The Shadow of Your Smile

53

After sharing coffee with Monica and Nan following Olivia Morrow’s funeral Mass, Sophie Rutkowski went home to her nearby apartment, the memory of her many years with Olivia paramount in her mind.

I wish I had been there when she died, Sophie thought, as she changed from her good slacks and jacket into the sweatshirt and cotton pants that were her work clothes. It’s such a shame she was alone. When I go, I know my children will be around me to say good-bye. If they get any warning that I am dying, nothing on earth would keep them away…

Dr. Farrell, what a lovely-looking girl she is. Hard to believe that she’s a doctor and very highly respected, according to what they wrote in the paper after that bus almost killed her. Ms. Morrow didn’t have a single family member at the funeral. The priest even mentioned that in his sermon. He spoke so nicely about Ms. Morrow. Dr. Farrell was so disappointed when I couldn’t tell her what Ms. Morrow meant when she said she knew the doctor’s grandparents. Dr. Farrell has no family, either. Ah, dear God, people have so many problems and it’s hard to face them alone…

On that somber note Sophie picked up her knitting needles. She was making a sweater for her newest grandchild and had a spare half hour until it was time to go to the one job she didn’t like. It was at Schwab House on Saturday afternoons, starting at one o’clock, in an apartment three floors down from the one where Olivia Morrow had lived.

The couple who owned it were both writers who worked at home. The reason they liked to have their apartment cleaned on Saturday afternoon was because by noon they were on their way to their country home in Washington, Connecticut.

Sophie continued at the job for only one reason; they paid her double to give up her Saturdays, and with fifteen grandchildren that money made it possible for her to do all the little extras for them their parents couldn’t afford.

Even so, it gets harder and harder to work here, Sophie thought, as at one o’clock promptly, she put her key in the door of the apartment. Those two are nothing like Ms. Morrow, she told herself, not for the first time. A few minutes later she started to empty overflowing wastebaskets, pick heaps of damp towels off the bathroom floor, and clear the refrigerator of half-empty cartons of Chinese food. There’s a word for them, she sighed: slobs.

At six o’clock, when she left, the apartment was spotless. The dishwasher had been emptied, the laundry folded in the linen closet, the shades drawn exactly halfway down in all five rooms. They tell me how nice it is to come home on Monday and find it like this, Sophie thought. Why don’t they try keeping it like this?

Ms. Morrow’s apartment, she sighed. People would be going through it. It’s such a nice one, a lot of people will want to buy it. Ms. Morrow had told her that Dr. Hadley would take care of everything.

As Sophie pressed the button for the elevator, a thought occurred to her. If Ms. Morrow had bled on the pillow when she bit her lip, the soiled pillowcase would be in the laundry bag. And what about the bed? When they took away poor Ms. Morrow’s body, I bet nobody bothered to make the bed. I don’t want strangers to go into her home and see it with an unmade bed and a soiled pillowcase in the laundry bag, she thought.

The elevator came. She pushed the button to go up to the fourteenth floor. I have a key to her apartment, she thought. I’m going to do the last thing I can ever do for the poor soul-change her sheets. Take that soiled pillowcase home, launder it, make her bed and put the spread on, so that whoever goes into her apartment can appreciate what it looked like when she lived in it.

Comforted at the thought that she could offer one final service to a lady who had been very kind to her, Sophie got off on the fourteenth floor, took out her key, and opened the door of Olivia Morrow’s apartment.