Mary Keane - Fever

Missing from Soper’s notes was the feeling in her belly when she looked up to find a stranger striding into her kitchen, to hear him demand to know if she was Mary Mallon. How disorienting it was to have a man like him — with his perfectly tailored jacket, his ivory white fingernails, his polished shoes extending from the bottom of his pants, the cuffs immaculate, as if he floated above the mud and shit that made up the streets of New York City, and never walked through it like the rest of them — use her full name and know that he was not lost, that she was the one he was looking for. He’d finally come to a stop between Mary and the stove. She could make out perspiration on his sideburns. He had high, sharp cheekbones and his face was flushed.

A creditor, she decided.

“What’s it to you?” Mary asked.

Soper stepped closer. She could smell tobacco on his skin. She tightened her grip on the knife. “My name is George Soper. I’m a sanitary engineer and have been hired by Mr. Thompson to investigate the Typhoid outbreak that occurred at his home in Oyster Bay this past summer. I’ve reason to believe you are the cause not only of that outbreak but of several outbreaks in and around New York City. You must come with me immediately, Miss Mallon. You must be tested. Can you confirm that you were employed by the Warren family last summer and that you worked for them for six weeks at the home they rented from Mr. Thompson in Oyster Bay?”

Mary couldn’t remember her first response, only her wonder at what that had to do with anything.

“Pardon?”

“You’re sick, Miss Mallon. You must be tested.”

“I’m sick?” Mary forced a laugh. “I’ve never felt better.”

“You are carrying sickness. I believe you are a Typhoid Fever carrier.”

She felt dumb and slow, like she’d been turned around and around and then been asked to walk a straight line. She leaned her hips against the counter to steady herself.

“Leave now, please,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t understand, Miss Mallon. It’s imperative that you come with me now for testing. I’ve alerted the lab at Willard Parker Hospital to be ready for your arrival. You must cease cooking immediately.”

He went to take her by the arm, but she held out the knife and the roasting fork together and made a swipe in his general direction. “Get out,” she hissed. Mrs. Bowen hadn’t been feeling well all day but was upstairs being dressed. Mr. Bowen was hard of hearing. Someone had let Soper into the house, surely. Someone knew he was down in the kitchen, yet no one seemed to be coming. She went for him again with the fork in the lead.

Soper stepped backward into the hall. “You must listen, Miss Mallon.”

“I’ve a mind to stab you with this fork, so you’d better get out of my kitchen.”

“It’s not your kitchen, Miss Mallon.”

Mary made another move for him and he took several steps back. He stumbled for a moment, his knuckles white where he gripped his hat’s brim. He looked at her as if he had more to say, but then retreated quickly down the hall.

A few minutes after Soper left the kitchen, Frank, the butler, appeared.

“Where were you?” Mary asked.

“Mr. Bowen was giving me instructions. Who was that? He’s just standing on the sidewalk looking at the house. I think he has a mind to come back in.”

“He had some cock-and-bull story he’ll tell them,” Mary said, laying down the knife and fork. She began to pace. They heard the sound of the doorbell.

“Leave it to me,” Frank said after a moment. Mary crouched in the hall as Frank opened the door.

“They’re not available at the moment,” Frank said when Soper asked for Mr. or Mrs. Bowen. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“I could wait.”

“I’m afraid not. A dinner party, you see.”

“A message then,” Soper grumbled as he searched his breast pocket for a note card and pen. He scribbled as much as he could fit onto the small space. “Make sure you give this to them,” Soper said, looking the older man in the eye.

Frank gave an abbreviated bow, took the note from Soper, and wished him a good night. When he had closed the door on the doctor, he walked the message to the fire and threw it in.

“Thank you,” Mary said. They watched the paper vanish until Mrs. Bowen’s bracelets jangled a warning from the top of the stairs.

• • •

Soper’s appearance in the Bowen kitchen was Mary’s first warning, but it had come coded, and Mary couldn’t decipher it. By the time she was sure Soper had left for good, and the ducks were roasted and sliced, she’d decided it was a misunderstanding, and wondered at herself for not saying more. Why had she not told him that she never had the fever, and that she was the one who’d nursed the Warrens back to health? Why had she not told him to check his facts: that the local doctor in Oyster Bay had already concluded that they’d gotten the fever from soft-shell crabs? Mary liked working for the Bowens, but if that man called again and told them his story, or if he sent them a letter by the post, and they believed him and fired her, she’d go back to the office and have them place her somewhere else. If he told that agency, she’d use another agency. If he told all the agencies, she’d go over to New Jersey, where they didn’t like to pay fees.

• • •

After a week at Willard Parker, Dr. Baker finally came to check on her. “Where were you?” asked Mary. “You said I could get word to someone.”

“And you haven’t?”

“I keep telling them, but it’s been a week.”

“I’m sorry, Mary,” Dr. Baker said, and Mary’s frustration wavered at hearing her first name. The other doctors called her Miss Mallon. “I work at a lab uptown and can’t get down here as often as I’d like.” She removed a few lined pieces of paper from the thin stack on her clipboard.

“You can…?”

“Yes,” Mary said, too grateful to be insulted. “Yes, of course.” Dr. Baker also handed over an envelope. “There should be a pen at the nurses’ station. I’ll tell them you’re permitted to use it. When you finish give it back to them and they’ll post the letter for you.”

“Thank you,” Mary said, and placed paper and envelope on her bedside table. Now that she had a means of getting in touch with Alfred, Mary wanted to consider what she’d say, how exactly to describe what had happened. They’d argued the last time they’d seen each other, but none of that mattered now. And there were practical concerns, too. Her friend Fran had asked her to make a birthday cake for her daughter and it was starting to seem like Mary would not be freed in time. She had planned to shape the cake like a daisy, with yellow and white buttercream frostings. The child would be disappointed.

“Will you walk with me?” Dr. Baker asked.

They strolled along the corridor with the guard trailing just behind. “Mary,” Dr. Baker said finally, “they’ve asked me to talk to you about surgery. About removing your gallbladder. I know Dr. Soper has already explained it, but perhaps there are questions he hasn’t answered.”

In the week since Mary had last seen Dr. Baker, there were several doctors in addition to Dr. Soper who tried to convince her to let them remove her gallbladder. Just that morning, Mary had been called to a meeting with three doctors at once. “We’ll get the best man to do the cutting,” said a doctor named Wilson, and Mary asked the three men present if they’d agree to be sliced open as well, since there was nothing in the world wrong with them either. What would New York come to if surgeons went around cutting open all the healthy people just to take a look at what was inside? They explained it to her over and over, as if she didn’t know what it was to cut a body from neck to navel, but she was a cook, for God’s sake; she once butchered a Jersey heifer with only one other person to help and when she was finished, even after draining the cow well before cutting, she was bloodied to her shoulders, and all those wet and glistening parts that made up the cow, when they were laid out on her table, would never have fit back inside that animal the way God made her had Mary decided to change her mind, put her back together, stitch her up like new. All the worse that they planned to slice her alive.