Deadly (8 page)

I don't think I've ever experienced a young man's attention like that, the way he seemed to look right through me. And I believe he used that lie about the other science fellow just to inflame me.

Poor Anushka—she isn't properly prepared to conduct herself around fellers either, it seems. She writes that her friend Ida has confessed that she too loves this Randall person, but didn't tell Anushka for fear it would ruin their friendship. I ask: Is this new friend even worth keeping? Apparently, Ida did know of Anushka's feelings before she announced hers, but she still loves him anyway and cannot keep it inside. I think, if they are both truly in love with the same boy, they should bring the dilemma to Randall himself. Let the feelings come to a boil, push them to the outer limit of expression, pour the salt into the wound, a painful but rapid solution. In the end, anyway, he will be the one to choose between the two young ladies.

Besides, I'm not so sure fellers are worth all the suffering. I'm really not sure at all.

I
've been
working in the office past seven p.m., typing out my copious notes to make them clear for Mr. Soper to read each morning. In each chart, we have food separations—dairy, meats, vegetables, fruits; and baked goods; and foods fried, boiled, frozen; and who ate what, and when. One item keeps cross-referencing, fitting into dairy, fruit, and frozen, and evening meals, snacks, and even breakfast—I notice it keeps appearing more frequently than the others. I noted times and dates, and it seems that everyone in the family, without exception, ate peach ice cream sometime within the week preceding their illness.

I showed Mr. Soper the charts and how popular peach ice cream was at the Thompsons', and such a pleased light shone from his eyes, it took my breath away. It makes me smile to think of it now. He says we will follow this lead next week.

Sometimes I have the most unusual feeling at the office, a forgetting of myself that happens when I am deep into the work of transcribing notes. I feel as if I am no longer me, but rather part of a larger thing, a giant machine with many components that functions perfectly. A machine of knowledge, one that moves our lives forward in important ways. It's those times when I'm furthering our work that I am happiest.

Marm, however, seems to be in low spirits. I worry she's becoming lonely without me around so often. I've arrived at the apartment after normal hours thinking it's empty. The front room where I write beside the window and sleep by the stove and where we keep our kitchen and bathing things is quiet and untouched, and the little back room where Marm sleeps is darkened. Evenings, when we are both home, we usually sit at our wooden table, boiling rose tea in which to dip the day-old bread that complements a warmed, fragrant spread of salted schmaltz, sharing our borrowed newspaper or occasional magazine by gaslight. Nights when I'm late, there have been no cooking smells wafting through the rooms, and I find Marm asleep in the dark back room. She stirs when she hears me, and when she comes out, I see her eyes puffy and red, and her hair loose. Her natural beauty seems blunted then, the pretty pink of her lips and cheeks faded. It shakes me, seeing
her like that, and I ask if anything is bothering her, but she claims not, and bustles about, lighting the stove and warming the chicken fat and the bread. She feeds me and asks me lots of questions about my work. She especially asks about Mr. Soper, and his behavior toward me, as if she still hears Mrs. Browning's ugly parting words. I tell her Mr. Soper has more concern for the sewage system than for the female species. I talk about our case. Tonight I described the very possible break-through we may have, thanks to the clue of the peach ice cream. The more I spoke to her, the more she relaxed, and smiled, and even seemed satisfied we had made the right decision.

I worry my work life will take me too far from my home life, like those characters in the novel I've been reading,
The Jungle
, by Mr. Sinclair. It's a terrifying story, yet it feels true—the Lithuanian immigrants remind me very much of my more troubled neighbors: Too many overworked foreigners living on top of each other, sharing customs and the stink of boiled cabbage in the hallway. How lucky Marm and I are to have our little cubby of an apartment all to ourselves. I don't envy the difficulty my neighbors experience when they come to a new country where they don't speak the language and don't know the customs and sometimes have to hide their religion. We all seem to be from somewhere else, except of course the
Indians, and in their exotic dress and features, they appear the most foreign of all to me.

I feel like things are changing for me and Marm, the way the light does through the seasons, rays becoming whiter in winter, thinning out, separating. We don't have enough time together anymore—though we have more money because of my job, we haven't had any outings at all. I wish I could
be more
for Marm,
do more
for her—I think she is getting older and more tired. I must make an effort to spend time with her, if I can.

I
'm not sure
how it happened, but it appears that the strange science fellow has found himself seriously interested in me, though I can't say I return the feeling. He has waited after work to walk me home twice this week, to my great embarrassment. I don't want Mr. Soper to see me associating with him; I don't think my chief likes this boy much. I have turned him down, yet he follows me like a pup. His stare troubles me, and the prospect of his touch is distasteful. I suppose the best I can do is to ignore him, and perhaps he'll leave me be.

I
t turns out
that there was a cook who worked for the family back in August that none of the Thompson household had thought to mention. When we asked specifically about the peach ice cream, they all remembered this woman as the one who made it. Mrs. Thompson went over her housekeeping records for us and came across the woman's information. She said her name was Mary Mallon, and described her as fortyish, tall, heavy, Irish from Ireland, in perfect health, and not known to have ever had an attack of the typhoid. She was not a person of many words. Apparently, she kept to herself, quietly cooking adequate meals and retiring to her room when her job was done. She did not stand out in anyone's mind (except for the ice cream), and left after three weeks, just after the illness hit.

Mr. Soper thinks this cook Mary may very well be the
key to our case. There's one problem: We can't find her. It seems she changed employment bureaus, and the one who hired her out to the Thompson family hasn't heard from her. They sent us over to Mrs. Cleanglove's Handy Helpers, but they have not seen her either. The man at Handy Helpers was very forthcoming and gave us a list of residences where she has worked for him in the last five years. Mr. Soper wonders if she has taken ill, or has left the city, in which case our whole lead may fall apart. He says Monday we will begin with a concerted search for this woman, physically traveling house to house until we find her.

The cook has no record of the typhoid, nor any significant illness, so I'm not sure I understand exactly why Mr. Soper suspects she is at the heart of our case. Usually typhoid is carried by a person who suffers from the disease. If this woman didn't become ill at the Thompsons', and never contracted the fever, I don't follow Mr. Soper's line of thought.

I fear we may be traversing down another dead end.

W
hite ribbons
snake into my heart as our work progresses, deathly white ribbons that frighten me.

We started off the search for Mary Mallon with the only information available to us—the record of the families the cook worked for over the last five years. We took upon ourselves the task of visiting every household on the list. Mr. Soper wanted to know if they remembered the cook, and if they knew anything about her past, or her present whereabouts.

I feared a blind search that would yield nothing. Who would remember a cook from five years past, and why would they keep track of her? And how would we explain our purpose in looking for a woman who's never been sick, but who supposedly carries disease?

But Mr. Soper's instincts were right.

At the first house, a surly maidservant answered, and my chief introduced himself and explained that we were from the Department of Health and Sanitation and were looking for one Mary Mallon. The girl's face shuttered completely, and she said she didn't know anything about the cook. It happened to us more than once this week. I think there is some code of silence among these servants: The moment they sense trouble, their entire countenance snaps shut like an irritated clam. Once their masters are retrieved, the true story arises. Her lady came down the stairs, and when we put to her the same inquiry, her eyes brightened. “Why, of course, Mary Mallon,” she exclaimed, “she was such a darling help when the children were ill.” She turned to her maid and said, “You remember, Sally, you were ill too, and Mary nursed you to health.”

Mr. Soper asked, “What illness?”

The lady answered, “Why, the typhoid fever. It came not long after Mary, maybe two or three weeks later, I guess. It was late fall of that year, and as cold outside as a chicken's beak. She stayed with us for about six months, till the spring of 1903, when we moved here. For an Irish girl, she was quite the angel. The children loved her.”

I could see Mr. Soper pale. He asked how many in the
household had fallen ill, and she counted on her fingers, her two children, the maid, and the laundress.

“Did they all recover?” he asked.

“Why, yes,” she said.

He asked if the lady knew of Mary's present whereabouts, but she did not. She mentioned another employment bureau that placed the cook in her next job. She asked if we needed a recommendation for Mary's services, which she'd be happy to provide. Mr. Soper politely declined. We bid the woman good day and left.

Riding the elevated train to the next family on our list, I think we were both too surprised to say anything. It felt as if Mr. Soper's idea had been proven—not a good feeling—quite terrible, in fact. For if this woman
has
been carrying around disease, we don't know where she is. And an even bigger question stands: How is she
able
to carry typhoid if she's never
had
typhoid?

We reached the next home, where the lady remembered Mary, and the sickness. There, a girl of eighteen had
died
from the fever. The sadness of that muted me, a girl nearly my age succumbing.

The following day we continued down the list, and each time, yes, they caught the fever, and the cook nursed them,
or left shortly after. Of the nine households we visited last week, six suffered from typhoid fever during the time Mary cooked for them. At the other three homes, no one answered our call.

All totaled: Twenty-seven ill, one dead. And these are only the families we know about.

By the end of the week, Mr. Soper appeared struck as if hit by a physical blow. It was quite obviously painful for him to have his revolutionary idea confirmed. I could think of no way to console him, nor could I ease my own heartsickness.

Once we spoke to the last family, my chief sat me down in our office and explained the new scientific theory that was fueling our search. Dr. Koch, a scientist in Germany, has put forth this idea: That a healthy person can carry disease inside himself without suffering from it, and can transmit this disease without knowing it, a so-called healthy carrier. This is a theory I simply cannot understand. If it's true, then how did Mary get the disease inside her in the first place? Why doesn't she become ill herself? How come the sickness doesn't go away like it normally would once it has run its course?

This news, this trail of fevered and dead, has left me sore inside, and deeply sad.

The challenge ahead of us is to find this elusive cook and test her for the typhoid germ by examining her body fluids. Mr. Soper has charged me with telephoning all the employment bureaus in the city next week, not giving up until I find her.

C
rossing Cherry
Park yesterday, I encountered a sick dog expelling from its body wormlike creatures—it was particularly offensive, but I found myself drawn to watching the worms move about on the ground after dog and owner left. I wondered at my own fascination, and the lowly act of observing excrement in the dirt. I thought what I might do if one of my schoolmates were to see me, or worse yet, Mrs. Browning. But a stronger thought overwhelmed me, an understanding that was too powerful to turn away from.

It was this: The worms showed me Mr. Soper's scientific theory.

They showed me how one creature can live inside another, eating from it. Once sated, the creature is expelled out into the world through the feces, where another animal can pick
it up. It became clear to me how the fever spreads—if the cook uses the toilet while she is working and doesn't clean her hands well before returning to the kitchen, she passes the typhoid creature—bacteria, he called it—out of her body and into her household's. Mr. Soper has told me that these germs are shaped like noodles, and maybe they have limbs to propel them. Fascinating how living things can live inside us. But I still don't see why Mary doesn't get sick herself.