If Only in My Dreams (9 page)

“I’ll take two dozen pint-sized canning jars. They’ve got Florida oranges at twenty-five cents a dozen over at the grocery. I’m putting up the last of my marmalade this week, before I start in on the holiday baking.”

“Well, I can hardly wait for that. I count on you to bring me one of those delicious fruitcakes of yours every year.”

“Oh, I’ll be bringing you a few, don’t you worry. That reminds me—I need heavy brown paper to line the pans…”

Jed points her in the right direction, then keeps one eye on Clara as he counts the jars into a sturdy carton.

She’s still sitting there on the stool with the coffee untouched in front of her, and she’s fretting. Even from several yards away he can see her wringing her hands and biting her lower lip.

Maybe he should lock up the store after Mrs. Bouvier leaves, and take Clara over to see Doc Wilson. She might have a concussion. She sure as heck is confused, and she probably shouldn’t be boarding a train back to the city by herself.

For a split second, he fancies himself going with her—and all but snorts out loud when he realizes how outlandish an idea
that
is.

For one thing, she’s a complete stranger who, for all he knows, is married or engaged, ring or no ring.

For another, he has a business to run. He can’t go chasing after every Able Grable who happens to cross his path.

The trouble is, it isn’t every day that an Able Grable crosses his path here in Glenhaven Park, unless you count the gals he’s known all his life. And he doesn’t.

“I can deliver these later this afternoon, Mrs. Bouvier,” he informs his customer, having finished counting and packing. “Or maybe sooner…”

If Alice ever shows up.

“Oh, there’s no rush.” She deposits her purchases—a roll of brown paper, a metal cookie cutter shaped like a bell, and a popgun, a gift for her great-nephew—on the counter. “I’ll take these with me now. How is your mother, Jed?”

“She’s doing just fine,” he lies as he totals her purchase.

There’s no reason to tell Mrs. Bouvier that his mother has fallen into a state of depression these last few weeks.

It’s because of Christmas, of course.

Another Christmas without Pop, who joyfully embodied the holiday spirit.

That first holiday after he died, with the harsh loss raw as a coastal nor’easter, was a blur of shock and overwhelming grief.

The one that followed brought the first anniversary—and, in the wake of initial disbelief, a somber permanence that settled over the Landry household like a burial shroud.

It’s been two years now. Two years, today.

Two years already
, Jed thought when he stepped into the dim, chilly kitchen early this morning to see the still-empty spot at the head of the big table in the breakfast alcove. Sometimes it seems like just yesterday that Pop was sitting there enjoying his morning paper, a cup of coffee, one last Lucky Strike before heading out to open the store.

Only two years
, Jed thought later this morning when Mrs. Robertson, oblivious to the shortages created by the war in Europe, demanded to know why there are
still
no silk stockings for sale, and why he can’t tell her when there will be. Sometimes it seems like a lifetime since he was striding jauntily and carefree along a Cambridge street, a stack of books under one arm, Carol under the other.

Two years
.

Shouldn’t it be getting a little easier? Shouldn’t there be some mornings when Lois Landry doesn’t emerge from her lonely bedroom with heavy footsteps and telltale red, swollen eyes?

Jed honestly expected his mother’s grief to diminish as yet another year drew to a close, but time seems to have had the opposite effect on her.

And it isn’t just Mother. Facing yet another holiday season without Pop is hard on all of them. Grandma sighs a lot, and not just over the news from overseas. Granddad shuffles around the house halfheartedly, glancing often at the chessboard sitting untouched on the shelf. His son-in-law was the only one in the house who knew how to play.

Gilbert sent a letter claiming that he couldn’t be home until Christmas Eve, and had to be back on campus before New Year’s. Penny and Mary Ann have been bickering even more than usual.

Meanwhile, Doris pesters Jed every chance she gets about when they’re going to take the cartons of decorations from the attic, and put up the outdoor lights, and cut down a tree.…

Those were tasks Pop always tended to—only he didn’t consider them tasks.

The first year without him, of course, the Landry home was newly in mourning; there were no decorations, no lights, no tree. Last year, it was Jed who took over the seasonal rituals, halfheartedly, because Doris insisted and Pop would have wanted him to.

But he only agreed to indoor decorations: a small Christmas tree and the stockings. Outdoor lights for all the world to see would have seemed garish on the first anniversary of Pop’s death.

This year, he supposes, the decisions—and the decorating itself—will fall to him again.

And what about next Christmas? Will he be on some frigid European battlefield or in an island jungle in the South Pacific, longing for home? Will Gilbert know how to string the lights along the porch eaves and remind Doris to hang the shiny lead tinsel on the tree strand by strand, rather than in clumps?

“Oh, look, it’s snowing again,” Mrs. Bouvier announces as she accepts her package from him.

Jed follows her glance out the plate-glass window and a wistful feeling falls over him.

You don’t have to go, you know
, he reminds himself.
You can always stay right here in Glenhaven Park. Forever
.

Unless, of course, he’s drafted.

Which he will be, sooner or later—he knows it in his gut, the way he knew that his father’s health was failing long before Doc Wilson delivered the dreadful verdict back in the spring of ’39.

Anyway, he doesn’t want to stay here and bide his time waiting for war to hit home and the government to decide
his fate. He’ll enlist in May, right after Gilbert gets home, just as he planned.

“I’ll be seeing you later, then, Jed,” Mrs. Bouvier says, and departs into the swirl of white flakes.

Jed returns his attention to his visitor, who can’t really be called a customer because she isn’t shopping. She’s just sitting, and staring. Not at him, but into space, which gives him another opportunity to surreptitiously look her over from head to toe, with renewed appreciation.

She sure is classy.

Much too classy for a small-town fella like me
, Jed can’t help thinking.
Still
…

She looks up, suddenly, and catches him staring at her.

He is alarmed to see that the bump above her eyebrow is so much more pronounced, in size and color, that he can easily see it from where he stands several yards way.

“You really do need to keep ice on that,” he advises, quickly covering the ground between them.

“I know… but it’s cold.”

“It’s supposed to be cold. It’s ice.” He picks up the towel, now sopping wet, and secures it better around the clump of melting ice. He offers it to her. When she doesn’t take it, he gently presses it against the bump himself.

She flinches when it makes contact with her skin, but to his surprise, she lets him hold it there. It’s an oddly intimate situation, to be standing so close to her that he can, if he lowers his eyes to her legs, easily see that she is wearing the real thing. Silk stockings. If Mrs. Robertson were here she might offer to buy them from her on the spot.

Standing this near to Clara, Jed can smell the delicate scent that wafts deliciously in the air between them. He
wants to ask her what fragrance it is, so much lighter than the heavy floral aroma of that Evening in Paris perfume he’s been selling like hotcakes.

Betty Godfrey bathes herself in it, as far as he can tell. It’s all he can do not to sneeze whenever she’s cozying up to him.

He inhales again and is seized by a momentary—and wholly inappropriate—fantasy that involves burying his face in Clara’s fragrant neck.

He can’t do that.

But he can ask her what scent she’s wearing.

No, he can’t, either.

That would be much too forward of him… wouldn’t it?

Of course it would, Jed! You barely know her. Wait, you don’t know her at all
.

“You’re shivering,” he notes. “I’m sorry… I know it’s cold, and this isn’t comfortable for you, but if you don’t ice that bump—”

“It’s okay. It’s not just that I’m cold, I’m…” She trails off, but he has the strangest sensation that he can read her mind… and that she was about to say
scared
.

He provides the word for her, but as a question, and isn’t surprised when she nods.

“What are you scared of?” he asks.

She hesitates. “A lot of things. But… I don’t want to talk about them.”

Jed frowns, running his thoughts over a list of possibilities. He settles on the most likely and most frightening scenario he can conjure. “Is somebody after you? Did somebody hit you? Is that why you have that bruise?”

“No!” she says quickly… so quickly that he’s certain she must be lying.

Jed is instantly infused with the same brand of anger he experienced as an overprotective older brother called in to disperse Waldie Smith and his cronies with a few well-thrown punches.

If some goon did this to an innocent woman… well, Jed would love to get his hands on him and give him a taste of his own medicine.

I guess I am capable of violence after all
, he finds himself thinking as he says aloud, “Clara, you can stay here with me for as long as you need to. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I can’t… I have to get back home. And that’s… that’s part of the reason I’m afraid.”

“Because he’s there?”

“Who?”

“The fella who—did this.” He removes the ice pack to inspect the injury again, gingerly grazing it with the very tips of his fingers.

“Nobody did this. There’s no…
fella
.” The word seems so awkward on her tongue that he decides she must be lying. But she persists, “I told you before, I hit my head when I was on the train.”

“Then why are you afraid to go home?”

“I’m not afraid to go home. I’m afraid I won’t be able to
get
there,” she says cryptically. “And when I do manage to get back,
if
I do… I’ve got a lot of stuff going on that I have to deal with. That’s all.”

“Like what? What do you have to deal with?” When she remains silent, he tries another tactic. “Do you live with your parents? Your husband?”

“I’m not married,” she says—
at last, at last
.

She isn’t married!

Absorbing that delightful news, he asks, “You live with your parents, then?”

“No—but this has nothing to do with where I live, and you wouldn’t understand, so…” She starts to stand. “You’ve been very nice to me, but I have to—”

“Careful,” he advises, seeing her start to sway.

She quickly sinks to the stool again as he guides her, gently holding one slender upper arm. There’s nothing to her; beneath the sleeve of the velvet jacket he can tell that she’s scrawnier than his kid sister.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, concerned.

She shakes her head.

“You’re not drinking your coffee. Too hot?”

After a slight pause she nods, but she looks uncertain enough to make him wonder if she even took a sip.

“How about a milk shake, then? It’ll make you feel better.”
And put some meat on your bones,
as his grandmother would say.

“No, thank you,” she says politely.

“Let me make you a chocolate milk shake,” he insists. “You can just sip it.”

“I can’t!” she protests, as though he suggested that she drink the blood of a freshly slaughtered boar.

“Why can’t you?”

She responds in a tone that suggests she doesn’t appreciate having to spell out things that are pure common sense. “Because… I have to watch my weight.”

He blinks. “How’s that again?”

She studies him for a moment, as though trying to assess his reaction, then admits, this time with considerable reluctance, “I’m watching my weight.”

“Watching your weight do what? Plummet until there’s nothing left of you?”

For the first time since he offered her the Dr. Denton’s, he sees a glint of amusement in her eyes.

So that’s it. She was kidding, obviously. She sure has a quirky sense of humor.

“Never mind.” She glances at the newspapers on the counter. “Things are so different… here.”

He can’t help but feel a little defensive at what sounds like a vague insult, coming from a cosmopolitan gal like her. “We’re only about forty miles from the city, you know.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“No? What did you mean?”

“You couldn’t possibly understand.” Again, her gaze flicks to the bold black headlines about the war.

“Try me.” It’s a challenge… one she seems to accept with a sparkle in her eye despite her pain, her confusion, her inexplicable fear.

“Where I come from—”

“New York? That’s where you’re from?”

She seems to hesitate for a split second before answering, “Yes.”

“Lived there all your life?”

She nods, then tells Jed somewhat guardedly, “In my world, people tend to worry about a lot of things that, I have to admit, all of a sudden seem pretty… frivolous.”

“Such as…
milk shakes.”
He shoots an exaggerated comical expression at her.

For the first time since she walked into the store, a pleasant, tinkling sound spills from her lips. But the laugh quickly ripples back into silence like a music box that needs to be rewound.

“What are you scared of, Clara?” he asks softly, watching her face transform once again into a mask of trepidation.

“I just… I really need to get back home. What time did you say the next train leaves for the city?”

“Ten twenty-one. I’ll walk you over to the depot when it’s time.”

“That’s all right, I can find it. I just came from there.”

“You shouldn’t be walking around by yourself.”

“Where I come from, grown women come and go as they please.”