The Shadow of Your Smile

47

On Saturday morning, Nan picked Monica up in a cab at nine fifteen and they drove uptown to St. Vincent Ferrer Church on Lexington Avenue. The funeral Mass for Olivia Morrow was scheduled for ten A.M. On the way up, Nan phoned the rectory and asked to speak to the priest who would be celebrating the Mass. His name, she learned, was Father Joseph Dunlap. When he got on the phone she explained to him why she and Monica would be present.

“We’re hoping you can help Dr. Farrell find someone who may have been a confidant of Ms. Morrow,” Nan told the priest. “Dr. Farrell had an appointment to meet her on Wednesday morning because on Tuesday Ms. Morrow had revealed that she knew the identity of the doctor’s birth grandparents. Dr. Farrell’s father was adopted, so she’s never known anything about her ancestry. Unfortunately Ms. Morrow passed away during the night. Dr. Farrell is hoping that someone attending the funeral Mass may have the information Ms. Morrow planned to give her.”

“If anyone can understand the need to trace family roots, I can,” Father Dunlap responded. “Over the years I have encountered that situation regularly in my pastoral duties. I intend to eulogize Olivia following the gospel. Why don’t I tell Dr. Farrell’s story when I conclude my remarks, and say that she will be waiting in the vestibule to speak with anyone who might be helpful?”

Nan thanked him and hung up. When they arrived at St. Vincent’s, Monica and Nan deliberately sat near the back so that they could observe the people who attended the funeral Mass. At five minutes of ten the rich sound of the organ began to fill the church. By then there were not more than twenty people in the pews.

“Be not afraid, I go before you…” As Monica listened to the lovely soprano voice of the soloist, she thought, Be not afraid, but I am afraid. I am afraid that I may have lost my only link to my father’s ancestry.

At precisely ten o’clock, the door opened and Father Dunlap walked down the aisle to receive the casket. To Monica’s astonishment, the only person following it was Dr. Clay Hadley.

As the casket was escorted to the foot of the altar, Monica did not miss the startled look Hadley gave her when their eyes met. She watched as he took a place in the first pew. No one joined him there.

“Maybe that man is a relation who could be helpful,” Nan whispered to Monica.

“That’s her doctor. I met him Wednesday evening. He’s not going to be any help,” Monica whispered back.

“Then I don’t think we’re going to get very far,” Nan said, keeping her naturally resonant voice low. “There are so few people here and that man is the only one in the area that’s usually reserved for family.”

Monica thought of her father’s funeral in Boston five years earlier. The church had been crowded with friends and colleagues. The people sitting with her in the first row had been Joy and Scott Alterman. Just after that Scott became obsessed with her. Monica stared at the casket. As far as family goes, that’s the way it’s going to be for me, she thought. Olivia Morrow apparently doesn’t have a single relative to mourn her and neither would I if that bus had hit me. Pray God that will change someday.

Unwanted, Ryan Jenner’s face came into her mind. He seemed so surprised when I told him I didn’t want any gossip about us. In a way that’s as disappointing as the fact that he’s involved with someone else. Is he so casual about his relationships that he could have a serious girlfriend at home and allow himself to be linked with me in the hospital?

The same question had made her lie awake during the night.

The Mass had begun. She realized she had been making the responses to the opening prayers by rote.

The Epistle was read by Clay Hadley: “If God is for us, who shall be against us…” His voice was strong and reverential as he read the letter of St. Paul to the Romans.

Father Dunlap offered the intercessions. “We pray for the repose of the soul of Olivia Morrow. May the angels attend her to a place of refreshment, light, and peace.”

“Lord, hear our prayer,” the congregation murmured.

The Gospel was from St. John and the same one Monica had chosen to be read at her father’s funeral. “Come all of you who are heavily burdened…”

When the Gospel ended and they sat down again, Nan settled back in the pew. “He’s going to talk about her now,” she whispered.

“Olivia Morrow was a parishioner here for the past fifty years,” the priest began. As Monica listened, he spoke of a caring and generous person, who after her retirement and until her health failed had been a Eucharistic minister who regularly had brought Holy Communion to patients in hospitals. “Olivia never wanted recognition,” Father Dunlap said. “Even though she had worked her way to a position of authority in a renowned department store, in private she was modest and unassuming. An only child, she had no relatives to be with us today. This was not to be, but she is now in the presence of the God she served so faithfully. There is a reason to wish she had been with us for one more day. Let me share with you what Olivia told a young woman only hours before her death…”

Let someone have something to tell me that will be helpful, Monica prayed. I’m finally understanding Dad’s need to know. I need to know. Let someone here be able to help me.

The final prayers were said. Father Dunlap blessed the casket and the attendants from the funeral home came forward and lifted it to their shoulders. As the soloist sang, “Be not afraid, I go before you,” the mortal remains of Olivia Morrow were moved from the church to the hearse. In the vestibule, Monica and Nan watched as Clay Hadley got into a car behind the hearse.

“That was her doctor and he didn’t even take a minute to talk to you,” Nan said, her tone critical. “Didn’t you tell me that you sat and talked with him while you waited for the medics to come?”

“Yes, I did,” Monica replied. “But the other day he did specifically say that he knew nothing about whatever it was Olivia Morrow was going to tell me.”

As the congregation began to leave, a few people stopped to say that they were employees at Schwab House but didn’t know anything about any personal information Ms. Morrow intended to share. Several others explained they had sometimes spoken to her after Mass, but she had never referred to anything of a personal nature.

The last to leave was a woman who obviously had been crying. With graying blond hair, wide cheekbones, and a broad frame, she looked to be in her midsixties. She stopped to speak with them. “I am Sophie Rutkowski. I was Ms. Morrow’s cleaning woman for thirty years,” she said, her voice quivering. “I don’t know anything about what she wanted to tell you, but I wish you had met her. She was such a good person.”

Thirty years, Monica thought. She might know more about Olivia Morrow’s background than she realizes.

It was obvious Nan had the same thought. “Ms. Rutkowski, Dr. Farrell and I are going to have a cup of coffee. Won’t you join us?”

The woman looked hesitant. “Oh, I don’t think-”

“Sophie,” Nan said briskly. “I’m Nan Rhodes, the doctor’s receptionist. This is a sad time for you. Talking about Ms. Morrow with us over a cup of coffee will make you feel better, I promise.”

A block away they found a coffee shop and settled in at a table. Monica watched in admiration as Nan made the other woman comfortable telling her that she could so understand how sad Sophie must be. “I’ve been working for Dr. Farrell for almost four years,” she said, “and when I heard that she was almost killed in an accident, I can’t tell you how upset I was.”

“I knew that the end was coming,” Sophie said. “Ms. Morrow has been failing for this last year. Her heart was bad, but she said she didn’t want any more surgery. She had the aortic valve replaced twice. She said…”

Sophie Rutkowski’s eyes filled with tears. “She said that there is a time to die and that she knew her time was coming soon.”

“Didn’t she have any family at all whom you met?” Nan asked.

“Just her mother, and she died ten years ago. She was very old, in her early nineties.”

“Did she live with Ms. Morrow?”

“No. She always had her own apartment in Queens but they saw a lot of each other. They were very close.”

“Did Ms. Morrow have much company as far as you know?” Monica asked.

“I honestly couldn’t be sure. I was only there on Tuesday afternoons for a couple of hours. That was all she needed. No one ever lived who was neater than Ms. Morrow.”

Tuesday, Monica thought. She died sometime between Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. “How did she seem to you when you saw her this past Tuesday?”

“I’m sorry to say I didn’t see her. She had gone out.” Sophie shook her head. “I was surprised she wasn’t home. She’s been getting so weak. I vacuumed and dusted and changed the sheets on her bed. I did the little wash there was. I don’t mean I washed the sheets. She sent them out. They were very fine cotton and she liked them to be done at a special laundry. I used to tell her I’d be happy to iron them but she wanted them done just so. This past Tuesday, I was only there for an hour. She was so generous. She always paid me for three hours, even though I told her I couldn’t find another thing to clean or polish.”

Olivia Morrow liked everything done just so. That was obvious, Monica thought. Why is it I keep thinking about that pillowcase that didn’t match the others: “Sophie, I noticed that there were lovely peach sheets on the bed but that one of the pillowcases didn’t match the other three. It was a pale pink shade.”

“No, Doctor, you must be wrong,” Sophie said flatly. “I’d never make that mistake. This past Tuesday, I put on the peach sheets. She had other sets, of course, but she preferred the pastels. One week the peach set went on. The next week the pink set.”

“What I’m getting at, Sophie,” Monica said, “is that when I saw Ms. Morrow’s body on Wednesday evening, I could see that she had bitten her lip. I thought it might have bled on the pillowcase and she decided to change it.”

“If she bit her lip and bled onto the pillowcase, she would have put that pillow aside and used one of the two spares on the bed,” Sophie said emphatically. “You must have noticed how full those pillows are. She wouldn’t have had the strength, or even tried, to change the pillowcases. No way.” She sipped her coffee. “No way,” she repeated for emphasis. Then she paused. “I work for a number of people at Schwab House. One of the handymen told me that Dr. Hadley had been to see Ms. Morrow Tuesday night. Maybe if there was blood on the pillowcase, she asked him to change it. That she would do.”

“Yes, of course that’s possible,” Monica conceded. “Sophie, I’m going to run ahead to visit a patient at the hospital. Thank you for joining us, and if anything comes to you about anyone who might have any knowledge of what Ms. Morrow wanted to tell me, please call. Nan will give you the phone numbers where both of us can be reached.”

Twenty-five minutes later she was stepping off the elevator to the Pediatric floor of the hospital. When she stopped at the nurses’ desk, a slender woman with salt-and-pepper hair was talking to Rita Greenberg. Monica noticed that Rita looked relieved to see her.

“You’d better speak to Sally’s doctor,” she told the woman. “Dr. Farrell, this is Susan Gannon.”

Susan turned to face Monica. “Doctor, my former husband, Peter Gannon, is the father of Sally Carter. I know he is barred from visiting her, but I am not. Will you take me to her, please?”