Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

I said: Are you completely sloshed, Mack Walters?

He said: I am, ma’am.

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

He said: I got nervous.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He let out a sob.

I said: Come on, you fool.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mack said: What do you know of intellectuals?

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

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

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 16, 1921

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

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

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

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

I said: You believe that?

Because I truly needed to believe it, too.

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 20, 1921

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

Mazie’s Diary, April 25, 1921

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 1, 1921

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

He said: I didn’t bomb anything.

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

George Flicker

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

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

Mazie’s Diary, May 15, 1921

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