Elio Ferrante
I know it’s killing you that you’ll never know the real truth because it seems like he might be a criminal. You’ll just have to accept the fact that you’ll never really know. I mean there’s just so many goddamn things we never get to know. We’re not entitled to all the truth.
Mazie’s Diary, November 11, 1922
Louis’s in the hospital. He was at the track and he fell forward, his heart seized on him. He was talking to a trainer, one hand on the horse, and then down he slid. It scared the horse, who ran off to her stable, where she hid for the rest of the day. No one can get her out. This is what the trainer said to me in the hospital when he came to pay his respects. I made him tell me everything. Every last detail.
I said: What track was he at?
He said: The Empire City, miss.
I said: What color’s the horse?
He said: Chocolate brown.
I said: What’s her name?
He said: Santa Maria.
I said: Is she favored to win?
He said: Not anymore.
I’m only home to bathe because one of us should bathe, between me and Rosie. One of us should be presentable to talk to whoever needs talking to. Because it doesn’t look good for Louis.
Mazie’s Diary, November 13, 1922
Louis left us yesterday. We held hands with him, me and Rosie, one hand in each of ours. Ring Around the Rosie went through my head. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. We didn’t know what else to do but touch him for as long as we could before we couldn’t touch him anymore. Rosie sang to him in Hebrew, a song I never heard before. She said it was about being between two worlds, ending a life here, beginning a life somewhere else. I didn’t want him to go anywhere else. I held his hand against my cheek, felt his skin go from warm to cool to cold. All the wailing. A doctor, a nurse, another nurse, stuck their heads in the room, until finally they stopped looking and left us alone.
Mazie’s Diary, November 14, 1922
There were four of us, and then there were three, and now it is just two.
Mazie’s Diary, November 15, 1922
Rosie sits like a stone in the kitchen. Barely made of flesh. I nearly didn’t get her to the funeral. I couldn’t find Jeanie to tell her he was sick, let alone dying, now dead. She’s just…somewhere in California. She will always be somewhere in California. Louis will always be dead now.
So it was just the two of us, and Louis’s aunts and their husbands, wading through the fall leaves toward the grave site. All the Gordons weeping, and Rosie just stock-still, until she fell to her knees, the lower half of her collapsing where the top half of her could not. Her dress was covered with dirt and when she stood I dusted her off.
I said: You’ll be all right.
I must have said that a dozen times until I realized I was still saying it out loud and not just in my head. Everyone looked at me as I chattered. I put my arm around Rosie and said it one more time.
Mazie’s Diary, November 17, 1922
We sat shiva today. Neither of us wanted to, as we practice no faith, but Louis was a Jew, in his way. And so for Louis, we opened our doors to his aunts. They arrived like a squadron, a squat army of mourners. I was glad they were there for the help. One of his aunts had brought what looked like a wall of smoked fish. They were noisy and busy in their preparations. It was good to listen to their chatter, their huffing, the opening and slamming of cabinet doors as they found their way through an unfamiliar kitchen.
Rosie sat slumped in the living room. This morning I noticed whatever drugs Jeanie left behind in the medicine cabinet were gone. I’ve been keeping an eye on it this week. Thought I might have suggested it to her myself as a way to get through these trying days, but it looks like she figured it all out on her own. I left her alone, only once I asked she move from the couch to the armchair. In my mind I thought she should be alone on a throne. The visitors in our home should pay their respects to the queen. Also I thought it might keep her propped up, because she looked as if she’d tip over at any moment.
I spent a good deal of the morning dodging any real conversation with these strangers. Some of them were familiar. I knew them from the track, and from Grand Street. But the rest of them were a mystery to me. Who were these men, where did they crawl from? They weren’t like bugs, they weren’t like rats, they weren’t like cats, but there was something feral and wild about them. Creatures of the dark corners. Dark suits, dark hats, pitted skin. A stench of cigars and booze, a smell I’ve never minded before, but on them they wore it like spilled cologne. They were rough trade. All of them introduced themselves to me as Louis’s business partner. Every last one. All these men in a room and none of them for me.
Then the well-dressed Jew walked through the door, shaking hands with everyone until finally he arrived at me. Up close he was handsome, sinewy, with slick, shiny hair, and a clever expression on his face. He murmured something in Hebrew I didn’t understand, and then he took my hand.
He said: Miss Mazie, how are you doing?
I said: I’ll be fine. He was family, but he wasn’t my husband. That’s a greater tragedy.
We both looked at Rosie, her head lolled to one side, her arms splayed on the chair, her legs uncrossed.
He said: I’ll wait to meet her. It’s you I’d like to have a word with.
Together we stepped into Jeanie’s old room. He said his name and I realized I’d read it before in the paper, though no photo of him had ever been printed, as none exist.
He said: I was in business with Louis.
I said: He sure did a lot of business.
He said: And I’d like to buy out his end of it from you.
I said: What kind of business was it?
He smiled but his face turned into something sharper. Like he might snap his jaw at me. His teeth would be in me before I knew it. I was too weary to be scared of him, though.
He said: Now a smart girl wouldn’t ask a question like that. Louis always said how smart you were.
I said: I am smart.
He said: And you’re the money girl, right? Louis said you handled the money. And I’m here to buy out Louis’s end of the business. I’m here to make things even.
I said: All right. Go on then.
Then he handed me an envelope.
He said: Count it.
I said: I don’t need to count it. I don’t know what the business was, and I don’t know how much it’s worth, and I don’t know if you’re cheating me or being fair or even being generous. The number means nothing to me.
He didn’t like what I said but he couldn’t argue with it, either. So he left. I stood there with the envelope in my hand. The money girl holding the money. Then there was a knock at the door. One of the vermin from the living room. He, too, wanted to buy out a dead man. He handed me another envelope. Then there was another, and another, and this went on for quite some time, the men with the envelopes. After they were gone, I didn’t know what else to do but count the money. When I was done counting, I came out of the bedroom. The living room was empty. Rosie was up in the kitchen, cleaning, the last of Louis’s aunts hustling out the door. It made me think she was going to be fine again someday. She couldn’t have those women cleaning her kitchen. Only Rosie cleans the kitchen.
I said: We got a lot of money today.
Rosie said: I’d burn it all if it would bring him back.
Then together we ate the wall of fish until nothing remained.
George Flicker
I will tell you this one last thing about Louis Gordon. I heard when he passed a cheer went up in the stands at Aqueduct. Not because he was a bad man or a cruel man, but because when he died, half the men there had their debts wiped out.