Fever

by Mary Beth Keane

  “What is it?” Mary asked. From somewhere over their heads came a sound like thunder that grew louder every second until one of the street doors of the Asch Building swung open and people, mostly young women, began to run out to the street. Leaving the gentleman’s shirt on the counter and clutching the key to the register in her fist, Mary left her post, walked out to Washington Place, around the corner to Greene Street, and when she saw the crowds looking up she also looked up, and saw what appeared to be a heap of clothes falling from an upper-floor window. Saving their materials, Mary thought, but she wondered at the moaning from the crowd as another bundle was sent down. A man fainted and the people beside him barely noticed. Mary moved closer to the outer fringe of the crowd. The fire truck’s siren could be heard in the distance, moving closer. Coins rained from above along with the bundles of clothing, and Mary wondered that no one was reaching for them. No one was moving except for one woman who was wailing and thrashing and calling out for God, and Mary worked her way closer, excusing herself and pushing forward through the police officers who did nothing, the gentlemen and ladies, the bakers from across the street, the passersby, a pair of children who were looking up with open mouths. Finally, when Mary got through the crowd, she saw that the bundles had legs and arms and faces, many of which had been singed black. She looked up and saw framed in a ninth-floor window a trio of girls holding hands. The girl on the left was swatting her hair, which had caught fire, and all three were shouting something that no one on the sidewalk could understand. They jumped at the same time, and two of the three held hands until they hit the sidewalk. The third, the one with the burning hair, covered her face with her hands and as she fell her body became piked, her head almost touching her knees, like children do sometimes when they are jumping off rocks into water and want to impress one another. It took Mary a second to understand that there was no water, this was no game. These girls were jumping to their deaths, and far above their heads the crowd could glimpse a man’s arm as he helped them to the ledge as easily as he might have assisted them up the boarding step of the trolley. Two more followed. Then two more. They jumped from other windows as well, in singles, and pairs, and groups of three. The man who had come into the laundry with the ink-stained shirt shouted at them to wait, please wait, the fire trucks were coming and they would be saved. Wait! he commanded, even after they were already falling.

  Finally, a fire truck arrived, and then another. The crowd made way for them. The trucks pulled up close to the building, the firemen unwound their hoses, stretched their ladders up, up, up as high as they would go, and after looking hard at those folded-up ladders, and looking again at the distance to the eighth, ninth, tenth floors, Mary dropped to a crouch and prayed.

  “They’re not going to reach,” a nearby man’s voice said. “By God, they’re too short by three stories.” The collective moan grew louder and louder and swallowed everything. Two more jumped. Then another. Another. When they hit the ground it was as loud as an automobile crashing into a wall. Through the forest of legs at the base of the Asch Building, Mary could make out the back of a woman’s head on the sidewalk, the careful braid threaded through her curls.

  • • •

  The laundry was closed for a week as the bodies were lined up in makeshift coffins on the sidewalk, and families tried to identify their loved ones by a watch or locket, by a pattern of stitches on a stocking, a particular ribbon in the hair. The line went on and on, hundreds of bewildered people in their mourning clothes, while the charred and broken bodies waited to be claimed in the crisp, late March sun. In the days after the fire it seemed to Mary that everyone in the city, from the Upper West Side to the quays of Lower Manhattan, moved about in grief. Papers were sold. Cafés were open. But the world went silent. In another week or so the accusations would begin. Why was the exit door locked? Why hadn’t the alarm sounded on the upper floors? But in those first few days, when people spoke, it was of one subject only. All those girls. All those beautiful girls.

  TWENTY

  “How could I go back?” Mary asked her caseworker at the Department of Health. It was a busy place, and among the clicking of heels on the polished wood floor, the scrape of chairs, the racket of a ringing telephone, and the blusterous arguments spilling out from behind half-open office doors, Mary had to raise her voice to be heard. It was the end of May 1911, and Mary had been checking in with them every three months, as required. The first time she’d checked in, the whole office seemed to halt when she announced her name. Every man or woman behind a desk paused to watch her approach. They’d glanced at one another as she took a seat in the waiting area, and when her name was called their eyes followed her across the room. Now, at her fourth visit, a different caseworker each time, they barely noticed her, and most didn’t look up from the stacks of paperwork on their desks. The staccato music of struck typewriter keys, the zip and ding of carriages returned, never ceased. The office was sinking under all the paperwork—file drawers left open, envelopes, writing pads, stationery, ribbons of ink loosened from spools and piled on chairs, on windowsills, heaped in corners. She wondered if she could talk them into letting her check in every six months instead of every three. She debated telling them about quitting the laundry, but there was nothing to feel guilty about, and if she was as free as they claimed she was, then there was nothing they could do to her for it.

  “I couldn’t possibly go back. You don’t know what it was like that day.”

  “Ah,” the man said, looking again at the address. “I see.” Everyone had an opinion about the Triangle Waist Company tragedy, but relatively few, considering the size of the city, had been there to witness it. “Go home now,” Mary had said to a pair of boys who had stopped to watch. They reminded her of the Borriello boys. But they didn’t move, only stared up at the burning Asch Building like everyone else, until Mary took the smaller one by the shoulders, turned him around, put her forehead against his, and shouted “Go home! Do you hear me? Go home!” He blinked at her, and then, taking the older boy’s hand, they ran away together.

  The man riffled through some papers. “How have you been making ends meet since leaving the laundry?”

  None of your business, Mary wanted to shout, but instead she counted to ten. “The woman I board with takes in lacework for a milliner. She’s been showing me how.”

  “But no cooking, correct? I see here that that is the agreement you came to when you left custody. You understand that?”

  Mary could tell by the change in his face, the sudden light, that he had not realized until that moment who she was. Her file said Mary Mallon, but she could guess what he was thinking: Typhoid Mary.

  “It says here that you risk infecting others if you cook for them.”

  “I know what it says.”

  He closed the file, pushed back from his desk.

  “It will take a while to get you a position at another laundry,” the man said. He brought his hands together and regarded her for a moment. “Have you considered factory work?”

  “Factory work?” Mary blinked, thought of herself among the throngs of women who waited outside the glassworks or the clocks manufacturer for the starting bell. They had to ask permission to use the lav. They had to punch in and out with time cards. At night, when they left, they had to be patted down in case they’d pocketed the small parts, just like the girls in the Triangle fire had been checked for scraps of silk and velvet.

  “Do you realize I’ve cooked for the Blackhouses? For the Gillespies? I’ve cooked for Henry and Adelaide Frick and several of their friends.” She crossed her arms. “I won’t be working in any factory.”

  “You’re not in a position to be haughty, Miss Mallon. We’re not an employment agency, so we have to assign someone the job of getting new work for you. I just don’t have the time. Truthfully, you might have better luck going through an agency. They might know of vacancies at private homes.”

  Mary wo
ndered how old he was. If he still went home to his mama for supper.

  “I’ve been finding work since I was born. Put that in your file. I don’t need any help from you, and I certainly don’t need to be helped into another situation as wrangler.”

  The man sighed. “Fine. Whenever you get something make sure to stop again and let us know the details.”

  “I look forward to it.” She slammed his office door on her way out.

  For the first time since leaving North Brother more than a year earlier, Mary felt unobserved as she made her way down the avenue. The man had forgotten to send her for a sample, and she smiled, quickening her step in case he might remember and run after her. Why had she never considered quitting before, finding something with better terms? She stopped in on the fishmonger on First Avenue and bought a pound of mussels. She stopped again for white wine, parsley, butter, a pair of shallots, a loaf of bread. It would be a treat for Mila, supper ready when she came home, and lately she’d been doing more and more of the cooking, and Mila had agreed that she could take the price of the groceries out of her board. No one had ever said anything about cooking for herself, or cooking for friends without being paid for it, but still, before she cooked for them the first time she reminded Mila of what Dr. Soper had said about her, why she’d spent almost three years on North Brother. She loved cooking, and would like to help, but if Mila didn’t want her boys to eat what she made she would understand.

  “Did you have the fever?” Mila asked.

  “No,” Mary said. The truth. More truth: “They say that doesn’t matter.”

  “How could it not matter? And you cooked for Alfred? When you were living here before? And for other people?”

  “Yes. Of course. It’s how I made my living.”

  “Well then, you cook. I trust you.”

  Mary made that first pot of stew with the boys in mind, and hummed as she chopped the carrots and the celery. Only when it came time to ladle it into bowls did she feel something nagging her, a sharp chill that started behind her neck and traveled down her back. She hesitated, but they were already lusting after the bits of tender meat, the steam rising up to their cheeks as the snow floated down the airshaft. They reached for their bowls and she handed them over, and after, for several weeks after, even after telling herself it was fine, it was completely fine, they’d gotten into her head, was all, they’d made her nervous of herself without true cause, she found herself observing them for signs of illness, and wondered if this was a sign of her guilt, a sign of admitting that she knew something that she could not face. But they never did get sick, not even a head cold, so she kept cooking for them: shepherd’s pies and roasts and coq au vin, quiche with bacon and leeks, and she felt both happier than she’d felt since 1907, and angry once more that she’d signed the paper promising to never cook for hire again.

  “So what will you get?” Mila asked that evening when they finished supper, the blue-black shells in a pile at the center of the table. “You’re still not allowed to cook?”

  “No.” She’d been wondering since leaving the DOH if baking counted as cooking or if it was a different category altogether. She thought of the dairyman upstate who was allowed to stay on and supervise his dairy. There was a bakery looking for help not five blocks away.“Ah,” Mila said. “And they would know, I suppose.”

  Mary nodded.

  “How would they know?”

  Mary didn’t know how they would ever find out, but she had signed the paper. They would return her to North Brother if she lied to them and was caught.

  “Do you think baking counts as cooking? Or is it a separate category?”

  Mila considered the question very seriously.

  “Baking is a different thing. And anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know about either one.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Mary said.

  The next morning, she walked to the bakery that had advertised for help. The man who managed the place showed her their equipment, explained how many rolls, buns, cakes, and pies they made and sold daily. There was a front counter where people could come in and order from what was displayed behind the glass, but most of the business was in the large orders that went directly to grocers nearby. He quizzed Mary about her experience, and then, leaving her alone in the kitchen with the other baker, instructed her to make something that showed them what level of skill she had.

  “Where’s the cocoa?” Mary asked, opening and closing cabinet doors, pulling and pushing drawers. “Do you have a double boiler?” The other baker, an older woman named Evelyn, pointed to a corner of the counter. She stayed silent but watched closely as Mary gathered ingredients. Mary saw her looking from the corner of her eye as she folded and poured and whipped and mixed. When the timer dinged, Evelyn dropped the pretense and turned from her work to watch Mary remove the soufflés from the oven.

  “Wait. They might fall still.”

  “They won’t fall,” Mary said, and they didn’t. The manager took her name without showing any sign of recognition, and told her to report first thing in the morning. Mondays were mostly rolls and buns, Fridays mostly cakes and pies, in between was a free-for-all—from cranberry-nut bread to fried dough to custom cakes decorated with sugar flowers. He sent her home with two-day-old apple strudel, and she held the box flat in her palm all the way, thinking of what the boys would say when she showed them, thinking how they’d rush through their dinners with their eyes on the oil-dotted box.

  • • •

  What will I say? She demanded of herself three months later, the next time she walked up to the DOH office where she’d once again sign next to her name, her residence, her place of work. It was August now, and they were baking with blackberries and apricots. She brushed flour from her sleeves and the front of her dress. She washed her hands thoroughly, and loosened the pins that kept her hair in a severe bun while she was mixing and beating and pouring. She told them at the bakery that she had to bring an ill neighbor to the hospital, and Jacob, the manager, told her to be back in one hour. One day, when she got the courage, she might march Mila and the Borriello boys to the DOH headquarters to say that she’d cooked for them, and they had survived, but then they’d just say what they always said, which was that it didn’t matter. Some people were immune. Some people had protection built in to them already. And sometimes she wasn’t infectious. Maybe she’d write to Mr. O’Neill about helping her get back to cooking. But not today, not yet, and when the man asked her where she’d found employment since her last visit, she was about to tell him, getting ready her argument that baking and cooking were entirely different occupations, when instead, she heard herself say that she worked in a shop, as an assistant.

  “What kind of shop?” the man asked.

  Mary brought forth her thickest brogue. “Oh, one of them kinds of shops that sells nice things to rich people. Pretty-looking things.”

  As he scrutinized her, she tried to look and feel as blank as possible—a middle-aged woman with a thickening waist, poor posture, ugly shoes. She blinked. She scratched behind her ear.

  “Trinkets?” he asked. “What sort of pretty things?”

  “I dunno. Colorful things. I don’t see much of the selling as I work in a room at the back.”

  It was all true, in a way. All true if you slanted it a bit, made the colors run together.

  A girl came in with a stack of files and placed them on his desk. He sighed, pushed the pile to the side, and then scribbled “shop assistant” in Mary’s file and handed it to her. “Put the address,” he said. She took the pen from him and held it in the air for a moment as her mind raced and she realized she was about to write the real address. She changed the street number by one digit. An honest mistake, she could say later. I wasn’t entirely sure. She signed. He signed. Then he summoned the secretary and told her to lead Mary down to the basement to give her sample. Mary knew her own way to the s
mall room, but she was escorted anyway, and once there a nurse made conversation about the weather, about Vinie Wray being shot outside the stage door of the Hippodrome, about the Sanitation Department’s new plan to remove garbage at midnight, about a shipping company owned by J. P. Morgan announcing that it was building the world’s first unsinkable ship, while Mary squatted over a bright white bucket and prayed to God for something to happen so that she could be on her way.

  “Do you want me to get the bulb and syringe?” The nurse asked.

  “No, I do not,” Mary said. “I want you to leave me alone.”

  “Can’t do that, ma’am.” She tapped Mary’s file.

  From her left Mary heard the traffic of the hallway on the other side of the locked door, and on her right the sounds of the street floated in the screened window. The nurse closed her eyes and leaned against the wall.

  “Stuffy in here,” she said. “Feel anything?”

  “I’m not doing this,” Mary said, pulling up her underthings, straightening her skirt.

  The nurse took a step forward. “It hasn’t been thirty minutes. Look, why don’t we take a break and try again in a while. You don’t want to have to come back tomorrow, do you? Can I bring you a glass of water?”

  “You can drown yourself in the river if you like,” Mary said as she walked across the room and opened the door. “I’m leaving.”

  Twenty minutes later she was cracking eggs into a ceramic bowl.

  She didn’t go back the next day, or the next week. She expected them to look for her, but they didn’t. Summer ended, and in the autumn she and Evelyn baked with pumpkin, nutmeg, clove. Sometimes, when Jacob said that a customer had requested fresh peaches or sliced strawberries placed on their cake or pie, she thought back to what they told her on North Brother about heating food until all the germs would die away. “Do you know what a germ is?” they’d asked her, like she was a child sitting for an examination. Only later, back in her hut, facedown on her cot, the rush of Hell Gate just twenty-five yards from her gable, would she try to make sense of what they told her about invisible microbes that floated in the air, that traveled up the nose and into the mouth. So many years later, it still sounded like a fairy tale meant for children, a little world too small for the human eye to see, or like religion, in that they were asking her to believe such a thing existed without giving her a chance to look at it, hold it, understand it.