Fever (21 page)

EIGHTEEN

On the night Driscoll was taken by ambulance, Alfred slept in the old man’s rooms. He heeded Mary’s advice and washed himself in the basin. Not wanting to sleep on the bed Driscoll had been coughing into, he found a spare blanket and made a bed on the kitchen floor. In the morning, he walked to the stable with his thoughts full of Mary, and how he could put everything right again.

As he cleaned the stalls and fed the horses, he decided he’d wait until after Samuel’s exams to tell Liza what he now knew—that he could not be with her, and certainly could not marry her. He’d wait until after Christmas. After the New Year. But when he got back to their rooms that afternoon and saw them there, mother at the sink and son at the table, and the way she warned him with a look to keep quiet, and winced when he took off his boots by the door, and followed him around, touching everything he touched to straighten it, right it, clean from it whatever invisible grime he might have carried there on his fingertips, he knew he would not be able to stay there one day longer. He returned to his boots and went out the door before she could ask where he was going.

Back on the sidewalk he headed straight into the barrage of sound—children shrieked, their mothers calling after them; the horses clopped, whinnying and snouting at anything that came near them; the carriages squeaked and rattled; the automobiles honked and sputtered as they tore down the streets, the passengers gripping the crossbars.

Alfred sank into the bright busyness of the Lower East Side. He noticed now that many of the windows had Christmas candles waiting until nightfall to be lit, and remembered that Christmas was just ten days away. The day was warm, more like October than December, and he walked in a westerly direction across Allen and Eldridge Streets, through the blocks of all Italian—Mulberry and Mott. He headed south along Lafayette, and then west again until he came to the outdoor market on Chambers, where a twelve-foot Yule tree was standing at the northwest corner, decorated with beads and tinsel. He bought a loaf of bread and a few slices of smoked trout wrapped in a newspaper. With the bread and fish tucked under his arm, he turned east again. After a few blocks, he stopped on a curb and ate his meal while a group of children kicked a ball around him. Licking his fingers, he continued toward the East River, passing the faces of a hundred tenements standing shoulder to shoulder, like a row of tight-lipped and straight-backed soldiers. The zigzagging fire escapes, chipped and rusted, marred each façade, and Alfred knew without looking that the interior hallways were similarly spoiled, the plasters cracked and crumbling, the pastoral scenes painted over and over again until every color was a shade of gray. On one block alone he passed a delicatessen, a butcher, a baker, a milliner, a tailor, and a factory that made women’s shoes. He passed a police officer who was trying to coax a dog from the street, and another officer yelling up to a man who had thrown a pile of chicken bones from his fifth-floor window. The man shouted back to the officer in German, and then pulled the curtain across. “Want me to tell you what he said?” Alfred asked the officer.

“Don’t bother,” the officer replied, and continued on.

Alfred turned and turned and turned again until before him was the Brooklyn Bridge, that shining, massive jewel suspended over the water and held there, it seemed from Alfred’s vantage, by magic, by a simple crosshatch of wire and string. He was a German, the man who thought how to do that. Alfred marveled as he stared at how the bridge seemed to take a flying leap across the tidal strait below. He recognized the gothic towers of the old world, except instead of appearing bulky and grim like they did in the Rhine country, here in America they held only promise, and the arched portals carved into them seemed to Alfred to welcome those who crossed like a collection of solemn ancestors, holding the new Americans in the palms of their hands.

He walked across the bridge and then jumped the trolley on the Brooklyn side, held tight to the bar, and after a long time hopped off at Coney Island, where, passing the Loop-the-Loop and packs of young girls pressed into circles, talking behind their hands and laughing, he remembered bringing Mary there when Aunt Kate was still alive and watching her as she danced with other girls. Even then it was a rare thing to see her so joyous, and even more rare as time went on, but it was worth the wait and even severe Mary, even worried Mary, even Mary with a cook’s slouch was worth a hundred Liza Meaneys.

  •  •  •  

It was nearly midnight when Alfred got back to Liza’s rooms, and after climbing the narrow stairs he listened at the door for a minute to discover whether she was still awake, waiting for him, or if the boy was still studying at the table. He thought about what he’d say, whether he’d hold her or if that was wrong, whether he’d tell the boy himself or let her do it. He heard nothing, and there was no light under the door.

It will come as a shock to her, Alfred knew. She might not be able to make ends meet without him. She mightn’t be able to send the boy to school. But she’ll take on another boarder. A woman would be better for her, and the neighbors would like it more. I’ll send her a letter, he decided as he turned and made his way back down to the street. It would be kinder to Liza to avoid the shame of having to watch him leave, or the temptation she might have to beg him to stay. It would be more honorable to allow her to face that on her own and then she could tell Samuel whatever she liked. Alfred would simply never return to Orchard Street at all. As for the few articles he’d left behind in her place, she could do what she liked with them.

Then he remembered he had thirty-one dollars saved in a coffee can on the top shelf of the pantry, and that stopped him as he crossed the first-floor landing. He looked up the dark stairwell and listened. After a few seconds, he shook his head and waved his hands in front of him as if he were scattering that paper money in the breeze. He stepped toward the heavy front door, believing he’d made his decision, but he thought of that money again as he placed his hand on the knob. He could see it as a stack, turned on its side and curved against the can. It smelled of coffee. What would Liza do with it? Buy books for the boy?

He climbed the stairs again. He placed the palm of his hand against the door and then turned the knob, slowly, slowly, so that the lock wouldn’t pop like a gunshot and wake her up. He pushed it open only far enough to slide his body inside and in three steps he was standing at the pantry, peering toward the top shelf. Empty. He scanned the lower shelves, the counter, the curio in the corner. The floorboard creaked as his thumb grazed the miniature collectable bell she’d gotten from Philadelphia, years and years ago from her husband, the boy’s father, dead at twenty-seven. Alfred was rooted in the still silence until he remembered the small hollow in the brick wall between the window and the curio, a little space gouged out long before his arrival and impossible to notice unless a person went looking for it. Liza had pointed it out to Samuel as a good place to keep his earnings, and Alfred went up on tiptoes now, reaching around the curio to find it in the moonlight. There was his coffee can, and next to it, a chipped sugar bowl full of the boy’s earnings. Graceful as a ballerina, he leaned down, plucked up both, and barely felt the floor under him as he slipped out the door, back to the hall, down to the street.

For the first time since taking the cure, he reached for the flask that held the medicine, and there on the dark sidewalk he tipped it into his mouth, pretended it was whiskey, and swallowed every drop. When he was finished, he waited to see if the medicine would do the trick, if it would take all that wanting away and turn it into satisfaction, into the calm easiness of sobriety as Dr. Oppenheimer had described it, the peace of needing nothing, of feeling sound in body and mind. Instead, he felt violence in his belly, and as quick as he could lean over, he vomited on himself and all over the step. He stumbled to the curb and vomited over the dog shit there. He dropped down to his hands and knees and vomited again. When he saw in the dim light of the gas lamp a policeman coming up the street with his hand on his club, he moved along as quickly as he could. He stuck close to the buildings and walked north until he came to a church with a small cemetery beyond its gates. He tried to vomit again but nothing came because there was nothing left, so he retched drily behind a headstone, wrapped his coat more tightly around his body, stumbled over to a bench, and slept.

In the morning, cold to the bone and with an aching neck, he made his way to Washington Square Park. The Borriello boy had said the laundry Mary worked at was almost on the park, but he hadn’t had a chance to tell him which side, how close “almost” was. Buttoned into the inside pocket of his coat was his thirty-one dollars, plus Samuel’s eleven. Eleven dollars was nothing compared to the dinners he’d put on their table, compared to all the pencils and books and scratch pads he’d purchased. The groceries, the new kitchen curtains, all acquired with the money he’d given her. She’d made out well, he told himself, the thick stack of money a lump on the left side of his coat.

He began searching at the park’s south end but found no laundry. There was a laundry a block from the park’s west side, but when he went in to inquire about Mary, they didn’t know who he was talking about. It was the same at the two laundries he found within a few blocks north of the park. Then, on the park’s east side, he spotted a sign and knew it must be the place. He watched a Chinese move around the front of the store, and then had a glimpse of her, passing through a back room, carrying a stack of folded clothes. Though the vomit had dried on his pants and shoes, the stench seemed as strong as it had been when fresh, and when he touched his hand to his face he knew that he needed a wash and a shave. He was hungry. He wanted to rinse his teeth. The Chinese came to the door, noticed him, and turned his back.

He needed to make himself presentable. He needed to consider what he’d say. Instead of speaking to her right then, as he’d planned, he walked to the old building and got himself into Driscoll’s rooms by the key Driscoll left over the frame of the door. He stripped in Driscoll’s kitchen and then went into the old man’s closet to find a shirt, pants, fresh socks, hurrying out of the contaminated room as quickly as he could. He found Driscoll’s blade and cream. When he was finished, and standing in the kitchen with Driscoll’s bedroom door shut tight, he made a mug of strong black coffee and sipped it beside the stove. He felt jumpy, as if being chased, as if those pursuing him were crouched outside in the street, spying on him from the upper floors of the buildings lining the avenue. He placed Driscoll’s key on the table and locked the door behind him.

  •  •  •  

He walked directly over to the laundry—it was near quitting time—but she would not see him. A Chinese looked him up and down with those inscrutable eyes and told him that she could not be disturbed. He told the man he would wait as long as he had to. He raised his voice and sent it toward the back of the shop, where the sounds of cranks and pulleys and the sudden hiss of steam went on as if he weren’t there at all. The smell of damp clothing and hot irons filled the small space, and he wondered if she smelled like that now—where before she’d smelled of fruit and fresh bread, now she might smell of starch and laundry powder. She’d heard him. He could feel it. She was listening. He told the Chinaman to call the police if he wanted to. He didn’t care. And then, not fifteen minutes later, he was back on the street again, walking into the wind that pricked his face like a hundred thousand needles, turning a shoulder to slice through the throngs hustling about with their packages tied up with string. He circled around the neighborhood for a while, and then went back to the laundry and stood outside the door.

“Mary,” he said, when she finally came out, as he knew she would, eventually. Two other women had already left, and the sign on the door said CLOSED. “I need to talk to you.”

She stayed several feet away from him on the sidewalk and wrapped her scarf around her head. “No, Alfred, I don’t think so. I think the time for talking is past.”

“I didn’t marry her, you know.”

Mary leveled a look at him. “And? What am I supposed to do? Thank you?”

“No! I only—”

“Go away, Alfred. Please. Leave me alone.”

He watched her walk away, and he waited for her to stop, look over her shoulder, think of something more to say to him. But she turned onto Greene Street and disappeared.

  •  •  •  

He needed to change his tack. He needed to find a way to explain himself. In the short term, he realized he shouldn’t have locked himself out of Driscoll’s flat. He had his stack of money but he didn’t want to waste it, so he walked over to Eighth Street, to a delicatessen where an old friend from his coal-hauling days worked slicing meat, and asked to sleep in the pallet in their supply room.

In the morning, he waited outside 302 East Thirty-Third, but he must have arrived too late and missed her. He passed by the laundry a few times to kill the hours until they closed, but didn’t catch any glimpses of her. Christmas was now only eight days away. Pale children begged from morning until night, and there was a Santa on every other block. The markets smelled of clove and cinnamon and the men hocking evergreens were asking astonishing prices for trees that by New Year’s would be brown and brittle and back on the curb.

What he needed was courage. What he needed was to figure out exactly the right thing to say. He shoved his fists deep into his coat pockets because when he set them free his arms felt out of rhythm with his body. He put up his collar. He walked faster. His flask was empty now, and he kept reminding himself to go to Oppenheimer’s office for more of the medicine, but it was like the old prayers of his childhood: his mind said the words but the words were meaningless and he barely heard them. The thought of filling it with something better came to him innocently, the first time, as he passed a pub he used to like. But as soon as the thought entered his mind it gained traction, and wouldn’t be pushed away. He tried to think instead of how he and Mary would talk, finally, and how life would go on, but every time he let his guard down there it was, an itch in his chest demanding to be scratched. He walked and walked and bought a comb for his hair and better socks for his feet, but there it was, squatting in the corner of his mind and smirking at him. If I limit myself to a dram, he considered. His groin tingled. He felt his pulse in the soles of his feet and his fingertips. If I tell the barman it’s only the one, and to not under any circumstances sell me another. If I drink it up quickly and then go on my way. If I never do it again after this.