If Only in My Dreams (14 page)

As she ties the sash around her waist she catches sight of her reflection in the medicine-chest mirror.

Good God. I look like hell
.

Her forties’ hat is waterlogged; beneath it, her hairdo is lacquered to her head. Her eyes are raw and red, her expression ravaged, her makeup is down around her chin, and the crimson lipstick is hopelessly smudged.

How ironic that Clara, who wouldn’t deny that her success in the entertainment industry is based as much on her beauty as on her talent, has transformed into this… this visual monstrosity. She can’t bear to look at herself.

Is this what it’s going to be like from now on… after the surgery? Will she dread seeing herself naked afterward? Will she be able to ever again share her body with anyone else?

One thing at a time. For now, I just need cold cream
, she tells herself.
Cold cream, then a hot shower for about an hour, and about a week of sleep.…

Except that she can’t sleep. She has to see Karen.

Maybe she’ll help me
.…

Oh, who am I kidding?

No one
, she thinks bleakly,
can possibly help me at this point. Not in the way I need
.

What she needs is a magic genie who could miraculously sweep away her cancer as if it never existed.

Sure. That’ll happen.

With a weary sigh, she begins pulling out the pins that secure her sodden hat to her matted hair. Each tug makes her wince in pain.

She isn’t looking forward to donning this getup all over again tomorrow…

Nor is she looking forward to calling the unit production manager to explain her vanishing act.

And no, she’s not looking forward to the appointment later with Karen, either.

So what
are
you looking forward to?

Not much of anything
, she realizes. Except, perhaps, sleep.

Maybe I’ll dream about Jed Landry again
.

That possibility sparks a glimmer of interest. Now that could possibly be something to look forward to. Especially since, this time, she’ll know it’s just a dream.

Not that
he
can possibly help her.…

No, she has already determined that no one can do that. No human, anyway.

But then, Jed wasn’t human—he was a part of her dream. And there was something about dream Jed… strong, solid, capable dream Jed… that made her feel…

Safe.

Gazing into the mirror, she watches her brow furrow and her teeth come down on her bottom lip.

It was definitely just a dream
.
Right
.

Right?

Clara turns thoughtfully away from the mirror, the hairpin removal task momentarily abandoned.

Padding barefoot to the living room, she goes straight to the bookcase and peruses the row of titles.

It’s on the top shelf: the big leather-bound dictionary her grandfather presented to her at her elementary school graduation, along with a dark-haired porcelain angel, of course. The dictionary’s first page is inscribed in spidery handwriting:
For Clara-belle, with love from Grandpa on your special day
.

She flips the pages to the Ds and scans the entries. There it is.

As she reads the definition, her heart starts pounding all over again.

Doughboy
n. An American infantryman in World War I.

She never knew that.

Are you sure? Maybe you read it somewhere
.

No, she would have remembered. She would have remembered because the word
doughboy
would have brought to mind her father, and the way she used to poke him in the stomach to make him giggle like the fat white Pillsbury Doughboy on TV.

But if she never knew that a doughboy was a World War I soldier, then how could she have conjured it in her dream?

If the Jed Landry she encountered was a figment of her imagination, then he could know only what
she
knows… isn’t that correct?

Suddenly, she’s utterly depleted. Her head is spinning and, once again, nothing makes sense.

She closes the dictionary and shoves it back on the shelf.

Later,
she thinks wearily, trudging to the bathroom again.
I’ll worry about all of this later
.

CHAPTER 7

J
ed? Have you been away?” Sarah Wenick calls through the dusk as Jed passes by her two-story Dutch Colonial that evening on his way home.

He shakes his head, marveling that the neighborhood gossip happens to be outside on a gusty December evening like this. Chestnut Street is all but deserted, families tucked cozily inside houses gaily illuminated with strings of colored lights.

Yet there’s Sarah on her top step, plainly visible in the pool of light from an overhead fixture. She’s bundled into a woolen coat and a head wrap, fiddling with the string of darkened lights tacked around her front door. One of the bulbs must have burned out.

“Hello, Sarah, no, I haven’t been away,” he calls back to her. “I’m just coming from the store.”

“Oh… I saw the suitcase and I thought…” She trails off, waiting for him to elaborate.

He merely nods and tips his hat with a gloved hand.

If he were a gentleman, he’d offer to help her replace the bulb, knowing her husband, Clark, is working the night shift down at the plant.

Well, he is a gentleman… under most circumstances.

He just isn’t in the mood to explain the suitcase to his perennially nosy next-door neighbor… or, in turn, to his mother, who will surely hear about it from Sarah promptly.

“Good night, Sarah.”

“Good night, Jed. Give Lois my best.”

His galoshes make a squeaking sound in the snow as he trudges up the Landrys’ driveway next door, covered in several inches of fresh white powder since he shoveled it early this morning.

Pop’s snow-blanketed DeSoto is parked in front of the detached garage, right where Jed left it when he drove it home a few weeks ago with a flat tire. He hasn’t got around to fixing it yet. Good thing nobody drives the car but him—though Gilbert will want to when he gets back, and Penny keeps begging him to teach her now that she’s almost seventeen.

He figures he’d better oblige her one of these days. Mother doesn’t have a license, and Gilbert would never have the patience to teach Penny.

But he’ll have to become more patient if he’s going to take over where I leave off next spring
, Jed tells himself—not for the first time.

He can’t help but worry about how Gilbert is going to manage the household in his absence.

He’ll have to grow up quickly…
just like I did
.

Jed pauses beside the car, remembering how proud Pop was when he scraped together enough to buy it—how lovingly
he cared for it, polishing it every week until the chrome shone like mirrors.

I really should fix that tire,
Jed thinks guiltily.

It just hasn’t been a priority. Not with everything he needs within a few blocks’ walking distance of the house.

Well…

Not everything
.

Clara lives in New York.

But that’s all he knows about her.…

So far.

He hasn’t opened her pocketbook or her suitcase—not yet. It seemed far too brazen a thing to do in the store, especially with Alice underfoot.

But when it came time to close up the five-and-dime for the evening, there was no question about his leaving Clara’s belongings there. He opted to bring them home with him for safekeeping—and, all right, possibly for further investigation.

If she hadn’t left her bags behind, it would have been much easier to forget her.

Who are you kidding, fella?

All right, Jed probably wouldn’t find it easy to forget her under any circumstances. It isn’t every day a beautiful doll like her walks into his life… then out again, without any plausible explanation.

If she hadn’t left behind the suitcase and pocketbook, he’d be helpless when it comes to finding her again.

If
that’s what he decides to do.

Forget about her. That’s what you should decide to do
.

Even if…

Say he finds her, in New York. What then? Does he just hand over her bags and wish her well?

Somehow he knows that seeing her again, one last time, won’t be enough.

But what else is there?

Falling in love, getting married, settling down…

That wasn’t part of his future plan. Not for a coupl’a years, anyway. After he’s enlisted, and done his part for his country, and seen something of the world beyond Glenhaven Park.

Then again… he’s seen it. Some of it. He’s seen New York and Boston, and the Catskill Mountains where they spent a week every summer before the Depression, and once, right after he got the DeSoto, Pop drove the whole family to the Jersey shore for the day.

Maybe that’s all the world travel Jed really needs.

Maybe if he found the right girl tomorrow—

Or, more specifically,
today
—

Maybe he’d be content to just stay put here in Glenhaven Park forever.

Maybe.

Jed can see his mother’s silhouette against the filmy white curtains in the window as he passes the back corner of the house. He pictures her there in the kitchen, bustling from stove to sink to icebox, preparing supper with help—and a lot of bickering—from his sisters.

They eat later than usual on Monday nights, because it’s laundry day and Mother doesn’t finish until after five o’clock.

It must be nearly six now.

Mother will be sending Doris out to summon him for supper any minute.

First, however, he wants to examine Clara’s bags. His curiosity has been building all day, as has his anticipation of actually finding her address.

He steps into the garage, which was formerly a carriage house, and is far too small to house the monstrous DeSoto. Anyway, it’s filled to its shadowy, cobwebby depths with unused remnants from his grandparents’ household, plus the Landrys’ yard equipment, outgrown bicycles, and lawn furniture nobody’s bothered to bring out for two summers now.

Jed hauls the suitcase up the steep, rickety flight of stairs leading to what was once a loft overhead. Now it’s a one-room apartment with indoor plumbing Pop installed back in ’38. He’d planned to use the space as a workshop; he always did like to tinker with things.

But those days were over for him soon after he finished whitewashing the walls and sanding the wide-planked floors.

Pop’s tool bench still sits in one corner of the large room. Jed likes to look at it, remembering how he was once Pop’s proud helper. Hunched over some splintered furniture or broken appliance, cigarette burning between his lips, Pop would tell him what he needed; Jed loved to reach in, rummage around until he found the right tool, and bask in Pop’s approval.

Jed hasn’t opened the tool chest since his father passed away. When something needs fixing around the house, it’s Granddad who usually does the repairs, using his own set of tools, before Jed can get to it.

He should probably move Pop’s tool chest back down to the garage; the apartment is cramped enough as it is. But he doesn’t have the heart to do that just yet.

The remainder of his meager floor space is occupied by furniture odds and ends, including the twin bed, bureau, and desk Jed moved up here from the house. His grandparents brought their own bedroom suite when they took over his old room. The heavy mahogany four-poster and massive wardrobe still seem out of place up in Jed’s dormered boyhood room, against a backdrop of decades-old pastel wallpaper picturing baby farm animals: lambs and chicks and calves.

No less out of its element is the wobbly wooden dinette table that once stood in the Landrys’ breakfast nook and is now tucked into a dormered nook of Jed’s garage loft. He has countless memories of hearty meals eaten at that table with his parents and Gilbert when they were a well-fed family of four, back before the Depression—and the girls—came along.

Now the nicked wooden surface, its faded yellow paint worn away completely in some spots, is covered with household bills, books, magazines, and a basket of folded clothing Mother must have brought up earlier.

Jed drops the suitcase by the table and pushes the tabletop clutter aside to make room for the pocketbook.

He stares at it as he removes his coat, hat, and gloves, tossing them all on one of the rickety painted chairs.

Then he lowers himself into the sturdiest of the four, the only one he uses for sitting, and takes a deep breath.

Does he dare?

If you don’t open that pocketbook, you’ll never see her again
.

But he can’t know that for certain.

He can’t know that she won’t show up tomorrow to reclaim her things… and his heart.

Face it. That’s not going to happen, Jed
.

And you can either forget her… or try to find her
.

He hesitates.

Then, with a trembling hand, he unfastens the clasp on Clara’s pocketbook.

Karen Vinton, a beautiful African American woman dressed in a gauzy purple print skirt and a brown shawl she crocheted herself, looks up from the phone in her hand when Clara steps into her reception area.