The Gallery (7 page)

I snatched up the Ovid and shoved it back on the shelf, whether in the 100s or 900s, I didn't know or care. From my apron pocket I produced that spitty rag and began frantically polishing the books with Alphonse's saliva.

“I was just walking by, and the door was open, and I was going to close it, but the books looked so dusty. I mean, look at that dust . . .” I coughed, I thought, convincingly. “And we're all a team here, aren't we, so I just thought I'd pitch in.”

“That's rubbish. This room is
never
left unlocked. Unless . . .”

Her eyes narrowed a bit, and I did feel bad that Alphonse was going to take the blame.

“Locked or no,” she continued slowly, “you should never enter this room without permission. There's not just the matter of Mr. Sewell's private papers. Each one of these books is worth a month's wages, some more. If you so much as ripped a page . . .” Ma left the thought unfinished, a ripped page an unspeakable offense.

I took a step back from the bookshelves, now afraid of even accidental contact. “No wonder Mr. Sewell wants to sell them.” I whistled under my breath. “Not that he needs the money, of course.”

“Mr. Sewell's financial decisions are no concern of yours,” Ma snapped, but then paused. “But it's like Mr. Sewell said, I suppose: living near the source of wealth—well, we could all learn from his vision.”

Ma crossed over and withdrew my hastily shelved book.

“I'll have you know it's not that Mr. Sewell doesn't care for the books. Heavens, no! One of the most cultured, most learned men in New York, Mr. Sewell is! It's that, as he says, these books could be working for him, instead of him for them. If he sold them,
he says, he could put the money in the stock market and double it overnight! With all the information that flows into the paper, Mr. Sewell is always the first to hear of any stock tip.” Ma nestled the book back into its proper place in the 800s. “I've been thinking of putting a bit of money in the market myself. With Mr. Sewell's guidance, of course,” she murmured to herself.

I stood back and looked at the sea of books. Each one worth at least forty dollars, times what? A thousand, and then that doubled in the market . . . “So why doesn't he sell them?”

Ma stood back, glancing over the stacks to make sure all was in order.

“They're not his to sell; they belong to Miss Rose. The books, the paintings, the house. They were all left to Miss Rose by her father. So as long as she chooses to keep them, Mr. Sewell is their keeper and protector.” Her eyes passed from one end of the bookshelves to the door. “And hers,” she murmured.

She put her hand on my shoulder—a familiar grip the twins and I called “The Claw”—and began to steer me back toward the door. “And as his deputy, it's up to me to see that all is maintained in the same condition in which it arrived in this house. Which means”—here she pushed me out into the hallway
and stepped out behind me, blocking the door—“no unauthorized visitors. And that includes you.”

She turned back, and with her own jangling ring of keys, which dwarfed Alphonse's, she turned the lock with a definitive click.

And that was the end of Mr. Sewell's library, for me.

Chapter

T
hat night on the subway home, I scanned the car for
Daily Standard
headlines while mentally depositing two pennies in my own Ovaltine jar.

There wasn't much to hold my interest (“
TROY MOTOR COMPANY STOCK CLIMBS
” “
INTEREST RATES RUMORED TO DIP
”), so I leaned back to read the
Yodel
over the shoulder of the engrossed office girl to my right. Today's top story was a corker: A chorus girl from the Follies had been caught in Montreal with a congressman, pretending to be his wife. The real wife reportedly got wind and took off the next day for Reno for a quickie divorce, with a Portuguese waiter in tow. And now the chorus girl's mother was suing the congressman for kidnapping. A delicious, scandalous mess, the whole thing.

By the time I got home, I couldn't remember what was so interesting about pomegranates and Ovid anyway.

And Mrs. Sewell, if I thought about it.

Did anyone care what made Georgie Riordan think he was King Tut? No, they just tipped their hats to him on Flatbush Avenue and told his ma “no charge, ma'am” when she came into their store. What made me think it was any stranger for a rich person to go loopy than some joe from the neighborhood? If anything, in that house filled with books of monsters and paintings of squiggles, it made
more
sense.

So let the lady of the house lie in bed, eat porridge, read about half men–half goats, and stare at pictures of watermelons and alligator pears. Whatever the source of Mrs. Sewell's troubles, I wouldn't discover it in all the myths of Ancient Greece and Rome combined.

At least, I was pretty sure.

—

“Land, the racket, Martha!” Ma flew into the Sewell music salon, where I was cleaning the piano's keys, approximating Gershwin (I thought) in the process. “Though at least the noise led me straight to you. I need you to run an errand.”

I had my apron off before Ma could even give
me a destination. After a week of rain, the light glimmered and danced outside, and it was exactly the kind of day I would have faked a stomachache at school and headed to the park or the beach or simply anywhere.

“I see the schemes in your eyes, young lady, and you'll be wise to check them right there before they meet up with your brain.” Ma took the apron and looped it back over my neck, spinning me around and tying the strings together with a yank. “You'll be in an official capacity, a representative of the Sewell household, and I expect you to comport yourself accordingly.”

I loosened and retied the strings around what Daddo called my jelly belly. “All right, all right. Where to?”

“Mr. Sewell needs this note hand delivered to the Dukes. It's got to get there right away, before Mr. Duke leaves for their golf game. Mr. Sewell can't make it, you see. It's just a bit farther up Fifth Avenue, across from the museum.” She stared in my eyes. “Shouldn't take you more than fifteen minutes. I'd go myself, but I must go downtown and give the grocer a what's what. And Alphonse . . .”

“Ma, I've got it!” I snatched the letter out of her hand. “Across from the museum, easy.”

Ma took a deep breath, looking like she'd already regretted the decision. “Can I trust you on this, Martha?” She looked over her shoulder, and I knew she was wondering if the silent-but-compliant Magdalena was within shouting distance.

“Of course!” I jumped in her line of sight, to block any further thoughts of Magdalena. “Just a trot up Fifth Avenue and back. What could be easier?”

—

To my credit, I skipped straightaway to the Duke place, strangely pleased to find their fairy-tale mansion slightly smaller than the Sewells'. But any haloed grandeur I felt was in my own mind alone, because the footman refused to even open the front door to my maid's uniform. He met me instead at the servants' entrance, where he took the letter between two fingers and coldly closed the door in my face.

But even that couldn't get me down. It was one of those delicious fall days in the grand finale of the season: sun beaming through the branches, just a few golden leaves left clinging, its red and orange sisters already carpeting the ground. I inhaled deeply, drawing in the toasted scent of sunbaked leaves, the smoke of fireplaces coming back to life. The clean, cold bite of winter was waiting in the wings.

Across the street from the Dukes' was Central
Park, where I could take the long way home through the tree-lined paths and promenades. Hop through a game of jump rope. Maybe get a last Italian ice before the pushcart vendors closed up for the season. With Ma oblivious downtown, there was no rush.

There was only one thing standing between me and the park: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The museum, an imposing matron of a building, took up nearly two blocks along the other side of Fifth Avenue, guarding any view of the park. As I strategized which side to go around, it felt as if it were daring me to pass, like a playground bully exacting a toll of milk money.

I deliberated at the foot of its grand stone steps, waves of well-dressed art lovers streaming up and down past me: the kind of folks, I thought, who had nowhere to be on a Wednesday but in front of a painting. People who probably looked at paintings every day of their lives—and not just four, once, for a few minutes before the drapes were pulled over them.

People, maybe, who knew about pomegranates and Ovids.

A gaggle of girls, dressed in starched and pressed school uniforms, jostled me as they swept up the
steps. One gave me a look of annoyance—most likely the same look she gave her own maid, her own Katie or Mary or Bridget at home. Before she asked them to go dust her own paintings—but not look at them.

I stuck my tongue out at the girl's back as I mounted the steps behind the class trip. I'll just take a quick peek, I told myself. It won't take but a minute.

—

The inside of the building was bigger than even St. Patrick's Cathedral, where I'd stop in occasionally with Daddo to light a candle for a new gig. Maybe this is what the swells worship, I thought, as my eyes traveled from the enormous sprays of flowers to the soaring roof: beauty. And old things. And the money to buy both.

And yet, its grandeur felt strangely familiar. No more or less opulent than the Sewell mansion, the museum was merely bigger and more crowded. No wonder all the rich folk looked so comfortable here: It reminded them of home.

But my familiarity ended there in the center hall, as I watched couples, class trips, and retired millionaires wander in all different directions. Which way to the paintings, I wondered? And what did it cost to see them?

“You look lost, dear.”

A voice came from what I saw now was a desk in the middle of the hall—
INFORMATION
, a sign read.

“I'm not lost,” I shot back at the disembodied voice. “I have a right to be here.” But even as the brash words left my mouth, I wasn't so sure I did. So far in this place I'd seen socialites and school groups, but no other unaccompanied maids off the job.

“You don't need to snap,” came the gravelly voice again, and as I looked more closely, I saw a pompadour of gray hair hovering behind one of those giant floral arrangements. “I never said you didn't. The Metropolitan Museum is open to all, no matter one's station.”

I peered now over the desk and saw a little old lady perched on a stool, her hands on a cane. She dressed like pictures I'd seen of Queen Victoria, all puffy sleeves and lace and high collars. “I only meant”—and as she resettled her hands, I saw that her gold cane topper was as big as a doorknob—“that you look as if you don't know where to begin.”

“Do you work here?” I asked, realizing how silly the question was as soon as I asked. Ladies this old and rich didn't work.

She guffawed, too, at the very idea. “I am a docent.” In my silence, she continued, “I guide
patrons to the works they seek.” And as I continued to look blankly, she kept going. “I help people who come into the museum. Now, what are you looking for, dear?” Her lined face was haughty but kind, like a queen distributing Christmas baskets to peasants.

What was I looking for? Even here and now, I wasn't sure. A knowledge of art, so that I wouldn't have to keep asking Alphonse and feeling stupid? I probably couldn't cover that in a quick fifteen-minute trip. An understanding of what it was about the pictures that made Mrs. Sewell so crazy?

I needed something I could see quickly. Something that would shed light on one tiny sliver of this strange story I'd found myself in.

“I'd like to see the pomegranates, please,” I said loudly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. A couple standing next to me, consulting with another docent about “naturalism” (which was a thing to see, apparently), turned to stare.

The old lady blinked. Paused. “Pomegranates,” she repeated finally.

“Ye-ess,” I faltered a bit. “Just . . . whatever pomegranates you have around.”

She blinked again. Then she shifted her weight slowly forward, reaching some shelf below and producing a map that revealed the museum to be a
labyrinth of interconnecting rooms. She also produced a fountain pen, which hovered in the air over the map. Then, before she could circle whichever room held the fruit pictures, she set the pen down and pushed herself up to her feet.

“Follow me, dear,” she commanded, slowly lumbering her way toward a side hall. A guard stood at attention, but with the faintest wave of her wrinkled hand, he stepped aside.

My feet slowed. Gallery after gallery telescoped behind the guard, and I knew the wise thing would be to say a polite “Thank you anyway,” and hustle my way back down Fifth Avenue.

Sensing my hesitation, the old lady paused and shot back over her shoulder, “I said, follow me.”

So I did.

—

It was a good idea, at least in theory.

I thought, maybe if I saw all the art with pomegranates, I would detect some kind of meaning that tied them all together. That would explain what about them fascinated Mrs. Sewell.

Also, how many paintings of pomegranates could there be in this place?

As it turned out, a lot.

Not just paintings, but sculptures, jewelry, pages
from books, furniture, even hieroglyphics from the tombs they were excavating in Egypt that very moment, shipping back crates of slabs with carvings like the funnies—many of which included pomegranates.

And here's the thing: Every one was in a different room. Or hall. Or wing. Each of which required a walk between them. A walk that became a journey behind the old lady's unhurried hobble. The sound of her brass-tipped cane striking the marble floor echoed throughout the galleries, but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, I'd say she took it as her birthright.

Along this expedition, the lady—“Mrs. Harry Ellsworth, née Edith Inness, how do you do”—filled the time with a slow but constant stream of opinions. Somehow I couldn't get a word in edgewise, as she condemned some industrialist's shockingly “paltry” donation to the museum, and compared some painter she thought was a “fraud” to another she found “sublime,” and complained how her daughter was marrying “the wrong sort” of man. (Whoever he was, I guessed he would be considered very much the right sort in my neighborhood.) One thing was for sure: Mrs. Harry Ellsworth was not a woman to be interrupted.

So I listened and I followed at a glacial pace, shuffling my feet alongside hers. Each room came with a story, a whole oration of history and religion and wars and wardrobes, in which each pomegranate came delivered.

And every time the story around that little fruit changed, the meaning changed along with it.

So for the Egyptians, the pomegranate suggested success and prosperity. But for the Greeks it was the fruit of the dead.

In ancient China, they thought it brought lots of babies, while in India, it was a cure for diarrhea.

The ancient Hebrews used it to represent the fertility of the Promised Land. But they also suspected it was the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden.

Mrs. Ellsworth lingered on one painting—“Italian Renaissance, dear”—and nattered on about perspective and modeling. I just saw a naked baby Jesus, a halo tipped off the back of His head like a silver dinner plate, straining out of the Virgin Mary's arms. The object that drew His attention turned out to be a book (I guess reading at under a year was another of His miracles), which He studied with the same focus Daddo gave the day's racing form.

Just to the right of His chubby elbow was an open
pomegranate. “An emblem of the Church,” explained the label next to the painting, “a symbol of both Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.” Life and death, all mixed together. As I drew closer to inspect it, I saw that its seeds were scattered along the table. But unlike the dark glistening seeds of Mrs. Sewell's painting, these looked pale, somewhat dry, a listless pink.