The Gallery by Laura Marx Fitzgerald

were empty. Well, nearly empty—at one point there must have been dozens, maybe even a hundred paintings crammed along those walls—the ones, I realized, that now populated Mrs. Sewell’s rooms upstairs.
    Today there were just four. They were hung along one side, neatly in a row, as if someone had begun planning an exhibition and then lost interest. Each was draped with a sheet, protected from my unworthy eyes.
    The spilled drink in question was located halfway between these sole survivors. The drape to one painting had been pulled aside, dragging halfway on the ground. I felt a shiver, as if witnessing the scene of a crime. I could picture Mr. Sewell strollinghere with his dinner guest, stopping to show off the artwork purchased by his once charmingly cultured wife, then dropping a drink (of club soda, no doubt) in surprise as smoke and a bloodcurdling scream emanated from downstairs, from the kitchen, from the . . . dumbwaiter?
    Shards of broken crystal littered the floor like a land mine, a warped circle outlining where the melting ice and liquid had seeped into the inlaid wood. A few flying shards had landed as far as the half-pulled drape, where the sheet pooled on the floor. I’d have to shake it out—without pulling down the painting behind it.
    I stood back to assess the job. The painting was tall, high, much taller than me, and the sheet clung to its top right corner.
    And behind the sheet, beckoned two hands. Delicate and white, with long tapered fingers, one circling the wrist of the other, which clutched—what exactly?
    With my thumb and forefinger, I pulled back the sheet a bit more, revealing an apple, held possessively, close to the chest.
    Now I gave the sheet a billowing yank and found myself face-to-face with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
    Eve. The apple said it all.
    Poor Eve, I thought. In every stained-glass window and Bible picture, she was always cold and naked, a fig leaf stuck to her nethers, shoving an apple into Adam’s mouth. Or she’s only slightly more covered in animal skins, as God banishes her from the garden, following Adam with the requisite weeping and gnashing of teeth.
    Also, she always has a belly button, which just makes no sense at all, if you think about it.
    But this painter—an Italian guy, ROSSETTI , the little brass label read—lavished his Eve with a rich peacock green fabric that spilled around her like a waterfall. He’d chosen the color to match her intensely serious blue-green eyes, and against it the apple seemed frankly dull in comparison. It was some kind of apple I’d never seen before, which made sense because everyone knows the best grocers are always Italian.
    Another thing I liked about this Eve is that Adam was nowhere to be found. I’d never seen a painting of just Eve alone before. Come to think of it, she usually appeared with the subtlety of a moving picture actress, batting her eyelashes at Adam or wailing behind him or letting herself be sweet-talked by the villain-snake. But here she was lost in her own thoughts, looking so fixedly at something beyondme. And instead of foisting the apple on Adam, she held on to it, like it was hers and hers alone.
    Maybe if she’d kept all that knowledge to herself, I thought, there wouldn’t have been a Fall. After all, it was Adam who spilled the beans to God.
    â€œWhat are you doing in here?”
    I whirled around. Alphonse’s head was peeking through the double doors.
    â€œMa sent me in.” I rattled the glass shards in my dustpan. “To clean up a spill.”
    â€œAh.” The head disappeared back into the hall, then reappeared followed by the rest of Alphonse’s body. His long legs had him standing by me in an instant. “You look at the paintings.” He said it as an accusation rather than an observation.
    â€œThe sheet fell off,” I lied automatically.
    But he wasn’t listening. He was looking,