Saint Mazie: A Novel (8 page)

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

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

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

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

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

He said: I could send a guy with you.

She said: What guy?

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

I said: I could go with her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said: Now are those eyes green or blue?

I said: The color of money.

He said: The color of luck.

I said: I wouldn’t hold your breath.

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

I said: The color of trouble.

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

I said: All right. Breathe.

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

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

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

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

He said: You’re a businesswoman then.

I said: That’s right I am.

He said: You run the show.

I said: Yes.

He said: I run the ship.

I said: Yes.

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

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

He said: Not even one?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said: She forgot about me.

I said: How could she? I would never.

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

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

I looked at him. Trouble meets trouble.

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

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

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

He said: I can’t. Don’t make me.

I said: I won’t. But be careful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He said: You trying to make yourself sick?

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

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

I said: Then you boys will never go home.

He said: Speaking of nosy, I forgot something.

He pulled a letter out of his pocket.

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

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

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

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