The Gallery

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  He took my silence as acquiescence. “So you’d vote for Al Smith, anyway? Turn over our country to the pope?”

  Confusion shook me out of my silence. “What? No, to Mr. Smith, sir, he’s not the pope.”

  “But he’s a Catholic.” Mr. Sewell pronounced it Cath-o-lick, and he poured suspicion on each syllable. “Which makes the pope—de facto—as the head of him, the head of the rest of us.”

  “Well, I don’t think that’s true.”

  “And you’d let your Al open the saloons again,”—I didn’t dare say that, in Brooklyn, none of them had ever closed—“and allow the blood of gang violence to come to our very front doors? And you’d see the pure, honest country lanes and village squares of this great country become, like your Mr. Smith revels in, ‘the Sidewalks of New York?’”

  I had many thoughts. Many things I’d like to say. But as I looked at Ma, I saw that we also had many bills to pay.

  “No, sir, I guess not,” I murmured, suddenly and assiduously swabbing my mop around the floor.

  “You guess not, eh?” I could feel his eyes on the top of my head, looking down from on high. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing you won’t be voting. And thank God, as of tomorrow, I shan’t be hearing that idiotic song about sidewalks again!” And he turned on his heel—leaving a black mark on the floor—returning to his office.

  I couldn’t help myself. “That’s only if Hoover wins, sir.”

  “If?” He stopped and slowly turned back, regarding me like a simpleton. “If Hoover wins? Do you think I would allow any other outcome?”

  “I don’t see how it’s up to you, sir. You’re only allowed one vote.”

  He walked back over to me, bent over, and ruffled my hair. “No, dear,” he said quietly, his hot breath smelling of black coffee, “you are only allowed one vote. I have one million, stretching from coast-to-coast, wherever the Daily Standard is found. And as long as I’m its publisher, every one of those votes will go to Hoover.”

  He stood up. “Mrs. O’Doyle?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ma’s voice sounded weary, weighted with her disapproval of me.

  “Could you see that the steps are cleared of that trash?”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll get someone—”

  At that moment, I think Ma and I suddenly realized that someone had been missing throughout the whole episode. The one person who should have been working the door, who might have seen . . .

  “Yes, ma’am?” Alphonse crept in like a fog behind us. “The front steps. I will see to it immediately.”

  Alphonse turned away to get whatever cleaner removed a bomb blast from marble. Mr. Sewell turned back to his office, his candidate assured and his chambermaid put in her place. And Ma turned away from me, her head shaking, as if a scolding was the height of wasted effort.

  “I must check on Miss Rose,” she muttered, pulling out her ring of keys as she headed to the stairs. “The blast surely startled her, and Lord knows what the aftermath will be of that. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  —

  The hall floor waited silently for me, freshly smudged by Mr. Sewell’s shoes.

  Fortunately, the angrier I got, the harder I mopped.

  I hated the way Mr. Sewell spoke to me. Like I was an ignorant maid. Like he knew more than me about the things that mattered.

  I hated more that it was true.

  Whatever was happening behind all the cold, closed lifeless doors in this house, he knew about it.

  And maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t know anything.

  But there’s one person in this house who knows everything.

  Ma.

  Chapter

  11

  “Does it seem strange to you that Mrs. Sewell never leaves her rooms?”

  We were stopped at the corner of Park and Seventy-Second, the early evening well dark. The night had been stealing in a few minutes at a time, a day at a time, and now we found ourselves in this blackened sea of glowing streetlamps at a time when, just a few weeks prior, the kids would still have been playing stickball in the street.

  Ma had her face deep in her purse, rifling for a peppermint. Chef had loaded the day’s chicken stew with garlic, which always provoked Ma’s dyspepsia. (The stew actually was quite tasty, despite having the word “cocoa” in its name.) “And what do you expect me to say to that, Dr. Freud?” she muttered as she stifled a burp. “Yes, I think it’s the height of normalcy to barricade yourself in a room?”

  “What I mean is, do you think she needs help of some kind?”

  The light turned green, but Ma stayed put, letting her purse drop back to the end of her arm and turning back to look at me. A taxi stopped in anticipation, but she waved it away. “What help, pray tell, is she missing? She has New York’s finest doctors on call, a nurse standing by twenty-four hours a day, and a house full of servants.” She struggled to stifle a burp, interrupting her lecture. “Not to mention my near constant attention. The entire household is designed around keeping her out of a loony bin, where she’d be heaped in with the screwballs and ruffians and Georgie Riordans of the world.”

  Was that such a terrible thing? We rubbed elbows with Georgie Riordan every day (not to mention Crazy Lady Minchin and the speakeasies’ stranger regulars), and no one seemed to think it was any great hardship for us.

  The light turned red again, and Ma kept talking.

  “Miss Rose has everything Mr. Sewell’s money can buy.” She coughed around a burp or a lump in her throat, I couldn’t tell which. “And his love, obviously. And still she founders.”

  She stopped talking long enough for a bus to rattle by, the driver laying on his horn the whole way.

  In the moment of relative quiet that followed. I ventured, “And her money, you mean.”

  “What’s that?” The light had turned green, and Ma was already heading for the other side of the park.

  I trotted after Ma. “You said everything Mr. Sewell’s money could buy. And her money too, right? Isn’t Mr. Sewell spending that as well?”

  “There is no more ‘her money.’” Ma sighed. “There’s the house and its contents: the paintings, the library, a few other baubles. That’s all that’s left of her father’s fortune. But Mr. Sewell spends down his fortune maintaining them, just to keep her happy.” She stopped to struggle with another rising belch. “You know he could give two hoots for that house and those pictures. He’d be rid of them in a flat minute if he could.”

  “So why doesn’t he? Sell them, I mean?”

  “As I said, they make her happy, and her happiness is foremost in his mind.” A loud burp finally escaped from Ma’s pursed lips. Too relieved to look embarrassed, she sighed and started walking again. “But even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. They’re hers, legally.”

  Like that rising belch, a bubble of a thought rose in my mind.

  “Ma, what would happen if Miss Ro—I mean Mrs. Sewell went well and truly . . . well, nuts? If she did go into an asylum? Then would Mr. Sewell maybe take ownership over her things? Like how Mrs. Phelan cashes Georgie’s Saint Vincent de Paul Society checks?”

  Ma stopped again and turned back to me with a look I hadn’t seen since I borrowed her Sunday stockings to make mud grenades with the twins.

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing!” We’d reached the entrance to the subway by now, and with a shake of her head, she broke off to race down its steps. But almost immediately she flew back up. “You talk of your employer as if he is some kind of a monster!” Now I could see she was more baffled than angry. “Like it’s some kind of story from one of your detective rags! Well, you like spinning yarns? Here’s the story for you. Mr. Sewell is no monster imprisoning a fair maiden; he’s a knight. A knight who married a princess who was cursed, and now she’s become the monster.

  “Every day, he fights the good fight.” Ma turned back down the
stairs wearily. “For Rose. For all of us.”

  I followed meekly behind Ma, scolded . . . but unconvinced. I wasn’t sure Mr. Sewell did want his wife to get better. And I was even less sure why Ma believed it so fervently.

  —

  An infuriatingly brief postcard from Daddo—“Next stop: Dixie!”—awaited us when we got home. Ma glanced at it, then tossed it on the table to be buried under the grocer’s bill. The boys and I dug it back out, poring over the mysterious illustrations of children chased by alligators and studying the postmark for clues.

  “Why’d he mail it from Penn Station if he’s headed down South?” I wondered aloud.

  “Probably dropped it off while switching trains,” noted Ma as she filled the tub with steaming water for the twins’ scrub. “Don’t worry,” she said brightly, “he’ll be back before you know it.” But her promise sounded hollow.

  I took my own soak while Ma settled the boys. Too lazy to pour a bath of my own, I sat knees up in the tepid water, listening to her wrestle pajamas over wet heads, tell stories of pirates and mermaids, lead prayers, lay out uniforms for the next day. Soon she’d be out preparing the morning’s porridge, sorting her own uniform out, reviewing the bills, scratching out grocery lists, and attending to whatever else it took to keep our family afloat.

  She had reason to believe in her employer, I supposed, when that employer stood between us and the hardship and hungry bellies that lurked around Willoughby Street.

  With my own wet head on the pillow that night, I felt ashamed. Not so much for my ideas, but for the pain they’d caused Ma. For all the pain I’d caused Ma. From the moment I walked in that Fifth Avenue address, I’d caused nothing but trouble for her and her employer, and my inevitable expulsion would mean not just another dressing-down, but possible the sacking of the whole O’Doyle family. So if Ma had to believe that Mr. Sewell was a knight in shining armor to keep working for him, well then, so did I.

  The wind creaked and moaned outside. A drafty damp swirled in from the windows and snuck into the wrinkles in my quilt. Whether the chill of the room or the chill between us, something drew me to the warmth of Ma’s bed, where Ma snored lightly—still ladylike, I thought—on her side.

  Ten years and nothing had changed: Daddo on the road, me padding in my bare feet and burying any bad thoughts under Ma’s snoring body. I slipped one foot, then two, under her covers, gingerly tucking them behind her nightgown-wrapped knees. Rather than bolt from the shock of my icy feet, Ma hugged her knees tighter around them.

  But even the welcome warmth couldn’t push two competing thoughts out of my head: Was Mrs. Sewell a victim of some nefarious plan? Or was she a goonie bird to start, luring me to crazytown with her fantastical ideas?

  Tossing and turning, I grabbed in desperation Ma’s well-pawed copy of Jane Eyre on her bedside, hoping its many syllables would bore me to sleep.

  I skimmed the book by the streetlamp streaming in the window, flipping past orphan whinings in search of the adventure (of which there was almost none).

  There was romance, however. The romance between a lowly governess and her powerful, brooding employer, who has a secret: a mad wife in the attic. Whom he is too noble a man to leave, though he loves this governess so very, very much.

  And that’s when I understood why Ma returned to this book, over and over.

  Ma wasn’t in love with Daddo anymore. She was in love with Mr. Sewell.

  Chapter

  12

  The mailbox handle at midnight was ice cold on my gloveless hand. The shock of it made me yank my hand back and look down at the letter I held.

  In this letter to Daddo, I denounced Ma as an imposter. This woman who we thought we knew—the woman who made me not only return a piece of penny candy I stole, but spend my First Communion money on sweets for the Brooklyn Catholic Orphan Asylum. The woman who insisted on two layers of wool underwear from October to May. Who crossed the street wherever two men or more gathered, lest she overhear “rough language,” who marched for Temperance and taught Sunday School. Yes, this woman was a liar, a cheat, a brazen hussy only pretending to be a saint.

  It was an impassioned plea mixed with condemnation, worthy of any pulpit or court of law, and I ended asking Daddo to come back and take me and the twins on the road with him. I also added in a few ideas about a family act, which I still think would have played big down South.

  As the streetlight fell on the letter, I realized I had no stamp . . . and no address. Where would I send it? Daddo could be anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, or if the right gig came up, on the vaudeville stages of Timbuktu.

  I pulled my coat tight around my nightgown. In the quiet, in the cold, I suddenly felt so very alone. Just as Ma must have felt every night in that cold, empty bed.

  —

  So instead of denouncing Ma’s name from the rooftops, I grew quiet. Over the following days I mopped and dusted while I eavesdropped and observed. Out of the corner of my supposedly downturned eye, I shuddered as Ma yessed and sirred and bowed her head through every interaction with the Great Archer Sewell. I saw now how her eyes shone when he called her name. How her lashes fluttered when he gazed down on her. And how her cheeks flushed when he gave her a compliment. She seemed less like a grown woman and more like the silly girls in school who talked to boys in whispery sighs.

  But as I watched, I noticed, too, how steady the compliments came: “You are a marvel, Mrs. O’Doyle!” and “Another job well done, Mrs. O’Doyle!” and “How could we do it without you?” I saw how Mr. Sewell would touch her shoulder—just for a moment—as he spun flattering words, and how he’d lean down from his great height to murmur instructions, his breath fluttering the loose wisps of Ma’s hair. Or how he’d plant his hand lightly, but firmly on her elbow, guiding her to his chosen destination.

  Mr. Sewell knew exactly what he was doing, I deduced. This was no embellishment of Ma’s overactive imagination, no playacting as Jane Eyre. He was deliberately drawing her down this path. He wanted Ma to fall in love with him.

  And yet the idea of a passionate love affair was not just ridiculous, but logistically absurd. There was hardly a moment when Mr. Sewell or Ma wasn’t working. And Mr. Sewell’s late-night dinners were well-enough attended by debutantes and showgirls. Ma was beautiful in my eyes, but I couldn’t see any millionaire pursuing a married, harried, mother-of-three housekeeper over Clara Bow.

  So why? Why draw out Ma’s affections?

  —

  This is what I was wondering a few days later as I returned to the gallery. Ma had sent me in with a rug beater, with the direction to undrape all the scattered settees and lounge chairs and knock the tar out of them. Or dust really. Clouds of it filled the gallery—so much that when Ma finally came in to check my handiwork, I heard the jingling of her giant ring of keys before even seeing her.

  The keys.

  The same keys that jingled as Ma climbed the stairs each day on the way to Rose’s locked room.

  But not locked from the inside, it finally dawned on me. Locked—and unlocked—from the outside.

  By Ma.

  “And what are you staring at, may I ask?” Ma ventured as I held my rug beater frozen in the air.

  “Your keys,” I whispered.

  “Yes?” Ma looked swiftly down, and her face settled with relief to see them right where she guarded them, linked to her belt. “Yes, what about them?”

  “Mrs. Sewell,” I started. “Captive . . .”

  “Of course she’s captive. She’s a captive of her own mind. And I’d think that you . . .” She stopped and followed my eyes, still trained on her key ring. “What—just what are you suggesting?” Ma sounded shocked. “That I’m the one who stands between Miss Rose and her liberty?”

  I lowered my rug beater, now a feeble weapon in my hand. I said nothing. What was there to say?

  Ma took in a d
eep breath, then let it out. The very action tinkled the keys a bit. “Let me tell you,” she said slowly, “let me tell you what freedom looks like for Miss Rose. Last year it looked like knocking McCagg senseless with a paperweight so she could wander up and down Fifth Avenue in a nightgown, banging on car doors and ranting about a Greek goddess.”

  She must mean Proserpina. Now probably wasn’t the time to tell Ma that was her Roman, not Greek, name.

  “Or this spring, freedom for Rose looked like falling out a window someone’d been foolish enough to leave unlocked and breaking both her ankles.”

  Surely she was trying to escape, I thought. “But Ma—”

  “Or climbing on the roof. Or riding dumbwaiters. Or setting fire to the kitchen. And somehow, everyone ends up reading all about it in the Yodel. So yes, I am the only thing between Miss Rose and freedom: the freedom to get herself killed. Or kill her caretakers. Or to humiliate herself on a grand scale and be remembered as a sideshow act, long after we—God willing—are able to restore her health.” She stopped to catch her breath. “So then, is it such a sin to protect our beloved girl from this kind of freedom?”

  Suddenly I wasn’t so sure I had it all right.

  Ma’s voice softened. “Martha, nothing makes my heart break so as the sound of the key in that lock. But it’s for her own good, don’t you see? You’d no more give her free rein than you’d let a toddler cross Lexington Avenue.

  “And besides,” Ma continued, “Mr. Sewell firmly believes she won’t need any of this one day, if we can just maintain a sense of consistency with her routines . . .” Her voice faded away, as if she didn’t entirely believe it.

  Mr. Sewell.

  “But Mr. Sewell,” I started uncertainly, “he’s behind this. He’s got to be! He wants you to believe—”

  “Dear Lord in Heaven!” She rubbed her face in her hands, then lifted it to look at me. “Yes, dear, I’ve heard it all before. Miss Rose says her husband is imprisoning her, and I am, and McCagg is, and Alphonse, too. And the food is salty, and the pomegranates are rotten, and there’s a minotaur in the basement.” She sighed heavily. “I’ve heard it all before.” She checked her watch. “And now it’s time for me to hear it all again.”