Behind a Lady's Smile

by Jane Goodger

  “I can hardly breathe in this dress. I shall become one of those ladies who faints from lack of oxygen.”

  Mitch furrowed his brow. “Tell Tillie not to make everything underneath so tight.”

  Genny laughed. “How ferocious you look, Mitch.”

  Mitch took a deep breath. She was right, he likely did look like a man bent on murder—just from the thought that someone had made her feel a bit uncomfortable. “It’ll be a while before the plate is dry enough to make a print. I’ll come get you when I’m done. You can get out of that dress now. And put your hair in a braid, if you’d like.”

  Genny tilted her head a bit, studying him. “You know, sometimes you sound angry, but I don’t think you are.”

  “Just go change, Genny. You’ll ruin your new dress.”

  “There you go again, sounding angry,” she said in a singsong way.

  “I am angry.”

  “Ha. No, you’re not. I don’t know what you are, but you’re not angry.” She gave him a saucy look before leaving him alone to stew over the fact that she was right. He wasn’t angry. He was in love.

  When Genny saw the picture, it was the oddest thing. It was almost like looking at someone else, someone she didn’t recognize. She looked regal and sophisticated, and the expression on her face was one of suppressed joy. “Is that what I truly look like?”

  “You really do look like a princess,” Tillie said.

  The two women, heads close together, were looking down at the print, studying it as if it were a painting by a master. It was that beautiful, and Genny couldn’t stop the surge of pride she felt that Mitch, grumpy Mitch who swore too much, could have produced something as beautiful as this. It wasn’t vanity that made her think that; she had a good idea what she looked like. The woman in the picture was not the woman she saw when she looked in the mirror every day. The woman in the picture was almost lovely beyond words.

  She looked up to see Mitch studying her, no doubt looking for her reaction. “It’s lovely, Mitch. Really. I don’t know how you made me look so pretty.”

  “You are pretty,” Tillie said, laughing.

  “Not that pretty,” Genny said.

  “That’s true,” Tillie said, then turned to Mitch. “You think you could take a picture of me and make me look that good?”

  “Of course.”

  Tillie shot him a look of disbelief.

  “It’s so strange,” Genny said, staring at the picture again. “When I’m an old lady, I’ll know just what I looked like. I’ll remember this day, and you, and I’ll have this image to hold forever. It will almost be like going back in time.”

  “That’s why so many people take pictures of their children, so they can remember them always,” Mitch said.

  “Even the dead ones,” Tillie said dramatically.

  “Dead children? Why would they do that? It seems so macabre,” Genny said.

  “So they can remember them,” Mitch said, coming around to look at her photograph. “It gives the parents comfort. William took one picture of a young woman holding her little dead baby. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. We were all a little shaken up by it. But when she got the picture, days after the little one was put in the ground, she was so happy she cried. She held that picture almost like she was holding her baby. Near broke your heart to see it.”

  Tillie’s eyes flooded with tears, and when Genny saw Tillie cry, her eyes started burning too. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” Genny said.

  “It is sad, but that picture made her happy. That’s why I like photographing people, not things. You’re giving someone something they can hold onto forever, almost as if you have a piece of them.” Mitch stopped talking abruptly and looked away. “Anyway, I’m glad you like the picture.”

  “I do,” Genny said, wondering why Mitch’s eyes had momentarily looked so bleak. She knew so little about his past. Did he have someone he wished he had a photograph of? Someone now gone? She wished suddenly she had a picture of Mitch or even one of the two of them. She thought that was a wonderful idea.

  “We should have a picture of the two of us, Mitch. Tillie can take off the lens and put it back on. Then I’d have a memento of our time together. And so would you.”

  Mitch’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. “I don’t have enough chemicals left for another negative.”

  Genny nodded, but had a feeling he wasn’t telling her the true reason he didn’t want a picture of the two of them. She swallowed her disappointment and forced a smile. “At least I have this photograph.”

  Chapter 10

  Two days before Mitch, Genny, and Tillie were due to board the ship, his mother and Tillie disappeared on an errand of “finding costumes for Tillie’s role.” Mitch couldn’t recall the number of times he counted himself the biggest of fools for getting caught up in this scheme. He was out nearly all of his savings, had fallen in love with a girl he could never have, and was facing the prospect of preparing her to attract another man.

  It was a cruel irony that when Mitch finally found himself in a place where he thought he could give a woman what she needed, he’d found one he could never have. Mitch had grown up in a world of misfits, so the idea of not being good enough hadn’t really entered his mind until he reached adulthood. But he understood it now. His mother’s friends had welcomed everyone into their fold, and as a boy Mitch just figured that’s how people were. It wasn’t until he reached the Army that he realized rank and privilege had anything do with respect and authority.

  It had been a hard lesson for a seventeen-year-old kid who’d spent his life practicing lines and dance steps with his mother. The first week of his training had nearly destroyed him. Sgt. Baker had seen his weakness the first day of training. He saw a kid who had no business putting on a uniform, a kid who had never really been in the company of other men. Something inside Mitch wouldn’t let him give up, wouldn’t let the sergeant break him, though God knew the older man had tried. Or maybe he’d seen something in Mitch that he hadn’t even known was inside him. Either way, the Army changed him.

  In the end, he’d survived the war, Sgt. Baker had died in Petersburg, Virginia just seven days before Lee surrendered. Mitch hadn’t seen the man fall, but he’d seen plenty around him die. It was only dumb luck Mitch had survived the fighting. He learned later that more than seven thousand men had died; it was easy to believe given the bodies he’d seen. Mitch had been part of the New York 40th Infantry regiment, trying to take back a city that had fallen early in the war. He was wiry and strong, a tall target for the Confederates. A bullet grazed his head and he went down. That bullet saved his life, for when he came to, it was all over. He was in a ditch surrounded by dead men, and for a while Mitch wished he’d been among their number.

  Mitch had only been in the fight six months before that day, but he came back to New York a changed man, one who saw everything his mother and her friends did as frivolous and silly. He’d tried to return to his old life, but the war had reshaped him into a new person, though he didn’t know who that person was until much later.

  Years of wandering led him to Nebraska and Will Jackson, a man Mitch came to think of as a big brother. Mollie and Will took him in, let him heal, showed him what a normal life could be like, made him realize that what he wanted more than anything was peace and a soft place to put his head each night.

  Now he was twenty-seven years old, and he’d let his heart destroy that dream of peace he’d been working so long to achieve. All those years, all that focus on one goal—to save enough money to start his own studio—would be gone if his gamble did not pay off.

  What had he done? What had he allowed?

  He looked down at the photograph he’d taken of Genny and felt as if his chest was on fire. This was all so wrong. This was not supposed to have happened. Part of him wanted to rip the picture, to throw the negative into the fireplace and smash it. She was his peace. She was his soft place. But she was going to England and he was coming back t
o New York to start a business he no longer even had the heart to care about.

  The morning of July ninth, Mitch took a long, hard look in the mirror and saw a man he wanted to hit. Hard. He was aching for a fight and only wished he was back with his crew in California, for certainly one of them would have obliged him. As it stood at the moment, he was left feeling he wanted to hit something, but there was nothing to hit.

  It was this dark mood in which Genny found him. He was in what his mother called the library, but was really nothing more than a dark room on the north side of her apartment with over-large leather furniture and not a book in sight. He didn’t even know why he’d gone there, except perhaps it was a room Genny rarely visited. It was warm, stifling, actually, for the windows in this particular room didn’t open wide. The room felt the way he did. Like hell.

  “There you are,” she said, and with just those innocuous, cheerfully spoken words, a sweat broke out on his brow that had nothing to do with the New York July heat.

  “Here I am.” He stiffened at the sound of her voice and calmly turned the photograph over, hoping she hadn’t seen what he’d been staring at.

  “We’re leaving in two days.”

  He took a deep breath, feeling impatient and in a foul mood. “So we are.”

  “Are you looking at something interesting?”

  He slowly turned toward her and saw that she was wearing one of her ready-made dresses from Nebraska; her hair was in a simple braid down her back. The sight of her, looking as she had when they’d first met, nearly made his knees buckle. He’d thought that girl was gone.

  “Just staring at the bricks.” He knew he sounded put out but couldn’t stop himself. He was put out.

  Genny’s smile faltered a bit. “Are you angry with me?”

  She said it in such a small, un-Genny-like voice, his heart lurched a bit. “No, Genny. I’ve never been mad at you and I don’t expect I ever will be.”

  “Then why . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It just seems as if you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  A long silence, and then, “Could you dance with me?”

  He jerked slightly before he could stop himself, and he gave himself a mental shake. Innocuous words should not hurt, but it seemed that almost everything she said felt like a blow to his gut. “There’s no one here to play the piano. Besides, you know all the dances well enough.”

  “I’m a bit worried about the waltz.”

  Mitch closed his eyes briefly, his entire body on fire with needing her. He wanted to bury his face against her hair, breathe her in, hold her, kiss her. Oh, God, did she even have the smallest idea what she was doing to him? If she did, if she knew the dark thoughts coursing through his brain, she’d run.

  “No piano,” he said, almost desperately.

  “I could hum. Or you could.”

  She was worrying her hands together and he hated that he was hurting her. He couldn’t allow her to know just how difficult this had become for him. God knew, he had only a hair’s breadth of control left. If she took another step toward him, if she smiled again, he doubted he’d be able to stop himself from kissing her. And if he started kissing her, God knew whether he’d be able to stop at that. Not when he lay in bed each night and dreamed what it would be like to see her next to him with that sleepy grin of hers, not when he could still recall the earthy-sweet scent of her hair.

  “Listen, Genny. I’m tired and not feeling too good. I just want to be left alone, all right?”

  She nodded but didn’t leave. “I miss you,” she said with a little shrug. “It seems these last few days you’ve already left me behind.”

  “I guess that’s about right.”

  She dipped her head a bit, and it seemed to Mitch she was almost trying to duck his words. “I wish you wouldn’t. I wish—”

  “Don’t matter what you wish, Genny. The only thing that matters is what’s happening. I’m taking you to England and I’m saying good-bye. That’s what’s happening. Get it? That’s what has to happen.”

  She looked as if she was trying not to cry; she knew how much he hated it when she did. “I understand,” she said, and he could hear her voice tighten. Damn it to hell.

  He walked up to her and gently grabbed her upper arms, giving her the smallest of shakes. “Look at me. I’m trying to do the right thing, Genny,” he said, hating the way his voice broke, the way she looked at him as if her heart were shattering, as if she knew his was too. “Please, let me do the right thing.”

  “I can’t.” She leaned to kiss him, and Mitch didn’t know how he had the will to push her away. It would kill him, that kiss.

  “If you won’t leave, I will,” he said, and stalked from the room.

  Genny let him go. When Mitch was in a foul mood, she found there was nothing she could do but let him stew a bit. She looked around the gloomy, hot space and walked to the window that Mitch had been staring out to see if there was anything of interest outside. Craning her neck, she looked down at the bricks, but saw nothing noteworthy. Leaning out further, she rested her hands on the narrow table that stood beneath the sill and felt a piece of thick paper.

  It dawned on her suddenly what Mitch had been looking at; she wondered if it would be a terrible violation of his privacy if she were to turn the paper over. Biting her lip and feeling rather guilty, she looked. “Oh.”

  It was her picture. He’d been staring at it, his hands braced on either side, his body tense.

  Genny wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from the photograph. Please, let me do the right thing.

  Genny suddenly closed her eyes and sagged against the table. She had no experience with love, but she had a pretty good idea that’s what she felt for Mitch. And now . . .

  “Does he love me?” she whispered, feeling none of the joy she should with such a thought. The minute she said the words aloud, doubt filled her. He didn’t act like a man in love; he acted like a man who wanted to kiss her and knew he shouldn’t. That wasn’t love. Then again, she had no idea what a man acted like when he was in love. Didn’t they write poetry and send a girl flowers? Or maybe they took your picture and made certain you had pretty clothes.

  Genny pressed her fingertips against her temple. This was all so confusing, not at all like the fairy tales she’d read where the princess knew immediately that she was in love. If this was love, it was nothing like in the books. This hurt.

  Genny sat down in one of the big leather chairs. Nothing was as it was supposed to be. Other than the day her father died, she’d never felt quite so miserable in her life. She sat there for several minutes before she heard Tillie calling out for her. Part of her wanted to remain silent, to pretend she hadn’t heard, but she ended up shouting, “In here.”

  In a few moments, Tillie peeked around the corner, her blonde wig seeming to glow in the gloom of the room. Other than that first day when she’d taken it off and the morning of her photography session, Genny hadn’t seen her without it on. “There you are. What are you doing in here all alone in the dark?” Tillie’s smile faded slightly, as if sensing something was troubling her. She peered at Genny’s face. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?”

  Genny’s throat closed up so suddenly, she couldn’t speak, so she just shook her head. Clearly, the desperation she felt was easy to read, for Tillie rushed over to her, went down to her knees and grabbed her hands.

  “What’s happened?”

  Genny swallowed, willing the lump in her throat to disappear; she would not cry in front of another person. “It’s just that nothing is the way it was supposed to be,” she said, barely getting the words out. “I promised my father to go home to England, but . . .”

  “It’s not home, is it?”

  Genny shook her head. “No, it’s not. And it just occurred to me. I’ve been so worried that they won’t like me, but what if I don’t like them? My mother had to run away to marry my father. What kind of parents would be so awful that a daughter would do that?”

 
“You say your grandparents are a duke and duchess?”

  Genny sniffed, still desperately trying not to cry. “Yes.”

  “And your dad, what was he?”

  Genny furrowed her brow, trying to remember what he’d been doing before her mother escaped with him to America. “I think he was a land steward for my mother’s neighbors.”

  Tillie’s face cleared, as if everything was dropping into place. “That explains it then. Why, your mother falling in love with a steward would be like you falling in love with a jailbird. Daughters of dukes marry sons of dukes or earls or some such. It’s just not done.”

  Her father had never spoken of the precise reason he’d run from England. Genny had only known it had something to do with her grandparents’ not liking her father. “How do you know all this?”

  “Jane Austen,” Tillie said with a nod. “Well,” she equivocated, “not quite, but her books gave me a general idea that class is a very important thing in England. It’s important here, too. Do you think John D. Rockefeller would let his son marry me? Not hardly.”

  “I know my grandfather was terribly upset by my mother leaving. Then he wrote the dearest letters begging her to come home.”

  Tillie dipped her head, forcing Genny to make eye contact. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I know about a hundred girls who would take your place in a second.” She snapped her fingers. “What’s happening to you is the stuff of dreams. Look at this dress, your hair,” she said, flicking Genny’s long braid. “Is this the girl you want to be or that girl in your picture?”

  “I’m not certain. I know who this girl is. I haven’t the foggiest idea who that girl in the picture is.”