Jami Attenberg - Saint Mazie

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

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

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

He said: Miss Mazie, how are you doing?

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

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

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

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

He said: I was in business with Louis.

I said: He sure did a lot of business.

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

I said: What kind of business was it?

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

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

I said: I am smart.

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

I said: All right. Go on then.

Then he handed me an envelope.

He said: Count it.

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

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

I said: We got a lot of money today.

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

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

George Flicker

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 20, 1922

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

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

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

I said: Should we hide it?

She said: Get it out of my sight.

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

Mazie’s Diary, November 23, 1922

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

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

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

They said: Sorry for your loss.

They said: Our condolences, Miss Mazie.

They said: We missed you while you were gone.

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

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

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