“Yankees,” I say softly.
“Well, that’s a relief. What else?”
I take a deep breath and begin to talk. I tell Andrew about how much Patrick liked to cook, how he loved woodworking, and how he was so good at his job because he really cared about helping his clients build better futures. I tell him about how Patrick’s stomach rumbled loudly sometimes in the middle of the night, how he secretly loved Rollerblading but was afraid it was girly, and how he sometimes left little notes under my pillow telling me he loved me. I even tell him about the silver dollars.
In return, he tells me about his brother, and by the time we pay our bill and leave, we’ve spent over an hour trading stories, and I feel like a weight’s been lifted. I haven’t laughed about Patrick in a long time. Every conversation I have about him is cloaked in sadness and loss. It was nice to simply tell a new friend about a man who used to be such a big part of my life.
“Do you ever dream about your brother?” I ask Andrew as we walk toward the subway together.
I feel foolish for asking the question until he replies, “No, but I wish I did. He died when we were both so young, and he’s been gone from my life for a while now. Sometimes I worry that my memory of him is fading.” He pauses and asks, “Do you dream about Patrick?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Recently, anyway. Really realistic dreams.”
He nods. “Do you think your subconscious is trying to tell you something?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I feel like the only time I dream vividly is when I’m trying to figure something out.” He looks at me. “Is there something you need to figure out?”
“Maybe,” I say in a small voice.
We walk in silence for a moment. “You know, I like to think that part of honoring my brother is acknowledging that losing him made me who I am today,” Andrew says.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, a tragedy changes you, doesn’t it? Like, I can’t imagine I would be here tonight, walking with you, working with hard-of-hearing kids, if it wasn’t for Kevin. When he was killed, there was a void in my life, and I think anytime there’s a void, it gets filled by something that makes you different than you were before. It changes the course of your life.”
I nod in agreement. “Loss colors everything.”
“But I’m a better man because of what I lost and what I learned, you know?” He pauses. “Do you think losing Patrick changed you?”
“Yeah, I guess it did.” I look up at the sky and add, “I’m just not sure I’m done changing yet.”
It’s not until we’ve hugged good-bye and I’m on a subway bound for Manhattan that I realize neither of us said a word about the kids of St. Anne’s.
Nineteen
“So tell me about these dreams.” My mother leans forward eagerly the next evening and reaches for my hand. “Quick, before Dan gets back.”
We’re eating oysters and drinking champagne at Noemi & Jean, a French bistro my mother read about in New York magazine. It’s the Fourth of July, but Dan hates fireworks and my mother hates crowds, so we’ve retreated to someplace quiet and decidedly unpatriotic. We’re the only ones here. Dan has just excused himself to the bathroom, and my mother’s eyes are bright with curiosity.
“There’s not much to tell,” I say weakly, the words a lie. The truth is, I feel fiercely protective of the world in which Patrick and Hannah live, because I’m afraid that telling someone skeptical the personal details will invite derision and destroy the illusion for me.
“Oh, but there must be, sweetheart,” she insists. She pauses to swish an oyster with a dollop of horseradish down her throat. “Susan told me how much they’ve been bothering you.” She takes a sip of champagne and leans back in her seat.
I glance toward the bathroom. Dan will be returning at any moment. “It’s silly,” I say quickly. “I’m just kind of seeing the life I would have had if Patrick hadn’t died.”
“Are you happy? In this dream?”
“Very happy.” I consider my next words carefully before saying them. “It feels like the life I was supposed to have, if everything hadn’t gotten all screwed up. What if Patrick had grabbed a different cab that morning, or what if his client had canceled the meeting? What if he’d stayed home sick that day? What if I’d asked him to fix the stupid leaky faucet before he left for work, so that he was running five minutes later? There are so many little ways it all could have been so different, and only one way it turned out like this. How can that be right?”
“Because it’s simply the way it is,” she says softly. “What’s done is done. You have Dan. You have a nice life together. You’re happy enough, right?”
I nod, struck by her choice of words. “Happy enough?”
“Isn’t that what most people have?”
“What if I want more?” I ask. But the words get lost as Dan returns to the table and we abruptly stop talking.
“I hope I’m not interrupting, ladies,” Dan says, smiling as he sits down.
“Not at all,” my mother replies, batting her eyes at him. She’s had a soft spot for him since the day I took him to Florida to meet her for the first time, and when my mom likes someone, she turns into a flirt. Of course it’s harmless, but with my own confusion clouding things, her simpering smile and fluttering lashes just annoy me.
We polish off the last of the oysters and champagne and order our entrées and more wine. As the conversation turns to wedding plans, color schemes, and invitation fonts, I feel myself drifting. I turn to look out the window again. I can just catch the glow in the sky from the fireworks dozens of blocks away, and it makes me sad to feel like I’m on the outside of something, looking in without really seeing it at all.
I close my eyes for a minute, just to clear my head, while Dan launches into a long story I’ve already heard a half-dozen times about how he picked out my engagement ring. His voice and the clatter of the restaurant fade away as I breathe deeply in and out, trying not to think about how different this perfect dinner feels from the wonderfully imperfect one I had last night at a Jamaican dive.
And then, just as I’ve succeeded in tuning everything out, an image flashes across my mind, clear as a photograph. It’s a frozen moment: Patrick, Hannah, and me smiling up at fireworks with the city sparkling behind us.
I gasp, and as my eyes fly open, I automatically reach for the table to brace myself, and I instead wind up knocking a glass of water over on Dan’s lap. He jumps up to grab napkins, and I turn to look guiltily at my mother.
“What just happened?” she whispers.
“Nothing,” I say, but my heart is still thudding, because I’ve never had a fragment from the dream appear while I was going about my real life. And with the Fourth of July celebrations in the background, it’s clear that the image I was seeing is supposed to be taking place right now, almost as if there’s an alternate version of my life playing out across town without me.
“Did it have something to do with the dreams?” she asks suspiciously.
I only have time to nod miserably before Dan returns, blotting the water from his pants as he sits down. “Geez, babe, you scared me,” he says, rubbing my arm.
“Sorry about the water,” I say.
“No problem. As long as you’re okay,” he replies before resuming his conversation with my mom, who’s now giving me worried glances each time Dan looks away.
Neither seems to hear when I mumble, “Actually, I’m not sure I’m okay at all.”
I pick my mom up in a cab the next morning at the Ritz-Carlton to take her back to the airport. She’s quiet on the way there, and although she comments a few times about the weather, how nice it was to see my sister and me, and how she’s looking forward to coming back to visit us again soon, she waits until we’re almost at JFK for the heavy words.
“What was that last night, Kate
?” she asks. “At the restaurant? Has that been happening to you?”
“No. That was a first. I closed my eyes and saw Patrick and Hannah. It just startled me.”
“Hannah’s the daughter?”
I nod and look away.
“Honey,” she says gently, “you’ve always had the tendency to obsess about things. Remember that crush you had on Jon Bon Jovi in the seventh grade? When you were so sure you were going to marry him?”
“I was twelve, Mom!”
She shrugs. “I’m just wondering if that’s what you’re doing now—obsessing about these dreams because you need something to hold on to.”
“Mom, I’m not obsessing. And these dreams have nothing to do with my childhood crush.”
“Well, I think you need to figure out what it is you want,” she says as we pull into her terminal. “I think these dreams are confusing you, Kate. If you don’t figure out how you really feel, I’m afraid you’re going to lose what you’ve built for yourself.”
“Dan, you mean?” I ask, trying not to sound bitter. “You’re afraid I’ll lose Dan?”
“No, honey. I’m afraid you’ll lose you. I’m afraid you’ll lose everything.”
She hugs me good-bye, and as I climb slowly back into the cab and ask the driver to take me back to Manhattan, I find myself wondering whether you can really suffer a loss if you have nothing left to lose.
But maybe I do have something to lose. What if the dreams are trying to give me some sort of a message, and I’m ignoring it? What if I’m meant to be following the clues the dreams are laying out for me? I know it sounds nuts, but there’s nothing about this that’s normal.
“Bleecker and Grove,” I hear myself tell the cabdriver as we plunge into the darkness of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. “Please,” I say a little more strongly, “take me to Bleecker and Grove.”
It’s the spot where I saw Hannah’s piano recital in my dreams. I have to find out if Dolores Kay is real, if she really holds piano recitals on the second floor of 321 Bleecker. If she’s out there somewhere, then maybe the dreams aren’t just a cruelly beautiful trick of my imagination. If she exists, maybe there’s hope that Hannah does too.
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 figmen
t 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?
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