If Only in My Dreams (11 page)

Clara finds herself picturing the fat white Pillsbury Doughboy from the commercials, and hides a quick smile.

Somehow, she’s pretty sure that’s not what he means.

“Your father worked in a bakery?” she asks, pleased at having quickly made the danger connection. Maybe Jed’s grandmother feared her son would get burned in a raging brick-oven inferno.

“A bakery?” Jed is looking blank.

“You said he was a doughboy.…”

“In the Great War.”

“He was a baker in the Great War?” she asks, vaguely embarrassed but not quite sure why.

“He was a
soldier
in the Great War.”

“Oh.” She nods as though she understands what baking has to do with fighting in the Great War.

At least she’s aware that he’s talking about World War I, which was called the Great War back before there was a World War II.

Suddenly, she is struck by just how much Jed Landry doesn’t know.

America isn’t even officially in the war yet. Pearl Harbor hasn’t been attacked, but it will be… less than a week from today, she realizes, after a quick calculation.

Denton’s dramatic proclamation comes back to her.
The world I came into that day was a far different world than it had been the day before. I was born the day America’s innocence died
.

Maybe she should warn someone. Jed, or better yet, warn the president. Maybe she can somehow get to FDR and—

What? Heroically change history? Save the world? Preserve America’s innocence?

You’re dreaming all this anyway, Clara, remember?

“So my father made it through the war, and that horrible flu that killed all those people,” Jed is saying, “and he
survived the Depression. Then he was hit with the one thing he couldn’t survive.”

“What was it?”

“Lung cancer.”

There it is again, rearing its ugly head to invade her dream like the murderous Mouse King invaded the Clara character’s in Tchaikovsky’s ballet.

Cancer
.

The one word that never really leaves her consciousness… not even when she’s asleep.

“They couldn’t treat it?” she manages to ask Jed, who shakes his head bleakly.

“It was cancer,” he repeats, as if that explains everything.

And it does.

In this day and age, a diagnosis like yours isn’t the automatic death sentence it used to be
.

Haunted anew by Dr. Svensen’s words, Clara comprehends that for Jed’s father, just as for her own grandmother, there were no effective treatments. They were trapped in a world without options.…

And now… am I trapped there, too?

Alarmed as the chilling notion hits her, Clara withdraws her hand from Jed’s sleeve. Age-old instinct sends her restless fingers straight to her head, where she encounters her hair confined by the velvet hat and stiff spray.

It seems like a lifetime ago that she donned her retro costume and boarded the train to shoot her scene.…

Dear God, if I’m not dreaming this, then it really
was
a different lifetime
.

If I’m not dreaming this, and I’m really stuck in 1941, then
…

I’m going to die
.

Just like Grandma, and Jed Landry’s father.

And Jed.

Jed is going to die.

Unlike his father, he won’t come home from the foreign battlefield. He’ll be killed on a beach in France on a June day.

A wave of foreboding rises within her to collide with one of sheer panic.

Overcome, she bolts from the stool.

“What happened?” Jed asks, startled.

She doesn’t reply, just takes off running, running as fast as she can despite liquid knees and ridiculous high-heeled platform dress shoes.

“Clara! Where are you going?” Jed calls, scrambling after her.

“Home,” she hurls over her shoulder, then jerks the door open with a jangle of bells and bursts out into the street.

A wall of cold air and swirling snow hits her head-on.

She flinches momentarily but resumes the race.

There are more people out on the street now, despite the blustery weather. She weaves her way through the scattered pedestrians, vaguely aware that they’re turning toward her in bewilderment as she flies by.

Midway down the next block, her path is obstructed by a slow-moving quartet of chatting young women pulling children along on wooden sleds.

Clara darts between two oversized automobiles parked at the curb and steps into the street. Her foot promptly sinks into gray slush so deep that it rises above the thick soles of her shoes to soak her stockings.

Ignoring the icy chill that shoots up her leg, she waits for an antiquated pickup truck to pass, then scurries across the wide avenue and on toward the train station.

Her head hurts and her cold, wet feet are killing her. The air is bitter, snow falling on a diagonal wind from the gray sky.

Several times she nearly loses her balance on the slick sidewalk, yet she rushes on, determined to catch the southbound train.

Finally, she trips on an uneven slab of concrete and goes down hard for the second time this morning.

Assorted male pedestrians, all in overcoats and fedoras, most of them smoking cigarettes, rush over to help her up.

“Are you okay, doll?” one of them asks.

Another gallantly brushes a few snowflakes from her sleeves, politely ignoring her more provocative body parts that are now presumably covered in white.

Clara wriggles away from them, murmuring that she’s fine.

“Wait, honey, is something wrong? Why are you running?”

In the distance, she hears a train whistle from the north.

“I—I have to catch the train,” she blurts, and takes off toward the depot again. Behind her, she can hear the men calling out to be careful.

Then she hears something else. Someone is shouting her name.

For a moment, she wonders if it’s Michael or Denton—if somehow, she’s awakened from the nightmare at last.

She turns her head.

No, she’s still dreaming… or still in 1941.…

Because the voice belongs to Jed. He’s striding down the street on the opposite side, toting a large piece of luggage and her purse.

She forgot all about them.

But it doesn’t matter. She can’t go back now. If she misses the train—

Helplessly, she ignores Jed and hurries on. She’ll have to leave everything behind.

The suitcase, the clothes it contains, her iPod—and Jed Landry.

She couldn’t care less about the bag—it’s a meaningless prop.

Yet, desperate as she is to get back to New York, the present, familiar territory—she can’t help feeling…

Wistful.

It’s ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous, because even if he really does—did?—exist…

There’s no place for Jed Landry in Clara’s world.

And she has no intention of staying in his if she can help it.

“Wait, Clara!” he calls again breathlessly.

She glances over her shoulder to see him stepping recklessly into the road to get to her.

“Jed, no!”

A car swerves to miss him. Its horn emits an old-fashioned
ah-ooga
in unison with another high-pitched whistle from the train, sounding much closer this time.

Oh, Jed, be careful
.

She turns away, knowing there’s nothing she can do… knowing, too, that his life isn’t in danger.

He’ll be okay
.…

Today
.

Swept by helplessness, she forces herself to cover the last stretch of sidewalk to the depot.

The whistle sounds again, loudly, drowning out Jed’s urgent shouts.

She mounts the steps to the platform two at a time as the big antique locomotive pulls into the station. She’s vaguely aware of curious stares from the cluster of people waiting there: a few businessmen dressed in overcoats and hats, and several uniformed soldiers who shoot curious—and appreciative—stares in her direction.

She can again hear Jed calling her name.

Don’t look back. Whatever you do, Clara, don’t look back. Just get on the train
.

It slows to a stop.

“Clara, just wait one second!”

His voice is so plaintive. She starts to look over her shoulder for him. Maybe, if he’s close enough, she can grab the suitcase and tell him good-bye.…

“Need a hand?” One of the soldiers, a red headed guy with a freckled face and a friendly grin, materializes at her elbow, obstructing her view of Jed.

“I’m fine,” she protests, but he ushers her onto the high step.

There’s nothing to do but move from there into the smoky, crowded car with the other boarding passengers.

The train begins to move again, and she leans toward the nearest window, hoping for a last glimpse of Jed.

Why, she has no idea. She just wants to see him one more time before he disappears forever.

For a moment, the deserted platform is all that’s visible in the sliver of glass between the large hats of two women seated by the window.

Then, through a thickening curtain of falling snow, she spots him.

He’s poised on the depot steps, still holding her bag, searching the train windows as though he’s looking for her.

She waves, a futile gesture, and feels ridiculous when she catches the red headed soldier looking at her.

“Good-byes are tough, aren’t they?” he comments.

She merely nods, closes her eyes, and inhales the smoky air deeply, trying to steady her nerves as the train chugs away from Glenhaven Park…

And Jed Landry
.

And, please God, 1941
.

If she opens her eyes, will she wake up at last, back in her own century?

“Miss?” Somebody touches her arm. “Take my seat.”

I’m definitely still dreaming
.

She knows it even before she opens her eyes to see a young uniformed soldier standing and gesturing at the mohair cushion he just vacated.

On a modern-day commuter train, the seats are cushioned in stiff vinyl, and nobody offers one to a woman unless she’s enormously pregnant, or elderly.

She slides into it gratefully, thanking him. He tips his cap and steps away, down the aisle, past the red-haired soldier who helped her up the steps.

In the process of lighting a cigarette, he catches her eye and offers the pack.

She shakes her head.

He comes over anyway. “Are you Jed Landry’s girl? I saw him chasing after you back there at the station.”

Jed Landry’s girl
.

Why does the quaint phrase immediately send a ripple of pleasure through her? And why can’t she quite bring herself to tell him that, no, she isn’t Jed Landry’s girl?

She hears herself asking instead, “You know Jed?”

“Sure. I went to grammar school with his brother, Gilbert. Jed was a coupl’a years ahead of us. He’s a good egg.”

She smiles faintly at the quaint phrasing. “He is a good egg.”

The soldier sticks out his gloved hand. “I’m Walter O’Mara.”

“Clara McCallum.” She shakes his hand politely, wondering why his name sounds so familiar.

Walter O’Mara
…

“You can’t be from Glenhaven Park,” he said, “or I’d know you. It’s too small a town.”

“No, I’m from the city.”

“Going back home?”

God, I hope so
. She merely nods.

“I wish I were.” He exhales a stream of smoke.

“Where are you going?”

“Fort Eastkill. My National Guard company was mobilized into the army.”

Fort Eastkill
.

He’s one of them
, Clara realizes, staring into the friendly, freckled face of a soldier who is little more than a boy.

He’s one of the eleven Glenhaven Park servicemen who was killed—who
will
be killed—in the Normandy invasion.

She swallows hard over the knot that constricts her throat and squeezes her eyes closed to block out Walter O’Mara’s unwitting innocence.

“Those fellas are part of my company, too,” he informs her, and she opens her eyes to see him gesturing at the other soldiers who boarded with them at Glenhaven Park.

She nods and turns away, staring blindly out the window. She can’t bear to look at him, at any of them, knowing what’s going to happen to them all.…

And to Jed.

Oh, Jed
.

I wish
…

No, that’s silly.

He was just part of my dream. And now that part is over, and any second now the whole dream will be over, and I’ll be home
.

Except…

He was so real.

Jed. She touched him, smelled him, can even now see his face in her mind’s eye as the train sways rhythmically, its forward motion lulling her frenzied torrent of thoughts.

She leans her head back against the seat, exhaling heavily, trying not to remember.…

And then, inexplicably, trying not to forget.

The whistle blows.

She can see every contour of Jed Landry’s face so clearly, etched against the darkened screen of her closed eyelids.

She finds herself wondering what it would have been like to kiss him.

Just once.

Her breath catches in her throat as she imagines him taking her into his arms and hungrily lowering his mouth over hers the way Michael does in their big love scene.

Except that kissing Michael is nothing like kissing the real Jed Landry. She knows that, just as she knew that beneath his stiff woolen shirt was a magnificently sculpted masculine chest, taut abs, well-defined biceps…

Terrific. Now you’re fantasizing about seeing a man who doesn’t exist
—
not in your world, anyway
—
shirtless
.

Clara yawns, suddenly weary.

Much too weary to prop open her eyes again, much less fight the searing images of her fantasy love scene with Jed Landry.

So she lets them come, borne on a welcome haze of romantic illusion as the southbound train chugs on toward the city.

Jed didn’t even lock the store when he raced out into the snow, coatless, chasing after Clara.

What would Pop say about that?

That I’m an irresponsible goof, and anyone could have walked in and robbed the place blind,
Jed thinks grimly as he steps back inside. To his relief, he sees that the store is empty—and, at a glance, the merchandise and cash register seem intact.