If Only in My Dreams

  Clara waits for the tears to begin again, but there seems to be a temporary dry spell despite the painful lump in her throat.

  She looks around the living room, all hers now since Jason finally came to get the last of his possessions before Thanksgiving. There’s the stack of scrapbooks that preserve sentimental childhood relics and, of course, her press clippings. There’s the framed series of stills from her brief run in Les Mis before it closed—and there’s the empty spot beside them where a portrait of her and Jason used to hang.

  There are her plants, her books, her CDs. The Waterford vase her father and stepmother gave her last Christmas—why a vase?—and this morning’s empty coffee mug and yesterday’s Daily News and the telephone.

  On the shelf above the mantel is her eclectic collection of angel figurines—all of them with dark hair. As a little girl, Clara once asked her grandfather why angels always seemed to have golden hair and not brunette, like hers. Naturally, her grandfather began a mission from that day forward to find and buy for his only granddaughter every dark-haired angel in the metropolitan area.

  Good old Grandpa.

  On the end table is a framed black-and-white photograph that catches Clara’s eye tonight. Her grandmother, Irene, looking like a forties’ pinup girl—busty, wearing dark lipstick, hair in sleek waves—smiles out at her. She must have been in her early twenties when the picture was taken, blissfully unaware of what her future would hold.

  Clara pulls her eyes away from the photo. She can’t look at it—not tonight.

  Beside the window, a foil-wrapped red poinsettia droops thirstily, a smattering of curled leaves littering the sill. She bought it at the supermarket on a whim a few weeks ago.

  I should water it.

  No, the plant can wait.

  I should call someone.

  She reaches for the cordless receiver, wondering whom to call.

  Not her mother.

  Nor her father, who lives across the river in Jersey with his third wife and their two young sons. Clara just saw them all on Thanksgiving. Dad mentioned something about an upcoming business trip that would take him out of town for most of Hanukkah week. He also said he would be spending Christmas in the Midwest this year, with his in-laws.

  You don’t mind, do you, Clara? he asked anxiously, and she wondered what he’d do if she said yes, she did mind. That he’s supposed to be here, with her, sleeping on the couch, waiting to see what Santa brought.

  But she didn’t say that. He hasn’t done that in years, and anyway, she gave up on believing in Santa—and her father—ages ago. Somewhere around the time he scheduled one of his honeymoons to coincide with one of her Broadway openings. He told her his tickets were nonrefundable.

  So when he said he was going to Indianapolis for Christmas, Clara told him that it was fine, that she would be spending the holidays with her mother and Stan in West Palm Beach anyway.

  He looked miffed.

  She felt guilty.

  Once a child of divorce, always a child of divorce… even when you’re twenty-nine.

  So, no, she won’t call her father. She’d only get Sharon, and her stepmother is hardly Clara’s trusted confidant. Not due to any particular animosity, but rather because of a general indifference, on both their parts.

  Who, then, if not her parents, can Clara lean on?

  Her longtime therapist, Karen Vinton, of course.

  But of course there’s only so much she can do. There are lines a therapist can’t cross.

  Who, then, Clara wonders, feeling needier and more alone with every passing second, is my most trusted unpaid, nonprofessional confidant?

  It was Jason. For so long that she’s almost tempted to dial his number. But that wouldn’t be fair. She shouldn’t turn to him now, when he still isn’t over their breakup. He might think there’s hope for them, when all she wants to hear from him right now—from anyone—is that there’s hope for her.

  She runs through a mental list of assorted longtime female friends—her cousins Rebecca and Rachel and her gay sidekicks from her stage and soap days—considering and quickly dismissing each of them. Everyone is terrific when it comes to dishing over margaritas and wedding showers for mutual pals. And she wholly appreciates the impeccable fashion advice and metaphoric applause when her actress ego needs it most.

  But when it comes to a life-and-death situation like this, she isn’t compelled to reach out to any of them.

  When you get right down to it, she’s much closer to some of the people she’s recently met on the movie set. Accelerated friendships are as common a commodity in the entertainment industry as they were back in Clara’s summer-camp days. Sharing a rustic cabin or a makeup trailer for a mere couple of months, one can forge unwavering bonds that might take half a lifetime to establish back in the “real world.”

  Clara’s costar, Michael, knows more about what’s going on in her life than her parents do, while she’s privy to more of Michael’s secrets than his soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend is. She and Michael spend a lot of time together on set and off—particularly now that both their publicists are currently encouraging tabloid rumors of romance. After all, Michael’s secret lifestyle requires the occasional smoke screen, and being linked with an A-list star certainly won’t hurt Clara’s new film career.

  So, yes, Michael is a trusted confidant; she can lean on him if she needs to.

  Then there’s Albany Jackson, who plays Sue, Violet’s scripted best friend; Tessa Milks, the stand-in who’s teaching Clara how to knit; and Jesus deJesus, the acerbic makeup artist who keeps her in stitches and in false eyelashes.…

  She’ll tell all of them soon enough. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, at the location shoot up in Westchester, in the real Glenhaven Park.

  But not now.

  She slowly returns the receiver to its cradle, missing Jason for the first time since he left.

  Or maybe…

  No, it isn’t Jason she misses. It’s the relationship itself. The intimacy of a real relationship. She misses coming home to somebody; misses knowing that she is the most important person in somebody’s world; misses crawling into bed beside a warm body every night.

  But not Jason’s.

  No, their romance had long since run its course when she finally found the guts to call it quits. In theory, he should have been Mr. Right: the perfect complement to her theatrical lifestyle. He was the product of a solid small-town family, had a stable corporate job, believed in marriage, and children… in that order.

  On paper, he was everything she had ever wanted. She knew, because in the midst of her soul-searching about him last spring, she made a list of pros and cons.

  The only con was one that, in the end, she couldn’t live with. Or rather, it was something she couldn’t live without.

  Passion.

  The initial sparks that brought them together lasted only a few months.

  Yet somehow, waning chemistry didn’t stop Clara from moving in with him or accepting his proposal and a hefty diamond last Christmas.

  She craved stability; Jason provided it.

  Which is why, she tells herself sternly, you’re thinking of him now.

  Now, when she’s feeling like a kite caught up in a tornado, with a tether that’s frayed to a thread and about to snap, Jason would be able to bring her back down to earth. Levelheaded, logical Jason would hold her steady through the long night ahead. Through the many long nights that surely lie ahead.

  But cancer isn’t a good reason to get back together, Clara tells herself sternly. It’s probably the worst, most desperate reason there is.

  Stoically, she reminds herself that she chose to be alone when she set him free. Alone is what she is, and alone is where she’ll stay. At least, for the time being.

  Alone sucks, she thinks glumly.

  Maybe if it weren’t the holiday season…

  Yes, and maybe if I weren’t scared to death that, despite what Dr. Svensen says, this might be the last Christmas I’ll ever have.
…

  Well, maybe she’d feel stronger than she does now. Stronger, and less needy.

  When the going gets tough, though, the tough don’t curl up and cry. They steel themselves for whatever lies ahead, and they fight.

  I’ll fight tomorrow, Clara decides, as the tears begin to fall at last. Tonight, I’ll curl up and cry.

  CHAPTER 2

  Two days later, it’s official: Clara will be spending Christmas alone in New York.

  She called Florida yesterday when she knew her mother would be at her weekly holistic cooking class and broke the news to her stepfather that she wouldn’t be able to get away for Christmas.

  Stan was disappointed, but said he understood how important this movie was to her.

  “We’ll miss you, but we know you’ll be spending the holiday doing something that makes you so happy, even if it is work,” he said, and it was all Clara could do not to burst into tears.

  Since then, she’s screened two calls from her mother, who sounds teary and wants to talk. She hasn’t returned them yet. She can’t. She doesn’t trust herself not to break down and tell her mother the real reason she can’t come.

  She’s tentatively scheduled the lumpectomy for the week before Christmas, with endless rounds of tests between now and then. She has also met with the breast surgeon, the oncologist, the radiologist.

  Later tonight, back in Manhattan, she’s going to her standing weekly appointment with her regular therapist. She’s been seeing Karen for years, ever since her parents decided she needed help dealing with the divorce.

  Karen became her trusted confidante. And yes, there are times when Clara’s relationship with her feels more personal than professional.

  But of course, they never cross that invisible doctor-patient line.

  Nobody knows Clara like Karen does. She helped her process not just her parents’ divorce, but, through the years, her grandfather’s death, her breakup with Jason, and of course, her ongoing issues with her mother.

  It isn’t that Clara doesn’t get along with her mom, because for the most part, she does.

  The problem is that Jeanette has never been a rock for her daughter the way mothers are supposed to be—not even when Clara was still a child and desperately needed one. There were countless times, especially right after the divorce, when it was Jeanette who crumbled and Clara who took on the maternal role. It was emotionally exhausting—and sometimes, it still is.

  Of course, things have been better since Clara’s stepfather, Stan, came along. Not perfect, but better.

  Finding out about Clara’s cancer would do her mother in, no doubt about that.

  Which is why she’s not going to tell her. In fact, she’s not in the mood to discuss it with anyone, really.

  “Maybe I’ll skip my appointment with Karen,” she muses to Jesus.

  “You can’t do that. I’m sure she’s worried about you.”

  “She doesn’t know anything about this. I never even bothered to tell her about the lump,” she tells Jesus, watching in the mirror of her location trailer as he coats her lids with smoky shadow that matches her green eyes. “That’s how unconcerned I was about it.”

  “Well, hopefully she’ll be able to help you work through your anxiety. I know my shrink has done wonders with my ostraconophobia.”

  That, of course, would be his irrational fear of shellfish, which he is slowly overcoming with cognitive therapy.

  “Okay, darling… blink.”

  Clara blinks.

  “Again.”

  She blinks again.

  Jesus studies her face with critical dark eyes, stroking his clean-shaven chin—which matches his clean-shaven head. And his clean-shaven chest, as well as anatomical hinterlands he mentioned in one of their too-much-information conversations, the kind that tend to unfold amid hours of mind-numbing between-take on-set boredom.

  There isn’t a whole lot she doesn’t know about Jesus deJesus, including his oft-mentioned conviction that he is the reincarnation of Coco Chanel. This he discovered during a past-life hypnotic regression conducted by one of his many therapists or gurus or whatever he calls that particular member of his New Agey posse of advisors.

  Jesus frequently expounds on the concept that everyone’s spirit, after physical death in this world, is reborn in a new body. The concept has its roots in various religions in which Jesus has dabbled, from Hinduism and Buddhism to Hollywood-chic Scientology and Kabbalah.

  Clara actually read a couple of the books he forced on her, and was unexpectedly absorbed. Of course, she would never admit to anyone—least of all Jesus deJesus—that his far-fetched reincarnation theory makes sense. Nor is she convinced that the legendary Coco Chanel has returned to Earth as a hairless, chubby man who runs away shrieking at the mere sight of shrimp.

  Jesus dabs a bit more shadow on Clara’s lids and reaches for the liquid liner with a flourish. “So how are you feeling overall?”

  “You mean, mentally? Or physically?”

  “Both.”

  “You know. I’m hanging in there.”

  “Hold still. You’re hanging in there mentally, or physically?”

  “Both.” She sighs, holds still, gazes at her face in the mirror.

  At least she looks like her usual self: wide-set eyes, high cheekbones, pert nose, heart-shaped mouth. Jesus expertly masked the shadows under her eyes with plenty of pancake foundation; you’d never know she hasn’t slept more than restless half-hour spurts since the diagnosis.

  How reassuring to see her familiar reflection, considering that she’s been feeling as though she’s temporarily inhabiting a stranger’s body.

  Every time she looks down at that small gauze-covered scar, she glimpses the most innocuous-looking enemy portal imaginable. And she can’t help but wonder whether Dr. Svensen was wrong, whether perhaps her records got mixed up with somebody else’s at the lab.

  How can she, Clara, possibly be ridden with deadly, toxic cancer cells when she feels absolutely fine?

  “Listen, I’m here if you need a friend instead of a shrink,” Jesus is telling her. “And you should make an appointment with Jezibel, my life coach.”

  “I don’t think I—”

  “She’s amazing. I’ll give you her number.”

  “No, that’s okay, Jesus, I doubt I’ll—”

  “I need something to write on.”

  Because it’s easier than arguing, she opens a drawer, rummages around, and plucks one of her photo business cards from a rubber-banded stack. On the front is her head shot, on the back, her contact info.

  “Just put it on here,” she tells Jesus.

  “Don’t you have any scrap paper?”

  “Does this look like an office?”

  “Got a pen? Or do you want me to use eyeliner?”

  She sighs and relinquishes a Sharpie she keeps handy for signing autographs. Which doesn’t happen as often these days as it did when she was on One Life to Live. Soap fans are a dedicated breed.

  Jesus scribbles something, then hands the card back to her. “Promise me you’ll call Jezibel.”

  She sticks it into the shallow lone pocket in her vintage forties’ skirt. “Thanks, but I really don’t think—”

  “Um, hello, you need to close your mouth so I can do your lips now.”

  “Okay, but just so you know, I don’t need—”

  “Ah-ah-ah,” he cautions.

  Forced to close her mouth so that he can apply the vintage deep-red lipstick, she contemplates the day that lies ahead.

  She still hasn’t found the nerve to break the news of her illness to the powers that be, particularly Denton Wilkens, the director. She will, before the day is out, but she isn’t looking forward to it.

  What’s the worst that can happen?

  It’s not as though he can recast the Violet role at this stage in filming… can he?

  No, but he’s going to have to scramble the production schedule to accommodate her surgical recovery and treatment. As the world’s mos
t notoriously anal-retentive director, he’ll hardly welcome the disruption—particularly on a film this close to his heart, and one he’s wanted to make for years.

  Glenhaven Park is Denton’s hometown; he was born there on December 7, 1941.

  “The world I came into that day,” he dramatically told the cast at the first read-through, “was a far different world than it had been the day before. I was born the day America’s innocence died.”

  Denton can be a little over the top… but not necessarily more so than any other director Clara has ever known.

  “Just think,” Jesus muses, expertly giving her the lips of a forties’ film siren, “you’ll be able to channel all this personal angst into your role as Violet. Maybe you’ll win the Oscar.”

  “Yeah, posthumously,” she says darkly.

  Jesus curses. “You just smudged. Stop talking.”

  “Sorry,” she mumbles through a clenched mouth.

  “You’re no ventriloquist, honey. But move your lips one more time”—he brandishes the crimson lipstick tube—“and you might just be a clown.”

  Sitting mute and motionless, Clara wonders when would be a good time to talk to the director about her illness. Definitely not until she’s finished filming her scene today—the one in which city-girl Violet steps off a train in Glenhaven Park, slips on the icy platform, and literally bumps into her future husband for the first time.

  It’ll be difficult enough to muster believable passionate attraction for a man who, she happens to know, has been battling a nasty stomach bug the last few days and is having a torrid, clandestine affair with the best boy. She might be a pro, but given her current emotional state, it will be more challenging than usual to separate the closeted actor Michael Marshall from fabled all-American hero Jed Landry.

  “All right, you’re all set, Violet,” Jesus proclaims, taking a step back to admire her face. “Off to the hairstylist you go.”

  “Thanks, Jesus.” She removes the black vinyl drape and peers out the window of the trailer at the frosty gray dawn, pulling her terry-cloth robe more tightly around her. “You know, it actually looks like it’s going to snow. Wouldn’t that be great?”