The door closed behind him at 7:48 a.m.
I never saw him again.
I
was out for my morning run when it happened. While I was jogging north along the Hudson River greenway, marveling at how bright and clear the sky looked after a few days of rain, a thirty-seven-year-old woman named Gennifer Barwin, a tourist from Alabama, was finishing off the bottle of vodka she’d started drinking at three in the morning after a fight with her boyfriend. While I was mentally replaying a lecture I’d heard the day before in the music therapy graduate program I’m just started at NYU, she was strapping her seventeen-month-old daughter Lianna into a car seat in her 1997 Toyota Corolla. While I was thinking how lucky I was that Patrick had encouraged me to quit my banking job to pursue the career I’d always wanted, she was pulling out of the parking lot of Hoboken’s Starlite Motel.
You have to do what your heart tells you to do.
Patrick’s words of encouragement rang in my ears as my feet pounded the pavement.
Life’s too short not to follow your dreams, Kate.
As I looked up at the sky that morning, reflecting on how wonderfully supportive my husband was, Gennifer Barwin was swerving through the Lincoln Tunnel, headed for Manhattan. As I turned south to
head home, she was taking the exit for West Fortieth Street, sideswiping a sign after she got off the highway.
And as I smiled to myself, wondering what piece of good luck had made Patrick hand me a silver dollar that morning, Gennifer Barwin was driving at 47 mph directly into the back passenger-side door of the taxi my husband was riding in.
Thirty minutes later, I rounded the corner to our fifth-floor apartment, still breathing hard from my run, and found two uniformed police officers standing outside my front door.
“Mrs. Waithman?” asked the younger one. I’m not sure whether it was his eyes full of sympathy, his somber expression, or the way he said my name, but in an instant, I knew something was terribly wrong.
“What happened?” I asked, my knees buckling beneath me. The young officer caught me before I could hit the ground.
“Ma’am, we’re very sorry, but your husband was involved in a serious car accident this morning,” he said, his voice flat. “He was in a cab, ma’am. Near Times Square.”
“No, that can’t be right,” I protested, looking back and forth between the officers. Their faces were suddenly blurry. “He’s at work. He takes the subway to work.” But he had that meeting, I realized immediately, the one with some of his most important clients. He would have taken a taxi from his office to theirs. “
Oh God.”
“Ma’am—?”
“You’re sure it’s him?” I choked out.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid so.”
“But he’s okay, right?” I asked into the strangely heavy silence. “Of course he’s okay?”
“Mrs. Waithman—” the younger one began uncertainly.
“Where is he?” I cut him off, glancing at the older officer, who reminded me of my dad, someone who would surely make
everything okay. “Which hospital? Can you take me? I have to help him.”
From the thin slice of stillness that lingered between them, the way neither of them made a move, I knew before they said the words.
“Ma’am.” The older one finally spoke, his eyes watery. “I’m afraid your husband was pronounced dead at the scene.”
“No. Absolutely not.” My reply was instant, for the very concept was impossible. No more than two hours earlier, Patrick and I had made love. He’d held me in his arms. He’d kissed me good-bye, just like any other day. He’d been warm and alive and mine. “That can’t be right,” I mumbled. “Of course it can’t. There’s been some kind of mistake.”
“Ma’am, I’m afraid it’s true,” the younger officer said, reaching out again and catching my other elbow so that I was suspended between the two men. I hadn’t even noticed that I was falling. “Is there someone we can call for you?” he asked gently.
“Patrick,” I answered irrationally. “Patrick’s my emergency contact.” It had never occurred to me that he could be the emergency. I let them help me inside the apartment, where they placed me gently on the couch. I handed them my cell phone, and somehow, they must have managed to find my sister Susan’s number, because my daze was interrupted some thirty minutes later by her flying through my front door, her hair a mess.
“I got here as soon as I could,” she said, but all I could do was nod. It wasn’t until I noticed the tears streaked across her face that I realized I hadn’t cried yet. “Mom and Dad are out of town, but Gina’s on her way.”
“Oh,” I managed.
“Kate,” she said softly, sitting down beside me on the couch. “Are you okay? What can I do?”
I just stared at her blankly. It was like she was speaking a different language. I knew that I’d have to call Patrick’s parents, reach his friends, arrange a funeral, and do all those things you’re supposed to do when someone dies. But the thing is, I wasn’t ready to admit he was gone yet. As long as I sat there on the couch, the couch where we’d spent hundreds of hours together, believing in our future, I could convince myself that the world hadn’t ended.
My best friend, Gina, who’d lost her husband a year earlier in the September eleventh attacks, arrived some time later, and the two of them stayed with me, rubbing my back in silence, until long after the time Patrick should have come home from work. I watched the door for hours, hoping beyond hope that he’d walk through it, that it would all be a crazy mistake.
But it wasn’t. And as the clock turned to midnight and September nineteenth became the first day of my life that Patrick wasn’t on this earth with me, I finally began to cry.
Two
Twelve Years Later
“R
aise your hands up high!” I sing brightly, strumming my guitar as I smile at Max, my favorite client.
“Kick your feet up too,” I continue. “Now twirl ’round and ’round! Bend down and touch your—”
“—shoe!” Max cries.
“Good job, Max!” I’m making it up as I go, and Max, who has autism, is giggling madly, but he’s playing along. In the corner of my office, his mother, Joya, laughs as Max straightens up from his toe touch and begins to jump up and down.
“More, Miss Kate!” Max begs. “More, more!”
“Okay,” I tell him solemnly. “But this time, you have to sing along. Can you do that?”
“Yeah!” he exclaims, throwing his hands in the air with joyful abandon.
“Promise?” I ask.
“Yeah!” His enthusiasm is contagious, and I find myself laughing again.
“Okay, Max,” I say slowly. “Sing with me, okay?”
I’ve been in private practice as a music therapist for five years now, specializing in kids with special needs, and Max was one of my very first clients. Joya first brought him to me on the recommendation of his speech therapist when he was five, because he wasn’t making progress with her and was refusing to speak. Slowly, in our weekly sessions, I managed to coax one-word answers, then sentences, then entire conversations out of him. Now, our sessions are a time to sing, to dance, to be silly together. On the surface, I’m helping him with his verbal and motor skills, but this is about more than that. It’s about helping him to socialize, to trust people, to open up.
“Okay, Max, fill in the blank,” I begin. I strum the guitar and sing, “My name is Max, and I have—”
“—brown hair!” Max cries, giggling. “My name is Max and I have brown hair!”
I laugh. “Good one.” I play another chord and sing, “I’m so handsome that all the girls stare,” I sing, raising an eyebrow at him.
Max collapses in giggles. I wait until he straightens back up again and says, “Miss Kate, that’s so silly!”
“Silly?” I exclaim in mock horror. “Silly is as silly does, mister. Now are you going to sing with me or not?”
“Sing it again, sing it again!” Max says.
I wink at him. “I’m so handsome that all the girls stare,” I repeat, strumming my guitar.
This time, Max sings it back to me, so I move on to the next line.
“I’m just turned ten; I’m getting so—” I sing.
“—old!” he cries, puffing his chest out and holding up ten fingers. “I’m getting old!”
“You got it, old dude!” I strum again and conclude my on-the-spot verse. “But the best part of me,” I sing, “is my heart of gold.”
I stop strumming and put my hand over my heart as Max sings back, “The best part of me is my heart of gold!” He giggles again and claps his hands over his mouth “But my heart’s not made of gold!” he exclaims through his fingers. “That’s silly again!”
“You’re right!” I tell him. “But what that means is that I think you’re a very, very nice person, Max.”
He breaks into a grin and throws his hands in the air. “You’re nice too, Miss Kate.”
I put my guitar down so that I can hug him. Today, I needed him and his cheerful innocence more than he needed me. But I don’t want him to know that. These sessions aren’t supposed to be about me.
“Thanks, Miss Kate!” Max cries as he squeezes me hard around the waist, pressing his head into my shoulder. “I love you!”
“Max, you are very special,” I reply, surprised to feel tears prickling my eyes. “You be a good guy for your mom this week, okay?”
“Okay, Miss Kate!” he says cheerfully. Then he bounds over to give Joya a hug.
“Thanks, Kate,” she says with a smile, getting up from her chair as she returns her son’s squeeze. “Max, why don’t you go out and see Dina in the waiting room? I just need to talk to Miss Kate for a minute.”
“Okay!” Max agrees. “Bye, Miss Kate!” he cries as he dashes out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
I turn to Joya. “Everything okay?”
She smiles. “I was going to ask you the same thing. You don’t seem like yourself today.”
I shake my head, chiding myself for letting my personal life bleed into my professional one. “No, I’m fine, Joya,” I say. “Thanks.”
She takes a step closer, and I can see doubt in her eyes. “Things with Dan are still going well?” she asks.
“Things are great,” I answer quickly. Joya and I have gotten to know each other well in the last five years. I know, for example, that she’s a single mom struggling to make ends meet and that she’d do anything to make her son’s life as normal and as easy as possible. She knows that I’m still struggling with the grief left over from Patrick’s death nearly a dozen years ago, but that I’m finally dating a guy I’m serious about, someone everyone in my life agrees is perfect for me.
“Is it something else, then?” she asks gently.
“Really, it’s nothing,” I respond too quickly, too brightly. I see something in her eyes flicker. “Don’t worry about me,” I add with as much confidence as I can muster. “I’ll be fine.”
But after Joya takes Max’s hand and leaves, her face full of doubt, I sink into the chair behind my desk and put my head in my hands. It takes me another five minutes before I can force myself to open the file folder my doctor gave me today, the one filled with terms like
chronic anovulation
and
primary infertility
.
T
wo hours later, I’ve finished up my notes on today’s clients and I’m headed south on Third Avenue toward Zidle’s, the intimate bistro on the corner of Lexington and Forty-Eighth that’s become a favorite of Dan’s and mine over the last year. We have a reservation at seven, and the closer I get, the more ferociously my heart thuds.
I’ll have to tell Dan about the news from my doctor, the fact that my ovaries have basically shut down, but what if this changes his mind about being with me? He’s the first person I’ve been serious about since I lost Patrick. I’ve made the choice—
finally—to blend my life with someone else’s. I can’t lose that. I can’t be alone again.
You don’t know
what
Dan will say,
I remind myself as I turn the corner onto Forty-Eighth. We’ve never really talked about children, save for a few surface-level conversations when we first started dating. I had just turned thirty-eight when we met, so I suppose my biological clock should have been ticking, but it was strangely silent. I thought—even though I knew intellectually that it would be harder to get pregnant the older I got—that I had all the time in the world to make my mind up about kids. I certainly didn’t expect to be told at barely forty that my chances had all vanished. I’m not even sure I
want
to be a mom, but I’ve realized I’m not ready for that door to close.
What if Dan isn’t either?
I check my watch as I arrive outside the entrance to Zidle’s. I’m already ten minutes late, but there’s a piece of me that wants to turn around and go home. I could text Dan with an apology, tell him I got caught up with a client, and suggest we order takeout. It would buy me an extra hour to keep things just as they are.
“Kate?”
My intentions evaporate as Dan emerges from the restaurant, his brow creased in concern.
“Oh.” I force a smile. “Hey.”
“What are you doing just standing out here?” He takes a step closer and puts a hand on my shoulder. Right away, I feel better. This is Dan. Perfect, blond-haired, hazel-eyed, friends-with-everyone Dan, who’s reasonable and rational and loves me. Everything’s going to be okay. He’s not going to give up on me just because my ovaries have.
I take a deep breath. “Dan, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Something flickers across his face, but then he smiles and shakes his head. “Think we could go in first?”
“Well—” I begin.
“You can tell me once we’ve gotten our table, okay?” He grabs my hand and turns around without waiting for an answer. I sigh and let him pull me through the door.
“Surprise!” A chorus of voices greets us the moment we step inside. I gasp and take a step back as my eyes adjust to the dim lighting of the restaurant. It takes me a moment to register that the entryway is filled with some of the people I love most: my sister, Susan, and her husband, Robert; their kids, Sammie and Calvin; my best friend, Gina, and her husband, Wayne; a dozen other friends and acquaintances from over the years. Dan’s brother, Will, is there too, as is his best friend, Stephen, and a handful of the couples we sometimes go out with.