The Gallery (16 page)

The dumbwaiter.

I raced to the pantry and finally saw what I hadn't wanted to see. Waves of platters and trays crashed in and out of the dumbwaiter, filled, then emptied. The rising and falling box was in constant use, manned on either end by servants circulating replenishments and sure to notice even the smallest hitch in its operation, not to mention a Bearded Lady sitting on the canapes.

How could I have overlooked it? How could I have been so stupid? With no dumbwaiter, there would be no way to get Rose's costume to her, and Rose herself would be left waiting, waiting, waiting all night, just as she had for years, as the opportunity for her escape slipped away. The weeks of planning drained out of me, puddled around my feet like a snowman in the sun.

—

In the absence of a plan, I, for once, did what was asked of me and grabbed trays of dirty glassware to
bring down to the kitchen. Not even Bridie gave me a hello in that underground ant farm of activity, where it was hard to say what rattled the dishes more: the jazz music or the rushing of the subway train just outside. I rushed to escape back above deck.

But on my way back to the stairs, I passed Ma's sitting room and was shocked to hear a man's voice inside.

I pushed the door open.

“You got someone to take this down? Okay, here goes:
Film stars, debutantes, and former presidents
—we might have trouble with Taft's people on that one—
former presidents gathered for a night of staggering
—heh, staggering, that's good—
staggering excess at J. Archer Sewell's residence last night
. Full stop.
In a circus-themed blowout that would have shocked Marie Antoinette, New York's glitteratti tried their hand at trapeze and the latest Jazz dance crazes, fueled by libations lately frowned upon by Congress
—”

A short guy in a shabby attempt at a nice suit was on Ma's telephone, usually reserved for calls to the grocer. A mask had been pushed up on his forehead, replaced by spectacles jammed on a stubbed snub nose, and although he looked familiar, I couldn't quite place him. He peered intently at a stenographer's notepad in the lamplight.

The notepad I recognized as a promotion piece the newsstand had given away at Christmas:
NEWS TO YOU?
read the cardboard cover.
READ T
HE
Y
ODEL
!

Lady Florenzia had been very clear: no press. But more importantly, no one was allowed in Ma's sitting room except Ma.

“Hey! You can't be in here.”

“S'all right, kid. Go back upstairs.” He turned his back to me and pressed his lips back to the receiver. “Okay, picking up with
In her younger days
—”

“Hey! You're not supposed to be here. Not
here
,” I jutted my chin toward the room, “or here at all, mister. No press.”

“Look, I gotta get this in before the three a.m. press run. So just run along—”

“I'll run along, and I'll get one of the guys out front.” Mr. Sewell had stationed some guys with ham necks by the door to check invitations and keep out fellows just like this.

The man shoved his notepad into his breast pocket. “Look,” he fumed into the receiver, “I gotta find another phone. Don't print anything without my say-so.” He slammed down the phone and pushed past me, not noticing when his notepad got knocked to the floor. I kicked it spitefully into a corner and followed him up the back stairs, intending to see
him out the trade entrance, but got caught behind two footmen balancing silver bowls of ice cream for the dessert service.

“Some shindig, huh,” said the slick-haired Irishman in front of me.

“I'll say,” came back a voice by way of Bensonhurst. “Just saw Babe Ruth passed out under the pianah, all tree-hunderd pounds of 'im.” Bensonhurst stopped to swipe a trail of melting ice cream with his finger. “Put yer money on the Dodgers this year, boys!”

And just like that, I had a new plan.

—

“No, no, no, no,” Ma chanted as we made our way to the ballroom. Sure enough, Babe Ruth lay snoring under the grand piano like a beached whale. A beached whale at a raucous jazz spree where no one gave any notice to whales, beached or otherwise.

“How are we—”

“McCagg!” I burst in before she could finish the thought. “He's the only one big and strong enough.”

She thought for a minute, assailed from all sides by foxtrotting couples. “All right. Go get him. I'll get Alphonse to help, too.” She turned to leave.

One down.

“Oh, and Ma! Almost forgot. I found some reporter type in your sitting room. Didn't you lock it up?”

Ma looked momentarily furious with herself. “Lord, I must've forgotten.”

“Quick, gimme your keys. I'll run down and lock it.”

Ma's hands flew to her keys protectively.

“I'll bring them right back. Come on, Ma.” I looked back over at the beached Babe as a trombone blast blew my hair askew. “We can't leave him here. Especially with a reporter sneaking around and using your phone.”

I had the keys. I had both Ma and McCagg occupied, I had Mr. Sewell behind closed doors, and a house full of partygoers oblivious to anything but their own good time.

Now I just needed Rose.

—

The key turned easily in the lock on Rose's room. Like everything else in the house, Ma kept it in good working order.

Her room was dark—pitch-black, really—and as I closed the door behind me, I wondered how she could sleep with the thumping and blasting of the orchestra, which vibrated through the house.

“Rose?” I whispered.

A hand—cool, thin—grasped mine.

“I'm ready.”

—

Rose didn't speak as she dressed. Far from the crazed, brutish animal I first saw kicking at the bed curtains, or the catatonic rag doll that couldn't leave her chair, this version of Rose was composed, fixed on the events at hand. She took the Bearded Lady costume from me quickly, whisking off her nightgown and yanking the dress into place.

As she dressed she asked simple questions, pushing ahead when I rambled my answers. Was Mr. Sewell occupied? Was there a car waiting? How long would she have it? She handed me a hatbox. Inside was stuffed a silk dress and some stockings and undergarments, all too fine and out of season, but the only things left in her armoire, I imagined. I resolved to steal her a fur coat.

“Are you sure you have everything?” I asked, clutching the bag.

She pulled the ridiculous beard up and didn't even turn her head. “I've always had everything. Now I have what I need.”

Chapter

I
t always seemed fitting to me that the next day was Ash Wednesday.

I knelt bone-tired at the altar that morning. Father Riordan smudged a cross on my forehead, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Ma stared straight ahead, her face unreadable.

I relished my gnawing hunger, happy to use the day's fast as a constant reminder of my sins. I welcomed the ashy sign of my wickedness. I stared straight back when non-Catholics looked quizzically at me on the subway, weighing whether to tell me I had something on my forehead, as if it were spinach in my teeth. Yes, I am a sinner, I wanted to tell them. I wanted to be like God. I wanted to know
everything, and I wanted to control it. But I am flawed, and apparently so is everything I touch.

My stare drove their eyes away, and they flicked back to their newspapers, the
Yodel
headlines gloating:

MIDNIGHT RUN!

—

Wild Rose Stops Traffic!

—

Did Sewell's Jazz-Crazed Carnival Finally Drive Wife Out of Her Gourd—and Out of Her House?

—

By the time Rose and I crept down the stairs last night, the party was at a frenzied pitch. Duke Ellington had shown up and commandeered the orchestra to the carnival-goers' delight. Wild rhythms had driven dancers to the tops of antique tables and divans (until yesterday draped to protect their delicate surfaces from the threat of sunlight), or into the arms of real or costumed carnies, while other luminaries leaned uneasily against doorways, plotting how to cross from Point A to B without tipping over.

Just as I predicted, Rose—bearded—would go completely unnoticed.

I pushed Rose forward into the ballroom crowd, then pulled her back almost immediately. Trying to cross that churning sea of dancers doing the Charleston was simply too dangerous; I didn't want Rose's beard getting knocked off midway.

I grabbed Rose's arm, pulling her behind me down the main hall as I threaded around the land mine of partygoers. Did they know her behind that beard, I wondered, as we bumped past New York's brightest lights? Did they miss her presence, these “old friends” of Rose, who once attended her father's salons and social teas, or wonder if she missed them, up in her lonely rooms? If they did, they gave no indication, looking only to the bottom of their bottomless highball glasses.

My eyes were locked on the front vestibule at the end of the hall, and I felt Rose's step falter behind me just as I stopped short of our destination. Sewell stood square in front of us, shaking the block of granite's hand heartily to seal some deal. Lady Florenzia hung her arms on each man's back as if to take credit for the treaty, while her boa flicked its tongue at Mr. Sewell's collar.

Rose and I stood frozen for a moment, reassessing our plan. We had only to lie low, I thought, stay outside their gaze. There was no reason to panic, I
repeated to myself unconvincingly. If we just waited for Mr. Sewell to take his leave of his guest, he'd brush past the bearded Rose like any other “nobody” and retire to quiet victory in his office.

Rose's pulse raced under my fingertips, but I also felt her arm rise and fall slightly as she took long, deep breaths to calm herself. I joined her, and we stood there in the rising and falling, the quiet eye of a swirling hurricane, waiting for the scene with Sewell to resolve.

Finally the granite man took his leave. But Sewell didn't retreat to his fortress as expected. Instead he gleefully clapped and rubbed his hands, swiped a drink of God-knows-what off a tray, and downed it in one swallow. Then he tipped Lady Florenzia back, snake and all, and planted a kiss on her like Rudolf Valentino.

Two gasps sounded out like a shot in that moment, the same moment when the orchestra took a long pause meant to set up a dramatic drum solo.

Just behind my left shoulder stood my mother, her mouth still gaping. The look of shock on her face was already beginning a slide through heartbreak, betrayal, and fury.

The other, in retrospect, was more of a guffaw than a gasp, a loud “Ha!” that bubbled out of Rose's
throat, and she immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, as if she could will it back inside.

Too late. That scornful laugh must have been her signature, back in the days when she was unafraid to show her disdain for princesses and politicians equally. Back when she believed she had all the power in the world.

I dropped Rose's wrist.

I took one step back.

Mr. Sewell stood up slowly, releasing the shocked snake charmer and turning his head to our little group. He looked hard at the now-shaking Bearded Lady. He walked over, his eyes meeting Rose's over her mustache.

The drum solo was now in full swing, but we all seemed frozen in silence, until the front door opened again, Alphonse and McCagg stamping the snow off their shoes. Their arms hung weary at their shoulders; it must have taken all their strength to get Babe Ruth into a cab.

Maybe that's why their reflexes were slow when Rose made a run for the open door.

She flew past them to the sidewalk, with McCagg, Alphonse, Sewell, Ma, me, even Lady Florenzia behind her.

She dodged and sprang around the surprised
cops who expected to keep reporters out, not heiresses in. Her legs were like a newly born colt finding its footing, trotting and wobbling up and down the curb, banging her hands on every car parked up Fifth Avenue.

I looked, too, scanning the line of limousines waiting for their precious cargo, seeking Rose's target: a barely functional Model T with Daddo at the wheel.

There was none to be found. Daddo wasn't there.

By now the men had her surrounded: the cops with their nightsticks, grabbing at her limbs; Alphonse looking uncertain; McCagg looking determined; not to mention the reporters with their notepads and photog pals with their blinding, flashing cameras.

One reporter—the one I'd kicked out of Ma's sitting room—stood a bit aloof from the pack. His spectacles had been discarded now, and he wore a fedora, shading his eyes from the light of the flashbulbs.

A second wave of recognition washed over me as I remembered that nose poking out under that hat last fall, at the servants' entrance. A source, Ma had called him, as he had pushed inside for an off-the-record meeting with Mr. Sewell.

I saw his eyes under his hat brim now as they
looked at something—someone—behind me: Mr. Sewell, who stood safely out of the fray in the door frame. He gave a slight nod to the reporter, and when I turned back, the reporter was walking away quickly, jotting in a notebook—he must have had an extra—all the way down the street.

A
Yodel
reporter in Mr. Sewell's pocket? But before I could even register the shock, I was pushed aside by McCagg and some of the cops, each holding Rose by a limb and dragging her back inside.

Ma flew to the front door, squeezing between McCagg and Mr. Sewell.

“Take her straight to the back stairs,” she hissed. “Get her up the back quietly.”

But Mr. Sewell blocked their progress and offered something else in a low voice to McCagg.

The group changed direction then and pushed their way through the partygoers, winding their way through the most public rooms, dragging Rose between them like a lamb tied to a spit.

“I'm being held!” Rose shouted, attempting to be heard over the party's din. “He's holding me prisoner! He won't let me out!”

But rather than inciting an army to her defense, Rose left in her wake only bemused or repulsed party guests, some whispering, some giggling, some
shaking their heads, some looking up then deliberately looking away. The mayor seemed asleep on his feet, but roused when the group pushed by. “Whas she say?” he slurred, then slumped down again in a heap against the door frame. A woman dressed as an acrobat—in a flesh-colored body stocking that made her look naked but covered in crystals—dissolved into tears against a—man?—wearing a gorilla costume. “We were best friends once,” she wailed into his furry chest. “Best, best of friends! Now look at her!”

And at least half the guests were too caught up in the swirling circus to even notice.

I turned back to Ma, now on the front steps, her jaw clenched in silent rage, her arms crossed as if they alone kept all the fury inside her at bay.

“Ma,” I whispered. “Ma, I tried—”

“That man,” she muttered between those locked teeth. “How could I have—How did I—” She left whatever she was feeling unfinished, unsettled, and I wasn't sure if she was talking about the reporter, or Mr. Sewell, or Daddo, or maybe all of them.

—

Not a word passed between Ma and me for the rest of the night. But when we finally got home, in the dark before dawn, when the celebrations of Mardi
Gras were turning to ashes, we didn't need any words. Without even getting undressed, we carried the twins to Ma's big bed and all climbed in together.

I knew now that this was our family. That Daddo wasn't really a father, let alone an actor, but a drunk. A drunk hiding behind a story of bookings and tours, aided by Ma, who figured it was better for kids to have a pretend father than a real void.

So I closed my eyes, with the twins on one side and Ma on the other, and waited for the sun to return.