If Only in My Dreams

by Wendy Markham

  ALLIED SUCCESSES CAUSE JAPS TO ASSUME MILDER ATTITUDE

  The headline leaps out at her, as hauntingly familiar as if…

  Well, as if she saw it just yesterday.

  Again, she finds herself wondering how she could have known. She never searched old newspapers when she was in Glenhaven Park.

  Could this one have been on display in the library’s historical exhibit?

  No. It couldn’t have been.

  There was plenty about December 7, the day that would live in infamy.…

  Plenty, predictably, about D-Day, and V-E Day, and other relevant dates during the war years.

  But nothing about December 1. That would have stood out for its sheer incongruity. She would have remembered.

  She scrolls forward again, until she finds the Glenhaven Gazette dated December 7.

  Nothing.

  Oh, right. She remembers that she needs to look at the following day’s paper.

  Sure enough, the December 8 headline screams US DECLARES WAR.

  The pages are filled with details about Pearl Harbor, the stateside reaction, the government. Clara reads about the attack and its aftermath with more fascination than ever before, feeling as though it’s no longer just something that happened in a history book.

  It was real, she was there.…

  No, she just feels as though she was. It seemed so real, all of it.…

  Particularly when she begins to notice that the paper contains ads for familiar businesses she’s seen on the Main Street of modern-day Glenhaven Park… or did she see them in the past, in her dream?

  And it isn’t just the ads…

  A name jumps out at her from a small article of local news, buried in the middle of the newspaper.

  Bouvier.

  Accompanying the article is a photo of an old woman she instantly recognizes: It’s the customer who stopped in Jed’s store for canning jars while Clara was there.

  Clara clearly remembers being struck by the woman’s last name at the time; it was the maiden name of the former—but in 1941, it would have been future—first lady. When she heard Jed mention it, she almost expected to look up and see a young Jacqueline Bouvier standing there.

  Naturally, she didn’t recognize the old woman who promised to bring Jed a couple of Christmas fruitcakes. But she remembers how affectionately he spoke to her, and how it seemed as though she had been shopping in his store for years.

  According to this article, Mrs. Minnie Bouvier, eighty-six, of 59 Oak Street, was struck by a car as it rounded the corner of Main and Oak at dusk on Saturday. She died the next day at Glenhaven Park Hospital. Her next-door neighbor mentioned that Minnie had asked to borrow a spice she needed for a recipe, but the neighbor was out of it as well.

  “She said she’d just walk over to the store,” a Mrs. Lorraine Barker was quoted as saying.

  “I warned her not to go, as it was getting dark and starting to snow. But she really wanted to finish mixing her fruitcakes. She said she’d been trying to get to them for days.”

  Fruitcakes.

  A chill slips down Clara’s spine.

  Yet another detail.

  And one too many for comfort.

  She tries to turn her attention back to the article.

  No charges were pressed against the distraught driver of the blue Packard that fatally struck Mrs. Bouvier. En route to the hospital with his laboring wife, Mr. Arnold—

  Clara reaches out and snaps the laptop closed, unable to continue.

  It’s just too much. Too much to absorb in one evening…

  Though she wonders, if she tries for the rest of her life, whether she’ll ever manage to wrap her mind around any of this.

  It’s almost as if…

  “I was really there.”

  There.

  She said it aloud.

  And somehow, it didn’t sound half as outlandish as she expected.

  Pushing back her chair, she heads for her bedroom, determined to get some sleep.

  And tomorrow, she won’t rest, or go to the gym, or see a movie.

  No. Tomorrow, she’ll pay a visit to an old friend.

  One she hasn’t seen in over a decade.

  The only person in the world who might be able to explain why the impossible suddenly seems distinctly possible.

  CHAPTER 10

  The first southbound commuter train stops in Glenhaven Park at precisely 5:40 A.M. on weekday mornings.

  Today, Jed plans to be on it. Wearing a brown fedora and his only decent suit, baggy with wide lapels and high-waisted trousers, he waits on the platform. He’s joined there by a smattering of businessmen he’s known most of his life, encompassing the generation between his and his father’s.

  In his hand is Clara’s heavy suitcase. He stashed her pocketbook inside, not wanting to be seen carrying it.

  “Jed Landry, what are you doing headed for the city at this time of day?” Harold Pogue, a Park Avenue lawyer, asks, curiously eyeing the suitcase. “Starting a vacation?”

  Lifting the bag as though it’s weightless—and thus, empty—he tells Harold, “No, I need to pick up some merchandise downtown. I’ll use this to get it home.” Frightening how comfortable Jed is with the lie he’s been rehearsing all night.

  He didn’t sleep when he climbed into his bed after setting the alarm.

  Nor does he sleep now, as he leans back in a cushioned seat after boarding the train.

  Anticipation dogs his every breath, along with a hint of dread at what he might find—or not find—when at last he reaches West Eleventh Street.

  It would probably have been easier to wait until he can fix his father’s car and drive down, but he simply couldn’t hold out another day.

  The train is the way to go. With any luck, he’ll be back in Glenhaven Park by nine o’clock to open the store.

  Darn that Alice, anyway. If she were someone he could count on, he’d simply have asked her to cover for him until he could get there. But she didn’t show up at all yesterday, nor did she ever call with an explanation. Jed figures she’s as good as fired; he’ll just have to wait until she turns up to drop the axe.

  He isn’t going to waste any time worrying about it now, when Clara McCallum is almost within his grasp.

  As the train rattles toward the city, he removes her photo card from his wallet and stares at it.

  Who are you, really? he asks her smiling, carefree image.

  More than an hour seems to pass before the train pulls into Grand Central Station, but checking his watch, Jed sees that it’s right on time.

  He exits with the other passengers, whose population has grown steadily at every stop and is now a bona fide horde.

  It’s been years since Jed took the subway in Manhattan. So long, in fact, that he has to consult a map on the mosaic-tiled wall of the station below the terminal.

  Hmm… Which line will get him closest to West Eleventh Street: IRT, IND, or BMT? It takes just a few seconds to conclude that the IRT Lexington Avenue Express to Fourteenth Street looks like the best route. He fishes a nickel from his pocket and feeds it into the wooden turnstile.

  The train arrives within minutes. Every rattan seat is occupied; he stands holding on to a porcelain strap as the train hurtles through a black tunnel to the next stop.

  Less than five minutes after boarding, he’s outside at last, heading down Broadway, the suitcase weighing heavily on his arm.

  For the first time since the commuter train entered the tunnel a few miles north of Grand Central, he’s able to glimpse the sky. It’s gone from black to milky charcoal, rimmed by the slightest hint of golden light that seems to promise a nice day.

  This is almost too easy, he thinks as he turns west onto Eleventh Street. It can’t possibly be this easy.

  He walks down the block, noting the descending order of the addresses as he nears Fifth Avenue: 25, 21, 15, 11…

  Having reached the sprawling Beaux Arts apartment building on the corner, he crosses lower Fifth Avenue. He
can see Washington Square Park a few blocks to the south, with its famed marble arch.

  Does Clara stroll in the park on nice afternoons? he finds himself wondering, and pictures her there, in dappled shade on a glorious summer afternoon.

  He realizes that he’s seeing the black-and-white Clara in the photo, though—not the Clara he met in person. A stroll in the park seems far too idyllic a pastime for the skittish woman with the bruise on her head and fear in her eyes.

  He pauses to set the suitcase down on the sidewalk and pull the card from his pocket again.

  What happened to you? he asks the serene woman in the photo.

  Again, he wonders about the name Jezibel, scribbled across the card. Is that her real name? Her alias?

  He flips the card to check her address against the buildings to his left. Still a ways to go. Eleventh Street’s designation transformed from East to West when he crossed Fifth Avenue and the numbers are ascending from the beginning again. She lives in the hundreds; he’s just passed number 16, 18…

  He lifts the suitcase with a grunt and resumes his pace. The street noise seems to have gone down a decibel, and there are more trees. More pigeons and squirrels, too. It’s as though he’s in a whole new realm of the city now. The hubbub of Union Square seems a thousand miles away rather than a mere few blocks.

  Here, traffic and pedestrians are sporadic. Bare limbs spread overhead against the gray morning sky. Century-old brick homes with wooden trim and double-hung paned windows are set back from the sidewalk. Many are fronted by short, wide flights of stairs that lead to graceful entries. Beneath, basement windows rise to eye level. The tiny concrete patches of sidewalk footage are protected by low black wrought-iron fences.

  Jed reaches the intersection with Sixth Avenue and is startled to find it oddly open and bright. It takes a moment for him to realize why: He hasn’t been down here since before the elevated train trestle was razed two years ago.

  Now there’s a clear view up the avenue, formerly the city’s famous Ladies’ Mile. From this angle he can’t see much detail on the sprawling Beaux Arts buildings that once housed the glorious department stores of the Gilded Age. Many lingered well into this century before closing or moving to more desirable uptown locations.

  Jed is familiar with the area’s history because his mother once worked down here, as a shopgirl at Siegel-Cooper a few blocks north. When Pop was courting her, they used to meet by the famous lobby fountain with its shooting jets and colored lights.

  Jed remembers taking the train down here with his parents once in a while on Sunday afternoons when he was little, before the Depression hit. He was struck by the way Mother and Pop would hold hands as they strolled, laughing and reminiscing about what used to be.

  What used to be…

  Jed can’t help but notice that, freshly sprung from the shadows of the El, the once-elegant buildings now seem as faded and run-down as the widowed Lois Landry does.

  Melancholy seeps in, and he quickly turns away from the memories, focusing his thoughts again on Clara.

  So this is her block. On the left is Rhinelander Gardens, a series of three-story apartment buildings set back from the street beyond well-landscaped front yards. Unbroken balconies run along the buildings’ facades, marked by lacy ornate ironwork.

  Though momentarily intrigued by the unusual century-old architecture, Jed doesn’t linger; Clara’s address is farther up the block.

  Has she ever eaten at that quaint little Italian restaurant, or noticed the high broken limb creaking in the wind on that elm tree just ahead? Are any of the briskly striding pedestrians her neighbors?

  He looks more closely at them as they pass, and can’t help but note the stark difference between these folks and the uptown commuters.

  Here, there are scattered well-heeled types to be sure, but there are also dungarees on men and women alike. Rather than briefcases, some people carry portfolios and instrument cases, or nothing at all. A few seem aimless, others shifty; many are obviously less than well-off. Though it has its share of elegant old homes, this doesn’t strike Jed as a particularly safe or desirable neighborhood.

  Why does she live here, then?

  Who or what is she, really?

  Greenwich Village, he knows, has been inundated with artists, writers, and theater people over the past few decades. Clara doesn’t seem to be any of the above—though he should probably know better than to think he can begin to guess anything about her based on one short, edgy encounter.

  You just never know. She could be a burlesque dancer, or a poet, or, yes… a spy.

  That she lives here among the Bohemians and architectural remnants of forgotten New York neither adds to nor detracts from his espionage speculation. He just can’t help but wonder why someone like Clara would make this neighborhood her home… unless she had no choice. Perhaps she can’t afford to live uptown, though this suitcase certainly contains a lot of nice clothes for someone on the fringes.

  Nice clothes in all different sizes.

  Realizing he might be close to solving the enigma one way or another, he checks the nearest address. Hers is only a few numbers away.

  He walks on, and his heart seems to be beating in his ears.

  Here. This is it.

  He stops and surveys the tall townhouse.

  It’s slightly shabbier than the one on the left and much nicer than the one on the right, proving the neighborhood clearly is in flux.

  Once, this was a grand townhouse. Now the paint is peeling from the trim around the door and windows. English ivy creeps halfheartedly up the front of the building, obstructing most of a ground-floor window, and there is a Christmas wreath on the front door. Those splotches of green are the building’s only bright spots in the midst of the bleak December landscape.

  Jed checks his watch. It’s just past seven o’clock.

  He wonders whether he should knock now or wait until a slightly more respectable hour. He can’t afford to let too much time pass if he expects to get back home and open the store.…

  Then he hears the voice.

  “Hey, mister… what you doing?”

  Sunday morning, Clara is awakened from a sound sleep—a sleep that had refused to descend until the sun came up—to a distant tapping sound.

  It takes her a moment to realize that it’s coming from her door.

  She jumps out of bed and hurries, barefoot, to the next room, rubbing her bleary eyes, wondering who it can be.

  In fact…

  She slows her pace as she approaches the door, remembering that people can’t just pop in. Not people without keys to the building, anyway. Or crazed killers who slip in when nobody’s looking.

  Frowning, she peers through the peephole… and smiles.

  The building super is standing there, holding a tremendous pinkish-white poinsettia plant.

  Wishing she were presentable, she unlocks the door and peeks out. “Hello, Mr. Kobayashi,” she croaks in her morning voice. “What have you got there?”

  “This is for you.” He thrusts the foil-wrapped pot at her.

  “Thank you! It’s so sweet of you to—”

  “No!” He looks downright alarmed. “Not sweet of me! This isn’t a sweet gift from me! I’m a married man!”

  “I know, I know… don’t worry.” Confused, she wonders if Mr. Kobayashi has a crush on her and what she’s supposed to do about it—and the sweet gifts he won’t own up to even when he hands them directly to her.

  “I found this here,” he says then, and gestures at the black rubber doormat.

  “You… found it?”

  “On the mat. Someone left a sweet gift. Not me.”

  “No, not you. Of course not.” And she believes him.

  “I just found it when I was coming to give you soup.”

  “Soup?”

  For the first time, she realizes that he is also holding a plastic container.

  “My wife made it. When I told her last night you got mugged by street scum and beat
up to a pulp, she said, ‘Isamu, my soup will help that poor girl.’ She says her soup will help everything. Here. For you. Homemade nabeyaki udon.”

  “Thank you so much.” Clara accepts the soup, balancing it on her arm, touched by his kindness. She also wonders who could have left the gorgeous poinsettia on her mat. “Please thank Mrs. Kobayashi for me, too.”

  He nods and pads away in his slippers, down the stairs.

  There’s a note, Clara realizes, spotting a corner of white peeking out from amid the leaves.

  She locks the door again, shoves the soup in the nearly empty fridge, and hurriedly opens the small florist’s card.

  In red Sharpie, someone has scrawled, May your day be merry and bright! Love, Santa.

  You again, Clara thinks, bemused. But who are you?

  The small, accented voice seems to have come out of thin air.

  Frowning, Jed looks around.

  There is nobody in sight.

  He hears a giggle.

  Only then does he catch sight of the little boy squatting in the subterranean shadows of the brownstone’s front steps.

  He’s about five, with a cap of shiny black hair and mischievous black Asian eyes. Clad only in a short-sleeved shirt and dungarees, he’s shivering.

  “Shouldn’t you be wearing a coat?” Jed asks, and the child shakes his head. “Well, what are you doing out here?”

  “Hiding,” is the reply.

  “From whom?”

  “Mama. She want to give me grilled fish for breakfast.” The boy makes a face.

  “I take it you don’t like grilled fish?”

  “Not for breakfast. I sick of fish! Every day, every day, fish.”

  “You don’t say.”

  The child nods vigorously.

  “I see where that would be a problem,” Jed says thoughtfully, setting the heavy suitcase on the sidewalk. “Say, where do you live?”

  The child points up at the townhouse.

  “Really? In there? What’s your name?”

  “Isamu.”

  “Hello, Isamu. Nice to meet you.”

  “What’s your name?” the boy asks haltingly and somewhat self-consciously, using the same inflections as Jed in a clear attempt to perfect his American accent.