Fever (15 page)

“All right,” Alfred called after a moment. “Problem solved.” Again, he told everyone to move back, again he told everyone to beware, and on the third try, when he touched the match to the fuse, the little ball of fire ate the thin rope in an instant, and the rocket flew with a wild shriek into the sky, above the tenements of Third Avenue, arcing west for a moment before exploding red, white, and blue high over their heads, seeming to cover the whole island of Manhattan. The audience was transfixed, their faces lit, the kids openmouthed, and for the next half hour, until the very last sparkler had died, Mary was proud of him, that he’d done this for all of them, and she remembered why she loved him.

He was good for three weeks after that. He wasn’t working, but he stayed away from the bars, and sometimes made supper, and bought the newspaper for Mary, and went for long walks. When the message came that she had to go to Oyster Bay sooner than planned because the regular cook’s grandchild had come early, he acted as if she were lying, as if she had made it up to get away from him. So he disappeared, and when he finally came home just in time to say good-bye, she slipped past him and down to the street. She didn’t want to look at him. She didn’t want to hear herself say all the things she knew she’d have to say.

The remainder of his toy stock—a set of two play cups and saucers for girls, a china cat with one blue eye and one brown, marbles, a checker set, nearly a dozen toy soldiers without the faces painted on—all of it had been sitting in a box in the corner of their bedroom for the past six months. Before leaving for Oyster Bay, Mary left the whole crate outside the door of the Borriello family.

  •  •  •  

Looking back from the quiet of North Brother, her bare feet covered in wet sand and with an egret for company, the water lapping at the fallen hem of her skirt, it all seemed like a very long time ago, far longer than just a couple of years. Fighting with Alfred, that hot spring and summer of 1906, up and down the stairs of their building with sweat running in streams between her breasts, it all seemed like a fever that had now broken, and like so many of the patients she’d nursed, now she was on the other side, amazed that her skin was cool to the touch, bewildered by the stark blankness of everything without that heat to color it, without those swings from joy to rage. At the center of everything, like a selection of notes played at a lower register while the rest of the song sways and dives around it, was the fact that she loved him. She’d loved him since she was seventeen, and even when she wanted to take her skillet and swing it at him, even that time when she did take her skillet and swing it at him, she loved him. Everything would be easier if she didn’t.

  •  •  •  

On the evening before Alfred’s visit, Mary dragged the tub from a cobwebbed corner of her hut and out to the middle of the room. She ran a damp cloth along the inside to pick up any dust, and then she poured in kettle after kettle of boiling water until it was halfway full. She usually went up to the hospital when she wanted a bath—they had tubs there with running hot and cold water—but she didn’t want to be seen or questioned or rushed. She readied her soap, her tooth powder, her washcloth, her shampoo, and when she stepped in and lowered herself, the water rushed for the edges and sloshed over the brim. It ran in streams toward the door.

Mary washed. She pinched her nose and dipped her head under the surface and then rubbed the shampoo into her scalp with her fingertips. She dunked again to rinse. She soaped her neck, her long arms, her legs by lifting one out above the water in a straight line and then the other. She stood up, quickly, and soaped her breasts, her belly, her hips, between her legs, and plunged back into the exquisite warmth of the water and wondered why she didn’t perform the same ritual more often.

She soaked, and thought about what attitude she should take when she greeted him. It was unforgiveable, how little he’d been in touch. If it were Alfred who’d been locked up, she would have sent him the things he missed the most. She would have tried to see him even if they told her there were no visitors allowed. But it wasn’t Alfred who’d been taken away, and what was the point of saying how she would have been, and how he should have been, and marching out the long list of grievances when he was coming, finally, tomorrow? Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. Aunt Kate, before she died, said he was a rogue, but the charmingest, handsomest rogue she’d ever seen in her life, and Mary knew she liked him, because whenever he stopped up for her, Aunt Kate made him sit into a plate of stew, and if they had it, a dram of whiskey. Later, Aunt Kate would go around her rooms pointing out pieces Mary could have when she married. Her mantel clock. Her lace-fringed pillows. “And if I’m gone,” she said, “I’ve written it all down for Paddy. ‘On Mary’s wedding day,’ I wrote, and a list of things to be yours.”

Mary pulled a clean dressing gown over her head, removed a mason jar from the shelf, and emptied the tub jar by jar until it was light enough to push to the door, where she tipped it. She listened to the water rush down the single stair, onto the grass, into John Cane’s pansies and snapdragons. He would not have to water in the morning.

She went about brushing and separating her hair. She had no curlers, so she twisted each section around her finger and then pinned it against her scalp. She had only a dozen pins, and her hair was thick and long, so twice she’d run out and had to start over again with a better sense of proportion. He would probably notice right away the pains she’d taken. He knew her well enough now to know she didn’t wake up with curls. Or maybe he’d never noticed.

She counted the years since they met: almost twenty-five. Two years fewer than she’d been in America. She was employed by the Mott family the first time she saw him, and even though she was washwoman she also worked a little in the scullery as assistant to the cook. It was the agreement they’d come to at the office. If she was ever to be hired as head cook, she had to have experience. She’d left her work trimming beans when she heard the bell ring. Where was the maid? She wiped her hands, and as she came down the hall she could make out the outline of a man’s arm and hip in the thin strip of glass inlaid in the thick oak. Other than the bell, the house was completely silent. There were no guests expected that day.

“I’ve brought the coal,” the man said when she opened the door. His barrel sat on the step beside him, and his clothes were covered in coal dust. He had a smudge on his forehead that blended with his coal black hair.

“This is the front door,” she said to him in a fierce whisper, quickly stepping outside and shutting the door behind her. “Do you deliver through the front door at other homes?” She glanced back to peer through the strip of glass to see if anyone was coming.

“I usually deliver to businesses,” he said. “I’m covering.” He didn’t seem to notice Mary’s response and made no move to lift his barrel and move along. He crossed his arms and leaned against the iron banister that led up the three wide steps to the door.

“So what are you then? Nanny?”

“No,” Mary said. He had high cheekbones that reminded her of a wolf. He also had a masculine jaw, a throat flecked with black stubble. On the first floor of Aunt Kate’s building lived a sixteen-year-old boy who always seemed to be hopping a ball on the street when Mary entered or exited the building, and once in a while he came up to knock on their door. Mary had no more interest in him than she did in any other boy in Hell’s Kitchen. He was someone to talk to when there was nothing to do, but when he tried to kiss her inside the first-floor vestibule, Mary had dodged him and then laughed. Now he hopped his ball outside another building.

“Washwoman?”

Mary nodded, and clutched her hands behind her back. He seemed to Mary to be at least twenty-five, and as they each waited for the other to speak she noticed the gentle flutter at his neck.

“Alfred,” he said, extending his hand. Mary shook it quickly and then looked at the black dust he’d left behind on it. “And you’re Mary.”

“How did you know?”

“All the Irish girls are named Mary. Every single one. Swear to God.”

“Ah,” Mary said, her glance falling again on the flutter at his neck. She wanted to put her thumb there, feel the beating of his blood. The horse he’d left on the street seemed an angry animal. He was pitching forward and back, stamping with impatience, and the hill of coal in the cart was sliding, a few hard lumps hitting the road. Perhaps the horse knew its master had knocked on the wrong door. It was March, late in the winter for a delivery of coal, but the family had almost run out and feared the cold nights that late March and even April might bring.

“Aren’t you gonna tell me not to swear to God?”

“What?” Mary said and felt as if she had to shake herself awake. “What are you?” She thought she detected an accent in certain words, but she couldn’t pin it down.

“All American,” he said, and opened his arms wide. Every time he moved, a fine layer of black dust drifted down to the step where they were standing. He lowered his arms. “German. But I’ve been here since I was six.”

“And how old are you now?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” He seemed amused. “Twenty-two. You?”

“Seventeen.”

He looked at Mary that day, bright green eyes rimmed with lashes as black as the coal in his bin, and for a few seconds Mary no longer cared if someone came up the hall and spotted them through the glass. His work shirt was unbuttoned at the very top, and underneath, the neck of his undershirt had gone black with soot. When he took off his clothes at the end of the day, there would be parts of him that could not be scrubbed clean, and other parts that were pure white.

“Which door is it, then?”

Mary pointed to the servants’ entrance, which also served for house deliveries, especially deliveries of dirty things, like coal, or things that might drip, or have an odor, or in general any type of thing that the family would prefer not to know about. Just inside the servants’ door was the chute where any coal man would know to send the black stones down to the cellar.

“They like to know their beds are warm, their underwear clean, but they don’t like to know how it gets that way.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “That’s cheeky.”

Mary didn’t know why she’d said it out loud, but now that she had she couldn’t disown it. She hadn’t expected a reprimand, especially not from a man who’d left a trail of coal that someone else would have to sweep away. Not even sweep, Mary corrected herself, remembering how coal dust smeared and spread further when wiped. She’d probably have to fill a bucket and drag it out there to splash the dust away. The work that would be, and in this cold. Mary was tired of having wet, cold hands in wet, cold weather.

“It was cheeky of you to ring this bell,” Mary said. “Use your head. Does any family take a coal delivery through the front door?”

Alfred shrugged, but Mary noticed the skin around his collar become mottled. “I told you I’m covering.”

Mary leaned over the rail and again pointed out the lower door, almost around the side of the house but not quite. As she leaned, he also leaned, to see what she was seeing, and Mary felt the rough cloth of his work shirt against the thin cotton at her back. She sensed the body within, solid and strong. “There,” she said, and when she looked back at him over her shoulder he wasn’t looking toward the door at all. Mary worried about the lamb’s blood she’d wiped on her apron, about Mr. Mott’s twelve dress shirts that had to be soaked, rinsed, dried, pressed, and hung, and about him, this grown man, who even on a cold, wet day seemed to give off warmth like a flagstone in summer, long after the sun goes down.

Still with that half smile, he took both handles of the coal bin, heaved it up with a forward thrust of the hips, and made his way to the far door.

“I’ll see ya, Miss,” he said. Inside, with the doors closed tight, Mary listened to hard knots of anthracite slide along the metal throat of the chute, the crunch of his large tin scoop driven into the pile again and again.

  •  •  •  

Saturday morning was overcast, and the skies threatened to storm. When she woke and smelled rain in the air she told herself not to be disappointed if he didn’t come. The ferries wouldn’t run if the waters were too rough, and it wouldn’t be his fault. But when she went outside to see if she could spot the dock through the fog, everything seemed to be running as usual. John Cane stepped out of the mist and onto the path just before Mary, with a covered plate in his hand.

“Everything all right?” he inquired, peering at her unusual hairstyle.

“Fine.” She took the plate, peeked under the lid, and sighed. After two and a half years she was getting to the point where she would mug someone for a good plate of eggs and rashers. “Are the ferries operating on time?”

“They are,” John said, putting one foot. “Why? Expecting someone? That lawyer?”

“You are the nosiest person I ever knew in my life.”

“Your man?”

“I don’t put it that way, but yes.”

“What kind of name is Alfred anyway? What’s his surname?”

“Briehof. It’s German.”

“What part of Germany?”

“John, do you have any work to do today? Are you paid to work, or just to visit?”

“I just like to know things is all.”

“Doesn’t everyone? But not everyone thinks it’s right to ask.”

“Not everyone. That’s true. Take you for example. You’ve hardly asked me a single thing.”

“Okay, tell me something about yourself.”

But John just shrugged and walked back up to the hospital.

  •  •  •  

Mary saw him before the ferry docked. She saw his dark head swaying with the rhythm of the water. She watched him leap from the boat to the pier without the assistance of the handrail. She watched him say something to the ferry’s captain, and then both men wheeled around to face Mary’s bungalow. She lifted her arm and waved.

They walked toward each other. He leaned in to kiss her when they met on the path, but she told him to wait, not yet, she’d say when. He looked so good, and so young, and so healthy. His teeth were clean and white. His neck was shaved close without a single nick. He was tall. He moved with the ease of a man who was well fed, and well washed, and had full use of his lungs and got physical exercise every day. So this is how she appeared to the patients of the hospital. This was the light they were looking at when they sat, wrapped in blankets and propped up on hospital benches and stared at her, struggling to recall what being fully alive was like. Mary and Alfred, they weren’t as young as they once were, but they weren’t so bad, not so bad at all. She pointed out the hospital building, the chapel, the coal house, the male dormitory, the morgue, the nurses’ quarters, the physicians’ quarters, the lighthouse, the female dormitory, the stable, the sheds, and her own little shack, which she promised to show him later. She led him down the path that John Cane had cleared for her, down to the beach and her snowy egret. They found a damp log to sit on, and she pointed out the Bronx to their left, and to their right South Brother and Rikers. To their far right was Astoria, and behind them, of course, was Manhattan. She asked him if North Brother was as he had pictured it.