If Only in My Dreams Page 7

  Only two years, Jed thought later this morning when Mrs. Robertson, oblivious to the shortages created by the war in Europe, demanded to know why there are still no silk stockings for sale, and why he can’t tell her when there will be. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime since he was striding jauntily and carefree along a Cambridge street, a stack of books under one arm, Carol under the other.

  Two years.

  Shouldn’t it be getting a little easier? Shouldn’t there be some mornings when Lois Landry doesn’t emerge from her lonely bedroom with heavy footsteps and telltale red, swollen eyes?

  Jed honestly expected his mother’s grief to diminish as yet another year drew to a close, but time seems to have had the opposite effect on her.

  And it isn’t just Mother. Facing yet another holiday season without Pop is hard on all of them. Grandma sighs a lot, and not just over the news from overseas. Granddad shuffles around the house halfheartedly, glancing often at the chessboard sitting untouched on the shelf. His son-in-law was the only one in the house who knew how to play.

  Gilbert sent a letter claiming that he couldn’t be home until Christmas Eve, and had to be back on campus before New Year’s. Penny and Mary Ann have been bickering even more than usual.

  Meanwhile, Doris pesters Jed every chance she gets about when they’re going to take the cartons of decorations from the attic, and put up the outdoor lights, and cut down a tree.…

  Those were tasks Pop always tended to—only he didn’t consider them tasks.

  The first year without him, of course, the Landry home was newly in mourning; there were no decorations, no lights, no tree. Last year, it was Jed who took over the seasonal rituals, halfheartedly, because Doris insisted and Pop would have wanted him to.

  But he only agreed to indoor decorations: a small Christmas tree and the stockings. Outdoor lights for all the world to see would have seemed garish on the first anniversary of Pop’s death.

  This year, he supposes, the decisions—and the decorating itself—will fall to him again.

  And what about next Christmas? Will he be on some frigid European battlefield or in an island jungle in the South Pacific, longing for home? Will Gilbert know how to string the lights along the porch eaves and remind Doris to hang the shiny lead tinsel on the tree strand by strand, rather than in clumps?

  “Oh, look, it’s snowing again,” Mrs. Bouvier announces as she accepts her package from him.

  Jed follows her glance out the plate-glass window and a wistful feeling falls over him.

  You don’t have to go, you know, he reminds himself. You can always stay right here in Glenhaven Park. Forever.

  Unless, of course, he’s drafted.

  Which he will be, sooner or later—he knows it in his gut, the way he knew that his father’s health was failing long before Doc Wilson delivered the dreadful verdict back in the spring of ’39.

  Anyway, he doesn’t want to stay here and bide his time waiting for war to hit home and the government to decide his fate. He’ll enlist in May, right after Gilbert gets home, just as he planned.

  “I’ll be seeing you later, then, Jed,” Mrs. Bouvier says, and departs into the swirl of white flakes.

  Jed returns his attention to his visitor, who can’t really be called a customer because she isn’t shopping. She’s just sitting, and staring. Not at him, but into space, which gives him another opportunity to surreptitiously look her over from head to toe, with renewed appreciation.

  She sure is classy.

  Much too classy for a small-town fella like me, Jed can’t help thinking. Still…

  She looks up, suddenly, and catches him staring at her.

  He is alarmed to see that the bump above her eyebrow is so much more pronounced, in size and color, that he can easily see it from where he stands several yards way.

  “You really do need to keep ice on that,” he advises, quickly covering the ground between them.

  “I know… but it’s cold.”

  “It’s supposed to be cold. It’s ice.” He picks up the towel, now sopping wet, and secures it better around the clump of melting ice. He offers it to her. When she doesn’t take it, he gently presses it against the bump himself.

  She flinches when it makes contact with her skin, but to his surprise, she lets him hold it there. It’s an oddly intimate situation, to be standing so close to her that he can, if he lowers his eyes to her legs, easily see that she is wearing the real thing. Silk stockings. If Mrs. Robertson were here she might offer to buy them from her on the spot.

  Standing this near to Clara, Jed can smell the delicate scent that wafts deliciously in the air between them. He wants to ask her what fragrance it is, so much lighter than the heavy floral aroma of that Evening in Paris perfume he’s been selling like hotcakes.

  Betty Godfrey bathes herself in it, as far as he can tell. It’s all he can do not to sneeze whenever she’s cozying up to him.

  He inhales again and is seized by a momentary—and wholly inappropriate—fantasy that involves burying his face in Clara’s fragrant neck.

  He can’t do that.

  But he can ask her what scent she’s wearing.

  No, he can’t, either.

  That would be much too forward of him… wouldn’t it?

  Of course it would, Jed! You barely know her. Wait, you don’t know her at all.

  “You’re shivering,” he notes. “I’m sorry… I know it’s cold, and this isn’t comfortable for you, but if you don’t ice that bump—”

  “It’s okay. It’s not just that I’m cold, I’m…” She trails off, but he has the strangest sensation that he can read her mind… and that she was about to say scared.

  He provides the word for her, but as a question, and isn’t surprised when she nods.

  “What are you scared of?” he asks.

  She hesitates. “A lot of things. But… I don’t want to talk about them.”

  Jed frowns, running his thoughts over a list of possibilities. He settles on the most likely and most frightening scenario he can conjure. “Is somebody after you? Did somebody hit you? Is that why you have that bruise?”

  “No!” she says quickly… so quickly that he’s certain she must be lying.

  Jed is instantly infused with the same brand of anger he experienced as an overprotective older brother called in to disperse Waldie Smith and his cronies with a few well-thrown punches.

  If some goon did this to an innocent woman… well, Jed would love to get his hands on him and give him a taste of his own medicine.

  I guess I am capable of violence after all, he finds himself thinking as he says aloud, “Clara, you can stay here with me for as long as you need to. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I can’t… I have to get back home. And that’s… that’s part of the reason I’m afraid.”

  “Because he’s there?”

  “Who?”

  “The fella who—did this.” He removes the ice pack to inspect the injury again, gingerly grazing it with the very tips of his fingers.

  “Nobody did this. There’s no… fella.” The word seems so awkward on her tongue that he decides she must be lying. But she persists, “I told you before, I hit my head when I was on the train.”

  “Then why are you afraid to go home?”

  “I’m not afraid to go home. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get there,” she says cryptically. “And when I do manage to get back, if I do… I’ve got a lot of stuff going on that I have to deal with. That’s all.”

  “Like what? What do you have to deal with?” When she remains silent, he tries another tactic. “Do you live with your parents? Your husband?”

  “I’m not married,” she says—at last, at last.

  She isn’t married!

  Absorbing that delightful news, he asks, “You live with your parents, then?”

  “No—but this has nothing to do with where I live, and you wouldn’t understand, so…” She starts to stand. “You’ve been very nice to me, but I have
to—”

  “Careful,” he advises, seeing her start to sway.

  She quickly sinks to the stool again as he guides her, gently holding one slender upper arm. There’s nothing to her; beneath the sleeve of the velvet jacket he can tell that she’s scrawnier than his kid sister.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks, concerned.

  She shakes her head.

  “You’re not drinking your coffee. Too hot?”

  After a slight pause she nods, but she looks uncertain enough to make him wonder if she even took a sip.

  “How about a milk shake, then? It’ll make you feel better.” And put some meat on your bones, as his grandmother would say.

  “No, thank you,” she says politely.

  “Let me make you a chocolate milk shake,” he insists. “You can just sip it.”

  “I can’t!” she protests, as though he suggested that she drink the blood of a freshly slaughtered boar.

  “Why can’t you?”

  She responds in a tone that suggests she doesn’t appreciate having to spell out things that are pure common sense. “Because… I have to watch my weight.”

  He blinks. “How’s that again?”

  She studies him for a moment, as though trying to assess his reaction, then admits, this time with considerable reluctance, “I’m watching my weight.”

  “Watching your weight do what? Plummet until there’s nothing left of you?”

  For the first time since he offered her the Dr. Denton’s, he sees a glint of amusement in her eyes.

  So that’s it. She was kidding, obviously. She sure has a quirky sense of humor.

  “Never mind.” She glances at the newspapers on the counter. “Things are so different… here.”

  He can’t help but feel a little defensive at what sounds like a vague insult, coming from a cosmopolitan gal like her. “We’re only about forty miles from the city, you know.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “No? What did you mean?”

  “You couldn’t possibly understand.” Again, her gaze flicks to the bold black headlines about the war.

  “Try me.” It’s a challenge… one she seems to accept with a sparkle in her eye despite her pain, her confusion, her inexplicable fear.

  “Where I come from—”

  “New York? That’s where you’re from?”

  She seems to hesitate for a split second before answering, “Yes.”

  “Lived there all your life?”

  She nods, then tells Jed somewhat guardedly, “In my world, people tend to worry about a lot of things that, I have to admit, all of a sudden seem pretty… frivolous.”

  “Such as… milk shakes.” He shoots an exaggerated comical expression at her.

  For the first time since she walked into the store, a pleasant, tinkling sound spills from her lips. But the laugh quickly ripples back into silence like a music box that needs to be rewound.

  “What are you scared of, Clara?” he asks softly, watching her face transform once again into a mask of trepidation.

  “I just… I really need to get back home. What time did you say the next train leaves for the city?”

  “Ten twenty-one. I’ll walk you over to the depot when it’s time.”

  “That’s all right, I can find it. I just came from there.”

  “You shouldn’t be walking around by yourself.”

  “Where I come from, grown women come and go as they please.”

  “They do that where I come from, too,” he says, frowning, “when they’re in familiar territory and don’t have tremendous lumps on their foreheads.”

  “Oh…” A shadow crosses her face. “Trust me… this particular lump is absolutely the least of my worries right now.”

  Jed nods thoughtfully, wondering again what it is that’s got her so spooked.

  But he’s pretty darned sure she isn’t about to tell him.

  CHAPTER 5

  First cancer, now this… this… this bizarre hallucination she can’t seem to escape.

  This is about as cataclysmic as things can possibly get, Clara has concluded, marveling that she’s still able to function on any level.

  Yet here she sits, somehow having a coherent conversation with dead Jed Landry… in 1941, no less.

  It’s almost as if focusing on the superficial details keeps her from facing the mind-bending situation itself.

  “How about a Coca-Cola?” Jed is asking. “If you won’t drink a milk shake, will you drink a Coke?”

  Just the details, Clara. Stick to the conversation. All you have to think about is answering the question.

  Will you drink a Coke?

  No, she won’t. Not unless it’s Diet—which she highly doubts is available here in the, um… past.

  And anyway, that’s an indulgence she can no longer enjoy…

  Talk about superficial. Here she is, trapped in some alternate universe, and she’s lamenting her self-imposed diet-soda ban?

  Well, it’s certainly preferable to lamenting the loss of everything even remotely familiar to her.

  Plus, it’s much easier to be self-disciplined about artificial sweeteners when they’ve ceased to exist even in your fantasies, she realizes with the tiniest hint of irony.

  As if there’s anything even remotely amusing about any of this.

  “I’d rather have water, thanks,” she tells the still-hovering Jed, realizing he’s not going to leave her alone until she allows him to hand her a beverage of some sort.

  “Just water?”

  “Just water,” she assures him.

  She watches him go around to the other side of the counter, where he picks up a glass.

  A glass glass. Not a paper cup.

  Paper cups must not have been invented yet, either.

  Good Lord, is this 1941? she thinks as renewed panic begins to well up again. Am I really in 1941?

  How on earth could this have happened?

  Breathe, Clara. Don’t panic. And don’t hyperventilate, for God’s sake.

  Air in, hold it… air out.

  Air in, hold it… air out.

  Jed turns around. “Do you want a straw?”

  A straw. Does she want a straw…

  Air in, hold it… air out.

  Jed is waiting.

  A straw? Does she want a straw?

  She manages to shake her head and smile.

  He smiles and turns his back again, running water at the sink.

  Okay. If you must think about what’s going on here, then do it rationally.

  And there’s only one possible rational explanation.

  This hasn’t happened. Not really.

  I’m just dreaming.

  Of course she is.

  Like Clara in The Nutcracker ballet…

  Or like Dorothy. Glenhaven Park is her own personal version of Oz. She even bumped her head right before she started dreaming, just like Dorothy did in that Kansas twister.

  But…

  It’s just…

  Well, shouldn’t she have woken up by now?

  Because whenever she’s dreaming, and in the dream she suddenly comprehends that it is, indeed, a dream… she wakes up. Always. Instantly.

  She has never before, after being struck by the realization that she’s in the middle of a dream, managed to continue it. Especially against her will. Especially when the dream happens to be a nightmare.

  The good thing about nightmares—if there is anything good about nightmares—is that sooner or later, you always wake up.

  Not that this particular nightmare has been entirely nightmarish.

  But only because of Jed Landry.

  She’s just barely managed to hold it together—in part because deep down in some innately flirtatious and decidedly unreasonable part of her psyche, she doesn’t want Jed to decide she’s a loony tune.

  No, God help her, she wants Jed to think she’s desirable… and if he does think that, then it’s certainly mutual.

  He happens to be much bett
er looking than any Hollywood heartthrob she’s ever known—including Michael Marshall, last year’s cover boy for People Magazine’s annual “Sexiest Man Alive” issue.

  How could Clara never have noticed until just today that most actors’ looks are just so… premeditated? The big-screen heroes whose handsome faces cover the tabloids—men most women would kill to meet in person as she has—are men who spend way too much time in the gym, painstakingly applying hair products, and shopping.

  Conversely, Jed Landry’s sex appeal seems utterly incidental.

  Who knew a barbershop haircut and a canvas apron could make a man look so good?

  He doesn’t just look good, he also smells good. She’s pretty sure it isn’t expensive cologne. It’s… well, she could swear it’s just plain old soap. Maybe a hint of pipe tobacco. And plain old masculine skin. His skin.

  She got a good whiff of him when he was leaning over her, holding the ice pack against her forehead. It was all she could do to remain in control of her emotions.

  She was shivering, but not because she was cold.

  And not merely because she was afraid, either.

  “Here you go.” Jed slides a glass of tap water across the counter. “Are you sure that’s all you really want?”

  Tap water. Hmm.

  “This is perfect,” she tells him with forced enthusiasm, reminding herself that no five-and-dime circa 1941 is going to be serving Evian or even Poland Spring.

  She sips, watching him watching her over the rim of the glass.

  He’s such a sweet guy—or fella, as he might say—with his tender concern about her head, and his old-fashioned manners.…

  Old-fashioned?

  Does anything about Jed Landry technically qualify as old-fashioned when this is his era? And when this moment has already unfolded, or is currently unfolding, almost three-quarters of a century ago?

  Does any of that even make sense?

  Clara tries to wrap her mind around the thought, to rephrase it, but only winds up more confused.

  How can now be in the past? How can she be in the past?

  She can’t be. Therefore, she must be dreaming.

  It’s that simple.

  Okay, you can wake up now, she tells herself for the umpteenth time since she figured out what’s going on here.