Life Intended (9781476754178)

by Kristin Harmel

  When we finally finish, our fingers tired, she gives me a high five.

  I look up just in time to see Andrew watching us from the doorway with a smile on his face.

  For the next several days, the session with Allie bothers me. I begin to have trouble sleeping, and the dreams—or whatever they are—don’t return. I lie silently beside a lightly snoring Dan, willing myself to forget about Allie, to fall asleep, to see Patrick and Hannah again. But the tiles of my ceiling only grow blurrier, and the moments tick by until the room begins to gray around the edges as the first rays of dawn saturate the room-darkening blinds.

  It begins to occur to me that maybe I won’t get another glimpse into the life with Patrick and Hannah. Maybe being exposed to Hannah was a strange means to an end, a roundabout way to put me in Andrew’s path so that he would lead me to Allie. I feel an almost gravitational pull to the girl. In fact, I can’t stop thinking about her and how I might be able to help her, even when Dan surprises me with a weekend in the Hamptons. I lie beside him on the sand and pretend to read People magazine while my mind spins over the songs I’d like to try with her. At night, as we sit by a bonfire Dan has built on the beach, I pretend to listen as he regales me with stories about his coworkers, but really, my mind is on Allie.

  On Tuesday, I have a session in my office with Max, and after we’ve played the xylophone together and talked about a new boy at school named Toby who isn’t being very nice to him, he asks me a question that makes my heart ache.

  “Miss Kate?” he says as he fidgets with the hem of his shirt. “How come some parents don’t want their kids?”

  “Max, why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes they just don’t.”

  “Who are you talking about?” I ask gently. When he doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Your mom?”

  “No, silly!” Max says, rolling his eyes dramatically. “She loves me.” Then his face falls. “But what about my dad? He didn’t want me.”

  “What makes you say that, Max?”

  “Toby at school told me that’s why my dad went away.”

  I bite my lip as I search for the right words. Joya has been raising Max alone since he was ten months old, after his father left one day for work and never came back. Three months later, he had divorce papers delivered to Joya, and she’d signed them without fighting for more child support, because they’d also contained a provision that gave her full custody. She told me once that she didn’t want Max having any exposure to a man who didn’t want to be his father.

  “First of all, Max, do you think Toby really knows anything about your life?”

  He thinks about this for a minute. “Maybe not.”

  “So what do you think really happened with your dad?” I hold my breath, hoping I’m not inadvertently leading him down a hurtful path.

  “I don’t know. Mom never says anything.” He pauses. “Maybe my dad didn’t want to be my dad.”

  I think about how to respond. “Is it possible he just wasn’t ready to be a dad yet at all? And that it had nothing to do with you personally?”

  He looks confused. “But how come he’d be a dad if he wasn’t ready to be a dad? That’s crazy.”

  “Well, it’s a bit like taking a test at school,” I tell him. “Have you ever taken a test?”

  He nods. “I’m good at spelling tests.”

  “Well, you study for the tests beforehand, right?”

  He nods again. “Mom makes me.”

  “And studying is hard work, right?”

  “Really hard!”

  “But when you go in to take the test, you’re prepared, and that’s what makes you do well, right?”

  “Mmm hmm,” he agrees.

  “Well, parenting is a bit like that. It’s a lot of hard work. You have to always be learning and always be practicing and trying your hardest.”

  “Or you get an F!”

  “Exactly,” I say. “Sometimes, people just aren’t ready to work hard. So they’re not really good at being parents.”

  He thinks about this for so long that I start to believe my explanation has been a big flop. But then he smiles slightly and says, “So maybe my dad just didn’t want to work hard and practice.”

  “Right,” I say slowly, hoping I haven’t instilled false hope.

  When our session ends, I pull Joya aside and recap our conversation.

  “I think it’s just human nature to wish that the people who are gone from our lives are going to come back,” she replies with a sigh. “Maybe this is something Max just has to puzzle through.”

  After she’s gone, her words echo in my head. Maybe, like Max, I’m just going to have to wrap my head around the idea that Patrick is gone for good, and no amount of hoping for his return will bring him back.

  “Well, you’re tan,” Andrew says as I walk into sign language class the next night. He’s standing in front of the classroom, leafing through some papers, when I arrive, and I feel immediately awkward when I realize I’ve interrupted a conversation between him and Amy, the only other student who’s already here.

  “It’s that obvious?” I ask, hoping that I’m dark enough he won’t notice my blush. “I guess that must mean I was really pale before.”

  “Not at all,” he says with a smile. “I’m jealous that you obviously spent your weekend at a beach or something, while I spent mine doing paperwork.” He pauses. “No, wait! Maybe you didn’t go away at all! Maybe you’re one of those tanning bed girls. Is this a spray tan?”

  He’s teasing me, and it makes my cheeks even warmer. “Nope, sorry to disappoint. This is from a weekend in the Hamptons.”

  Andrew groans. “I knew it! Now I’m officially jealous.”

  “Did you go with your fiancé?” Amy asks loudly, injecting herself into the conversation. “I bet you spend a lot of time with him, right? With your fiancé?”

  I blink at her. “Yes. Right. His cousin has a share in Montauk.”

  She whistles. “Fancy.”

  I shrug and glance at Andrew. “We thought so too. Until we arrived and found out we’d be splitting a three-bedroom house with four other couples.”

  Andrew chuckles, and Amy makes a face.

  “Well, still, your fiancé must make some serious money, right?” she asks. “To be in the kind of social circles where Montauk is even an option?”

  She’s beginning to get on my nerves. “He does okay,” I say vaguely. I’m heartened to see Andrew rolling his eyes behind Amy’s back.

  “Well, you should hang on to him,” she says. “I know I would appreciate it if someone treated me to weekends away.” She bats her eyes at Andrew, who looks embarrassed and goes back to shuffling his papers.

  I sit down, and as the others filter in one by one, Amy picks up her things and relocates to the seat next to mine. “So you and Andrew seem pretty close,” she whispers once Andrew is involved in a conversation with Greg on the other side of the room.

  I don’t meet her eye as I say, “Yeah, we do some work together. With foster kids. That’s all.”

  She studies me for a minute. “So there’s nothing going on between you two?” she asks.

  “Nothing.” I hold up my left hand. “Remember? I’m engaged.”

  “So you wouldn’t mind if I asked Andrew out?”

  I hesitate just a millisecond too long before saying, “Of course not.”

  She smirks a little, and it’s obvious she’s interpreted my pause as evidence that I’m secretly in love with Andrew. In reality, I’m trying to think of a way to tell her Andrew’s not interested without being rude.

  Andrew looks at me suspiciously as he calls the class to order, and I try to put Amy, Andrew, and their potential date out of my mind as I work on committing thirty new verbs and thirty new nouns to memory. At the end of class, Andrew lectures us for a few minutes about A
SL sentence construction, then pairs us up with partners to practice twenty phrases he has provided for us on worksheets. I’m relieved when he assigns me to work with Vivian, but I feel uneasy when I realize that means he’s working with Amy, since there are an odd number of us in class.

  After class, I wave good-bye to him from across the room and hurry out with my head down. I’m halfway to the corner of Madison and Sixty-Ninth when I hear footsteps on the pavement and turn to find Andrew jogging after me.

  “Wait up!” he says, his armful of papers and books precariously waving back and forth. “You rushed out,” he says when he catches up to me.

  “Didn’t want to stand in Amy’s way.” I can’t resist.

  “There’s no—” he begins, but then he shakes his head. “Don’t worry. I won’t be dating Amy.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” I say too quickly.

  “Right,” he says. He falls into step beside me. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that Molly’s gone back to her mother. It was a court order we weren’t expecting, or I would have told you sooner. Her caseworker was in support of it, but none of us really thought the judge would sign off. It just happened this afternoon.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “Seemed like she was really excited about it,” Andrew says. “I’ve never seen a kid pack so quickly in my life.”

  “Well, that’s good.” I’m surprised to feel a lump in my throat. It’s unsettling to realize one of these kids could vanish from my life so quickly. “I wish I’d gotten to say good-bye.”

  “I wish you had too. I’m sorry. But I think it’s for the best. The parental reunion, I mean. I think the mom’s not a bad person, and maybe this was the wake-up call she needed. I think Molly’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s good.” I pause. “But what if you’re wrong?”

  He just looks at me.

  “I mean, how do you deal with the not knowing?” I ask. “You’ll never know whether Molly’s okay or not unless she winds up back at St. Anne’s, right?”

  “Right,” Andrew agrees after a pause. “Of course there are follow-up visits. But you’re right; it’s hard to tell how everything’s going when you’re only with a family for an hour. I think you just have to hope—and believe in the fundamental goodness of most people.”

  Twenty-One

  I wake up the next day back in the too-bright, bizarrely familiar world for the first time in two and a half weeks, but this time is different from the rest. I’m not waking up at home, beside Patrick. Instead, I’m slumped forward uncomfortably on a mahogany desk, a piece of paper stuck to my cheek. As I struggle upright in my chair and blink in confusion, the only way I know I’m dreaming is that the colors in the room are too rich and vibrant for real life. Everything here always seem to be strangely oversaturated, as if someone exposed a photo reel for far too long, making the images bleed into one another too brightly.

  I look around, puzzled. Where am I? But the second the question crosses my mind, the now-familiar information download happens. Instantly, I know that this is my office. I know I’m in a brownstone on the Upper East Side and that I work only three days a week so that I can be home with Hannah. I know I can afford to, because my music therapy practice has become very successful. The phrase Music therapy services for adults: discretion, professionalism, and healing, flashes across my mind like an advertising slogan. A second later I realize it is an advertising slogan. My advertising slogan. But does this mean I don’t work with kids?

  I frown and look at the file folders spread out on my desk. I open the one on top and read the case notes, written in my own handwriting, on a twenty-six-year-old patient named Travis Worthington III. Apparently, he has schizophrenia and I’ve been working on a treatment plan in conjunction with his psychiatrist. My notes tell me he’s been having trouble expressing himself in words, but that he’s been slowly opening up through music. According to what I’ve jotted down, his psychiatrist has recently recommended another six months with me.

  The next file folder is for Samantha Lynn Berkley-Fournier, forty-two, a mother of two suffering from depression. My notes tell me she’s been coming to me for a month now and that we’ve been working on finding music that makes her feel some happiness and using that as a jumping-off point to discuss how she’s feeling. My eyes practically bug out of my head when I flip to her billing statement and see how much I’m charging her per session. It’s nearly four times what I make in my real life!

  But as I gaze around my office, I wonder suddenly if I’m happy here. In real life, my office is filled with pictures kids have drawn for me, artsy photographs of musical instruments I’ve collected over the years, and random knickknacks people have given me as gifts—everything from candles to marmalade jars to framed baseball cards. I love the managed chaos, and it gives the kids I work with something to look at too. I think of all the objects as possible entry points into conversations with each client I serve.

  But here, my office is stark and professional, lined with books and medical journals. The walls hold my framed degrees and a handful of awards I’ve apparently won. The only traces of my personality are the photos of Patrick, Hannah, and my niece and nephew displayed on my desk.

  I lean in and look at the photo of Patrick, a picture I suddenly know I took of him during a beach vacation to the Outer Banks of North Carolina a few years ago. He’s standing knee-deep in the water and laughing as he looks right at the camera. Now, his eyes seem to sear into me from the photograph.

  “What happened to my life?” I ask aloud, staring at his image. I don’t have the sense that I’m unfulfilled here, necessarily, but it occurs to me for the first time that choosing to work with kids was a decision I made after Patrick died in my real life. I never considered it a choice influenced by his death, but what if it was? What if it was a subconscious need to work with clients I considered the most helpless, because Patrick had been helpless at the moment he died too? Or what if I’d simply found comfort in working with kids when I thought my own chance to have children had vanished? Should that have been a sign to me all along that I had a deep-seated desire to be a mom?

  My heart thudding, I reach for my office phone to dial Patrick, but I realize that to my surprise, I don’t know his number. I shake my head and grab my cell phone instead. It takes me a minute to discover that my security code is our wedding date, and when I unlock it, I’m relieved to find Patrick first on my favorites list. I call him, but it rings and goes straight to voice mail. “Hey, honey,” I say, shaken by hearing his beautifully familiar voice on his outgoing message. “Can you give me a call when you get this? I have a question for you.”

  I hang up and look at the appointment calendar on my desk. My next session isn’t until two thirty, and it’s only noon. Suddenly, I know exactly how I’ll fill the time. I need to go out to Queens to sign up for a volunteer position at St. Anne’s, so that the next time I’m here, I’ll feel a bit more comfortable with the work I’m doing. And I need to go home to see Hannah, if she’s there, because I can’t imagine spending time in this world without her.

  I stride out of the office, telling my assistant—whom I don’t recognize, but who I instantly know is named Judith—that I’ll be back in time for my next appointment. As soon as I’m in the hall, I call Hannah’s cell—the second number on my favorites list—but it goes to voice mail. I leave her a message, then I text her: Thinking of coming home for lunch. Where are you?

  The second I hit Send, the world fades a little, and I realize too late that of course I should I already know where my daughter is. She’s barely thirteen. That’s too young to leave home alone, isn’t it? I’m embarrassed to discover I don’t actually know the answer to that.

  At Aunt Gina’s, just like every M, W and Thu in summer, Hannah texts back.

  Can you tell Gina I’ll drop by around 1:30? I text back.

  Ok.

  Love you, honey. S
o much, I add.

  U 2, Mom.

  I take a deep breath, tremendously grateful that I’ll be seeing not only Hannah shortly, but Gina too. It appears that in this world, she and I got even closer to each other—close enough that my daughter refers to her as an aunt and stays with her when I’m working. I wonder if her first husband is still alive. If Patrick and Dolores Kay—both of whom died tragically in real life—are here, maybe Bill is too. Oddly, I’m not sure how this makes me feel, because if Bill didn’t die, Gina never married Wayne, and they never had Madison. And I can’t imagine a world in which Gina isn’t Madison’s mom. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The more time I get to spend in this world, the more complicated the questions get.

  I hail a cab outside my office and give the driver the address of St. Anne’s. When we pull up in front of the familiar building twenty-five minutes later, I breathe a sigh of relief; it’s still here. The fact that it’s a constant between both worlds makes me relax a little. At once, I’m excited—giddy almost—to see Andrew. He may not know me yet, but like Joan, he’ll be an anchor to my real life. And maybe he’ll be able to help me understand what’s going on.

  But when I approach the receptionist, the one I never see in real life because Andrew usually meets me outside, she looks confused when I ask for Andrew Henson.

  “There’s no one here by that name,” she says blankly.

  I blink at her a few times. “He runs the deaf services program.”

  “Ma’am, we don’t have a deaf service program,” the receptionist says.

  I feel a sense of panic beginning to rise within me. “But what about Riajah Daniels? And Allie Valcher? And Molly Parise?”

  The woman looks at me with concern. “Ma’am, none of those people work here.”