Saint Mazie

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 Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

I think of all the misfortunes I’ve had through the years, but none of them landed me on the street — not unless I chose to walk it myself.

Pete Sorensen, owner, Diary of Mazie Phillips, Red Hook, Brooklyn

Do I have to? [Groans.] I have to. All right.

How did I find the diary? Well, I keep my head down a lot; I’m always looking at the ground, because I find things. Sometimes I find stuff I can sell, or I can use in the shop. For a long time the best thing I ever found was thirty-two Polaroids of this middle-aged Chinese lady stripping. They looked like they were taken in the eighties. They were all washed out, and there was something about her skirt that looked kind of eighties, maybe my mom had one like it? God, I don’t want to think about my mom stripping. [Laughs uncomfortably.]

Anyway, there was an order to the photos, like shirt on, shirt off, bra off, skirt off. There was definitely a little act to it, although I don’t know how sexy it was. I kept the pictures for a while. I couldn’t stop thinking about who she was undressing for. Whoever was taking the pictures, or if there was someone else in the room, too. For a year or so, I guess, she was on my mind. But then I stopped thinking about her. I just gave up trying to figure it out. I was never going to know, and then I stopped caring. I didn’t need to know how the story ended. It was sort of enough that I had seen the pictures in the first place, you know?

Now, the diary was a whole different game. I found it two years ago, give or take. It was in the fall. I was over near the Navy Yard walking to work. This was just a few months before I opened the shop, and I was still working at a studio there. I saw a big box over by where they used to have the used car auction. Most of the stuff in the box, I couldn’t use it or sell it. It was like, old lightbulbs and a roll of movie tickets and a flask. I opened the flask and it still smelled like booze. I mean old booze, but still.

But also in there was the diary with the postcards. Everything was pretty ratty. The diary was leather-bound once, but most of the cover was coming off in strips. The pages were loose — I had to be careful or they would slip out and blow away. All the paper was yellow, everything was crumbling in my hands. But all of it was like, chattering at me, asking to be read. I know that sounds kind of nuts. It looked like junk, but it was actually the exact opposite of that. So I stashed it all in my backpack and took it to work.

During my lunch break I started reading everything and then I was late getting back to work, and then after work I went to a bar and sat there and read them all the way through. Her handwriting wasn’t the greatest, you know that, but I made it through. I didn’t know anything about her, except that she sounded like a saint, the closest thing I’ve ever heard of anyway. I went to Catholic school, I studied them, but I never believed any of them were real people. She was definitely real. Because I saw the words in front of my own eyes.

There were parts of it that felt pretty personal to me. This person who felt like she had been bad but didn’t want to give in to it entirely. She thought maybe she had a shot at being a better person but she couldn’t shake who she had been. We all live with our pasts. I live with mine. You live with yours. I don’t even think she did anything wrong. She had just lived a big life, even though it was mostly in this confined space. And when you live big you fall big.

Near the end I started reading really slowly because I didn’t want it to be over, I just wanted it to go on and on. I wanted her to live forever. At the very end I cried. Then I put the flask in my pocket, close to my heart, which is where I still keep it. I fell in love with her a little bit, and I wanted a piece of her right next to me.

Mazie’s Diary, October 1, 1924

We’re back on Grand Street, six doors down from where we once lived, the home where I was raised. Now we’re in a two-bedroom flat, one room for Rosie, one for me. We’ve given up on Jeanie coming home. The only thing that feels familiar anymore is our table and our couch. Those things we brought with us. A table to eat on and a couch to faint on.

I’ve been walking to work again, through the throngs of the Lower East Side, the Jews, the Russians, the Italians, the Germans, the Chinese, the Gypsies, the cops, the children, the lads, the broads. The swirl of people, it’s heaven.

I miss taking the train sometimes, though, and the time I had to gather my thoughts before the day began. I always had a seat. I could watch the people get on and collect themselves. A tidy and a tug. I’ll miss seeing the people from across Brooklyn heading to work. I’ll try to remember what they looked like. I won’t have cause to return to Brooklyn again anytime soon. Once you cross the river you stay there.

But it’ll be nice to stay here, I think. I’m still trying to understand what here means. All our things are still in boxes. Rosie’s promised to unpack but it’s been weeks and she still hasn’t touched a thing but what she needed for the kitchen, a few dresses, some pairs of shoes. I kept you for myself, though. A book of secrets. Mine, and Jeanie’s.

Mazie’s Diary, October 11, 1924

Rosie hates the kitchen now, says there’s mold, can’t get rid of it, no matter how much she scrubs. I can’t see it, but she swears it’s there.

She says: There! There!

I say: Where?

She says: There.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1924

I’m twenty-seven years old today. Rosie served me ice cream with raspberries and chocolate sauce when I came home, and there was a chocolate bar on my bed, as well. Sweets for the sweet. A quiet birthday, I didn’t mind it. She was calm for a moment. Not a word about the kitchen.

Mazie’s Diary, November 14, 1924

A postcard from Jeanie, birthday greetings, two weeks late.

It said:

You’ll always be older than me & wiser too. I hear you in my head when I least expect it.

Like she’d listen to a thing I have to say.

Pete Sorensen

Oh yeah, all the postcards are pretty special. All the places she saw but never went to. Oh California! [Clutches heart.] You and I disagreed about that Niagara Falls postcard, and what it meant exactly. “It could have been you.” You think it’s romantic but I think it’s ice cold. The Captain was spitting in her face. Why would you tell someone something like that? That you’ve married someone else but you had your shot. I’d rather not know. I think it’s disrespectful.

Mazie’s Diary, January 4, 1925

We’re moving again and there’s nothing to be done about it. I can’t argue with her any longer. I can’t listen to her yelling. I can’t bear the neighbors knocking on the wall. I can’t bear the tears. The pointing at the floors, the ceiling, the corners, the crevices, the mold, the germs that don’t exist. I don’t see a damn thing and she sees everything. I have dreams about her pointing at things.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1925

234 Elizabeth Street, second floor, new kitchen. Scrubbed clean. Sparkles. Sunlight through the window, hands in front of our squinting eyes.

I said: Can you argue with this?

Rosie said: I cannot.

Mazie’s Diary, July 31, 1925

Rosie hates all our neighbors. Let’s see, what’s her list of complaints. Hershel downstairs reeks of fish, she hates passing him in the hallway, especially when it’s hot, and lately it’s hot. Menachem on the third floor is too religious and she swears he’s judging her for not going to services every Friday night. But that Russian seamstress next door with the newborn, it’s her she hates the most. Says the baby’s too loud, and that I don’t even know the half of it because I’m gone all day.

I said: Then take a walk.

She said: All day? I can’t walk all day.

I’d kill to take a walk all day but that’s not what she wants to hear.

I said: It’s a baby. How can you hate a baby?

She said: Well it’s no blood of mine.

I said: It’s a helpless human being.

She said: It’s rattling me.

Rattle’s a word I don’t like her using. When she gets shook there’s no unshaking her.

Mazie’s Diary, August 3, 1925

Mack Walters passed. His heart gave. Tee and I went to his funeral in Queens this morning. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, a year, maybe more. We’d stopped talking, stopped flirting, and then he transferred uptown. After that it was like we hadn’t even known each other in the first place. Still I remembered that day we all ran downtown when the bomb went off. Tee did, too. A day when you witness something terrible together, you don’t forget a day like that. You can’t unsee what you saw. So I’d give him tribute.

Mack was Catholic, and Tee knew every single prayer before the priest said it out loud. I liked the church, the cool wooden pews, the stained-glass windows dividing the sun, the statues of Jesus and Mary all around us. A mother and her son. It meant nothing to me, none of it, but it meant everything to Tee.

There was no family at his funeral, just other police officers. He was an orphan from a young age, is what I learned. These officers were the only family he had, and I noticed a few of them pawing away their tears. I was an orphan in a way but I’ve always had Rosie steady in my life, even if she’s unsteady herself. Poor Mack didn’t even have a lunatic sister to call his own.

Afterward someone asked me if I was Mazie and I told him I was and then a few other officers came to greet me and suddenly a whole crowd of them was around me. The famous Mazie, is what they were saying. You’re the one. They told me Mack talked about me all the time, that I was a heartbreaker. I forgot I could do that, break a heart.

Tee and I held hands the whole time. She told me later she could tell I was nervous. My whole life I handled attention from strangers just fine. It’s just lately I’m used to the bronze bars of a cage between us. When the rush stopped I remembered that some of these men could have been the ones beating up on Al Flicker. I wished that I could humble them instead of being so humbled myself. But I was there to pay respects, and that’s what I did.

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1925

A postcard from the Captain. Washington, DC.

He wanted me to know he’s back east now.

The picture on the front is of the Washington Monument. A giant prick.

Pete Sorensen

I’ll be honest, I like a girl with a little seasoning, a little special sauce. I’m not interested in the helpless young virgin type, I guess partially because I’m not so innocent myself. And women that have had some experiences in their lives, there’s some kind of wisdom that comes with that. Also they’re less likely to make certain kinds of demands, particularly of, say, a permanent nature. I just never wanted to settle down or anything like that. Opening my shop was about as settled as I was going to get. But I swear to god, reading this diary made me want to settle down. I actually found myself wanting to marry her! I know it’s nuts. I just heard her in my head so clearly and thought I know her. I mean I didn’t know every little thing about her. But I knew that she liked to walk the streets of New York, and that I love more than anything. And I knew the quality of her character, which made me think I could spend the rest of my life with her.

Mazie’s Diary, September 1, 1925

112 Delancey Street. Only elderly women reside in this building, polite old Catholic ladies. Tee told us there was a room for rent — she’d heard it through the grapevine. They’re all her favorite tithers. Quiet mice with hair like snow. They’ve even got a knitting circle every evening at sunset. Dolores with the bad knee one floor down has already offered to make us a quilt. We’re on the fourth floor in three rooms. There’s no street noise. Kitchen’s clean, I made Rosie run her finger on the counter and show it to me. Here we sit, here we stay.

George Flicker

So that was a thing that was very strange for a long time with these two ladies. They could not stop moving. Six months max, that’s how long they lasted in each apartment, and it went on for years, this moving-around business. This was when I was just starting to investigate a career in real estate. It seemed like the only economy that never changed in New York. People always needed a place to live, and you didn’t have to have much of an education to get started in it. So I started circling everyone. I got to know a lot of the building owners on the Lower East Side. A few of them, I had grown up with their families, or I’d seen them around. So I was just schmoozing with them. The good ones and the bad ones, both. I wanted to know what they knew. And one of the things I kept hearing about, just as part of everyday gossip, was that the Gordon girls were on the move. Who knows why, but they had turned themselves into gypsies.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1925

Twenty-eight. My waist is still trim, but my breasts have gotten bigger this year, maybe it was last year and I didn’t notice. As if they weren’t already big enough. My back aches, sitting there, hunched over those tickets, counting cash, head in my stories. The lines are longer at the theater. We make money. Good money, legal money. I give Sister Tee a fistful every month. I’m a good businesswoman. This is what I learned this year. This is what I know.

Dolores prayed for me, she told me. Sister Tee said she did too, and she gave me a box of peppermints. Rudy hugged me and gave me a new scarf. Rosie rubbed my shoulders when I got home, she’s seen me hunching, knows my posture’s gone.

She said: It hurts for you now the same way it hurts for me.

I don’t think she knows my pain, though. Just like I don’t know hers.

Mazie’s Diary, November 8, 1925

He was here again. How long has it been, one year, two, three, and there he was, and I was not surprised. He came to me, and I went with him. Didn’t blink, didn’t pause, just went. He stood in line with all my regulars, the last show of the night, at the very end of the line, and he bought a ticket like everyone, and when I handed him the change, he held my hand. I sat there, burning, both of us burning, stupidly burning, looking at each other, and holding hands. I rested my head forward on the cage, and he put his hand against my other cheek. His hand was cold, and my face was warm. Burning, burning, burning.

I said: You’re late.

He said: For what?

I said: You just missed my birthday.

He said: Oh, Mazie, I’m always going to miss your birthday.

I said: I’m going to think of you as my present anyway.

He said: You can if you like. But I think you’re mine instead.

Later, in the hotel room, he held his prick against my cunt for a while, and he commented on the size of my lips, the way his prick looked up against them, all of those swollen things next to each other. It looked beautiful and I became fascinated with it, I couldn’t look away, and he couldn’t either, and together we did that, we looked at our parts touching, while he moved everything around slowly with his prick.

I’ll never be more intimate with any man than I am with him.

He’s married now. I knew it, but he showed me his ring anyway, which he had in his breast pocket.

He said: I want to speak the truth to you, Mazie.

I told him that it didn’t matter, and it doesn’t. Our union is our union, and theirs is theirs. This bride in Connecticut means nothing to me. I had him first. I chose not to keep him because I knew he couldn’t be kept. Him standing before me at that very moment last night proved it.

Mazie’s Diary, November 9, 1925

I smoked and smoked all day today, and licked my flask clean. An early snow for the season. I watched my customers dust the flakes off their coats, smiling. When it was all over, there were peach-colored clouds gliding through the sky. I thought: No one else can see this sky like I can. No one else sits here and watches it change all day except for me. I see the snow and I see the clouds and it is all a show for me. Everything is for me.

Pete Sorensen

I loved her because she was tough and knew what she wanted. It wasn’t like she always knew, but by the end of the diary I think she did. I mean she spent all this time trying to acquire her exact purpose in life. Maybe she didn’t mean to, but she did. And how many of us get to know that? I’m pretty sure I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing with my shop, but what if I’m supposed to be a painter? Or build houses? I know I’m not supposed to be in a band anymore. No one would give a shit about our reunion tour. But what if I’m supposed to move back to Saint Paul to take care of my mother in her old age? Like that is actually a thing it would make sense to do. That is what people do; they take care of their family. She knew that! She did it. She knew how to be a human being.

I wasn’t jealous of her, but it did make me a little angry with myself that I don’t know exactly everything yet. But being a little angry with yourself is all right. That’s how shit gets accomplished. You know what I mean. I know you do.

Mazie’s Diary, January 15, 1926

Dolores died, and it took two days for anyone to find her. We all thought there was an animal trapped somewhere, a dead rat in the floorboards. Her hair went white during that time. It happened over the weekend. No knitting circle on the weekends, so it took till Monday to realize the poor woman was gone.

Rosie says she can smell the body still.

She said: You can’t smell it? I know you can smell it.

I said: I ain’t moving again, Rosie.

She said: Who said anything about moving?

I asked Tee to teach me a prayer Dolores would have liked. All that she did for me I could do for her.

I said: It’s tragic, lying there like that for days.

Tee said: She lived a long life, and there is that to remember.

I said: Rosie’s kicking up a storm now. She’ll say the place is haunted in no time.

Tee said: That’s our Rosie.

I said: I’m tired of looking for apartments.

Tee said: The wandering Jews.

Mazie’s Diary, February 13, 1926

Postcard from the Captain. Just a sailboat in the water and his name with love, and nothing else.

Every morning I stand at the sink, I wash my face, I brush my teeth, I brush my hair, and then, when I’m ready, I look down at myself, and I think of him.

Filthy, awful, beautiful man.

Mazie’s Diary, February 18, 1926

Tee’s truly my best girlfriend, a good friend to have. She stops by the cage now nearly every day, even in the rain. Sometimes she comes home with me for tea after work. Rosie coddles her. She loves any sort of spiritual type, no matter what they believe in, as long as they believe. And though Tee’s not our Jeanie she feels like family. But I’ve never seen her home, after all these years.

I said: Tee, why don’t you invite me over?

She said: I’ve got the smallest room. The two of us could barely fit at the table.

I said: Aw, Tee, I’d squeeze in for you.

I like to have a little fun with her. I like to grab at her belly through her habit and try to tickle her. Little Tee. Today she said I could come by sometime though. After we move again.

George Flicker

These landlords said they paid first and last, and when they moved out the apartments were cleaner than when they got there, so there were no complaints. It was just kooky behavior. How could they have been happy doing that? You had to wonder. They were always the kind of family that circled the wagons, but now, with all the moving, that circle was closed shut. So who knows why? No one could keep track of their business.

The only thing you could count on when it came to them was seeing Mazie in her ticket booth on Park Row. Sometimes I’d swing by Chinatown for lunch, my office not being too far from there, and I’d see her there, and that was a nice way to pass the time. My crush on her hadn’t withered, I’ll be honest with you. We were both young people. Her bosom grew every year, and she wore the most flattering dresses. That girl just had a really enjoyable figure.

I was always waving to her from the street corner. If she didn’t have a line or her head in one of her magazines — she loved all those True Romance type of magazines — she’d wave back too, even blow me a kiss sometimes. She’d yell, “George Flicker, there he is, ladies and gentlemen, a real-life war hero!” She was the only one who didn’t forget.

Mazie’s Diary, April 1, 1926

416 Mulberry Street. Our neighbors are young, single ladies, most of them in nursing school. Top floor. On Friday nights they go to the movies together. They stand in my line and I sell them tickets and they all greet me with respect. They’re not so much younger than myself, but it feels ages between us. They’re just starting out and most days I feel like I’m already done.

Mazie’s Diary, May 3, 1926

Rosie said: Why are they having so much fun? Why are they so goddamned happy all the time? What’s with the tittering?

I said: They’re young and full of life! Look, lady, we wanted young. And none of them are going to die on us.

Rosie said: Not unless I kill them.

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1926

Tee lives down near the water, in a narrow but tall building filled with all the other extra Theresas from her settlement. Her building is quiet, whispers all around us, the lobby barely lit. We came in off the street and it was as if Manhattan disappeared behind us. So different from all the homes I’ve had in the city, where I’ve always heard the streets below calling up to me.

The elevator was out, so we climbed the stairs to get to her apartment on the top floor. Round and round. A maiden high in a castle, was what I was thinking. As soon as we entered her apartment, she took off her headpiece. She looks so young without it. That blond hair hanging about her shoulders. A real blonde, not a fake one like me.

The room is as small as she promised. Dark gray walls, two square windows, one with a view of the Woolworth Building. I asked her if the lights kept her up at night and she said she didn’t need much sleep.

I said: That’s right. Who needs sleep?

She said: When there’s so much to be done.

There was a hot plate in the room, and a small card table for dining. One giant painting of Jesus, and a few smaller ones. A single bed, a wooden frame, one small pillow, a wool blanket. A bookshelf, books in Latin. A Bible on a nightstand. I realized Tee doesn’t have much more than the people she helps.

Next to the Bible there was a framed photograph of Tee with her parents, standing in front of a waterfall, somewhere upstate I imagined, where her people are from. Her hair was all around her shoulders, and she was young and smiling. Tee, before sisterhood.

She cracked a window and put on some stew. I bought some bread at the market yesterday morning, and we barely used our spoons as we ate, just hunks of bread soaked in stew. We sucked our fingers. It was salty and I liked it. When we were done, we pushed the bowls to the center of the table.

I noticed the ring on her wedding finger. Married to Christ. I took her hand in mine and twirled the ring. I asked her if she always knew she had her calling.

She said: I think my parents wanted something else for me. I’m an only child. They dreamed of me getting married, and giving them a grandchild or two to dote upon.

I said: You never wanted that?

She said: I always dreamed of the stars and the heavens, and that someone was looking down on me, watching over me. My daydreams were about God.

I said: Do you really love him?

She said: I do. I truly do. My heart feels full when I think of him.

I had no response. My heart was full of so many things and yet not one thing at all.

She said: Who do you love?

I thought of the Captain.

I said: No one. Or no one like that.

Now she was holding my hand.

She said: I’m not trying to convert you. I accept you for who you are. But I would like to help you.

Instantly I was angry. She’s always making me angry. Whenever she tries to help me I can’t stand it. I don’t want anyone to help me. I don’t want her to think she knows better than me. I pulled my hand away from her.

She said: I’m not trying to change you. I swear to you, Mazie. I only care for you. I know you have secrets. You don’t have to tell them to me. You never have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m not your confessor. I’m your friend.

I said: Yes, you’re my friend. Not my parent, not my god. Nothing like that.

She said: I said I’m not. I know I’m not.

I said: Fine. You’re not.

I started to calm down. It was quiet there in her apartment. Just the moon and the Woolworth Building. What was I going to do with all my anger anyway? Was I gonna strike her? No. I love her.

She said: But you could tell your secrets to someone else. No one would have to know. It might make you feel better. Just to talk to someone.

I told her I’d think about it. That’s all she was looking for. Just so she knew I heard her. I’ll never do it, though. Trust a stranger? What a hoot. Plus, that’s what this diary’s for.

Before I left I gave her a gift, a stack of True Romances. She laughed at me.

She said: What am I going to do with these?

I said: For when you get bored with Jesus.

She said: Never will I tire of my savior.

I said: Boy oh boy, you and your savior.

She took them anyway. I know she likes them. I saw that juicy gleam in her eye. Who doesn’t love a little dirt? Surely she can’t dream only of him at night.

Mazie’s Diary, June 18, 1926

A postcard from Jeanie.

I’ll be in the Bay Area for the foreseeable future, darling. There’s money to be made here. Big crowds every night. Come visit if you please.

California’s on the bottom of my list of things to do, right after jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge for a nice swim. Wish she’d give us a ring though. I’d like to hear her voice.

George Flicker

This is something I never mentioned to Mazie or Rosie at the time because it all had seemed rather delicate, and I don’t like to get into anybody’s personal family business unless it’s offered to me or asked of me or they’re my own blood or what have you. But I had a cousin named Morrie who saw Jeanie perform in San Francisco, at a place called the Capri. It was maybe not a nice club, is what Morrie said. I said, “Well then what were you doing there?” “Ohhhh, I got dragged there.” Okay. Whatever you say, Morrie. She danced with a fan, and then she danced without a fan. It could have been worse. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. Live long enough, you’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt. It costs you nothing.

And who really cares what kind of dancing she did? Who cares, I say. Do you care? I didn’t think so.

Mazie’s Diary, July 1, 1926

I don’t believe in hell but I’m probably going there anyway.

Just to make Tee happy I went to confession. I said all that forgive me father nonsense she taught me.

It’s hard to believe the man listening on the other side won’t run and blab all my secrets to any bum on the street. So I only told him a few. Just to see how it felt. I told him about some of the lovers I’ve had around town.

But if I’m really going to be confessing here, I was bragging more than anything else.

I tried not to laugh. I tried! Heard him grumbling. Finally he asked me if there was anything else.

I said: So much more. So many more.

I hustled out of there and straight to Finny’s. I gave it a shot anyway.

I know there are other things Tee thinks I should be talking about. But I ain’t ready yet, might never be. I still can’t tell if they’re a burden or a comfort, these secrets of mine. Is it going to make me feel better or worse if someone knows the truth about me?

George Flicker

It was a strange thing, this being Catholic all of a sudden. Look, I don’t think she was 100 percent Catholic, whatever that means anyway. But she was always palling around with that nun, you’d see them walking in the streets, arm in arm, whispering in each other’s ear. And she definitely went to church, here and there. She prayed to that guy. I don’t know if she went all the way and converted, or anything like that. The strangest part of all of it was Mazie believing in any sort of organized anything, because that family had not stepped foot inside a synagogue in years, if ever.

But you know, whatever works. I believe in that. Whatever works, whatever gives you hope.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1926

Twenty-nine now.

New home. Always a new home. There’s nothing new about a new home. What would be new is if we stayed somewhere.

Pete Sorensen

So after her twenty-ninth birthday, this is right about when the diary starts to drop off for a while. I had one theory, which was Mazie was sad the Captain didn’t show up again, and so she just got real quiet. She was hoping for it but didn’t want to say it out loud. Maybe it’s something she prayed for, but just couldn’t tell anyone about it.

I had this other theory that all the excitement happens when we’re younger. Everything feels so big then because you’re learning all the important lessons. When I toured with my band, I was twenty-two and twenty-three and it was, like, every day my mind got blown with a new experience. Mostly it was a new girl, but that counts, right? [Laughs.] Then I was twenty-four and it started to feel familiar, and then I was twenty-five and none of it felt new anymore. My brain slowed, the world slowed. I stopped seeing things with fresh eyes. I started to realize what I knew.

After that, we really only see her checking in three or four times a year for a while. But she doesn’t miss her birthday too often. I’m not big on them myself; I don’t like all the fuss. You know, maybe knock back a beer with your buddies. But I get it; it’s a way to mark time. When your life’s too busy, it forces you to check in with yourself. Or when it feels all the same all the time, maybe it can make you feel special. I’m not knocking Mazie for caring about her birthday.

But I really started missing that time, those days of hers that were gone that I was never going to know about. I wanted to see everything she saw. Also I was worried about everyone. I was like, how’s Rosie, how’s Jeanie, how’s Tee? I felt a little greedy, like why couldn’t I know everything about their time. How would you like it if someone you cared about just disappeared on you?

Mazie’s Diary, April 4, 1927

6 Clinton Street. A married couple beneath us, older than us, no children. He’s a librarian, and she’s a teacher. Jews. Quiet, smart Jews. They seem kind.

She said: Maybe I’ll borrow some books.

I said: Maybe you’ll learn something from them.

She said: What do they know that I don’t? You think they’re smarter than me?

I don’t care what she thinks. There’s a bakery next door, and when we open our windows every morning, in comes the smell of bread. I wear the scent all over me, and it lasts for hours.

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1927

Tee showed up late at the cage. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. Rapped her wee knuckles on the cage. Her skin was pink.

I said: To what do I owe the pleasure?

She said: No reason. It’s just a nice night. Walk me home. Talk to me about the world.

She was coming from a shelter. She seemed down. I knew I should go home to Rosie, but it cost me nothing to give a little of my love to Tee.

So we walked downtown, through Park Row, past City Hall, down Broadway. We talked about all the money in this town lately, more than usual it seemed. Everyone’s so giddy but it can’t last. The city’s pregnant with hope, but only that. New construction everywhere we looked. It’s made of air, this money, this wealth. It’s not real.

I told her about this new film Rudy’s talking about, coming out this fall. A talking movie. He thinks everything’s going to change. Tee told me nothing will change for those less fortunate, the poor and the hungry. She never lets up, that Tee. But I couldn’t argue with her.

She asked about the new apartment, if we’d be staying awhile. I told her Rosie’s fine for now, but I’m never sure of anything with her. I don’t think she sleeps anymore at all, but I can’t be certain.

I said: I never unpack all my boxes.

She said: And how does that make you feel?

I said: I’m used to it now. I miss some of my shoes though.

That made her laugh. My vanity entertains her.

We stopped in front of the Seton Shrine. Her favorite of all the saints. Tee loves her because she started an entire school system, and she helped poor children, too.

I said: You’re as good as she is.

Then we were at her house.

She said: Come up, I’ve got chocolates.

I said: Slow down, slow down. Chocolates? You’re a wild one, Sister Tee.

It’s been a long time since I’ve slept there, and only twice before. Rosie doesn’t like it when I don’t come home at night. We sleep together not as sisters, but not as lovers, either. She could never give in to that. She’s not as bold as me. Although there is love. And we hold each other. What comfort it is to be held, and to hold. So tiny beneath me, our chests pressed tight. We are silent, and we hold each other. I said but one thing, and I don’t know where it came from. I just sighed it out of me.

I said: You’re divine.

And then she wept.

She said: I’m not sad, I promise. It’s just the pleasure of it all.

Pete Sorensen

I kept wishing a nice guy would show up. But then I realized she had Tee.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1927

Thirty. How? Thirty.

Mazie’s Diary, February 2, 1928

Rosie says she can’t breathe the same anymore. Bad air. The wheat from the bakery, it’s in her lungs. It’s been building up for months and now it’s trapped in there. She claims.

I said: You liar.

She said: Listen. Listen to me wheeze.

I begged her. Please let me stay here. Let me stay near the fresh loaves of bread in the morning and the kind and quiet Jews with their heads in books and the Bowery up the road.

I said: We were getting comfortable. Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel calm?

She said: I can’t breathe.

Mazie’s Diary, April 1, 1928

The hustling I do. 14 Division Street. Over Louis’s aunt Josie’s dress shop. The only apartment in the building. Just us and Josie. A kitchen cut from diamonds. A window out onto the markets. New dresses for Rosie every day if she likes. New dresses for me as well.

I said: We will stay here, Rosie.

She said: We’ll see.

Am I allowed to unpack? Can we look inside these boxes at last?

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1928

Jeanie called! Jeanie. Happy Birthday to me.

I said: Sister, how are you?

She said: Sister, all is well. Things are just dreamy and easy out here in California. I dance and play all day.

I said: That’s living.

She said: I miss you though. I always miss you.

We both started crying like crazy. A fella came up to get a ticket for the two o’clock show and I shut the curtain on him, yelled at him to come back later. He knocked on the window and I growled at him.

I said: Don’t make me come out there. I will smite you.

Jeanie said: You’re still working too hard.

I said: Someone’s got to pay the bills around here.

She said: How’s Rosie?

I said: Why don’t you call her and find out?

She said: I might do that.

I know she won’t. It’s foolish, the two of them not talking like that. Jeanie’s scared, I know it. You don’t get to break someone’s heart twice like that and get off scot-free. You have to walk through a little fire first.

Mazie’s Diary, January 1, 1929

I thought I’d see Tee, wish her the best for a New Year, but she’s nowhere, disappeared. It’s been weeks. No Christmas either. I had a gift for her. A small scented pillow for her head. I’ll keep it in the cage. She’ll show up someday.

Mazie’s Diary, February 9, 1929

I took my lunch break in Chinatown, I wanted to see the parade for the Chinese New Year. I’d heard the men banging their drums all the way from Park Row. The brash clash of the cymbals made me feel proud, and I don’t even have anything to brag about. But their pride was enough to buoy me.

It was snowing, but that didn’t stop anything. The gold and red dragon stomping down Canal Street, the white flakes dripping down like crisp tears. Year of the Snake, someone told me. Snakes mean wisdom. I’m going to take that as a good sign. I’ll be smarter this year. I’ll wise up this time around.

Then there was Tee at my elbow. I threw my arms around her, and nearly wouldn’t let her go. She laughed at me. She said we should keep moving, it was cold, we’d catch our death. So we walked arm in arm through Chinatown, following the parade, schoolchildren all around us, the rattle of their laughter, chattering, chasing the dragon.

I said: Where have you been?

She said: I’ve been run-down.

I said: You’re not avoiding me then?

She said: Why would I avoid you? I’ve been tired. Those moments when I’m not caring for others I’m sleeping. It’s winter. It’s cold.

I said: That’s a lot of reasons why.

She said: I wouldn’t lie to you.

I said: I know that. It was only that I wondered where you were.

She said: This is not about you. This is about those children, and the abuse that they suffer. And the tenements are a disgrace. Everything is a disgrace. I feel as if I plug one hole and another starts to leak and it is all I can do to keep myself dry, let alone those smaller or weaker than myself.

We stopped walking and the crowds following the parade passed around us. Tee looked devastated and exhausted, and I thought thinner, and older, like a withering piece of straw, and not like my sweet Tee anymore, but someone else, another girl, a sad one, one that I would pass on the street and worry if she were all right.

I said: All right, Tee, I understand.

She said: Sometimes I feel like I only have so many prayers in me.

She gasped and grabbed my arm.

She said: Don’t ever tell anyone I said that.

I said: Who would I tell?

Mazie’s Diary, February 14, 1929

A postcard from the Captain.

It said: I’m a father now.

I’ll be sure and send a present.

Pete Sorensen

Even though I wanted to know what happened, I still didn’t want to show the diaries to anyone, because it seemed like she wanted them to be a secret. I was cool with that; I respected that. It was like we would have a secret together, Mazie and me.

But then I met you, and my first thought was that you would appreciate it just because you’re such a special lady. For sure I thought you would know what to do with it, if it even made sense to do anything with it. You said you thought you could fill in the blanks, you could try to anyway, and that you could make it a project, like a professional project for yourself. I’m all about making projects for yourself.

Also we talked about how you hadn’t been passionate about anything in a while. Me, I’m passionate all the time. I’m always busy, the shop’s going well, I’ve got people working for me that I care about. Even if I’m not being hands-on all the time, I like doing the design work. Also being a good boss is a thing I care about. There are a lot of things I care about in my life, and there are people who need me just to show up every day and be me.

But all of your film projects had been a dead end. You couldn’t find funding for anything, like, arty. And even though this wasn’t a film project, you said it felt akin to what you had done in the past. You were looking for a passion project. So I said you could have the diary for a while if you thought it would help. And now here you are traipsing all over the place, tracking down anyone who has any little bit of information about Mazie.

It’s funny, isn’t it? How we can treat the same fascination so differently. I’d have daydreamed forever about her.

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1929

Tee’s sicker than I thought.

I hadn’t seen her in a month, longer, two, I lost count. I thought she disappeared on me. I thought I’d done something wrong. I thought I’d never see her face again, and that she didn’t care to see mine either. I stopped my clean living. I dug my flask out.

Rosie said: What’s wrong with you? Why you mooning about?

I thought I saw her yesterday morning from far away, another nun on a corner, talking to a wicked-looking girl. Lipstick on fire. Me, I thought. That should be me. I’m your wicked-looking girl. I waved, but she wasn’t Tee after all. She was old, much older, and she didn’t smile at me, she didn’t wave back. Where’s Tee? I was thinking it all day. I drank more than I should have. I dropped in on Finny’s after work. I hadn’t stayed out late in so long. I decided to find her, to climb up her castle.

I walked downtown, past her beloved Seton Shrine. I crossed myself in front of it even though I didn’t know what it meant to do that, but I knew it meant something. Praying she’d never abandon me, Tee wouldn’t. Not by choice. Not my Tee.

The dark lobby, the elevator down, the elevator always down. Up the stairs, my head swirling as I walked, drunk as I was. A huddle of nuns outside her room, silent but for one.

I said: Where is she, where’s Tee, where’s my friend?

And no one answered.

I said: Is it TB? I don’t care, I’ll see her anyway.

They shook their heads.

It’s not TB. Her breast is sick. The right one.

I said: Let me see her.

They didn’t stop me, I’d like to have seen them try.

She’s skin and bones, bones and skin. She’d been losing weight for a while and I hadn’t noticed. No one had noticed. Tee hadn’t told a soul she wasn’t feeling well. She’d had too much to do, is what she told me. I touched her cheek with my hand, I said her name. I leaned in close.

She said: You’re drunk.

I said: I am.

She said: Now I have to pray for you tonight all over again. Just when I thought I was done with all that.

I said: Stop it. I’m praying for you, I’m praying for you!

She said: I’ll take your prayers, Mazie. Bless you.

Then she put her hand to my cheek.

She said: But you absolutely must brush your teeth first.

I was up all night with her, now I’m home. Rosie made me breakfast, and I ate it only so I won’t be sick at work all day. Because I don’t feel like I want to eat ever again. After she fed me, she made a noise for a moment, a heartbeat of a complaint about street vendors blocking the door in the morning.

I said: We have to stop moving for a while.

Rosie said: Do you think I’m making this up? I can barely get out the front door when I need to.

I said: My friend is dying, Rosie. Tee is dying. I need to sit still for just a moment. I’m exhausted. Let me sit still. You can do whatever you want when she’s done dying. When she’s dead.

Rosie said: What if there’s a fire and I can’t get out?

I slammed my fist on the table, the only thing we’ve held on to after all those moves.

I said: Goddammit, Rosie. Goddammit. Let me sit still.

Pete Sorensen

I mean, yes, obviously, I wanted to impress you. I wanted you to see something more than just this guy who works with his hands all day. I’m an actual community college dropout, have you ever met one of me before? I’m like a total joke in the intellectual department. And you’re smart. And fancy. You look fancy. You feel fancy. You smell fancy. I thought maybe showing you this would make you feel the way about me that I felt about you. It was like an offering. It was one of the most precious things I owned, as much as anyone can own something like this. And I didn’t realize how precious it was to me until I handed it to you and never saw it again. I thought, well I’ll give it to her, and maybe I’ll have a shot. I’ll give it to her and maybe she’ll love me for it.

Mazie’s Diary, October 24, 1929

I walked down through Wall Street before I went to visit Tee. Today, I had to see today on the streets, the day Wall Street fell. People were weeping on the corners. Why is this city so beautiful when it mourns? I pretended it was all for Tee.

I said: Tee, don’t leave me.

She said: What if you don’t think about it as me leaving you? And just that I’m going to him instead?

That’s of comfort only to her.

I wrapped my arms around her. I asked her for the hundredth time if she wanted to go to the hospital and she said no, that she would die there, in her own bed.

I said: We could get you a better blanket at least. You deserve a thick blanket.

She said: I’m not better or worse than anyone else. We’re all the same.

I said: We could get you silk sheets. You should be covered in silk. You should be swimming in it.

She said: It’s all the same. It feels the same if you let it. Don’t you see that yet? It’s all the same.

I got under the blanket with her.

I said: Silk sheets, fit for a princess.

I stayed the night there. I held her and she moaned sometimes with pain and I tried not to cry. When I walked back through Wall Street this morning, the sidewalks were littered with garbage, and men in fine suits were passed out on the street, and I thought something felt different in the city, but maybe it was just me that was different, having slept on silk for the first time in my life.

Lydia Wallach

My great-grandfather ran the movie theater nearly single-handedly for a good six months while Mazie tended to a sick friend. This was noted as part of our family history because it was during this time the first of my great-uncles got sick and passed away. This would have been my great-uncle Gilbert. My great-grandfather was away from home, working at the theater, so sadly he wasn’t there when his son passed away. It happened very quickly, he got sick and died within a week. No one was to blame. But it was devastating for everyone, Rudy in particular because he felt so helpless, so absent, although I suppose no one can judge who mourns the most. But it hit him hard, harder than one of his heart attacks. My mother told me that her father told her that he was the one to run all the way to the theater to tell Rudy about it, and when he told him he watched the color drain from his face. It went from peach to yellow to white. It was the opposite of blushing, is what he told her. And he never got it back; the color never came back to his cheeks. He became a pale man, and he stayed that way for the rest of his life.

Elio Ferrante

Without Sister Tee’s last name it’s impossible to find out any information, and even with it I kind of suspect it would be tricky because the place where she worked closed in 1960. I found out a few things about this place, the Mercy House. It was a settlement house on Cherry Street, not far from Knickerbocker Village, and it was founded in the late 1800s to help immigrants. Basically they fed and clothed poor families, housed the homeless, took care of sick people in their homes. The usual good works. I wish I could have found a record of her. Sometimes I guess we just forget people. Even if their work isn’t forgotten or at least felt in some way.

Mazie’s Diary, January 5, 1930

The Captain came back.

I thought I didn’t want to see him anymore. I’d written him out of the story of my life. He’s gone, he had a baby. He’s not coming to New York City ever again, or if he is it’s with his new family. Good-bye, good riddance, good night. That was how I wanted the story to end. But I can’t lie to myself, at least not here. I was glad to see him in that line. I’ve known him for so many years. We’ve lain in each other’s arms, we’ve shared our flesh with each other. He knew me when I was but a girl, and I knew him when he was the handsomest man in the world.

He’s not a Captain anymore, not sailing the seas anyway. Now he’s a businessman, working for his wife’s father. No uniform. Just a regular Joe, even if he’s a rich one.

I said: How’s business?

He said: We’ll survive this mess. People need cars.

I said: Can’t we just walk instead?

He said: You’ve lived in Manhattan your whole life. You don’t know what the rest of the country is like. Even if they don’t need cars, people want cars.

He asked me to dinner, and I said yes. We ate steak. He insisted upon it. He told me I needed the vitamins.

He said: You look pale and thin.

I said: I’ve been in mourning.

He said: For whom?

I said: For everyone.

He said: I’m sorry.

I couldn’t eat any more after that.

He said: Come back with me to my hotel. I’m worried about you. Let me comfort you.

I said: You’re a father now.

He said: So?

I said: I don’t know why that makes a difference to me, but it does.

He said: We don’t have to do anything. We could just hold each other.

I laughed so hard at that the entire restaurant turned and looked at me, and then I waved at the lot of them.

He said: All right, all right. You don’t need to cause a scene.

I said: I’ll come back with you.

He said: Are you sure?

Once I told him I was mourning, I knew I couldn’t go home, not right away. I’ve been sad for so long there. All of my sadness is wrapped up in that bed, that kitchen, that woman in the other bedroom. This diary.

And worse comes to worst, I’d have a roll in the hay with a handsome man.

So I went with him to his hotel, a nicer one than usual, nicer than when he was just a seaman. Uptown, a bellman with shiny buttons and downcast eyes. Deferring to the rich man.

There was whiskey on the table, and the room smelled of fruit. We sat next to each other, and he kissed me on my cheek and neck. I didn’t mean to, but I tittered anyway.

He said: You’re still a beauty.

I sighed, and then I held his hands for a moment.

I said: Could we do what you said? Would you just hold me?

He said: Mazie, what’s wrong? What happened to my good-time girl?

I said: I’m sad.

I started to cry and he told me not to and he kissed me again and I said there was no way to stop, that I must cry, I must.

He said: Then if you must, I am going to have to insist you tell me everything. You can’t go halfway. Let’s just finish this. Tell me now or forever hold your peace. Just get rid of it, and then we’ll be done.

So I told him about Louis dying, and how he had been a criminal, and how he had made me a criminal too, in one way or another, but that I had not fought too hard against it. And it started to feel good, to say these things, even as sad and awful as they were. I told him that my sister had gone mad years ago and I tried to help her as much as I could, but also that I hated her, too, I hated her for making me suffer as much as she did. I told him that Tee had died, and that I had loved her, and now that love was gone, and that I had tried so hard to be the person she wanted me to be and it hadn’t mattered in the end, she died anyway, and what was the point in being your very best if all love dies?

He said: Not all love dies. Here I am with you now. Here we are together, Mazie.

It didn’t feel real to me when he said that. He was listening but he wasn’t hearing me, or he was saying the thing he thought I wanted to hear, but that wasn’t it at all. It was not the right thing. And so I told him finally about the baby I had lost, nearly eight years ago, the baby that had been his. I told him how I had kept the baby a secret except from my family, and that I would have given it to Rosie and Louis to keep as their own, and he started to say something but then he stopped himself because I saw him working it out in his head, that there was a baby, and then there wasn’t, and I told him that the baby had died, died inside of me while I slept, and I told him about the mattress, how it was suddenly soaked with blood, how it turned red, I woke up, and it was red and sticky and I was wet with my blood, the insides of me turned out, and I had bled so much I nearly died, but also it wasn’t just losing all the blood that was killing me, it was the sadness, and the guilt, and the broken heart.

This was when he started to cry. He asked if it had been a boy or a girl and I told him a boy. He told me that he was sorry I had gone through that and if he had known I was with child he would have done the right thing by me and I told him that we had only met once, there was no right thing or wrong thing, and it was a good thing he hadn’t because he’d probably be sitting in a hotel room with a different woman now, being the kind of man he was. That stung him, and I didn’t mean to sting him, only I suppose I did. He told me there was no need for that, and I apologized.

He said: It was my child too.

I said: It’s nobody’s baby anymore.

The next part came from a place of sadness and us both being animals like we are. We removed just enough clothing for us to put all our parts together. I wasn’t even wet enough for him to fit inside me easily but then very suddenly I was. I didn’t look at him and he didn’t look at me. I stared out over his shoulder, my legs wrapped around the small of his back. I couldn’t tell if it was making me feel better or worse. Better, worse, worse, better. It didn’t seem possible that I could feel either.

After, I couldn’t stay there with him. I didn’t want to wake up in his arms. I didn’t want to talk to him anymore about the things I had just told him. I told him I had to leave, and he didn’t argue, because he was thinking his own thoughts, about his lost son, probably, and the son he had now. I told him I’d see him around and he said the same and it was like a good-bye only more like a lie.

And then I walked home from his hotel, all the way downtown, and it was cold, and it tasted bitter, and I liked it. And then I saw it, truly, for the first time, the way this city has changed. It’s lost its pride. There’s bums everywhere, and there’s drunks everywhere, and it’s filthy, and people are hungry. It’s not just in the tenements, it’s everywhere. I ain’t never seen anything like it. I was lifting my skirt up over the men in the gutters, but there were children there too, and women, and they were spread out all over the island. Maybe I’ve been blind because I’ve been mourning, or maybe I’ve just been trapped in my little cage for too long, because it is only just now that I am seeing how much trouble this city of mine is in.

I thought of Tee walking next to me, and what she would have thought about it all. Her habit gathered up around her as she bent to help. We never would have made it home, she would have stopped and helped each person. She couldn’t turn down a soul.

I fished in my pocket, and I squatted down next to a man on the sidewalk. There was a cut on his cheek. Stubble, dirt, dried blood. Blood on his collar and coat. He was shivering. Everyone on the streets was shivering.

I handed him a quarter.

I said: This is for a bed to sleep in.

I handed him another quarter.

I said: This is for a meal.

I handed him a final quarter.

I said: And this is for a drink or two.

That last part Tee wouldn’t have approved of, but Tee never knew how to have a good time.

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

The younger ones still have a chance to change their lives, and I’ll lend them a hand if they like. But too many of the older men, they’ve been on the road so long they wouldn’t know what to do with a proper home if they had one. The concrete feels right under their bodies. Their discomfort has become their comfort.

Elio Ferrante

Is it weird that I love teaching the Depression the most out of all the eras? I think part of it has to do with it being the most. Like it was the longest and the worst and it was global and terrible, and these kids only know how to pay attention to superlatives. Also the idea of businessmen jumping out of buildings freaks them out. Breadlines freak them out, too. A lot of these kids have had experience with food stamps, and then I get to tell them it was because of the Depression that food stamps were even created in the first place. This speaks to them. The image of New York City in trouble, with so many people down on their luck, that genuinely speaks to them also. They weren’t here for the seventies and eighties, which is when I was a kid, and when New York City was still, pardon my language, a shit show. But the idea that it exists, that so much of New York City was in trouble that there were breadlines everywhere, it freaks them out, it makes them pay attention, and more than anything I like it when I have a classroom of eyeballs facing forward. All those heads up, listening to what I have to say, I love it. I wish I could teach the Depression all year long.

Mazie’s Diary, February 1, 1930

Now I’m back regular at the theater, and Rudy and I met this morning about business. He said it’s no good. First, people were coming to the theater to forget their worries, but now the money’s run out. He thinks it’ll be bad for a while. Gloom and doom on that poor man’s face. Pale-faced Rudy, he is. The faintest sliver of a man.

I said to Rudy: We’ll run it at a loss for a while if we have to. We’re not closing this theater down. We won’t put the people who’ve worked here out on their behinds like everybody else.

I talked to Rosie about it all over dinner tonight.

I said: Who knows when it will pick up?

She said: We won’t close it.

I said: No, of course we won’t.

She said: I’ll sell all my jewelry, and whatever else I need to. Louis loved that theater.

I said: And those people are our family.

She said: I don’t even understand why we’re having this discussion.

I said: I only wanted to make sure. We choose this, there’s no unchoosing it.

She said: You and I disagree about a lot of things, Mazie, but I think we can both agree we will not send our people out on the streets until the last dime is gone.

Ah, I loved her then. I loved my Rosie.

Lydia Wallach

They kept the theater running for two years at a loss, paying people out of their own savings. Supposedly they had plenty of money, she and her sister. Secret stashes of cash here and there. But still, to support an entire staff like that.

Mazie’s Diary, February 15, 1930

There was no line at the theater today, we sold three tickets in the morning, and that’s it. Same as yesterday, and the week before, and the week before that. I decided to check out the competition. Everyone was standing in line instead at the Bowery Mission.

I wrapped myself up in my warm cloak, and brought an extra pack of smokes with me, thought I’d hand them out if anyone was craving one. I hadn’t seen the lines up close yet, or maybe I’ve seen them and just wasn’t paying attention. I wore gloves and a scarf and a hat and the new wool winter cloak Rosie gave me in December, and I walked briskly, I swung my arms, and still I felt the chill. And I was thinking if I’m cold, how are those fellas doing?

I walked the line, nodding at the gents. So many of them had suitcases with them and if I didn’t know any better I would have thought they were heading on a trip. But instead they were just carrying whatever they had left, what little remained in their lives.

I knew I’d seen some of them around before. Some of them were hustlers, but some of them were just regular old Joes from the neighborhood, working stiffs without any work, just stiff now. I couldn’t name them, I couldn’t place them exactly, and I thought maybe I was even making it up, them being familiar. But then a couple of them tipped their hats at me, and a few of them said my name. How do, Miss Mazie. So I knew I was right. These were my customers, starving on the streets. I offered out cigarettes to the fellas, and some of them took more than one and I didn’t say a thing.

One of them touched my arm and I turned to him, offered him the pack.

He said: It’s me, Mazie. It’s William. From Finny’s. Do you remember me? It’s been a while, I know.

It was Hungry William, who had savaged my breasts a few years ago. The bites and the bruises, how could I forget him?

I said: Oh, William, of course. I’d know you anywhere.

I was girlish and flirtatious. I wanted to make him feel special right then. He took a smoke, told me that he was down on his luck like everyone else.

I said: Even the bankers have fallen.

He said: Especially the bankers. But I was not so much a banker as a bank clerk, I must admit to you. And now I’m nothing.

He started to cry, standing right there in the line. I felt all hot and teary too. I touched his face. I remembered him as so rough and arrogant, I couldn’t stand to see him as anything but that. There’s not much I ask for in this world anymore, but I want my memories to remain intact.

I said: William, don’t be sad. We had such a good time together, think about that.

He said: There’s no more good times left for me.

I pulled my flask from my coat.

I said: Drink this, it’ll warm you up.

He sipped from it but then other lads yelled for it, and it was gone in a flash. Everyone was sipping. I couldn’t deny them a thing. After the flurry of cigarettes and booze there was nothing left for them to do but stand there in the cold, some of them jumping up and down to keep warm, others hunched over, arms wrapped around themselves. I started to feel it, too, the cold to the bone.

I said: Listen, when you’re done here, you come see me at the theater, I’ll let you in for free. All of you lads, you come in, warm up, see a show, it’ll take your mind off your problems. In no time you’ll feel better. It’s on me, you hear?

They all let out a cheer. I know it’s just temporary, a temporary gift for them. I can’t have them in there every day. I’ll never get another decent customer in if I do. But for one day, I can let these fellas warm themselves under my roof.

Later on Rudy told me half of them slept through the entire movie.

Mazie’s Diary, February 16, 1930

I don’t know if we’ve ever had a fight before, Rudy and me, but letting the bums on the outside in, he isn’t having it. Early this morning, before I opened up the cage, he asked me inside. We sat in the balcony. I hadn’t been in the theater for nearly ten years. I’d forgotten what it looked like. Some theater owner I am. The screen was dark, and the lights were dim, and I was thinking that was for the best, that I wouldn’t want to look too close at anything. The air felt thick and dusty, like maybe I could hold it in my hand. But I could be wrong about everything. It smelled fine in there, not moldy, not boozy. And the chairs were still plush beneath me. Nice seats, high-class seats. Those seats were good enough for me and anyone else who walked through that door. Which was the point I was about to make.

Rudy said: We’re not a shelter or a flophouse, Mazie.

I said: I know we’re not. But they were the same as you and me six months ago. They had jobs and homes and money in their pockets. We’re no better than them. This city is just stricken.

Rudy said: People think we’re letting the bums run the place they’ll never come back again, even when they do have money.

I said: You know what the movies mean to you. Now think what it will mean to these fellas, too broke to have any kind of treat for themselves.

He said: You want to talk about what the movies mean to people? I don’t want to be rude but a lot of them, they’re not clean. It’s not their fault, but would you want to sit next to someone who doesn’t smell so great? You’ve saved up your pennies, some fella’s taking a girl he wants to impress, or this is your birthday present from your husband, say, and it’s a big night out on the town and, Mazie, you’re sitting in a theater filled with guys who haven’t washed in a week or two because they’re sleeping on the streets. I mean, who’s coming back for that? What’s going to happen to our business?

I heard him. I heard everything he said. It’s his business too, he’s put his whole self into it for so long. Front of the house is me, back of the house is Rudy. I know it. It’s the deal we made. But I’m breaking the rules.

I said: I’ll remind you it’s my business, Rudy.

He said: Mazie, please.

I said: It won’t be forever. And it won’t be all of them. Only the ones that can behave themselves.

He said: And how will you know?

I said: I’ve been looking at these lines of people for ten years. I know.

Mazie’s Diary, April 7, 1930

William’s been showing up every day to the Venice. Filching smokes off me, sometimes I’ll hand him change, and once I brought him a tiny bar of soap from home, didn’t say nothing, just slid it over to him. He nods, I nod. Rudy told me he snoozes quietly in the balcony for a show or two. I never even see him leave.

Sometimes I can’t tell if he’s drunk or just sad. It’s not a mystery I want to solve. I’ve no judgment either way, only I just want to know how to help him, if I can even help him. I know some of these lads you just have to give up on. But how can I give up on the one who sucked at my tit?

Mazie’s Diary, April 15, 1930

Haven’t seen William in a week. Asked around, nothing. Now he’s not even showing up in the mornings. I think I’ll walk the street tonight, see if I can find him. I don’t want him to get lost in the shuffle.

Mazie’s Diary, April 16, 1930

No William, but oh those streets, they’re good for no one at night. The bodies all around, not dead, but some of them seemed barely alive. Passed out, skin and bones beneath their filthy clothes. I gave them all I had in my pockets and kept digging to see if I could find more.

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1930

I found him tonight, in an alley off the Bowery, bleeding from his lip, a torn shirt, bleeding from there too. Some vomit down the front of him. He said he’d had work on a train and then he’d spent every cent he made, and what he didn’t spend a buddy of his had stolen from him the night before. And now here he was, bleeding in an alley. I waited with him till the ambulance came, and then I had a drink at Finny’s and then another, and then another, and I let a man walk me home and kiss me good night and touch my behind but I’d seen too much blood tonight to do any more than that.

Mazie’s Diary, May 4, 1930

Went to Tee’s church early this morning because I missed her. I sat through mass, and thought about her believing in those words. I confessed, and I did it with sincerity, and it felt good to speak some truth. Then I crossed myself in front of the shrine to see what the air felt like under my fingertips, if it changed, but it did not. The air is always the same. And I remembered I was still me.

Mazie’s Diary, July 8, 1930

Rosie’s back at her old tricks. It’s been months of it. I can’t move again. I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Oh, this block is dangerous now. Oh, that mission around the corner is bringing all the riffraff here. Oh, we should leave the city, move to Boston, move back to Coney Island, move uptown, move to Brooklyn, move where it’s safe and nobody’s hungry.

I said: Rosie, people are hungry all over this country.

She said: I know, I know! But that doesn’t mean I have to live among them.

I said: We used to live in a house with dirt on the floor. We ain’t no better than them.

She said: I don’t feel safe on this here block.

I said: You crazy old broad, you’re tougher than I am. Nothing scares you.

She said: If you were home more I’d feel safer. Especially at night.

I said: I can’t be home any more than I already am.

She said: I know where you go at night. I know where you go!

But how do I say to her that I need a drink at the end of the day? That a little hooch warms me, like I’m velvet on the inside and out. And that I need the company of men, that flirting feeds me better than her beef stew. Jesus, I need to remember what it’s like to be a woman and not just a bird in a cage. Tee’s gone now. Can I have this one thing? This one part of the day to be mine.

Mazie’s Diary, August 1, 1930

No one’s asking for change for a flop, it’s too hot. In the winter it’s all they dream of, getting warm. In the summer I’m noticing they don’t mind sleeping on the streets. It’s cooler outside than in one of those airless flops. They’ll take the dirt, they’ll take the sweat, over choking on the bad air. They’d rather pass out in the night breeze. Change for a meal, change for a drink, but no change for a home, not tonight anyway.

Mazie’s Diary, September 2, 1930

Jeanie called, said she’s been sick, hasn’t been able to dance, and crowds have been dying down. She’s in Chicago again, and that leg of hers is aching from the chill that rises off the big lake. I said I’d send her some money.

She said: That’s not why I called. I’m not begging for money.

I said: No one said you’re a beggar. I’m just offering. I have it. There doesn’t need to be a fuss about it.

She said: I don’t want you to think I can’t take care of myself.

I said: You’ve been away long enough that’s not even a question.

She said: I worry what you think of me.

I said: That’s a first.

I got sharp with her. I knew she was just playing a game with me. She’d called for money, plain and simple. I told her not to kid a kidder and she asked for a hundred and I sent it her way.

George Flicker

What happened was my father died very suddenly — this was in the summer of 1930—and it was devastating for everyone because he was such a good man, though he was not a young man, so at least we could all say, “Oh, he led a good life,” that sort of thing. Still, it was just awful, because he was so beloved. And then my mother died soon after that because she couldn’t live without him, and this was another devastation, because say what you will about my mother — and people had said plenty — she was a real force in the universe. Although no one was walking around saying, “Oh, she lived a good life,” because she never seemed particularly happy.

So then it was just me and Uncle Al in that tiny apartment. Even with less people in it, it still felt full. One day I asked Al if he thought it was haunted by my parents. I was just kidding around with him. And he said, “Of course. Where else would they go?” I don’t think I had fully recognized what was going on with Al, how bad he had gotten, because my mother was the one monitoring the situation; it was her full-time job. I’d been sent out more than a few times to pick him up if he was sleeping in a park somewhere, and I know that it made my mother feel more secure with me being back home, but I wasn’t home enough to know the complete reality. So when they passed, I found my whole life turned on its head. I had to watch my uncle Al. Now, he was lucid most days, very smart with his head in the books, always the intellectual, but also he was sleeping on the streets half the time. He was too skinny and he had awful bruises. And I just didn’t feel comfortable letting the man wither, especially after my parents had just passed. I’m a human being. We’re all human beings. We look after each other.

It was either I had to watch him, or I had to check him into a mental institution of some sort, and I wasn’t in the financial position to do that, not yet anyway. It would have had to be somewhere sort of high class, not some awful state institution. I knew Al would never survive in a place like that; I’d heard those operations were miserable, real torture chambers. No way, not for my uncle Al.

What I was doing was, I was working all day for Frederick French, who was a very famous and successful developer at the time, but of course someone you have never heard of before because you are a child. This was just before he started on Knickerbocker Village, but he had numerous other properties in development. I was at the bottom of the totem pole but that was fine, I just wanted to get my foot in the door. I didn’t want to work in ties for the rest of my life. How far can you really go with ties? So I’d work from very early in the morning till early evening, and then I’d go home, and if all was well in the world, Al’d be sitting there waiting for me. And we’d have dinner, and maybe we’d go for a stroll through the neighborhood, us bachelors, and maybe we’d have a drink. Also on nice nights we’d go to Washington Square Park so Al could play chess, and I’d smoke a cigar and watch him destroy those poor schmoes who dared to take him on. These were the best nights, and I had sort of resigned myself to this kind of life, at least as long as Al was alive.

But if all was not well with the world, I would come home, and there’d be no Al. And I’d have to hunt the streets looking for him. If I got lucky, he was down the block, or he was playing chess, or he was at the library. If I wasn’t lucky, it could take hours and hours, or I wouldn’t find him at all, and then I’d just be sleepless. It wasn’t that the cops were beating him up anymore, they’d sort of forgotten why they were even mad at him in the first place; they’d found someone new to pick on I guess. It was just that he was damaged goods. He was an easy target. Someone else could beat him up or rob him and he wouldn’t fight them off. And the streets were getting rougher. People were desperate. I lived in fear for Al.

One of the places I’d look for Al was Finny’s, which no longer exists of course. The last time I checked, and this was more than a few years ago, it was a head shop. But at the time Finny’s was one of those untouchable joints. Prohibition or not, there was always Finny’s. The cops liked it; I think that helped. I wasn’t much of a drinker before then, and I wasn’t after, but for that period of time, those darkest days with Al, I can admit I sought some relief in a glass of beer. Oh, I was depressed, I guess. I had work, I was one of the lucky ones, but it seemed like no one else did. People were starving on the streets. We were all sad.

On top of that it seemed like my youth was passing me by in service of this man who did not seem to want to be helped. Of course he wanted his freedom. Of course he did! Who among us would want to have to sit at home and wait for someone? But I’d had this dream that eventually I would settle down, I’d get married, I’d have kids, I’d build this life that wasn’t expected of me but that I expected of myself. But instead I was just chasing Al around every night.

Now the other person walking the streets checking on the lost souls, as you know, was Mazie. The early thirties, she was just starting to become the person she was going to be, if that makes any sense. I guess she was a bit of an eccentric too. I mean what kind of woman wanders the streets like that? At least that’s what everyone used to talk about at Finny’s. Sure, there was a hypocrisy there. Why was I allowed to and she wasn’t? Well she was doing it anyway, so it doesn’t matter what any of us thought.

Mazie’s Diary, October 5, 1930

The lads at Finny’s like to tease me about walking the streets. Like I’m a streetwalker, a real one. Oh Mazie’s got a new part-time job, ho ho ho. Last night I twisted one of their ears, and I saw tears in his eyes, though he wouldn’t admit it.

I said: I’m a queen, and don’t you ever forget it.

He said he wouldn’t.

George Flicker was there, too. I’ve always liked him fine, even though he spends half the conversation staring at my bosom. Once in a while I take his face in my hand and lift it up to meet my eyes. I don’t think it’s funny, and neither does he, but we both laugh anyway. I’d get mad at anyone else, but I’ve known him too long. I know he’s not a bad sort. I think he’s a good sort, actually. Except for the wandering eye.

Last night I sat with him after I twisted that man’s ear.

He said: I know why I’m walking the streets but what about you? It’s not safe out there for a lady. I don’t listen to these jokers over here. I know you’re a real lady.

I started talking and I didn’t stop till I was done. I wish I could remember what I said! I was in a frenzy.

George Flicker

She gave me this speech once and I’ll never forget it. It was this especially rough night at Finny’s, the guys were teasing her. These were the days they still teased her. She was still young and pretty enough that they cared to bother. Isn’t that an awful thing to say? Well I’m old now, and I know the truth, so I can say it. So they’re teasing her, saying she’s a streetwalker, getting customers, whatnot. And she socked some guy in the ear I think. She said, “I’m the queen!” And everyone started laughing. So I offered her this safe haven with me at a corner table. But I’d been drinking and I couldn’t leave it alone. I asked her why she did what she did when she could have just stayed home safe.

And she said, “These are dark days, Georgie. The city’s lost its pride. And what does it cost me to buy these fellas a drink or two? Or to give them some soap to clean up with, or to buy them a place to rest their heads for the night? It’s change that I already got in my pocket. What else am I going to do with it? Buy another dress? I got a whole closet full. Go on vacation? Where would I go? I live in the best city in the world. Buy myself a fancy dinner? Give me my sister’s cooking any old time. No, my change goes to these fellas on the streets. I used to give my money away to strangers, I didn’t want to look them in the face, I didn’t want to know where it went. Now I want to know where it’s going. I want to make sure it’s making some kind of difference. I walk these streets because I want to help. Why is that so hard to understand?”

She got pretty emotional. She wiped some tears from her eyes. I handed her my kerchief. Then she said, “Is it so hard to believe I could be a good person?”

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1930

I’m thirty-three now.

Rosie gave me a walking stick for my birthday.

I said: What’s this for?

She said: I know your back bothers you, and it doesn’t look like you’ll stop walking those streets anytime soon. This’ll help.

I held the stick in my hand. It’s a fine, lacquered dark wood.

She said: I know what you do.

I said: Do you now.

She said: Everyone knows you’re out there helping those bums.

I stood and practiced with it. I stood up straighter immediately.

She said: You’re a good girl, Mazie.

I said: I’m no girl any longer.

She said: Well you’re my girl, and you always will be.

George Flicker

Another time I remember her telling me about Rosie. I strolled into Finny’s and there she was, and I tipped my hat at her, and she patted the seat next to her, and it made me feel special, and a little tight in the pants if I must be honest here. I don’t mean to make you blush, honey. Those early sexual desires inform everything. This is what Freud said. I don’t know much about psychology but I do know what Freud said, doesn’t everyone? And that little boy in me, he liked having Mazie ask him to sit next to her. I asked her what the good word was, and she said, “I got nothing good. The streets are dire and my sister’s a loon as usual.” I said, “What’s the problem, Mazie? Moving day again?” She looked shocked that I knew about it. Maybe a little embarrassed too, I guess. I said, “Not to make a joke out of it.” She said, “I just didn’t know it was common knowledge.” I said, “I work in the business. I’m sorry. Plus I worry about you girls. No man to look out for you.” I thought I’d give it a shot, show a little bravado, see what I could get out of it. “A man to look after us isn’t what we need,” she said. “A man for her to look after is what she needs. Just so she can leave me alone already. I’d marry her off in a second if I could, but she’d never go for it. She’ll love Louis till the day she dies.”

Mazie’s Diary, December 3, 1930

Called an ambulance tonight, and both the attendants were cold to the poor bum. There was a bigger one, an enormous man, who was strong enough to carry the bum in his arms, but he was just flipping him around, dragging him a bit on the ground.

I said: He’s blue in the lips, how about some respect already?

He said: He can’t feel it anyway. Look at him, he’s passed out cold.

I said: Be humane.

I growled it really, and then he listened, took a more tender turn, straightened the bum’s coat for him. I think it was my voice that did it. Lately I’ve noticed it’s as deep as a man’s. All those years under the train tracks, yelling at the folks in my line just to be heard. I know I’m all woman. But I’ll just catch myself here and there, and I’ll forget it’s me talking. It’s good to have this voice on the streets though. It’s good to feel tough. I gotta be at my boldest on the streets.

Mazie’s Diary, January 8, 1931

Walked a young fella with a limp to the flophouse on the corner. Said his name was Winky, and that gave me a laugh. I should write down all these bum names I hear sometime. It’d be quite a list.

Mazie’s Diary, February 6, 1931

William showed up today just long enough to filch some money off me at the cage. His coat was so worn it was barely more than buttons and some loose threads. He wandered off down the street whistling. Well at least he’s happy enough to whistle.

Mazie’s Diary, March 2, 1931

Ambulance tonight for Winky. He showed me his ankle and it was a blue so pale it was nearly gray and swollen, and a little green around the toes.

He said: I don’t want to go to Bellevue.

I said: You gotta.

He said: Come visit me, promise you will.

I said I would but I won’t. I’m only good on the streets.

Mazie’s Diary, April 1, 1931

18 Mott Street, heart of Chinatown, blocks away from the theater so that’s fine by me. Seems like a crazy move, crazier than usual. I don’t know why Rosie thinks it will be any better here but she says she doesn’t mind the noise as much when she can’t understand what anyone’s saying. It’s a new building, across the street from one of our own, and we’ve got the top floor all to ourselves. I give her a month till she gets sick of the smell of food different than her own. She promises she won’t. Says she loves chow mein, could eat it all day. I know my Rosie though. She’ll get her fill.

Mazie’s Diary, April 19, 1931

Saw an old fella stealing another’s suitcase. First bum was too drunk to notice it was gone, the second fella was too drunk to run with it. Then he banged into a wall. He dropped it and the clasp flopped open. All that was in it was old clothes, and they fell in a pile, stink rising. Then a moth flew out.

I rapped him with my walking stick.

I said: This is your comrade. Don’t steal his possessions.

He said: Ain’t nobody my friend on the streets.

I pushed my walking stick farther into him.

I said: If you don’t have any friends, then all you got is enemies.

I made him pick up the clothes and give the suitcase back. First fella didn’t wake up the entire time.

Second fella spit at my feet and I told him to scram. I whacked him in the leg before he left. Wish I’d whacked him harder. All I’m doing right now is sitting here and wishing I’d left a mark and hating myself for feeling that way, too.

Mazie’s Diary, May 4, 1931

Two ambulances this week, got twelve fellas beds for the night, and paid one hospital bill. Also I bought a big box of hotel soaps for the dirtiest of these bums. I figured I should carry them with me wherever I go. If I give it to them, I know they’ll use it. Clean up the filth, one bum at a time.

Mazie’s Diary, May 14, 1931

Winky’s foot is gone, and they gave him some crutches and that’s it. I gave him everything in my pocket.

I said: What’ll we do with you, Winky?

He said: At least it’s getting warm again, Miss Mazie. At least there’s that.

I sat next to him for a spell on the bench. I asked him why they called him Winky and he told me it was short for Winklemans. I said that I used to know some Winklemans on Grand Street when I was growing up and he told me they were his cousins, that he’d come to visit from Philadelphia and never left and he’d had work, and then he hadn’t had work, and neither had his cousins, and then he was too ashamed to go home, and then all of this had happened, and he smelled like rot, and his foot was rot, and his gut was rot, and it was more shame on top of shame. I asked him if he’d rather rot out of pride on a bench or swallow it all and go home. He said he was worried if they’d even want him like this, not being able to earn his keep. I asked him if he had a mother and if she loved him and he answered that yes, he did, and I told him that she’d love him no matter what shape he was in, and this story ends with me hailing a taxi and taking him to Grand Central Station and buying him a train ticket home, and him thanking me and then crying and waving good-bye to me from the window as the train left the station, one of his crutches resting up against the window.

Mazie’s Diary, July 15, 1931

One ambulance last night. And he didn’t even last till they got there. His hand in mine. The stench in the heat already rising, like dirt, like animal, like shit. And I smelled it on me all today.

I can’t tell if it’s making me feel better or worse anymore, writing all of this down. It’s like I have to live through it one more time when I’d rather just forget at the end of the night.

Mazie’s Diary, August 3, 1931

This morning, at the table, I’m eating, she’s pushing the eggs around with the fork, and I can hear the fork scraping against the plate, that tinny sound in my ear.

I said: What?

She said: Nothing.

I said: Say it.

She said: The smell.

I said: I don’t smell a goddamn thing.

Mazie’s Diary, September 11, 1931

There’s an artist named Ray who’s been trading me sketches for change for weeks now. All he does is draw the Brooklyn Bridge, but I don’t say a peep. They’re beautiful anyway. He tells me he’s selling me the Brooklyn Bridge and we both have a laugh. I put one of them up in the cage, next to all the postcards.

Last night I saw him in an alley. I’d thought he was just broke, not on the streets. He told me his lady had left him and time had run out on his rent. A friend came over and gave him a few bills for what he had left, some books, some art. The rest he’d sold a long time ago, or it was garbage anyway. He blamed himself for everything.

He said: I don’t need to be down on my luck. I choose to be here. I’ve lost the fight. I’m no good at the other thing.

I said: What other thing?

He said: You know, life.

He’s handsome, this Ray. He’s long-legged, and his suit fits him well. He has a stylish bowler he wears and his blond curls flop around his ears. His face is long and drawn but a week or two of good eating and he’d be gorgeous again.

He pulled out his notebook and offered to trade another drawing for some change.

I told him he didn’t need to sell his work to me any longer, that I’d give him change no matter what.

I said: I see how thirsty you are.

He said: I’m no beggar. I’m an artist.

He took his hat off and held it to his heart and focused all his attention upon me where I stood and I nearly desired him.

And then he said: But I am indeed thirsty.

So I took the drawing and he took the change and I put it where I’ve put all the rest of them. In the pages of this diary.

Pete Sorensen

I had all the Brooklyn Bridge sketches individually framed. There’s twenty-two in all. I couldn’t help myself. I hung them in my shop and I get so many compliments on them. A wall of nearly identical Brooklyn Bridges, signed by one Ray Frieburg. I looked him up. He was nobody special.

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1931

Thirty-four. I took myself shopping on Division Street. I bought dresses, three of them, one violet and two blue ones, all in deep jewel tones, all of them silk. I looked real sharp in all of them. Afterward I walked along the Bowery and felt bad, indulgent and spoiled, because so many people are suffering on the streets. But then I felt fine when I got back to work because I need to feel pretty, even if no one can see what I’m wearing in that cage all day. I need it. Me. Mine.

I showed Rosie the dresses when I got home tonight and she touched the fabric, looked closely at the seams, held the violet one up against her in the mirror. She declared them immaculate and stylish and the best quality. She grew sad for a moment, and said she wished she could fit in a dress with such a small waist.

She’s become a big woman, it’s true. In particular her arms are enormous, like an ape’s arms. She’s on that downward slope toward being an old woman. Her hair is nearly all gray, battle lines drawn around her lips. Just last week I suggested ever so gently she dye her hair.

She said: For who?

And I said: For you.

Mazie’s Diary, February 6, 1932

William passed. A pal of his told me, this fella Gerard who was looking for money to crash in a flophouse tonight. Hit up old Mazie at the cage, that’s what they all do. I didn’t know his face at first. The street’s aged him. He was a pink-cheeked cherub and now he’s got bags under his eyes and chunks of hair gone and there’s no color left in his face.

I said: Do I know you?

He said: Sure you do.

I said: From where?

He said: I met you with William, that day you let us all in the theater. It was a long time ago, but not too long.

I said: Two years ago nearly, I think.

He said: A lot’s changed.

I said: You were just a kid then. Look at you now.

He said: The cold wind changes a man.

I felt bad. What does he need me insulting his looks for?

I said: You look fine, just fine.

He said: I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t looked in a mirror in a long time.

I said: Hey, where’s that buddy William of yours?

He didn’t say anything, just pointed to the sky. I looked up, not understanding right away.

I said: Oh.

He said: Yes.

It was months ago, and I didn’t even know it.

Mazie’s Diary, February 27, 1932

Called four ambulances this month and checked six fellas into flophouses. Feel like I’m just getting started here, like I could do this forever. Just keep helping them. Because someone’s always going to need help.

Mazie’s Diary, May 8, 1932

I looked up just before close yesterday and there was the Captain. Ben, now. I’m going to call him Ben. He hasn’t been a captain in a long time. He’s not the Captain I used to know either.

It was raining, and we ducked into a diner and sat at the counter. I’d promised Rosie I’d be home for dinner for once, and I felt anxious about that, but on the other hand I knew we needed to talk. About what I didn’t know exactly. Only that there were things left to be said.

We both ordered coffee, and I realized it would be the first time the two of us were together without any booze in us. And the lights in the diner were bright. It was just the two of us. We could only be ourselves.

He showed me pictures of his son, his namesake. He was a cute kid, bright eyes, his hair slicked down and parted to the side, a tiny suit coat. A bow tie. I nearly choked up but I didn’t and I’m goddamn proud of myself.

I asked him what his boy was like and he shifted around on his stool. He didn’t seem too happy talking about it.

He said: He’s angry already and he’s not old enough to be angry at the world yet. And we’ve got a fine life there. Anything going on that might tick him off, he doesn’t know about it.

I said: Kids are smart. He looks pretty smart in that picture.

He said: He’s a good kid. I’m not complaining about him. I feel bad. Ah, I don’t know.

I said: You could change your ways. You can be whatever kind of person you like.

He said: I’ve been this way so long I don’t know how else to be.

I said: All you have to do is choose it. It’s up to you.

He said: You sound like my wife.

I said: The last thing I want to sound like is your wife.

We both waited to laugh but then we did and everything melted between us. I let him hold my hand for a while though I knew I wouldn’t go back to his hotel with him. But I felt like I could talk to him, more than I can ever talk to that priest I visit. Ben’s not anonymous exactly, but it feels safe to tell him everything. He’s a real friend now, and he doesn’t want anything from me except maybe to have someone to talk to. And I found myself telling him things I hadn’t even realized until the moment it came out of my mouth.

I told him about walking the streets at night, helping out the fellas. He told me it worried him, me walking alone out there. I told him I’d been getting to know them all, getting to know their true stories. I didn’t think a one of them would hurt me. They were just alone out there, and I understood that. And then this one thing occurred to me.

I said: I’ll tell you the real truth of why I do it, or part of it anyway. There ain’t nothing wrong with being alone, which is what I am, or what I have been. It’s when it turns to loneliness, when you get to feeling blue about it all, that you’re in trouble. There’s the problem, loneliness. And now I’m never really alone anymore, day or night. Even if I walk the streets by myself, I’m always surrounded by people. It’s like being in the cage, only inside out.

He told me he was sorry I felt lonely. He told me to be careful, that I was precious. He held both of my hands in his. He comes into town every few months on business and he’d like to have coffee with me every so often. Would I like that, is what he asked me. Would I.

Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1932

A postcard from Winky, thanking me.

It said: Safe & sound & loved.

Mazie’s Diary, November 2, 1932

Thirty-five years old. I wound up at Finny’s, no surprise there. George Flicker was at the bar and I got looped enough that I didn’t mind him looking at my bosom the way that he always does. Happy Birthday to me, why not have some fun? He walked me home and we kissed and kissed and kissed, and I let him put his hands on me for a minute or two or three. He’s an all right kisser. He said he learned everything he knows from French girls.

George Flicker

She said that? She did. Well, I suppose it was true then. I wasn’t trying to hide anything from you. I’ve told you everything else I know so far, haven’t I? I was just being respectful of the lady. My generation, we showed some respect. It feels good to show respect. It makes you feel like a man. I wasn’t going to kiss and tell unless I had to. And now I suppose I have to.

Mazie’s Diary, December 1, 1932

It’s cold now again, it won’t warm up for a long time. I’m worried about the fellas. I collect nickels and dimes and quarters. I line my pockets with them. I hand them out freely. I pray every night they won’t freeze to death.

Mazie’s Diary, December 15, 1932

Last night she stayed up cleaning the apartment, every inch of it, not just the kitchen but the toilet, too, and her bedroom, and my bedroom, too. She came in while I was sleeping. She was possessed by a cleaning demon. I thought maybe she was walking in her sleep. I tried to rouse her. I shook her by her shoulders. I said her name and I begged and then I gave up. I put the pillow over my head and waited until she left.

I would give anything to make this stop. I’m used to this pain — it feels so familiar, it’s like it’s my little pinky. But still I dare to dream of a life without it.

George Flicker

The month I can’t remember so well, but I believe it was early 1933. It was freezing out, just a bitter, bitter cold, and she’d been on the streets, and she came into Finny’s. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked very pretty. She’d been avoiding me since we kissed, or maybe I’d been avoiding her. But that night we were both exhausted, and we truly were so fond of each other that we gave in to it. We just liked each other and wanted to talk! And I think she needed to talk about Rosie with someone. It was this burden she carried with her. I had my burden; she had hers. And there are times when you need other people to witness your pain. Not anymore, I’m done with that. All my little aches and pains I’ve lived with long enough now, why bother? I’m one hundred years old. Guess what? I’m falling apart. But then we were young and we still felt entitled to some kind of relief. We believed in the possibility of relief. That we deserved a break. So we shared our problems. And then I knew all about Rosie, with the cleaning and the complaining and the in general obsessive behavior. And then we very naturally came up with this solution to both of our problems. Oh, we thought we were so smart. We were even a little smug about the whole thing. We thought we knew our family so well. Our people, they were our people. But we never could have predicted how it was going to turn out in the end.

Mazie’s Diary, February 14, 1933

Well George Flicker and I had an interesting talk tonight. Who knew George Flicker could be interesting?

He’s working for this developer, and there’s going to be a new building downtown. It’s going to be the finest building in the neighborhood, with a beautiful garden in a private courtyard. He told me that when I sit in that garden l’ll feel like I left New York City behind.

It’ll be difficult to get into the building. Everyone wants in. But he thought he could do it, could secure a small apartment for himself and his uncle. He could barely afford it but he thought he could make it happen. A chance to get out of the tenements, he’d make it happen. And he could secure another one for me and Rosie, we could be neighbors in this new building. And then he said the very interesting part, which was that maybe when we moved in there, Rosie could watch over Al.

He said: She just needs someone to worry about is what it sounds like to me.

I could not argue with him on that matter.

He said: And Al, he just needs someone to look after him. I can’t do it forever, Mazie. I need to have a life of my own. And you do, too.

I said: When can we move?

He said the building wouldn’t be ready till next year. That they had to tear down all these filthy tenements there first, then build the new one. They’re going to build fast though, he told me.

He said: Hold on, Mazie. Just hold on.

Elio Ferrante

Lung Block, yea, Lung Block. I don’t teach it anymore. I taught it a few times, and honestly? It grosses the kids out. Breadlines, they get, they nod their heads. Lung Block, it’s gross, it’s terrifying, and it doesn’t really educate them about anything new. They kind of already know about mold and bad air, and if they really want to learn about the specifics of mold, I’ll trust their health or science instructors to educate them on the particular details. But, just to explain here, these apartments had maybe one or two tiny windows and no ventilation, and they were packed with people. And they got sick.

There were more than a few Lung Blocks in New York City. So many of the tenements were terrible for air quality, germs, mold, but this one particular block, down by the water — north of the South Street Seaport, like southeast of Chinatown — a good percentage of the tenants there got sick with respiratory illnesses. Tuberculosis for one, which is highly contagious, so once it started, they all fell down. There were just germs everywhere. And hundreds of families lived there; everyone crammed into these small spaces. On top of that there were bunch of bars and brothels. It was just a seedy, germy block. Hundreds of people died. This was in the late 1920s. And New York being New York, instead of fixing the buildings, they just decided to tear them down and start over. And that is how Knickerbocker Village came into being.

Lydia Wallach

I should have had two more great-uncles, but they died from tuberculosis. They lived in a bad building. It wasn’t a bad building when they moved in, but it became one. By the time they figured out they should move somewhere else, it was too late. They were no longer in control of their destiny, or the destiny of their children. And so my mother’s father grew up with tragedy, and then my mother grew up in the shadow of tragedy, and then I suppose I grew up in whatever shade was left behind. Rudy with his heart attacks, two dead great-uncles. These stories that people pass on. You feel them. They haunt you.

Pete Sorensen

A thing you and I talked about for a while is how she starts to disappear into these men. Like we felt like we lost her to them. Like she became so obsessed with them that the other parts of her started to disappear. Or maybe those parts were visible to someone else? But the diary totally changes. It’s just about these men; that’s all she cares about. And you were like, “I get it. I get the obsession.” And I was like, “I get it, but I reject it. Because there’s more to life than just that. You have to care about more than one thing.”

Mazie’s Diary, February 26, 1933

One more body in the late-night frost. I tried to rouse him but his skin turned my skin cold.

I thought: We’re both the same color. We’re both blue.

But then I realized he was bluer than I’ll be in a long time.

Mazie’s Diary, March 15, 1933

Called six ambulances this month and they’re sick of my voice and my face and I don’t care.

Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1933

Lately I’ve been noticing that the bums are waiting for me to get to work. Just a few of them, same fellas, sometimes a bigger group of them. Waiting for their morning handouts so they can get a little of this or that and move on through their day. What’s it hurt? Tee’d tsk tsk me, but what did Tee know about fun?

All of it makes me feel needed. And that I can help them. I can’t help Rosie, but I can help them.

Mazie’s Diary, June 5, 1933

A guy named Wilson died and I didn’t know him but all the fellas were reeling this morning. He’d been good to them. They said he’d looked out for them. Someone stabbed him in his sleep, and he’d been sleeping on an old mattress in an alley and the mattress was all red when they found him. I was shuddering when they told me this and I didn’t even know it till Rudy came out and shooed them all way. Ghost white I was, that’s what Rudy told me.

Mazie’s Diary, June 13, 1933

A boy with blond hair in my line, sixteen, seventeen, everything about him ragged and worn, his clothes, some scars, a sad, dazed squint. Willowy and breakable. Too young to be in line with those other fellas, and I told him so. Too young to be that battered is what I thought. He deepened his voice, swore he’d been working on the trains for a few years already. I asked his name. Rufus. It couldn’t be, I thought. Not the same. I asked if he had a mother named Nance. He told me it was the name of the woman who bore him but that he barely remembered her.

I said: Who raised you?

He said: A hundred kind people and a hundred mean people and no one in particular.

I couldn’t stand to see his face in my line. He told me he’d been working on the rails here and there, but that he dreamed of working on an apple farm in New Jersey. It seemed safer than the rails, where it was nothing but drunks and trouble. He’d heard it was all sunshine and fresh air on the apple farm. I gave him a few big bills. I told him to go to New Jersey now, get a head start on apple-picking season.

I said: I don’t want to see you around here again, you hear?

He promised he’d never come back. Who knows if he was telling the truth or not? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been conned. Only I needed to know I tried.

Mazie’s Diary, August 9, 1933

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

She said: That’s a terrible block.

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

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

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

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

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

I said: It’s the best we can do.

I said: It’s the best I can do.

Elio Ferrante

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

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

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

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

Pete Sorensen

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

Mazie’s Diary, September 29, 1933

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

I said: Hold on, hold on, buddy.

He said: Mazie, it’s me.

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

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

I said: Not you, too!

He said: Not me, too, what?

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

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

He thought that was funny.

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

I said: What about her?

He said: I’m worried about her.

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1933

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 13, 1933

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

I said: What’s this?

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

I peeked into the sack. Green apples.

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

Mazie’s Diary, December 5, 1933

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

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, January 10, 1934

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

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

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

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

I laughed. It was a joke I would make.

I said: Are you truly done now?

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

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

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, March 1, 1934

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

I said: Well.

She said: Well.

I said: What have we here?

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

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

George Flicker

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

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

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

Phillip Tekverk, publisher emeritus, Tekverk Books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 12, 1934

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

He said: I could never do it.

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, June 1, 1934

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, July 12, 1934

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

Phillip Tekverk

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, October 15, 1934

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 1, 1934

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 15, 1934

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

Jeanie said: You look very fetching.

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 18, 1934

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

I said: You find love, you take it.

Phillip Tekverk

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

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

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

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

George Flicker

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

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

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

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

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

Phillip Tekverk

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

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

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

George Flicker

Rosie and Al lived for a long time in Knickerbocker Village together, though they never married, which would have been scandalous if we’d had anyone left in our lives to care. Their apartment became a haven for all the intellectuals and bohemians that eventually moved into the building. The police came more than a few times to ask him questions about his radical politics, which, as it turns out, he still was very much active in. I guess it’s possible he resumed his activities once he settled down with Rosie. Perhaps the building triggered his renewed interest, being around all those thinkers. The Rosenbergs were have said to have dined at their table more than a few times. The police never arrested him or roughed him up though. Those days were done, thank god. He was a frail man now, and Rosie looked after him. Tiger Lady’s what we used to call her.

Mazie had long since moved out. I didn’t see her very often. Al told me she had an aunt in Boston she’d grown close with and she visited her once a year. I thought that was good for her. Her sisters had never been so reliable. She was a churchgoer too. Al told me she went to workingman’s mass every Sunday, late at night, or maybe it was early in the morning. While Al didn’t necessarily approve of God, he did approve of the workingman so I remember him telling me that as a point of admiration.

I waved at her sometimes at the theater. But she always seemed busy, and whatever had existed between us once, it was like none of it had happened. I missed her but I guess I didn’t have the right to say that or much of anything to her. It was true that there was a crossover in time between her and Alice. I didn’t tell you that right away because my wife is the one I think of from that time in my life. Mazie wasn’t the girl I was going to marry. Alice was. And some secrets are better left hidden. We don’t need to know everything about everyone. I have to admit I’m a little tired now of you digging up the secrets. Just today, just now. I’m tired.

Vera Sung, former resident, Knickerbocker Village

I did not speak English yet, or only a little bit I did, but not very well. I felt very lonely even though the apartment was crowded. We were happy to be there though, because the Knickerbocker was a special place, well kept and beautiful. And we had many family members in the building, too, so there was always someone to feed us or look after us, which was helpful for my mother after the divorce. But in my apartment there was my mother and four brothers. So, the only girl, even harder.

I was silent for a long time, but I was also a daydreamer and an adventurer. I could climb like a little monkey and I could fit through windows that no one else could. There were many passageways to explore there. There is a basement that connects all the buildings, for example, and side entrances and exits where you can escape undetected. All of this was very helpful later when I began to skip school, and then after that when I started hanging out in the East Village with those bad boys in the leather motorcycle jackets and the tight jeans. Those are good stories. I can tell you those too.

But when I was little I had nowhere in particular I wanted to go but the garden. I liked to listen to all the birds chirping. I would pretend I was Snow White. In my daydreams my brothers were my dwarves. I would hold my hands out and wait for the birds to come land on my shoulders and arms and fingers but they never did. In the early mornings, before anyone in the apartment woke up, that’s what I would do, I would sneak out to the garden and daydream, sing along with the birds.

This is where I found this couple, the older Jewish couple. I had never met them before, but later I learned their names were Rosie and Al. They were sitting next to each other on one of the benches, hidden behind a row of high hedges. It was September, but they were wearing their winter coats because they were old, and old people get cold sometimes. She was snoring loudly, so loudly that I could hear her over the birds. That’s why I had gone over there, to investigate the noise. He was not snoring at all. He had a long gray beard and fisherman’s cap, and he was blue in the face. I had never seen a dead person before but I knew right away that’s what he was.

Suddenly I realized the birds had stopped chirping. I shook the woman awake. I said, “Miss, wake up, wake up.” It was the most I had spoken all year. I was four or five. She finally woke up and I pointed to him and said, “He is sick.” Which was a lie but I could not bring myself to say the real truth. She shrieked, and I ran off, back to my apartment. I heard an ambulance soon, and I watched it all through my window. I told my mother nothing.

Two days later I snuck out of my window again, back down to the garden, and I found the woman, Rosie, on the bench. And now it was her time to be dead, and this was when I began to cry. Once stunned me. Twice wounded me. Now there was no way to hide this information from my mother. Someone had to call the police, and it was she who made that call. She hugged me, and she made all my brothers hug me, one by one. After that morning I talked all the time.

Mazie’s Diary, December 1, 1934

I’m late, I’m pregnant, all of it, all that could happen, it’s true. It’s George’s and no one else’s.

Mazie’s Diary, December 3, 1934

Could I keep it and never tell him is what I’m thinking today. I could move away and he might never know. I never wanted one though. Why would I now?

Mazie’s Diary, December 4, 1934

What if the mattress turns red again? None of us have ever been able to have a baby. All the Phillips girls, our bellies are made of shit.

Mazie’s Diary, December 5, 1934

He loves this Alice. I saw them today together. Across the street from the theater, her in her nurse’s uniform, him in his best suit, her carrying flowers, him with his arm around her, her talking, him nodding. The two of them acting like real people in love. Not like we were. We were just horizontal is all.

Mazie’s Diary, December 6, 1934

I came in last night late, and he was there, too. In the hallway. And now my heart swells for him a little bit more because I can’t have him. His hand was on his door handle and mine was on mine and I thought for a moment I’d tell him the truth, and I know he’d care because he’s an all right fella but what good would it do? It wouldn’t change a thing. It wouldn’t change my mind. It might change his, but not for the right reasons. I don’t need to tell him and he doesn’t need to know.

So we both stood there with our backs to each other and there was all this silence between us and then we both wished each other good night. No glance over the shoulder. Just the best of wishes for a gentle sleep.

Mazie’s Diary, December 7, 1934

Ben was in town on business again. Him with all his meetings, and his high-class suit and now he’s gone gray, too. He looks the same though, just more prestigious. Me, I’m looking older. He gets to look important.

He took me out for a honey bun and a coffee after work. I didn’t mean to tell him I was pregnant. Especially him. But it came out anyway.

I said: The world is all bitched up. Always was, always will be.

He said: Do you really believe that?

I said: No, I guess I don’t.

Ben told me he thought I’d be a great mother, but that I should know children were hard, much harder than he’d imagined. He didn’t know why they didn’t just listen. Why couldn’t they just be quiet when they were told?

He asked what I was going to do and I said I didn’t know but I think I do. What do I need a baby for when I got all those men out there needing me?

He gave me a wonderful hug when he left me. He told me no matter what, he’d always respect me and love me.

I think he might be the best friend I have in the world. Who would have thought? The Captain and me, buddies.

Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.

He talked about her ceaselessly, his famous friend Mazie in the city. She was so special to him there was just absolutely no way he wasn’t sleeping with her. It’s just the way men and women work. I could talk for hours about it but who would want to listen?

You know, I held her no more and no less against him than any of his other girls. She was just the one I thought about because I knew her name. Mazie. You don’t forget a name like Mazie.

Mazie’s Diary, February 1, 1935

Moving day tomorrow. You’ll be packed up again. This table I’ve sat at so many times with you will be gone, somewhere, in someone else’s home. The Salvation Army is coming to take it away in the morning.

Rosie said: I don’t want it.

I said: Me neither. What am I going to do with a table like that?

Rosie said: It’s just that Al likes the table he has already, and things need to be just so with him. He’s so finicky.

I said: You met your match then.

Rosie said: But it’s a fine table.

She rapped it with her knuckles.

Rosie said: Are you sure you don’t want it?

I said: It’s like I’m sitting down to dine with ghosts at that table.

Rosie said: I never minded the ghosts.

I said: I know.

Rosie said: They keep you company.

I said: All I want to do is forget them.

George Flicker

I didn’t know about that part. No. That part I didn’t know. She never told me. Oh, I’m sorry. Oh, that poor darling. [Puts head in hands for a moment, inhales.] Are we done here? Can we be done now? I’m tired. I’m just an old man now. I’ve only got so much energy in the day. You’re a gorgeous girl. Very convincing. But I’m done now.

Pete Sorensen

And then she was gone for five years. No diary updates, nothing. How dare she, I know. Five years, no Mazie. Five years of using our imagination. Five years of filling in the blanks.

Elio Ferrante

What happened in those five years? You can’t stop New York City from changing, don’t even try it. And there were global events, obviously. A war was coming. I will spare you the lecture. You’re a smart lady. You know your history.

Phillip Tekverk

I’m sorry I’ve been difficult to reach. I’ve been out of the country. I had to present a speech in Paris. I gave you all the files I had on her, I thought somehow that would be enough. But apparently it isn’t.

Mazie and I met for coffee a few times. We talked about what she would have to do to write a book. I asked her what books she liked and she said she only read magazines, True Confessions and True Romance and the like. She said, “I can’t believe people would be willing to spill their beans like that.” She did not seem to fully grasp that she would have to spill her own beans if she were to write an autobiography. This concerned me. I said, “You know you’ll be telling your life story, right? Just like all those people do.” She got huffy. She said, “I’m not like those people. I’m a lady.”

I couldn’t quite figure out how to handle the situation. I thought maybe I was in over my head, but at the same time I was young and headstrong and extremely entitled. I was there because a smart woman had told me I should be interested, but at the time I was too foolish to understand why. Mazie was, to me, a common person, and I believed I should be able to manage common people. So I told her she would need to outline what she wanted to say. That if she had an outline I could go to my boss and show it to him and maybe he would let me buy this book. And if she needed help we could probably hire someone who would work with her. But the first thing she needed to do was figure out what she wanted to talk about. Or rather what story she had to tell.

Lydia Wallach

I just wanted you to know that I unpacked the boxes finally, and I’m sorry to report there wasn’t a picture of her in there. I did find a picture of a plaque that Mazie had made when my great-grandfather died. She had put it on the back of the aisle seat in the last row, where he loved to sneak in and sit at the end of the last show every night. When they shut down the movie theater one of my great-uncles managed to remove it from the theater. It said, “Here sat Rudy Wallach. He was a good man. Now look up and watch the movie.”

Mazie’s Diary, March 13, 1939

I don’t like reading you. There’s good things that happened to me in my life but more sad things it seems. Better just to save some of this thinking for my prayers, that’s what I believe, that’s how I act. Still, I know some things. I know about these men. I should write about these men. So they won’t be forgotten.

Mazie’s Diary, March 15, 1939

Last night I walked to the footwalk of the Manhattan Bridge and watched the bums standing by the fires in the old oil drums there. I had myself an illicit cigarette. One of the bums called my name, no one I recognized but that doesn’t mean a thing. I’d know him eventually. I know all of them eventually. I slipped him a dime and a bar of soap, pleaded with him to use it.

I stayed there in front of the fires with him for a good while, bathed myself in the smoke. He told me his sob story. Once he was rich, now he’s poor. That’s a good one. It’s very popular. I don’t know why I didn’t bid him good night. I just kept nodding and listening like he was the most fascinating man. I thought something interesting might happen, like he might become a different man than he already was. But I know that the story always ends the same way. With them on the streets.

Then I realized what I was waiting for. I wanted Tee to show up and walk with me, whisper in my ear, tell me which man was injured and needed my help and which one to let alone, he’s sleeping, just needs to rest for the night. I’ve felt that way before. Not most nights, not anymore anyway. But looking back at you made me remember her, how she walked right next to me on the streets of the Lower East Side. In this city we fight for our space, but Tee was never afraid to be up close.

When he got to the part where he’d managed to lose it all through no fault of his own, I pressed another nickel in his hand and left him. He blessed me, and I blessed him. Our frail blessings. Then I walked up the Bowery, heading toward home. I was with her and without her at the same time. I emptied my pockets of everything they had in them. I didn’t want one cent left at the end of the night.

Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography

of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

I’ll admit sometimes it’s peaceful to watch a man passed out on the street, snoring, curled up, that last lick of whiskey still on their lips. It’s hard to tell if they’re passed out from pleasure or pain, but my prayers for them always are that it’s boozed-up bliss. I never want to wake them up when they’re like that. It wouldn’t be fair. They spent all night getting there.

Phillip Tekverk

I suppose I was careless with her.

Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography

of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

Flophouses are just that, a place you go to flop face-first. There’s only a bit more comfort in sleeping there than on the streets. They’ve got bugs and mold, and sheets like paper and mattresses that suck you in like a dirty old hole in the ground. But they’ve got showers, if you’re the kind who cares about showering, and they’re warmer than the streets in the winter. And sometimes a warm bed is all it takes to make a man feel like he’s champion of the world.

Lydia Wallach

And I wanted to tell you that I was glad that I finally unpacked all of those boxes. A lot of it was garbage, and I just threw it away, but some of it was useful, and even triggered a nice memory or two. So it was good that you asked me these questions, it was good that you wanted me to look. I just wanted to say thanks for that.

Pete Sorensen

Do you remember that day we went down to the Navy Yard? And I pointed to that gap between the fence and the sidewalk? I said that was the exact spot I found the diary but I lied. I couldn’t remember where. I just thought you’d feel better thinking you knew it. I didn’t feel like there was any harm in lying. But now I want you to know: I lied.

And then we played that game where we tried to figure out how that box got there. Like how does something from the 1930s in Manhattan end up on the Brooklyn waterfront in 1999? My best guess was someone was cleaning out her apartment after she died and it ended up stuck in the trunk of a car for a good long while until the car was impounded by the city. But of course we ended up talking about diary thieves and stolen cars and carrier pigeons for a while. You know, you’re just really incredibly good at coming up with elaborate scenarios, Nadine. I never met anyone who knew how to complicate things like you do.

Phillip Tekverk

Ultimately what she delivered to me was unusable. First of all, it was handwritten. I mean, you saw it. I realize it’s a copy but I think you get the gist of it. She had been a drinker for many, many years, and I’m presuming she had the shakes. I hadn’t noticed it whenever she and I met, but that’s really the only explanation for the appearance of it. The papers even smelled as if it had been written in a bar. What little I could translate was entirely useless. She just went on and on about these men, how to care for them, their struggles, their essence. What would I have done with that? I wanted to publish cutting little novels about humanity that people would brag about having read to their friends at dinner, downtown, on a Saturday night. Not a treatise on the care and feeding of the homeless. I kept it though, like I kept every piece of paper that passed across my desk. It felt like something, an artifact.

Pete Sorensen

You let me hold your hand that day and then I put my arm around you and you put your hand around my waist. We kept finding new ways to wrap ourselves around each other. Then we walked down the waterfront to Williamsburg and sat at a dive bar outside on the patio and drank beer and watched the boats. It was a sunny and cool spring day, and it felt like we were a million miles from home, and I thought, “She’s my girl. This is my girl.”

Phillip Tekverk

And I was cold to her. I was too cold. I regret that now. I didn’t even do her the courtesy of coming to meet her in person. I called her at her cage and said I wouldn’t be able to work with her. I said, “No one is interested in this story.” A different kind of a person would have known what to do with it. I was not that person. I am not that person. It is important to know your strengths and weaknesses and work with them and around them. I was too young to realize it then, but by now I see it, and it’s this: I have very little imagination. I think she knew that, because before she hung up on me she said, “Lucky for you, the lord loves all fools.”

Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography

of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

All I ever needed was my walking stick and my flashlight and I felt safe. No one would touch me or trouble me. They all know my name. They knew I was there to help them. Most of them mean no harm. They just have no home.

Phillip Tekverk

Fannie called me the next day. She was furious about my treatment of Mazie. She said, “I will destroy you.” And she did! [Laughs.] For a little while, anyway. She got me fired from my job, and all the new friends I’d made dropped me. But it turned out not to matter in the end because I had my father buy a small, failing publishing company for me that I turned into less of a failure for many years, putting out war sagas by middle-aged men who had never seen a day of combat. Then when I retired my underlings started publishing experimental fiction popular with cerebral midwestern graduate students. For which they win many awards. For which I take all the credit at dinner parties, when I am invited to them. Which is still often. And then six months later Joseph Mitchell wrote about Mazie in the New Yorker. So I guess Fannie found the right person to write about her after all.

Elio Ferrante

This was easier information to find than I thought it would be. Jeanie Fallow was buried beside her husband, Ethan Fallow, in a cemetery in Queens. Rosie was buried next to Al Flicker, also in a cemetery in Queens, but not in the same one, as Rosie and Al were buried in a Jewish cemetery and Jeanie and Ethan were buried in a nondenominational one. Mazie was buried in Boston, in a family plot, where her mother, father, and aunt were all buried. If you want to know the names, I can e-mail them to you, but I can’t remember them now.

Pete Sorensen

And it doesn’t matter anymore that you don’t love me and maybe never did. If you hate me, it’s fine, but I hope that you don’t, because I don’t hate you, at least not anymore. If you met someone new, it’s fine. If you’re obsessed with your work and that’s why you don’t call me anymore, that’s fine. Just disappear, it’s fine. No one understands being obsessed with their work more than me. I love my shop. I know what it’s like. I’m glad you have something to care about at last besides your goddamn haircut. It’s good to have something to care about. But you can’t keep the diary. It’s mine. I didn’t give it to you. I loaned it to you. Whatever you’re doing with it, you need to be done. And especially if you’re not in my life anymore, you need to be done.

Elio Ferrante

Death, that’s the real end of the story; am I right? Now will you turn off the recorder, darling, and come to bed?

Phillip Tekverk

I heard there was a diary though. Fannie said she’d seen her once with one at the theater, that she’d walked up to her at the ticket booth and startled her. But she saw it, this brown leather diary, the words across the cover in gold, and when Fannie rattled on her cage, Mazie looked up, quite shocked, and shut it closed. A diary, could you imagine? What I wouldn’t give to read it. That was the real story right there. But I never saw it. Did you?

Mazie’s Diary, August 15, 1939

Just for a minute I thought I needed someone to know what I knew, but I can see I was wrong. I’ve been wrong before. I’ve talked to enough people about my life already. I’ve written enough in these pages. It’s enough that it happened. It’s enough that I survived. It’s enough that I have a warm bed to sleep in at night. I got enough. I got more than enough.

Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography

of Mazie Phillips-Gordon

Somebody loved them once, and that’s all you need to know.