The Gallery

by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

  “Is that so hard to believe?” He seemed hurt and set about tidying up his suit, as if his footman’s uniform were to blame.

  “Not at all,” I chuckled. “It explains everything.” It explained what a scolding know-it-all he was and why I always felt as if he were going to chide me for not finishing my reading.

  “I taught in a school, Greek and Latin. I taught boys like you.”

  “I’m not a boy,” I retorted.

  “No, that is true. Girls do not study Greek or Latin. But you are like them. You want only for me to give you the answers, do none of the study yourself.”

  “Girls can so study Greek and Latin!” I flashed.

  “I did not say that they couldn’t.” He bowed slightly. “I say that, as a rule, they do not.” And he smiled, waiting for me to disprove him.

  “So what happened?” I sidestepped. “How did you end up here?”

  He paused again before speaking. “My parents had a café. They made—how do you say—pasticcini?”

  “Pasta? Like noodles?”

  “No, like cannoli—”

  “Oh, pastry!”

  “Yes,” he pointed at me lightly, “this is it. We would work in the shop with them, my older brother and I. Long, long hours. Seven days a week, only an afternoon off every two Sundays.

  “My brother and I hated this work. We loved books. He says, okay, he will help with the shop if I can go to school. And then he will go to school next. So that is what we did: I went to school with my fingers in books, and he stayed with his fingers in the pastry. I studied Greek, Latin, even English.” He cleared his throat. “Also Italian. I speak some Italian.

  “I started teaching. This, I love. Even with the students who were not so good; when I would share these stories,” and here he gestured to the painting, “I would see their eyes . . . how do you say? Lighten? Light up? How incredible, I thought. To share the same stories that speak to the imagination for thousands of years, right here, today.”

  “But why aren’t you a teacher anymore?”

  “My brother also had dreams. He wanted a new life in America. When my mother died, he cannot bear to stay any longer. He worked so many years for me. So I came with him.”

  “No,” I said frustrated. “Why aren’t you a teacher here?”

  Alphonse shook his head. “You Americans—you are more interested in making new stories than hearing the old stories. Not so much interested in the classics, and not so many teacher jobs for foreigners.” He flapped the lapels of his footman uniform again. “But always many jobs for servants. It is the land of opportunity, after all. For some,” and he looked around the room, with its silk wallpaper and ceiling like a cathedral. And back to the lady in the painting, with her own display of luxury.

  “And what new life did your brother discover in America?” I asked.

  He seemed to return to himself, assuming a businesslike manner. “None at all,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  I flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “Now this painting.” He moved on. “Sophonisba. A great woman hero of Roman literature—Petrarch? Yes, Petrarch. But the cup . . . perhaps this is why Mrs. Sewell chose it.”

  I looked at the painting again. At the young maid bringing her mistress that drink. Perhaps a nice hot cup of tea, just as I had brought Rose this morning.

  “Oh,” Alphonse reached into his jacket pocket, “also. When I get the painting,” he said, “the lady also give me this book. To return downstairs.” But instead of returning it to the library, he handed it to me: a small leather-bound volume, with gilt-edged pages. I opened it to the first page, which read: Great Heroines of Antiquity.

  —

  For the rest of the day, I sneaked looks between making tracks with the carpet sweeper. Waiting for Ma to pass from room to room, I hid behind sofas I was supposed to be plumping and paged through the chapters with dusty fingers.

  Sophonisba . . . well, quite honestly, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. First she married one fellow, then some other one. One or another got defeated by the Romans in a war. The Romans wanted to parade Sophonisba around like some kind of victory trophy, and her husband said death would be preferable to this (which I guess was easy for him to say). So he sent her a cup of poison, and she drank it.

  I scuttled back to the gallery like a mouse, staying close to the walls.

  The drape was still off, forgotten on the floor. And on the canvas, the young maid still had her back to me, as she offered the seashell cup of poison to her mistress, sent by the husband.

  Her husband sent a cup of poison. Her maid gave it to her. She drank it.

  I pictured Rose again from this morning. Pale. Unsteady. Blotchy. Not well.

  Could she really believe her husband was poisoning her? And that her servants—even me?—were the messengers?

  If this is what Rose suspected, I thought with a shiver down my spine, then she was either crazier than I thought . . . or in more danger than I could imagine.

  —

  It didn’t take me long to suspect just what mysterious substance was in that cup.

  And it didn’t take much to distract Bridie with a concocted task or to wait for Chef to sneak into the pantry for a nip of cooking wine.

  I ruled out Mrs. Sewell’s tea quickly enough—its packaging was fancier than necessary, to be sure, but its smell and its small, flaky, black leaves were like any tea I’d ever seen.

  Then there was that special sugar, secured by Mr. Sewell from some exotic location. A sugar that, when I put a bit on my tongue, actually tasted salty, just as Mrs. Sewell said, with a slightly metallic aftertaste.

  This couldn’t be some juvenile trick of Mr. Sewell’s, I thought, the way I used to put sugar in the salt cellar for April Fools’. Surely there was something in this salty-sugar or sugary-salt that was poisoning Rose.

  I tied a spoonful in my handkerchief. There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter

  16

  I trotted out my woman troubles story on Ma and headed back to Brooklyn early, willing the subway on to reach home before five o’clock, when Mr. Phelan closed his pharmacy. His was our local, the site of Sunday afternoons at the soda counter and late night knocks on his upstairs apartment door for fever reducers. But as my hand wrapped around the doorknob, and I glanced the back of his balding head through the window, I could already picture his skeptical, gossiping face. Whatever we discussed would be in Ma’s ear by nightfall.

  So without the door giving so much as a jingle, I walked on.

  The thing I love about Brooklyn is that you can cross countries and even continents, if you just keep walking long enough. So I kept walking deeper into Brooklyn, past signs for Flanagan’s Five and Dime (“Everything under the sun!”) and Gallagher’s Hardware (“Where your ‘to-do’ list gets done!”), past Gottschalk Household Goods (“It’s got to be Gottschalk!”), and Shapiro & Sons Fine Dresses (“If you can find a better price, your brother must be in the business!”), past butcher shops with names devoid of vowels and slogans. I stopped at a few shops with the telltale red cross hanging over their doors, but they were either closed or the babble of languages at the counter drove me back outside.

  I kept walking until I reached Bedford Avenue.

  Across Bedford was off-limits. Across Bedford was where “the other kind” lived, as Ma put it, and you didn’t want to go there alone.

  But then, Ma was wrong about a lot of things, I was starting to think.

  Here I was relieved to hear only English in the streets, but the voices had a different cadence—swingier, janglier, with broad English accents here and there—and people came in all shades, from almost as light as my “white Irish glow” to an astounding shade of blue-black. I held myself upright, on guard for the unnamed danger Ma always warned about, but no one gave me any notice. Other whites wandered
freely, shopping, even socializing with the men and women on the sidewalks, and I wondered: Did they not know about the unnamed danger . . . or did they believe Ma was wrong, too?

  When I saw the next red cross hanging over a lane, I turned and entered the shop underneath, relieved to escape the threat of a threat.

  The shop resembled Mr. Phelan’s in almost every way: a small soda counter and baubles up front, brightly colored boxes and bottles lining the walls, more mysterious potions behind the counter. The same mothers wiping kids with snotty noses, the same constipated-looking old biddies, the same shifty men in line with prescriptions for “medicinal” alcohol. I let out a small sigh of recognition.

  I compared the brands of hair tonic in too much detail until the bulk of the customers had cleared out.

  “I know what you’re looking for,” called out a soft voice, deep and royal with something like the King’s English.

  I turned cautiously, hoping he was speaking to another customer. But I was the only one left.

  “I keep them here, behind the counter,” said the man. His grizzled hair matched the white coat he wore over a natty suit, a camel color that seemed a natural outgrowth from his deep brown skin. As I drew closer, I was surprised to notice he had freckles like me. “Girls like you were stealing them, too embarrassed to ask.”

  He pushed an enormous box labeled Kotex across the counter to me. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, girl,” he clucked quietly. “It’s as natural as the tides.”

  My own freckles must have flared as my face turned red. “No, I’m not—I mean, that’s not why I’m—” I fumbled in my pocket for the handkerchief I’d knotted back at Bridie’s workstation. “Here,” I said, holding it out, “it’s this.”

  He looked at my hand for a moment, then plucked up the handkerchief gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

  “And this is . . .?” He left the thought unfinished.

  “No, nothing . . . unpleasant.” My mind scrambled for some plausible story. “My ma, uh, found a bottle in the kitchen. Unmarked, you see, with this . . . powder in it. She’s not sure if it’s sugar, or salt, or um, medicinal in nature. Maybe you could say?” He looked at me strangely. “She hates to throw it out if it’s useful,” I hastened to add.

  “Ah.” The pharmacist continued to weigh me with his eyes. “And naturally, she sent you here?” He cocked his head, taking in my cheeks, still pink, and my hair which had never seemed more red than in that moment.

  “Well,” I said, trying to sound assured and sophisticated, “I was passing through.”

  He chuckled to himself. “Yes. Passing through. Of course.” He weighed the handkerchief in his palm, bouncing it up and down slightly, while still considering me.

  Finally he set it on the counter and went to work on the knot.

  “Well, let’s see what you’ve brought me, Miss . . .?”

  “Oh. It’s Marth—Marguerite,” I blurted.

  More slow nodding. “Marguerite, it is? Well,” he reached over the counter to shake my hand, “how do you do? I am Dr. Murphy.”

  “Murphy?” I responded without thinking, “Oh, we have a whole Murphy clan on our block. Jack Murphy, John Murphy, Sean Murphy, the other Sean Murphy—” I stopped when I realized there wasn’t likely any relation.

  He smiled indulgently. “No, I don’t know them. I think we are from different parts of the isles.” He opened the handkerchief flat on the counter. “My Irish heritage comes by way of Jamaica.”

  I’d never met a black Irishman, but then, I’d never crossed Flatbush before either.

  The doctor manipulated the handkerchief a bit, watching the crystals of the powder shift and glimmer in the electric light that hung over the counter. Then he licked his pinkie, dipped it into the powder, and he touched it to the tip of his tongue. Like me, I saw him screw up his face a little.

  “Salty in taste.”

  “Yes, exactly!” I jumped in. He gave me that suspicious look again, and I shut up.

  “That indicates a sodium base. Could be one of several varieties though.” The door opened, letting in a neatly kept grandmother whose complaints could only be suggested in the broadest of terms. I moved back to the hair tonic until the pharmacist was able to decode and prescribe the right remedy. Once she left, he waved me back over. “Wait here,” he said, and went into the back room.

  He came back with a small glass test tube in its holder, a pitcher of water, and a small bottle marked silver nitrate.

  “You know this from chemistry class, yes?”

  I shrugged. “I’m a girl. I don’t think we take chemistry.”

  “That is the silliest thing you’ve said since you told me your name is Marguerite.”

  I said nothing in return to that.

  He dropped a pinch of the powder into the test tube. “Now,” he said, pouring a slug of water into the tube as well, “when you add a few drops of silver nitrate, the ions recombine, and what’s left behind is a precipitate.”

  “A what?”

  “Residue. Let’s say, stuff,” he said, swirling the tube until the crystals disappeared, absorbed into the water. He reached for the other bottle and picked up its dropper, then squeezed off a few drops of the substance into the test tube.

  “That is our magic, right there.” And like a real magician, he obscured the test tube with his hand, roiling it around and around in the air, its transformation hidden behind his palm. “If it is sodium chloride—simple table salt to you and me—we’ll see a clean white residue left behind.

  “Sodium fluoride, on the other hand,” and here he actually switched the tube to his left, still concealing its magic, “would leave behind nothing, as sodium fluoride is soluble.” He looked at my blank face. “It dissolves.” He peeked at the tube. “Is anyone in the family having tooth trouble?”

  I thought back to my conversation with Rose. She hadn’t had much opportunity to smile. But her teeth seemed strong and white, the teeth of a rich girl. I shook my head.

  “Then there’s sodium iodide.” The tube swirled its way back to his right hand. “There we’ll see a pale yellow precipitate.” This time he looked at me instead of the tube. “You’re a skinny girl, aren’t you? Quick, too.”

  “I suppose.”

  “How do you like fish?”

  I shrugged. “It’s all right. I love oysters, though! I can slurp down a dozen, raw. More if my dad dares me!” Then I shut my trap again, because I was supposed to be thinking about Rose’s symptoms, not mine. I wasn’t sure whether fish was on her menu of bland.

  He peeked again at the tube, then began to get the test tube stand ready. “That brings us to sodium bromide. In which we’d see a cloudy white residue. Something like a thickened cream.”

  Finally he held the tube up to the light.

  The liquid in the test tube spun like its own tornado, then calmed, a cloudy cluster of white settling to the bottom.

  We both stared at it for a minute. Then Dr. Murphy put the tube softly into the test tube holder.

  “Sodium bromide,” he began sternly, “is a strong treatment. It should never be left out, may God forbid, unlabeled. Should you mistake this for common table salt, the results could be dire.”

  “Dire,” I whispered. “Sir?”

  “Bromides have a long half-life.” He saw the confusion on my face and continued. “They don’t flush out of the system easily; they can stay in the blood for a long time, building up.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, but he could see that I still didn’t get it.

  “Yes, they may soothe symptoms at the beginning, but the more you use them, the more toxic they become. In low doses, side effects may be headaches, stomach discomfort with attending loss of appetite, along with the expected somnolence”— he paused—“sleepiness, even lethargy. But in higher doses one might see restlessness, irritability, confusion, disori
entation, even hallucinations. And on the skin sometimes—”

  “Rashes,” I whispered.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yes,” he consented, and I saw his gaze pass over my clear face, neck, and arms.

  “And—death?” I gasped.

  The doctor frowned this time. “No,” he said carefully. “At least—unlikely, at this dosage.”

  “So it wouldn’t kill you. But it would make you seem crazy?”

  “Yes. Still, it’s likely too strong a treatment—”

  “But—what is it a treatment for?”

  “There are much safer sedatives, if that is needed.” He pushed aside the test tube, and leaned a bit closer. His voice became kind rather than stern. “At home, is everything—”

  “What’s a sedative?”

  He spoke even more slowly, with more concern now, as if his own ponderous voice could slow my rapidly beating heart. “For nervous conditions. For calming nervousness, anxiety—”

  “Wild, strange behavior?”

  “Yes,” he assented.

  “So you’re saying,” I worked it out slowly, “you might take these—”

  “Bromides,” he prompted.

  “Bromides,” I acknowledged, “if you’re crazy.” I thought, and then said, “Wild. But if you take too much—or if someone gives you too much—they might make you crazier?”

  “Yes, that is one way to put it.” He thought for a moment, then reaffirmed, “Yes. I’m afraid so. Extended use could cause greater mental distress than any original symptoms.”

  And I remembered—for the first time—that outburst, quite literally that burst of energy and life, came the day after I’d forgotten to add the “sugar” to her porridge.

  “And if you stopped taking them all of a sudden—”