The Shadow of Your Smile (24 page)

As if it were happening now, he could feel again the sensation of their arms touching as they sat next to each other at the crowded table in the Thai restaurant. She was enjoying herself, too, Ryan told himself. There’s no
way
that was an act.

Is there some guy important in her life? Maybe she was just being kind to warn me off? I’m not going to give up that easily. I’m going to call her. Last night, if she had been there, I intended to ask her to have dinner. Earlier this week, when I looked at the O’Keefe file in her office, I would have asked her to go out for dinner, but Alice had already roped me into going to that play.

Ryan finished his tea and got up. The cafeteria had thinned out. The daytime people were all in the process of leaving, and it was too early for the evening shift to have a dinner break. I’d like to go home, he thought, but Alice is probably still hanging around. She said she was busy tonight, but what does that mean? I don’t feel like sitting over a glass of wine with her until she goes out. I don’t know what time her plane is tomorrow, but as soon as I get up I’m leaving the apartment. I don’t know what excuse I’ll make, but I’m not sitting
across the breakfast table with her while she’s still in her fancy bathrobe. I feel as if she’s trying to play house with me.

Now if it was Monica across the table, it would be different . . .

Impatient and out of sorts, Ryan Jenner walked out of the cafeteria and went back to his in-hospital office. Everyone had left, and the cleaning woman was emptying wastebaskets. Her vacuum was in the middle of the reception area.

This is ridiculous, he thought. I can’t go home because I’m a nonpaying guest in my aunt’s apartment and I’m annoyed that she is allowing someone else to share it. I think that an impartial observer would call that colossal nerve on my part. I know now what I’m going to do tomorrow: I’m going to start hunting to find my own place.

The decision cheered him. I’ll stay here and go back through the O’Keefe file, he thought. Maybe I missed something when I looked at it the first time. Brain cancer doesn’t simply disappear. Could there have been a misdiagnosis? The general public hasn’t a clue how many times some seriously ill patients are given an all clear, and others are treated for conditions that don’t exist. If we were more open about it, the average person’s trust in the medical community would be shaken to the core. That’s why smart people get second and third opinions before they submit to radical treatment, or if after they’re told there’s nothing wrong, they listen to their own bodies telling them they have a problem.

The cleaning woman spoke. “I can vacuum later, Doctor,” she said.

“That would be great,” Ryan said. “I promise I won’t be too long.”

With a feeling of relief, he went into his private office and closed the door. He settled at his desk and reached into the drawer for the Michael O’Keefe file, then realized that his mind was churning with a question: is there any possibility that some nut is stalking Monica?

Ryan leaned back in his chair. It’s not impossible, he decided.
There are all kinds of people in and out of this hospital around the clock. One of them, maybe a visitor to some patient, might have seen Monica and become fixated on her. I remember my mother telling the story that years ago, when she was a nurse in a hospital in New Jersey, a young nurse was murdered. A guy with a history of assault had spotted her when he was visiting someone, followed her home, and killed her. It does happen.

Monica is the last person to want any kind of sensational publicity, but is she making a mistake not taking that witness seriously? I’m going to call her, Ryan decided. I simply have to talk to her. It’s just six o’clock. She might still be in her office.

He dialed, hoping against hope that she would either pick up the phone herself, or that her receptionist would still be there and pass it on to her. Then, when the message machine took over, he quietly replaced the receiver. I have her cell phone number, he thought, but suppose she’s out with some guy? I’ll wait and call her Monday, when I can catch her in her office. Intensely disappointed at not hearing her voice, he opened the O’Keefe file.

Two hours later he was still there, going back and forth between Monica’s reports on the early symptoms of dizziness and nausea that Michael had experienced when he was only four years old, the tests she had conducted, the MRIs from the Cincinnati hospital that clearly confirmed Monica’s diagnosis that Michael had advanced brain cancer. Michael’s mother had stopped bringing him in for treatment to relieve the symptoms, then months later when she did set up an appointment with Monica, the next MRI showed an absolutely normal brain. It was astonishing. A miracle?

There is no medical explanation for this, Ryan confirmed to himself. Michael O’Keefe should be dead. Instead, according to these notes, he’s now a healthy kid on a Little League team.

He knew what he was going to do. On Monday morning, he was going to phone the Bishop’s Office in Metuchen, New Jersey, and
volunteer to testify that he believed Michael’s recovery was not explicable by any medical standards.

After making the decision he leaned back in his chair, his thoughts on the day when he had been fifteen years old and at the bedside of his little sister, who died of brain cancer. That was the day I knew I wanted to spend my life trying to cure people with injured brains, he thought. But there will always be some people who are beyond our human skills to help. Michael O’Keefe was apparently one of them.

The very least I can do is to testify that I believe a miracle was performed. I only wish to God we had known about Sister Catherine then. Maybe she would have heard our prayers, too. Maybe Liza would still be with us. She’d be twenty-three years old now . . .

The wrenching memory of four-year-old Liza’s small flower-covered white casket filled Ryan Jenner’s mind as he left his office, went down to the lobby, and left the hospital. He walked to the corner and waited, as a Fourteenth Street bus thundered past him. The thought of Monica lying in the street in the path of that bus sent sickening fear rushing through his body.

And then, as if she were standing there, he remembered the moment when Monica told him she once played Emily in
Our Town
. I told her that I still get choked up at that last scene, when George, Emily’s husband, throws himself on her grave.

Why do I think about Monica as Emily? Ryan asked himself. Why do I have this awful premonition about her? Why am I filled with dread that Monica is going to relive the role she performed in that high school play?

It’s exactly the way I felt when I was kneeling beside Liza’s bed, knowing her time was running out and I was helpless to stop it . . .

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.”