5
It was December 16, 1896, seventeen days since Harper had been murdered. Mary had secluded herself in her apartment with Josie and didn’t venture outside except to get groceries and other necessary items. The excitement of Christmas had invaded New York, with people shopping, kids making lists, families decorating trees, and sidewalk Santas ringing their bells. But all this good spirit had eluded Mary. In a desperate attempt to protect what was left of her family, she never let Josie out of her sight, smothering her with love and constant talk about what a wonderful father she had. She tried to pass their time together by teaching Josie to walk, but Josie wasn’t cooperating. That minor frustration kept sending Mary back to reliving what had happened, aggravating her already raw feelings, which were also being fueled by massive guilt.
After finding Harper’s body, an unending parade of police and coroner personnel had marched before her in a surreal haze. She was numb, unable to cry or show any emotion. She did give a description of the man, which she doubted would be helpful because he looked like any member of the multitudes of working-class men in Brooklyn. She particularly remembered a newspaperman who had plagued her at the police station.
“What can you tell me about the murder in Prospect Park?”
“It wasn’t in Prospect Park. It was near it.” That was all she could handle at the moment. She brushed by him and left the station.
Mary had had one more unpleasant chore to do before going home. She had to inform Gilbert of what had transpired. He was shocked but amazingly pleasant considering he’d lost his money and still didn’t have his play. He was more concerned about Mary, who, though she still wasn’t capable of showing much emotion, was grateful for his concern and impressive display of humanity.
By process of elimination, she figured out that Josie was with her mother. At a time like that, the last thing she wanted to do was to deal with her mother’s list of “I told you sos”: the working-mother issue, being a detective, and not heeding her advice, which encompassed every facet of Mary’s life. Elizabeth had always been predictable and had never failed to make Mary’s successes seem like failures, turn her happiness into gloom, and make a defeat seem even worse. This time, though, she surprised Mary. She told her not to worry, that she’d make all the funeral arrangements and that Mary should just go home and take care of Josephine (well, not all of her idiosyncrasies disappeared). Some people drop their emotional baggage and miraculously come through in times of crisis. Apparently, Elizabeth was one of them.
When Mary got home to her empty apartment, the reality of what had happened began to sink in. Harper wasn’t there. He would never be there again. The sight of his typewriter sitting on the table hit her hard. She tried to be strong for Josie but couldn’t. About to break down, Mary squeezed her tightly as she went into the kitchen to get away from the memories. It was there that she saw something that devastated her even further.
Sitting on the kitchen counter was the ransom note. In her haste to get to her meeting with Gilbert and then the one in Prospect Park, she had taken it out of her pocketbook to once again review the details and had neglected to put it back. It was not difficult to deduce what had probably happened. Harper had found the note and had decided that he needed to protect Mary. The overwhelming guilt she immediately felt permeated every cell of her being. Her carelessness and her profession were the causes of his death. She felt weak, too weak to remain upright. Mary stumbled to Josie’s crib and laid her down, then made it to her bed and collapsed. She began to cry for the first time. It soon turned into deep sobs, and it seemed as if they would never stop.
A few days later, as Mary took Josie in her arms to leave for the funeral, she glanced at the newspaper that she had kept from the day after Harper’s murder. The headline read: MURDER IN PROSPECT PARK. Mary shook her head. The one thing she had told the reporter, he had ignored. Before they left, Mary put a photo of Harper in her pocketbook, then turned to Josie and said, “See, sweetie? Now we will always have Daddy with us.”
The funeral was a difficult ordeal. Everyone close to her was there: her mother; her brother, Sean; Lazlo; her best friend, Sarah; Sarah’s husband, Walter; and an old family friend from Second Street Station, Billy O’Brien. Harper’s huge family turned out en masse, along with his longtime colleague and chum the famous muckraking journalist Jacob Riis. The only one missing was her mentor from the Brooklyn Police Department, Chief Patrick Campbell. He had retired a while ago, but after years of poor eating habits, about which Mary had constantly warned him, he had had a heart attack and was recovering.
There were several speeches, wonderful tributes to Harper from his family and newspaper people with whom he had worked. Harper’s father, a working-class man who had never been very articulate, gave a lovely speech. It didn’t matter that his grammar wasn’t correct. It was so heartfelt that it moved everyone.
Mary tried to speak but didn’t get very far. After a few sentences, she stopped. “I can’t do this. I’m responsible. I killed him.”
Her brother, Sean, immediately rushed up and put his arms around her, trying to give Mary some comfort as he ushered her to her seat. No one made much out of what she had said, attributing it to a grief-stricken wife whose husband had been taken from her much too soon. Still, Elizabeth, who had agreed to hold Josie while Mary was speaking and still had her in her arms, felt a need to explain.
“I’m sure you all understand that my daughter has been through a terrible shock. An awful, awful tragedy. She was very much in love with Harper, and in no conceivable way would she cause even the slightest bit of harm to him, just as she would never cause any harm to Josephine.”
The funeral crowd was silent. They all knew Mary and Harper and had never considered that Mary would have had any part in his death. After a full ten seconds of silence, a man in the back raised his hand.
“Who is Josephine?”
Elizabeth raised Josie in the air. “This is Josephine, their daughter.”
“Oh, you mean Josie.”
Elizabeth stiffened, but she knew this wasn’t the time or place to have a dispute over her granddaughter’s name. She emitted a very cold and controlled “Yes.”
During her seclusion, Mary had several visitors, family and good friends who sympathized with her but who also tried to shake her out of her depression and get her to begin living life again. Elizabeth was the most frequent and easily the most annoying. She tried many methods to lift Mary out of her doldrums. Though she earnestly didn’t want to cause Mary any more distress, that was what Elizabeth did, and she did it so well.
Her first ploy was to appeal to Mary’s motherly instincts. “Mary, you’ve been through a terrible ordeal, but it’s not just you. You have a daughter to raise. There’s Josephine.”
“I’m well aware of that, Mother.”
“Then you’re also aware you’ll need a job to support the two of you. And whether you like it or not, that involves leaving your apartment.”
“I won’t have to do that for a while. Harper and I were very frugal—”
“Mary, girl, ya don’t squander yer life savins just ’cause ya had a setback.” Elizabeth was a native of Ireland, and her accent reemerged when she got upset or excited. For the sake of her grieving daughter, she had tried to withhold her frustration and show empathy, but the accent was a dead giveaway.
“A setback? My husband was killed!”
“True, it’s much worse. Tragic is what it is, but he wouldn’t want ya to—”
“How do you know what he would want me to do?”
Elizabeth’s frustration was mounting. “Maybe yer right. Maybe I don’t know. But ya gotta think of Josephine.”
“Her name is Josie. Will you please call her that? And she’s all I ever do think of.”
This approach was getting Elizabeth nowhere. She took a few deep breaths and tried another tack, thinking more long-term. She calmed, and her accent disappeared. “Look, when you’re ready, whenever that is, I would like you to work in one of my stores. After all, you and your brother are going to own them one day. You might as well learn the business.”
The last thing Mary wanted to do was to work in a butcher shop, whether she owned it or not. She and Sean had discussed this many times, and they both felt the same way. They figured if that time ever came, they would sell the shops and split the proceeds. However, Mary did know her mother was trying to hold out an olive branch. Even though she was upset with her and life in general, she saw no reason to make Elizabeth feel worse than she already did.
“Thanks, Mother. When the time comes, I’ll think about it.”
Elizabeth had a spring in her step when she bade Mary goodbye. Mary was a very honest person, sometimes too honest, and she didn’t like lying to anyone. But nothing before had ever prevented her mother from continuing to upset her. Since this tactic had worked so well, she considered using it more often with her.
Sarah came to sympathize and give comfort to her dear friend. She told Mary that she had no idea how she’d react if anything ever happened to her husband, Walter, so she hesitated to give Mary any advice. And that was just fine with Mary.
Lazlo’s intellectual approach didn’t work either. He quoted one of her idols, George Eliot.
She was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.
“You see, Mary,” said Lazlo, “it’s not forgetting about Harper but rather making him a part of your life as you go on. With ‘go on’ having the distinct emphasis.”
Mary understood Lazlo’s point but emotionally was nowhere near accepting it. “Lazlo, you’re my dear friend and I’ve loved you from that first day we met in your bookshop. But don’t even pretend to understand my grief. I’d like you to leave.”
Lazlo was taken aback. “Mary, I never—”
“I know you have good intentions and it’s not because I’m mad at you, though I am. I’m not in good spirits, and I need to be alone with Josie.”
Lazlo respected her wishes and left, a bit rattled by this new aspect of Mary he had never seen before.
When Sean visited, he tried to appeal to the detective in Mary, urging her to track down Harper’s killer. Sean was a policeman and had recently been promoted to detective, yet he wouldn’t hesitate to criticize the department if it might help his sister.
“They’re getting nowhere with this case. They need you, Mary.”
He was hoping that would give her an incentive to get out of the apartment and concentrate on something other than her grief. But Mary’s guilt was too crippling. Her detective work had caused his death. She couldn’t bear returning to it.
Sean was very sympathetic to her situation, beyond just being a brother who cared about her. His fiancée had been murdered several years earlier.
“I know it’s hard to imagine now, but you’ll get over this. Not over, but learn to live with it. Look at me. I’m dating again. Well, more than dating. I’m engaged.”
“What?”
“I know, I know. I haven’t told you about her. Her name is Linda, Linda Doyle.”
“Ah, a nice Irish girl.”
“Only half. Her father’s Irish and her mother’s Italian. She looks more like her mother, thank God.”
“Sean—”
“I know what you’re thinking, but the engagement just happened and this is not exactly a good time to introduce your fiancée to your family. Correction: I meant not a good time to introduce her to you. It’s never a good time to introduce anyone to Mom.”
For the first time in a while a slight glint flashed in Mary’s eyes, indicative of her old self. “Unless you want to subject that person to her unique form of torture.” The two of them started to laugh. “Oh, Sean, I’m so happy for you!”
Then Mary buried her head in her arms and started crying uncontrollably.