Fever

by Mary Beth Keane

  “Get up,” she said, one hand on her hip, the other hand reaching down for the corner of the quilt. She had every intention of whipping it off him, yanking him to his feet, marching him around the neighborhood until he protested and gave her a little of the fight she needed if they were to keep going.

  “Alfred?” she said, noticing, finally, that his face was gray, his lips tinged with blue. She dropped the edge of the quilt and touched his cheek, cold but not clammy. She dropped her face to his and felt for his breath. Run for help, she ordered herself and felt every small muscle in her body prepare to spring forward, propel her down to the sidewalk to hail a policeman, find a telephone. But all she could do was stare, and where a moment earlier her body had felt full of turmoil, now it felt perfectly still, like everything within her had paused, like a dancer who leaps and is suspended over the stage for one single second, halfway between one place and another but knowing she is on her way and will have arrived there as soon as she opens her eyes. Mary lifted the edge of the quilt and moved next to him, put her arm around his chest. As long as she stayed there, like that, as if they were sleeping, it hadn’t happened yet. As long as no one knew, and no one else came into their rooms, and they didn’t take him away. His pills were a mess, all over the desk as well as the drawer, and the needles he’d kept so clean and organized were separated, thrown here and there, mixed up with his dirty clothes, one propped inside an empty coffee mug. I should clean it all up, she thought, and realized she didn’t care.

  “There’s Typhoid at the hospital,” she said, looking at the ceiling, worried that she was already forgetting what it felt like to hug him when he was warm, and feeling her heart throb when she thought she felt pressure back. But he didn’t say anything, and there was no pressure back, and after a few minutes, she walked to the grocer’s to call for help.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The doctor on the telephone told Mary that he’d come directly after supper, and true to his word, he buzzed around eight o’clock. After checking Alfred and confirming what Mary had told him when they spoke, he glanced around the room. “Is that his layout?” he asked, looking over at the open drawer, the pills and vials. Mary nodded and then pulled the covers up to Alfred’s chest, tucked them tightly all around. She still half-expected him to open his eyes. She kept thinking she saw him flinch. She stared at his blank face. She thought of the babies swaddled at the hospital, how contented they were when their blankets were wrapped tight.

  “And you?” the doctor asked. He was younger than she by a decade, and reminded her of Mr. O’Neill, a young man dressed up in his father’s work clothes.

  “What about me?”

  “Do you take any of that stuff?” he walked over to the desk, pushed some of the pills around.

  “Get away from that,” Mary said. She pushed the drawer shut.

  The doctor shrugged. “The coroner will be by shortly,” he said just before he left.

  She should be more upset, she decided, but discovered she was too tired to muster up the energy. It was difficult to understand that they would take him away, and that would be the last she’d see of him. Typhoid at the hospital. One was connected to the other—she felt as sure of that as she’d been sure that wearing a hat identical to Mrs. Bowen’s was what had sent her to North Brother. If she’d brought Typhoid to the hospital, to those new mothers, to those babies, then it was as they said, she’d brought it to the other places, too. She’d killed Tobias Kirkenbauer. A cold breeze rattled the panes of the window, and she looked down at Alfred again. She ran through their years together to think of who should be notified. Back and forth she went, and could come up with only half a dozen names. Among them, Liza Meaney. Her son. Fran. Joan. Jimmy Tiernan. Better not say anything at all, she decided, than have a funeral and face so few people, all impatient to get back to their lives. She opened the desk drawer again and rooted around for a pen and paper so she could list the things she had to do, and then as soon as the tip of the pen touched the paper she thought about how strange she was being, and how she’d better look at him again because it would be the last time. She turned to study him and realized that she didn’t know what she was looking for. More than his coloring, which made him seem more unfamiliar to her with every passing quarter hour, it was the fact that he hadn’t moved at all that upset her. Not a single finger, not a hair, not a cough or gasp or growl.

  What had Mr. Kirkenbauer done when his wife died? He’d embraced her—lifted her from the bed and held her close to his broad chest. He’d cried big, hot tears and didn’t care who saw. He’d kissed the top of her head and told her he loved her. In the total silence of their rooms Mary put the tip of her finger to Alfred’s hand, the familiar row of knuckles. She examined the jagged fingernails. She studied his blank face. Where did a person go? She wished she knew. She said her good-bye in silence. I don’t think I understand what’s happened yet, but when I do, I will miss you. And I’m sorry.

  The coroner came at eleven o’clock, with his teenage son to assist him. She signed the paper he placed on the table. “Right here, Mrs. Briehof,” he said. “And here.” She didn’t bother correcting him, and signed “Mary Briehof” because it was easy, and then they would go away. They got Alfred onto a stretcher, and as they moved into the hall, the boy walking backward, the father forward, she heard the man say quietly to his son that this is what happened to druggies, he saw it all the time. The son said something Mary couldn’t make out, and she tried to ignore the sound of them struggling on the stairs, tried to turn away from the image of his body shifting, sliding. The coroner had given her a contact name and address for the next morning, where she’d have to go to make arrangements, and she folded it over and over until it was as small as a pebble. Then she shoved it deep in her pocket.

  It was impossible to sleep that night, and a little before dawn, still wearing the clothes she’d worn the day before, Mary went down to the sidewalk to clear her head. She walked west, to the Hudson, and crouched on the river’s sloped bank to watch a small barge approach from the north. She wondered how long until it didn’t feel as if he were at home, waiting for her. How long until the space he’d made began to narrow and close and until she wondered what it had been like to ever have known him, and to be known by him. Even in those months when they lost track of each other she knew he was out there somewhere, a dot on a map, and she could pass the time wondering if he was thinking of her, and if the dot that was him and the dot that was her were moving closer together without either of them realizing. A woman and child walked by and nodded to her. They can’t tell by looking at me, she thought, staring after them as they ambled up the embankment and back up to the street. Seems like something they should be able to tell by looking at me.

  She hadn’t considered going to the hospital that day, but when the sun had fully risen it seemed better that she work, at least for a few hours, and besides, it already seemed like such a long, long time had passed. In the light of morning she remembered that it might not be Typhoid that was going around the hospital. Not every fever was Typhoid Fever, and the nurse hadn’t been sure. And even if it was Typhoid, it mightn’t have anything to do with her. She was only one person, and there were so many in and out of the hospital every day, from deliverymen to proud grandmothers. Who knew what invisible infestations they swept in with them when they came? She thought of the Borriello boys, and how they’d eaten anything she made for them and never got sick. She’d never made Alfred sick. Fran. Aunt Kate. She thought back on all the families she’d worked for. It was a coincidence. A strange coincidence, but still. What could she have done differently? What would they have done differently if they were in her shoes? She thought of the dairyman up in Camden and imagined him skimming the cream from his milk, walking his property with his grandchildren.

  Staring across the broad Hudson at New Jersey, she also wondered whether it was possible for a person to know something and not know something at the same time. Sh
e wondered whether it was possible to know a truth, and then quickly unknow it, bricking up that portal of knowledge until every pinpoint of light was covered over. When she thought back on the hot blur of days that marked her hearing, way back in 1909, and all the things they’d said about her—that she had no friends, that she didn’t keep a clean kitchen—she felt that animal fight rise up in her again. They blamed her because she was opinionated, and Irish, and unmarried, and didn’t bow to them. She walked quickly to the water to kick stones. The wind on her face felt cleansing, and she closed her eyes to it. And yet, and yet, and yet. As if crouched behind a small door that didn’t draw attention to itself, a different truth sat. And now, as she considered how cold the river water was at that moment, how quickly it would numb the limbs of a swimmer, she closed her eyes and looked at that door, nondescript as it was, unadorned, just sitting, waiting to be opened.

  • • •

  She’d tell the administrator about Alfred so he’d be prepared when she asked for time off for the funeral. She might tell a few among the kitchen staff. Maybe she’d go over to the old building and tell Jimmy in person, stop in for a talk with Fran or Mila. It had been too long.

  And anyway, if she didn’t go to the hospital they might find it strange, and start looking into Mary Brown’s history as a cook.

  When she got to the hospital, she nodded to the doorman as usual but found herself studying his face for signs of exhaustion, signs that the fever was on its way. When she got to her floor, she opened the door to disconcerting silence, and continued down the hall passing empty rooms, not a single nurse. The recovery rooms were similarly empty, not only of patients, but also of beds. Only when she approached the kitchen did she hear the ebb and flow of voices in conversation. As she passed the doctors’ lounge, Dr. Henshaw was standing in the frame of the door, watching her pass. She said good morning, but he didn’t reply.

  Fly away, she told herself as she took another step, and then another, toward the voices in the kitchen. Do it now. Moving down the hall was like walking through water, and she felt both light and heavy at the same time. Fly out now into the brittle winter air and don’t look back. She glanced over her shoulder at the stair door. To her right was the bank of elevators, but it was as if they had her on a tether and now they were shortening the chain, wrapping it around the broadest part of their hands to draw her closer, and closer, until they had her where they wanted her.

  Finally, she arrived at the kitchen. She was lifting her bag from her shoulder and toward the usual hook when, at the same moment, she noticed Soper standing not five feet away. Next to him was the head doctor and behind them were two men Mary didn’t recognize. The mood in the room was one of calm patience, as if they’d been waiting for her all night and now that she’d arrived they could check off that final item on their long list of things to do. One of the unfamiliar men moved to the doorway through which Mary had just entered.

  “Mary Mallon,” Dr. Soper said without moving. He looked so pleased to see her that Mary wondered for a second if he could be there on other business. But no, she saw when he exchanged glances with one of the unfamiliar men; Mary had confirmed something that he’d suspected, that he’d suggested to the other men standing around, also waiting, and he was pleased to have his suspicion proven true. They spread out, almost imperceptibly, to fill the corners of the room. She went ahead and hung her coat alongside her bag as she did every morning, and then without looking at any of them she walked over to the stove and checked on the oats. She opened the icebox and made note of the fresh eggs and cream. Then she sat on the single stool, the one they used for peeling, put her hands over her face, and cried.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  She gave them no trouble. She listened and nodded and only once remembered her bag, still hanging on the hook at the hospital. When Dr. Soper gave her his hand to step down into the boat that would ferry them across Hell Gate, she placed her hand in his and then took her seat. In the series of questions there were one or two about Alfred, and Mary said only that he was deceased, not that he’d died the day before, or that there was a burial to arrange, or that it was still so new that she didn’t know what to make of it except that now that she was back on North Brother, at an actual, physical distance away from him, from their rooms, from their life, she seemed to be able to see it better—like backing away from a picture to take in the whole scene and not just the image at the center.

  Her bungalow had not been occupied in the five years since she last saw it, and they were kind enough to air it for half a morning while she answered the doctors’ questions in the main hospital. It wasn’t like the first time around, where she fought and argued, and the tenor of their questions changed accordingly. Now she gave them the answers they sought right away, and they seemed grateful to her. She’d been asked to check in, and she hadn’t. She’d been asked not to cook, and she did. She knew the terms of her release and she violated them with full knowledge. She nodded. She wondered if her egret was still living on the island somewhere, if John Cane was still commuting daily. “You put lives at risk,” one of the doctors informed her, and she saw that they worried about getting through to her, that she mightn’t understand why they’d taken her again. “Before, it was carelessness. This time, it’s criminal.”

  “I know that,” she said, and when she said it she realized she wasn’t just being agreeable; she did know. And that it had been a risk worth taking was something they would never be able to understand.

  “And using a false name is an admission of guilt. Do you agree?” Mary nodded that she did, but again, there were so many things that were difficult to explain, things she didn’t even understand herself. It was possible to live in such a way as to keep one’s back to the things that were not convenient. People got Typhoid Fever when she cooked for them, and in some cases, those people died. But more often than not they did not get sick, and she was a remarkable cook, and wasn’t it possible that those people were going to die anyway? If our lives are determined before we are born, then what could she have done about it? And if every person who is born will die, and if every person will rise again, and come together again, and if our time on earth is only a handful of seconds compared to the infinity of life after, then wasn’t her crime very small? No greater than the crime of the East River that drowned Alberto Borriello? She’d taken a risk, but living was itself a risk, and most people agreed it was a risk worth taking.

  And then she thought of the Kirkenbauer boy, his limp arm cast around her neck, his hot cheek against hers, and she felt a dead weight on her chest. She would not argue for herself. She would not fight them. If they decided to put chains on her ankles and drop her into the river, she would not object.

  But they didn’t want to throw her into the river. They simply wanted her to stay on North Brother, and as soon as she opened the door of her bungalow and leaned against the range to look about the room, she realized that finding herself back on North Brother was surprising only in that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. The ten-foot-by-twelve-foot room was so familiar to her, every fold in the dusty curtain, every creak in the floor, that within a few seconds she was astonished to think that just a short time ago she’d never expected to see it again. Every part of life feels strange, and every part of life feels inevitable. The mattress on her cot was rotted through, so they brought her another. She slept peacefully the first night, and in the morning John Cane left a sweet bun and a cup of coffee outside her door. When she saw him later, she’d ask him to let the coroner know that something had come up, but to use the little money she’d put aside for rent to buy Alfred a new shirt and tie, and to put him in a decent casket. “Tell him to take Alfred to St. Raymond’s in the Bronx,” she’d tell John Cane, and if the coroner didn’t do any of this, if the coroner just took her money and buried Alfred in his undershirt in one of the city plots, she supposed she’d never know. She took one further step back: and if John Cane never went to the coroner, if
he felt too tired to spend time tracking down a stranger about a man he’d never liked as a favor for a friend who hadn’t reached out to him in five years, she supposed she’d never know that, either.

  She was not as special as she’d been the first time around. In five years they’d discovered more healthy carriers, though the rest of them were allowed to live out their lives with family, at home. The papers that had taken up her cause in 1909 got word of her story again, but now cast her as villain. Jealous of young women who could still have children, and driven insane by an abusive and drug-addicted companion, she’d purposely gotten work at the hospital to infect those new mothers and kill their babies, was how one newspaper put it. Twenty-five people had contracted Typhoid Fever at Sloane Maternity Hospital. Two people had died. Mary read the article, and then she read it again, and both times had to catch her breath. She read it for a third time and then she folded it, left it on her front step, and decided she wouldn’t read the paper again until her capture was no longer in the news.

  John Cane came for a visit on her third day back, and though she felt him glancing sideways at her while she was looking away, he wouldn’t meet her eye. So she talked a while but then drifted into silence, and as they sat, shivering, on the front step of her hut she saw the old retired horse in the distance, wearing a tartan blanket and looking across the water. “I thought he’d be dead by now,” Mary said after a bit, and John Cane stood, clapped his hands, yelled at the horse to get on.

  “Dead!” John Cane said as he clapped his hands a few more times to warm them, as he reached for his toes and the sky and back again. “He wouldn’t leave North Brother for all the fresh hay in the kingdom.” He looked at her, finally. “And I don’t blame him. Life can be good here.”