If Only in My Dreams (39 page)

Clara’s leaden heart lifts, just a little.

Her mother is here in New York.

Thank God.

I need you, Mom.
…

“When did you get back here?”

“This morning. Hang on a minute.” Her mother covers the receiver but Clara can hear a muffled “Take the phone, Stan… yes… because I feel like I’m going to pass out.”

“Mom!” Tormented by her conscience, Clara wonders how she could have been so selfish. Had she allowed herself more than a passing thought of the life she so abruptly abandoned, she would never have put her mother through this hell.

“Oh, God, Mommy, I’m so sorry.…”

“She’ll be okay.” Her stepfather is back on the line, but his reassuring words can’t begin to assuage Clara’s guilt.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, she’ll be fine, now that she knows you’re safe, anyway. It’s just been a rough couple of days.”

“I can just imagine,” Clara murmurs.

“Where have you been? Your mother’s been trying to call you for days at home and on your cell. By Tuesday she was so frantic she called the police. But they said they had to wait forty-eight hours before they could open a missing persons case.”

“I’m so sorry,” Clara repeats, wedging a fist into her hair, pulling so hard her scalp hurts. “I got a note from my landlord saying the police had been here.”

“Oh, him?” Stan sounds slightly disdainful. “He wouldn’t even let us into your apartment this afternoon. He said it wasn’t legal.”

“Well… it probably isn’t.” Clara can just imagine her mother barging into the building in a frenzy, demanding access to her daughter’s apartment.

“Ask her where she’s been, Stan,” her mother is commanding in the background.

Before her stepfather can oblige, Clara tells him, “I went away for a few days, that’s all. I just had to get out of here. I know it was really irresponsible and I never meant to worry you and Mom and—and did she tell my father?”

“Of course she told him. Listen, your mother already has her coat on.… We’re coming right over.”

“Now? But—”

“Do you really think I can stop her? She needs to see you for herself and make sure you’re really okay.”

I’m not okay
.

And it’s time to tell Mom the truth and hope she can handle it
.

After all I’ve put her through, she deserves to know
.

About the cancer. Not, of course, about Jed.

Clara will never tell another soul about that.

Oh, Jed… I miss you so much
.

If only
…

Can there possibly be a chance that he listened to her, that he survived the war after all?

No. Don’t tease yourself like that
.

What was that rule of quantum physics?

What you do in the present is an inevitable product of the past
.

Meaning what’s happened has happened. It can’t be changed.

Clara shakes her head, crying all over again. What an emotional wreck she is.

If only I could see Jed again, one last time.
…

Why?
an inner voice demands.
Would that be enough?

Could you handle one more good-bye?

The answer to that question is abundantly clear.

No. You could barely handle the first good-bye. Look at you
.

It’s better, then, to leave Jed in the past, where he belongs. Better to always cherish the memories, and the red mittens he returned to her, and focus now on the challenge just ahead of her.

“Clara, do you want us to bring you anything?” her mother is asking in her ear, having grabbed the phone back from Stan again.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know… milk? Bread?”

Milk. Bread. Oh, Mom
.

“No.” Clara smiles through her tears. “Just… come.”

“I’m coming. I love you, honey.”

“I love you, too.”

She ends the call, then buries her head in her hands and lets out a shuddering sigh.

She should probably get in touch with her father now… and Mr. Kobayashi… and, probably, the police before they barge in with a search warrant.…

And then there’s the movie.… She’s got to call Denton right away.

Denton… Dent-in…

She smiles again, faintly, wishing for a fleeting moment she had stuck around 1941 just long enough to catch a glimpse of the new Wilkens baby.

Right now the poor kid is wearing pink booties.
…

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

Her smile fades as she remembers Jed’s ravaged expression in the very last moment before she turned her back and walked away.

Her eyes are hot with tears all over again; she bows her head and a fat, salty drop lands on the envelope in her hand.

The envelope…

She forgot all about it.

Turning it over, she sees that her name is written on the front in red ink.

Sliding a finger beneath the flap, she cautiously rips it open.

Inside are a long cardboard rectangle and a note, also scrawled in red:
See you there! Love, Santa
.

Heart pounding, she realizes that she’s holding one ticket to
The Nutcracker
for December 24… Christmas Eve.

Two hours later, she walks her mother and stepfather back down the two flights of stairs, her mother clinging to Clara’s hand so tightly that her rings are quite possibly drawing blood in Clara’s palm.

Naturally, Jeanette won’t be going back to Florida anytime soon. She intends to see her daughter through every step on this journey—and Clara isn’t about to argue, grateful to have her mother here and know she doesn’t have to go it alone.

“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 commitment 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?