The Gallery (10 page)

Chapter

T
he 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 deep 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.”

Ma turned on her heel and left me in that dust-settled room, where I saw the drape had slipped off the painted Proserpina again. I walked over to rehang it, stopping to look at the pomegranate that started it all. The goddess's hand settled into her chest, that fruit of knowledge both shown off and held back. For the first time, I looked up, looked deep into the goddess's pool blue eyes, which seemed to say, “I told you. I told you you didn't want to know.”

Chapter

N
ow when Ma walked, I could no longer hear her neatly clicking footsteps, only the jingling of keys. My eyes glued to the pavement, I followed that sound from the subway to the house the next morning, looking up only when a six-piece marching band—the now weary oompahs of “The Sidewalks of New York”—drowned her out. “Vote for Al Smith!” said one side of the big bass drum, and when they turned the corner, I saw the other read “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Beer!”

I'd almost forgotten. It was Election Day.

The servants had gathered just outside the Sewells' front door to see the small parade, but when they saw Ma, they quickly scattered, not wanting to be
caught loafing. Only Alphonse stayed, munching on an egg sandwich.

“Here's Hoover promising a chicken in every pot, and still, some men only want beer,” Ma tsked.

“Perhaps they want both, ma'am,” offered Alphonse.

Ma gave him her sternest look. “Mr. Dupont, what does Mr. Sewell say about eating on the job?”

Alphonse wrapped up the scraps in his handkerchief and shoved it in his pocket. “That it has no place in this house, ma'am.”

“So then I shouldn't have to remind you,” and she strode off to the back entrance, as if to note that, even four feet away from the front door, she still knew her place and the correct entrance to use.

“Now, I wasn't
in
the house,” Alphonse muttered, pulling the parcel back out of his pocket. He stuffed the last bite in his mouth and turned to go back inside.

“Wait!” I blurted, and Alphonse slowly turned back to look at me. “The paintings.”

I paused, hoping he'd jump in to fill the silence left in the wake of the oompah band. He didn't.

“I've been thinking . . . the paintings. The myth—Proserpina.” He nodded encouragingly. “I mean . . . it's her, right? Mrs. Sewell?”

He smiled and made a flourish with his hand as if to say “That's it.”

“But does that mean . . .” I shook off the question and began again. “That means she's being held . . . well, not captive. But yes, captive! Is that what the paintings are there for? To tell us?”

He nodded as he looked up and down the street. No more pomp or parades; just the usual New Yorkers with their own places to go now. “And who is holding her captive?” he finally said, looking at me meaningfully.

I didn't want to say it. But it had to be said out loud. Still, I couldn't meet his eye.

“Ma. But—”

He finished the thought for me. “But, in the story, was it not Pluto who stole Proserpina?”

“Well, yes, Pluto, I guess. Her husband.”

“Her husband, yes,” he said.

I looked over my shoulder. “Mr. Sewell,” I whispered.

But this time he shrugged.

I grabbed his arm. “So who do we tell? The police? Or no, we'll go to the newspaper! But not the
Daily Standard
, obviously, but the
Yodel
! Or—”

He took my hand calmly, firmly, and released its grip on his arm. “No, not we. Not me. There is nothing to do.”

“Nothing?”

“Now you know. And it changes nothing.”

“It changes everything! It changes nothing only if you
do
nothing!”

“No. It changes nothing because the facts have not changed. The lady is mad. She stays in her room. Her husband wants her there. Trust me. Calling an alarm will not change a thing in the house, except perhaps your place in it.”

“But,” I sputtered, “but—but she isn't mad!” And yet as I said it, I realized, I didn't know. “At least, she wasn't! I mean, maybe she wasn't mad before! Or maybe she was,” I mumbled, “but maybe she wasn't but she was driven mad by being locked away?”

“But don't you see? It is all the same. Mr. Sewell is a powerful man. He makes the story. And if he says his wife is mad, that is the end of it. She is.” He brushed his hands together.

“Fine, if you won't help me, I'll tell—”

“Who? McCagg, her”—he laughed, not kindly— “‘nurse'? He is the very man placed to keep her from escaping.” And now his broad shoulders, his hamhock arms, his sleeping spot outside her room made sense. He wasn't there to step in when help was needed, but to keep help at bay.

“Chef? Magdalena?” Alphonse continued. “None
of the staff will lift a finger if they think they might lose their jobs. Bridie? Well, yes,” he chuckled, “perhaps Bridie truly does not know. I think she still believes in fairies also. Your mother—”

He thought for a while, looking down the street and fiddling with the baby mustache that was sprouting on his lip.

“Somehow,” he said as he turned finally to go back inside, “Mr. Sewell has convinced your mother that this bizarre scene is in service to her mistress. So let us just say, the lady of the house is not the only one that Mr. Sewell has imprisoned.”