Deadly (19 page)

T
hese books
Dr. Baker gave me are different, not dull or dusty like Latin texts, but full of fascinating stories. All day I carry the one I'm reading on Dr. Louis Pasteur, and open it whenever I have a spare moment.

He was the first to prove the germ theory.

It used to be thought that disease was caused by something outside of ourselves, like clouds of bad odors, or something inside ourselves, like the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile).

Dr. Pasteur had the radical idea that something
alive
was
feeding
on us, and
that
was making us sick. He got the notion from observing grapes fermenting into wine, and then souring. He examined the ruined wine under the microscope and discovered that there were creatures living in it. Germs, bacteria. He found them everywhere—in the water and food
that humans consumed, in our bodies—and his brain made a great leap. He connected these germs to the ones that were making people ill.

I think of the lambs on Anushka's farm, the three sickly ones with runny eyes and sores in their mouths, and then I think of Dr. Pasteur, of the sheep he saved. He watched them die of anthrax and knew he had to help them.

He applied his germ theory to the sheep. He removed the anthrax germs from them, killed them, and injected the dead germs into healthy sheep, making their bodies accustomed to the disease, and so immune to it.

It's a brilliant mind that can even imagine such things as bacteria. Doing these experiments, how did he know what to look for? When he saw the wine, what made him think there might be something alive in there? How did he make the connection between wine and anthrax?

I wish I had the ability, as Dr. Baker described, to see the larger picture. Even more than that, I wish I could make leaps and see things that the rest of the world doesn't see. Perhaps I will one day, once I've studied everything.

I must push myself to think harder.

W
hat occurred
this morning has altered me in a way I cannot reconcile. I have not spoken to anybody about it, and am not sure how I ever will.

A stranger came into our office today. At first I thought it was another reporter who somehow got past the police guards and was hunting me down for more details on the Mary Mallon case. It turned out the man had read my name in the newspaper and came with a secret that he'd been holding on to for nearly a decade.

For some reason, I don't know why, I feared his presence the moment I saw him. Whatever news this man had to offer, Mr. Soper would hear, but I could not stop him from taking the chair across from me, and I certainly could not ask Mr. Soper to leave.

He said his name was Tim Wilcox. He was missing his
right leg and walked with canes. His clothes hung loosely from his thin chest, his eyes seemed ill and watery as he stared at me.

“You look just like him,” he said quietly.

“To whom are you referring, sir?” I asked.

He handed over a large coin on a chain, though it didn't seem like a regular coin.

“Your father. That's where I met him,” he said, pointing to the coin.

All the breath in my body left me. I shook my head. My mind was suddenly blank. “I'm sorry, I don't understand,” I said.

“That's his war badge,” Mr. Wilcox said. He tapped a cane against his good leg. “After the Spanish blew up the USS
Maine
docked in the Cuban harbor, me and your father were sent to fight alongside Roosevelt.”

My face felt numb, my mouth dry. I looked more closely at the badge, the imprint of the American flag, and the name stamped on it. I ran my finger over the letters,
GREGORY GALEWSKI, ARMY ID NUMBER
3040
.
My father's name.

I looked up at the man. Words blocked my throat, the question at my lips.

Is he alive?

“We were overcome by land forces on the beach,” Mr. Wilcox went on. “I was shot in the thigh and your father carried me into the forest, to our headquarters, where they removed my leg. As you can see, I recovered. Not all of me, but enough.”

He took a deep breath.

“I'm sorry I can't say the same for your pa,” he said.

It couldn't be! I stared at the man, trying to understand, trying not to believe him. I coughed and shook my head, swallowing back tears. We've waited so long, hoping for his return, and now this!

I looked over at Mr. Soper. When I met his eyes, he stood and excused himself from the room, saying he had to see Mr. Briggs. I wanted to reach for him, but he slipped away.

The man gestured to the badge in my hand. “Your father asked me to keep that from the medical doctors, to hide his badge so he would not be counted among the dead,” he said.

“But why?” I whispered.

“He was sick with the yellow fever. He wanted you to remember him … in a certain way. He wanted you to think he was shot, or taken hostage, he said. Not killed by disease.”

My father seemed cruel to me suddenly, cruel in his
desire to maintain his honor. Pride, it was blind pride that made him do it.

“He wanted me to go to my grave with his secret, but then I saw your name in the paper,” Mr. Wilcox said. “With me not so far from my own grave, it wasn't right. I thought you should know.”

I closed my eyes, grateful that this man had come to me. My heart ached, but I knew the truth.

I put the badge on my desk, looking at my father's name. This piece of metal had hung around his neck. He had touched this man in front of me, he had saved his life.

“Did—did he ever speak of me?” I asked. My voice sounded high and weak.

Mr. Wilcox nodded. “You and your mother. And your brother, his son, Benjamin.”

He shook his head sadly.

“Miss Galewski, I want you to know I argued with your pa about his decision. But he was a stubborn ox and wouldn't listen. Since he saved my life, I had to respect his wishes. Up till now, of course. I hope I did the right thing.”

I looked into his watery eyes; I wanted to reach over my desk and touch him, to bring back my father through him. I laced my fingers and squeezed them together as hard as I could.

“Of course you did the right thing,” I said. “Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. If you hadn't come, we would never have known. We've waited so long.”

I could not help the cry that escaped from me, the tears that streamed down my face. I covered my eyes with my hands, pushing back the flood that tumbled out of me. I couldn't stop it. Mr. Wilcox cleared his throat. He said my name. I looked up and saw him standing before my desk, holding out a handkerchief. I took it. He bowed his head and limped to the door and quietly left.

I felt as if my insides had collapsed. How would I tell Marm? How would she feel? And how could my father have been so selfish? Didn't he know how much we loved him? Did he think we would forget him? Not wait for him? All the years, all the sorrow we bottled up, all the hope that's kept us going—how could he have done this to us?

I heard footsteps outside the door and hastily wiped the tears from my face. I slid the badge from the desk and put it in the drawer where I also kept the few brief notes Mr. Soper had written to me. I had to focus on my work. I had to find a way to keep going. I opened a case folio and rolled a piece of paper into the typing machine. I placed my fingers on the keys and made myself move them.

Mr. Soper returned. He sat at his desk and went to work without addressing me. I was relieved by his silent presence beside me. I don't know how I lasted out the day, but somehow I did.

When work finished this evening, I removed the badge and the notes from the drawer and fit them into my purse. Mr. Soper left the building with me and walked me to the streetcar stop. There, he took my hand. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he said.

His touch reached straight into me. The warmth of his hand soothed my shocked heart.

“Mr. Soper,” I said, “I apologize for not telling you—”

“You were being very professional, Prudence, and I appreciate that.”

He still held my hand. He was so near, I could smell his sweet cologne.

“For years we did not know what had become of my father,” I said.

Mr. Soper took my other hand.

“It's difficult to lose a loved one,” he said. “You're a brave girl.”

His brown eyes looked into mine. The blood beat in my ears. My face burned. He released my hands just as my trolley pulled in and opened its doors. And then, I did the
unthinkable. I felt he would not turn me away. I rose up and kissed him on the cheek. Then I ran up the steps without bidding him good night. On the streetcar, I could feel the roughness of his skin, the edge of his mustache on my lips. I can feel it still. I berated myself for not being able to contain my feelings.

I came home to an empty, cold house. A note from Marm told me she was at a birth. I started a fire in the stove and tried to push away the persistent question that nagged at me: What had I just done? The prospect of facing Mr. Soper suddenly frightened me.

I splashed my face with cool water from the basin. I took the badge and my chief's precious notes and hid them inside my blotter case by the window. Then I began to scrub potatoes for stew.

At last Marm came home, blood on her skirt, a sadness hanging about her. Sensing that the birth had not gone well, I hesitated telling her of the visit. All evening I tried to think of a way to break the news. But Marm seemed too tired and sad.

I write this now, unable to sleep. Beside me, I hold the book Papa gave me—after Benny died and he left, it was the one thing that kept my hope strong, that he would come back, and I could talk to him about all that I had learned from it.

And now, to find that a disease has taken his life…

After Papa left, something in me cracked and leaked one drop at a time. With the news this stranger brought, a giant gush has broken through the crack, and all the water has poured out. Now I am left with a vast hollowness that I know not how to fill.

I
n all
the years I waited for him, I didn't allow myself to think he would never come back. I thought I would not survive the news of his death, but I woke in the dark and felt my own heart beating.

Yet the world around me has changed somehow. It is a world without Papa.

Unable to sleep any longer, I got up and walked to work, my toes nearly freezing in my boots. When I arrived at our building, I found that my feet, cold as they were, would not allow me to go in. I could not face my chief's knowing eyes, the closeness of him. I walked three times around the block before the obligation of work overwhelmed me.

At the front door of our building, I felt my chief just behind me and turned.

He nodded stiffly at me and said, “Good morning, Prudence.”

“Good morning, sir,” I said.

He reached ahead of me and pulled the door open for me. I went inside; he kept pace just behind me, until we got to our office, which he unlocked. He turned the gas key, lighting the lights.

We sat at our respective desks.

I waited for him to chastise me, or to say something about my father, but he said nothing.

I organized the bottom drawer of my desk. I rearranged my pencils and quills. I changed the paper on my blotter pad and filled all my ink bottles.

He left the office for a meeting with Mr. Briggs. Around midday, he returned and stood before my desk and said my name. He held up a folio.

“I have notes of a new case,” he said. “Several children have fallen ill with the typhoid in Riverdale.”

I reached over my desk for the notes. My fingers accidentally brushed his when I took the folio. It felt like putting my hand into a flame.

“I will type them up right away, sir,” I said.

“That's fine,” he said.

I could not wait for this day to end.

I
have not
yet told Marm about Papa. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. I wished so completely for his return these past nine years, and now all I can feel is his absence.

Telling Marm would allow her the chance to begin anew, but something in me wants to hold the information to myself just a little longer. It's as if this knowledge has brought a strange circle of fate upon me—I cannot help but think of Mary Mallon, and the fever she carries within her. I think of my father's death by yellow fever. It seems Mary brought me to Papa somehow. To solve something, the crime of disease.

There's one image of him that comes repeatedly to me. The day after Benny died, my father said the Kaddish in his memory. He spoke it in Hebrew, along with Rabbi Samsfield. I hear the intonations of the prayer like a whisper in my mind all the time now.

I read last night that two of Louis Pasteur's children died of typhoid.