FOUR
Mary sent her response to Mr. O’Neill on a Tuesday, and on Friday she watched an unfamiliar young man step off the ferry and steady himself for a moment before continuing up the path to the hospital. He clutched his briefcase with both hands. “Mr. O’Neill?” she asked. She was waiting in the shadow of the hospital’s western wall.
“You must be Mary,” he said, shaking her hand. She had so much to say and so many questions that she didn’t know where to begin.
“Why don’t I check in?” he said after a moment, nodding at the hospital doors. “They’ll want me to sign something.”
“I’ll wait down there,” she said, pointing to her hut.
Twenty minutes later, after a brief conversation about what was what on the island — Mr. O’Neill seemed interested in the X-ray building — she showed him inside and watched as his gaze skittered across the counter to the pile of rubbage she’d collected for John Cane. She offered him tea, but he declined. He pressed his handkerchief to his nose, and then opened his briefcase and removed a pile of papers. He had with him a copy of every newspaper article about her, plus her records from Willard Parker. She noticed he had notes attached to each item. He opened a notebook to a blank page.
“Let’s start with your arrest,” he said as he uncapped his pen.
“You mean my abduction,” she corrected him, and bit her lip. She didn’t want him to think she was unreasonable.
“Well, yes,” he agreed. “That’s probably more accurate.”
They spoke for two hours, and when he left, they had a plan. As Mr. O’Neill explained, the Department of Health may have been within their rights if they’d tested her first, and then put her in quarantine in Willard Parker following a positive result, but not the other way around. They were completely out of line to arrest her without a warrant and to test her once she was in their custody. First, he told her, she would apply for a writ of habeas corpus. There would be a hearing. He warned her that this meant her real name would be released, and asked if she needed to think about that. “No,” Mary said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“The papers have been sympathetic to your side,” Mr. O’Neill said as he gathered his things. “That will help, too. Don’t be surprised if reporters come out here looking for you.”
“Will they be allowed to see me?”
“I’ll arrange it. I don’t see how the hospital can get around it.”
“And what about other visitors, could you get them to allow that, too?”
Mr. O’Neill touched her shoulder. “Try to be patient. I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen your friends. But we have to proceed carefully, and remember, you’ll be home soon.”
“Wait,” she said as he began to leave. She had to address it now or else it would hang over her until they saw each other again. “I haven’t worked in over two years. I had a little money saved, but—”
Mr. O’Neill held up his hand. “There’s no fee.” She narrowed her eyes. He seemed decent, but no one was that decent. She decided to worry about that later, once she was free. As soon as he left, she got out a sheet of paper.
Dear Alfred,
Finally! I have news. I’ve just met with a lawyer named O’Neill and he seems certain he can get these people to let me go. There will be a hearing, I’m not sure when. Soon. I’ll send the details when it’s scheduled. I know it’s been a very long time and we have much to talk about but I miss you, Alfred. And I’m worried about you. I can’t wait to see you again. Let’s just forget these horrid two years and celebrate when we see each other soon. I am the same, I hope. Are you?
Mary
As Mr. O’Neill had predicted, within days of their habeas corpus application there was another newspaper article about her in the New York American, a long one, and for the first time, they used her real name. Her appeal was popular news in the city, and reporters began to request face-to-face interviews. The hospital allowed no more than one reporter per day.
“Write down about the closeness of this place,” she reminded each one who made the trip. “And the cot. Do you see how it cups in the middle?” The numbers used to condemn her were inconsistent: one had twenty-two sick, one dead; another had thirty sick, two dead; the third had twenty-eight sick, six dead. But none believed that was the whole story. She’d been cooking since she arrived in America in 1883, but the records that led to her discovery and capture went only as far back as 1901. “You can tell me,” each reporter said in a different way, and each made a show of putting down his paper and pencil like Mary was some kind of imbecile who didn’t know how the world worked. “When did you know?” The young man from the Herald had a vein that jumped at his temple.
“When did I know what?” she would reply, willing herself to stay calm. She offered each reporter one of the black-currant scones the hospital cook had sent down with John Cane. “I’ve never been sick a day in my life, and that’s all I have to say on the matter.”
Each reporter shrank away from the plate. “No?” she said, holding the plate aloft a few moments longer, as if the person sitting across from her might change his mind.
Ever since arriving in America, she kept her head down and she worked. She’d found Alfred, but that was no crime. They couldn’t lock her up for not being married, for demanding a good wage and getting it, for not attending any brand of church services and loving instead to spend Sundays roaming Washington Market, and then going to hear the fiddler who played on the corner of Fulton and Church Streets. She was thirty-nine years old and healthy. Did any of them realize the strength it took to lift a pot of boiling water? To knead bread for thirty minutes? To pound one of the tougher cuts of beef until it was tender and ready for her skillet? At the end of a workweek she was exhausted in her bones, in the muscles of her shoulders and her back, but still, she often walked all the way from the Bowens’ brownstone on the Upper East Side to her place farther downtown because she liked using her own steam, didn’t feel like squeezing herself into a streetcar.
“Miss Mallon,” the reporter from the Herald asked, “do you yourself believe you carry Typhoid Fever and pass it to those for whom you cook?”
She made sure to look him directly in the eyes. “No, I do not.”
“Then why has the Department of Health gone to the trouble and expense of keeping you here?”
“That’s exactly what I would like to know.”
And when it came time for each reporter to leave, she walked with him down to the dock and spoke of other things. The weather. That Frenchman’s attempts to cross the English channel in an aeroplane. The hurricane in Texas. “Where do you live?” she asked each one, coming around to it just before arriving at the dock. One was from Brooklyn. Another from Fort Lee. But the writer for the Herald lived on Twenty-Eighth Street and Third Avenue; upon hearing it Mary held her breath. Surely, living so close, he’d passed Alfred in the street, brushed up against him at the grocer, sat beside him at Nation’s Pub, maybe struck up conversation. The thought came to her that she should give this man a message to bring to Alfred, have him climb the stairs of their building and knock on the door to their rooms. But the reporter was backing away already, thanking her for her time, stepping down into the boat, and Mary felt the chance slip past her like a life ring thrown into the water and swallowed by the waves.
• • •