The Gallery

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  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.

  The more I walked, and the more Mrs. Ellsworth talked, the less I understood about the pomegranates. Depending on where I looked, they were sometimes juicy, sometimes dusty. Sometimes the seeds looked like gems, sometimes like blood, sometimes like small insignificant pebbles. Sometimes they meant life, sometimes death, and everything in between.

  It seemed that the pomegranate could really mean anything. Which meant it meant nothing.

  We finally found ourselves back in the great entrance hall, where, without any paintings or sculptures to prompt a lecture, Mrs. Ellsworth finally stopped to place her full attention on me.

  “So, dear,” she said, settling back onto her stool behind the desk, “was that enough pomegranates for you, then? Did you find what you were looking for?” She studied my uniform with narrowed eyes. “Which household are you with, did you say?”

  As part of New York’s Fifth Avenue set, Mrs. Ellsworth surely knew the Sewells. Or knew of them, at least. And just as I was about to open my mouth, I remembered what Ma said: Discretion is the heart of a good servant.

  Then again, would I be at the museum right now if I were a good servant?

  Whatever my motivations, I had no trouble answering the question. “I work for the Duke house. Just across the street.”

  —

  Here’s something you may not know: There are no clocks in the Metropolitan Museum.

  I realized this as I stepped back out onto those majestic steps and found the sun dancing along the treetops in the park. It must have been at least four o’clock, I realized in a panic, and no matter how long Ma’s errand downtown would take, it would be over by now.

  As my feet flew down Fifth Avenue, all the useless pomegranate-stained knowledge tumbled around my brain: life and death and seeds and orbs and babies and poo.

  But what did it all mean to Mrs. Sewell? No matter how many pomegranates I saw or cultures I visited, none of it changed what it meant to one lady in her own strange reality.

  I was flying past Seventy-Eighth Street when, out of the corner of my eye, something stopped me in my tracks: a fruit peddler across the avenue. He was packing up his cart with a forlorn look, his long beard not quite covering the soup stains on his waistcoat. Business was bad today, he shook his head, bad every day if he was honest. Maybe another corner, another neighborhood. I cut him off, and delightedly he told me he had what I was looking for. Left over, he said, wrapping it in a brown paper bag, from some recent Jewish holiday. It felt a bit mushy in my hands, but it would do.

  —

  I was just going to open it, see the real appearance of the pomegranate’s seeds for myself, place one on my tongue and . . . what? Bite down? Suck until it disappeared like a candy button? Would it be juicy? Hard? Tart? Sweet? I slipped quietly through the servant’s entrance and headed for the kitchen, passing Ma’s hat and coat already hung on her usual hook. I cringed to think how long they’d been there.

  “Martha O’Doyle!” Bridie tutted as I plucked up the sharp knife at her elbow. “Now where have you been? Your ma has been searching high and low all afternoon for you.”

  I stopped, the knife tip poised on the fruit’s flesh.

  “What do you mean? Wasn’t she at the grocer all day?”

  Bridie giggled. “No, silly, just until noon. She was called back; Mr. Sewell has a new guest tonight. I heard it might be Clara Bow!”

  I groaned loudly enough to make Chef holler I’d make his soufflé fall. “You covered for me, right?”

  “Why, no, I said I had no idea where you were!” She nudged me gently out of the way as she hoisted up Mrs. Sewell’s supper tray—the sweetened tea, the sweetened porridge. “Really, I was so worried about you!”

  I’d have to come up with a really good story this time. Maybe something about a subway track fire. Or a lost orphan. I hadn’t used that one yet.

  “Where were you anyway?” Bridie slid the tray into the dumbwaiter, then stopped, taking in my strange fruit. “Out shopping for produce? You know we order in all the marketing.”

  I looked at the pomegranate still held firm to the cutting board. Suddenly I had no interest in seeing its glistening, glimmering guts.

  But then I had another idea.

  “This,” I shoved the pomegranate into Bridie’s hands. “It’s for supper. For Mrs. Sewell. Ma asked me to get it.” Bridie blinked. “As a treat,” I finished.

  “Oh, well then, thank you! What an interesting addition. How do I prepare it then?” Bridie questioned cheerfully. “Shall I slice it for her, or perhaps I could—”

  I grabbed it away, searching and finding a small, deep bowl, which would keep the pomegranate from rolling away. “Like this,” I said, placing the bowl on the tray and closing up the dumbwaiter. “Just . . . just like this.”

  And before Bridie could ask any more questions, I pulled the cord, pulled and pulled and pulled it, sending the fruit to its destination in the sky.

  What would that simple red globe mean to Mrs. Sewell? Heaven? Earth? Life? Death? Or simply a snack?

  Would it be the very thing she’d been craving, hoping for, obsessing over? Would it cure her of her obsession, bringing her confusion to an end?

  Or would it set off an episode that would make the Night of the Plain Porridge look like a tea party?

  For the next hour, I alternated between being chased out of the kitchen by Chef, playing Cat and Mouse with Ma, and sneaking back down to the kitchen again. When I heard the squeak of the dumbwaiter descending past the first floor butler’s pantry, I flew down the stairs again.

  “Mrs. Sewell did not care for that fruit, I can tell you.”

  I pushed Bridie out of the way (in true Bridie fashion, she apologized to me: “Oh, so sorry, I’m so clumsy!”) and snatched back the pomegranate.

  Bridie was right. The fruit was still where I’d placed it on the tray, unopened, mushy and unappetizing.

  But then I picked it up. And I saw that Mrs. Sewell had done the same.

  And with small, shallow nicks—pressed in with a fingernail, it looked like—she had spelled out a single word:

  HELP.

  Chapter

  9

  Sunday, for me, was no day of rest.

  When I was in school and it was just Ma who worked, Sundays started early. With Daddo always on the road, it was up to me to give Ma a break. I’d let her sleep in a bit and help get the boys ready for Mass, which meant twenty wriggling toes to stuff into four stiff shoes and one million hairs to plaster down, each one pointing a different direction. Then there was Mass itself which our Father Riordan seemed to want to wrap up as quickly as we did, but it still meant forty-five minutes of distracting the monkeys so Ma could listen to the homily.

  Then we’d all pitch in—well, Ma and I would while the boys snuck away to play army men under the bed—on all the cleaning that’d gone undone all week. After that was Ma’s “Sunday holiday.” This was Ma’s one and only luxury in life: an hour or two in bed, her corset discarded, a pot of tea and Jane Eyre near at hand.

  I was charged with keeping the boys out, and when I was younger, chasing the boys through the rain or bracing myself for another snowball fight, I resented Ma’s laze abouts. Now that I, too, had spent from Monday dawn to past-dusk Saturday on my feet,
I should have demanded a holiday of my own.

  But now a day running after the boys felt like a lark compared to a day up to the elbows in Murphy Oil Soap. I thought through our usual Sunday haunts: the stickball game on Willoughby Street, the empty lot where you could shoot bottles with Jimmy McGarry’s BB gun, following the drunks as they left Donovan’s speak, hoping for falling pennies.

  But the fall weather had taken the weekend off, allowing winter to visit in its absence, and the gray skies and biting wind were conspiring to drive us inside.

  —

  “Aw, sis, this place is lousy. Whadda we s’pose to do here?” Timmy whined loudly.

  Though I’d never entered its halls before, something about the library made me shush my brother with a rap on the head. It wasn’t so much the quiet or the other patrons as the dark wood and hanging brass lamps put me in mind of being in church.

  “Nah, Tee, you got it all wrong.” Willy had already pulled a reference book off the shelf and was preparing to rip a page right down the middle. “Lookit all the paper airplanes we can make.”

  “C’mon, Dubs, that won’t work. Put some spit on it!” Timmy jumped in when the page stayed fast.

  “Hands up!” I broke in, and both boys reached for the sky, like cornered gangsters, knowing from Daddo that a dawdling response would mean a slap on the head. I swiftly cleared the table of all books, the one I’d gotten from the librarian safe under my arm. “You’re in a library for pity’s sake. Keep up the roughhousing, and you’ll get raw chicken for dinner like the junkyard dogs you are.”

  “I wanted to go to the pictures!” Timmy huffed. He’d gotten the idea somewhere that my newfound wages were earmarked for his pleasure budget.

  As usual, Willy joined in. “Me too!”

  “Well,” I settled myself in a chair at the table, “what I’m going to read you—”