If Only in My Dreams

by Wendy Markham

  “Tomorrow,” Jeanette promises, as they reach the front entry, “I’ll bring you some flaxseed oil, Siberian ginseng, and wild yam. Oh, and chocolate.”

  “Chocolate? What does that do?” Clara asks, her head still reeling from her mother’s whirlwind course in holistic healing.

  “It tastes good and makes you happy.”

  Clara smiles as her mother wraps her in a surprisingly comforting embrace and a pungent cloud of aromatherapy oil.

  “You’re going to be fine, honey.” Jeanette’s green eyes, precisely the shade of Clara’s own, are suspiciously bright. “You’ll see.”

  “I know I’m going to be fine.”

  But Mom doesn’t, she realizes, seeing her mother’s lip tremble slightly as she pulls away. She’s going to go home and cry her heart out to Stan.

  Maybe that’s okay.

  Because she’s channeled her maternal love into being strong for Clara, and eventually, that might give her inner strength for herself. Perhaps, when she sees that Clara is going to survive, she’ll stop living every moment of her own life in fear.

  “Just don’t go running off again like you did,” Stan tells Clara, taking his turn to put his short arms around her and pull her to his portly chest. “You gave us all a real scare.”

  “I know, and I’m so sorry. I guess I just… panicked.”

  “That’s understandable after what you had been through.”

  Clara can only hope that Denton Wilkens will be as empathetic as her stepfather is.

  Below, a door opens, and Clara hears Mr. Kobayashi calling, “Hello up there?”

  She crosses to the rail and pokes her head over. “Hi, Mr. Kobayashi.”

  “You’re back!”

  “I am. I just went away for a few days.” She wants to ask him about the man who left the package for her all those years ago, but she can’t with her mother and Stan here.

  “The fuzz was here!” he announces. “And that little old lady came back looking for you.”

  “Little old lady! I’m not even gray!” Jeanette pats her brunette bob indignantly, and looks over the railing. “Hello? I’m Clara’s mother.”

  “Not you,” he says. “You’re not a little old lady.”

  “I would hope not,” Jeanette mutters under her breath.

  “I mean the little old lady who was here before,” Mr. Kobayashi tells Clara. “She came back today, a little while ago. Wanted to see you.”

  “Who is he talking about, Clara?”

  “It’s nothing, Mom. Just some soap fan who wants my autograph.” To Mr. Kobayashi, she says, “Thank you for taking care of things for me.”

  “The fuzz are coming back with a search warrant.”

  “No, my stepfather already called them and told them it’s okay.”

  Clearly, Mr. Kobayashi is disappointed to hear that news. He must have been looking forward to participating in a good old-fashioned missing-persons investigation.

  “Now when are you meeting with the surgeon?” her mother asks Clara after the super has returned to his apartment. She pulls a date book from her oversized purse and begins rifling through it, saying, “I want to be there.”

  “I’ll let you know when it is,” Clara promises, noticing that her mother’s hands are trembling as she turns the pages. “I missed the appointment this week, Mom, so I’ll have to reschedule. You don’t have to be there.”

  “Clara! Why would you say that? Of course I’m going to be there. For all of it. I’m your mother.”

  Clara nods, her throat clogged by emotion again.

  “I just hope this lapse doesn’t mean they have to put off the surgery, honey. We want you all better by Christmas.”

  All better. She makes it sounds so simple.

  But if the surgery does go off as planned, Clara should at least be up and about in time to celebrate Christmas after all.…

  And just in time to show up at The Nutcracker ballet to meet her secret Santa.

  Alone again at last in her apartment, quantum physics be damned, Clara turns on her computer and signs onto the Internet.

  Because she can’t shake the nagging, irrational hope… and because she can’t handle the knowing… but not knowing.

  You’ve got mail, a disembodied electronic voice informs her.

  “Yeah,” she mutters, “I’ll bet I do.”

  Ignoring the full-mailbox icon, she opens a search engine and quickly types in Glenhaven Gazette Archives, July 15, 1944.

  “Please,” she whispers, waiting for the screen to load.

  And then it does.…

  And then she knows.

  ANOTHER LOCAL MAN CONFIRMED LOST IN EUROPE

  A telegram from the War Department last night officially brought to ten the number of local men casualties in the first wave of the Allied invasion at Normandy on June 6. Previously reported missing in action, Sergeant Jed Landry of 21 Chestnut Street, son of Mrs. Lois Landry and the late…

  So.

  Quantum physics reigns after all.

  You can’t change the past.

  No, you can only visit it, and helplessly watch it unfold, because destiny is destiny.…

  And Jed Landry’s was to die on a European battlefield.

  Denton Wilkens’s New York office is in a converted warehouse on Gansevoort Street.

  By day, this is the Meatpacking District—by night, the city’s most fashionable neighborhood.

  Clara’s appointment with her director is right on the cusp, at five-thirty on Friday evening.

  As she crosses the uneven cobblestones toward the building’s entrance, a truck at the curb is being loaded with animal carcasses from a wholesale meat company while a sidewalk menu placard is set in front of a trendy restaurant next door.

  A few hours from now, designer heels, as opposed to bloodstained aprons, will be the neighborhood’s required accessory.

  The security guard in the lobby doesn’t give Clara a second glance, ask for ID, or bother to read her name as she signs in. He simply hands over a visitor’s badge, barks, “Fourth floor,” and goes back to reading his New York Post.

  Riding up in a large, drafty, and disconcertingly wobbly elevator, she realizes her palms are sweaty.

  This isn’t going to be fun.

  No, but I’ll go with K.T.’s advice and let Denton do all the talking.

  “Just be prepared.… He’ll be sympathetic to your illness,” the second assistant director said, “but he’s not going to overlook the fact that you just cost the production a hell of a lot of money by just not showing up on the set the past few days.”

  Just not showing up.

  She was tempted to tell K.T.—and everyone else connected to the film—that she was in the hospital, or something equally dire.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to lie.

  So she gave them all a form of the truth: said she was overwhelmed, and had to get away for a few days.

  “I realize that it was irresponsible, and I’m so sorry.”

  How many times has she uttered those words in the last twenty-four hours?

  Minutes later she repeats them, verbatim, to Denton Wilkens, who sits with his hands steepled beneath his chin. He’s wearing a bright pink cashmere crewneck.

  My father always said it takes a real man to wear pink.

  “I know it doesn’t help,” she adds, as unnerved by the echo in her head as she is by his silent gaze from behind thick glasses. “But it’s all I can say. That, and—”

  She takes a deep breath.

  “I need to drop out of the film.”

  Denton doesn’t appear nearly as surprised by her announcement as Clara herself is.

  But the moment the words have left her tongue, she feels a surge of relief.

  Yes.

  Yes!

  This is the right thing to do.

  “Is this strictly because of your illness?” Denton asks. “Because we’ll work to accommodate your surgery and treatment schedule, if you can give us your wholehearted comm
itment for the remainder of the production.”

  She’s already shaking her head. “That wouldn’t be fair to you. I don’t know how I’m going to feel after the surgery, or what the treatment is going to do to me, physically.…”

  But I do know that I can’t possibly learn to forget Jed Landry if I have to step into 1940s’ Glenhaven Park day after day for the next few months and go through the motions of falling in love with him all over again.

  It’s hard enough as it is. She’s spent the past twenty-four hours in a futile effort to reconcile her miraculous ability to breach time with the fact that Jed died anyway.

  It just doesn’t make sense.

  If she couldn’t change his destiny, what was the purpose in any of it? Why did she find her way back to him, fall in love with him, if not to save him?

  Perhaps she’ll never know.

  What she does know is that she can’t bear to continue her role as the love of his life. Not even with a fake Jed Landry on a fake vintage set.

  “You’ll have to recast the role,” she tells Denton firmly, her mind made up.

  “This isn’t the way I would have chosen to resolve this, Clara. You were a perfect Violet.”

  “Thank you. And I’m sorry I didn’t figure this out sooner, before I put everyone through all those days of chaos.”

  Denton shrugs. “Sometimes the longest way round is the nearest way home.”

  Clara’s heart skips a beat. “What… what did you say?”

  “Didn’t you ever hear that expression?”

  Yes, more recently—and longer ago—than you can ever imagine.

  “It was a favorite saying of my father’s,” Denton informs her. “He had a lot of them, but that was his favorite. In fact, my mother had it etched on his gravestone when he passed away a few years ago.”

  Overwhelmed by the sudden connection, once again, to the past and Jed, Clara can only offer a tremulous smile.

  “Welcome back,” Karen Vinton greets Clara at her office on Saturday morning. She clasps one of Clara’s cold hands in both her warm ones. “I’ve been really concerned about you.”

  “I—thank you. I’m, um, sorry I blew off my Monday appointment, and I’ll absolutely pay for your wasted time, and—”

  “No need to do that. I just sat here knitting and hoping you were going to show. When you didn’t, I assumed you got hung up at work.”

  Clara just nods, unwilling to dispute that… just yet, anyway.

  “So it was no big deal and, thanks to you, I almost finished the scarf I’m knitting my girlfriend for Christmas.”

  “I’m… glad.”

  “And I’m glad you made this appointment,” Karen goes on, gesturing at a chair, as she closes the office door behind Clara.

  I’m trapped, she thinks irrationally… as if she truly had any intention of fleeing.

  All right… the notion did occur to her.

  But she won’t do that.

  You really can’t, she reminds herself, still standing, looking again at the closed door.

  Karen follows her gaze. “A little nervous about being here today, huh?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “That’s all right. Have a seat. We’ll go slowly. You take the lead, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Clara reluctantly sits. And waits.

  “Why don’t you fill me in,” Karen suggests after a moment of silence.

  “Fill you in on…?”

  Karen shrugs, sitting across from her. “Whatever it is that you need to talk about.”

  Clara still can’t seem to say anything.

  “You made the appointment,” the therapist reminds her gently. “You must need to talk.”

  “I just… I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Well, what’s been going on since we last saw each other? It’s been over a week.”

  Clara shrugs.

  “Something must have happened, Clara.”

  “A lot of things happened,” she agrees.

  “Like…?”

  Let’s see… I traveled back in time again, fell madly in love, relived Pearl Harbor Day, realized I couldn’t save Jed’s life after all, told him good-bye forever, traveled back to the present, reached out to my mother, told her I have cancer, quit my job…

  And here I am.

  “You know, I probably shouldn’t even be here,” she tells Karen, shifting her weight self-consciously.

  “You thought you should when you made the appointment. What’s on your mind?”

  “Right this second?”

  “Right this second.”

  “Well… my surgery, for one thing… it’s next week.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “Afraid. Whenever I think about it I wish I could just run away again.”

  “Again?”

  Clara hedges. “I sort of… did. Already. Last weekend.”

  “Was it like before?” Karen flips through her notes. “You’d had an episode.…”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.” Because this time I knew it wasn’t a dream or some kind of psychotic fantasy.

  “How was it, then?”

  “I just took a few days to… you know. Sort of… hide.”

  “From anyone in particular?”

  “From the world, pretty much. I just know that I didn’t want to deal with anything here.”

  “Here? You mean New York?”

  Clara hesitates.

  No. You can’t tell her. She’ll never believe you, or she’ll think it was some kind of fugue, or fantasy—

  And it wasn’t.

  It was real.

  Jed was real.

  At least she has that; she’ll always have it, in her memory and in her heart, where it counts.

  “Yes,” she tells Karen, still waiting patiently, as always. “I mean New York.”

  “And where did you go?”

  “Just upstate.” Just.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “Just… not much. You know. Thought about things.”

  “About your illness?”

  Clara nods.

  “And did it help?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  All these questions are starting to rankle. But she supposes that’s the whole point… for Karen to get her to examine her feelings.

  And when she does…

  “I’m definitely going to beat this,” she finds herself blurting. “I’m not going to just give in and… die.”

  “Of course you aren’t. Was there really ever any doubt in your mind?”

  She shrugs. “My grandmother died of breast cancer. It happens. But it isn’t going to happen to me. I want to have a life.”

  Even without Jed. That’s why I’m back here. I have to go on; I have to survive. It’s what he would want. I know it is.

  It isn’t until Karen hands her a box of tissues that Clara realizes tears are streaming down her cheeks.

  “Do you think,” she asks, and pauses to blow her nose and wipe her eyes, “that everything happens for a reason?”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  “I want to, but…”

  But why did I fall in love with Jed if I was only meant to lose him?

  The troubling thought refuses to fade.

  “Sometimes,” Karen tells her, giving her a tight, welcome hug, “we can’t see things clearly as they’re unfolding. We’re too caught up in the emotion.”

  “But hindsight is twenty-twenty?”

  The therapist smiles. “Something like that.”

  Maybe, then, in time it will make sense.…

  Or Jed will somehow find me again, like he promised.

  After all, nothing is impossible… right?

  Again, she thinks of her secret Santa, and that single ticket to The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve.

  What if…?

  No, Clara. Don’t get your hopes up.

  Some things
really are impossible.

  CHAPTER 19

  How are you feeling today, Clara?” asks Dr. Bronstein, the surgeon, as he walks briskly into her hospital room carrying a folder and a clipboard. Clara likes him; he’s down-to-earth. He communicates with her on a human level rather than on a more formal doctor-patient one, as the oncologist does.

  “I feel great today,” she tells him—almost wholeheartedly.

  Yes, the surgical site is sore despite the pain medication, and she’s still feeling the aftereffects of the anesthesia.

  And yes, she’s frightened of what he’s going to say now about what he found when he went in during the operation.

  But at least that part is behind her.

  “Do you think you can prescribe something stronger for her pain, Dr. Bronstein?” Clara’s mother asks, seated in the bedside chair where she set up camp almost two full days ago.

  “Are you in a lot of discomfort, Clara?”

  “She is,” Jeanette answers for Clara, who shoots her a look. Jeanette responds with a shrug, saying simply, “You can’t fool me. A mother can tell when her child is hurting.”

  Dr. Bronstein scribbles something. “I’ll take care of that.”

  Then he looks up and, in his straightforward way, says, “Well, I’ve got some very good news for you, Clara.”

  All the oxygen seems to gush out of her at those words, leaving her breathless, speechless.

  “I can bore you with all kinds of medical terms and details, and trust me, I will at some point, but what I would really be saying is this: the margins are clear and the cancer hasn’t spread.”

  At Clara’s side, Jeanette makes a choking, sobbing sound and presses her hand to her lips.

  “You mean…” Clara breaks off, clears her throat, tries to digest the wonderful news. “I’m going to be all right? I’m not dying?”

  Dr. Bronstein smiles. “You are absolutely not dying. Although if you eat the so-called minestrone soup they’re serving for lunch here today, you might feel like you are. I just tasted it and—” He makes a face and a thumbs-down sign at her.

  Clara laughs out loud. “I’ll pass on that. When can I go home?”

  “Tomorrow, I think, if you feel up to it. Just rest now, and let the nurses—and your mom, of course—take care of you. Sound good?”