said.

Mazie’s Diary, December 15, 1919

Sister Tee visited me today. It’s been an age since I’ve seen her. I’d been worried she was ignoring me. I decided to tease her. No reason, I wasn’t being cruel, only having a laugh.

I said: You must be bored these days. No booze, no trouble.

She said: Funny how people always find a way to the trouble.

I said: Idle hands, idle minds, Sister Tee! Maybe you’re finding your way to the trouble.

She said: Faith’s where I put my energy.

I said: Fun’s where I put mine.

She said: If you’d seen the things I see.

I said: I see exactly what you see.

I heard myself for a second. My voice sounded like the grind of the train on steel that I hear all day above my head. I didn’t like it, neither did she. She looked more like a young girl than ever, soft and big-eyed. Baby Sister.

She said: How are you doing, Mazie? Are you feeling better?

I said: Better than what? What are you talking about?

She said: I didn’t mean a thing, my friend. Only I heard you’d been sick.

I said: Look at me. I’m healthy as a goddamn horse.

And that was that. I don’t tell anyone my secrets, especially no nun. I shut the cage, and didn’t even say good-bye.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1920

Morning ride with Louis.

I said: Teach me about gambling.

He said: Never bet more than you have to lose.

I said: Boring.

He said: You should never gamble, Mazie. You’re too hotheaded. You, your sisters, none of you would be any good at it. You’d bet it all on your gut. And you can’t keep straight faces neither. You’d be out at the poker table in a heartbeat.

I said: We can’t help it if we feel things.

He said: It’s why I keep you around. You think I want to look at serious mugs all night long? Talk about boring.

I got good instincts, I don’t care what he says.

He said: All right, all right. I got one tip. Losing streaks. If you get on one, you can’t let it throw you off. You have to ride it out. We all go through them.

I said: Even you?

He said: Everyone. No one is so special in this life. We all lose sometimes. Life’s plenty easy when you’re winning. It’s what you do when you’re down. That’s the real test.

I said: I used to think I was special.

He said: I know.

I wanted him to tell me I still was. I would have eaten my left pinky to hear it. Torn it off with my teeth. But you can’t ask someone to tell you that.

Mazie’s Diary, February 3, 1920

Our mother finally passed on to the next life, wherever that is. I’d like to say she lived a good life, but she didn’t. I’d like to say she lived a long life, but that’s not true either. I barely knew her. I won’t miss her. You can’t miss a thing you don’t know. Still when I heard I wept like a baby fresh to this world. Rosie, too. We howled and held each other. Louis didn’t know what to do. We just stood in that kitchen and cried.

Later I said: We should tell Jeanie. She’ll want to know.

Rosie said: I’ll have nothing to do with that.

I sent her a letter anyway. Care of a boardinghouse in Chicago. Last known address.

Mazie’s Diary, February 4, 1920

Rosie left this morning. Drove herself and an empty trunk to Boston. I looked out the window and saw a gentle embrace between her and Louis at the car. He petted her hair, hunched over, and kissed the top of her head. Then he handed her a paper sack. Sweet that he made her lunch.

Later on Louis told me he’d be late picking me up, and I told him not to bother, I’d find my own way home. No words need to pass between us. He takes care of his business, I take care of mine.

After work I went to Finny’s for a quick one. Knock twice, then knock three times, and then you’re in. Lately I like it better than some of the noisier places, the ones with dancing and music. I don’t need the gaiety. I ain’t got nothing to celebrate, but I’m game for a laugh or two. Finny’s is simple, clean, a place to drink and not much else. Old wood floors covered with sawdust, and chipped cement walls with a painting of a half-naked lady that everyone says is Finny’s mom. I like to listen to the drunks talk. When I leave, my shoes are always a little dusty from the floor, like I’m taking a little bit of Finny’s with me.

There were a bunch of old-timers there. George Flicker’s uncle Al was there, head in a book, throwing them back. I remember him from the days he used to sleep below the staircase, when we lived in the first apartment on Grand Street. That bunched-up mattress. He built his own shelves beneath the stairs, stocked them with books. None I wanted to read but I liked looking at the covers.

For a bit I flirted with a young banker, William. He said he was going to own the world. He’s been to a movie or two at the Venice, knew who I was when I walked in the door. I let him buy me a drink, then three more. He’s sharp but he doesn’t make me laugh. I just want a laugh! God, I’m desperate for it. All I could see was his desire. Stared at me like a dog waiting to be fed. I nearly barked at him. I thought he must be in some kind of pain between his legs so steady were his looks. I thought about telling him there’s whores out there for that. But it’s been too long since I’ve seen the Captain…

I’ve been bleeding for a few days though, so I only let him at my breasts. He nearly sucked my nipples raw.

Hungry William.

Mazie’s Diary, February 5, 1920

I’ve just been taking cabs everywhere. No idea where Louis’s been. Cash on the table this morning.

Finny’s again last night. Al Flicker was there, in the corner talking to an Italian man. He was a real firecracker, this Italian. Dancing hands, dancing eyes. Looked over his shoulder a thousand times. I wanted him to look at me but he was looking at the door. Who you waiting for? I was thinking.

There was some grousing at the bar about the firecracker. They said he was an anarchist.

I said: You gotta be something I guess.

Oh, they howled at me.

I said: Politics is just a pose.

More howling. God bless America, what have you.

I said: Why don’t you mind your own anyway? What are you, running for office? Gonna be mayor of Finny’s?

Not a peep. These drunks.

George Flicker

I don’t know if Al was exactly an anarchist in a political way, like a lot of those gentlemen were. Gentlemen, I don’t know if they were gentlemen. Anyway, I think he just felt anarchic within himself. It was this spirit that he connected with. That word seemed to make sense to him. But the actual politics, what they stood for or didn’t stand for, I can’t say one way or another if he stood behind it. I think he believed in the right to believe, if that makes any sense at all. He felt it was his right as an American to be able to believe what he liked.

Mazie’s Diary, February 8, 1920

Rosie’s back home with us. Louis dragged the trunk in after her.

The first thing she said: That man’s mad.

The second thing she said: The kitchen is a mess.

She looked at me when she said that.

I said: The kitchen is not a mess.

Louis said: Sit. Talk to us.

She gave the kitchen another look, paced around it, suspicious, running her hands all over everything. That woman needs a cage of her own. Finally we both yelled at her to sit and she did.

She said: I went to the hospital. They said her body was gone. I went to the funeral parlor. They said she was buried already. I went to the cemetery and they gave me a number. There’s just a number on her grave. I put flowers on it. I thought someone should. Do you know what I mean, Mazie? Don’t you think I should put flowers on our mother’s grave?

I said: I’m glad you did.

She said: It was so cold I thought I would die right there. Then I’ll be a number too, I thought.

Louis said: You’ll never just be a number, I promise you that.

She said: That night I had dinner with Aunt Edith and she said there’s nothing anyone could do about it. He hadn’t talked to a soul. He makes his decisions, that’s it. I went back to the house the next morning. It was nearly empty. Someone was hauling a table away when I got there. He’d sold it all. Anything worth selling, anyway. Not that any of it’s worth much.

Louis said: Those are his possessions, the man’s got a right to it.

She said: I just wanted whatever could have been ours. I thought maybe there was something she would have wanted us to have. Something from the past, I don’t know what past. He was sitting on the back porch, still in his funeral suit. He had a bottle of something or other in his hand. I don’t know what, it smelled foul. His eyes looked murderous. He was not of this earth.

She pulled out a paper sack and pushed it across the table to Louis.

She said: I didn’t use it but I was glad I had it.

I reached out for it, I don’t know why. But Louis just snatched it.

She said: I took whatever I could find that was hers. It looked like a bunch of junk. I was looking for our birth certificates, something that could have been about us. I got nothing. I never got anything from her. It’s just trash. Old clothes. It’s rotting. It’s junk. Shoes. I don’t think even half of them match. I don’t know. I grabbed what I could from the bedroom. He followed me in the room. I said I’m taking it, old man. He said no one wanted it anyway just like no one wanted me or any of us or her. I said I will kill you if you don’t keep quiet. I did pull it out of the bag, Louis, I’m sorry. I did wave it at him. I didn’t mean to but the whole way there I was thinking I was glad I had it with me. But I wasn’t going to use it. I wasn’t going to be like him. The moment I saw him though I just wanted to wave it in his face. I wanted to scare him.

I think this is what she said. I’m trying to remember everything she said.

Louis said: It doesn’t matter, you didn’t do anything wrong, sweetheart. I gave it to you for a reason.

She said: I wouldn’t have done it. I just showed it to him. I said, this is ours. I’m waving a gun in his face for a bunch of junk. I’m a fool. I don’t know what I thought I would find.

I went to the trunk and opened it. It smelled horrible.

She said: Maybe I’m the mad one.

Louis told her she wasn’t.

She said: There’s nothing in there worth anything.

Louis shushed her gently.

She said: He pissed himself! Can you believe it? He was laughing at first, because my hand was shaking. Then it was steady and he wasn’t laughing anymore. Nothing was funny anymore, I’ll tell you. Then I heard it, and I looked down. We both did. There was a puddle at his feet.

Louis started laughing.

He said: You’re one tough cookie, Rosie.

Rosie said: Oh my goodness, I’m so tired, husband.

I dug through all the holey, stained clothes, worn shoes, figurines snapped in two. Then I picked up a book. I nearly fainted. It was a diary.

I said: What about this?

Rosie shook her head.

She said: It’s junk, I swear it.

Then she went upstairs to their bedroom. She’s been asleep for a day now.

I’ve been trying to read the diary but it’s impossible. Broken English, shaky handwriting. After all that time with him, she had a blurred brain. I can’t read a damn thing. It’s unfair.

I just wanted to know if she missed us when we were gone.

Mazie’s Diary, February 10, 1920

Too quiet in the car this morning.

I said: Tell me about your family, Louis.

He said: Why you want to know about my family, Mazie?

I said: Because I can’t bear to think of mine anymore. I can’t stand it for another goddamn minute.

He coughed and then he was quiet for a long time.

He said: Well I had a father, and I didn’t know him. He passed when I was young. My mother I remember. She passed when I was thirteen. She had a funny laugh, real deep, as deep as yours. She also had pretty skin. It was especially pale and soft. The thing I remember most, because as I get older things are fading a bit, is that she wrote beautiful letters. Every year for my birthday she’d write me a letter telling me all the things I had done in the last year, and all the things she wished for me the next year. I mean these are great letters, Mazie, for a kid to get. I still have them. It’s a shame they stop so young. I had to make up the rest of my life all on my own.

I said: Where are the letters?

He said: Back at the house.

I said: Can I see them?

He said: Why?

I said: I just want to know how I’m supposed to be.

He said: Sure. You’re doing fine though.

I said: How did your parents die?

He said: They got sick. People got sick a lot more then than they do now. They got sick, and they died, and it was sad, and then it was over. And now I have a new family. Now I have you.

Outside, the sky was white and gray and glittered like some kind of angel.

Then he said: You know maybe I don’t show you the letters right away. It does make me sad to look at them. I like to look at what I have right in front of me, not what’s behind me. I like to look at the good things.

Then he stopped talking. We were quiet all the way till we got to the city.

When I got home tonight I was praying I’d see Rosie in the kitchen but all that was there was that trunk. Together me and Louis moved it out back.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Mazie’s Diary, February 11, 1920

She finally got out of bed today. Back in the kitchen when I left this morning.

Mazie’s Diary, February 14, 1920

Not a love in my life, but a postcard from a captain will do. Postmarked San Francisco, but the picture was of a redwood tree, in a place called Eureka. A child stood next to it, dwarfed by the trunk.

It said: Don’t change one goddamn thing about yourself before I see you again.

I tacked it to the wall. I stood very still for a moment and thought about staying exactly the same forever. That tree would grow, that child would grow, but I would stay just the same in my cage.

Mazie’s Diary, March 15, 1920

The police shut down Finny’s place last night, for good this time I think. Finny’s in jail. I sent bail with one of his bartenders. Mack Walters stopped by, checking the temperature on the street I guess. We got into a tiff about Finny’s arrest.

I said: I’ve seen you drunk there a thousand times.

He said: Finny can’t be running booze like that anymore and he knows it.

I said: I notice you still have that flask of yours bulging in your pocket.

I pointed to his pants.

He said: Oh that? That’s not a flask, Mazie.

He gave me the filthiest look. The lech! I flipped the Closed sign on my cage and turned my back on him. I was laughing though, and he knew it. He’d like to take me out, he’s been asking. I keep telling him I live on Coney Island now, that’s where he’ll find me.

Mazie’s Diary, March 16, 1920

I saw Sister Tee across the street this morning. In flight with her flock. Not a nod, not a wave.

I don’t need her.

Louis stopped by later. A bag in the safe.

I don’t bother asking because he won’t tell me nothing anyway.

Mazie’s Diary, March 19, 1920

I said: Do you worry about Rosie?

Louis said: What about Rosie?

I said: The way she’s always cleaning the kitchen.

Louis said: Do you want to clean the kitchen? Because I sure don’t.

And that’s it for Louis I guess. We’ll have the cleanest kitchen in Brooklyn.

Mazie’s Diary, April 1, 1920

I got on the third train ever from Coney Island to the city this morning. I rode it and I waved good-bye to the ocean.

The train, I’ve been waiting on it forever. The train! Freedom. No more drop-offs or pickups from Louis, no more living on his schedule, on his time. The train! I’ll be out in the world as I please. I can come and go, say hello and good night, whenever I like. My time becomes mine again.

The train!

Elio Ferrante

The completion of the Coney Island subway station was absolutely significant from a historical perspective. As I mentioned it was mostly an upper-middle-class population living on Coney Island, even if they weren’t there full-time. But when they completed construction on the train, there was suddenly easy access to the beach and, thus, an explosion of the working class there on the weekends. So that’s the thing we mainly study, the impact of the train on the class structure in New York City.

But you’re right, it works in the reverse direction, too. Even if it’s not the thing we study, that doesn’t mean it’s not important. If you lived on Coney Island, now you could travel to the city more easily. Trains changed everything. Trains, and also planes and cars, and while we’re at it, the telephone, too. Radios! Color movies! Television! Computers! Medicine and weapons. Pollution. Skateboards. Condoms. Bikinis. Books. Magazines. Elections. Pornography. The lightbulb. I could keep going. Everything changes everything. Everything around us is a piece of history. Every invention, every reaction to it. Every war, every retreat. There is always a trail, Nadine.

Mazie’s Diary, April 11, 1920

I adore every little thing about taking the train to work. I feel gentle, resting on the cushion of the straw cane seats, the ceiling fans above dusting me with air. The train rocks us all in sweet rhythm. Babies drop their heads on their mamas’ chests. I keep catching myself smiling like a fool on the train. The smell of the burning oil even makes me feel a little lusty, though I know that’s odd. No one around me knows what it means to me, what five cents a ride can do for a girl. Change her world forever.

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1920

Another postcard from Jeanie today. A picture of White City. I liked all the sweet little trees around the edges of the park. Not so different from our Luna Park, I suppose, except we’ve got the ocean and all Chicago’s got is some boring old lake. Phoenix Theatre, that’s where she’s playing these days.

The postcard said: Why didn’t you tell me staying up late was this much fun?

A note like that, now she’s just bragging. I hope she’s having the time of her life. I hope she’s breaking hearts and wearing out those heels on her dancing shoes. I hope someone’s having fun somewhere.

Mazie’s Diary, May 12, 1920

Sister Tee brought a peace offering, a bag of sweets, peppermint candies strong enough to knock you sober.

Sister Tee said: I didn’t do anything wrong.

I said: It wasn’t what you did. It was what you said.

Sister Tee: What did I say? I was only concerned for your welfare.

It makes me grind my teeth, her talking like she knows better than me how to take care of myself. She’s no older than I am. Devotion to something doesn’t make you any kind of expert on life. Life makes you an expert on life.

I forgave her though. I missed her when she was gone, and I adore her, it’s true. No one I’d rather tease than my little Tee.

Mazie’s Diary, July 1, 1920

Postcard from Jeanie.

It said: I’m in love with love.

I didn’t like this postcard much. Michigan Boulevard, Looking North. Bunch of buildings and cars, no different than New York City. Cleaner, I suppose. Shoot anything from the right angle and it can look clean.

Mazie’s Diary, July 15, 1920

Al Flicker was on the train this morning. He got on at Jay Street, with a plump, purple shiner.

I said: Hey, Al, I’d hate to see the other guy, right?

Just trying to make a joke, make things easy on the guy. But he didn’t think it was funny. He didn’t think it was much of anything. He just looked behind me, at the darkness of the station. He stared so hard I looked myself to see if there was anything there. But all I could see was pitch-black tunnel.

George Flicker

My mother didn’t know where he was disappearing to, and I don’t think he could have told you much either. He was a grown man though, and allowed to go where he pleased. I was still carousing in Europe myself, so I couldn’t really disagree with how he spent his time. In my mother’s letters and phone calls though, I could tell she was really worried. She used to say he’d be the death of her, and I’d say, “Ma, like anything could kill you.”

Mazie’s Diary, September 5, 1920

A postcard from the Captain.

It said: I’ll be in New York City on October 4. I’d be honored if you’d join me for dinner. P.S. You look gorgeous in red.

Mazie’s Diary, September 16, 1920

Devastating day. Ain’t seen nothing like it before in my life, never hope to again.

A bomb went off down on Wall Street. I heard it at noon. A mile away and I could hear it, not like it was right next to me but close enough. No lines for another hour, so I shut the cage and stepped outside. I saw Mack running. Then more of the foot patrol. I watched them fly. I stopped breathing for a second. The whole city grew quiet, I swear it. And then I heard screaming. I hiked up my skirt and started running down Pearl Street. Don’t know what I was thinking, don’t know where I was heading. Just toward the noise. Just wanted to help.

After a few minutes a crowd was coming from the other direction. Some of them covered in yellow dust, like parchment, and then a few with some blood. Nobody was dying, but they were all scared and crying. Dazed creatures. I was pushing against them, I didn’t mean to. I was going the wrong direction. I used to outrun all the boys. I still remember turning and seeing them all trailing behind me.

The farther downtown I got, the more dust I saw. All kinds of things flying through the air. The red of the blood against the yellow of the dust. I’d have liked to wash it all clean. Started praying for rain, thought that would help. Whatever’s up there in the sky, let it rain. I looked up but all I saw was these clouds of smoke, yellow and green mixed together. Sirens screeching madness. Someone said it was the Morgan building, a bomb at the Morgan building.

I ran up Wall Street. Windows blown out in buildings along the way. I started seeing bodies. I saw some arms. I don’t know why I didn’t turn back. There was the leg of a horse. Blood on the streets. Then I saw Sister Tee on the ground, her hands pressed against a man’s leg, a bleeding wound. I dropped to my knees. I took the scarf from my neck, and we tied it together around him. Police all around, everyone racing. There was another man bleeding next to him, and another, and another. We moved together. I ripped off the hem of my dress and we tied it on the next man’s wound. Mack was in the distance, with other officers. The dust was all around us. We stayed until there was no one left to help, till all the bodies were gone.

Sister Tee and I walked up through Chinatown together, slow and dizzy. She stopped us in front of the Church of the Transfiguration.

She said: Look up.

There was a statue in the steeple, an old man, chipped white marble.

She said: Saint John Bosco.

I said: Well where were you today, Saint Bosco?

She said: Oh he was there.

She crossed herself and I would have laughed but today was no day for disrespect.

Finny’s was open later. Funny how it opens and closes as it pleases. No one said a thing. I saw half the force in there I swear. Everyone needed a drink. The saddest day I’ve ever seen in New York City.

The anarchists, police were saying. Justice tomorrow, I thought. Tonight let’s just sleep.

I got home a few minutes ago and Rosie said Louis was driving me to work in the morning.

Mazie’s Diary, September 17, 1920

I rose at dawn and snuck out of my own home. I’d be damned if I didn’t take that train with the rest of New York City today. I wondered if I’d be the only one riding, but sure enough, stop after stop, people got on. All dressed in dark colors, dark skirts, dark blouses, dark suits, dark hats. Their finest and saddest. The whole train hovered with gloom.

At Flatbush, a man boarded, hauling a crate of apples. They were small and bright green. I nodded at the man and he nodded at me. He was small too, short, with a dark, swirling mustache. An Italian I thought.

He said: I picked these in New Jersey yesterday. I was out of town all day. I missed everything because I was picking apples.

I said: Better to miss it.

He said: It’s not the kind of thing you want to see but it’s not the kind of thing you want to miss neither.

I said: I saw it. Believe you me.

He said: It just made me want to fight someone, anyone. Wished I could have helped.

I said: I know it.

He said: Hey, you want an apple?

I said: There’s nothing more on this earth I want than one of those apples.

He handed me one. He asked a lady sitting next to me if she wanted one too, and then another, and then another. Soon enough all his apples were gone. We all sat there eating them, our shiny green rewards for being alive. The train rocked us back and forth like we were babies. You couldn’t hear nothing but the sound of people crunching on apples. It wasn’t like we forgot the day before. It was just that those were some damn good apples.

Elio Ferrante

This city, as imperfect as it is, knows how to come together when things get rough.

Mazie’s Diary, September 18, 1920

Louis drove me to the city this morning. Just because, said Rosie. Just because.

Louis said: You don’t go any farther downtown today, you hear me. It’s none of our business.

I said: It was working stiffs, just like me. Those are the people standing in my line, Louis.

He said: We ain’t losing any more family members this year, Mazie.

Mazie’s Diary, October 2, 1920

Rosie’s on me about Louis driving me to work again every day. She wants me to go from cage to cage to cage. No way, no how. The train’s the only time I have to myself.

Down on the floor scrubbing and she’s calling out orders. That woman makes more rules on her knees than most kings do on thrones.

I said: I’m taking the train goddammit.

Rosie turned her back on me and started scrubbing again. But that didn’t mean she agreed with me.

Mazie’s Diary, October 3, 1920

Louis dropped by again, more money in the safe. I’ve been daydreaming about stealing it, not all of it, just enough. What’s mine is yours, sis — he tells me that all the time. I could take it and go. But would I even know what to do if I ran? Where would I go? To White City to find Jeanie? I’d just end up working in another ticket booth. From one cage to another.

Mazie’s Diary, October 4, 1920

I forgot about the Captain coming to town. How could I forget? I did, though. But there he was, at the cage. In his uniform.

I said: I forgot to wear red, sir.

He said: You’re beautiful no matter what, miss.

He could bend me in two, that’s how fragile I am these days. I’m made of paper, fold me at the edges.

We walked up the Bowery.

He said: It’s cleaned up since the last time I was here.

I said: There’s no more booze.

He said: There’s always booze.

He pulled a flask from his pocket. Then he turned us down Hester Street, toward the park there. His hand on my elbow. He whispered something in my ear about loving my elbow and I nearly loathed him.

We sat in the park quietly. A gent and a lady, passing a flask back and forth.

He said: They take it away, it only makes you want it more.

I said: Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

I looked down at the ground, suddenly humbled. I had this feeling the whole time that seeing him was going to humble me.

A police officer turned a block up. The Captain slid the flask in his coat pocket, fast and easy. Like a thief on the street.

He said: What do you want to do on a night like tonight?

What I really wanted to do was get on the train with him to Coney Island so he could meet Rosie and Louis. Let’s sit together on the train and be like people in love. Let’s sit together in my kitchen with my family. Let’s be like those other people.

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He turned and kissed me, fingertips in my hair, wicked little pleasure points.

He said: What about that, beautiful? Do you want to do that?

My desire for him humbled me most of all. I went with him to his hotel. It was clean and quiet. In his room he kissed me at the door. Wretched and perfect. Oh he smelled like a man and I could have howled at the moon.

He said: I can’t believe we’ll have all night.

I watched as he undressed. He watched as I undressed.

I made him give me more of the flask and I drank it and he drank it till it was done. We spilled it on each other some too. We sipped it off each other’s flesh. I got down on my knees. He said my name and told me I was beautiful as I sucked. Then we were on the bed. Then, at last, I howled at the moon.

It went on like that for a while. I’m raw today. Each step I take reminds me of him.

I’d love him if I could. But he’s got a whole life out there, flying free wherever he likes, and I know nothing about what he does with his time. Except that I do know, I think. And I ain’t a part of it.

Mazie’s Diary, October 5, 1920

In my dream I tell him about the baby and he turns his back to me and I throw my arms around him and he says why are you telling me this now and I say I just thought you should know and he says what’s the point of knowing and I say I’m just letting you know there was something there and now it’s gone and he says I wish you hadn’t told me I could have lived my whole life not knowing and I said me too and he said it would have been fine now I have to carry it with me forever and I say me too me too me too.

Mazie’s Diary, October 8, 1920

Louis and me stood on the front porch and stared down at the ocean. Summer’s gone, it’s over. Nothing left to grasp at.

Louis said: You don’t want to spend a little time with your old pal Louis?

I said: I don’t want to be driven.

He said: I’ll buy a new car, fresh off the lot. Your pick. And it’ll be in your name.

I said: It’s not fair.

I cried. He tried to hold me but I wouldn’t let him. Let him go hold his wife instead.

Mazie’s Diary, October 9, 1920

I’ll move out, that’s what I’ll do. Back into the city. I got a job, I got money saved. I’ll find a single apartment just right for a girl like me. Other girls do it, lots of them, all the time. I can find someone to rent to me. I won’t even tell Rosie. I’ll just move out in the middle of the night. I’ll pack up my things and run in the night. If she wants to talk to me she can come and stand in line just like everyone else.

Mazie’s Diary, October 11, 1920

Mack stopped by the cage.

I said: What’s the good word?

He said: Nothing, not a peep.

I said: What about that thing that happened down on Wall Street?

He said: We’re trying, we’re trying.

I said: Truly nothing then?

He said: Not a lot of evidence to be found, unless you count a horse’s head, and that horse ain’t talking. But we’ve got our eye on some individuals. Just because we can’t prove it doesn’t mean they didn’t do it.

I shuddered then. I don’t like that kind of talk.

Elio Ferrante

But we have a little problem here in New York with authority. The cops are not afraid to use their fists or their weapons.

Mazie’s Diary, October 13, 1920

Early morning, the coffee stinging more than most days.

Rosie down on the floor, washing away specks of nothing. Louis’s eating eggs at the table, fork after fork, not breathing in between.

I said: The kitchen’s clean.

Rosie kept scrubbing.

I said: Did you hear me? The kitchen’s clean, Rosie.

Rosie said: It’s clean when I say it’s clean.

I got down on my knees next to her. I grabbed her hand and she slapped me away. Louis came behind me and lifted me up by my waist. All of this was done in silence, as if we were performing our own lunatic ballet.

I ran to the train in the rain. I ruined my new hat. I threw it on the ground in front of the theater, and watched it suck up the water from the skies until one of the ushers dashed out with an umbrella and threw it away.

Elio Ferrante

It goes both ways though, this problem with authority. You bear down too much, someone fights back.

Mazie’s Diary, October 15, 1920

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness.

This morning, we’re sniping at each other, me and Rosie, like usual. She won’t rest till she gets me off that train.

Louis said: Can’t a man eat his breakfast in peace? The two of you are like children.

Rosie said: She’s the child.

Louis said: Take it outside. I can’t stand another minute of it.

We went to the porch. Rosie slammed the door behind her. I felt bad for Louis, that he’d be getting it later from her. He must have thought it was worth it. Every once in a while it must be.

The sky was that brilliant early-morning violet I’ve only seen since we moved to Coney Island. I swear the ocean has a different sky than the rest of the world.

I said: Could we look at the sky for just one moment, sister?

Rosie said: Why won’t you do as I wish?

I said: Look at the sky. Look at it.

Rosie said: It’s your safety I’m worried about more than anything.

She started to say something else, but then suddenly the fanciest car I’ve ever seen pulled up in front of the house. I don’t give a rat’s ass about cars, but this was something special. It was a Rolls-Royce, silver. The air changed around it. For a moment I believed Louis had bought me this car. I pictured myself being driven to and from the Venice in it. What kind of ticket taker has a car like that? Me, that’s who. I felt this stir of arrogance. Even writing this now is making me laugh out loud. A-ha, I thought. My ride is here.

But it wasn’t my ride at all. A driver got out of the car, a proper one, wearing a special cap and gloves. He opened the rear door of the car and leaned inside. Someone slid an arm around his neck. Finally he stood, a body in his arms. I saw the casted leg first, and then I saw her face.

Jeanie’s back.

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

Some of these bums are singers — every morning outside my cage I could hear them singing their Irish folk songs, or even a sea shanty or two. There were others who liked to draw, sketches of the park where they’re sleeping, that filthy noisy train overhead, or pictures of the other bums, just being bums. I’ve got hundreds of them, swapped for a nickel, swapped for a drink. There’s real artistic souls out there on the streets. A passion for something vivid and beautiful, not everyone has that. The bottle dims the passion, though, ruins the talent, too. If you let it. But I think you have to want to ruin it in the first place.

Jeanie Phillips, October 21, 1920

Mazie said to write my story down, it’s too long for her to tell, and that it’ll be good for me, it’ll clear my head, and I’m the one who lived it, not her, anyway. Then she said start at the beginning until you get to the end, tell the truth, no point in lying to the page, to the diary, to yourself, and then she handed me this diary and this pen, and away we go.

I skipped town a year and a half ago because I wanted to make my own fate, choose my future myself, rather than accept what Louis & Rosie wanted for me, what Ethan wanted for me, too. I would have been married by now, I would have been working at the candy shop or at the track or at Luna Park, or cooking and cleaning like Rosie, or making babies with Ethan. And it’s not that I’m too good for any of that, or even that there’s anything wrong with that. Only I wanted to dance, I wanted to use these legs, these arms, my body, my gifts, my weapons. I didn’t want to waste them on sitting still, at least not yet.

So I started dancing with the Folsom brothers, Skip & Felix, two white-blond-haired boys from Pennsylvania, escaped from a milk farm, no teat squeezing for them, just throwing me around in the air instead. A better fate, they said, more fun to throw the pretty girls in the air than touch the cow’s titties. They were tall and strong, strong enough to toss me and catch me, and make me feel like I could disappear forever. If they just kept spinning me, I’d turn into a whisper and I’d be gone.

Felix is the elder brother, older by a year, and he still reads the Bible every night, but says it’s only a habit, and the stories put him to sleep. He’s married to Belle’s girl Elizabeth, who does all her hair and makeup and sits by her side. She’s a cherub from Philly, round cheeks, big eyes, and a real pleaser, yes’s rather than no’s any day of the week. And Skip’s the dreamboat that everyone else falls in love with, and so I did, too.

I didn’t fall in love with Skip until we were out on the road together. I swear on my life, on the air that I breathe, I wouldn’t treat Ethan like that, never lied to him, never cheated, only loved and respected that boy, him being my first sweetheart and all. But Belle says tour love’s as common as the flu, highly contagious, and I caught it, sleepless nights and dizzy daydreams and all the rest. I fell in love with the world we built together, the nerves before the curtain opens and Skip squeezing my hand for luck, the applause at the end taking my breath away every single time, whiskey & wine after the show, me on Skip’s knee, Elizabeth with her hands in Felix’s hair, Belle barking at all of us to do as she bid. Belle’s always telling me she’s the one who gave me a shot, like she’s twenty years older than me instead of two, and didn’t grow up three streets away from me. I let her say what she wants though, because she’s more right than wrong. Without her I’d have been nowhere at all, or at least in the same place as always.

We started our tour in Philly, where Belle’s husband’s from, and where his father has a theater of his own. We stayed there for a month, reworking our act for the road, testing it out on those audiences that already loved Belle, she could do no wrong. Then we went to Cleveland to see what they thought, and they liked us there, they liked us a lot, and we liked them too, Cleveland was a gas. The theater was brand new, and we had crowds every night, on and on, all the applause thrilling me, until suddenly it seemed like everyone in town had already seen us once, and once was enough. Belle said it was time to move on, and what Belle says goes, because Belle runs the show, because Belle is the show.

There was more money to be made in Chicago, bigger crowds, more Jews, Jews who wanted all the Yiddish songs as much as the English songs, more than the English songs, never tired of them, and they were always Belle’s favorites too. Belle’s husband left us there, back to Philly, back for the spring, a relief for Belle because the only one who barks more than Belle is her husband. She told us she got us to Chicago but now we were on our own. So we did two shows a night with her on the weekends but nothing during the week, and we were worried we’d go broke, but Skip, my baby, my talker, my charmer, got us work at White City. I loved White City, with its twinkling lights all over the place, crowds of jolly Chicagoans, clean streets, wide skies. Three nights a week there, plus two with Belle and we were set.

Oh, everything was such a laugh! Rushing to the theater, hustling in a cab, breathless, tumbling out the door, but never tripping, never falling, we were dancers and we would never fall. I could have kept going across America, I liked the driving, I liked the road life, I liked setting up house for a spell in a hotel or a boardinghouse and then taking everything apart again. I could have looped and looped around this great country of ours forever. I liked these people, these performers, and I liked being buddies on the road. Skip & Felix & Elizabeth & Belle & Jeanie, that’s me, the girl in the air.

But if I had to stay in just one place, Chicago was as good as anywhere else. They got a mayor there who’s a real hoot, puts on a good show, even if he’s bad news. He makes his own rules, doesn’t give a damn about Prohibition, lines his own pocket from booze money. I read the papers, and I spent enough time there to know, Chicago is one wild town.

I never met that mayor, but I met a lot of people who worked for him. It seemed like half the town was either coming or going from his office. One of his special assistants came backstage once, a man named Paul, a gentleman in a fine suit, tall and meaty but with long sweet eyelashes and enormous, plush lips. Paul was an American but the child of Italians, so he was Paulo once, he told me, that very moment we met, sharing a new secret between friends, we shook hands on it, and the minute we touched I thought only one word: Yes.

Paul loved our work, loved our show, all three of us, me & Skip & Felix, and he offered to show us the town. He was one of the mayor’s special assistants in enforcing Prohibition, which made him an expert in exactly where you weren’t supposed to go but sometimes could. There was a wink after that, a wink just for me. Yes, we will go with you, Paul, wherever you go, yes.

He had his own car, the fanciest I’ve ever seen, with a driver who tipped his hat at us once when we got inside, and then never spoke to us again, quiet as a ghost in the front seat, he might as well have been a puff of smoke. We went from speakeasy to speakeasy, Paul shaking hands with all the men in fancy suits hovering near doorways, surveying the scene, running the show. I’m in Skip’s arms the whole night dancing, but I can see Paul watching me, burning a hole through Skip with his eyes like he’s not even there, and I’m staring right back at him, and I know something’s going to happen because I want it to and all I have to do is say yes.

So yes, I say, yes yes yes, I scream it. He’s married, who cares, yes. He’s a criminal maybe, yes yes yes. You’re just a girl he tells me, I say yes yes yes. You’re so skinny I could slip my hand right through you, he says. Oh I’ll feel it, I say. A skinny pretty Yid from New York City, he said. Never did I know that was a thing that could be desired, but in fact it is a thing that he desired, and so he had it.

What about Skip? How did I get it past him? We shared a room, like a married couple, husband and wife, till the curtain closes for good, he used to say, but we were definitely not married. The answer is that I’m an excellent liar, I have lied for years, so long that it has become as easy as telling the truth.

It went on for a few weeks, me and Paul, sneaking around Chicago, seemed like he had keys to every door in town, hotels and warehouses and clubs, front rooms, back rooms, a key to my door too. He offered me money sometimes but I always said no, because I didn’t need his money, and also I might be a liar and I might be a cheat, but I’m definitely not a whore.

Every day my hair was a mess, messy sex hair, and Elizabeth hadn’t the time to get it right every day, the tight waves and curls, the two of us racing to get it done before Belle’s set. She said she didn’t know what to do with me, that the Chicago wind must be stronger than she knew, and I laughed, a dirty laugh, a good-time-girl laugh, and she gave me a look like maybe it wasn’t the wind, maybe it was Skip, and then she sighed, “Oh those Folsom boys.”

Then one day we were running later than usual and Belle was in a monstrous mood, her husband was in town and he was not a part of the road family, him being bossier than Belle herself, and there couldn’t be two bosses of the show. Belle started griping that Elizabeth was her girl and not my girl, and we were wincing hearing her voice, so beautiful when she sang but intimidating when she spoke, and Belle was right, it’s true, Elizabeth was hers and not mine. And Elizabeth said she’d rather just cut all my hair off and be done with it, and then I told her to do it and the very next day she did, it was a bob, and it was done.

Now the men in my life had even more ardor for me, this new me with the new hair. Paul liked it because it was different, spontaneous, a change of plans, and Skip liked it because it was smart and stylish and fresh. I liked my hair because it didn’t slow me down. I was a twirling, racing, breathless, desirable woman. I felt like I had everything I needed for one perfect week.

But one morning I woke up with a pain in my stomach, serious and low, slow and steady, and along with that my undergarments were stained with a white mess, and that didn’t seem right either. And I tried all the old wives’ recipes I’ve heard, gypsy recipes too, but alas and alack, the pain would not stop, the undergarments continued to spoil, and I knew I was ruined in some way.

I didn’t believe I could tell anyone in my road family about my pain, not Elizabeth or Belle or Felix and especially not Skip. This is the hard part when you’re a liar and a cheat and you have secrets, because you’re really alone when things are bad, then you’re really invisible. So I found a doctor for ladies and he stared at me down there for a while and coughed and hemmed and hawed and then, without looking me in the eye, told me I had the clap. The clap! Here I was, living for applause all this time, and boy oh boy, did I get it.

Now I knew I could have gotten the disease from either Skip or Paul, but I had an idea it was from Paul because I was sure I wasn’t his only girl on the side, that there were other girls, ones who took money from him, and those kinds of girls sometimes have the clap, although there I was with it too, so who was I to judge or say anything? I asked Paul about it, I asked him if he had a little something going on down there, and he said that when you lived a life like his, there was always a little something going on down there.

Then I had to tell Skip, and I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to, so I raced to the theater to tell him, to the backstage dressing room, and he was sitting there with Elizabeth looking serious, and when I looked at his face I saw that he already knew he had it too. I said I was sorry, awful sorry for everything, and that it was all my fault, and he said my name and shook his head and couldn’t look me in the eye, and then Elizabeth reached out and held his hand and I felt shame. And then I saw Elizabeth was crying and I realized that she had it too, and that she and Skip were lovers. Then I could really hear the crowds roaring in my head, an ocean of applause for me, Jeanie, the girl in the air, taking down everyone around me. It was only a few minutes later that Felix showed up, whistling, humming, ready for another show, and then we had to tell him, all of us, that our road family was sick, we had all given each other a case of something horrible, and the minute we told him he walked out and didn’t return until right before the show.

Elizabeth left to do Belle’s hair, I smoothed mine down on my own, Skip sat next to me in the mirror, I put on my lipstick, I kohled my eyes, I looked at him in the mirror and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling at all, who was this person next to me, this beautiful fair-haired boy, but he wouldn’t look back at me, somehow he was looking anywhere in the room but at me, and then I knew he was just as much a liar and a cheat as me, we were the same, me & Skip, and Skip & Elizabeth were the same, and it was only poor Felix who got the short end of it all, happy, whistling Felix, now on fire like the rest of us. And then it was showtime.

It took about five minutes into our act, the first real spin of the night, for me to fall. I can’t say as to which one of them dropped me, Skip or Felix, because when you’re in the air like me you lose track of who is supposed to be catching you. You just close your eyes and hope everyone’s doing their job, and this time they weren’t. Skip or Felix, Skip & Felix? I didn’t get a good look at their faces afterward, I was up in the air, and then I was down, and I felt a crack in my leg, a very particular crack, and I screamed, and all I saw was stars in my pain, stars and theater lights and then blackness, and then I passed out.

I woke up in a hospital, a doctor telling me if I had landed differently I would have broken my back. It’s how you fall, he said, that matters. Youth helps, fitness, and how you fall. He’s telling me how lucky I am, lucky with the cast up past my knee. I told him I didn’t believe in luck, I’d make my own fate, thanks.

No one came to visit me the first day, not Skip or Elizabeth or Felix, but then finally Belle, my old friend Belle, showed up at my bedside. She told me that she was sorry but that I would have to leave town, or at least leave the show, and that as soon as I was recovered enough to travel she would be happy to buy me a train ticket back to New York City, back where I belonged, with my family. She said she had taken a chance on me and I had failed because I had upset the balance of the road family. But also she said that she loved me like a sister and she bore me no ill will, would hold no grudge, and would be happy to keep all of this a secret amongst our mutual friends and family as long as I would agree to do the same. And when I looked deeply into her eyes, those hooded soulful eyes, I knew that she had the clap too.

Paul came to the hospital in an elegant wool coat with black leather gloves that smelled like the woods, and I will never forget how handsome he looked, my married Italian man. There he was, kissing both of my cheeks, holding my hands, kissing them too. He said he was sorry that it had come to this and that I was a beautiful girl and I would someday recover and dance again like an angel, and he would remember our time together fondly, and that it was a crime to break a leg like mine, as graceful as it was, and with all the joy it offered the world with my fantastic performances. Then he offered to kill someone for me as an act of revenge and I said no. Then he asked me if I needed a ride home and I sobbed yes yes yes.

So last week I was driven from Chicago to Coney Island in Paul’s fancy car, and he gave me some money and this time I took it, and I did not feel like a whore, I only felt like a person in need. Paul’s driver, Mauro, is a friend of his father’s from the old country, their old country anyway, and he is my friend now, too. I told him everything that happened, start to finish, from Chicago to here, and it felt so good to tell the whole truth to someone.

He said it’s not the worst thing in the world the things that I did and that I had a little fun and there’s nothing wrong with that. I said that yes I had had my fun. He told me it’s fine to be young and entertain myself, but that I should stop lying so much because no one likes a liar and that I’ll keep all my secrets stored inside and it’ll show in my face, and I’ll end up an ugly old woman that no one will want to touch or love. He said there was a woman like that back in his village in Italy and she was a witch, and all the young boys threw stones at her until she bled. He said don’t be that way, don’t let the boys throw stones at you. He told me to be nice, he told me to be good, I said I would try. But already it felt like another lie. I’ll be good and bad, I’ll be right and wrong. I’ll be just like everyone else.

Lydia Wallach

Mazie was the hero to my family, but I’ll admit I daydreamed about being Jeanie once or twice. Obviously there was absolutely no possibility I’d live her life. I’m not a risk taker. I seek no thrills. But still I thought about it. Jeanie, the dancer, traveling the country, fluttering in and out of everyone’s life. It was a point of contrast more than a pleasant distraction. If I were not that kind of girl, what kind of girl was I?

Mazie’s Diary, November 11, 1920

My life right now is back and forth on the train, home to work, work to home, not a moment free in between. Jeanie begged me to be with her as much as possible, and I’m living up to my promise. She’s a cracked egg, a sticky mess on the ground before us all. Every day Rosie tries to clean it up.

She said: Don’t leave me alone with her.

I said: I gotta work, sister.

She said: You don’t know what it’s like, being trapped with her all day long.

I said: Oh, I know.

Jeanie’s got six more weeks left in the cast, and even then it’ll be a while longer till she gets around on her own. Meantime, I’m counting the cash, shutting the cage, and rushing home every night so I can crawl into bed right next to her. And every night she asks me the same thing.

She says: Tell me the story of your day.

Some days are more interesting than others, but most of them are exactly the same. People stand in line, they slap some cash in front of me, I give them a ticket and tell them to enjoy the show. The line’s not the interesting part. It’s the people on the streets, just hanging around. Too much time on your hands means trouble. Good kind, bad kind, both. But the streets seem cleaner these days. Now that most of the bars are closed, some of these bums have cleared out. You need money to have a good time in this town right now. The kind of fun I’m thinking about anyway.

Last night she clung to my arm, nuzzled her face up against it, desperate for attention.

She said: Tell me that people are still having a good time out there.

I said: I wouldn’t even know if they were. I’m right here with you in bed every night. You want me to have fun, let me go.

Mazie’s Diary, December 1, 1920

Sister Tee came to the cage this morning and I was glad to see her. Jeanie spends all her time feeling sorry for herself, high and dreamy, and Rosie spends all her time indulging her every whim. It’s no game I’ll play. So it was nice to talk to Tee, a woman sincerely devoted to helping others. She was looking for some help for a few more women.

She said: These girls, they have bad husbands. It’s not their fault.

She wanted more help than I had in my purse. I thought of the bag Louis had dropped off just a few hours before. I stuck my hand in and grabbed a fistful of bills. I tried not to look too close at how much was there. It was full, though.

I thrust the money at her. I said I didn’t want to know. It makes me sting thinking about my own mother still. When does that sting die? Does it die when I die?

Mazie’s Diary, December 5, 1920

Last night Jeanie was passed out on the couch, snoring, one arm flopped to the side. There was the tiniest line of drool sliding from her mouth. Rosie was sitting in front of the hearth, reading the paper. I saw a tin of whatever Rosie’s been feeding Jeanie to keep her quiet. I pointed to it.

I said: You gotta stop with that business.

She said: I’ll stop when she’s better. She’s in pain. Her legs itch. Her nerves tingle. You’re not here all day. You don’t know how she moans. I’m the one who’s taking care of her, not you.

I put the back of my hand on Jeanie’s forehead. She was cool. I said her name. She fluttered her eyelids open.

I leaned over her and whispered in her ear.

I said: Do you want to sleep forever? I don’t think you do.

I rubbed her neck for a second.

I said: Did you hear me?

She mumbled that she did.

Rosie said: What did you say?

I said: I told her to wake up.

Mazie’s Diary, December 29, 1920

Ethan’s come courting again. I guess he forgives easily. Can’t say I’d do the same. I could hear Jeanie tittering from up the street as I approached the house. Nice to hear her happy anyway. She was sprawled on the couch by the hearth, a bag of chocolates next to her, her casted leg balanced on a pile of pillows.

She said: Ethan brought me treats.

She held up a stack of gossip papers.

He said: She sounded so bored, I couldn’t help myself. We can’t have our Jeanie bored.

I said: Oh brother.

Rosie called me from the kitchen, and I left the two of them with their sweets and gossip. Louis was seated at the table, Rosie behind him rubbing his shoulders.

She said: Leave them be. Let them get reacquainted.

I said: He’s a fool.

I repeated myself, said it louder.

I went out onto the porch, lit myself a cigarette. My throat’s been sore lately from yelling at all the holiday crowds above the noise of the city. Is it possible the city is getting louder? Could it be that the streets are fuller? More cars, more trains, more people, more noise. I can’t stop smoking to save my life though. Often it feels like it’s the only joy I have.

Ethan soon joined me on the porch. So tall, yet somehow he still seems like the runt of the litter. A stretched-out baby face.

I said: I thought you were clever. Doctors are supposed to be clever.

He said: I’m an animal doctor.

I said: So you’re not clever?

The both of us were trembling in the moonlight from the winter chill, made more deadly by the wind blasting off the ocean.

He said: My heart can’t help it, Mazie. She’s a rare breed.

I said: No she’s not. She’s a street cat, can’t you see? The kind who’ll only rub against your legs long enough till you feed her.

He said: I see an injured creature who needs my love and support.

I waved my hand in front of his eyes a few times.

I said: Just checking to make sure they work.

He thinks he can handle a Phillips girl, let him try.

Mazie’s Diary, December 31, 1920

We closed the theater last night till the New Year. Gave everyone the day off, paid.

Louis said: Thank god this year is over, let’s hope the next one is better.

He handed everyone bottles of this and that and a hundred-dollar bill each. One of the ushers wept and hugged him, and sweet Louis hugged him back.

In the car ride home I smiled at Louis.

I said: You could have given them a tenner and it would have been fine by them, more than they expected.

Louis said: I could have given them a hundred more and it wouldn’t have been enough.

Now it’s lunchtime and we’re all lazing about the house. Rosie and Louis rose early and drove into the city and spent a fortune at Joel Russ’s shop. There’s an abundance of food before us. Jeanie’s eyes are clear. She’s got just a few days till the cast comes off, and she’s counting them down. She swears she feels healed. We’ve been picking at the whitefish, slicing off chunks of sour pickle, too, for the last hour. I’ve been flipping through the pages of this diary, looking at how lousy the past year has been.

Jeanie said: Anything good in there?

I said: You were someone else for a while it seems.

She said: Who was that girl?

I said: I missed you while you were gone.

She said: I missed you too.

I didn’t quite believe her though.

I said: So you and Ethan are back on, are you?

Jeanie said: It’s the oddest thing. He’s right where I left him.

I couldn’t help but think of the Captain. I’m right where he left me.

Mazie’s Diary, January 1, 1921

Jeanie said: This year’s going to be your year.

I said: For what?

Mazie’s Diary, January 5, 1921

Mack wants to take me out on a date. He’s insisting on it.

He said: A proper date for a proper lady.

I laughed.

He said: I’m an officer of the law. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?

I said: Oh really, Mack Walters?

He said: I’m being a straightforward, honorable man.

I laughed some more. Mack, the biggest boozer I know, and that’s a lot coming from this boozer. Mack, with his oversized head and that extra chin and that beard that changes colors all year round, red to yellow to gray lately, like it can’t decide what looks best on his face. Maybe none of it does.

I said: Maybe.

He said: Mazie, Maybe’s what I’ll call you from now on. And I’m planning on calling.

Walked off whistling, like he knew something I didn’t.

Mazie’s Diary, January 9, 1921

Jeanie came back from the doctor’s, still on crutches, Ethan and Rosie helping her through the door. She’ll be hobbling for a while yet.

She said: I don’t know why I thought I’d be better. I was dreaming the cast would be gone and I’d be leaping through the streets, dancing in circles beneath the sun, whirling and twirling.

She waved her arms so gracefully in the air that I could nearly see her dancing myself.

Ethan said: You’re young and strong, you’ll heal just fine. Just do those exercises the doctor told you about.

I looked to see if Ethan was telling the truth and I could see that he was. Then Jeanie showed us her leg, scrawny and yellow and bruised.

Jeanie said: I nearly passed out when I saw it.

Rosie said: If that were a chicken leg I wouldn’t serve it for dinner.

All of Jeanie is thinner now, I noticed for the first time. Her dress was falling off her shoulders, her petticoat dragged on the ground. Bones poking from her neck. Her braids were loose. Somehow her hair has turned from black to brown.

I said: No point in feeling sorry for yourself now. You’re on the way to well.

She said: I’m not, I can’t do anything at all.

Ethan helped her to the living room, and there she began to weep. I could hear it from the kitchen. I could hear him comforting her. Nurse Ethan.

I could not bring myself to embrace her. I said I had to go to work. A train to catch. The wind was bitter off the ocean. By the time I arrived to the station my eyes were full of tears. On the train I had to assure several old nosy women nothing was wrong. I told them I only had a chill.

Mazie’s Diary, February 18, 1921

He was four days late, missed Valentine’s Day, and I don’t care because I’m not thinking about him at all, because who needs to bother with a lousy skunk? I put the postcard up in the cage anyway because the picture was pretty. The ocean, the other ocean across America. Mountains in the distance. I don’t know if I ever need to see a mountain in person, but I like knowing they’re out there. I’ve been turning and looking at it all day. I don’t know why, but it gave me a kind of faith in the world.

Doesn’t matter what it said on the other side of it, though. His words are so slippery they might slide right off the paper.

Mazie’s Diary, February 27, 1921

There was Jeanie in the living room this morning before I went to work, bending and stretching, trying to stand on her tippy toes. Desperate. Half squatting. Wobbly, leaning on the walls, breathing like a wretched old woman. I watched her from the doorway and she gave me a glance but kept huffing away. Then she fell backward and I rushed to her. There she was, tender in my arms. I kissed her forehead.

I said: You can do whatever you put your mind to.

She said: I want to be better right now, not later.

I said: You will. You’re from a family of tough broads even if you think you’re a fairy princess.

I hugged her, and she hugged me back.

I said: I didn’t realize I was jealous of you until you came home.

I didn’t even know where it came from, but now at last, there was a real truth hovering between us.

She said: I bet you’re not jealous now.

I said: No, I’m not.

So we’ll work on this for a while. We’ll work on getting our Jeanie stronger. Whatever she needs, I’ll give her.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1921

Told Mack he could pick me up tomorrow in the early evening just to get him to shut up already. Rudy said he’d stead me. Rudy wishes I’d fall in love more than I do, more than Rosie, more than anyone.

Lydia Wallach

She did not have the best of luck with men. Dating in New York City has apparently always been terrible throughout history. You know: A good man is hard to find, and all that jazz.

Mazie’s Diary, March 3, 1921

Well, that was a flop.

First, the weather was cursed last night. Blustery spring wind, the kind that shakes up all the dirt and debris. I kept having to hold my skirt to my legs while waiting in front of the theater.

Then Mack showed up three sheets to the wind. He stumbled into a trash bin a half block away, and then struggled to right it. I laughed while I was watching him and then I remembered that was my date for the evening and it wasn’t funny at all.

I said: Oh brother, here comes trouble.

For his one and only act of chivalry of the night he removed his hat, but then promptly dropped it, and the wind grabbed it. I watched him chase it down the block. I turned to Rudy in the cage. Rudy whistled and looked away.

Eventually he got ahold of his hat and ran back slowly, then stood in front of me, breathless for a moment.

I said: Are you completely sloshed, Mack Walters?

He said: I am, ma’am.

I said: I took a night off work for this?

He said: I got nervous.

I was fuming. I started flapping my hands around and giving him the what for. I can’t even remember all that I said except for the last bit.

I said: And now Rudy’s got to stay late. He’s got a wife and children who’d like to see him one of these days.

He said: I didn’t know what else to do. You’re just so lovely, Mazie Phillips. You’re a pretty, pretty girl. Look at your pretty hair.

He reached out and touched my hair, the creep. I swatted his hand away, and gave him a good shove to boot. His eyes got larger, and for a moment I was terrified. I had just hit a police officer. In or out of uniform those lads still rule the streets. But instead his eyes filled with tears.

He said: I’ve been waiting for years for this and now I’ve gone and messed everything up.

I said: All right, all right, don’t go crying, especially not on your beat. You don’t want anyone to see you like that.

He let out a sob.

I said: Come on, you fool.

I dragged him down the street and the spring wind soon cooled him off. Finny’s was the only place I could take him. A drunk for a drunk’s joint. When we walked in the door Finny raised his hands in the air and everyone in the bar slid their drinks behind their backs or in their coats. As if that would make a goddamn difference. I snorted at them.

I said: Put your hands down, Finny. He’s off duty.

Finny said: I never know what to expect from the long arm of the law anymore.

I shoved Mack up to the bar and told him he’d better start buying, and he spilled some change on the counter, and paid into the wee hours. It wasn’t all bad, last night. I stayed late, so I must have been having some kind of fun. There was a laugh or two, once he calmed down. I wouldn’t let him touch me though. Funny, I’ll let any old fella passing through for the night grab me and squeeze me, but the men who’d stick around, I won’t let them near me.

Also he told me something that scared me — that they’re looking at Al Flicker for the Wall Street bombing last year.

I said: Al Flicker wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s an intellectual.

Mack said: What do you know of intellectuals?

I said: I know enough to know they’re too caught up in their heads to worry about bombing J. P. Morgan. They’d rather just talk about it all day instead.

Mack said: Well Al Flicker’s the one we’re watching.

I said: If it was me and I killed all those people, I wouldn’t stick around. Whoever did it is long gone.

At the end of the night Mack poured me into a cab. He had somehow drunk enough to be sober again, while I was finally as drunk as he’d been when he first arrived. I let him kiss my hand. I did let him do that. His lips were like cool jelly on my skin and I knew he was not the one for me.

Mazie’s Diary, April 16, 1921

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

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

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

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

I said: You believe that?

Because I truly needed to believe it, too.

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 20, 1921

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 25, 1921

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1921

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

He said: I didn’t bomb anything.

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

George Flicker

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1921

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

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

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

He said: I’ll take lessons.

She said: You’re sweet.

He said: Sweet on you.

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

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

She said: You couldn’t get any worse.

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

She said: It’s fine, I promise.

He said: Truly it doesn’t matter?

She said: Truly.

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 31, 1921

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

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

He said: How about you show some respect?

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

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

I said: He’s not a criminal.

He said: Mind your own, Mazie.

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

George Flicker

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, June 4, 1921

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

He said: So what do you think about Ethan?

I said: I like him just fine.

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

I said: Quite the surprise.

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

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

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

He said: He’ll provide for her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, June 12, 1921

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

Jeanie Phillips, July 7, 1921

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

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

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1921

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

Life is full of lies just waiting to be told.

Mazie’s Diary, September 1, 1921

Walking wounded, and we never even went to war.

Mazie’s Diary, September 15, 1921

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

Mazie’s Diary, October 3, 1921

I got a postcard from Jeanie today, at last.

It said: I’m not done yet.

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1921

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

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

He said: Hey, sis.

I said: Yes, brother?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I said: That sounds like something I could do.

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

I said: I’m yours, Louis.

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 16, 1922

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1922

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 11, 1922

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

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

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

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

He said: I wasn’t chatting with nobody.

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

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

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

Elio Ferrante

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

And then there’s my cousin Joseph. He’s a gambler, and he got himself in all kinds of trouble, fell in a hole he couldn’t climb his way out of, but what he got caught for was credit card fraud. This is considered a victimless crime. He certainly felt that way, and for the most part, so did the judge. He’s in a halfway house now. His wife left him, took the three kids with her, left the dog behind. It was his dog. But he can’t keep it obviously, so guess who has the dog now? Me.

This is a beautiful dog, an Akita. Do you know about these dogs? They’ve got this soft, plush fur, and they’re sort of like stuffed animals. They don’t give a crap about anyone but their owners — they’ll basically ignore anyone else, maybe at best have a lazy interest in them — but they are loyal to the core to the hand that feeds them.

My cousin’s dog, she’s in perfect condition. Her teeth are as white as yours, like polished stones. This dog has been loved and cared for her entire life. Beautiful fur, shiny eyes, great disposition. And she sits by the door every night waiting for him to come home — even if his wife doesn’t. How bad could a person be if he took care of a dog this well? But he’s a criminal, I know it. Everyone in my family knows it. Thanksgiving was the worst last year. You know when everyone’s not saying someone’s name but you’re all hearing it anyway? It was like that.

There was a documentary that came out a few years ago on these guys, these Coney Island guys, not Louis specifically, though. I ordered it for the school library. Kids watch it sometimes for extra credit. I could get it from the school library and we could watch it together; I can fill in some of the blanks for you. A lot of these guys were heroes in their community. I think that’s an important thing to remember. They were legends and saints. Even if they broke the law.

Mazie’s Diary, June 15, 1922

Postcard from Jeanie. How’d she make it all the way to California?

Daydreamed about the Captain showing up one day at a performance of hers, just stumbling in there, an accident, maybe another girl on his arm. Jeanie and him never even knowing I loved them both.

Mazie’s Diary, July 2, 1922

Saw that dapper Jew down the block today again.

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

Elio Ferrante

My cousin I was telling you about last week, the one on the force, he took a look and there’s no record at all of any arrest of Louis Gordon, anytime before 1923. Now, if he had any aliases, it might be a different story. And that doesn’t include other states obviously. And to be honest, my cousin says the paperwork system from eighty years ago, maybe it’s not the most reliable in the world. But according to existing records, Louis Gordon was never arrested or convicted of any crime.

Mazie’s Diary, August 3, 1922

In my cage, counting pennies, a smack of hands against my booth. I looked up, and there was the Captain, forehead pressed on the glass.

He said: There she is, the most beautiful lady in the world.

I raced from my cage and embraced him, a girlish fool. I pretended he was mine to keep.

What else can I do but love him?

I don’t care if I’m supposed to care that he’ll never be here when I need him. Fleeting as a fly. I only know that I have a good time when I see him, that he makes me feel like a good-time girl again, back when I knew nothing of the world, back when all I cared about was a laugh. And I need that right now. I need a laugh. Squeezing both my hands. The kisses all over me, and his sweat on my flesh. All the world contained between us. Even that grunt he makes when he’s done that I know has nothing to do with me, it makes me laugh. He’s just him, he’s just a man. Weak and human and all it comes down to is a noise.

Mazie’s Diary, August 5, 1922

Last night, damp in his hotel room. I threw away everything for two days just to lie there sweating with this man. He gave me a dozen dangling gold bracelets and they dripped down my arm. The fan blew overhead, an open window, the breeze coming off the river, and still we were just stuck in each other’s sweat. I couldn’t move away from him, neither he from me.

He said: Come back with me to California.

I laughed at him. Not being cruel, just amused. How funny to think about that. How funny it would be if I left, too. What would my world be like somewhere else? I hadn’t thought about that in so long, being somewhere else, it felt almost like it was never. So I had all those thoughts at once, and his arms were around me and I was covered in his sweat, and so I laughed.

He said: Don’t be mean.

I said: I’m not being mean. It’s a lot to ask.

He said: It seems like nothing to ask. It seems like the simplest thing in the world. Marry me, Mazie.

I said: What would I do in California?

He said: This. Exactly this. Every day. For the rest of our lives.

I said: Life isn’t made of just this.

But I didn’t know what else it was made of either.

He said: This isn’t how I thought it would go, proposing to a lady.

I said: We don’t even know each other.

He put his fingers inside me, two of them, deeply.

He said: I know you.

Rosie would never get the kitchen clean enough if I left, is what I thought. If I’m so special to this man why don’t I see him but once a year, is what I thought. I don’t know how it works, that kind of love, is what I thought. I only know the temporary kind.

He said: The air is cleaner, the sky is bluer, and the trees are as tall as skyscrapers.

I said: That’s not possible.

He said: I’m telling you, Mazie, you don’t need skyscrapers when you have trees like these.

I told him no, but I was gentle and I kissed him and I whispered only that I was too scared to say yes. Which was not a lie, though not the whole truth. I have never been able to tell him the truth about anything though.

I know you, is what he whispered over and over in my ear all night. But this morning he seemed relieved I had said no. Or maybe I was just imagining it. Or maybe I wanted to imagine it. He told me I could change my mind if I liked. He said California would always be there, and so would he. A great big state far away, on the other side of the country. I gathered up my things and returned to my life. He went off on a ship. Tomorrow I’ll explain to everyone in my life where I’ve been. Today I’ll think about California.

Mazie’s Diary, August 6, 1922

I found Rosie on the floor in the kitchen, sobbing, when I came home early this morning. Hysterics. I couldn’t calm her. The sunlight lit up her face, those lines drawn in her forehead, her mustache untended to, eyes bulging and pink. I gave her a glass of water and she pushed it away. I tried to hold her and she shook beneath me. I shushed her, I stroked her hair, and it was no use at all, none of it. Finally I slapped her, and she looked as if she might murder me right there on the kitchen floor, but it was better than her sobbing like that.

She said: You can’t just do that to me. You can’t disappear on me.

I said: Rosie, I didn’t mean it like that. I got caught up on something. It was just a man.

I should have just told her everything then, told her I loved him, told her who he is to me, who he was to me. But he’s my secret goddammit. He’s all mine.

I said: Where’s Louis?

She said: He’s gone, doing whatever it is he does out there.

I said: Who ever knows what Louis does?

She said: I was fine when he left. It’s only when I’m left alone I get like this. I don’t mean to get like this.

I said: You’ve been better lately.

She said: I haven’t. Not truly.

She didn’t know what I was doing all day and I didn’t know what she was doing all day either. She could weep in the mornings and scream in the afternoons for all I knew.

She let me hold her then. Soon enough Louis got home. Maybe he could hear her howling from wherever he was. By then she had calmed. Still, we were slumped on the ground together. He whistled as he entered.

He said: The kitchen’s really sparkling today, wife of mine.

He leaned over her, kissed her on her head. Gave her his hands and she took them, and then she was up, standing. Gave me his, and I was up, too.

I’m in bed now, a flask next to me. There was something I was supposed to be dreaming about but I forgot already what it was.

George Flicker

When I came home I moved right back into the apartment I grew up in on Grand Street. I was a world traveler! I had fought in a war. I had saved people’s lives. I got a Bronze Star; do you see that over there on my mirror? [He points at a dresser.] A Bronze Star! And now I was crammed back into that same damn one-room apartment. It was not pleasant. My parents were older, and they were starting to smell like old people, just like I do now. With Al not being well, everyone’s nerves were frayed, and we were stepping all over each other. My mother swore I was half a foot taller than when I’d left, like I’d had some sort of growth spurt in France.

And I had to start all over finding work, building a career. Girlie, I’m telling you, it’s no fun to start over when you’ve already started over once or twice, and you’re doing it right under the nose of your mother. But in France I had worked for a tie manufacturer, and he had taught me how to make ties, and how to sell them, too. When I moved to New York I got a job at a tie factory for fifteen cents an hour. I started to save enough money to buy my own ties, which I sold on the streets. But what I was really thinking about was real estate. It was not an original thought, of course. I don’t know anyone in New York City who doesn’t think about it. It’s impossible to walk those streets and not think about real estate. Louis Gordon was in it, I remember. He owned a few buildings here and there, along with all his other…investments. You know, he was a dabbler.

Elio Ferrante

It’s pretty unlikely that he was solely a gambler based on what you’ve told me. Money laundering, sure, that was a possibility. Could have been a loan shark. Could have run booze, could have run drugs. There are myriad possibilities.

Mazie’s Diary, September 22, 1922

After breakfast this morning Louis asked us if we wanted to take a walk down to the ocean.

He said: Come on, nobody’s out there. The street is all ours.

Louis opened the front door and the most delicious ocean air came in, cool and moist. A gentle slap in the face. Rosie stopped scrubbing. She rubbed the back of her neck with her hands.

Louis said: Let’s pretend like we own it all. Like we’re the king and queen of Coney Island.

I said: I’ll play princess, Rosie. You’re the queen.

Rosie said no, and there’s no arguing with her after breakfast. All those dishes in the sink and everything. But I said yes.

I took his elbow, and we walked all the way to the end of the road. The seagulls in their loop de loops. When we got to the sand we stood quietly and I leaned against him. He took my hand and kissed it.

He said: What if we had a conversation about your sister? About her mental state.

I nearly keeled over. For years I’ve been waiting for him to want to talk about it. Rosie’s madness.

I said: I worry sick about her sometimes.

He said: She worries about you, too.

I said: But we’re not talking about me.

He said: No, we’re not.

I said: Do you think she’s crazy?

He said: You live with her, you know what I know. For weeks she’ll be fine. Months and months even.

I nodded, this was true. All had been quiet until I went off with the Captain.

I said: What about behind closed doors? That I don’t know.

He said: Behind closed doors, she sleeps like an angel.

He grimaced for a moment.

He said: Except when she doesn’t sleep at all.

I said: What can we do?

He said: Be there for her when she needs us. Show up when we’re supposed to. Schedules are important to her.

I said: But what about my life?

He didn’t answer me, he just shrugged. A tiny airplane dragged over the ocean, and he pointed at it, but didn’t say a damn thing. The wind that had felt so lovely before now stung my eyes.

I said: Haven’t I done enough? Don’t I do enough?

He walked off.

I said: But what about me?

George Flicker

Look, he was never arrested for anything, not that any of us knew of. In my book he was no worse than anyone else of his ilk. Likely he was much better.

I’ll tell you this story though. I remember I saw him one last time, right when I got back in town from France. It must have been two in the morning. I’d have done anything not to be in that apartment. The streets were empty, and I was marveling at how much cleaner they were than when I had left. Less riffraff, for starters. But there was no garbage either. I remember just the fall leaves beneath my feet.

And then he sort of startled me, and I don’t really startle easily. I’m small now, I’ve shrunk, my bones are tiny, but I was at my peak then. You know, I was this young, healthy, fit guy who’d served his country. I wasn’t so far away from battle that I wasn’t on my toes.

But Louis was an enormous man, and he tapped me on the shoulder and all I could see was this big figure behind me and I jumped. Well, he started laughing. He said, “It’s me, Georgie, your old neighbor Louis.” I said, “Louis! Of course!” My heart was racing, I had to bend over for a second. I was kind of half laughing, half breathing hard.

So he patted my back until I calmed down. He said, “Aw, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then we just shot the breeze for a while, it was no big deal. He thanked me for my service. He’d heard about the medal from my mother, I guess. Then he offered me his card and said if I ever needed anything, some work, money, anything at all, he’d be happy to help me out. “Two pals from the neighborhood,” is what he said.

And I remember thinking exactly this to myself at the time: George Flicker, no matter how bad it gets, you never call this man for a job. Because you are no criminal.

Elio Ferrante

I know it’s killing you that you’ll never know the real truth because it seems like he might be a criminal. You’ll just have to accept the fact that you’ll never really know. I mean there’s just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We’re not entitled to all the truth.

Mazie’s Diary, November 11, 1922

Louis’s in the hospital. He was at the track and he fell forward, his heart seized on him. He was talking to a trainer, one hand on the horse, and then down he slid. It scared the horse, who ran off to her stable, where she hid for the rest of the day. No one can get her out. This is what the trainer said to me in the hospital when he came to pay his respects. I made him tell me everything. Every last detail.

I said: What track was he at?

He said: The Empire City, miss.

I said: What color’s the horse?

He said: Chocolate brown.

I said: What’s her name?

He said: Santa Maria.

I said: Is she favored to win?

He said: Not anymore.

I’m only home to bathe because one of us should bathe, between me and Rosie. One of us should be presentable to talk to whoever needs talking to. Because it doesn’t look good for Louis.

Mazie’s Diary, November 13, 1922

Louis left us yesterday. We held hands with him, me and Rosie, one hand in each of ours. Ring Around the Rosie went through my head. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. We didn’t know what else to do but touch him for as long as we could before we couldn’t touch him anymore. Rosie sang to him in Hebrew, a song I never heard before. She said it was about being between two worlds, ending a life here, beginning a life somewhere else. I didn’t want him to go anywhere else. I held his hand against my cheek, felt his skin go from warm to cool to cold. All the wailing. A doctor, a nurse, another nurse, stuck their heads in the room, until finally they stopped looking and left us alone.

Mazie’s Diary, November 14, 1922

There were four of us, and then there were three, and now it is just two.

Mazie’s Diary, November 15, 1922

Rosie sits like a stone in the kitchen. Barely made of flesh. I nearly didn’t get her to the funeral. I couldn’t find Jeanie to tell her he was sick, let alone dying, now dead. She’s just…somewhere in California. She will always be somewhere in California. Louis will always be dead now.

So it was just the two of us, and Louis’s aunts and their husbands, wading through the fall leaves toward the grave site. All the Gordons weeping, and Rosie just stock-still, until she fell to her knees, the lower half of her collapsing where the top half of her could not. Her dress was covered with dirt and when she stood I dusted her off.

I said: You’ll be all right.

I must have said that a dozen times until I realized I was still saying it out loud and not just in my head. Everyone looked at me as I chattered. I put my arm around Rosie and said it one more time.

Mazie’s Diary, November 17, 1922

We sat shiva today. Neither of us wanted to, as we practice no faith, but Louis was a Jew, in his way. And so for Louis, we opened our doors to his aunts. They arrived like a squadron, a squat army of mourners. I was glad they were there for the help. One of his aunts had brought what looked like a wall of smoked fish. They were noisy and busy in their preparations. It was good to listen to their chatter, their huffing, the opening and slamming of cabinet doors as they found their way through an unfamiliar kitchen.

Rosie sat slumped in the living room. This morning I noticed whatever drugs Jeanie left behind in the medicine cabinet were gone. I’ve been keeping an eye on it this week. Thought I might have suggested it to her myself as a way to get through these trying days, but it looks like she figured it all out on her own. I left her alone, only once I asked she move from the couch to the armchair. In my mind I thought she should be alone on a throne. The visitors in our home should pay their respects to the queen. Also I thought it might keep her propped up, because she looked as if she’d tip over at any moment.

I spent a good deal of the morning dodging any real conversation with these strangers. Some of them were familiar. I knew them from the track, and from Grand Street. But the rest of them were a mystery to me. Who were these men, where did they crawl from? They weren’t like bugs, they weren’t like rats, they weren’t like cats, but there was something feral and wild about them. Creatures of the dark corners. Dark suits, dark hats, pitted skin. A stench of cigars and booze, a smell I’ve never minded before, but on them they wore it like spilled cologne. They were rough trade. All of them introduced themselves to me as Louis’s business partner. Every last one. All these men in a room and none of them for me.

Then the well-dressed Jew walked through the door, shaking hands with everyone until finally he arrived at me. Up close he was handsome, sinewy, with slick, shiny hair, and a clever expression on his face. He murmured something in Hebrew I didn’t understand, and then he took my hand.

He said: Miss Mazie, how are you doing?

I said: I’ll be fine. He was family, but he wasn’t my husband. That’s a greater tragedy.

We both looked at Rosie, her head lolled to one side, her arms splayed on the chair, her legs uncrossed.

He said: I’ll wait to meet her. It’s you I’d like to have a word with.

Together we stepped into Jeanie’s old room. He said his name and I realized I’d read it before in the paper, though no photo of him had ever been printed, as none exist.

He said: I was in business with Louis.

I said: He sure did a lot of business.

He said: And I’d like to buy out his end of it from you.

I said: What kind of business was it?

He smiled but his face turned into something sharper. Like he might snap his jaw at me. His teeth would be in me before I knew it. I was too weary to be scared of him, though.

He said: Now a smart girl wouldn’t ask a question like that. Louis always said how smart you were.

I said: I am smart.

He said: And you’re the money girl, right? Louis said you handled the money. And I’m here to buy out Louis’s end of the business. I’m here to make things even.

I said: All right. Go on then.

Then he handed me an envelope.

He said: Count it.

I said: I don’t need to count it. I don’t know what the business was, and I don’t know how much it’s worth, and I don’t know if you’re cheating me or being fair or even being generous. The number means nothing to me.

He didn’t like what I said but he couldn’t argue with it, either. So he left. I stood there with the envelope in my hand. The money girl holding the money. Then there was a knock at the door. One of the vermin from the living room. He, too, wanted to buy out a dead man. He handed me another envelope. Then there was another, and another, and this went on for quite some time, the men with the envelopes. After they were gone, I didn’t know what else to do but count the money. When I was done counting, I came out of the bedroom. The living room was empty. Rosie was up in the kitchen, cleaning, the last of Louis’s aunts hustling out the door. It made me think she was going to be fine again someday. She couldn’t have those women cleaning her kitchen. Only Rosie cleans the kitchen.

I said: We got a lot of money today.

Rosie said: I’d burn it all if it would bring him back.

Then together we ate the wall of fish until nothing remained.

George Flicker

I will tell you this one last thing about Louis Gordon. I heard when he passed a cheer went up in the stands at Aqueduct. Not because he was a bad man or a cruel man, but because when he died, half the men there had their debts wiped out.

Mazie’s Diary, November 20, 1922

We met with a lawyer today. Now Rosie owns our house on Surf Avenue and two apartment buildings and half of four racehorses and a quarter of a dozen more and a bumper car ride. I own a movie theater, which I suppose I have for a while now, but something about him saying it made it seem more real. And I had never truly thought of it as my own anyway. I had signed some paperwork but all the money still went to Louis. Now there’s no Louis. Also Rosie has everything he had in the bank, which was not a lot because Louis was not a fan of the banks.

And there is more, somewhere, I’m sure of it. In a safe, maybe, or in a closet. There’s gold and there’s diamonds and there’s bills. I saw things sometimes. I saw the glint. But it’s hers, not mine.

We went home and stood, dizzy, outside Jeanie’s room. The money in the envelopes was still there, stacked on Jeanie’s bed. Neither one of us had been able to touch it. It was a thing that we didn’t need, this money, but we couldn’t throw it away neither.

I said: Should we hide it?

She said: Get it out of my sight.

I put each envelope underneath the mattress, one by one. The mattress was higher in the air when I was done and wobbled a bit. But no one would be sleeping there anyway. No one would ever know.

Mazie’s Diary, November 23, 1922

At last I went back to the cage today. Rudy told me he’d handle the tickets as long as I needed. But Rosie told me to go, it was our business and we needed to be looking after it. She believed Rudy was to be trusted, he was a good man, but he was only human and had many mouths to feed in that family of his, and leave a man alone with money long enough he just might want to put it in his pocket. I’m thinking her sharpness might be a sign of a return to health so I did not argue. But Louis would give Rudy whatever he needed whenever he needed it. Rudy wouldn’t have ever had to steal from him. Nor would he have to steal from me.

It was a relief to be back there in the cage, surrounded by all my postcards from Jeanie and the Captain. California. Might as well be the moon. I counted my cash. The regulars started lining up before eleven. The mothers with their children, the gentlemen with no place better to be. These are my people, is what I was thinking, and it made me laugh. Bitter and sweet, these tastes I know.

And then one by one, after I gave them their ticket, they gave me a gift. A flower, a card, some sweets from the truck around the corner. Offerings of sympathy, offerings of regret.

They said: Sorry for your loss.

They said: Our condolences, Miss Mazie.

They said: We missed you while you were gone.

I tried not to cry. I didn’t want them to see me that way. But I failed. I can’t blame myself though for feeling it all so deeply. These people all woke up this morning and reminded themselves to be human beings. Not everyone knows how to do that. No vermin, my people. Real human beings.

In the afternoon Sister Tee came to the cage. She marched straight to the door and rapped on it with her tiny fist. I’d never opened my door for anyone like that before, not one person. But for her I did. Because she asked. She wrapped her arms around me. Our cheeks touched. Her skin was soft, and she smelled like the soap I used that one weekend I spent in the Captain’s hotel. Then she pressed something into my hand — a medallion.

She said: It’s Saint John the Evangelist. He’s the patron saint of grief. He’ll look out for you now.

I needed no saints though, not today anyway. I had all of Park Row with me.

Mazie’s Diary, January 1, 1923

Sweet Jesus is this house empty.

Mazie’s Diary, January 10, 1923

Last night I came in and I found Rosie standing at Jeanie’s door, her arms crossed, back hunched, face all twisted up into something I didn’t recognize. I touched her real gently on her back and she jumped, spooked. I stroked her back and calmed her.

I said: What are you thinking about?

She said: That money’s no good.

I said: It isn’t, but it’s ours anyway. And we’re good.

She said: Do you really think we’re good?

A year ago or maybe two or three I would have said we weren’t good, or at least that I wasn’t. But I know a little more these days.

I said: Well, we’re not bad. We’re definitely not bad people, Rosie. And that will have to do for now.

Mazie’s Diary, January 15, 1923

This morning, Rosie came into the city with me. First time she’d left the neighborhood since Louis died and we went to see the lawyer. She said she needed to check on the buildings in Chinatown, that she’d been hearing all kinds of stories about them being run into the ground. We might need a new superintendent. She wore a tidy suit. There was a new hat too, violet colored with a jewel on it, and some lace netting she drew around the edges of her face. There was some color on her cheeks. Where it came from I’ll never know. I only see it as a sign of life.

Mazie’s Diary, February 10, 1923

Sister Tee needed to buy some winter coats for some girls she knew so I took some money from the envelopes in Jeanie’s room. Not even an entire envelope, just a few bills was all it took. I don’t know what else it’s there for if not that.

Mazie’s Diary, March 13, 1923

Rosie took the train again with me this morning.

I said: More business in the city?

She said: I’m getting my hair done.

I said: Your hair looks fine.

She said: You got a problem with me going to the city, miss?

I said: I’m just asking what your business is, is all.

It went on like that for another stop, us having a not-conversation. Everything felt flipped around, me wondering what she was doing, her not answering me straight.

I said: Do what you like.

She said: I don’t need your permission.

The subway door opened just then and she got off. Her back to me on the platform. She didn’t even turn and wave.

Mazie’s Diary, April 3, 1923

There were forty-six envelopes in Jeanie’s room and now there are forty-one. I’m not crazy. I counted them myself. There were forty-six in February when I took money for Sister Tee. It’s not mine to wonder but wonder I will.

Mazie’s Diary, April 20, 1923

A postcard from Jeanie, Los Angeles. The sign that says HOLLYWOODLAND in the hills. I’ve been seeing pictures of that sign in my magazines forever. I got a little excited, I couldn’t help myself. But then I flipped it over.

It said: What happened to you just happened to me & it is terrible, Mazie.

A lot of things have happened to me in this life but I knew exactly what it was she was talking about.

As much as I wanted to add this postcard to my wall, I threw it away. I know it’s bad juju to have bad news floating all around you. Same as that money too, still sitting in our house. Thirty-nine envelopes left.

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1923

Tea leaves in a saucer, a haze of incense in the house. Dishes in the sink. Rosie’s nowhere. The house stinks of gypsies. I could not bring myself to count the envelopes.

Elio Ferrante

My grandmother on my father’s side was part Romany, but she was not the kind of gypsy who conned, and anyway, even if she was, she married out of it. Her skin was colored so that she could pass for Italian, like Sicilian Italians, the real Mediterranean Italians. You should see me in the summer, my skin gets so dark, I can pass for all kinds of ethnicities, Latino, African-American. I’m a citizen of the world come June. Anyway, my grandmother knew grifters, and there were stories passed around our family, cautionary tales more than anything. One of them was about being a single person, a lonely person looking for companionship or comfort. Widows were easy targets. There was one con where they’d tell these widows, Oh, you give us X amount of dollars, ten dollars, a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars, whatever, and we’ll burn it, we’ll burn your loss away, we’ll burn your pain away. And then it’s just this sleight-of-hand trick — they take the money during these sessions and they slip it into the linings of their skirts. They kept everything in these skirts. Coins, jewels, and cash. Gypsy skirts were like Fort freaking Knox.

Mazie’s Diary, July 9, 1923

I know that it was wrong when all Rosie did was clean, but now the house is pure filth. Worse, the summer heat is roasting the dirt. A trail of tea leaves across the kitchen table. A line of ants following. A march. I’m at the theater all day and night, holding everything together while Rudy’s out again. I can’t do it all. I can’t. I need help.

Lydia Wallach

Rudy had five heart attacks in his lifetime. I’d guess in 1923 it was probably his third heart attack? Some of them were smaller than others. Each one he bounced back from within a few weeks, until the last one, from which he did not bounce back at all. He was this calm, loving, supportive man who took on the pain and stress of others without flinching, and his heart attacks were his moment of flinching. And when he was in the hospital, everything collapsed around him. My great-grandmother, their children, the theater. He held all these worlds in his head. I understand this. If you let go for a second, it all unravels. The loose threads of the universe.

Mazie’s Diary, July 15, 1923

I told Sister Tee everything about Rosie. It felt so good to tell someone even one little thing about my life, and this feels like the only thing in my life now. That and the theater.

Tee hates the gypsies as much as Tee is capable of hating anyone. She thinks they’re godless. I told her I’d known some kind ones but she’s come up against them too many times to forgive or at least to forget.

She said: They’ll rob you blind then leave you standing on the corner in the cold and the dark.

I said: I don’t think she thinks she’s being robbed.

She said: I think that money could be better spent elsewhere.

I said: But what if it soothes her?

She said: A con’s a con. Those gypsies should be punished.

When Tee turns to tough talk I have to laugh and kid her.

I said: Where’s your forgiveness, Tee? I thought everyone had a saint.

She stopped her ranting and thought about it.

She said: Saint Dismas watches over criminals. But it’s the ones who are seeking pentinence that he cares for.

I said: And these gypsies don’t care.

She said: They don’t care one bit.

Mazie’s Diary, August 28, 1923

I took the money. I took it and I put it somewhere she can’t find it. There were just twenty envelopes when I did so. More than enough money to last us a long time, yet it seemed like not very much at all considering what we started with. It’s not hers, it’s not mine. It belongs to strangers now.

Isabel Kaller, bookkeeper, Church of the Transfiguration, Chinatown

We’ve got archives dating back to the late 1800s. They’re treasures, really. All of the bookkeepers over the years have had the most darling handwriting. These teeny tiny letters and numbers in perfectly straight rows. It’s very sweet to me. I like the way the ledgers feel too. They have a real heft to them.

I found the ledger from 1929, and it indicates there was a fund set up by Miss Phillips-Gordon in honor of her mother, Ada Phillips. The money was earmarked to help women and children. It was blind on the part of Miss Phillips-Gordon, meaning she gave the church the money, but had made a request to never know what was done with it, or rather, who was helped with it. The fund was used to establish battered women in new homes, pay for doctors’ bills for them and their children. At the time we worked in tandem with churches in Montreal and Buffalo, and so these women from New York were set up with new lives in those communities. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many women she helped. Hundreds? Thousands? I’ve no idea. Many, many women. There was a substantial initial deposit, and then this fund was maintained annually until Miss Phillips’s death in 1964.

I don’t know what we’d do if we got a comparable donation now. Gosh, we could do so much good with it. I don’t even want to think about it, but I do, you know? What a dream it would be.

Mazie’s Diary, September 2, 1923

She’s lost her mind. Tore the room apart looking for the envelopes. Bed up, sheets off, curtains down. Rug on sidewalk. I think she threw it out the window, but can’t be sure.

George Flicker

There was some bad blood between Mazie and Rosie for a while but no one knew why.

Mazie’s Diary, September 3, 1923

A screaming match at the cage. She was trying to claw me at the window. I didn’t even recognize her at first. The eyes confused me. The cruelty of her gaze. Then her hands were up against the cage, trying to shake it, shake me out of there. No blood of mine, is what I was thinking. She’s not my sister.

She said: Where is it?

I said: It’s gone and that’s all you need to know.

Rosie said: Give it to me. I need it.

I said: You’re being a fool, Rosie.

She said: You don’t know anything about anything.

Rudy came running and held her back as best he could with those tiny hands of his. She shook him off and ran.

Mazie’s Diary, September 4, 1923

Tee said: Wait it out. It’s all you can do.

What I want to say to Rosie is that I know her pain is like no other, but also that it is no worse or better than anyone else’s. We do not get to suffer forever.

Mazie’s Diary, October 1, 1923

She’s out there somewhere. I stopped by the Bayard Street building to collect this month’s rent, and the tenants said she’d been there already and taken their money. Likely handed it straight to the gypsies.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1923

Happy Birthday to me. Twenty-six years old and my life’s chaos.

Sister Tee brought me some daisies, and later I threw one back with Mack. I haven’t forgiven him one thing. But I was lonely. Surrounded by people all day long yet as lonely as can be.

Mazie’s Diary, November 2, 1923

The rent’s gone again, in her pocket, in their pockets.

Mazie’s Diary, November 5, 1923

Saw her on the street, grabbed at her arm, and she ran. I chased her, chased her through Chinatown, we ran and ran.

I said: Please, Rosie, please.

I said: Please come home.

I said: Please, I love you.

I lost her on Canal Street.

I don’t even know if it really happened or if it was just a dream I had this morning. Or if it was even her, even Rosie at all.

Mazie’s Diary, December 4, 1923

Rosie’s home. I found her last night on the couch. Thin and gray and snoring. I just covered her with a quilt a moment ago. I was afraid to touch her, I thought she might disappear.

I’ll forgive her anything if only she’ll forgive herself too.

Elio Ferrante

The thing about these gypsies is eventually they leave. There’s no long con in their world. Get in and get out. Change your look, and hit the road.

Mazie’s Diary, January 3, 1924

I found her in the ocean last night. The door was open when I came home from work. I walked the street calling her name like she was a lost dog. Then I saw her standing in the ocean, nearly waist high in it. Not close enough to drowning herself. I write this so that it will be true. That she does not want to drown herself.

The moonlight was all around her. The ghost of my sister. I waded my way in, pulled her back toward the sand. We stumbled a bit. The surf crashing around our ankles, both of us shivering. She was white and blue at the same time. I threw my whole self around her to warm her but she shook me off.

She said: It’s been a hard year, Mazie.

I said: I know.

She said: It’s been a hard life. Thirty-four, and I’ve nothing to show for it. A dead husband. No baby. What do I have left?

I said: You have me. I’m here. I’ll never leave you.

I’m not going to leave her. It’s not a lie.

I said: Come on, Rosie, it’s cold as a witch’s tit out here. You’ll catch your death. And if you die, I’ll murder you. I’ll do it with my own two hands.

I wanted her to be beautiful in the moonlight — everyone looks beautiful in the moonlight — but all of Rosie’s collapsed now. Been falling apart for years, Rosie has. More of her hair is gray now than not. It flew all about her, nearly purple in the moonlight. The lines around her eyes and lips jagged and deep in her skin. The chin, sunken and wobbling. Once it falls like that it never rises again. Those are the rules of life. Only the pale cream color of her skin remains. That reminds me of young Rosie.

Slow steps to the grave. I won’t be the one to bury her though.

I said: I’ll kill you if you die.

I put my arms around her throat. It was and wasn’t a joke. We just stood there like fools, our teeth clacking, our lips turning blue, two corpses in the ocean, only one of us more alive than the other.

Finally she fell on me, and held me for warmth. I don’t know if it was her body or mind that gave in first. I will take what I can get from her.

I said: At least you had a love.

Then we both started crying. I wept into my brokenhearted sister, and she wept into heartless me.

Mazie’s Diary, April 2, 1924

Postcard from the Captain. Niagara Falls. A place not so far away from New York City. A day trip, a train ride away. I can see it on a map in my head.

I read the back of it once and that was enough. But I liked the picture, so I put it up on my wall. I can hear the crash of the waves when I look at it. I can feel the spit from the falls on my face. I bet it’s cold up there near the water. I bet the air stings your skin red. Like a man slapped you hard and meant to leave a mark.

Mazie’s Diary, April 15, 1924

We’ll move again, is what I decided. Back to the city, where I can keep a better eye on her between work and home.

She said: But I can’t go through his things.

I said: We’ll leave them then. We don’t need any of it.

She said: This house is a mess.

I said: Leave it. Let the next person worry about it.

She said: Where will we live?

I said: Anywhere we want.

Finally I convinced her to agree to the move. Agree to living, that’s the most I’m asking from her right now.