“All stand,” the court officer called out, and the clap of chairs being pushed back was thunderous. Mary looked toward the three large windows on the western side of the room and noted that the day had darkened, the metallic smell of rain had seeped indoors. When the people returned to their seats, there was stirred up in the room the odor of vegetables, of horse, of blood. Judge Erlinger pressed a handkerchief to his forehead and then briefly to his nose.
Mr. O’Neill cleared his throat. He began the way they’d discussed, with an account of her arrest in March of 1907. “Without a warrant,” he said, “without due process, the liberty of a perfectly healthy individual…”
Mary could see that he was nervous. He was five years younger than she, only thirty-four, but he never seemed as young to her as he did when he touched his fingertips to the edge of the battered table and stood.
“Mary Mallon has been quarantined for twenty-seven months with no one to keep her company but a gardener who delivers her meals three times a day. She has submitted to testing — urine, blood, and stool — twice a week for that entire period. The nurses who collect her samples are certainly no company, and she dreads their visits because of the anguish they cause. Her friends are not permitted to visit, despite the fact that every doctor associated with her case admits she is contagious only through cooking.”
Mr. O’Neill continued, sticking only to what was relevant, and as he spoke Mary found her thoughts drifting. For twenty-seven months she’d craved the streets of Manhattan, the chaos, the noise, haggling over the price of an orange, debating the accuracy of the butcher’s scale. She missed her work, rising before the rest of the house, removing the first shining pot from its hook, lighting the fire under it, dropping in a spoon of butter and watching it skid across the warmed bottom. She missed earning money, walking to Dicer’s on First Avenue, picking out a basket full of groceries, paying for it with clean, new bills.
She missed Alfred most of all and every morning when she woke she wondered whether he was also awake. She often caught herself thinking of him the same way she once thought of the people from home when she first got to America, all the way across the ocean, twenty-one days at sea. And then when she remembered that the East River was not the ocean, was not even as broad as the mighty Hudson, everything felt more urgent and these were the moments that made her wild, as the doctors called it. Combative. Difficult. Stubborn. Obstinant. Ignorant. Female. There were almost five million souls rushing through their days over there. She could see their chimneys and hear the sharp whistle of trains. Somewhere over there walked Alfred, and unlike those she missed from Ireland who were so far away that she’d quickly drawn a curtain across the possibility of ever seeing them again, the idea of being so close to him and not seeing him made everything worse.
If she had more courage she might have tried swimming across like the young men from the House of Refuge on Rikers tried from time to time, but then she reminded herself that most times, if the papers told the truth, those men turned back, often stopping at North Brother for a rest before doing so, or drowned. John Cane once told her that the East River was the fastest, roughest river he ever knew, especially around North Brother. At the time, she’d been on the island only a month and thought he’d been rubbing it in, reminding her that there were no options for her. But after watching those same waters for twenty-seven months, she knew he’d just been stating the truth.
• • •
Ten o’clock in the morning was not Alfred’s best hour. She thought of his long, white legs, splayed out on the starker white of their bedsheets. She thought of him standing by the window in his shorts. She thought of all the eggshells and orange peels that had probably collected in the sink for twenty-seven months, all the bottles that would need scouring. She thought of him in work clothes, making his way up the building’s stairs to their flat on the sixth floor. Who talked to him in the course of a day? Where did he take his meals? She thought of him running his hand along the curve of her back to her backside and pulling her toward him.
She missed seeing human beings other than herself and John Cane, who had a strange fascination with watching her eat what he brought for her from the hospital kitchen. The night before the hearing, when he should have been worrying about getting her that iron in time, he’d brought her two slices of beef threaded with gristle, a limp salad, a roll. “The people cooking for this hospital should be lined up before a wall and shot,” she said as she inspected the meat. John was the tiniest little sparrow’s fart of a man, but he laughed with the strength of someone full-size. She’d been asking John to bring her flour, yeast, butter, a few vanilla beans, nothing to make a proper meal, but ingredients for bread, something she could work with in the mornings when it was too early to step outside, but he just held up his hands and ignored her. She wondered what they’d told him about her, why asking for simple ingredients always prompted him to say good-bye and hurry across the green space like he was being chased.
Mary observed two flies float in through the window and then out again. The clop of horses, a large team from the sound of it, passed on the street outside and Mr. O’Neill paused for a moment; Mary heard the door at the back of the courtroom open. She heard a man’s low voice asking pardon as he tripped across knees to an empty seat. She heard the voice again, louder, and the sound of it was like a wire pulled up her spine. She felt the small hairs at the back of her neck. The stirring she heard behind her seemed to be moving closer. She felt bodies shifting. Chairs creaked. People exhaled the hot breath of annoyance.
“Sir,” Judge Giegerich said, looking at the source of the disruption while holding a hand up to Mr. O’Neill. “Is this entirely necessary? There are two seats on the aisle right in front of you.”
“I want to sit near Mary,” the man said, and Mary turned to find herself no more than three feet from Alfred, who was dressed in a gray sack suit with the jacket over his arm, and wearing polished shoes. Borrowed, Mary thought. The shirt, too. She hoped he’d give it all back in the same condition. “Hello, Mary,” Alfred said. He looked healthy, fuller in the face than he’d been when she last saw him. Eating, she hoped. Sleeping at night. Mary drew a breath, wanting to speak to him, but felt everyone in the room looking at her, the reporters poised with their pencils to paper, the others with their arms folded or their eyebrows raised. She turned back in her seat and faced the judges. Mr. O’Neill concluded his point.
“Mary,” Alfred whispered. He’d gotten the seat behind her.
Mr. O’Neill cast a sidelong glance at her, a warning not to turn around.
“You look nice.”
Mr. O’Neill turned abruptly and gave Alfred a stern look as one of the lawyers for the Department of Health launched into all the various reasons Mary Mallon must remain in quarantine.
Mary dropped her hand to her side and made a little wave beside the seat of her chair. He would see it if he knew to look for it. The flies flew in through the window again, and this time circled the room. Two more followed. A child’s voice below the window called out the names of the newspapers he was selling. There was the sound of someone running. A cart being pushed down the hall on the other side of the courtroom doors.
“How are you?” she whispered over her shoulder. Beside her Mr. O’Neill dropped his pencil and pushed his pad of paper away.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Alfred whispered back.
“You look well.”
“I’m better, Mary. Much better. Than before.”
“Good. That’s good.”
They stared at each other. Mary twisted in her seat, Alfred leaned forward on his elbows. She felt hot, reckless, and wondered what would happen if she got up out of her seat and walked out of the courtroom on Alfred’s arm. She noticed that he didn’t look nearly as uncomfortable as everyone else in the room. His hand was cool when he reached out and covered hers.