If Only in My Dreams

  “But don’t you want to see—”

  “Now, Doris.”

  “All right… I’ll go up to the attic and find all the tree lights and decorations.” She disappears into the house before anyone can protest.

  Jed is already out of the car and opening Clara’s door. His cold hand shakes as he takes hers to help her out, his gaze focused on his mother’s distressed face.

  “What is it?” he asks her as he and Clara hurry toward her.

  “Sarah Wenick was just here—she came right over from the hospital. Minnie Bouvier passed away this morning.”

  Jed can’t breathe, much less speak.

  He feels Clara’s hand tighten in his own.

  “That poor old woman,” his mother goes on. “What a terrible way to die. All alone, and she had to be so frightened—”

  “No…” Jed recovers his voice. “She saw an angel, Mother. When I was with her right after the accident. I’ll bet she wasn’t alone when she died.”

  Hearing a sniffle, he looks at Clara and is stunned to see tears running down her cheeks. But… why?

  She doesn’t even know the old woman.

  Or does she?

  Again, he realizes that Clara McCallum is purely an enigma, perhaps more so now than ever before.

  Because she knew. Somehow, she knew Minnie wasn’t going to make it.

  Still, Jed supposes, it could have been a lucky—or rather, unlucky—guess.

  “Mother,” he asks, his eyes still focused on Clara’s impermeable expression, “has there been any news today? About the war?”

  His mother shakes her head distractedly.

  If she hasn’t heard anything, then nothing has happened. His grandparents will have had the radio on; they always listen to the string quartet on Sundays after church.

  “Leave the tree for now. Come inside.” Mother holds the door open for them.

  Stepping into the kitchen, they’re greeted by a scorched smell, and something bubbling over.

  “Oh, no, my stew!” Lois cries out.

  “Here, let me help you.” Clara takes off her mittens and tosses them onto the counter.

  Something clatters to the linoleum.

  “You dropped these.” Jed stoops to retrieve her key ring and hands it to her, along with the folded bills she’s been carrying for days, unable to spend them here.

  “Thanks.” She hastily shoves the keys and money into her back pocket, then grabs a pair of crocheted pot holders.

  “I’ll be right back.” Jed ignores the questioning look Clara shoots over her shoulder at him. “I’ve got to make a call.”

  From the next room, he can hear the radio playing. He recognizes the jaunty tone of his sisters’ favorite program: It’s time to “Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye.”

  Sure enough, Jed can see when he steps into the front hall that Penny and Mary Ann are sprawled on the floor in front of the radio reading the Sunday funnies, swinging their ankles in time to the music. His grandparents are dozing nearby.

  “Did you get the tree, Jed?” Penny asks, looking up.

  “Sure did.”

  “Goody! Where is it?”

  “Outside,” he tells Mary Ann as he lifts the telephone receiver. “I’ll set it up later.”

  “How may I direct your call?” the switchboard operator asks in his ear.

  “Glenhaven Park Hospital, please,” Jed says tightly.

  Sensing that she’s being watched, Clara looks up from mopping up the mess on the stove top to see Jed in the doorway.

  “Mother, you’ve had such a difficult day, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down for a little while?” he suggests.

  Glimpsing the grim look on his face, Clara offers, “I’ll finish cleaning this and keep an eye on the stew for you, Mrs. Landry.”

  Jed’s mother doesn’t argue. Clara sees him tenderly pat her on the shoulder as she passes by.

  He takes such good care of her, Clara notices, not for the first time. Of all of them. Jed is the man of the house, dutifully filling his father’s place at the expense of his own dreams.

  He told Clara about Boston, and his scholarship to Harvard Law. He admitted that it wasn’t easy to turn his back on all of that when he lost his father.

  “But a man does what needs to be done,” he said simply.

  Those words sent a chill down Clara’s spine. Was that why he enlisted in the army?

  The stair treads creak as Lois ascends to the second floor.

  Still wearing her red hat and coat, Clara crosses to the sink. She can feel Jed watching her intently as she turns on the water and begins to rinse and wring the dishrag with shaking hands.

  Why won’t he just say something—anything?

  Careful… maybe you don’t want to hear what he has to say, she warns herself.

  Finally, she turns off the water, drapes the rag over the faucet, and meets his gaze head-on.

  “What?” she asks heavily.

  “Arnold and Maisie had a boy.”

  Clara’s breath catches in her throat.

  She knew it, of course… but hearing it aloud, accompanied by the almost accusatory look on Jed’s face, is overwhelming.

  Jed goes on in a monotone, walking slowly toward her. “Arnold hadn’t even bothered to think of any names in advance. They were positive it was going to be a girl. So positive that, right now, the poor kid is wearing pink booties. Arnold had to pluck a boy’s name out of thin air before Maisie went back on their deal to let him name it. The baby looked like he had a dent in his head, Arnold said… so that’s his name.”

  “What is?” Clara’s voice is barely audible, even to her own ears.

  “Dent-in… Denton.” Jed comes to a halt a foot away. “It’s Denton Wilkens. But you already knew that, didn’t you.”

  “Jed—”

  “How could you have known? These people are strangers to you, Clara… aren’t they? The Wilkenses, and Minnie…”

  She remains silent. What can she possibly say now that she hasn’t already?

  Only this time, he’ll believe you, she reminds herself. This time, he won’t shrug off your warnings.…

  But what does that matter?

  Minnie is dead.

  Jed—

  No. I can’t just let him die, too, without trying one last time.

  “Jed, you have to listen to me.” She takes hold of his upper arms, pleading with him. “It doesn’t matter how I knew. What matters is that I did know. About the Wilkens baby, about Minnie… and I know about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “I already told you, unless you do something to change your destiny, you’re going to—”

  Her words are curtailed by an urgent, ear-piercing screech from the next room.

  “Jed, come quick!” one of his sisters hollers.

  He turns on his heel and bolts, with Clara following closely.

  Both Penny and Mary Ann are on their feet, staring at the radio.

  “What’s going on?” Jed’s grandmother demands sleepily as her husband makes his way over as quickly as his old legs can carry him.

  Wide-eyed, Mary Ann says, “We just heard—”

  “Shh!” Penny jabs her. “Listen!”

  “—from the air,” an excited radio announcer is exclaiming in fast-paced staccato cadence. “I’ll repeat that. President Roosevelt says that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air. This bulletin came to you from the NBC newsroom in New York.”

  Jed whirls on Clara, eyes blazing with…

  Not anger. Nor is it accusation.

  No, she thinks wildly, burned by his gaze, it’s…

  Sheer terror.

  Overcome, Clara flees, hurtling herself toward the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Jed calls as she throws it open, dashing out into the gently falling snow.

  She doesn’t know where she’s going—knows only that she has to get away from that look in his eyes, and the horrific news of an attack she couldn’t prev
ent, and everything else that’s coming.…

  Particularly, the biggest tragedy of all; one that will further shatter the fragile lives in that house.

  Not to mention my own life.

  “Clara, wait!”

  The Landrys’ front door slams hard; Jed is chasing after her.

  A few yards down the deserted block, sliding on the slick sidewalk despite her rubber soles, she gives up.

  Panting hard, she stands absolutely still, head tilted back to the white heavens, feathery crystals alighting on her face to melt and run like tears.

  It’s like being inside a snow globe, she thinks, watching the swirling flakes come down. And I’m the lonely little angel, with a broken heart instead of a broken wing.

  Then Jed is on her, grabbing hold of her shoulders, turning her toward him. “Where are you going?”

  She can’t answer, and not just because she doesn’t know.

  “I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is scaring the hell out of me. Forgive my language,” he tacks on, ever the gentleman, even in crisis. “I just—”

  “No, I know,” Clara cuts in, finding a voice that sounds little like her own. “I’m afraid, too.”

  He pulls her close against him, and she fights the urge to bury her head in his shoulder and cry.

  “But listen,” he says, “I keep thinking we’re probably safe here, unless the Japs are—”

  “No, Jed… I mean I’m afraid for us… for you.”

  He looks at her for a minute. “So we—I—don’t have a chance. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “We don’t have a chance, but you do, Jed. All you have to do is—”

  “What do you mean we don’t have a chance? How can you know that?”

  “The same way I knew everything else. And because… I can’t stay here with you. I have to go back.”

  “I’ll go with you. Wherever you’re going.”

  “You can’t.”

  Or…

  Can he?

  What if—can he travel to the future with her?

  Why not? If she could leap through time to his world, and back again, why can’t he?

  But he’s already shaking his head. “You’re right. I can’t. Not yet, anyhow. I have to stay here with Mother and the girls and Grandma and Granddad. I can’t go back on that vow… not even for you, Clara.”

  “I understand,” she says softly. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “But you can stay. You said yourself that there’s nobody in your life—”

  “There are plenty of people in my life. I have parents, and friends, and—”

  “But nobody in your life who cares about you the way I do—or who is counting on you the way my family needs me. Or is there?”

  She shakes her head slowly. “No. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then what is it? Why can’t you stay? Or at least wait until June, when my brother can take over here and I can go with you?”

  She closes her eyes. “I’m sick, Jed.”

  “Are you going to faint? Here, lean on me.”

  “No, I mean…” God, this is hard. “I’m really sick. I have cancer.”

  The word drops like a bomb between them; she can feel him recoil even as one of his hands tightens on her arm and the other settles on the front of her coat, high above her right breast.

  “That’s what this is,” he says, referring to the scar beneath the layers of clothing and gauze. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And if I don’t go back home,” she forces herself to continue, struggling to keep the quaver from her voice, “I’ll die.”

  “No! You won’t die. I won’t let you die, Clara. I’ll take care of you.” His voice is hoarse. “I’ll help you. I’ll—”

  “There’s nothing you can do here… now. There’s a treatment, and I can only get it back… home.”

  “And it will save you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So… after you get it… then you can come back.”

  The possibility flares before her, only to be extinguished almost immediately.

  Even if she goes into remission, her disease can come back at any time… with a vengeance. And if it does, and spreads…

  Well, even modern medicine is no guarantee. But at least she’ll be monitored closely for the rest of her life, with ready access to every new drug that comes along.

  “We’ll both just have to do what we have to do, until we can settle down together for good,” Jed goes on. “As my friend Arnold always says, sometimes the longest way round is the nearest way home.”

  “Jed!” a voice shouts, and they both look up.

  A woman is leaning out the front door of the house next door to the Landrys, waving her arms. “Have you heard? The Japs attacked Hawaii.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard, Mrs. Wenick,” Jed calls distractedly as his neighbor shields her eyes with a hand and looks up at the sky, as if fighter planes might appear at any moment.

  Unnerved, Clara experiences a sudden, sickening flashback to September 11, 2001, in Manhattan. This is the same for Jed, and his family, and his neighbors… but not for Clara.

  Would I rather be in their shoes, shocked and petrified, with no idea what catastrophic thing might happen from one minute to the next…?

  Or in mine, knowing how it’s going to turn out…all of it. For better and for worse.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Mrs. Wenick is fretting in a high-pitched voice. “Next thing you know, the Nazis will be invading New York.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Jed assures her. Then, shooting a glance at Clara, he mutters, “Is it?”

  She shakes her head, thankful that she paid more attention in history class than she did in physics.

  “You should go be with your mother, Jed.” Mrs. Wenick sends a pointedly disapproving look toward Clara. “I’m sure Lois is frightened.”

  “I’m going in now, Mrs. Wenick,” he responds with a wave.

  After another worried glance at the sky, his neighbor retreats into her house, firmly closing the door behind her.

  Before Clara can speak, Jed picks up where they left off.

  “You’ll go back home for now, Clara,” he says logically, as though he has it all worked out, “and see your doctor, and do whatever it is that you have to do. We’ll see each other every chance we get—I’ll come down every Sunday when the store is closed, and you’ll come up as often as you can, and—”

  “I can’t. I’m having cancer treatment, Jed. I can’t come and go like some kind of… commuter.”

  He pauses. “When it’s over, then. You’ll come back here to stay, as soon as you’re finished with your treatment.”

  “No. It isn’t like that,” she tells Jed. “I can’t just come back.”

  “Why not? Manhattan isn’t on another planet, for Pete’s sake.”

  “It might as well be, for me.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  She thrusts her fingers into her snow-dampened hair beneath the red hat. “I know, and I don’t think I can make any sense, because if I told you the whole truth, I would be asking you to accept the impossible. Or at least, what you believe is impossible—not that I’d blame you for that.”

  “Try me.”

  “I already did. Last night. And you didn’t believe me.”

  “So try me again. You said a lot of things last night.”

  “It was all true.”

  “But maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. And that was before… today happened.”

  “All right. Why do you think I knew in advance about everything that was going to happen today?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he says, “and I keep remembering what I learned back in Sunday school, and… I think I understand. I think—you must be some kind of… prophet. Is that it? If that’s the case… I can believe in that.”

  “Because you learned about it in Sunday school.”

  He nods.

  Part of her
wants to let him take whatever explanation he’s willing to accept and run with it.

  But she can’t. After all they’ve been through together, all the suspicion and the questions she hasn’t been able to answer for him, she owes him the whole truth.

  Whether or not he buys it is up to him.

  But he deserves it.

  “I’m not a prophet, Jed… and I’m not a gypsy fortune-teller. It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then… what?”

  “I’m not seeing the future… I’m just reciting the past.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The things I’ve told you about have already happened. This very moment has already happened, sixty-five years ago. Which I know doesn’t make any sense, even to me, but… look, I don’t just live in Manhattan, forty-something miles away. I live in 2006. Sixty-five years away.”

  “Two thousand six,” he echoes, not getting it.

  “That’s the year. In the next century. The future. I live in the future, and somehow I got back here, to you.”

  She waits for him to laugh, or keel over in shock, or something.…

  But he doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move a muscle…

  Other than his eyes.

  And his eyes shift to her forehead, searching for the bump.

  Her head injury, he’s thinking, will explain everything. Maybe he’ll even convince himself that it left her some kind of soothsayer, the way a lightning strike can leave a person with heightened sensitivity… or so she’s read.

  “Let’s get you inside,” Jed says. “You’ve been dealing with this illness on your own, and now the whole world is upside down with the war. No wonder you—”

  He breaks off.

  “What?” she asks, needing to hear him say it.

  “Nothing.” He won’t look her in the eye.

  That’s when she realizes that no matter what she says or does in an effort to convince him, he’s not going to believe her.

  It’s simply too far-fetched.

  She turns away from him, suffocating in disappointment.

  “Clara, come on.”

  “I have to go. But I’m begging you one last time, Jed… don’t fight in this war. If you go, you’ll never come home.”

  “And I’m begging you one last time, Clara… don’t leave me. If you don’t leave me, I—I promise you I’ll stay right here.”