The Gallery (18 page)

Like the bearded men on the subway who bobbed and nodded over their prayer books, Ma worked her way backward through the paper, starting with the business section and working right to left up to the headlines.

I tilted my head to read the front page.

ITALIAN BOMB PLOT FOILED IN CHICAGO

—

Three men were apprehended today after bomb-making materials were found in the car they were driving and at one of the men's homes. Police suspect the men, two of whom were of Italian origin, of anarchist sympathies and indicated the bombings may have been intended as revenge for the trial and execution of known anarchists and murderers, Sacco and Vanzetti.

My eyes flitted around the subway car, and sure enough, as the other riders opened and folded their
Daily News
, their
Post
s, their
Yodel
s, the same story flashed in and out:

SACCO AND VANZETTI LIVE! SHOUT ANARCHISTS

ANOTHER FOILED PLOT, THANKS TO CHICAGO'S FINEST

With each story, mugshots of three small-fry hoodlums stared out, looking bewildered. But next to them, always, was a photo I'd seen reproduced so many times I'd stopped looking.

It was two men, sitting handcuffed together, side by side, very somber. One was clean-shaven, but the other had a great bushy mustache like a walrus.

Like a thicker version of Alphonse's.

These were Sacco and Vanzetti, the men executed—some said wrongly—a couple of years back. Since then, their supporters had unleashed a string of attempted bombings on those (they said) responsible for their persecution: the judge, a juror, the executioner, the governor. There had even been a bombing at the Twenty-Eighth Street subway station here in New York City, where dozens of subway riders—just like the ones bouncing and
dozing their way downtown in this very car—were bloodied.

I peered at the picture of the mustached one, called out as Mr. Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The resemblance was impossible to ignore.

Didn't Alphonse say he had an older brother? A brother who convinced him to immigrate to America? Who, he said, was dead?

I waved away the thought at first. What fish off the boat didn't have a brother along? And a brother who'd died was hardly news. There was no shortage of ways for the poor and hungry to expire in this city.

But most young immigrants didn't share the eyes of America's most hated anarchist, I thought as I stared at the photo that confronted me from every side. Or the same mustache, the same rounded jaw, the same jutting forehead.

Was Alphonse actually Vanzetti's younger brother?

Was it coincidence that he ended up working for Mr. Sewell—the very man whose newspaper had pursued his brother into the electric chair? Who painted his brother as ten kinds of guilty before he even made it to court?

Or was it by design?

Alphonse gave the impression of a defeated
man, and if this story were true, I supposed it made sense. When years of protests, marches, letters, and vigils worldwide couldn't free your brother, why would you believe anything you did would free the wife of one powerful man? A man whose every word became the truth, simply because he owned a newspaper?

But I remembered a story, front page of the tabloids a few years back, about a servant at a fancy club in Chicago. He poisoned the soup at a party, sickening two hundred people. The servant turned out to be an anarchist, and the act his revenge against the rich and powerful.

And I remembered the explosion on Mr. Sewell's very front steps, and Alphonse's mysterious absence.

That's why Alphonse—Alfonso?—Vanzetti, was in that house. Behind that false front of defeated apathy, underneath his cold detachment, he was most likely waiting for the right moment to finish the job.

Ma's eyes met mine over the top of the paper. She saw the picture, too. She saw that I saw. But without saying a word, she folded up her paper, stuffed it in her bag, and closed her eyes, pretending to sleep.

—

The next day, Alphonse had shaved his mustache.

But it was too late.

“May I have a word with you in my sitting room?” Ma beckoned him as soon as she got in that morning.

An hour later, he was gone.

Chapter

S
o then there were four.

Mr. Sewell. Mrs. Sewell. Ma. And me. (Five if you counted McCagg. I didn't.)

And no one was talking.

At least not to me.

Whenever I tried to talk to Ma—to apologize, to ask about Rose, to warn her of the sticky, icky, dark feeling I felt lurking in the silence—she stopped me. “You've done enough. Believe me, you've done enough.”

But then everything changed.

One day, in late March, I looked up from my mop and saw that the lion outside had been cloaked in lamb's clothing. Bare trees budded, slush drained into the gutters, and up and down Park Avenue,
tulip shoots struggled to break free of their underground exile.

And overnight, the silence of the house had been banished by babble.

Every room in the house now found itself inhabited by a radio, switched on and nattering, one room to the other. It was a bizarre sensation, to say the least. Ma had always hated the radio—“Isn't there enough talking in the world?”—and wouldn't abide them in the servants' quarters, even in the kitchen, where a little music would've helped those dishes wash themselves. But maybe now the silence was getting to her, too.

As I cleaned and polished, chased from room to room with music and news and Pepto-Bismol advertisements, the radios should have been welcome company. But instead it felt like a nervous old biddy trying to fill an awkward break in the conversation. And if I tried to turn it off, Ma swept in behind me and switched it back on. Without a word.

—

In the midst of that chatter came Rose's last message.

It was a Saturday at the end of March. It was raining—not one of those soft spring rains, but a soaking one, that drenched Mr. Sewell in that short walk from his new Rolls-Royce to the front door. I
ran forward to collect his hat and overcoat before the puddle underneath him required a mop.

“Eh—Martha.” He looked around and it was as if he'd just noticed I was the only servant left.

“Good evening, Mr. Sewell.” The wet coat over my arm had soaked through the left side of my body, but with my dry hand I retrieved an envelope on a side table. “Dr. Westbrook left these papers for you, sir.”

If Mr. Sewell could have rubbed his hands together like a movie villain, he would have. Instead his hands were too busy ripping the package open. He scanned the papers quickly, his thin mustache dancing over his twitching mouth.

I strained my eyes to the very corners to peek. I only saw a few words I recognized:
recommendation . . . Rose . . . sanitorium . . . assets transferred.

My eyes were stopped by Mr. Sewell's own. I lowered them while he stuffed the papers back into the envelope.

“You're a curious girl, aren't you, Martha? So I expect you've been reading the
Standard
then?” He didn't wait for a response. “And what did you think about today's front page? How about that new company we profiled, Ameriwin? Put your money on them, girl; that stock's going to be a skyrocket.”

What money, I thought. But I said, “What do they do?”

“Oh, they're on to a very important invention.” He tucked the envelope away in his suit pocket. “Trust me.”

I didn't. “Well, I do have that extra fourteen cents a week . . .”

This bit of sarcasm flew right over the master's head. “And this is the stock! With the right knowledge,” he put his finger alongside his nose, “a chambermaid might become a millionaire, hmmm? As a wise man once said, knowledge is power. Also,” he added, glancing at his watch, “time is money.”

“Pluck not luck,” I murmured in response.

He seemed pleased. “Why yes, exactly! That's what I've been saying. Your destiny is knocking! Seize the reins!” He attacked the metaphors with an eggbeater. “Now when you see your mother, tell her I need to speak to her. In my office.”

He patted the envelope in his pocket and hummed his way down the hall.

Before I could summon my mother, I was distracted by a thumping on the stairs.

Thump.

“Ma?”

Thump.

I ran to the bottom of the stairs, expecting to see the end of our little drama unfold: Mr. McCagg drags a heavily sedated Rose down the stairs. Mr. Sewell produces a letter from her doctor, stating that, yes, she would be better off institutionalized. An ambulance appears outside to whisk her away, and all her assets—her house, her paintings—are on the auction block in time for Mr. Sewell to invest the whole lot in Ameriwin. And Ma and I are out of jobs, while Mr. Sewell enjoys penthouse living.

But it was only Ma. In Alphonse's absence, it was her arms wrapped around a painting, almost as big as she was, and it landed heavily as she bumped it down each stair.

“I told her,” she huffed to herself—or to me? I wasn't sure. “I told her this was entirely unnecessary. But she never did listen to me.”

“Mrs. O'Doyle!” The office door shook with Mr. Sewell's voice. “Is that you? In here, madam, we have much to discuss.”

Ma abandoned the painting in the hallway, hurrying to the office where the door closed behind her.

I don't know how I knew. How I knew what it would tell me. Maybe I suspected Rose's desperation. Maybe those few glimpses at Mr. Sewell's documents planted the seeds of dread.

I crept over to the painting, muffling my footsteps from the office or the painting, I wasn't sure which.

No, Rose, I shuddered as I caught the first glimpse. Please, no. Not this plan.

Judith and Her Maidservant
read the label, along with a fantastical Italian name I couldn't pronounce, let alone spell.

The painting was simply, dark: two women standing in a dark hall in the dark of night, illuminated only by a beam of light streaming in from a corner. The women are united in their mission and, in the moment, both look nervously over their shoulders, stealing away from that light, as if they're afraid they've been discovered.

The plump one was Judith, I supposed, in her jewels and velvet, the beautiful rich widow who scolds her people for their refusal to fight off an invading army. (I had to offer some silent thanks to Sister Ignatius for grilling us on the Old Testament.) The maid has her back to the viewer, faceless and anonymous, as all maids are. But why so nervous, Judith and Maidservant? Maybe it's your cargo. For Judith has a sword slung over her shoulder like a pirate, while the maid (always left the dirty work) carries a basket containing the blood-dripping head of Holofernes, the enemy leader Judith has just assassinated.

I wrapped my arms around my own shoulders, as if shaking sense into myself. Is this what Rose wanted? My help in destroying—beheading?!?—her enemy?

How? When? Was I the one to plan it? I was a liar, that I knew. I'd even been a thief at times, and certainly a slacker.

But I was not a murderer.

But how else would Rose escape Mr. Sewell's plan to toss her in a loony bin and get his hands on her art, her house, her everything?

And yet, how did trading the loony bin for a spot in the electric chair make for a good plan?

Before I could stop my mind from swirling around these questions, the office door opened. I stayed frozen to the spot before the painting as Mr. Sewell breezed past that ominous prophecy.

“Make up my room, Mrs. O'Doyle,” he called over his shoulder as he conquered the stairs, two at a time. “I intend to have a good night's sleep.”

—

The next day was Sunday. Our day off.

My sleep had been fitful, with dreams where swords danced with pomegranates, threatening to split them open with every swing.

All through church, through the boys' stickball game in the rain-slicked streets, through a cold
supper and an only slightly warmer bath, I thought only of that sword.

I was the first to wake on Monday morning, the first to dress, and the first out the door, dragging Ma behind me as I raced to the subway.

I had to know what was waiting on the other side of the river.

Chapter

M
a, on the other hand, seemed in no hurry. She settled into her seat on the train, paging her way leisurely through the newspaper and finally breaking her silence as we broke through the underground tunnel and burst onto the bridge.

“Do you know what day it is?” she asked as she flipped another page.

I held up a hand to the low-hanging morning sun in my eyes. “Monday. March twenty-fourth. No,” I said with a glance at the front page, “the twenty-fifth.”

“It's Annunciation Day.” She looked at me. “Which is—” she prompted.

This was an easy one. “The day the Angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she'll give birth to Jesus. Aw,
no,” I whined, “we don't have to go to church for a Holy Day of Obligation, do we?”

“No,” Ma said with a twinge of annoyance. “Back home they called it Lady Day, for Our Lady of Sorrows.” The sun struck Ma's face with the same brilliance, but she accepted its glare with barely a squint. “Some said it was the day Christ died as well.”

“That's Good Friday,” I interjected. Surely Ma, practically a saint herself, knew that. “And that's not till, well, Friday.”

“'Tis just a tradition,” she continued. “That Christ would be conceived and would die on the same day. That death and birth would twine together. It falls at the vernal equinox, see.” She looked out the window, toward the glare. “The first day of spring.”

“Some spring,” I muttered. Though the sun was out, the wind on the bridge hit so fierce I thought it might blow the car right over.

“Spring isn't marked by fair weather. It's the turn. When the day and the night are the exact same length, and the day starts winning.”

But Ma didn't know that the darkest night had already begun to take over Rose's mind. And whatever spring showers or May flowers awaited us would make no difference to Rose—or to me, I thought with dread—in a jail cell.

What shook me out of these frightening thoughts was Ma's hand, her warm, but toughened hand, which I found laid over mine.

“Just remember this,” she said quietly. “Christ told us that the world may change in an instant. ‘Keep watch,' He said. ‘For of that day or hour, know not even the angels in heaven.'”

And as a shrieking wind rattled the train on its tracks, Ma took up her paper again and began to study the business section.

But not in the
Daily Standard
, I noted. Another paper called the
Wall Street Journal
.

—

Of course, today everyone knows what happened on March 25, 1929.

At least, they think they do.

Afterward, when the events of that night came to light, I was a minor celebrity in the neighborhood. Kids, even adults, stopped me on the street, knowing I'd worked in that house in the previous months.

“What did you see?” they'd ask. “Did you have any inkling?”

I always told the truth—that I had no idea.

Sure, maybe the scale of the destruction wasn't entirely surprising. Like a steam pipe building pressure, at some point it had to blow.

Who could have predicted the death of one of the most important newspaper men of the century, cut down in his prime?

Who could have guessed that this godlike man would let a serpent into his garden? That his killer was under his own roof?

And no one could have dared foreseen the wholesale annihilation of one of the world's greatest art collections.

The whole thing was impossible to understand. “Unbelievable,” folks muttered, shaking their heads over the words, as they followed the grim story over the following weeks.

But, of course, they all did believe it. It was in the papers.

—

When I arrived that morning, I flew past Ma and abandoned my apron.

“Where are you going?” she shouted after me as I flew up the servant stairs, and then up the front stairs to the family floor, straight to Mr. Sewell's closed bedroom door.

I held my breath. Pressed my ear to the door.

Nothing.

Dragging my courage up from the pit of my stomach, I knocked lightly. Then harder.

Nothing.

The crystal doorknob was surprisingly cold against my palm, but, with my eyes squeezed shut, I turned until I heard it click, then pushed.

Behind my eyelids, my mind conjured the most horrifying scenes I could expect. Mr. Sewell's lifeless, bloody trunk, his head rolled away into the corner? Or—worse?—the master of the house, unclothed and irate?

I opened one eye, then the other. But nothing awaited me over the threshold but a disheveled bed, its covers carelessly tossed aside for a maid to reassemble.

My feet carried me all the way up to the top floor, where Mr. McCagg snoozed fully dressed, his cot pulled across Rose's door. From behind the door, I heard the now-familiar sound of dragging and bumping; Rose was safely inside, sorting through her collection again.

I released a deep breath and headed back down the stairs. It was just another day in the Sewell house.

But as I passed that painting of Judith and her maid and their shared mayhem, still abandoned in the hallway, I knew that behind Rose's closed door, some dark scheme was still in the works.

“And what was that all about?” Ma greeted me in the front parlor with the brass polish and a feather duster.

“I was just checking—Mr. Sewell's not here, right?” I asked with a final glance toward his office. “I mean, he's all right and everything?”

“And what kind of question is that? He's at work, of course, left early as usual.” Before I could respond, Ma snapped on the radio in the front parlor. “Now, let's get to business on these front rooms. We have a lot of work to do.”

—

It was somewhere between finishing the piano in the conservatory and starting on the woodwork that I noticed the music had stopped.

So had
Housekeeper's Chat
with Aunt Sammy, and Ruth Turner's
Washing Talks
.

It was just one newscaster after another, no matter the station, following me from room to room, with the same story.

“Nervous investors are dumping stocks by the truckload. . . .”

“A weeklong drop in stock prices has led to a panic down on Wall Street. . . .”

“Stock prices plunge as interest rates skyrocket. . . .”

And I noticed, too, Ma's footsteps quickening throughout the house, up and down the stairs, back and forth across the floors, bringing her finally to my door.

“Quick,” she breathed heavily, her face flushed, “run down to the newspaper office and tell Mr. Sewell to get here as fast as he can.”

“But can't you—”

“The phone lines are overloaded; I can't get a call through. Quick, Martha! Tell him it's Rose! It's a matter of life and death!”

—

I couldn't get a cab—it seemed all of the Upper East Side had commandeered them in a caravan to Wall Street—and was afraid the 6 train would be too slow. So I ran all the way down to East Fifty-Third Street.

I worried that I wouldn't be allowed in the
Daily Standard
's imposing, marble-halled building. But on this day, it seemed even a sweaty, huffing girl in a maid's uniform could go unnoticed. I pushed past reporters who streamed in and out of the bullpen, shouting down phones and clacking on typewriters, until I found Mr. Sewell's office at the very back.

With a tap, I pushed the office door open, and a dozen men—most down to shirtsleeves and coffee stains—stopped dead in their dealings and looked back at me.

Mr. Sewell stood out in the crowd, the only one still with his jacket and tie on, as if taking a stand for decency in the face of Armageddon.

“WHAT,” he blasted as soon as he saw me, “could be so
infernally
important that you'd
interrupt
—”

And then he saw, and I saw that his face moved quickly from fury to fear. Fear not for his wife's well-being, but that his well-laid plans were going down at the speed of the market.

—

Ten minutes later, I sat clammy in the front passenger seat of Mr. Sewell's car, sticking to the fine leather upholstery, as his driver expertly threaded the car around the traffic that clogged Park Avenue. Any fun I might have found in riding in a luxury automobile was dashed with every curse that Mr. Sewell launched from the backseat. And every fleeting observation I made—the car had its own radio right inside!—was tamped back down by a new disturbing image: Rose sick, Rose hurt . . . or worse.

Mr. Sewell flung his door open the moment the Rolls found the curb, and I scrambled out behind him, racing to follow his long stride all the way up to Rose's rooms, where the truth awaited.

But we didn't make it past that newly dusted and gleaming front parlor, where it was hard to say who was more surprised—Mr. Sewell or me—to find a group waiting for us: Ma, Mr. McCagg, Alphonse . . . and Rose.