From against the tennis court fence, Cora had removed the cloth that covered her face and explained that she, too, was a prisoner at Riverside.
Smoothing her strawberry blond hair and starched skirt, Mary had beckoned for Cora to enter and take a seat.
Daily, Mary had ranted in her heavy Irish brogue about her rights, need for a solicitor, and “gittin’ the hell outta here.”
Always keeping her gloved hands in her lap and her nose and mouth shrouded, Cora would quietly listen to the sentiments that echoed those lodged in her heart, like a keg of gunpowder she was too timid to light.
Even while she’d been praying for her friend’s release, a small part of Cora had been hoping it wouldn’t happen. Finally, she had a confidante who understood her plight, someone to take the edge off the crushing loneliness.
According to Mary, Dr. Soper and the doctors at Willard Parker Hospital, where Mary had first been admitted, believed the germs resided in her gallbladder. Remove the gallbladder, remove the germs; so went the theory.
When Cora had asked Dr. Gettler if curing Mary could be that simple, he’d deemed it possible.
“Would that work for me?” Cora had asked.
By then a third pest had invaded her body; she’d pocketed a novella discarded by a woman with smallpox. And Cora had likely acquired typhoid fever from Mary. An ex-chef for wealthy families, Mary had struggled with Dr. Soper’s edict that she was not permitted to so much as boil an egg. She’d cajoled Cora into stealing ingredients from the shipments unloaded at the ferry so she could cook for the two of them within the privacy of her bungalow.
In response to Cora’s question, the doctor had launched into the story of Edward Jenner’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine.
Little good the advancement had done her, or the woman who’d owned the book. As far as Cora knew, none of the immigrants in the tenements of New York had received the inoculation. She doubted they would benefit from any vaccines made from her blood. If it could even be done.
She had to get away from him.
Still pacing on the beach, Mary cursed, and Cora wished she could again caution her friend to keep quiet. Cora sniffed the air for the scent of Canne’s tobacco but detected nothing. She pressed her spine against the wall.
Above the tidal strait, lamps dotted the deck of the Williamsburg Bridge. Beyond it, she could just make out the pearl necklace lighting of the Brooklyn Bridge. If only she could reach Gotham simply by walking across a trestle.
If she joined her friend and the dinghy capsized, a riptide—or one of the others in the group—would drag her under before she could swim to land.
Her body would become lodged between the pylons of a pier. Crabs would eat away her face, and once bloated, she would emerge unrecognizable—just like the sixty-one unidentified dead interred beneath the Slocum monument in a Middle Village, Queens, cemetery. Far less grand, she would be buried in Potter’s Field on Hart’s Island, the same site as her sister, yet nowhere near her.
But what if the boat did make it across the river? And the removal of her gallbladder eradicated her germs?
She would be able to hug her mamaí at long last.
Cora longed to be with her now. She’d clung to the memory of the Ambre Royal perfume her mother spritzed on her wrists and décolletage before leaving each night, as much a part of her uniform as the low-cut dress. By now its scent had been reduced to words: amber, orange blossom, vanilla. Oh, to smell her perfume again . . .
She also had a hankering for the pastries in Mrs. Meade’s bakery, three buildings down from their tenement. Each night, Cora stared out her window and imagined the velvety feel of buttered soda bread on her tongue. When she closed her eyes, she could almost hear the clatter of horse-drawn carriages along the cobblestone street and the happy racket of children playing “Come with Me” in the alley.
This was Cora’s chance to return to that life—to feel alive again.
But what if that place existed only in the past?
The city had changed so much in the six years since she and Maeve had been exiled. Cover to cover, she studied the daily newspapers that Canne passed along. But seeing a photograph of the new Plaza Hotel, or reading another headline on the bankers’ panic that was roiling Wall Street and Main Street alike, couldn’t prepare her for the changes that must have occurred within her district.
The bakery might have closed, its aromas replaced by the chemical smells of a laundry. The sounds and scents of horses had to be fading with the arrival of automobiles. Without a single car on North Brother, Cora couldn’t conjure the rumble of an engine or the smell it produced.
And worst of all, Eleanor might have left their once-cramped apartment with its painful memories, taking with her the kerosene lamp, the Gaelic quilt her great-aunt had stitched, and the sole opalotype of the two girls.
With such uncertainty awaiting her across the river, Cora couldn’t overcome her fear of drowning. Yet her hope that the dinghy would suddenly appear felt like a stone in her lungs, keeping her short of breath.
She reached under her shroud and pressed her blouse to her abdomen; warm blood seeped into the cotton. The wound needed to be cleaned and redressed.
Just then, a rowboat with two figures materialized in the dimness. Cora’s legs wobbled as if she were already aboard.
“Well, I’ll be gobsmacked,” Mary said. “The git actually got himself out of bed.” She fixed her windblown hair and flashed the lantern three more times.
Blue tinged the black sky. Soon Cora would stand out against the red bricks. Silently, she eased along the wall. While they
