She chuckled. “Irony can be a bitch, huh?”
“Can you at least tell me your name?”
Reflexively, she patted her pouch of scalpels. “It’s obvious what you’re up to, but it’s pointless. Everyone who gets close to me dies,” she said, grunting, “one way or another.”
A breeze tickled the back of his throbbing neck, and he shuddered. “How about I guess it? Is it . . . Elle? As in E-L-L-E. Not L, as in ‘lovely,’ though you are. Lovely, I mean.” Where did that come from? Suddenly the room felt ten degrees hotter.
“No, I’m hideous,” she said, crossing her arms to hide her scars. “And the inside’s even worse.”
She jumped back from the observation window.
Bewildered, he listened for whatever new threat she’d perceived.
Detecting nothing, he looked down and realized that he’d stepped toward her, but didn’t retreat. His throat ached. Over the past three weeks, he’d been so fixated on what she’d been through physically, he hadn’t considered the abuse’s impact on her psyche. Suddenly, he felt compelled to counter the negative self-talk she’d just revealed.
“You must have noticed I can’t stop staring at you,” he said in a gentle voice.
“Of course I did. Who wouldn’t stare at a freak?”
“I don’t know how you pull it off, but the scars make you look more beautiful.” He moved his foot in an arc along the dust. “It’s sad that you wear pain so well.”
He looked up and noted the glisten of a tear on her cheek.
“Coraline,” she said through the glass, “but all my friends call me Cora.” She laughed, and he could tell by her hollow tone that she’d meant it as a joke.
“Nice to meet you, Cora.”
Her eyes narrowed, and he felt their connection snap. “No Gettler is a friend of mine.”
“Then think of me as Finn. Just Finn.”
“Why didn’t your father give you a German name?”
“My mom wanted to name me after Huckleberry in Tom Sawyer. Her second love is American lit.”
“Ulrich must have hated that her Romanian genes muddied his perfect line of Aryan descendants,” she said nonchalantly.
How could she know that? Playing it off, Finn laughed. “He never seemed to mind that I was a mutt. Gramps was good to me, aside from when I was causing trouble.”
Her face had darkened.
Sensing he’d hit a nerve, he backtracked: “Irregardless,” he flashed her a smile, “I like my name. It fits.”
“I loved that character. The way he helped Jim…” she said, a lightness returning to her eyes.
He grinned.
“That doesn’t mean I like you,” she said, glowering, then looked toward the exterior. “I gotta go.”
His heart thudded. “Why?”
“The sun’s about to set.” She stepped out of sight.
“Wait.”
“I never miss a sunset,” she said from the far side of the wall.
The sound of footfalls echoed in the corridor.
Finn darted to the door and yelled through the slit. “When will you be back?!”
“Not sure I will.” Her voice had sounded faint.
1907
The beginning of Typhoid Mary’s exile on North Brother Island
October 1907
oncealed against the church, Cora pulled back the hood of her cloak and searched the blackness for an unlit boat. The flashing beacon at North Brother’s southern tip was little help. Downriver, the star-pocked night faded to an indigo hue as it neared the Gotham skyline. The mansions along Fifth Avenue and Broadway were illuminated by electric streetlamps—she could just make out their orange halos—and an occasional taller building glistened with nocturnal activity. Of the million lights in that city, only one mattered to her. Only one had her weighing the risk of a gruesome death while trying to reach it.
At this early hour, the kerosene lamp in the McSorleys’ apartment would be dark. But if she were to attempt—and survive—the river crossing, and the microbiologists at Carnegie Laboratory were able to cure her, within weeks she could be eating a hot bowl of her mother’s potato and leek soup beside its familiar glow.
If instead Cora remained here, her future as Dr. Gettler’s property would be unavoidable. While he’d been floundering through various methods to isolate her antibodies, the bacteria counts in her specimens and the death rates of the lab mice had continued to increase. With each day she became more lethal.
And more despondent.
Three years ago, she’d pleaded with Dr. Gettler to allow her to fill her days with a purpose. Stumbling over her words, she’d pointed out that he’d devoted himself to his research as a means of blunting the pain from his loss. She needed a similar analgesic. Also, others would be less inclined to object to a leper who’d become a permanent resident if she earned her room and board.
He’d worked out an arrangement with the head gardener, John Canne, whom Dr. Gettler described as “the only man on this island as trustworthy as O’Toole,” and secured her a small wage and a room in the nurses’ residence.
At the end of each day, she threw off her shroud and collapsed onto her cot. The labor itself, she relished; the constant fear exhausted her. Anytime she raised her gaze from the dirt, she might meet the doctor’s expectant stare, summoning her to his laboratory.
Once a week, she had to lie upon his examining table, at the mercy of his latest hypothesis. Only the rodents, in cages stacked against one wall, had it worse than she did. Even now, she could almost hear their squeaking and smell their foul odor.
She tried not to think about what he’d last done to her there, but the two-inch-long, sutured incision on her abdomen throbbed, refused to be forgotten.
If she stayed here, at least she would remain alive—until the microbial monsters prevailed. And she did believe in the doctor’s work; if he found the source of her immunities, there would be no need for contagion hospitals such as this one.
Conversely, if she risked the choppy waters, she’d likely drown. A chill seeped through her and settled in her chest. She blew onto her palm and concentrated on the sensation of air, not water. When the nightmares had first begun, Cora would be so out of breath when she woke that she thought she was actually submerged. As a result, she believed she knew exactly how that death would feel.
When Cora’s new friend Mary Mallon had mentioned her beau’s plan to rescue her, Cora had called them both crazy. To which Mary had responded, “That crackpot doctor treats you like a lab rat. Personally, I’d rather drown a free woman than live here a caged animal.”
It had been an easy claim for Mary to make. An asymptomatic carrier from New York City, who’d been vilified by the dailies for purportedly causing multiple typhoid fever outbreaks, she’d been banished to Hospital Island only seven months earlier.
Cora didn’t like to talk about that hellish day in 1904. No one who’d been there did. So, she’d left Mary’s comment unanswered.
As hard as she tried to recall the eleven she’d saved, those she hadn’t were the ones who floated through her memories, their limp bodies suspended around her like a school of jellyfish.
No way could she die like that. Not once since then had she stepped into the East River.
On the beach below, Mary paced, her tall silhouette visible in the glow of the crescent moon. With its reflection, the strait looked like obsidian, though Cora wasn’t deceived by its elegance. Beneath its shiny surface were riptides; she could hear them breaking against the two piers.
The wind, particularly sharp today, slapped her cheeks. The waves had to be equally fierce—either bad luck or a sign from God.
“He’s late,” Mary muttered, and a gust brought her voice to Cora.
An early riser, Cora’s boss, John Canne, would be roving the grounds soon. He, or a physical pla
nt worker who’d stepped out for a smoke, would alert the staff to the escape of the “Germ Woman,” as the papers had nicknamed Mary. If either spotted Cora, no one would believe that she hadn’t intended to flee as well. Undoubtedly, Canne would head straight to the doctor’s cottage and wake Dr. Gettler.
Cora willed the boat to appear, though its arrival was far from certain. Alfred Briehof might have gone on a bash last night, or perhaps the savage waters had already claimed the vessel, which had to be small given his meager wages as a coalman. At this very moment, it might be settling in the muck at the bottom, somewhere near the Hussar. If a British frigate laden with gold and eighty shackled Revolutionary soldiers couldn’t navigate these waters, what chance had a little rowboat?
Eventually she’d shown O’Toole the golden coin she’d found in the sand. After identifying it as a guinea, he’d speculated that it had come from the Hussar. To keep herself from impulsively deciding to risk the crossing, she’d intentionally left her satchel in her room that morning.
A gust buffeted Mary’s blouse and full skirt. She tucked a loose strand of hair into her coif, raised a covered lantern, and lifted its sheath three times to signal her location.
Cora scanned the water for Alfred. Although Mary couldn’t possibly hear her, she tried to be as still as one of the corpses waiting to be transferred by ferry. The dead had an easier way off this atoll than she did.
Her breathing too loud, she slowed its pace.
Last spring, the day “Typhoid Mary” had been assigned to the hut they’d built for her, Cora had asked Canne to leave a bouquet of primroses on the small porch.
Amid a stream of Irish curses and proclamations that her cooking had never sickened a soul, and that there was “no goddamn way” she’d listen to “that eejit” Dr. Soper, Mary had thrown the flowers to the ground.
From against the tennis court fence, Cora had removed the cloth that covered her face and explained that she, too, was a prisoner at Riverside.
Smoothing her strawberry blond hair and starched skirt, Mary had beckoned for Cora to enter and take a seat.
Daily, Mary had ranted in her heavy Irish brogue about her rights, need for a solicitor, and “gittin’ the hell outta here.”
Always keeping her gloved hands in her lap and her nose and mouth shrouded, Cora would quietly listen to the sentiments that echoed those lodged in her heart, like a keg of gunpowder she was too timid to light.
Even while she’d been praying for her friend’s release, a small part of Cora had been hoping it wouldn’t happen. Finally, she had a confidante who understood her plight, someone to take the edge off the crushing loneliness.
According to Mary, Dr. Soper and the doctors at Willard Parker Hospital, where Mary had first been admitted, believed the germs resided in her gallbladder. Remove the gallbladder, remove the germs; so went the theory.
When Cora had asked Dr. Gettler if curing Mary could be that simple, he’d deemed it possible.
“Would that work for me?” Cora had asked.
By then a third pest had invaded her body; she’d pocketed a novella discarded by a woman with smallpox. And Cora had likely acquired typhoid fever from Mary. An ex-chef for wealthy families, Mary had struggled with Dr. Soper’s edict that she was not permitted to so much as boil an egg. She’d cajoled Cora into stealing ingredients from the shipments unloaded at the ferry so she could cook for the two of them within the privacy of her bungalow.
In response to Cora’s question, the doctor had launched into the story of Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine.
Little good the advancement had done her, or the woman who’d owned the book. As far as Cora knew, none of the immigrants in the tenements of New York had received the inoculation. She doubted they would benefit from any vaccines made from her blood. If it could even be done.
She had to get away from him.
Still pacing on the beach, Mary cursed, and Cora wished she could again caution her friend to keep quiet. Cora sniffed the air for the scent of Canne’s tobacco but detected nothing. She pressed her spine against the wall.
Above the tidal strait, lamps dotted the deck of the Williamsburg Bridge. Beyond it, she could just make out the pearl necklace lighting of the Brooklyn Bridge. If only she could reach Gotham simply by walking across a trestle.
If she joined her friend and the dinghy capsized, a riptide—or one of the others in the group—would drag her under before she could swim to land.
Her body would become lodged between the pylons of a pier. Crabs would eat away her face, and once bloated, she would emerge unrecognizable—just like the sixty-one unidentified dead interred beneath the Slocum monument in a Middle Village, Queens, cemetery. Far less grand, she would be buried in Potter’s Field on Hart’s Island, the same site as her sister, yet nowhere near her.
But what if the boat did make it across the river? And the removal of her gallbladder eradicated her germs?
She would be able to hug her mamaí at long last.
Cora longed to be with her now. She’d clung to the memory of the Ambre Royal perfume her mother spritzed on her wrists and décolletage before leaving each night, as much a part of her uniform as the low-cut dress. By now its scent had been reduced to words: amber, orange blossom, vanilla. Oh, to smell her perfume again . . .
She also had a hankering for the pastries in Mrs. Meade’s bakery, three buildings down from their tenement. Each night, Cora stared out her window and imagined the velvety feel of buttered soda bread on her tongue. When she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the clatter of horse-drawn carriages along the cobblestone street and the happy racket of children playing “Come with Me” in the alley.
This was Cora’s chance to return to that life—to feel alive again.
But what if that place existed only in the past?
The city had changed so much in the six years since she and Maeve had been exiled. Cover to cover, she studied the daily newspapers that Canne passed along. But seeing a photograph of the new Plaza Hotel, or reading another headline on the bankers’ panic that was roiling Wall Street and Main Street alike, couldn’t prepare her for the changes that must have occurred within her district.
The bakery might have closed, its aromas replaced by the chemical smells of a laundry. The sounds and scents of horses had to be fading with the arrival of automobiles. Without a single car on North Brother, Cora couldn’t conjure the rumble of an engine or the smell it produced.
And worst of all, Eleanor might have left their once-cramped apartment with its painful memories, taking with her the kerosene lamp, the Gaelic quilt her great-aunt had stitched, and the sole opalotype of the two girls.
With such uncertainty awaiting her across the river, Cora couldn’t overcome her fear of drowning. Yet her hope that the dinghy would suddenly appear felt like a stone in her lungs, keeping her short of breath.
She reached under her shroud and pressed her blouse to her abdomen; warm blood seeped into the cotton. The wound needed to be cleaned and redressed.
Just then, a rowboat with two figures materialized in the dimness. Cora’s legs wobbled as if she were already aboard.
“Well, I’ll be gobsmacked,” Mary said. “The git actually got himself out of bed.” She fixed her windblown hair and flashed the lantern three more times.
Blue tinged the black sky. Soon Cora would stand out against the red bricks. Silently, she eased along the wall. While they were preoccupied with the landing, she should slip away.
A scraping noise signaled that the keel had hit the pebbly bottom, and the man she assumed was Alfred jumped out, soaking his trousers. While his mate fought the current with a set of oars, Alfred shoved the boat farther aground. He wiped his hands on his wool coat and fixed his attention on Mary, who’d backed against the seawall.
“Mary Mallon, I’ve come to take you home,” Alfred announced with a German acc
ent, not nearly as thick as Dr. Gettler’s, and waded toward her.
From her vantage point, Cora could barely distinguish among his thick eyebrows, dark eyes, and the circles beneath them. Although his features appeared to have sagged with age and alcohol abuse, he was still handsome, and he was staring at Mary as if she were a Broadway starlet. Cora understood why she’d stayed with him through the drinking and joblessness.
Mary raised the pillowcase that contained her boots and other meager belongings. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show. Before your last, only two letters in six months. Two!”
“I’m not much of a writer, but I’m here, aren’t I?” Alfred unfastened his life preserver and tossed it into the boat.
Cora half expected Mary to hurl the sack at him. Instead, Mary hiked up her skirt and splashed through the surf. She dropped the lantern in the boat, and Alfred scooped her up and twirled her. They leaned inward for a kiss, and their faces merged in the gloom.
Cora looked away, her heart breaking.
She’d imagined a thousand scenarios of being embraced like that by Linnaeus Jones. In all, his smooth hands, separated from her skin by only a cotton shift, pressed her body against his broad chest, and his lips tasted like a mix of tobacco and the black licorice he often chewed while walking between wards. Afterward, he would whisper in her ear that he was only one promotion away from a salary that could support her as his wife.
A few times, while she’d been planting alone, Cora had even attached his surname to her first in elegant cursive letters scrawled in the dirt, erased forever with a swipe of her boot.
But the doctor’s refusal to focus on eradicating her germs—and the needs of a young man—had worked against her. Two weeks ago, from the stairwell of the nurses’ residence, Cora had overheard nurse Carlton coyly describing to nurse Puetz a midnight rendezvous with Linnaeus.
No, she’d thought, her body stinging like she’d landed in a thicket of nettles.
Cora believed that as long as she remained confined to North Brother, no more relevant than a single period in a world the size of the Bible, she would never meet her soulmate. Whereas across the tidal strait, once the doctors at Carnegie cured her, she would walk among two million men.
The Vines Page 12