“Indeed we are, Mr. Sewell.” My mother beamed.
“And this team needs strong players who are willing to pitch in and do their share, never looking for glory for themselves—only for the team. Am I right, Mrs. O’Doyle?”
My ma gave a little nodding bow. “Correct as usual, Mr. Sewell.”
“Let me ask you a question, Martha,” and here he settled himself on the edge of his desk. “Do you read the paper?”
“Oh, yes, every day, Mr. Sewell,” I lied, and Ma frowned.
“So who do you like in this election—Hoover, or your countryman there, Mr. Al Smith?”
Everyone in our neighborhood loved Al Smith, New York’s former mayor, a mick like us who, as a “wet” called for the end of Prohibition—for alcohol to be made legal again. You couldn’t walk the street without hearing his campaign song, an old saloon favorite, “The Sidewalks of New York.” But I looked at Ma before answering and saw that she shook her head, ever so slightly.
“I couldn’t exactly say, Mr. Sewell.”
Here he laughed and looked at Ma. “Here’s the problem with you ladies: you get the vote, but you don’t necessarily get the brains.”
I could only think of what wrath Ma would rain down on some poor neighborhood chump who said this. But here, in Mr. Sewell’s office, she just nodded.
He turned back to me. “Hoover’s who you want. He’s got the vision our team needs. He’s not going to turn this country back into a two-bit saloon.”
Here Ma broke out into spontaneous applause. Ma may have marched for the vote once, but she’d marched for the Eighteenth Amendment to outlaw alcohol, too, and the fact that oceans of booze still washed over the country did nothing to dampen her ardor.
“Your mother understands, see? She understands what America needs to stay on the path to success. And what would that be?”
I was thinking of Daddo who used to say, “The parents of Success are a Little Bit of Luck and Not a Little Bit of Money,” when Mr. Sewell jumped in again. “Vision! Why, look at my example. I started with nothing but a small newspaper, an inconsequential outfit in Poughkeepsie, bought by my father on a lark. But I had one single-minded vision. And now, that small outfit is the most important paper in the greatest city in the world!”
I guessed that if his father published newspapers “on a lark,” then Mr. Sewell probably started out with a bit more in his pocket than vision. But I just nodded and said, “Yes, sir!” like a rescued urchin in a dime novel.
The master began to pace the room, his legs striding over the rug’s bold motifs, like a giant overtaking continents. “And just by working here, you will have an advantage I didn’t. You will do your job surrounded by success.” He beckoned me to the window, where all of Central Park was laid out. “There’s New York’s jewel, available for your viewing any time of day. Do you know what the apartment block going up on Seventy-Sixth Street is charging for that view?”
I didn’t, and anyway, I wasn’t viewing anything from the bowels of the kitchen. But I just whistled under my breath. “That’s really something, Mr. Sewell.”
He put his hands on my shoulders. “Well, Martha, now you have your vision, don’t you? ‘The nearer we live to the source of wealth, the more wealth we shall receive.’ Do you know what book that’s from?”
“The Bible?” I ventured, figuring when someone asks you a question about a book, you should always guess the Bible.
He chuckled. “Not exactly. Why, take a look at all these books,” and he gestured dismissively to the volumes that surrounded him. “Thousands of dollars spent by my wife and her father, touring Europe, shipping back books and paintings and gewgaws like this.” He plinked a bronze statue of a Greek god on his desk with his fingernail. “And yet there are only two books in the world any man—or girl—needs. You’ve guessed one: the Bible.” Mr. Sewell sent an approving look at my mother. “And the other, from which my quote was drawn?”
“Erm, The Lives of the Saints?” That’s what Sister Ignatius would expect to hear.
Here he grimaced. “No. It’s The Science of Getting Rich. Science!”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Science of Getting Rich—that book will tell you everything you need to know. Plenty of advice for good living in the Bible, too. Did you know Jesus was the world’s greatest businessman? That’s from The Man Nobody Knows, and you should read that, too.”
“Oh, yes, sir, The Man Nobody Knows.”
“Yes, sir, is right. ‘Pluck, not luck’ is what I always say. Let me hear it.”
“Pluck, not luck,” I repeated.
“Louder!” he rumbled from his gut.
“Pluck, not luck!” I piped up.
“LOUDER!” and this time, his roar filled the library, and I was afraid those hundreds of useless books would be rattled off their shelves.
I summoned up a roar to match. “PLUCK, NOT LUCK!”
Mr. Sewell burst into a laugh and turned to Ma, pumping her hand up and down.
“A fine girl, Mrs. Sewell, and we’ll turn her into a fine American yet. Martha, I’m going to start you off with a leg up. What do you say to a raise?”
I looked excitedly at Ma, who had already promised I could keep thirty cents a week toward the bicycle I wanted.
“Oh, Mr. Sewell,” Ma blushed, “sure, you’re too generous. Just to take on Martha at all has been—”
He silenced her with a wave of his hand and dug into a pocket on his waistcoat. Into my hand he dropped two pennies, which clinked dully together, as if even they were embarrassed.
“Fourteen cents more a week, Mrs. O’Doyle; two cents a day for the Daily Standard each morning. See to it. Your daughter will have the vote soon enough, and she’ll need the vision of my paper to keep her—and this country—on the right path.”
“Oh, thank you, Mr. Sewell,” I mustered, closing the two dull coins in my fist.
“Just remember, you may have gotten this job thanks to your mother, but you’ll only keep it thanks to your own hard work. We reward dedication and commitment here, and shirkers will be shown the door, no matter who their parents.”
As I backed out the door, as if leaving the presence of a king, I spotted yesterday’s Daily Standard in a wastebasket. I snagged it and tucked the pennies into my shoe.
—
Pluck (not luck) was all well and good, but it did nothing to vanquish those carrot cubes and greasy pots and tea trays. The basement tedium dragged on without interruption for a week or two—until one night, with the last copper pan polished and shining and hung over the stove, my mother reported that Mr. Sewell would be dining at home that night. Late. With a guest.
Well, that’s when the pots really started flying.
“Just some sandwiches,” Mr. Sewell had said, but Chef started in on some kind of puff pastry and insisted I hack the bones out of a chicken. Then Ma started squawking about the dinner tray, which I guess I’d forgotten to send up.
A pile of unpeeled potatoes still loomed at my elbow, where hot oil drippings landed from Chef’s scalding spoon.
“Why can’t she eat whatever Chef’s creation there is?” I whined. “Or we could give her some of the vegetable slop he made for lunch,” I said, ignoring Chef’s glare. “There’s plenty of that left over.”
“Shirkers will not be tolerated. That’s what Mr. Sewell said, and he meant it. And so do I.”
Ma was called off to supervise the table, and I managed to get Mrs. Sewell’s dinner tray into the dumbwaiter and out of sight, freeing me to finish Chef’s multicourse banquet for two, snatching bites of potato soufflé and rose-shaped slices of ham when he wasn’t looking.
By the time dinner was handed off to Alphonse for serving and the pots had been washed, it was well past ten o’clock and I was dead on my feet. I felt like I was climbing Everest instead of the back stairs behind Ma, and as we lef
t, I almost didn’t notice the shadowy figure loitering just outside the servants’ entrance. Instead of removing his hat as he entered, he pulled it further over his eyes and snub nose and pushed past us.
“Press for Mr. Sewell, ma’am,” he muttered, and flashed something in his wallet at her. She nodded and let him proceed.
“Who was that?”
“One of Mr. Sewell’s contacts,” she said, shutting the door firmly behind us, “and dinner guest, I presume. Many of the leads and stories he depends on take place behind closed doors.” She looked up and down the street before stepping out on the sidewalk. “Discretion, my dear. That’s the true secret to success in this job.”
I fell asleep on Ma’s shoulder before the train even left the Fifty-Ninth Street station. But around Thirty-Fourth Street, my eyes snapped open. In the distraction of the dinner rush, I’d sent up a nice, hot bowl of porridge to Mrs. Sewell, but I’d forgotten the fixings: no raisins, no cinnamon, not to mention any fancy sugar. I was about to tell Ma, who was nodding off herself, but then I thought of what Daddo would say: Don’t tell the Devil good day till you meet him. So I let the swaying of the train rock me back to sleep.
—
Early the next morning, as I slumped waiting for the train and the day’s drudgery, I dutifully peeked at the Daily Standard’s headlines:
HOOVER SHOWS VISION AT MILWAUKEE RALLY
‘SOFT’ DRINKS SALES SURE TO RISE
MIRACLE DRUG BUILDING INTEREST. . . .
But it was a headline on the Yodel that seized my attention:
WILD ROSE’S WILD NIGHT
New York’s Most Eccentric Recluse Steps Out—in a Dumbwaiter!
Nearly Burns Mansion to the Ground—Accident or Arson?
Chapter
4
I was relieved to find the Sewell mansion standing when we arrived.
Some smudges alongside the stove and a thick haze of smoke over the kitchen were the only evidence of Rose’s wild night. Whatever had happened, nothing had burned to the ground, besides Chef’s scrap bucket where a blazing rag seemed to have fallen.
Chef banged around the kitchen, furious to find his sanctum breached, ready to fend off any suggestion that it was he who left an olive oil–soaked rag too near a pilot light.
Upstairs was a symphony of slamming doors, books flung against walls, Ma’s running feet, and above it all, Mr. Sewell roared out his ire in the form of un-questions.
“I want answers, do you hear me!” he roared. “Does no one here know one damn thing about what’s going on in this house! Who is going to explain how this happened!”
I turned up the water in the scrub sink, but still scraps bounced down the servants’ stairs—“outrageous,” “disloyal,” “leak,” “like a sieve”—and I wasn’t sure what angered him most: that his crazy wife had tried to burn the house down on her way to a midnight stroll . . . or that the Yodel had scooped it?
And how had they found out? I wondered as I washed the dishes from Mr. Sewell’s supper. Once the food was on the table, the servants were expected to leave, to protect the master’s privacy. Only Alphonse, who served at the table, would have stayed to the end. . . .
A ringing of the front bell brought a temporary stay to the storm upstairs. And a few minutes later, Alphonse entered the kitchen. Chef looked up, hoping for a luncheon guest. “Non,” Alphonse shook his head, and Chef flung a handful of mirepoix vengefully across the room.
“Who’s here?” I asked Alphonse, grabbing a broom and dustpan to capture the tiny celery cubes.
“The doctor,” responded Alphonse. “The meesus is foul again.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Foul?”
“How you say—not foul, sick? The doctor wants some tea for the meesus. You make it.”
“Please,” I added in my head, as if correcting the twins. I put on the kettle and started a tea tray. “So what happened? You were here, right? Did the missus really ride in the dumbwaiter? Was she the one who set the fire?” I lowered my voice. “On purpose?”
Alphonse looked uncomfortable, but his eyes involuntarily flicked to the smoke-damaged range.
Did Alphonse discover the whole brouhaha while clearing plates to the kitchen? “Did you see the whole thing? Get over!” I punched him on the arm, which he frowned about and rubbed gingerly. “What did she look like? Was she nutty as a fruitcake? Was she foaming at the mouth?” A new thought occurred to me. “Was she trying to make something to eat? I’ll bet she was, after all that mush day in, day out.” Especially the plain porridge I’d accidentally served up.
I saw Alphonse recoil from my questions, as if he regretted the glance at the stove that had escaped him, maybe even regretted saying hello. He feigned either ignorance or indifference with a shrug and turned his back to me, retrieving a small book from his vest pocket to read while the water boiled.
Steam rose in me as it built in the kettle. To know what happened—to have been an eyewitness to the whole crazy scene—and to keep it to yourself! What was the point of knowing something if no one knew what you knew?
The silence expanded. Chef banged pans. I tried to catch Alphonse’s attention again, clinking china and clearing my throat. Alphonse leaned back against the workstation, but said nothing. A hint of steam appeared. Alphonse flipped a page. When I peeked at the book, he shifted so his back was more squarely to me. I flung a pot into the scrub sink and smiled when he reached for a handkerchief to dab the dirty water off his uniform.
Finally the watched pot had boiled and the tea was made, a gingersnap added as a kind of apology, too little too late. I thrust the tray at Alphonse, who barely looked up from his book.
“No, it’s for you. They ask you to bring it.”
“Me? Why? When?”
“Be quick, they say. As for why-—” He shrugged again slowly, but shot a look at the tea tray.
—
There is a step that a maid perfects in time, a step that is swift in speed, yet seems unhurried. It’s a dance between you and marble staircases and unsecured rugs where you glide effortlessly, your tray virtually hovering.
But I had not perfected this and had to stop outside Mrs. Sewell’s rooms to wipe off the saucer with my apron. It was only when I looked up that I noticed something strange on the landing: a cot, a washstand, a small table with a deck of cards in mid-solitaire.
The door opened up, and a wide, ruddy face popped out, like a tough working the door of a speakeasy. “What, girl?”
“They told me to come up!” I protested guiltily, but for what I didn’t know.
“Agh, the tea. Well, bring it in then. Don’t stand outside ogling.”
The man flung the door open and stood aside.
My breath caught in my throat.
What lay before me was no lady’s room. It was nothing short of a museum—or what I imagined a museum would look like. In just a small suite of rooms were crammed dozens of paintings, stacked three or four deep, leaning against walls or tables or wardrobes. Others were hung haphazardly, some big, some small, some dangling so they half jutted across a window, as if they were in a constant state of rotation, changed daily, hourly even, with every shifting mood.
No wonder she was nuts, I thought. The walls pulsated with life—no, with something larger than life. Gods and goddesses fought and frolicked. Dukes and duchesses followed me with their eyes. Winds swept through landscapes, and bowls of glistening fruit dangled out of reach. And in some pictures, lines shot this way and that, meeting nothing but squiggles and blocks of color. They added to the sense of madness, to the sense that every form of life had been sucked out of the house and stuffed somewhere incapable of containing its grandness. Like Mrs. Riordan’s son, George, who wanders Willoughby Street claiming to be King Tut, Queen Victoria, or Heavyweight Champion boxer Jack Dempsey, depending on the day.
“Martha!” My mother’s shar
p call summoned me back to Mrs. Sewell’s bedroom where a small crowd surrounded a canopied and curtained bed. I set the tea down on a marble-topped table, and when my mother gestured to stay, tried to will myself into the wallpaper.
“The dumbwaiter will have to be seen to,” came Mr. Sewell’s voice; he then raised it for another listener, as if speaking to a child. “You may always exit via the door, darling. You know we’re longing for you to join us downstairs. But this dumbwaiter business, it’s not safe.”
“What has she been reading?” The scolding voice came from a distinguished older man standing at the head of the bed, one hand through the curtains and the other holding a pocket watch. A stethoscope dangled from his neck.
“The paper, mostly,” my mother offered. “Mr. Sewell’s, of course. It’s good, sound thinking, and I believe it makes her feel—well, part of Mr. Sewell’s world.”
“Is that so?” responded the doctor. “It’s good of you”—he raised his voice in that fatherly way, as Mr. Sewell had done—“to take an interest in your husband’s affairs. But you should focus on your health at the moment. And what’s this?” He put away his watch and picked up a leather volume from the bedside table. “Ovid? Classical literature for an invalid, for heaven’s sake. And what’s this—Dante’s Inferno?” The doctor shook his head. “Inferno? And you wonder why she starts fires at the first opportunity?”
My mother cleared her throat. “She sometimes requests books from the library downstairs.”
“From my office, you mean?” Mr. Sewell huffed and shook his head. “I should have sold off that library. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on it.” I wondered if Mr. Sewell was mad that his wife wasn’t reading The Science of Getting Rich. Then again, she was already rich, so maybe she figured she didn’t need to.
“You can’t!” hissed a voice from inside the curtains. “They’re mine!” I saw a curtain billow out suddenly as if it had been kicked. The circle surrounding the bed widened for a moment, as everyone took a step back: Mr. Sewell, my mother, that flat-faced man who opened the door and now stood with his arms folded and feet apart, like a soldier at ease. I saw now that he wore some kind of all white uniform, almost like pajamas.
The Gallery Page 3
