If Only in My Dreams

by Wendy Markham

  “Mother, this is my friend Clara, visiting from Cambridge.”

  “It’s wonderful to meet you.” The woman politely extends her right hand.

  Clara shakes it, noting the ironic juxtaposition of the gold wedding band she still wears on the same hand that holds the cigarette aloft.

  “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Landry,” she says politely, trying to block out the memory of the archived newspaper headline.

  COMMUNITY PILLAR SUCCUMBS TO LUNG CANCER

  “Hi, I’m Doris.”

  Startled by the nearby voice, Clara turns to find a freckle-faced girl with red pigtails standing right at her elbow. She looks to be about twelve and is wearing jeans and an oversized blue sweater that must once have belonged to Jed or his father. Her eyes are the same deep shade of blue as her big brother’s.

  “Where did you come from?” Clara asks with a laugh as she shakes Doris’s extended hand.

  “Oh, Doris is always sneaking up on people,” Jed says, ruffling his kid sister’s hair affectionately. “Aren’t you, toots?”

  “Yes, she is, and it really gripes my middle kidney,” another voice announces from overhead.

  “Oh, ish kabibble,” Doris retorts, looking up at the stairs.

  Clara follows her gaze to see a pretty, slender teenager starting down the flight. Directly on her heels is a look-alike, a few inches shorter.

  Both girls have shiny auburn hair curled in pompadours above their foreheads and falling past their shoulders in careful waves. They’re wearing similar knee-length wool skirts, white blouses with rounded collars, cardigans, dark-colored cuffed socks, and oxfords.

  “That’s Penny, and that’s Mary Ann,” Jed tells Clara. “Did I mention I’ve got three sisters? How lucky am I?”

  “Really lucky, actually. I don’t have any sisters. Brothers, either.”

  “Well, I’ve got one, and you can have him, too.”

  “Jed, you know that isn’t kind.”

  “I’m just teasing, Mother. You know that I love Gilbert. It’s Mary Ann that I’d give away to the first taker.”

  Arriving at the base of the stairs, his middle sister swats his arm and sticks out her tongue. He grabs her hand and holds it behind her back as she squirms, giggling, refusing to say Uncle on her big brother’s command.

  “Why don’t you have any brothers and sisters, Clara?” Doris asks.

  “Doris, don’t be nosy,” Penny scolds.

  “I’m not being nosy. I’m being friendly.”

  “All right, that’s enough,” Mrs. Landry declares, as Clara wistfully contrasts Jed’s household to her own quiet, unorthodox urban upbringing. As much as she has always lamented her parents’ divorce, as much as she has always craved domestic stability, never until this moment did she entirely grasp all that was missing from her life as an only child in a small city apartment.

  “Supper is ready,” Jed’s mother declares. “Come on. Grandma and Granddad are already sitting down.”

  “In the kitchen?” Doris is blatantly disappointed. “But we have company, Mother!”

  “I’d have set up in the dining room,” Jed’s mother tells Clara somewhat apologetically, “but I need Jed’s help getting the extra leaf into the table. And anyway, we have an extra seat with Gilbert away.”

  “Where is your brother?” Clara asks Jed as they all head down a dimly lit hall toward the kitchen.

  “College. Penn State. He graduates this spring, then he’ll be home to take over here with the store and the family.”

  He says it in a low voice, almost as though he doesn’t want his mother and sisters to overhear.

  “What about you?” she asks, wishing she didn’t already know. A sick feeling twists in her gut.

  “Well, I was thinking I’d join the army once Gilbert’s back home, but…” He shrugs, shooting her a meaningful glance, slowing his pace as the others disappear around the corner into the bright kitchen.

  “But… what?”

  “That was my plan when I didn’t think I had anything to stick around here for.”

  Clara’s heart skips a beat. Is he hinting that he might change his plans… because of her?

  She knows, based on the movie’s true-to-life script, that Jed wasn’t drafted; he enlisted. It was his own choice.

  What if she can influence that?

  “What about now?” she dares to ask him, and holds her breath for the answer. “Do you think there might be some reason to stick around?”

  “Now… who knows?”

  “Jed? Can you help me to lift this roaster out of the oven?” his mother calls.

  “Coming, Mother.” Jed looks at Clara. “We’ll talk later.”

  Not certain whether to be relieved or dismayed at the interruption, Clara follows him.

  The kitchen is large by Manhattan standards, but smaller, she supposes, than a modern suburban kitchen would be. The floor is speckled aqua linoleum. The cabinets are white metal with long silver handles. The white enamel stove is enormous, particularly in contrast to the icebox across from it. The low double sink stands alone, rather than set into a countertop the way sinks are today.

  As she looks around, taking it all in, Clara’s thoughts are whirling with possibilities.

  Maybe she’s here in the past so that Jed will fall in love with her and stay in Glenhaven Park instead of going off to the war in Europe. She can’t help but feel exhilarated by the mere thought of settling down here with him.…

  Even though it’s flat-out impossible.

  If she stays here in 1941, she’ll eventually die of the cancer that’s growing within her. She can’t survive without treatment.

  So what does this all mean?

  Is she supposed to sacrifice her own life to save Jed’s? Is that how it works?

  How can you even imagine such a thing? He’s a stranger, really.…

  And yet, he’s not a stranger at all. Right now, there is no one else in this world—or in her own world—who matters to her as much as this man does. Only with Jed does she feel safe, and happy, and—ironically—irrevocably alive.

  “Mom and Dad, this is Clara, an old friend of Jed’s from Cambridge,” Mrs. Landry announces to an elderly white-haired couple seated in a breakfast nook at a large chrome table with an aqua Formica top. “Clara, this is my mother, Etta, and my father, Ralph.”

  “It’s so nice to meet you both,” she manages to say cordially, even as she is struck by the perception of having crossed a vast bridge through time. Jed’s grandparents might very well have been born before the Civil War even ended.

  And they’re long dead now, in my time, she reminds herself.

  Jed’s mother probably is, too. And Jed himself—not something she wants to dwell on right now.

  “Where did you say you’re from, dear?” asks Jed’s grandmother, her gaze solemn behind thick glasses.

  “I’m from New York, but I met Jed in college,” she remembers to say, feeling a little guilty.

  “Did you go to Harvard Law, too?” Doris asks in surprise.

  Before Clara can acknowledge that she did, Penny disdainfully informs her sister, “Women aren’t allowed to go to Harvard Law, Dumdora.”

  As unnerved by that unexpected discrimination as she is by the close call, Clara reminds herself that in some ways, the good old days are anything but.

  Doris pulls her pigtails horizontally from her head, crosses her eyes at her sister, and retorts, “Aw, go chase yourself, Henny Penny.”

  “You’re not allowed to call me that anymore! Jed said, remember?”

  “Well, you’re not allowed to call me Dumdora, either!”

  “Jed never said that.”

  “I’m saying it now,” Jed announces from the stove, where he’s looking into the oven.

  Doris sticks her thumbs in her ears, wiggles her fingers at Penny, and lets loose a loud, wet raspberry.

  “Doris! That’s enough.”

  Under her mother’s warning glare, Doris turns to Clara and, in an
exaggeratedly sweet tone, offers, “You can sit here, in Gilbert’s chair.”

  “Thank you,” Clara murmurs, sliding into it, acutely aware that even Jed’s puerile kid sister is an old woman now… if she’s still alive at all.

  A lump rises in her throat as she watches Jed carry a steaming roaster pan to the table, laughing with Mary Ann about something.

  “What have we got here tonight, Lois?” Jed’s grandfather asks, looking with interest at the heaping platters she’s set before them.

  “Roast chicken and potatoes, bread and margarine, Brussels sprouts, and corn. Oh, and I’ve got canned peaches for dessert,” Mrs. Landry adds, as though that’s a rare treat.

  It must be, because Doris squeals and claps her hands in delight.

  “What was in that basket Minnie Bouvier dropped off this afternoon?” Jed’s grandfather asks.

  Startled, Clara recognizes the name.

  Minnie Bouvier.

  What was it she read in the Glenhaven Gazette about her?

  “She brought some marmalade,” Jed’s mother is saying. “We’ll have it in the morning with toast.”

  “Oh, I was hoping it was some of her famous fruitcake.”

  Fruitcake…

  It comes back to Clara as Jed speaks up. “Don’t worry, Granddad—Minnie was in the store on Monday and she promised she’ll be bringing her fruitcake along soon.”

  No, she won’t. Clara remembers with a nauseating lurch of her stomach that the elderly Mrs. Bouvier will be struck by a car… where was it?

  On the corner of Oak and Main, at dusk…

  When?

  On Saturday, she remembers. She was going out to the grocery to get ingredients for her fruitcakes, and she was killed.

  But what if…?

  Maybe I can save her, Clara tells herself. If I stay here, I can save her.

  And if I can, that will mean I can save Jed, too.

  “Mother, remember when you used to make fruitcake?” Doris asks.

  “Yes—in fact, I always used Minnie’s recipe. I like that one because it calls for currants and dates.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “The recipe? It’s in my file over there.” Taking a long drag on her Pall Mall, Mrs. Landry gestures at a small wooden box on the counter.

  “Why don’t you make some fruitcake this year, then?”

  “I don’t think so, Doris.” Clara catches her flicking a gaze at the empty chair at the head of the table—the only one that doesn’t have a place setting.

  That, she realizes, must have been Abner Landry’s seat.

  “But, Mother,” Doris protests, “it would be such fun to—”

  “Come on, toots, sit down,” Jed cuts in pointedly as he takes his own seat beside Clara, just to the right of his father’s chair.

  It won’t be long before Jed’s place, too, is forever vacated, Clara thinks with an ache in her throat.

  “Well, we’re still getting our tree on Sunday morning, right, Jed?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, goody!” Doris launches into a loud, off-key rendition of “O, Christmas Tree.”

  “Will you please stop singing that?” Mary Ann bellows, hands over her ears. “Or at least learn a new verse?”

  “Mary Ann!”

  “Mother, I can’t take it anymore. She’s been singing the same thing over and over for days. It gripes my middle kidney.”

  “And you’ve been saying that, over and over, for days,” Jed says, amused.

  “I could sing ‘O Tannenbaum,’ but then it would be a Nazi song,” Doris declares with a gleam in her eye.

  “Doris, will you please say grace tonight?” Mrs. Landry asks with a sigh, having stubbed out her cigarette and taken her place opposite Jed.

  Jed reaches across his father’s vacant spot to take his mother’s hand. With the other, he clasps Clara’s, his grasp reassuringly warm as he gives her fingers a squeeze. From the other side, Doris reaches for Clara’s fingers.

  “Dear Lord, we ask you to bless this food,” Jed’s little sister begins, her red head bowed like the others.

  As Doris recites a prayer of thanks, asking God to bless “dear Pop in heaven, Gilbert at school, and all the poor soldiers all over the world,” Clara lifts her face to dab her eyes against her shoulders before somebody spots her tears.

  Her vision cleared, she is struck by the bittersweet sight of the Landry family, linked hand in hand around the table, their chain unbroken…

  For now.

  “Watch your step,” Jed warns Clara, opening the door to the garage. “It’s kind of hard to see in here, and the place is filled with years’ worth of junk. Here, let me help you.”

  He reaches out to grab her hand, and can feel that there’s something stashed inside the mitten she’s wearing. Earlier he might have wondered what it is, might even have been suspicious that she’s hiding something incriminating.

  Not anymore. Throughout dinner and dessert, as he watched her charismatically interacting with his family, he realized that he instinctively trusts her.

  And he doesn’t just trust her.…

  He’s falling for her, hard and fast.

  And now, at last, he’ll be alone with her… if only for a little while. He told his mother he was going to get Clara settled in his apartment before returning to the house to spend the night on the sofa.

  “How long will you be staying with us, Clara?” his mother asked.

  “At least a few nights—I had to let Alice go, so she’s helping me out in the store for a while.” Jed spoke up before Clara could say a word. He could tell by the hesitant look on her face that she wanted to correct him, but she didn’t.

  Nor did she amend Doris’s delighted observation that Clara will be here, then, this Sunday when they go up to the woods to chop down a Christmas tree. She even chimed in when Doris sang a loud, off-key stanza of her new anthem, “O, Christmas Tree,” giggling with his little sister as though she’s part of the family.

  But she isn’t. And she’ll have to leave Glenhaven Park and return to her life—whatever that may be—sooner or later, Jed knows. Unless…

  No, it’s too soon to even think about anything like that.

  For now, he decides, he’ll simply live in the moment.

  Lugging her heavy suitcase, he leads the way across the crowded concrete floor and up the creaky stairs.

  “Sorry it’s so crummy in here,” he feels obligated to say as he opens the door and turns on the light, fervently wishing he were escorting her to a lavish hotel suite.

  Clara steps over the threshold. “It’s not crummy at all. I think it’s… cozy. And… charming.”

  He follows her gaze, trying to see the apartment through her eyes, wishing he had at least bothered to make his bed before he left this morning to catch that early train to the city.

  Then again, the unmade bed conjures alluring images of Clara lying naked in the tangle of sheets and blankets.…

  Jed blinks away that forbidden image, feeling his face grow hot when he catches her watching him intently.

  She hurriedly flicks her eyes away—right to the bed.

  And somehow, he finds himself wondering if she can possibly be thinking the same risqué thoughts that are tormenting him.

  He swallows hard, and it sounds like a strangled gulp in the still room. “Here, let me help you take off your… coat.”

  Clara nods, steps closer to him. His hands tremble at her nearness as she turns her shoulder to shrug out of the coat. Though she has worn it mere minutes, her clean scent wafts from the coarse woolen fabric as he takes it, and it’s all he can do not to bury his face in it—or in her.

  He blindly drapes the coat over the nearest chair and follows it with his own, and then strips off his suit jacket and loosens his tie. He is filled with an absurd longing to help her right out of her clothes, as well.

  If only he didn’t know about the lacy, racy lingerie that lies beneath that sedate, snug-fitting dress of hers.

&
nbsp; Stop thinking about that! She’s a lady. Be a gentleman, for Pete’s sake.

  All right, then. What would a gentleman do?

  “Do you want—” He breaks off, clears his throat, wishing he didn’t sound so darned hoarse.

  Clara is looking at him, waiting—still standing close enough to touch.

  Why doesn’t she step back, away from him?

  His whole body is clenched with the effort to ignore the attraction sizzling between them. His dangerously deviant fingers are confined safely into fists in his pockets, his eyes unaccountably fixated on her petal-pink lips untainted by cosmetic stain.

  Doesn’t she realize how hard it is for him to maintain his willpower when she’s this near?

  Maybe she does realize, he thinks, spotting a telltale glint in her eyes.

  Maybe she’s trying to tell him something.

  For that matter, he was trying to tell her something. Or ask her something. What was it?

  He sorts through his muddled brain in an attempt to recover the train of thought. “Uh, Clara, do you want—”

  “You to kiss me?” she cuts in boldly. “Yes.”

  Kiss her?

  He wasn’t going to ask her anything of the kind, but the banal offer of a glass of water has been instantly erased from his tongue.

  “You have no idea how mortified I am that I just said that,” she confesses on a nervous laugh.

  “You have no idea how glad I am that you did,” he returns as he wraps his arms around her. “Or how happy I am to oblige that request.”

  “I should probably stop you… shouldn’t I?”

  “No,” he says, “you definitely shouldn’t.”

  He pulls her close, enveloping her against the length of his body, his hands coasting down the warm planes of her bare arms.

  Slowly, savoring this extraordinary turn of events, he lowers his face over hers, looking into her eyes until she closes them with an expectant shiver of a sigh. Only then does he allow his mouth to touch hers.

  Desire roars to life within him as he revels in the silken nudity of her lips. He pulls her closer still, holding her fast against his body swollen with raw craving. He deepens the kiss and she responds with a quivering moan, her tongue receiving his in a swift, swirling duet.

  Coherent thought has been obliterated. Jed is utterly intoxicated, his senses encompassed by the wondrous creature in his arms. His hands swoop up over the crest of her shoulders and the slope of her warm neck before he entangles his fingers in her soft tumble of hair.