Deadly (22 page)

“How did you get the man to agree to this?” the lawyer asked.

I saw my mistake then—the rummy sat in the pew behind Mr. O'Neal, and I knew he had told of the monetary exchange. O'Neal brought me right to the confession.

“We—we offered him a few dollars.”

“You bribed him?” Mr. O'Neal asked. “You spied on Mary, followed her, and bribed her friend? Is that normal protocol for the Department of Health and Sanitation? Spying and bribing?”

Our lawyers objected to O'Neal's translation of our actions, but the judge allowed the question.

I glanced at the judge, whose bushy gray brows shaded his eyes. He waited for the answer; they all did. I felt my mouth open, a hundred words clinging to the back of my tongue. I found in the crowd Mr. Soper's agonized brown
eyes. I felt a great flood of anger toward him then—for leading me to this, for not warning me.

Then I understood what our lawyers had said: In order to keep Mary from cooking for the public, we must explain her stubborn resistance.

“She was violent when we tried to approach her properly,” I said. “She screamed and brandished a knife at us. She threw a cooking fork at us. She curses us and doesn't believe us, and that's why she's dangerous to—”

O'Neal stopped me. “That's all, Miss Galewski,” he said. “You are excused. You may step down now.”

I looked at our lawyers' stricken eyes as I returned to my seat. My row was filled with fallen faces; only Mr. Soper met my eyes. My cheeks burned with embarrassment, tears blurred my vision. Even Jonathan seemed disappointed. Why hadn't O'Neal asked Mr. Soper these questions? Why didn't our lawyers warn me? But I knew—I had not written of the spying or the bribe in my office notes; our lawyers weren't aware of Mr. Soper's methods. But he should've known. I sat beside my chief and looked at the back of Mary's bunned head. I prayed she would not be freed on account of Mr. Soper's irregular ways of obtaining information. On account of my own blunder in confessing them.

Dr. Baker was called to the stand next, and I made myself listen to her testimony over the hum of distress in my head. She too was put to the test when asked about her decision to enter the house without a warrant, but she handled it with a cold sureness, stating the department's policies, and our goal to remove the evil of disease from the public sphere in any manner possible, whether the disease be water, or food, or a human carrier.

“The urgency was upon us,” she said firmly.

“You could not take an extra day to obtain a proper warrant from this court?” O'Neal asked.

“No, we certainly could not,” she said. “A day could mean another person's illness. We didn't want to risk that.”

Her conviction fortified me. I vowed to myself that one day, I would be as strong as she.

Once O'Neal finished with her, a scientist was called. He talked about bacteria and the carriage of germs. He handed the judge all the papers he and the others had written. On cross, O'Neal asked the man if the theory of a healthy carrier was officially accepted by the Academy of Medicine, and the scientist had to conclude that it was not.

Jonathan was called next. He gave a short lecture on the Widal test, and how Mary's samples to the independent
laboratory were only feces, and not as definite as the blood test.

“When feces are not fresh, the typhoid germ dies, and the test shows as negative,” he said. “If you'd allow me to give her a Widal test right now, I could show you that she is positive. Mary is a dangerous carrier.”

“That will not be necessary,” Mr. O'Neal replied.

“A blood test is the only way to be sure,” Jonathan went on. He talked about Mr. Kinley, our second healthy carrier, and I saw the judge's eyes open wider with interest. Jonathan managed to tell most of the Riverdale story, the extent of that epidemic caused by our second healthy carrier, before O'Neal insisted he leave the stand.

The day concluded with testimony from Dr. Parks, who stated that he believed Mary carried the typhoid in her gallbladder. The judge agreed to continue the hearing until all the witnesses were called, which could take another week.

I left the courtroom, anxious to escape home, aware of Mr. Soper keeping pace beside me. On the street, we were instantly surrounded by the press and public wanting to know what had happened. My chief touched my shoulder; he met my eyes and nodded; I followed close behind as he led the way through the crowd without giving them a statement.

Once we were clear of the mob, I said, “I could not help it.”

He walked with his hands behind his back, his head bent in thought. “No, it's not your fault, Prudence,” he said.

He seemed older and weaker to me suddenly, tired of fighting this never-ending battle against the media and Mary, who refused to understand that she carried disease.

“That lawyer is a nasty piece of business,” Mr. Soper said, “and you handled him well.”

The secret tasks we had performed bound us together. I saw that, and I felt able to forgive him.

I felt, as well, a certain forgiveness from him.

We walked across town in silence, our human failings a sort of truce between us.

I
did not
mean for Marm to find out about Papa this way. I wish I had told her sooner. I wish I didn't have such bad news.

After another day of listening to testimony, I reached home and found Marm standing in the front room, holding my blotter case, staring down at the table.

Spread there were my father's war badge and the notes from Mr. Soper.

My stomach tightened. I could see she had stumbled upon the badge and notes by accident. Her face seemed a strange shape to me, triangular, with twisted lines along her cheeks. I had come home wanting to speak to her about the court case, which we had not yet discussed. I was not prepared to encounter her this way. The air around her seemed colored a bright blue, so thick I felt as if I could hardly walk
into the room. I wondered how long she had been standing there, waiting for me.

When she lifted her eyes, blue air came at me like a wave.

She picked up the war badge and held it in her palm. “Where did this come from?”

“A man named Mr. Wilcox saw my name in the paper,” I said quickly. “He knew Papa in the war; they fought together; Papa saved his life. Then he died. I'm sorry, Marm, I was going to tell you. Papa died of the yellow fever a long time ago. He didn't want us to know, so he gave his badge to Mr. Wilcox.”

I felt the knife in my chest come loose.

Marm moaned, closing her fingers over the badge. Her hand trembled. “His father died in the Civil War that way,” she whispered. She laughed bitterly, wiping her tears angrily from her eyes. “He was no hero defending a hill. He died of smallpox. Your father never forgave him that.”

She shook her head and held her breath to stop a sob. I counted the seconds—smallpox, smallpox, smallpox.

“Your father and I argued over this, his brave idea to join the army. I didn't want him to go.” She shook her head, and it all came tumbling out: “When Benny's leg turned to gangrene, your father quit his job at the factory to take care
of him. I had started my apprenticeship with Granny Rosa by then, and my time was unpredictable. I was afraid your father would lose his job; I wanted to put Benny in the public infirmary, but he wouldn't hear of it. He watched over that boy day and night, carrying him out to the street for fresh air. And when he died, your father tried to go back to work, but they wouldn't let him into the factory. No one else would hire him. They couldn't trust a man who would leave his job for a child. We had no money, we started fighting—those terrible fights.”

She put her hand to her forehead as if to keep the memories from invading.

Nine years, we waited.

A lifetime.

She dropped the badge on the table and went into the back room. I didn't know if she went to cry, or if she would return. I heard her moving around, and I dragged the badge slowly along the surface of the table on its chain. I wondered if she had read the notes from Mr. Soper; they sat open, five of them, like pages of a half-read newspaper.

Papa meant to come back. He had left to make money, he intended to come back.

Marm reappeared with a framed picture in her hand. In
it, a sturdy young man in a sharp black suit gripped the hand of a smiling girl in a white dress. I stared at his face: dark circles under piercing black eyes, cheeks narrow and long, mouth set in a triumphant line. They stood in front of a loopy roller coaster, and I knew the sound of the ocean roared in their ears—they'd just gotten married in Coney Island.

“We met on a bench at the beach,” Marm said. “I was fifteen and he was seventeen and he sat himself down right next to me and asked me if I'd ever eaten raw oysters. I said I had not, and Gregory disappeared. I looked around for my aunt, who was my chaperone for the day. On a bench, under her parasol, was Aunt Gertrude, fast asleep.”

Marm began to laugh at the memory. She dabbed at the tears in her eyes with the tips of her fingers and sighed. I smiled; Marm leaned over and cupped my cheek with her hand.

“Your father returned a few moments later with a plate of raw oysters,” she said.

“Did you eat them?” I asked.

She wrinkled her nose and nodded. “I didn't want to insult your father,” she said. “They were from his cousin Schmuel, who ran an oyster bar that wasn't very kosher and went bankrupt. Schmuel went to work at the Half Moon Hotel right after.”

We spent the night talking about Papa. She told me that between Benny and me, they had miscarried two babies. To understand why this kept happening, my father bought
Scientific American
magazines, and at night, when they came home from work, they read them aloud to each other. The key to my past turned in my brain when she told me that. The science book my father gave me, the direction he wanted for me.

Marm did not mention the notes from Mr. Soper, which had been so precious to me and sat like white boats on the table. Though they were simple office notes, to me they seemed like old letters from a long-lost love. Marm and I went to sleep very late, and before I turned off the gas, I tucked the notes under my pillow, hoping Marm would not ask about them.

E
arly this
morning, Marm shook me awake from a dark dream of jungles and machetes, soldiers marching along a beach, my father with his eyes closed, finally at peace.

She started the stove fire and put the porridge water to boil. I glanced at her face in the pink dawn coming through the window; she seemed younger somehow, lighter. More whole. I wondered if she, too, had dreamt of Papa. Last night she told me things about him I never knew—her stories filled a place in me, that hollow space where he had been.

She stood by the window for long minutes without speaking, until the water boiled. I wondered what she was thinking. She served me a bowl of oatmeal and stood over me, looking down at me.

“I haven't had a chance to talk with you about the court case, Prudence,” she said.

I picked up my spoon, feeling my skin more sensitive suddenly. She saw that I had put the notes away, Mr. Soper's notes to me.

A small, rusty door opened inside me, and I promised myself—no more secrets.

“I may have made a terrible mistake,” I said.

She nodded knowingly. “Tell me,” she said.

Keeping my eyes on the table, I told her of the spying and bribing in the case of Mary Mallon. I spoke about the morning with Jonathan, and how Mr. Soper saved me. I confessed my love for my chief. It all came spilling out, and I could not stop myself. I didn't want to stop. I had needed to tell her for months about these things, and now, finally, I did.

When I finished, she walked to the sink, where she stood with her back to me without saying a word. I waited for her to speak, frightened of what she might say. I could think of no defense for myself.

In a low voice, she said, “You work from eight in the morning until six at night with Mr. Soper.”

She turned then, and said, “That is a lot of time to spend with one's chief.”

I nodded, terrified she would take the job away from me.

She continued, “On the weekend, I'd expect you'd want to go out with your young friends, perhaps find a boy your age with whom you can visit the flickers, or the theater, or the nickelodeon.”

“I study on the weekend,” I said quietly.

“Prudence, each and every weekend you sit at that window and spend hours writing. You write in the evenings, and you never go out, unless it's with me. Why, since Anushka left, you haven't made a single friend. You spend all your time alone reading books, or writing letters, or scribbling in your tablets. Where is your life?”

I sensed my mouth dropping open—I thought of Anushka, who had not written a letter to me in weeks. I thought of the books Dr. Baker gave to me, and how I spent all my time studying them. I thought of my tablets, ten of which I had written so far.

And I thought,
She's right.

Marm shook her head slowly and said, “I'm guilty of the same, since your father left. We have sealed ourselves up in this tomb—I still have your father's clothes in the closet, for goodness' sake! We have wanted to be with people who are dead or gone or simply not eligible—Mr. Charles Silver has
been trying to tell me this for months, and I see it in you, too, Prudence. We must open our eyes and our hearts to people who are near and appropriate, flesh-and-blood humans who can return our affection in a proper manner.”

Her words flew through me like arrows, the rightness of them landing straight inside my heart. I thought of my evenings and weekends, and I felt as if I'd been looking down, or in, for years. As if I were always telling myself a story, instead of living the story of my life. Suddenly Marm's words lifted my head, and I saw a bright, sunny sky with swarms of beautiful birds flying high, their colorful wings shining.