Ella could hardly force herself to breathe. “Mr. K.? Knows?”
“His club says he’s not there. Never arrived at all. I suppose Cook’s right, and he’s with that woman. But how to tell Mrs. K.? We said we left a message at the club, and we did. If only we knew where to find Charles, we’d send him to the Decatur. But it wouldn’t be decent, Cook says, for one of us to go. Too much talk. If the mister didn’t fire us for it, the missus would.”
Ella watched her weep. She felt as if the news were doing to her heart what the flu had done to her lungs. Baby Annie, with her sweet little fingers and toes, her pretty new curls, the way she repeated buh-buh and puh-puh for ten minutes at a time, as serious as a professor delivering a lecture.
“Cook’s gone mad with it, too, Nanny. Imagine if you had to wrap up that darling little child and put her — She and the missus both, gone mad. Why look, Nanny, what Cook gave me.” Maid dug into the pocket of her apron, then held something between her fingers. “A ten-dollar coin! Says Charles had a pocketful in his pants, left by the washer when he changed clothes to leave. If it’s what Mrs. K. gave him to get lodging, then how’s he paying for it now? I asked Cook, but she got angry, saying, is it so hard to think her husband left it for her? And I said, ‘But he wouldn’t want you giving his money away.’ And she said, ‘You’d do the same for me if you had two people’s wages to live on, and I had one. And better if there’s less for Charles when he gets back.’ Meaning he’d take it and get into trouble. They’re not supposed to serve liquor down at Murder Bay, now the District passed that law, but he always finds some, doesn’t he, if he has the extra coin?”
“If he has more... he’ll be out...” She didn’t have to say whoring.
“Oh no, he swore off it, Nanny. I heard him myself. Him and Cook one night in the kitchen, didn’t see me at the door. She had her knife right through his vest and shirt, clear to his skin. He pushed her back and pulled up his clothes to show the mark she left. Said if ever he had the means to buy it ten times a month, he’d leave her. But as long as he didn’t, she was a fool to worry. While he could get it for free, she’d be right to kill him for wasting the money.”
“Do you think... could he have stolen from Mrs. K.?” They all knew the missus kept a strongbox of coins. She doled them out to Cook and Maid to settle with the chicken man and fish man and the dressmakers, now that they all came here so no one left the house. “When Mrs. K. paid Charles to go find lodging? If he saw where she kept them?”
Neither of them said more, but it was easy to envision Charles changing his clothes in a rush, forgetting the few coins in his pocket because he had a boxful under his arm.
“Muriel and John?” Ella asked, finally.
“Asleep, Nanny, and what a chore today, keeping them away from you. It’s their instinct to come to you in need. Not that Mrs. K. doesn’t dote on them, but with you it’s not so much fuss. And now, well... poor missus is half out of her mind. I put out their color crayons and said to draw pictures of their daddy, to give him when he comes home. But Mrs. K. flew into the schoolroom, screaming at me. It scared the little ones, you can imagine, the state she was in. She said I mustn’t go near them now, after nursing you.” A flash of fear twisted her face.
Ella wanted to take Maid’s hand, squeeze it to show she understood how brave it was to care for her this way.
As if reading her thoughts, Maid said, “The newspaper says it’s moving across the country like a grass fire, and no outrunning it. They say men boarding at Union Station are dead before the train reaches Chicago. Why, you went down as fast as anything, and this morning baby Annie was so pink and bright, just a little colicky how she gets. And now... We’ll none of us survive it, Nanny. I’ll be next, I know it.”
“If you are, I’ll take care of you,” Ella vowed. “Nurse you like you nursed me.”
The next time she awakened, Ella found Maid slumped in the broken wing chair, too ill to make it to her tiny attic room. Ella sat up, her head throbbing and her chest on fire, determined to make good on her promise. But it took a Bong time to help Maid up the dark, narrow servants’ stairs. They had to pause every few steps. Ella had no strength, it felt as if her bones were hollow, as if her marrow had died away from fever. And Maid suffered wave after wave of dizziness and nausea. On the third-floor landing, she spotted another ten-dollar gold piece. She thought it Maid’s, fallen from her apron pocket, but when she went to put it back, she saw it was a second coin. It was baffling, something to puzzle over while she got Maid up to her attic cubby. She put her into bed with the last of her strength. But when she staggered toward the room she shared with Cook, she knew she’d get no rest there. She heard Cook’s wracking cough.
By midday, Cook and Maid were dead. They had bathed Ella and cared for her, and for their trouble, she had given them the influenza. She had killed them.
She went slowly down the narrow staircase to the third floor. She stood facing the door leading to the children’s rooms and Mrs. K.’s suite. She didn’t want to open it. She didn’t want to break the news. And what if she learned that she’d infected Muriel or John? No, she couldn’t go in there, not yet. She sank to the floor, back against the door. She closed her eyes, never imagining she could sleep, not with this grief, this apprehension, inside her. But when she next opened her eyes, it was dark on the landing. Pushing herself up, her hand encountered a divot in the wood, new and frayed with splinters. As she pulled one from her finger, she saw that it was smeared with something rusty brown. Dried blood?
It was silent in the Kingstons’ part of the house. She didn’t hear Muriel’s piercing voice or John’s clamor of bouncing balls and big awkward feet. She didn’t hear them pushing or squabbling as they had every day since the mayor closed the schools. She wanted to hope Mrs. K. had called the garage and sent for the car, that the family had gone to her old uncle in Savannah. But as Ella padded past the empty schoolroom, where she read aloud to the children or made them practice their reading and writing and math, she heard a snuffling, mewling sound. Her body tensed and her gait became arrhythmic, almost spastic, as in a nightmare. As she neared John’s room, she caught the sharp chamber-pot stink of sickness. Muriel, she saw, had crawled into her brother’s bed, wrapping her little arms around his neck. He lay motionless and stiff, his chin covered with Muriel’s matted strawberry curls. The little girl’s body shook as she wept and, much worse, coughed. Pins and needles prickled Ella’s spine, raised the hairs on her neck.
“Muriel?”
The child turned to her, her face streaked with tears that were pink with blood. Ella picked her up, expecting the familiar feel of arms and legs wrapped tight around her, but she was limp as Ella staggered toward Mrs. K.’s room. She stopped at the door. The missus was in her bed. She was as pale as a wax candle, a thick rind of sweat on her brow and hot rashes on her cheeks. The children’s names punctuated her delirious babble.
Ella backed away, pressing Muriel’s face to her chest so she wouldn’t see. She went down the grand staircase to Mr. K.’s room. She put Muriel into his bed and then collapsed to her hands and knees. She crawled to the adjoining room, an office with a desk where Mr. K. hid his liquor and a couch where he’d taken his “accommodation” instead of her references. One of the household’s two telephones was there. She cradled the candlestick, hoping a voice in the earhorn would restore her hope. But the nurse at the hospital said it was no use bringing child or mother. There were hundreds lying outside waiting for beds. Keep them cool, the nurse advised. Give them water or broth.