The Gallery

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  23

  It 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.

  Chapter

  24

  By the time March rolled around, everything was looking up.

  At least, that’s what the papers said, and they were never wrong, were they?

  Hoover was finally inaugurated president, promising prosperity for one and all. An astrologer in the papers said the same and assured her clients, including Charlie Chaplin and even J. P. Morgan, that the market would keep going up up up. The Daily Standard featured a different company every day, each one promising to make the Next New Thing (and to the savvy, promise the Next Big Stock Tip). The Yodel splashed advertisements of shiny new cars and appliances and invited you to buy on credit, no matter what your lot in life.

  “Now anyone can live like a millionaire!” the advertisements crowed.

  The more time I spent in that hollow and haunted house, the more I thought: Who would want to?

  —

  After the party, we started shedding staff like cargo rolling off a sinking ship. Chef suffered a collapse, whether from overwork or overdrink I never knew. As soon as the last of the party’s canapés had been plated, he staggered out in the wee hours of the morning and never came back. The silent Magdalena left a letter in her place one morning, claiming a brother offering a job out West. (Her English was near perfect, it turns out.) Bridie spoke officially of an ailing mam back home, but whispered to me as she wrapped the strings around her apron, “It’s cursed, this house. There’s some black pishogue ’round here, and I wouldn’t stay for love or money.”

  Ma replaced no one. With no more parties, no visitors, and most days no Mr. Sewell, Ma and I soldiered on. Any evidence of that tragic traveling carnival disappeared. The house was put back to sleep, the furniture under billowing white shrouds. The courtyard, which just weeks before had been coaxed into such brilliance for the party, with wild, brash blossoms and ripe fruit, slumped and shed its bounty to be swept into the bin.

  Perhaps the flowers just did what flowers do: burst into life, then fade into a finish, dropping exhausted to the floor. Or maybe Ma simply forgot to call the gardeners. Ma’s full attention, once again, was on Rose. Ma went quiet at that time, speaking only to direct me to one task or another. She climbed the stairs each day, carrying the shots Dr. Westbrook had recently prescribed to keep Rose calm and a copy of the Daily Standard under her arm to pass the hours by Rose’s bedside. “But,” I sputtered when I first saw the syringe, “didn’t you say that bromides—”

  “These aren’t bromides,” Ma cut me off. “And this is none of your concern. You wouldn’t understand, so please leave this to the adults.” And with that, I understood the source of the eerie stillness that had returned to the top floor and had settled back down into the house’s bones.

  Still, under the quiet, something was churning.

  Alphonse was disturbingly quiet, too. He avoided my eyes when we passed in the hall and left the room when I entered. In his eyes, I saw the guilt of the innocent bystander. Because we both knew: if he’d only helped me—if he’d abandoned his belief that nothing made any difference so why bother, just for one evening—Rose would be free now.

  In need of something to hold on to, we all returned to our routines. Mr. Sewell was either at his stockbroker’s or at the newspaper office, even sleeping there some nights, if his still-made bed in the morning meant anything. He returned home only to consult with Dr. Westbrook. There were more visits from the doctor, more whispering between the men. “She’s a danger, and always has been, and now everyone knows it,” Mr. Sewell insisted one morning as I helped the doctor off with his coat. “It’s time she was in a place where no one else can be hurt by her actions.” The ground under the hallowed doctor seemed to be shifting, and through the office door, I overheard him wearily uttering words like “court-ordered” and “incompetent,” plus “sanitorium” and other ominous Latin terms.

  For days I waited with clenched stomach for Sewell to demand answers: How did Rose get out that night of the party? But days, then weeks went by with Mr. Sewell passing me in the hall. No words were ever exchanged.

  In the end, I realized he didn’t care. The outcome was better than any he could have planned, with Rose’s madness dragged on display for all of New York society. Who would doubt him now that his wife was really and truly mad?

  And who would guess that her madness was of his own design? To all of New York society, he was the model of the self-sacrificing husband, so in love with his wife he couldn’t bear to let her be removed from her childhood home—until it became entirely unavoidable, of course.

  It was a story you’d never read in the Standard. Of course you wouldn’t; why would the paper’s owner allow scandalous reports about his own wife? But any Yodel reader would know all the lurid details. It was no wonder that that Yodel snitch reporter kept showing up for back door dinners and Mardi Gras parties.

  He was getting his information straight from the leak himself: Mr. Sewell.

  —

  As these Lenten weeks dragged on, I thought a lot about purgatory, that waiting room for the souls of the not-quite-damned. Rose was trapped upstairs in her own drugged limbo, and with no parties to prepare for and no daring, dramatic escapes to orchestrate, my days of maid work became—well, just work. Even the weather was contrary, waffling between wet snow and spitting rain with occasional unkept promises of sunshine.

  Every day in the house seemed a drab, pointless exercise, as we all waited to see where we would end up.

  “Sisyphean,” Alphonse muttered to himself one day as I was sweating and buffing the same spot on the foyer’s marble floor where Mr. Sewell’s shoes always left a black mark.

  I sat back on my heels. “Who’s a sissy?” I never let Jimmy Ratchett call me that, and I wasn’t about to let Alphonse. Especially as he’d given me the silent treatment for weeks.

  Something about this response tickled him, and he stopped and laughed to himself, despite the painting he wrapped his arms around.

  “Sisyphus. Although I would not call him a sissy. He was a—how you say?—Strong? No, fierce king, cursed with an impossible task. To roll a large rock up a hill and then watch it roll back down again. The next day he did it again. And the next day. And the next. For eternity.”

  I looked down. The marble in front of me was spotless, sparkling. For now.

  “So it is Sisyphean. Your work and mine. Back and forth, this way and that. But nothing changes.” He shifted the weight of the bundle in his arms.

  “Coming or going?” I asked, indicating the painting.

  “Going.” He tipped it down so I could get a peek. It was the painting of Bacchus that Rose had hung for the party.

  I nodded. Said not
hing.

  It was Sisyphean to ask, I thought to myself, because what would be the point? Why endeavor to know anything?

  But I did anyway.

  “And what’s in its place?”

  “Nothing.”

  I stood up. The image of that gallery, empty of Rose’s visual schemes, made my heart drop like a stone in a cold, still pond. “Nothing at all?”

  He shrugged and twitched his mouth, causing his mustache to dance. It had filled in a bit more, becoming somewhat unruly, and with his high forehead and dark bushy eyebrows, he was beginning to look increasingly like a young walrus.

  “No new paintings in the gallery, then?”

  Alphonse shook his head. No new messages from Rose. Not only had I destroyed her one chance at escape, I had killed her hope for another.

  From several paces away, I craned my neck to peek at Bacchus. “Can I see it? One more time?”

  Alphonse glanced around, and seeing no one approaching, set the painting down on the marble floor, leaning against the marble wall. It seemed that marble covered every surface in this house, like a cold white creeping moss.

  Now that I had time to stop and really look at the painting, this Bacchus looked funny to me. He may have been a god, but he looked more like Giuseppe, Mr. Latonza’s son from the cobbler shop. No long wizened beard or muscled arms that held up the world. This Bacchus was slight and lean, his baby-face cheeks pink with wine, and his toga slipped off in a way that had . . . was it improper to say sex appeal? He held out a thin glass goblet of wine—so shallow it looked like the liquid might spill all over his nice white toga at any moment—but when I looked closer, I saw something strange:

  His fingernails were filthy.

  Instinctively, I looked at Alphonse. He nodded, as if he’d been waiting for me to get there. “And the fruit,” he said.

  There, underneath the goblet, was the fruit bowl that seemed to pop up in every canvas, signifying bounty or something like that. There was that grotesque pomegranate again, its seedy guts bursting. And around it was fruit of all kinds—some glossy and vibrant, but most . . . bruised, I saw now. Mushy. Rotten.