Lovers and Lawyers

by Lia Matera

  It was silent in the Kingstons’ part of the house. She didn’t hear Muriel’s piercing voice or John’s clamor of bouncing balls and big awkward feet. She didn’t hear them pushing or squabbling as they had every day since the mayor closed the schools. She wanted to hope Mrs. K had called the garage to send for the car, that the family had gone to her old uncle in Savannah. But as Ella padded past the empty schoolroom, where she read aloud to the children or made them practice their reading and writing and math, she heard a snuffling mewling sound. Her body tensed and her gait became arrhythmic, almost spastic, as in a nightmare. As she neared John’s room, she caught the sharp chamber pot stink of sickness. Muriel, she saw, had crawled into her brother’s bed, wrapping her little arms around his neck. He lay motionless and stiff, his chin covered with Muriel’s matted strawberry curls. The little girl’s body shook as she wept and, much worse, coughed. Pin and needles prickled Ella’s spine, raised the hairs on her neck.

  “Muriel?”

  The child turned to her, her face streaked with tears that were pink with blood. Ella picked her up, expecting the familiar feel of arms and legs wrapped tight around her, but she was limp as Ella staggered toward Mrs. K’s room. She stopped at the door. The missus was in her bed. She was as pale as a wax candle, a thick rind of sweat on her brow and hot rashes on her cheeks. The children’s names punctuated her delirious babble.

  Ella backed away, pressing Muriel’s face to her chest so she wouldn’t see. She went down the grand staircase to Mr. K’s room. She put Muriel into his bed and then collapsed to her hands and knees. She crawled to the adjoining room, an office with a desk where Mr. K hid his liquor and a couch where he’d taken his “accommodation” instead of her references. One of the household’s two telephones was there. She cradled the candlestick, hoping a voice in the earhorn would restore her hope. But the nurse at the hospital said it was no use bringing child or mother. There were hundreds lying outside waiting for beds. Keep them cool, the nurse advised. Give them water or broth.

  Ella asked the operator to put her through to the Decatur. After several rings, the operator said, “No answer at the desk. It’s nearly midnight, you know.”

  Ella thought of walking there, maybe with Muriel in her arms, and pounding on the lobby door or ringing buzzers until somehow she found Mr. K. But when she sat on the edge of the bed, she saw that it was already too late. She pulled the sheet over Muriel’s pretty little face.

  She cried till she went numb from it. She was the only person on Earth who knew the children were dead. The wrongness of that was nearly as overwhelming as the fact. She thought of phoning the old uncle in Savannah but she remembered the sour old man too well. He would arrive with his own servants, and he would insist Mr. K turn Ella out immediately since he had no work for a nanny. There would be gossip if he kept a young girl here when he didn’t need her. And what, Ella wondered, would Mr. K want in exchange for a reference?

  She noticed his valise sitting in an undisturbed layer of dust in the corner between the wardrobe and the wall. If he’d gone away with just the clothes on his back, it must mean he kept a closetful at the Decatur. If so, who knew when he’d be back. He was an inattentive father and a bored husband. It might be days till unanswered phone calls elevated his worries over his carnal desires.

  “I can’t just leave them,” she said aloud to no one. “I can’t leave them for the blowflies and the mice.”

  She crossed to the window and saw that up the block, a sheet-wrapped body waited on the street for the wagon. She pulled a robe from Mr. K’s tallboy, threading it on as she went downstairs. She sat with her back against the front door till she heard the horseshoes and metal wheels outside, then she stepped onto the porch. It didn’t even feel strange, in the increasing unreality of these days, to be outside wearing only Mr. K’s robe over Cook’s nightdress. While someone a few doors down was collected off the curb, Ella admired the starry sky through bare branches. It was a fine tree-lined street, a fine view from this entrance, which she’d been allowed to use only if the children were with her. When the wagon approached, she gestured for the drivers to pull over.

  “I have more for you,” she said. “I need you to come inside for them.”

  “Cost you.” The nearest wagon man leered down at her full chest, accentuated by unconstraining nightclothes. “You’re supposed to put them out on the—”

  “I’ll pay.” She thought of the coin in Maid’s apron. “Ten dollars.”

  When he said, “Ten each,” Ella knew she hadn’t imagined hearing those words, the other night.

  She sat at the bottom of the grand staircase, both hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming, while the men brought down Maid and Cook, and then (she couldn’t watch) John and little Muriel.

  When the men returned for their money, she gave them Maid’s coin and the one she’d found on the landing.

  “Plenty of these here, eh?” one of them said. He looked as if he might push past Ella to look around and help himself. He had the face of a prize-fighter, with a much-broken nose and deformed ears.

  She said, “This is the last of them.”

  “You should pay us more,” he said. “More work for us, tonight.”

  “But no risk.”

  He chuckled. Acknowledging, it seemed, that two nights ago he’d carried out a thrashing body. Did he feel no apprehension that she knew? Never mind the morals of it--why should he care about wealthy strangers?--he showed no worry about the law.

  That was how she knew the sheet-wrapped bundle had been Charles. A rich man could have a servant carted away, dead or living. A rich man could give orders, legal or not, and (for money) be obeyed without question or anxiety. That was how the world worked.

  Perhaps Mr. Kingston had come upon Charles stealing from Mrs. Kingston’s strongbox. Mr. K might not fight to protect his wife, but her assets were dear to him.

  “I see you’re all right now?” It was the other man speaking, a small furtive-looking person, his posture a perpetual cringe. But his smile, ugly because of missing teeth, was friendly.

  “What?” She shook herself out of her distraction.

  “Two, three nights ago, I took away your sheet? Nice bit of embroidered edge. From the mending pile, I guess. Too fine for a servant’s bed. I sold it to a half-blind crone makes antimacassars.”

  “You didn’t tell me ‘bout that,” his partner said.

  “Like you never picked a rag and said nothing to me?” He ducked to avoid a slap on the back of the head. “Doesn’t hurt to unwrap the package, grab a ring or cuff-link--can’t take it with them, can they?”

  “Tell ‘em that in Chicago,” said the other. “Collect them in trolleycars, black cloth over the windows. Rows of passenger corpses--pretty sight, eh? A guard in the trolley and no pickings for nobody.”

  Ella was glad to shut the door behind them. Soon, it would be daytime, and maybe Mr. K would return.

  She wished she could lie down, curl up and try to sleep away the acid edge of her grief. But that wagon man was right. The dead couldn’t take it with them. And this might be Ella’s only chance, ever in her life, to get away clear. She knew Mr. K wouldn’t pay her more than he owed for this month. And what would he demand for his reference?

  Maybe he wouldn’t miss some of his wife’s jewels, not when she had so many.

  Ella went upstairs and into Mrs. Kingston’s room, pulling the chain on a small lamp near the door. It cast just enough light to show the missus sunk deep into her featherbed, French sheets braided around her fever-wet limbs, her face mottled like bad meat, her red hair a tangle.

  Her eyelids fluttered open and, pausing to cough, she managed to say, “The baby? Did I dream…?”

  “Yes,” Ella said. “Yes, missus, you’ve been having terrible nightmares.”

  “My little John … Muriel? All right?”

  “Yes.” Ella felt
her stomach knot. “Everything’s fine. Go back to sleep.”

  She felt a sudden cramp of hatred. She nearly shouted, You put me out onto the street, to die alone and bitten by rats. Why shouldn’t your last hours be hell, as you meant mine to be? Why shouldn’t I tell you your children are dead?

  But she couldn’t. She could steal the woman’s things—it wasn’t as if Mrs. K would ever again have occasion to use them. But the tranquility of her last moments, no.

  She walked to Mrs. K’s dresser, to her row of jewelry boxes. There was a large one of exotic hardwood, an inlaid music box from Germany, and a replica of her tallboy, painted with the same roses and ribbons. They were so full of jewelry it made Ella want to cry. How could one woman have so much? She picked through them, selecting pieces she thought would sell easily and for good money.

  Then she opened the bombé dresser—more roses and ribbons—and slipped out of Cook’s old gown. She put on some of Mrs. K’s silken underthings. They were lovely but the circumstances made her cringe inside them. Stifling another crying jag, she forced herself to the wardrobe, and she pulled on the first shirt and suit her hands encountered. She slipped on a pair of shoes that were too long and narrow, then returned to the dresser to pocket the jewelry she’d laid out.

  She glanced at the bed, soft in the first light of day filtering through window sheers. The sick woman barely made a lump under the tangles and rumples of silk and linen and down.

  Mrs. Kingston said, very feebly, “Nanny?”

  Ella saw that her face had grown darker, almost purple in the thin light. An instinct of pity made her fill the nightstand basin with water from the jug. She dipped in one of a stack of cloths carefully ironed and folded beside it. As she ran it over Mrs. Kingston’s face, she thought of Maid, who’d done all the ironing. Up earlier than this every day to do a mountain of laundry—the children’s, Mr. and Mrs. Kingston’s, the other servants’. Back-breaking work even with the new wringer washer. Hours of stringing the backyard lines with sheets and towels and garments. Then the ironing, the folding. Charles would be up nearly as early to stoke the furnace, lay the fires, fetch and wash the car if an outing was planned. Cook’s list would be done by then, telling Ella what to buy at the market. Then Cook would make and knead the bread dough so it rose while the rest of the house awakened. Ella would return with the food so Cook could start on the first of the day’s four meals. Then Ella would go draw baths for the children, give the baby her bottle, comb out Muriel’s hair, fetch clean clothes for her and John, take them to the nursery table for milk and bread and fruit, and lay out the day’s lessons (if it was a weekend or holiday) while they ate. She never thought she’d want to turn the clock back to those days. She never knew how much the children meant to her. She’d been comfortable around them, she could almost be herself.

  “Too rough … with the cloth,” Mrs. Kingston said. “Bring Maid. Charles … is he gone? I didn’t want him… near the children. Can Maid … or you … stoke furnace? Children may get … cold.”

  Ella straightened, dropping the damp rag into the basin. Beside it on the nightstand was a locket with the children’s picture in it. She couldn’t resist it, she slipped it around her neck. For a moment she was lost in memories. Teaching Muriel to ice skate last year. Laughing at John’s mangling of jokes.

  Mrs. Kingston said, “You’re not … not … ill now?” Her voice was barely audible.

  “No. It was very cold out on the street. I suppose it broke my fever.” In the face of all the subsequent death—even a murder, it seemed—her knot of resentment had loosened a little. She stepped closer to the bed, close enough to see Mrs. Kingston’s feverish eyes glitter beneath her liverish blue lids. “Don’t worry,” she said to the dying woman. “Everything will be fine.”

  Mrs. K shook her head, gasping with the effort. “Children? Listened for them, but … Can’t hear them. Why haven’t they…? Tell them … stand … there by the door. Please. Not inside where I could … infect. But I … need to see them.” Her tears were pink like Muriel’s had been, tinged with blood.

  “I’ll go do that,” Ella said.

  “Locket,” Mrs. K barked out. Struggling against a coughing fit, she freed her hand from beneath the blankets. It shook with the effort of reaching for the gold and enamel oval.

  Ella opened it up. She removed the photograph on the right side, of Mr. Kingston perhaps ten years ago looking slimmer and more agreeable. She pushed Mrs. Kingston’s hand down onto the bed to steady it, and she pressed the photo into it. The picture on the left side showed John and Muriel holding baby Annie. It was the reason she’d taken the locket.

  Mrs. Kingston’s face spasmed.

  “Yes, I’m sorry,” Ella said. “You can see I’m taking some of your things. I won’t deny it. It’s because what little I did have, you …” But a voice inside her screamed, No, don’t hector her—let the woman die in peace. “In exchange for this locket, I’ll cry—” She took a steadying breath. I’ll cry for your children long after you can’t.

  She backed away. She needed to hurry, she needed to get out of here and into the air, into something that felt like freedom, like her own life gotten back.

  Mrs. Kingston was gasping, her hand clenched into a fist around the tiny photo of her husband. She shook her head like a person possessed. Like a crazed animal in a net. “Take … take picture away. He brought it. The disease.”

  Ella was shocked she’d managed to say so much. She didn’t look as if she had the strength. She barely looked human anymore, with her bloodstained face and sweat-matted nest of hair.

  “No, you mustn’t think that about Mr. K,” she said. Ella hated the vile pompous man. But he might come back in time to say good-bye to his wife. She imagined their last moments. It wasn’t right for them to be spoiled by this suspicion. It wasn’t right because it wasn’t true. “Mr. K didn’t bring in the flu.”

  Mrs. K was staring in horror at her own fist, still knotted around her husband’s picture. She glared as if it were a street rat coming to bite her.

  “It wasn’t him, missus. There’s someone, a man … He’s been in Mexico all the time I’ve been here. I meant no harm but I had to find out if he was all right. You don’t know this, but once or twice a month on my half-day I … I go to Union Station, to the pay telephones. It takes all I earn but I have to … I talk to people who get news of him.” Mrs. K would never understand what it meant to Ella to hear herself called her by her given name, to be asked how she felt and how she fared, so far from home. But the missus could sympathize with Ella’s anxiety for Nicky, surely? What Mrs. K felt about the children, everyone felt about someone, didn’t they? Well, even if Mrs. K didn’t care about that, fair was fair. Mr. K might come back in time, and Ella couldn’t deprive Mrs. K of whatever solace he could offer. “And so I went there—”

  “Where are … children?”

  “I went to Union Station. A few days ago. I sneaked out. Because I read that the flu had reached Mexico, and I was so afraid for him. My Nicky. You’d have fired me for using the telephone here, but I just had to know. I swear I never meant to …” I never meant to bring death home with me. I never meant to kill the children. Ella felt her spine curve with the weight of it. Her hand went to the locket on her chest and lifted it, as if it were the cause.

  Mrs. K said again, “Don’t hear … my children.” She didn’t seem to grasp what Ella was telling her. “Where are … the children?”

  Ella looked down at the dying woman, her face smeared pink from bloody tears, her lips nearly black, her eyes sunken and glittering. It was no use. It did no good for Ella to try to unburden herself. She’d never shed this guilt. And Mrs. K wasn’t well enough to understand.

  All Ella could struggle to achieve, with self-forgiveness far out of reach, was a bit of kindness. Maybe she could lessen the pain of a dying mother.

  “Mr. Kingston came and took them,” Ella said
. It was the only lie she could think of that might ease Mrs. K’s mind. “When you got sick, Mr. K came home and took the children. Took them someplace nice. Safe. Mr. K has them now, that’s why you don’t hear them. So don’t worry, they’re—”

  Mrs. Kingston’s cry was piercing. Ella wouldn’t have believed the sick woman could manage such a wail, could force so much air from her dying lungs. The room vibrated with her horror and despair. It ratcheted till she was choking, till she sounded like a woman drowning. And she didn’t stop, she kept screeching in short bursts, gagging and coughing in between, always in a frenzy of shaking her head.

  If Ella had believed in the devil, she’d have supposed he’d entered the missus’s body. She backed up and ran to the tallboy, grabbing a coat.

  Mrs. Kingston was shrieking, “My children! My children!” in between gargles and wheezes.

  Ella wanted to say something, to do something, to restore the woman’s peace as she died. To make her stop screaming.

  She said again, “Don’t worry, don’t worry about the children.” Backing out of the room, “Mr. Kingston came and took them. You won’t infect—”

  But as she reached the door, she understood. She’d have given anything not to.

  She pitched herself into the hallway and ran, though she knew she didn’t need to hurry. She knew now that Mr. Kingston wasn’t coming back.

  Someone had told Mrs. Kingston that her husband had a girl at the Decatur. Mrs. K assumed, as Cook had, that Mr. K had sneaked out sometime this week to be with her. Mrs. K thought he’d broken the quarantine she’d imposed to protect her children. She thought he’d risked—and brought back—the influenza, the contagion killing more than even a world war. He had risked all the things, the only things, his wife cared about.