The Gallery (5 page)

“Yes, but what about these paintings?” interrupted Mr. Sewell. “They're making her crazy.”

My mother broke in with urgency. “I've promised her they won't be moved. They may not provide the calming environment we hope for, but the prospect of their absence is far more disturbing to her than their presence.” She seemed to only realize her boldness, as she ducked her head, casting her eyes down, away from her employer. “I'm sorry, Mr. Sewell, it's just I'm sure it's the right thing for her.”

“She has a point, Archer,” the doctor murmured from the notes he'd started scribbling.

Mr. Sewell's face froze for a moment, the dam of his composed face holding back his irritation at being disputed. After a pause, he bowed lightly. “You're right as always, Mrs. O'Doyle. As Dr. Westbrook says, the important thing is to keep Rose calm. And happy. There's no rush—that is to say, we mustn't rush the process.”

“Well.” The doctor tucked his notebook in his pocket and then patted my mother on the arm. “You are a good role model for her now. By withdrawing from the world”—Dr. Westbrook had begun packing as if onstage in front of his audience, and I shifted to relieve my weary lower back—“she has retreated back to her infancy, returning to seed, as it were. Let us nurture her; let us give her the peace she needs to sleep through this winter of the soul. When she is ready, she will reemerge and blossom in her full womanhood.”

Ma nodded, and finding me in the corner, indicated I should follow her out. We descended silently, step by step, back to the servants' quarters, and when we reached Ma's office, really the former housekeeper's sitting room, Ma closed the door behind us and sank into a chair.

“Gee, is she always so-—”

My mother just held up a hand to stop me. “What did you do?”

“I didn't do anything. Probably what happened was—”

“Please, no lies this time. What did you do?”

I looked down at my hands, which twisted my apron into knots. “I forgot the sugar,” I mumbled.

And with this, my mother dropped her head into her hands. I noticed for the first time traces of gray shot through her hair.

“I'm sorry, Ma! It won't happen again! I'll make sure . . .”

When she looked up again, her eyes were red. “She's a shadow of the girl I first knew. Once she was resilient, unstoppable, a force of nature, that's what she was! And now the least change in routine sends her into a tizzy. All the strength and life drained out of her, or worse, distorted in these bizarre outbursts! And whatever we do—the sleep therapy, the restraints, the baths—she just fades more and more into the shadows.” She wiped roughly at her eyes with her handkerchief. “Mr. Sewell says we should stay the course, listen to the doctor, but I'm starting to believe we won't ever get her back.”

Ma indulged her sorrow a few moments more,
then blew her nose and tucked her handkerchief away. As she rose to splash her face with water from the washbasin, she said, “Go home, just go home. Tomorrow you'll work upstairs, as a parlor maid. I can't chance any more changes to Miss Rose's diet or routine.”

—

I ascended out of the basement to a glorious autumn day in New York, the sun shining and a free day ahead of me.

So why did I still feel such subterranean misery?

Because my carelessness had gotten me in trouble—again.

Because I'd caused Ma such grief—again.

And that grief wasn't even for me.

Chapter

D
espite my free pass to play hooky, something more attractive beckoned me: sleep. It had been weeks of up at dawn, an hour on the train, on my feet for ten, sometimes twelve hours, followed by another hour on the train, and practically collapsing on our house's stoop. I understood now Ma's “weekly holidays,” her two hours every Sunday afternoon, napping and reading in bed while I kept the twins out of her hair.

I dozed the whole train ride home, dreaming of a proper kip on the sofa and an after-school runaround with the twins. But the door was open and lights on when I got home. Which meant no afternoon nap. It meant something much better.

Daddo was home.

Daddo was what everyone in the neighborhood called him, short for Daddy O'Doyle, from when I was a wee thing and he'd show me off at the saloon. When Ma thought he was perambulating me around the park, he'd roll me instead into Gallagher's place, sit me on the bar, and we'd do patty-cake and handy-dandy-sugar-candy. And everyone would roar with approval and stand him a pint and tell him we should go on the road together, Daddy O'Doyle and his Delightful Daughter.

His back was to me in the kitchen, and as I threw my arms around him, I felt through his coat how thin he'd gotten on the road. The scent of his hair tonic wound its way into my nose. Still Brilliantine.

He spun around and snatched me up, getting crumbs in my hair from the soda bread he was eating. “Marty, my pearl!”

This was in the days when a Brooklyn pearl sounded like poyle and boil like burl.

“You're supposed to be, that is, I thought you were at school. Could it be you're playing hooky, you scamp?”

I pushed him into a chair at the kitchen table. “Don't eat standing up; you're getting crumbs everywhere, and you know what Ma will say. Let me fix you something. When d'you get back? How long are
you staying? You know I'm a kitchen girl now? Well, I was. I can make you some eggs, some potatoes. I can run out and get some sausages.” I pulled the empty Ovaltine jar where we kept grocery money off the shelf and started to dig around the bills.

He popped up again and went to the icebox, where he took a swig straight from the milk bottle. “No, no, don't go to any trouble, pet. I'm due back on the four o'clock train to Syracuse.”

I sagged against the kitchen counter. “Four o'clock? You won't even see the boys.”

“How are the rascals?”

“The same. I think, the same. I mostly see them when they're asleep, now that I'm working.” I sighed. “They're such angels asleep.”

“Ah, so not the same at all.” He winked.

I laughed. “No, I suppose not. How are Creak and Eek?”

“The talk of Wisconsin!” Daddo did a little soft shoe on the linoleum, two imaginary skeletons on his side. A few years ago he beat a guy at cards who was an orderly at a teaching hospital. He couldn't pay out, so he stole a male and a female skeleton for my father instead, whom Daddo christened Creak and Eek. He designed this kind of marionette-ventriloquist frame that made it look like they were
dancing and talking alongside him. “O'Doyle and His O-mazing Spook Show” was born.

“We sold out our Lake Superior tour, and now the Lake Ontario crowd got wind, so we're heading upstate on the silo circuit. Halloween time's always big for the skeletons.” Daddo wrapped the rest of the soda bread in a napkin. “Mind if I take this for the train?”

I took the napkin from him and laid the bread flat on the counter again, slicing three more pieces which I spread thickly with butter and mustard and laid on with ham. Then I wrapped the whole thing back up in the napkin with an apple and a couple of Italian cookies Mrs. Annunziata brought back from her niece's wedding and put it back in his hands.

“So you'll be back after Halloween?”

“That depends on the box office, don't it? The more the folks want Creak and Eek, the less you see your dear old Daddo.” He tucked the dinner bundle into his suitcase, sprawled open on the kitchen table, then started to buckle the straps. “Trust me, it's good that I'm gone so much. Means more money in the till.”

I leaned back against the kitchen counter. “So stay a few more hours. When the boys get home from school, we can take them for an egg cream. Or stay till evening, and when Ma gets home we can go
to the pictures. You can take a Pullman sleeper car upstate and sleep on the train.”

The well-traveled suitcase swung from my dad's hand, his limbs already in motion. “Can't do it, dearie. I've got to swing by my agent's on West Twenty-Eighth before my train. Harry Beecham owes me for the last two tours, and I'm not taking no for an answer this time.” He snaked an arm around my waist and pulled me in for a kiss on the head, then produced the Ovaltine jar from behind my back. “Tell your ma I'm taking a few shekels to tide me over,” he said as he dug in. “Harry'll have a check here by the end of the week. Next week, tops.”

“I'll tell her, but you know she'll be sore.”

“Ain't she always?” He winked again. “You know what the Presbyterians say: You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.”

“Yeah, well, we ain't Presbyterians.”

“Then you should know, a good Catholic always asks forgiveness, just never permission.” And with one more wink, he was gone.

—

I didn't bother telling the twins that Daddo had “come and gone,” as they'd say. I gave Mrs. Annunziata the day off and treated them to egg creams
myself, then let them play at the park all afternoon, while I dozed on a park bench. On the way home, I bought them gingersnaps for dinner.

“Ma used to get these for us,” said Timmy, spraying cookie crumbs all over his school uniform.

“Yeah, but I like Mrs. Annunziata's cookies better,” answered Willy. “She makes them herself. Why'd you have to pick us up?”

“Gee, thanks, pal. I thought you missed your big sis, or does Mrs. A. give you noogie kisses, too?” I planted a kiss and drove my nose into the top of his head at the same time. The boys loved-hated it.

Willy squirmed away, but smiled. “Nah, it's good to have you around, I guess. But why couldn't Ma come home, too?”

“She's busy.”

“She's always busy,” observed Timmy.

“Or tired,” added Willy.

“Or crabby,” said Timmy.

“Always crabby,” nodded Willy.

Before, I would have joined in: Yah, Ma's worn down to the bone. Ma's dead on her feet. Ma's on the warpath.

But now that I felt busy, tired, and crabby, too, it didn't feel right to slag off Ma for the same. So I summoned my last bit of energy instead. “If it's yer
ma ye be wanting, it's yer ma ye'll get,” I bellowed in a grand exaggeration of my ma's brogue, “but sure, I'll be beatin' the divil out o' ye two with this here wooden spoon,” and I brandished a stick I found on the ground. The boys screamed with delight and bolted for the corner.

The boys easily outran their tired old sis, and by the time they reached our front door, I was a half a block behind. Assured they'd gone inside already, I stopped to catch my breath at the corner, in front of the newsstand, where Mr. Conescu was packing up the morning papers.

The
Daily Standard
was still out, and I picked up a copy to read, as Mr. Sewell had instructed. “You got two cents for that?” Mr. Conescu asked. “It's still Saturday, on my watch.” I put it back and just browsed the headlines:

COPS BEAT BOOTLEGGERS BACK

SMOKELESS CIGARETTES? SIR WALTER TOBACCO SAYS YES

AL SMITH “WET” BEHIND THE EARS . . .

But my attention soon turned to the
Yodel
's front page, still with its Wild Rose headline, and while Mr.
Conescu's back was turned, I flicked the front page over to the story inside.

With all of the city's pleasures just outside her door, what drew Wild Rose to the kitchen last night? Midnight snack, joyride, or something more sinister? Our sources inside that secretive citadel tell us—

“Hey!” shouted Mr. Conescu. “What'd I say?”

I dropped the paper and trotted off before Conescu could squeeze me for my hard-earned pennies. But the article had confirmed what I suspected. “Our sources.” So Mr. Sewell was right; there was a leak inside the house. And with only one servant present at the time of the escape, there was only one reasonable suspect: one tight-lipped footman, who may not speak much to me, but sure didn't mind squawking to the
Yodel
.

Chapter

I
reported to my first day on the job as a parlormaid with a brand-new apron and a new sense of optimism. For whatever there was to do upstairs, it couldn't be harder than kitchen work, and at least I could catch a stray sunbeam falling in through the windows.

That was before I knew how busy Ma intended to keep me. I think she figured it was the only way to keep me out of trouble.

You couldn't blame her for trying.

My responsibility was the whole of the downstairs and halfway up the grand marble staircase. Magdalena, the other chambermaid, started at the landing and continued on up to the second floor. I did my best to be friendly when I ran into her at that midway
point, with a “Hiya” and a “Some day, hey?” But she never moved her eyes off the rag before her. Ma claimed Magda, a recent immigrant from Poland, understood well enough to decode “dust this” or “sweep that,” but I was starting to think she spoke no English at all. Or that maybe she pretended not to, saving her from any questions (or answers) about that strange household.

The third floor, happily, was mostly closed off, and the top floor was just Mrs. Sewell and that burly nurse-babysitter, Mr. McCagg, on the landing. My mother alone took responsibility for that floor.

One floor for one hearty girl might sound reasonable, but mind you, this one floor included an imposing entry hall, a reception room, a music room, a dining room, a ballroom, an art gallery. All of which was stuffed with carved furniture and expensive baubles from the Pritchards' many trips to Europe, where Rose's father tried to import class and stature by the boatload. Now all those items just drew dust like flies to a dung heap.

Bridie was the first-floor chambermaid sent downstairs to take my spot in the kitchen. I could only imagine the kitchen would be the better for it, as Bridie told me she “loved a good challenge” and scoffed when I showed her the soap pads. “With
copper pots, you've got to use lemon wedges dipped in salt. And my secret ingredient: elbow grease!” She laughed like this was a joke out of the funny pages. “You'll see. You've never seen a pot sparkle till it's met my magic fingers!” Chef nodded admiringly and set aside three petit fours for her. I left them both to all the fun they could find at the bottom of the slop sink.

Why I was cleaning at all was a mystery; none of the rooms ever seemed used. Besides his furtive, late-night dinners, Mr. Sewell didn't care to entertain in the fashion of the society set. “He's a businessman; he's too busy for all that,” said Ma, adding that he often said he'd prefer a penthouse in one of those new luxury apartment buildings going up on Fifth Avenue, with “none of this frippery to look after.”

I worked my way slowly through the rooms in Ma's prescribed rotation—the front parlor on Mondays, the dining room on Tuesdays, and so on—when Ma discovered a spilled drink in the art gallery. It must have been left over from Mr. Sewell's supper with his reporter two nights before, the night of Mrs. Sewell's dumbwaiter incident. In all the excitement, it had gone unnoticed, and now the parquet floor underneath it was likely warped and discolored. While Ma
went to telephone a woodworker, I hauled a mop and bucket in.

The gallery led from a reception room to the ballroom, a long, wide promenade, with tall ceilings and a barreled roof. It was designed, it seemed, for partygoers to take in the impressive collection of artworks as they moved from cocktails to supper, and the room was dotted here and there with sofas and lounges, so that guests might relax to better enjoy.

What exactly? Like the rest of the house, the walls were empty. Well, nearly empty—at one point there must have been dozens, maybe even a hundred paintings crammed along those walls—the ones, I realized, that now populated Mrs. Sewell's rooms upstairs.

Today there were just four. They were hung along one side, neatly in a row, as if someone had begun planning an exhibition and then lost interest. Each was draped with a sheet, protected from my unworthy eyes.

The spilled drink in question was located halfway between these sole survivors. The drape to one painting had been pulled aside, dragging halfway on the ground. I felt a shiver, as if witnessing the scene of a crime. I could picture Mr. Sewell strolling
here with his dinner guest, stopping to show off the artwork purchased by his once charmingly cultured wife, then dropping a drink (of club soda, no doubt) in surprise as smoke and a bloodcurdling scream emanated from downstairs, from the kitchen, from the . . . dumbwaiter?

Shards of broken crystal littered the floor like a land mine, a warped circle outlining where the melting ice and liquid had seeped into the inlaid wood. A few flying shards had landed as far as the half-pulled drape, where the sheet pooled on the floor. I'd have to shake it out—without pulling down the painting behind it.

I stood back to assess the job. The painting was tall, high, much taller than me, and the sheet clung to its top right corner.

And behind the sheet, beckoned two hands. Delicate and white, with long tapered fingers, one circling the wrist of the other, which clutched—what exactly?

With my thumb and forefinger, I pulled back the sheet a bit more, revealing an apple, held possessively, close to the chest.

Now I gave the sheet a billowing yank and found myself face-to-face with the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

Eve. The apple said it all.

Poor Eve, I thought. In every stained-glass window and Bible picture, she was always cold and naked, a fig leaf stuck to her nethers, shoving an apple into Adam's mouth. Or she's only slightly more covered in animal skins, as God banishes her from the garden, following Adam with the requisite weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Also, she always has a belly button, which just makes no sense at all, if you think about it.

But this painter—an Italian guy,
ROSSETTI
, the little brass label read—lavished his Eve with a rich peacock green fabric that spilled around her like a waterfall. He'd chosen the color to match her intensely serious blue-green eyes, and against it the apple seemed frankly dull in comparison. It was some kind of apple I'd never seen before, which made sense because everyone knows the best grocers are always Italian.

Another thing I liked about this Eve is that Adam was nowhere to be found. I'd never seen a painting of just Eve alone before. Come to think of it, she usually appeared with the subtlety of a moving picture actress, batting her eyelashes at Adam or wailing behind him or letting herself be sweet-talked by the villain-snake. But here she was lost in her own thoughts, looking so fixedly at something beyond
me. And instead of foisting the apple on Adam, she held on to it, like it was hers and hers alone.

Maybe if she'd kept all that knowledge to herself, I thought, there wouldn't have been a Fall. After all, it was Adam who spilled the beans to God.

“What are you doing in here?”

I whirled around. Alphonse's head was peeking through the double doors.

“Ma sent me in.” I rattled the glass shards in my dustpan. “To clean up a spill.”

“Ah.” The head disappeared back into the hall, then reappeared followed by the rest of Alphonse's body. His long legs had him standing by me in an instant. “You look at the paintings.” He said it as an accusation rather than an observation.

“The sheet fell off,” I lied automatically.

But he wasn't listening. He was looking, too.

“It's Eve,” I broke the silence. “See the apple?”

He laughed loudly. “That one is not Eve.”

“It is so,” I retorted. “And I should know, after eight years of Catholic school.”

A sound escaped the side of his mouth like a deflating tire. “You think you are the only Catholic? Where I come from, it is not just school. We are fermented in it, like wine.”

“Where's that exactly?”

He ignored me. “That is no apple. And that is no Eve.”

“Not an apple!” I guffawed. “What is it then, I'd like to know?”

“Americans.” He shook his head. “You know nothing but catsup and Cracker Jacks.”

“That's rich!” I shot back. “When the French eat snails! And frogs!”

“The legs of the frogs,” he retorted coolly, as if this explained it all. “And as for the lady in the painting,” he continued before I could get another word in, “you do not have to wonder. Her name is right at the top of the painting.”

He was right. At the very top, several lines of verse appeared as if written on an old-fashioned scroll. I tiptoed up to see, but it did me no good.

“It's in some other language.”

“True,” he shrugged. “Not so difficult if you read Italian.”

“And you do, I suppose.”

He shrugged again. “But you do not even need language to unlock this painting. All you need to know is in the picture itself.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, a click of the door admitted Ma and her businesslike step. “Aren't
you done yet? Why is that drape off? Alphonse, what business do you have here?”

Alphonse immediately took up the drape and, after shaking out the glass gingerly in the direction of my dustpan, tossed it back over the painting. I in turn scrupulously swept up the chards.

“The young lady could not reach the top. I was helping.”

Ma looked at us suspiciously. “Well, now you've helped enough. There's no one on the door, and Mr. Sewell wouldn't like it, especially with all the trouble we've had.”

Once the doors were closed behind Alphonse, Ma turned back to me. “I don't like you speaking with him.”

“Don't worry, Ma.” I kneeled down to sweep the last of the glass. “He barely talks anyway.”

“Still. I am quite serious on this. There's to be no fraternization on my staff.”

“I've got no idea what that means, so I can't imagine I'll be doing it.”

“Enough of your sass. It means chatting up the fellas, and it's a one-way ticket out the door with no reference letter.”

I nodded, although I knew this was an empty threat, as Ma was the one who'd be writing my reference.

“And don't go touching the paintings.” The drape had slipped again, and Ma reached out to fix it, then stopped and pulled it back just as I had. “These are Miss Rose's pride and joy,” she murmured, gazing at the beautiful lady, “and her ticket in.”

“Ticket to what?”

“To New York society. When Mr. Pritchard and Miss Rose moved from West Virginia to New York, no one would give them the time of day, no matter how much money they had. So Mr. Pritchard took Rose to Europe, ‘to get cultured' he said. Came back with all this art, all the books in the library, even designed this house to accommodate the haul and the folks he hoped to attract—the gallery, the ballroom. Used his railroad connections to get a private railway platform in the basement, to lure society types direct from their country houses upstate.”

“Did they come?”

“Oh, land, yes! Half the social register turned up for the teas and dinners and dances, eager to see the fancies. And it worked. Between her father's money and my dress skill, all the most eligible society bachelors came 'round to court her,” Ma said with certain pride.

“Including Mr. Sewell?”

“Well, yes,” she said shortly. “Of course.”

I looked around the room, with its empty walls and draped sofas. “So? Where is everyone? All these society types?”

She cleared her throat. “Miss Rose's father died shortly after her marriage. Miss Rose hoped to step in and take over her father's affairs, but that was absurd for obvious reasons.”

I nodded as if I understood what those obviously absurd reasons were.

“Some nephew took control of his company instead and managed to bankrupt it in short order. After that . . .” Ma paused. “Well, Miss Rose had always been . . . saucy, but after that, her behavior grew increasingly strange. She insisted on bringing all the art up to her rooms, refused to come out. All those newfound friends stayed away—not such friends after all, I suppose. And now, this”—Ma tossed the drape back over the lady in blue, turning her into a ghost again—“is all that's left.”

“Still!” she turned back to me with a pasted-on smile. “As they say, there's no friend like a faithful servant.”

“But you said she took all the paintings upstairs,” I said while sucking the finger I'd nicked on Mr. Sewell's crystal. “So, what about these?” The four frames huddled together, abandoned, on the gallery wall.

“Occasionally,” Ma sighed, “Miss Rose gets it in her head that certain paintings need to be downstairs. For Mr. Sewell's visitors. So she'll direct me to bring this one or that one down.” She peeked under the drape again. “Come to think of it, it's been donkey's years since she had me switch them out. Maybe she's finally grown tired of the whole exercise.” Ma slid the sole of her shoe around the floor until she found a stray shard. “You'll need to sweep this whole area again. We can't have visitors slicing their slippers on glass.”