Once Upon a List (13 page)

 

February

 

19.

I
n Clara's dream, she had just moved in to a grand, old, Southern plantation that required a complete renovation. Dozens of hired contractors dressed in white protective jumpsuits concealing their entire bodies from head to toe hurried about the vast, dust-filled space overlooking acres of fresh-plowed cotton fields, tending to their various construction duties. Clara had just arrived home via horse and carriage from someplace or other and was upstairs, surveying that day's progress, when a man holding a can of canary yellow paint exited the master bedroom. Setting the paint can down on the tarp-covered floor in the hallway, he unzipped his jumpsuit, revealing his face, and shook a few rogue wood shavings from his tousled hair. Clara froze in place, paralyzed, as her stomach plummeted and a blast of shock electrified her, causing the tiny hairs on the back of her neck to stand straight up. Staring at the man, she tried to say his name, but her breath had been taken away. She couldn't believe it at first. She was afraid to allow herself to even pretend that such a wonderful miracle could possibly be true. But sure as the day was long, there, in front of her very own two eyes, was the one and only love of her life. Trembling, Clara reached out and touched Sebastian's arm to make sure he wasn't an apparition. The handsome figure looked just like Sebastian, he smelled just like Sebastian, and finally, when at last he opened his mouth and said, “Hi, baby. Nice bonnet,” he sounded just like Sebastian. Tears welled in Clara's astonished eyes. In that one, single, staggering moment in time, the horrid, gaping hole in her heart was instantly mended, and life's thrilling possibilities suddenly seemed endless again.

“Sebastian!”
She threw her arms around his waist, weeping with joy, clinging to him like a child. “It's—It's you . . . It's really you!”

“It's me.” He held her warm body tightly against his.

Removing her bonnet, he stroked the side of her tear-stained face and passionately kissed her lips.

And then, Clara woke up.

Her eyes sprang open, and she sat bolt upright in bed, her chest heaving. Looking straight ahead, she extended one arm and, holding her breath, slowly, tentatively, felt the empty space beside her, as if maybe, by some small chance, Sebastian might actually be there, sleeping peacefully. But, just like the last time she had this same, strange, yet real-as-can-be, recurring dream, she found herself all alone. Catching her breath, reminding herself that Sebastian was gone and he was never coming back, she glanced about her bedroom. With the exception of a cardboard moving box substituting as a makeshift end table and the judge's wooden dresser, the room was empty.

Wide-awake now, Clara stared at the alarm clock flashing 2:44 a.m. After a few minutes, she flipped her pillow over to the cool side, lay down again, and attempted to fall back asleep. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't stop the merciless barrage of images from her vivid dream from invading her mind. Recalling Sebastian's sensual kiss, she touched an index finger to her lips, allowing it to linger, wishing desperately that it could be real.

Soon, a deep, choking, impenetrable sadness set in. Familiar with this middle-of-the-night routine, Clara squeezed her eyes shut, trying to quiet the pervading memories of Sebastian, but it was no use. It was as if she'd been swept up against her will in a vicious, swirling tornado of upsetting thoughts. These were the haunting hours of the day that Clara hated most, when she couldn't escape her own debilitating stream of consciousness, and all hope ceased to exist.

Hearing his master's muffled sobs, Milk Dud came running from his favorite spot under the Ping-Pong table in the living room where he usually slept, and jumped onto Clara's bed, cozying up beside her.

She buried her face in his fur and continued to cry.

Milk Dud placed his paw on her arm as she muttered, “I miss him so much. So much . . .”

“Everything always seems far worse at night,” Libby used to remind Clara when she was a child being tormented late in the evening by some seemingly world-ending trouble, such as being told she had a mustache by Maeve, the high school bully who dubbed her “Magnum P.I.,” or failing her driver's test for driving on the wrong side of the road. “You'll see, things won't seem quite so bad in the morning,” Libby would insist. And usually, she was right. But that was before a truck barreling eighty miles per hour crashed into Clara's fiancé's car, setting the agenda for the rest of her life. That was when she still believed nothing so tragic would ever happen to her. No, not to
her.

The previous week, while having sushi with Lincoln—the fifth time they'd dined together since their reunion in the park—he'd encouraged Clara to call him any time, day or night, when she was trapped in the brutal grip of a “mean moment,” by which he meant a stretch when the unbearable pain of missing Sebastian “threatened to swallow her whole.” All too familiar with such dreadful—but fleeting—periods, Lincoln had offered to help Clara through them. “Distraction is key,” he'd shared, clinking his cup of hot sake against hers. Staring at the telephone on the judge's old dresser, Clara pondered picking it up and dialing Lincoln's number, but then she thought better of disturbing her friend in the middle of the God forsaken night. What would she tell him? That she just had a puzzling dream where Sebastian was still alive and she resembled Laura Ingalls Wilder's long lost, bonnet-wearing cousin? She remembered Lincoln mentioned that adopting one of the Alcoholics Anonymous mantras had helped him deal with his grief over his wife's death. Rather than focusing on the scary “big picture,” he explained, he found it easier to concentrate on “making it through the day, making it though the hour, the minute, the second even.” When Lincoln twisted his face into a goofy expression, saying,
“Yard by yard life's pretty hard, inch by inch life's a cinch,”
Clara had laughed and joked that the rhyme would be perfect for one of those cheesy condolence cards with sunshine and rainbows breaking through the foreboding clouds. But weeping in her dark bedroom, consumed with despair and an overwhelming fear that she was doomed to remain a woman who lost her balance and never quite got it back, she realized her friend's philosophy made sense. It was even comforting.

Deciding to wait and call Lincoln when he was less likely to be snoring, Clara lifted from her makeshift end table a framed photograph of her and Sebastian dancing at a black-tie gala for the Boston Philharmonic. She stared at it for a long while before placing it on her chest, directly over her heart, and eventually drifting back to sleep.

She awoke again at 7:15 a.m., and, sure enough, noticed that her stifling sorrow had indeed lifted a bit with the rising sun.

Figuring she might just be able to catch Lincoln before he left for work, Clara brushed her teeth, splashed some cold water on her face, and gave him a ring.

He sounded out of breath when he answered the telephone.

“Is this a bad time? I hope I'm not disturbing you. I know it's early,” Clara acknowledged.

“Not at all,” Lincoln replied. “What's up?”

“Well . . .” She exhaled, slowly stroking Milk Dud's back. “I kind of had a rough night. Let's just say
mean moments
galore.”

“Ugh. I know what that's like. I'm glad you called. But, why didn't you let me know sooner? I distinctly remember giving you specific instructions to come straight to me—
do not pass ‘Go,' do not collect two hundred dollars, go directly to Link
.”

Clara chuckled softly. “I take it you're a Monopoly fan?”

“Actually, I'm more of a Scrabble kind of guy. But it wouldn't have made sense if I told you to pick your letters and call me.”

“True. I like Scrabble too.”

“We should play sometime,” Lincoln suggested. “But, tell me, how are you now?”

Clara heard somebody release a dainty, high-pitched sneeze in the background. And that's when she realized that Lincoln was not alone.

A woman with a sexy, raspy voice questioned, “Who is it, love?” Assuming it must be Meg, his girlfriend, Clara suddenly felt guilty about the crack-of-dawn call. “Uh . . .” she stuttered, remembering how winded Lincoln had sounded at first and fearing she'd disrupted an intimate moment. “Actually? I
am
feeling much better. Thank you.” She cringed, embarrassed. “But you know what? I have to go make a frittata.”

There was a short pause on Lincoln's end. “You have to make a
frittata
?”

“Yes. I do. I love them. And it sounds like you're busy,” Clara rushed on. “I'm gonna hang—”

“Wait! C.J. Hang on!” He stopped her just as she was about to end the call. “You're sure you're okay? Because believe me, I know how awful—”

“I'm
positive
. Honestly. I feel a lot better now,” she insisted in a deliberately cheerful manner. “Which is why it's frittata time.”

After suggesting they get together that evening for dinner, Lincoln told Clara he'd phone her later in the afternoon to iron out a plan. As he was hanging up, she heard Meg giggle and purr, “Get over here, sexy.” Considering it was Wednesday, which meant that Lincoln and Meg were apparently spending weeknights together—coupled with Meg calling him lovey-dovey nicknames—Clara presumed their romance had escalated to a more serious stage than Lincoln initially described. She was happy for her widowed friend; he deserved a second chance at love, and from what Lincoln had told her, Meg sounded like a wonderful woman. Not to mention a horny little minx, based on what she'd just heard.

Clara patted the side of her thigh a few times, beckoned, “Come on Milk Dud,” and moseyed toward the kitchen, yawning.

Wearing Sebastian's old Harvard sweatshirt and no pajama pants, she stood barefoot with her arms crossed, assessing a copy of her time capsule list, which was stuck to the otherwise bare refrigerator with a magnet. “What should we do today, boy? What do you think?”

Milk Dud barked.

“Yeah, you want breakfast is what you think,” she muttered. After fixing him a bowl of kibble, Clara poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed her time capsule list off the refrigerator, and proceeded to the living room, which, like the other areas in her apartment, held only a smattering of furniture.

Sitting in a folding chair at the Ping-Pong table, Clara studied her list. Some of the things on it she'd already accomplished in the past, such as
Serve on a real live court jury
(not nearly as “awesome” as a ten-year-old might suspect),
Eat sugar cereal & McDonald's during the week (not just on weekends!)
,
Swim with dolphins
(perhaps something positive came from dolphin therapy after all), and
Ride in a hot air balloon
, which she'd done with Sebastian during their vacation in Tuscany. How romantic she'd imagined it would be, until climbing aboard the balloon's compact, wobbly, wicker basket that seemed more suitable for a couple giant loaves of bread, hitting a few unexpected bumpy air patches, and discovering that she had the ability to scream for surprisingly long periods of time at decibels high enough to make a sweet, elderly, Italian tour guide cover his ears with both hands and swear at her to “Shutta zee foock up!” Clara drew a red line through these items on her time capsule list.

Next, she pondered two of the points that seemed particularly farfetched, if not altogether impossible to accomplish:
Find a cure for heart attacks
and
Become the President of the United States
. Clara knew damn well the only “attack” she was realistically going to be curing any time in the near future was a Big Mac attack, from which she was prone to suffer on occasion. And with minimal interest in politics, she no longer held any desire to become the President of the United States, let alone the P.T.A., which to her felt about equally unattainable.

Eventually, Clara's eyes settled on
Learn Morse code
. Furrowing her brow, she gave this point some serious thought. “Oh, who am I kidding, Milk Dud? What the hell am I doing? This is absurd. Do I
really
need to learn Morse code? Who am I going to use it with?” Clara continued thinking out loud. “My Scuppernong vendors?” She shook her head, wondering if this little plan of hers was as nuts as it suddenly seemed. “But, then again, it
is
on the list,” she reminded herself. “Which, I suppose, doesn't give me much choice now, does it?” Her eyebrows pulled together as she chewed her nails, considering it further. Sighing, Clara reached across the Ping-Pong table for her laptop and pressed the power button on. “Well, what do you say, boy? Should we conduct some Internet research on Morse code?”

Raising his only ear, Milk Dud tilted his head to the side and looked at her.

“Yeah . . . I don't really feel like it either,” Clara admitted right as her cell phone began ringing. Saved by the bell.

Libby, who had just finished recording a new detergent jingle in the city at a studio in Clara's neighborhood, wanted to know if she was interested in joining her for a winter walk. “Some crisp, fresh air might do you good,” she'd persuaded.

“I guess so.” Clara shrugged unenthusiastically, to her mother's surprise. Typically opposed to intentional exercise, Clara figured it was better than the alternative. Plus, she hoped it might help her earn a point or two with Libby, who was still furious about and seemed to feel personally responsible for the nasty way she'd avoided Todd. During a recent piano tuning, he'd nervously inquired if Clara was around almost immediately upon walking through the front door, and according to Libby, he acted notably ill at ease the entire time he was there. Though she doubted it would happen, she worried his awkward discomfort might even provoke him to stop working for her. Due to Libby's profession, her piano required fine-tuning every six weeks, and she swore up and down that never had she encountered a more capable tuner than Todd. Or, as Clara now referred to him, “You-Know-Who.”