The Life Intended (23 page)

Thirty minutes later, the driver lets me out on the northeast corner of Grove and Bleecker, and I stand there for a moment, looking around, my heart thudding.

I’m fairly sure I’ve never been here before in real life—certainly not enough to know exactly what it looks like—but the street scene is the just the same as it was in my dream. Blue construction scaffolding on the far corner. An alterations shop and dry cleaner across the street. I even dreamed of the white benches outside the café on the corner. And there, just where I knew it would be, is number 321, a narrow building with a high, arched awning. I hurry over and scan the businesses listed on the door. There’s a tax attorney, a hair salon, an importer/exporter, and an
ad agency listed, but no Dolores Kay and nothing related to a piano recital space.

That’s okay,
I tell myself.
Just because she’s not listed on the door doesn’t mean she’s not here
.

My heart hammering, I push open the front door, which isn’t locked, and take the stairs two at a time to the second floor. I turn left out of the stairwell, just like I did with Patrick and Hannah, then I barrel through the first door on the right, which is just where I knew it would be.

But when I tumble inside, it’s not a rehearsal space or a music studio at all. It’s an airy hair salon with hardwood floors, lemony overhead lights hanging from exposed beams, and a gum-popping receptionist who looks at me like I’m a lunatic as I stand there panting in the doorway.

“Ma’am,” she says slowly, looking me up and down, “are you okay?”

“There’s no piano,” I say stupidly.

“Ma’am?” the receptionist asks again. I can see the stylists, and the two customers sitting in chairs, all staring at me. “Are you here for a haircut?”

“No,” I manage after a moment. I blink and try to regain my composure.
Dolores Kay isn’t real. There’s nothing here. Hannah isn’t real
.
You’re a fool.
“Th-thanks,” I mutter over the voice in my head. I back out the door before anyone can say anything else.

I rush back down the stairs, and outside, I hungrily gulp in the air. I feel like I’m about to pass out, and for a moment, the sidewalk wobbles below me. But then I feel a hand on my elbow, and I turn to find a teenaged girl looking at me with concern.

“Miss?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes,” I manage, but she doesn’t look like she believes me. I turn away, embarrassed, and head south on Bleecker, toward Seventh Avenue, my head spinning.

It takes me a few minutes to regain my composure, and when I do, I sit down on a bus stop bench to finish collecting myself. I can’t understand why there are pieces of the dream that are real—my perfect awareness of exactly how the other storefronts on Bleecker would look, for example—but the most important components seem to be pure fiction. Why would I dream the poplar tree outside our old apartment window, for example, when the unit is now occupied by another family? Why would I be able to perfectly visualize the layout of Dolores Kay’s studio, only to discover that it’s occupied by a hair salon instead?

Is there really a girl named Hannah out there somewhere? How else can I explain what I saw from the bridal shop window without chalking this all up to insanity?

But then it occurs to me that Dolores Kay might be real after all, even if she doesn’t occupy the studio I dreamed of. And if she exists, there’s a chance Hannah does too. I pull out my iPhone, heart thudding, and enter
Dolores Kay
into a Google box. The search engine returns a slew of results, but my hope fades as I scroll through them. There are obituaries for women named Dolores Kay listed from Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but none of the photos match the woman from my dreams. There are a few Facebook matches too, but again, none of the Dolores Kays looks familiar.

I add
New York
to the search string, but the results are even more hopeless. Census data from the 1940s. More obituaries. Nothing that connects to the piano teacher I saw so clearly.

Finally, feeling disappointed, I add
piano teacher
to the search string and hit Enter. Immediately, my heart is in my throat, for the picture that materializes on the top of my search screen is instantly familiar. It’s the Dolores Kay I saw in my dream. She’s real.

Except she’s dead. My mouth goes dry as I click on the picture
and it takes me to an obituary. Dolores Kay, I read, was a beloved piano teacher who died on March 6, 2004, in a convenience store robbery in Brooklyn. Like Patrick, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was sixty-one, the obituary says, and she is survived only by a sister, Petula, who lives in London.
She will be missed most by her generations of piano students,
the obituary concludes.
In recent years, she had begun to develop a specialty in working with children with special needs
.

I can feel myself shaking as I stare down at the stark black and white of the obituary. There has to be a logical explanation for this. Perhaps, for instance, I skimmed Dolores Kay’s obituary in the
New York Times
back in 2004, and it somehow stuck in my memory. How else would I have known who she was, or that she taught piano to special needs children?

But the explanation fails to make me feel much better. If I’m dreaming only of dead people, does that mean Hannah existed at some point and has died too? Maybe she’s also wedged in my memory from an obituary I read years ago.

I put my head in my hands, ignoring the concerned whispers of the two women who have arrived at the bus stop and are staring at me from the far end of the bench. I hear the word
crazy,
and I wonder if perhaps they’re not that far off from the truth.

But then I remember something else. Joan is in the dreams, and certainly she’s real. She’s alive. But she still hasn’t called me back. If she truly does have breast cancer in real life, is it a sign that the dreams are something more than just a figment of my imagination? But if she doesn’t, maybe I need to seek professional help. The idea scares me, but I feel like I’m spinning out of control.

I close the Google search results and dial Joan’s number, but there’s no answer, so I leave a message apologizing for being a nag but telling her I’m worried about her and am coming out to
check on her. Then I jog to the corner, where I hail a cab to Penn Station.

Ninety minutes later, as I walk the twelve blocks from the Glen Cove station to Joan’s house, I almost convince myself to turn around and go home. After all, Joan hasn’t returned my call. Maybe she just doesn’t want to see me.

Still, despite the last-minute trepidation, I find myself standing on her front porch. I ring the doorbell, but there’s only silence inside. I ring once more, just in case, but it’s clear she’s not home. I feel even sillier for coming out here uninvited but I settle onto one of her comfortable Adirondack chairs to wait for her anyhow.
She’s family,
I tell myself.
There’s nothing wrong with this.
But if I really don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, why haven’t I returned Dan’s calls? He’s left me two messages since I got on the train, one asking if I’d be home for dinner and another telling me he was going to head out to Brooklyn to see Stephen for the afternoon.

“I’ll be home by seven,” his voice mail said. “Unless you tell me otherwise, I’ll plan on making salmon tonight. Love you, babe.”

I text Dan,
Salmon sounds great,
then I settle back to wait for Joan as I will the guilt to roll away.

She finally pulls into her driveway a few minutes before three and looks surprised to see me on her front porch as she gets out of her Volvo.

“Kate?” she asks, blinking at me. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” I assure her, as I head down the front steps to help her with the groceries I see piled in her backseat.

“Well, then, what are you doing here, dear? Not that I’m not happy to see you.”

We embrace, and I can’t help but notice that she feels thinner, less substantial than I remember. Or is that just my imagination?
Am I projecting cancer onto her because I don’t want to believe the dreams are pure fiction?

“I just hadn’t heard from you,” I tell her as I grab a few bags and an eight-pack of paper towels from the backseat. “I wasn’t doing anything else today, so I thought I’d just drop by and make sure you were all right.”

She blinks at me a few times as she grabs the remaining bags and pushes the car door shut with her hip. “Sweetheart, I’m fine. I just hadn’t gotten around to calling you back yet. I’m sorry.”

I follow her inside, where her place looks just like it always does. I realize I’m looking around for evidence of illness: medication bottles, hot water bags, dishes piled in the sink because she’s too worn out to clean up. But there’s none of that. After I help her put away her groceries, I excuse myself to the bathroom, where I check the medicine cabinet for evidence. But there’s only a bottle of Advil, a container of Pepto-Bismol, and a box of DayQuil tablets. In other words, she’s fine. I feel like a fool.

I head back into the kitchen, where Joan is unloading the dishwasher. “Can I get you a drink? An iced tea, maybe?”

“That sounds great.”

I watch her as she takes two glasses down from the cabinet, fills them with ice, and pours cold tea from a jug in the refrigerator. “Want to have a seat in the living room?” she asks, handing me a glass. “I’ll be in as soon as I finish up in here.”

“Need any help?” I offer.

“Oh, sweetheart, I get by just fine on my own, thanks. You go relax.”

As I head into the living room and sit down, I’m hit with an old memory. This is the couch where Patrick and I sat, side by side, thirteen years ago, the evening we told his parents we’d gotten engaged. His mother had grinned from ear to ear; his father had asked if they could help pay for the wedding. Patrick had
kissed me on the cheek and held up my hand for them to see. I remember how my diamond ring sparkled and caught the light.

I look down now at my hand, where Dan’s ring has taken the place of Patrick’s on my left ring finger. My hand looks older too; the veins are more prominent than they were when I was twenty-seven, and there are lines and folds that weren’t there before. Time marches ever forward whether we want it to or not.

“Kate?” Joan’s voice cuts into my thoughts, and I look up to see her gazing down at me. “Are you okay, dear?”

I nod, and she smiles, but there’s concern in her eyes.

“You just looked lost in your own world.”

“Just remembering the day Patrick and I came here together to tell you we were getting married,” I admit.

Joan sighs as she sits down across from me. “Kate, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

My heart pounds and I lean forward.
This is it. I know it. She’s going to tell me she’s fighting cancer.
“It’s okay, Joan,” I say. “I was hoping to talk to you too.”

She nods and takes a deep breath. “Kate,” she says slowly, “I wonder if I’m doing you a disservice by continuing to be so close to you.”

I blink. “What?”

She looks at her hands. “It’s why I haven’t returned your calls. Ever since you told me about those dreams, I’ve been worrying about the role I’m playing in your life. I think that in order for you to move on, you need to let Patrick go, and I’m concerned that by making you feel responsible for me, I’ve made it impossible for you to do that.”

“Joan,” I manage, my voice shaky, “I don’t feel responsible for you. I love you. You’re my mother-in-law.”

“But I’m not really, am I?” she asks, not unkindly. “Not anymore. I mean, of course I’ll always love you like a daughter. And
I’ll always be so grateful for the happiness you gave Patrick. But I’m not sure it’s healthy for you to keep an old lady like me around.”

I feel a bit like she’s breaking up with me. “You’re not an old lady, Joan. And I’m not here because I feel like I have to be. I’m here because I care about you. Deeply.”

“I feel the same about you,” she says. “But I imagine Dan isn’t a big fan of our relationship.”

“He doesn’t mind,” I say, although I know the words aren’t one hundred percent true.

She shakes her head sadly. “I just don’t want to be a burden on you, Kate. Patrick wouldn’t have wanted to be a weight on your mind either. You know, that right?”

“I do,” I say. “But you’re not a burden. And Patrick isn’t a weight.”

Joan is quiet for a moment, then she nods. “What did you want to talk about, Kate? You said there was something you wanted to discuss?”

My concerns feel foolish now, but I say the words anyhow. “I was wondering when you last had a mammogram.”

Joan looks startled. “A mammogram? Well, I guess it’s been a while, but I feel just fine. What makes you ask?”

I can’t tell her it’s the dreams. Not after what she just said. So what I blurt out instead is, “Someone I really care about was just diagnosed with breast cancer. It just . . . It made me worry about you.”

Her forehead creases. “I’m so sorry to hear about your friend.”

I shake my head. “Just promise me you’ll get checked out, okay?”

“Kate, I honestly feel just fine.”

“Please. I need you to tell me you’ll do this. For me.”

She stares at me. “Okay. I will.”

“Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Soon?”

“Okay.” She looks worried.

“And you’re sure you’re feeling all right?” I persist.

“Are you sure
you’re
feeling all right?”

I nod quickly. “I’m fine,” I tell her. “Just fine.”

She studies my face. “You look like you’re not getting enough sleep, sweetheart. Try to get some rest, okay? Take it easy. And don’t worry about me. You’re getting married soon, and this should be a very special and happy time in your life.”

“It is,” I say.
Just not as happy as the time I spend dreaming about your son
.

T
he first part of the work week passes quickly and uneventfully with appointments with Max, Leo, and several other clients. On Tuesday, I pray I’ll wake up in the dream, for it’s Hannah’s birthday, but instead, I find myself in real life, so I think of her all day and hope that somewhere, in my strange alternate reality, she’s happy. On Wednesday, sign language class goes well; I’m picking up words quickly, and I’m embarrassed to admit I’m enjoying my role as teacher’s pet, even if it does earn me death stares from Amy. After class, I arrange to meet Andrew the following night at St. Anne’s for a repeat of last week: appointments with Riajah and Molly at the office, then an in-home visit with Allie.