Mary Clark: The Shadow of Your Smile

At nine o’clock when his shift was over, Hank went back to the hole-in-the-wall office next to the kitchen. “Okay if I take an envelope and stamp, Lou?” he asked the owner, who was tallying receipts. “Somebody forgot something.”

“Sure. Go ahead. I’ll take the price of the stamp out of your paycheck.” Lou grunted with what passed for a smile. Short-tempered by nature, he genuinely liked Hank. The kid was a good worker and knew how to treat customers. “Here, use one of these.” He handed a plain white envelope to Hank, who quickly scribbled the address he had decided to use. Then Hank reached for the stamp Lou was holding out to him.

Ten minutes later he dropped the envelope in a mailbox as he jogged back to his dorm at St. John’s University.

Olivia was one of the first tenants of Schwab House on the West Side of Manhattan. Now, fifty years later, she still lived there. The apartment complex was built on grounds that had previously been the site of the mansion of a wealthy industrialist. The builder had decided to retain his name, hoping that some of the grandeur surrounding the mansion would be passed on to its sprawling replacement.

Olivia’s first apartment had been a studio facing West End Avenue. As she steadily climbed the ladder to the executive branch of B. Altman and Company, she had begun to look for a larger place. She had intended to move to the East Side of Manhattan, but when a two-bedroom with a magnificent view of the Hudson became available in Schwab House, she had happily taken it. Later, when the building became a cooperative, she had been glad to buy her apartment because it made her feel that at last she truly had a home. Before moving to Manhattan, she and her mother, Regina, had lived in a small cottage behind the Long Island home of the Gannon family. Her mother had been their housekeeper.

Over the years Olivia’s secondhand furniture had been slowly and carefully replaced. Self-taught, and with innate good taste, she had developed an eye for both art and design. The cream-colored walls throughout the apartment became a setting for the paintings she acquired at estate sales. The antique rugs in the living room, bedroom, and library were the palette from which she chose colorful fabrics for upholstered pieces and window treatments.

The overall effect on a first-time visitor was invariably the same. The apartment was a haven of warmth and comfort and gave off a sense of peace and serenity.

Olivia loved it. In all those competitive years at Altman’s, the thought that at the end of the day she would be settled in her roomy club chair, a glass of wine in her hand, watching the sunset, had been an unfailing safety valve.

It had even been her refuge forty years ago at the heartbreaking crisis of her life, when she had finally faced the fact that Alex Gannon, the brilliant doctor and researcher whom she desperately loved, would never allow their relationship to go beyond a close friendship… Catherine was the one he’d always wanted.

After her appointment with Clay, Olivia went straight home. The fatigue that was the reason she had consulted Clay two weeks ago completely enveloped her. Almost too weary to take the trouble to change, she had forced herself to undress and replace her outer clothes with a warm robe in a shade of blue that she was vain enough to realize exactly matched the color of her eyes.

A small and unwanted protest at her fate made her decide to lie down on the couch in the living room rather than on her bed. Clay had warned her that overwhelming fatigue was to be expected, “Until one day, you just don’t feel able to get up.”

But not yet, Olivia thought, as she reached for the afghan that was always on the ottoman at the foot of the club chair. She sat on the couch, placed one of the decorative pillows where it would be directly under her head, lay down, and pulled the afghan over her. She then sighed a relieved sigh.

Two weeks, she thought. Two weeks. Fourteen days. How many hours is that? It doesn’t matter, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

When she awoke, the shadows in the room told her that it was late afternoon. I had only a cup of tea this morning before I saw Clay, she thought. I’m not hungry, but I’ve got to eat something. As she pushed aside the afghan and slowly got to her feet, the need to review the proof about Catherine again suddenly became overwhelming. In fact, she had the frightening sense that it might somehow have disappeared from the safe in the den.

But it was there, in the manila file her mother had given her only hours before her death. Catherine’s letters to Mother, Olivia thought, her lips quivering; the Mother Superior’s letter to Catherine; a copy of Edward’s birth certificate; the passionate note he had given my mother to pass on to Catherine.

“Olivia.”

Someone was in the apartment and was coming down the hallway toward her. Clay. Olivia’s fingers trembled as, without putting them back in the file, she thrust the letters and birth certificate into the safe, closed the door, and pushed the button that automatically locked it.

She stepped out of the closet. “I’m here, Clay.” She did not attempt to conceal the icy disapproval in her voice.

“Olivia, I was concerned about you. You promised to call this afternoon.”

“I don’t remember making that promise.”

“Well, you did,” Clay said heartily.

“You did give me two weeks. I would guess that not more than seven hours have passed. Why didn’t you have the doorman announce you?”

“Because I hoped you might be sleeping and if so, I would have left without disturbing you. Or why don’t I tell the truth? If I had been announced you might have turned me down and I wanted to see you. I did deliver a bombshell to you this morning.”

When Olivia did not answer, Clay Hadley, his tone gentle, added, “Olivia, there is a reason why you gave me a key and permission to come in if I suspected a problem.”

Olivia felt her resentment at the intrusion begin to disappear. What Clay had said was absolutely true. If he had called up I would have told him I was resting, she thought. Then she followed Clay’s glance.

He was looking at the manila envelope in her hand.

From where he stood he could obviously see the single word her mother had written across it.

CATHERINE.

Monica lived on the first floor of a renovated town house on East Thirty-sixth Street. In her mind, being on the tree-lined block was like stepping back in time to the nineteenth century, when all the brownstones had been private residences. Her apartment was to the rear of the building, which meant she had exclusive use of the small patio and garden. When the weather was warm she enjoyed morning coffee in her bathrobe on the patio, or a glass of wine in the evening there.

After the discussion with her receptionist, Nan, about Michael O’Keefe, the child who had had brain cancer, she had decided to walk home, as she frequently did. She had long since realized that walking the one-mile distance from her office was a good way of getting in some exercise, as well as a chance to unwind.

Cooking at the end of the day was relaxing for her. A self-taught chef, Monica had culinary talents that were legendary among her friends. But neither the walk nor the excellent pasta and salad she prepared for herself that evening did anything to settle her uneasy sense that a dark cloud was hanging over her.

It’s the baby, she thought. I have to discharge Sally tomorrow, but even if I check the DNA and learn that Ms. Carter isn’t the birth mother, what does that prove? Dad was an adopted child. I can hardly remember his parents, but he always said that he couldn’t imagine being brought up by anyone except them. In fact he used to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice. A widower, Roosevelt had remarried when Alice was two years old. When asked about her stepmother, Alice had replied firmly, “She was the only mother I ever knew or wanted to know.”