If Only in My Dreams (15 page)

“There you are! I was just about to call you. You’re fifteen minutes late.”

“Sorry. Subway trouble.” Living in Manhattan, you can blame anything on that.

In reality, the subway got her here in a flash, but Clara spent the next half hour wandering aimlessly around the neighborhood, trying to work up the courage to break bad news to someone who cares about her.

She reluctantly follows Karen into the adjacent office, a rectangular space as nondescript as the waiting room. In it was a tidy desk in one corner, a cluster of blond wood chairs covered in nubby gold fabric, a characterless framed still life on the wall, and a tall window covered in metal blinds.

“So how was your week?” Karen Vinton’s stack of silver bracelets jangles as she closes the door and turns to face Clara with a smile.

“It was… okay.”

Jed Landry flits into her mind, then stubbornly refuses to budge.

That’s been happening all day. The dream hasn’t faded in the hours since she awakened, as dreams usually have a way of doing.

She can still recall every unsettling detail.

She finds herself wishing she could tell Karen about it, but how would she even bring it up?

“What’s on your mind, Clara?”

“Do you mean… right this second?”

Karen nods.

“Can I tell you about a dream I had?” she hears herself blurting, much to her own surprise—and dismay.

“Sure.”

Clara hesitates. Why did she have to go and say something about the dream?

Because you don’t know what to make of it… and you’re starting to think you might be losing your mind. Who better to decide whether that’s the case than a shrink who knows you inside and out?

She takes a deep breath, and finds herself spilling the whole story—prefacing today’s events with the cancer diagnosis.

Karen takes that in stride—unsurprising, really, considering that it’s her job to remain calm and listen.

She starts asking questions about treatment, but Clara holds her off with a terse, “I just want to tell you about the dream, okay?”

“Okay.”

Clara reveals the entire dream, and how she met Jed—even that she was attracted to him. And how she awakened on the Metro-North train with no memory of how she might have gotten there—not in real life, anyway.

She winds down by admitting that her feet were raw and bleeding by the time she made it downtown, and how Mr. Kobayashi had to let her into her apartment.

She also mentions that when she called Bobby, the unit production manager, he was remarkably understanding about the whole thing and promised to pass along the information to Denton. The director promptly sent an enormous bouquet of flowers, closely followed by a messenger service delivering her call sheet for tomorrow as well as her bag containing keys, wallet, and cell phone, which she’d left in her trailer up in Westchester.

“And that’s it,” she says, looking at Karen at last. “What do you think?”

“About…?”

“All of it. The whole dream. It was a dream… wasn’t it?”

“Do you think it was?”

“Of course!” She stares at Karen, who is watching her intently. “I mean, what else could it have been?”

Karen remains silent. Waiting, apparently. She’s good at that.

Clara knows from experience that she’ll just sit there for as long as it takes for Clara to answer her own question.

“What I don’t get,” she admits, shifting her weight uncomfortably, “is how I
lost
a few hours of my morning. I mean, I didn’t feel like I was losing it when I was dreaming… but I figured I’d wake up and find myself in the same place where I was when I started dreaming. Instead, I guess I blanked out… and I woke up in the same place where I was in the dream when it ended… on the train to the city. How could that happen?”

“Temporary dissociative amnesia can be triggered by both psychological and physical trauma.”

“Is that what I have?”

“I’m not saying that, but given your cancer diagnosis—and the head injury—your experience isn’t all that unprecedented… except…”

Utterly unnerved by the final word and the way Karen trails off wearing an intent frown, Clara prods her. “Except… what?”

“If we assume that your experience this morning should be attributed to the bump on your head, we would have to rule out retrograde amnesia, because you seem to clearly remember the details leading up to the accident… correct?”

“Right. I remember specifically how the train slowed down all of a sudden, and I flew backward through the air, and hit my—”

“Backward?” Karen cuts in. “Don’t you mean forward?”

“No, backward,” Clara repeats slowly, though how that might have happened is momentarily puzzling to her. Usually, a lurch on a moving train would cause you to fall forward… wouldn’t it?

Again, she regrets not paying better attention in high school physics class.

Karen is silent for a few seconds, as if trying to ascertain whether what Clara described is physically possible.

Then she continues with a shrug. “You say you didn’t immediately lose consciousness after you hit your head.”

“I don’t think I—wait a minute, of course I didn’t. If I had, everyone there would have seen me. They’d have known what happened. But according to them, I just… vanished.”

“You wandered out of the car you were in, and then off the train.”

“I guess so. Nobody saw me go, and I don’t remember it. Except that I
do
very clearly remember the train pulling
into the Glenhaven Park station, and finding the empty platform, and everything that happened after that.”

Karen hesitates. Then she asks, “Have you ever heard of dissociative fugue?”

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s a psychological disorder—”

“Oh, God, here we go.” Clara rakes a hand through her hair.
I’m losing it. I knew it
.

“Why do you say that?”

Ignoring the question, Clara asks impatiently, “What kind of disorder?”

“Do you want the textbook definition, or layman’s terms?”

“Textbook.” She’s familiar with layman’s terms:
crazy
.

“It’s a disorder in which the patient experiences a spontaneous episode of sudden travel away from home, marked by amnesia about some or all of his or her past life. And she may, during this episode, experience the reemergence of some event or person representing an earlier trauma.”

Clara is shaking her head before Karen is finished speaking.

“That’s not what happened,” she says resolutely. “I never for a moment forgot my past life. I knew exactly who I was the whole time.”

“But you did experience what you say were memory blanks?”

“Only about what happened to me, physically, while I was dreaming or hallucinating or whatever I was doing. I don’t remember getting on the train back to the city,” she says impatiently, sick of going over this aloud after having dwelled on it ever since it happened. “I mean, not in the present day. I remember getting on the train in 1941, in the dream. But it was a different train.”

“How?”

“You know… old-fashioned—like a train would be in 1941.”

Karen is silent, mulling that over.

“What are you thinking?” Clara asks at last.

“That I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with you, but that it’s acceptable to have escapist fantasies when you’ve just been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.”

“So that’s what you think happened to me this morning?” Clara asks doubtfully. “Just a fantasy?”

“I don’t know, Clara. We have a lot more work to do before I can make any kind of diagnosis.”

“But what are you thinking this might mean?” she presses, unable to let it go. “Why did this happen to me?”

“You mean this particular episode? I would say the fact that it involved traveling back to the past might indicate that the forties represent nostalgia for simpler times, and that this man—”

“Jed Landry?” Clara asks, her heart beating a little faster.

“Right, that he might represent your repressed longing for a man who knows nothing about your life or your illness, a man who has no preconceived notions about you. A hero to come along and save you from all this.”

Clara rolls her eyes, ignoring the little voice that tells her there might be a hint of truth to it. “I don’t want to be rescued,” she says firmly. “You and I both know that I can take care of myself—and of my mother, for that matter.”

“Have you told her yet?”

“No. And I’m not going to.”

“Don’t rule it out. You might need her. Or someone.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you sure? A cancer diagnosis is traumatic under any circumstances, and you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t just a little bit insecure about your ability to face the challenges ahead.”

A lump rises in her throat, making it impossible to speak.

“Then there’s that bump.” Karen leans forward and peers at Clara’s forehead. “You need to have that looked at. You might have a concussion.”

“Do you think it might have caused the whole… amnesia thing?”

“I’m concerned about it. Do you have a headache? Blurred vision? Are you nauseous? Sleepy?”

“Not really… not any more than I normally would be after getting up in the dark to go to work.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“Just if I touch the bump itself, but it’s just sore. I’m sure I’m okay.”

“If I were you, I’d go to the doctor just to be sure.”

“I will… tomorrow.” Glancing at her watch, she sees that their forty-five-minute session—which today was reduced to a half hour—is almost up.

“I don’t want you to go home alone tonight. Is there anyone who can come by for a while tonight, just in case your head starts bothering you? I’d do it myself, except I’ve got tickets to a concert.”

“I’m fine, Karen. It’s no big deal.”

“But I don’t like it that you live alone. You must have a neighbor you can count on… someone who would be willing to check in and make sure you’re all right.”

A neighbor you can count on
.

Drew Becker pops into her head.

Why, she doesn’t know, because he’s a total stranger. Not someone she can count on.

She imagines herself knocking on his door and asking him to keep an eye on her in case she develops brain damage.

Sure. As if
.

“I’ll be fine,” she assures Karen. “And I have an early location call tomorrow morning, so—”

“So I’m calling you on your cell first thing, to make sure you’re all right.”

Clara sighs. “Must you?”

“I must.” Karen flashes a brief smile. “And listen, let’s make another appointment, sooner than next weekend.” She briskly takes out a desk calendar and flips the page. “How’s Monday?”

“Monday? Karen, I’m way too busy to squeeze in—”

“I’d like to see you again on Monday,” Karen says firmly, pencil poised over the page. “Six o’clock.”

“I’m shooting that day. I can’t possibly get here by then.”

“So name the time. When can you make it?” When Clara doesn’t reply immediately, Karen says decisively, “I’m putting you down for eight-thirty Monday night. Okay?”

“Okay, I guess.”

She thinks I’m going crazy
, Clara decides, watching Karen write her name in the book.
And I’m not so sure she’s wrong
.

A tube of lipstick in a deep red shade…

A powder compact…

A comb…

A lace-edged handkerchief…

That’s it. That’s all Jed finds in Clara’s pocketbook. No wallet, no identification, no…

His probing fingers encounter one more object in the folds of the taffeta lining.

He draws it out.

What on earth?

Jed finds himself holding a peculiar flat, rectangular, metallic… er,
device
of some sort.

It fits in the palm of his hand, about two inches wide by four inches long, and it weighs only a few ounces, if that. The back—or is it the front?—is smooth, and in the center is etched the outline of an apple with a bite taken from it. Beneath that are the letters i-P-o-d, followed by a series of apparently coded numbers and letters.

The other side has a rectangular indentation on one end, and a circle below it. At the top of the circle, where the twelve would be on a clock face, is the word
MENU
. There are sequences of triangles and slashes at three, six, and nine. A thin, pliable, coated white wire comes out of the narrow edge of the contraption; it splits into two cords with cushioned circular objects attached to the ends.

What on earth is this thing?

It almost looks like… some kind of transmitter.

A sick feeling twists Jed’s gut.

Is Clara a modern-day Mata Hari?

That would explain why she was so skittish; why she didn’t reveal her last name; why she wasn’t carrying any identification—

Something suddenly creaks in the garage below.

Jed goes still, listening.

Not a sound, but he can feel somebody there. It must be Doris. Lately, she’s been eavesdropping and sneaking around. She claims it’s because she thinks the family is talking about
her behind her back, but Jed is convinced she’s just plain nosy.

He tosses the odd device back into the pocketbook, along with the cosmetics and other items, and quickly shoves the whole thing into the laundry basket with his stack of clean shirts and underwear.

“Doris,” he calls, “I know you’re there.”

“How did you know?” a disappointed voice asks from the stairs outside his door.

“Because I know everything.”

“You do not.” His sister pokes her freckled face through the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

Nothing other than entertaining the chilling possibility that the woman he found so enchanting might actually be a spy.

“Why are you just sitting there?” Doris asks.

“I’m not.”

“It looks like you are to me.”

Gee whiz, sometimes Doris really gripes his middle kidney.

“Never mind what I’m doing. What do you want?”

“Mother says it’s time to eat.”

“Go tell her I’ll be right there, will you?”

She stares at him for another long moment, then changes her mode. “After supper, can we string some lights outside? Please, Jed? We’re the only house on the block without them.”