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.
Benjamin Hazzard, Jr.
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.
Mazie’s Diary, July 16, 1918
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.
Mazie’s Diary, July 17, 1918
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.