For weeks after moving in together, after arranging the few things she’d brought from Kate’s, after going to the market and buying new bed linens to fit their new double bed, and a bright yellow tablecloth for their new kitchen table, she thought she’d never rest again. What woman could rest with him so near, and even when he fell asleep she’d lie awake, contemplating the weight of his arm where it lay across her ribs, the gentle tug she felt when the stubble of his jaw got caught on her hair. When she worked, all she could think about was getting home to him, and he said it was the same for him. They talked late at night over coffee, when they went to bed, when they woke up, and when they weren’t together they stored up all the things the other would be interested in and carried those items home. Even when winter came, and the gas-meter jar was often empty, they simply crawled into bed together and piled every blanket on top and then shivered with their hands cupped over their mouths. He’d take her frozen feet and pull off the layers of stockings until they were bare and then he’d lift up his sweaters and press her feet to his warm chest. When Mary thought of those days now, she could still feel that astonished joy, that belief that no one else in the world could possibly be happier than they were.
Alfred hugged her again, and released her again, and there was something in the hug and the release that told Mary something was not right.
Again, Mr. O’Neill shouted her name. The guard came over and stood beside her.
It was the time, probably. Twenty-seven months could make any two people a little awkward together, even two as close as Mary and Alfred. Also the guilt, Mary remembered. Alfred was always like a hangdog when he was guilty, and she shouldn’t have ridden him for not writing more often. Not when they were about to be happy and together again, Alfred working, eating three square meals, home at nights. Maybe leaving Thirty-Third Street was a good thing. Now they could get a new place together and truly start over.
“I love you, Mary. I really do.”
“All right, Alfred,” Mary said. “We’ll talk about that later.”
“We will,” he agreed.
Together, they walked down the alley toward Mr. O’Neill, who was pointing to his watch and frowning.
• • •
Everyone came back from lunch recess more overheated and red faced than when they left. A few of the reporters did not return at all, and Mary wondered if that was because they’d felt certain of the outcome, and if so, what their predictions had been. She noticed Dr. Baker sitting in the second row. The men seated beside her had their backs to her, talking to other men.
The scientists talked about new discoveries in the world of contagious diseases, new vaccines that were in development, how it was likely that more people like Mary would be discovered, people who carried disease but never succumbed to it themselves. They used the words bacilli, serum, agglutinins: words that made Mary feel like her mouth was stuffed full of cotton that she couldn’t manage to spit away.
Eventually, they began discussing her capture — specifically, why Dr. Soper and the Department of Health decided to take her by force. It would be one thing if this woman were an educated person, the Department of Health officials argued one by one, but Mary Mallon had no formal education, and lived with a man of low moral character, to whom she was not married. Several employers had reported that they didn’t like to cross Mary, didn’t like to demand veal when she’d planned on poultry, and that wasn’t natural, was it? What kind of cook inspires that kind of caution in an employer? Mrs. Proctor of East Seventieth Street recalled a time when she’d asked Mary to make Irish stew, assuming it would be one of her specialties, and Mary refused!
When Bette answered the door of the Bowen residence on that cold March morning in 1907, the police officers pushed past her and spread throughout the house. “She’s not here!” Bette shouted, and the note of urgency in her voice reached Mary, who was up on the third floor. She pulled back the curtain of the nearest window to see the police truck. She heard someone running up the back stairs, and discovered that she couldn’t move. “The police are here,” Frank said the instant he appeared at the door. “I have an idea.”
Mary saw the solution before he said it out loud. “The Alisons,” she said. The Alison family, who lived next door to the Bowens, had recently had a piece of their fence cut open behind the homes so that their servants could travel back and forth. Mrs. Alison and the children had left for Europe a week earlier, and Mr. Alison would be at his office all day. Frank held up his hand as they listened to the brisk footsteps of the officers walking through the rooms of the floor below them. “You listen for your chance,” he said. Mary nodded and felt suddenly very cold. Her whole body was covered in a thin layer of sweat, and she began to shiver. Her coat was downstairs in the servants’ closet and there would be no time to get it. It was snowing outside.
Only seconds later, Mary heard Frank shout from the first floor and then the rush of hard-soled shoes to the stairs. Mrs. Bowen was out shopping. Mr. Bowen was at his office downtown. It was supposed to be an ordinary Friday, a better-than-ordinary Friday, since Mary would have to cook only for the staff, and for them it would be easy: no serving, dinner together around the table in the kitchen. Clutching the doorknob for help, Mary peeked into the empty hall. She stepped out and stayed close to the wall until she got to the narrow back stairs. Down she went, silent as a cat, until she reached the back door of the house. Outside, the snow was falling faster. Feeling nothing but her own heart beating in her chest, she ran along the footpath that led over to the fence and unlatched the door that led from the Bowens’ yard to the Alisons’. When she looked back to see if anyone was watching her, she noticed her footprints in the snow. She hurried back to cover her tracks, and then, walking backward, leaned over to brush away the footprints with her hands.
The door to the Alison kitchen was locked — the servants mostly having been let go while the family was in Europe. At the edge of the yard was a supply shed. It was a small structure, little more than a low closet with a roof, but the door was unlatched, and when she stepped inside there was just enough room among the pruning sheers, the bags of sand, and the drums of kerosene for one person to crouch and wait.
She didn’t feel the cold at first, and considered herself well protected in the little room. But after a while she could feel the wind where it slipped in between the spaces in the planks, and her knees ached from crouching. She shifted a few bulky canisters of oil and made room to sit on the packed dirt ground. She wished she could hear what was happening on the Bowen side of the fence. Would Frank or Bette remember to get her once the police officers gave up and moved on? There was nothing to do but wait.
• • •
Later, Mr. O’Neill would ask her what she made of Dr. Soper’s pursuit, why she wasn’t more surprised to be hounded the way she was. “I was surprised!” Mary said. “I was shocked!”
“But you didn’t behave like a person who was surprised and shocked,” he insisted. “You behaved like a person who expected to be pursued. Do you understand the difference? You reacted too quickly. How did you know when you looked out the window and saw the police that it was you they’d come for? That’s the problem they have with you. That’s part of the reason they don’t believe you when you claim to have had no idea you were spreading disease.”
“I’m not spreading disease.”
“You see? Even there. You sound like a person who’s been defending herself for years, long before anyone accused you.”