Mary Keane - Fever

“Can you describe their rooms from what little you saw?”

“Mr. Briehof appeared disheveled. I noted dirty dishes on the press, and there was an odor of overripe fruit.”

The attorney continued. “Please describe to us what you did after failing for a second time to convince Miss Mallon that she must come in for testing.”

“I leaned more heavily on the Department of Health and the NYPD to take action because I knew I would need their help. After finally persuading them, we came up with a plan. We enlisted a female doctor to help, hoping Mary would be more willing to cooperate with a female, but that was not the case.”

“And that doctor was Josephine Baker, correct?”

“Yes.”

Mary scanned the people on the other side of the room, but didn’t see Dr. Baker among them.

• • •

Judge Erlinger called for a lunch recess at noon. Mr. O’Neill suggested they eat together, but Mary wanted to spend the three-quarters of an hour with Alfred. Mr. O’Neill started to protest that they had items to go over, but then he relented. “I have to send a guard,” he said. Mary found Alfred leaning against the back wall of the courtroom, watching her approach. She felt the damp wrinkles in her clothes as she moved closer to him, a rumpled sack of laundry that should be pushed into a basin and wrung out to dry. Her hair had collapsed; she could feel it bobbing at the back of her neck. She was nervous.

Alfred took her hand and squeezed it once before leading her into the hall and down the steps outside to the corner, where a man with a pushcart was selling ham sandwiches. The guard stayed a few paces behind. What was it that was different about him? He pulled off his collar and unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled off the shirt’s cuffs, rolled up the sleeves, and threw the collar and cuffs in the bushes. Without them, Mary saw that the shirt was worn so thin it was little more than gauze, the outline of his undershirt obvious in the sun. He moved his hand to her waist. She had decided that she wouldn’t let him kiss her until she’d said her piece, but now that the moment had arrived, she decided she could spend the rest of her life saying her piece. She hadn’t seen him in so long, and here he was, looking and smelling and moving like Alfred. She waited, but he only touched her cheek.

“I have only half an hour myself,” Alfred said.

“Work?” She doubted it — what job would allow him to show up after noon? — but it was a day for letting things go, for keeping peace. She wanted him to look forward to her release, not dread it.

Alfred nodded. “It started as a day-to-day thing, but they’ve not said anything about stopping, so I keep showing up and they keep paying me. It’s going on six months now.”

“What is it?”

“The ice trucks. Or rather, the ice company stable. They let me drive the truck last week when a man was out, but that was just for the week.”

“Do you like it?”

Alfred laughed. “You know you’re the only person who’s asked that?”

“I know if you don’t like it you won’t keep going.”

Alfred pointed to a step where they could sit. “For now, I like it. The boss says the horses like me. There’s not much to it, really, except brushing them and feeding them and making sure the stalls are clean. I run the ones who don’t get assigned a truck on a given day, and there are a few injured ones, but there’s not much to do for them until they heal. If they heal. I had to put one down. That was the only really bad day, and it was hard going back after that. He was hit by another truck on the corner of Madison and Fiftieth and his leg broke at the ankle. I had to go up there and shoot him.”

Alfred put his hand on her hair and traced his finger along her hairline, around her ear, down her neck. He stopped at the collar of her blouse. “But why are we talking about me? How about you? You look well, Mary. God, it’s good to see you.”

Mary brought his broad hand to her lips and kissed it. She studied his face. “You said I was the only one who asked whether you like it. Who else would ask? I mean, who else have you told?”

Alfred shrugged. “What do you mean? I tell whoever asks me what I do.”

“You seemed surprised that no one else has asked if you like it. Who would ask that, except for me?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Nothing.”

“All right.”

“I’m only saying that it’s a funny thing to say. That I’m the only person who asked that. To say it when you wouldn’t expect anyone else to ask that. Would you?”

“Mary.”

“Are you seeing someone?”

He pulled his hand away. “Why would you ask that? Are you?”

“Am I? Are you serious?”

“There’s people out there. You’re not alone. That gardener.”

“You’d know the lunacy of that question if you’d really read my letters. If you’d written more often—”

“Look. No point discussing it now, Mary, is there? With you coming home?”

“But I told you in the letters how lonely I was, how worried I was about you. If it was you out there I would have written every week. You know I would.”

“Well, you’re a better person than I am, Mary. Isn’t that it? I’m a beast with no regard for anyone but myself, and you’re a paragon of virtue.”

It wasn’t supposed to go like this, arguing over a past neither of them could change, criticizing each other’s choices just like they’d been doing before she was taken. She was hurt. She was very hurt. But she had to make her mind change the subject if they were going to be together again once she got home. She’d resolved to not start up on him the first time she saw him after so long, that she’d be pleasant and forgiving and that they’d start from scratch if he was willing, but as usual she found it impossible to stop. Just as her mind was warning her not to say something, her lips were already saying it. Alfred shifted on the step. He wore that expression of disdain that had made her so wild before she left, like every word she spoke was something to recoil from.

“And you hardly ever wrote back. I didn’t know if my letters were sinking to the bottom of the river.”

“I wrote back.”

“A handful of times.”

“More than that, Mary.” Alfred sighed. “What could I have done? It’s been hard for me, too, you know.”

“Look. The last thing I want to do is argue with you. Not now. I’ll be home soon and that’s all that matters.”

“About that. Might as well tell you now.”

“Tell me what?”

“Home. It isn’t on Thirty-Third Street anymore. I moved. Had to. Couldn’t afford that place without you. And a few of the women in the building got involved in the Temperance League and were driving me crazy, waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, sliding pamphlets under the door. A few of them followed me one afternoon saying Bible verses, and when I got to Nation’s the men chewed me out for leading them there.”

“Alfred! Why didn’t you tell me?” They’d lived in those rooms together for thirteen years. She loved the place. She imagined she’d always live there. In her letters to him she’d asked about the place, about the people in the building. Brief as they were, he’d never said anything in his letters about having trouble with the rent, so she’d assumed — hoped — he hadn’t gotten too far behind. She tried to shake off her disappointment. Home was wherever Alfred was. “So where have my letters been going?”

“Held at the building. Driscoll keeps them for me. I collect them when I’m over that direction.” Mary didn’t know Mr. Driscoll very well, but remembered he was one of the few in the building Alfred liked talking with when they crossed paths. He’d been a florist, Mary remembered Alfred telling her, until his joints got so painful he couldn’t work anymore.