On the morning of the hearing, Mary wondered once again who was paying Mr. O’Neill’s legal fees. John Cane said it was possible some of the New York American’s readers had pitched in to pay for her defense since the writer took such a forgiving view. He also pointed out that sometimes Mr. Hearst got involved in cases that interested his readers. “Who named John Cane an authority on these matters?” Mary asked him. He’d been getting a little too comfortable with himself lately, standing on the single step outside the door to her cottage as he told her the hospital gossip, having a say-so on matters that didn’t concern him in the least. He brought the papers down to Mary to read out the most important passages. That he couldn’t read the sentences himself didn’t matter when it came to forming opinions on everything from the garbage strike to city taxes to Mary’s case.
“And what do you mean a forgiving view? They told the story accurately.”
“And sided with you, it seemed to me,” John said, crossing his arms and leaning against the rail as if he were born and raised on that very spot.
“Who else would they side with?” Mary demanded.
“I’m only saying,” John Cane said. “I’m only making a point.”
Mary felt nervous enough about the day ahead, and didn’t see how John Cane gave himself leave to make points when he was no more literate than a flea. All she knew was once she stepped onto the ferry later that morning, she might never return to North Brother again.
Her last letter to Alfred was brief. On a small piece of lined paper she’d written only the address of the courthouse, the date, the time, then folded it inside a copy of the article that had appeared in the New York American. Surely, when he unfolded the article and read her note, he would remember the last time they’d been down on Centre Street together — how many years ago? Eighteen? Twenty? It was late fall, the weather brisk. They were deciding what to do with the rest of their day when a page ran down the courthouse steps shouting “Verdict is in!” and then tripped, tumbling head over heels until he landed at their feet. “Well?” Alfred asked as he offered his hand and the boy let himself be pulled up. “Guilty,” the boy said as he staggered and blinked, uninjured. Mary and Alfred had walked on, laughing with heads bent so the boy wouldn’t see them, until all of a sudden Alfred pulled her into an alley, deep into a shadow, where he pressed her against a wall and put his rough hands on either side of her face and told her he loved her, that no one would ever love her as much, and she, feeling a tug in her belly like a hand clenched into a fist, could not say it back, not yet, but felt it there, inside her, waiting to be pried open.
In the beginning, Mary would meet Alfred for regular Wednesday and Saturday evenings out. One Wednesday, he told her that he wanted to live with her, and also told her that he knew she wanted to live with him. So when Saturday came, he called on her earlier than usual and said that he’d found a flat on Thirty-Third Street. Would she come see it? To decide? He’d promised the landlord they’d let him know by the end of the day. Mary went with him and they walked along Third Avenue with Alfred making his case the whole time. He’d known her so well that he’d gone up earlier that morning to place in that gray and narrow kitchen a single hothouse orchid in a red clay pot so that the first thing she would see when she pushed open the door was something beautiful that needed tending. Needed her tending. And she’d said, in halfhearted protest, because she felt herself giving in, felt that she’d given in already, “But we aren’t married,” and he’d looked at her for a long time before asking, “What has that to do with anything?”
• • •
The special ferry that would transport her over to 138th Street was due at eight o’clock in the morning. That would give her time to get across the East River and all the way downtown to the courthouse by ten o’clock. She’d been preparing for two days, scrubbing each of her three blouses and hanging them outside in the sun, brushing each of her skirts. In twenty-seven months the two white blouses had gone a bit yellow, the ruffles fallen flat. Two of the wool skirts had gone shiny at the seat and to her shame, when she had them out in the sun and could look at them more closely, she thought she could make out a separation in the worn area of each, two moons next to each other and a narrow space in between. The nurses offered her clothing from the hospital, told her to help herself before they were sent to the mainland and donated, but she didn’t want those tubercular blouses and dresses, didn’t want dead women’s hand-me-downs. Besides, she had difficulty finding blouses that weren’t tight across the bust, and how dare they, anyway, assume she’d wear any old thing they offered, no matter what state it was in, how crooked the seams, how flimsy the lining, no matter who’d worn it before her and what kind of tailoring that person had paid for, and what quality of cloth. How dare they? She was no beggar. She was a cook and had earned good wages and she wouldn’t touch any of it.
“There’s many who’d be grateful, ma’am,” one nurse commented when Mary told her to take it all away, and she realized too late that they were only trying to be kind. They retreated from Mary’s cottage like it was on fire, and a moment later she watched their work-whites fade into the shadow cast by the main building of the hospital. She told herself to shout after them that she was sorry, that they must try to understand.
• • •
The afternoon before the hearing, when she picked out the best of her blouses and the best of her skirts, she asked John Cane to fetch an iron and board from the hospital laundry. “Just give them here and I’ll tell them to do it,” he said, and held open his arms for the clothes.
“I don’t want them to do it,” Mary said slowly. “I want you to fetch me an iron and board so I can do it myself.”
“You don’t even trust them to iron a shirt?”
“Please, John,” Mary said before she closed the door. After an hour, she went out and looked at the small side door of the hospital where he usually came and went. She waited two more hours. She spotted him coming around six o’clock, but it was only to bring her dinner, and he promised to come back again. At ten o’clock that night, long after he would have taken the boat back to the mainland, Mary went outside one last time in her bare feet to see if anyone was making his or her way along the footpath, but all was silent except for the distant bell of a trolley across the river. At midnight, she boiled a small amount of water in a saucepan and did what she could with the smooth cast-iron bottom, pushing it along the sleeves of her best blouse. When she was finished, the blouse hung neatly over a chair, the skirt flat on the table like a tablecloth, she climbed into her cot. She tried to imagine something peaceful that would put her to sleep, but instead, her left eye began to twitch. She squeezed both eyes shut, but she could feel it still, the muscle fluttering against her palm where she pressed it as hard as she could. The last thought she had was of Alfred, and how she’d have to explain to him why she had to keep one hand over her left eye.
When she woke, and dressed, and made herself a cup of black tea, she opened the front door of her cottage to find John Cane placing the twelve-pound iron on her front step. “And what should I do with it now? It’ll take an hour to warm up.”
He held up his hands as if to say it wasn’t his fault. Nothing was his fault.
She wasn’t going to argue with him that day. She’d save any arguing for the judge downtown.
“You look nice anyhow,” John said, and Mary’s hand went to her throat. She wished she had a brooch. “Good luck today.”
“I mightn’t be seeing you again, John. If I don’t see you, I wish you all the best.” She clasped her hands together and nodded at him. “You were kind to me.”