“But… what about Betty, then?”
“Betty…” He appears to be trying to place the name. Then, all at once, he breaks out laughing. “Clara, that was Rosemary Clooney!”
“What…?”
“Her character in White Christmas. That was the movie I was watching while I was burning that CD. Rosemary Clooney played Betty. You’re not jealous of her, now… are you?”
Her face is flaming as she shakes her head, aware that this changes everything.…
And nothing at all, she tells herself firmly. You can’t go falling for Drew Becker just because he doesn’t have a girlfriend and he did a really sweet thing for you.
At the moment, she can’t remember why she can’t… but she just can’t.
Definitely not.
“My only regret,” he is saying, “is that I didn’t make a dinner reservation for us after the ballet. What was I thinking?”
“Oh, pizza is fine. I love Ray’s. Ray’s is my favorite.” She’s talking too fast, chattering because she’s nervous. What if he tries to kiss her?
Her cheeks grow hot at the mere notion.
She discreetly tosses her unfinished pizza crust into a garbage can as they pass and pulls her red mittens on again with jittery fingers.
“This is your first year in New York,” she goes on hurriedly, grateful for the relative darkness. “You couldn’t know that every decent restaurant that isn’t closed on Christmas Eve would be jammed, right?”
“Well, at least we got to see the ballet.”
She smiles. The ballet. It was magical, as always. Even without her grandfather at her side.
After all, it’s Christmas Eve.
“That reminds me…” Drew pulls two ticket stubs from his pocket. He wound up with hers when they left their seats during intermission. “Do you want to keep this for your scrapbook?”
Her jaw drops. Can he possibly know that she has saved every Nutcracker ticket stub in a scrapbook, or was it a lucky guess?
“Here.” Drew reaches for her hand.
For a moment, Clara thinks—hopefully—that he’s holding it.
But he isn’t. He’s tucking the ticket stub into her mitten.…
Almost as if he knows that she has a habit of keeping things there, instead of in her pockets.
When he lets go, she feels a quick stab of regret, wishing he would hold her hand. For real.
“Actually…” Clara manages to get a grip on her thoughts, and her speech, at last. “That’s the other thing I was wondering.… How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“About me, and…”
The tickets in my scrapbook? And stashing things in my mittens? And…
“The Nutcracker?” is all she manages to say. “I mean… I used to see it every year, with my grandfather… and I really missed doing that now that he’s gone.”
“I’m sorry… and I actually didn’t know about you and The Nutcracker. In fact, I’m not exactly a ballet buff. Not that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy it,” he assures her with a smile. “My mother once dragged me to it, and I knew the girl in the story’s name was Clara, like yours… and I wanted to do something to make your Christmas Eve special, since you were going to be all alone.… I guess something just told me this would be a good idea.”
Something… or maybe someone, Clara thinks, tilting her head to the heavens.
Nice work, Grandpa, she tells the star-studded midnight sky.
In that moment, church bells begin to peal down the block, drowning out the ever-present city score of traffic and distant sirens.
“‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,’” Clara murmurs, recognizing the clanging melody as they climb the steps to their building.
Humming along, Drew unlocks the door and holds it open for her.
“Do you want to come up for coffee?” she hears herself offering unexpectedly. “Or… eggnog? My mother brought me some yesterday… although I think it’s organic soy.”
He laughs. “That would be great. But… I thought you said your mother was out of town for Christmas.”
“Oh, she was… but she came back.”
Something flickers in his brown eyes. “So you’re not going to be alone tomorrow?”
“No, I… no.”
Her mother is cooking a Christmas goose with all the trimmings, and asked several friends and some of Stan’s relatives to join them.
Invite whomever you want. The more the merrier, she told Clara.
Now, looking at Drew, she wonders whether she should ask him to come.
But that seems a little presumptuous… doesn’t it?
What if he gets the wrong idea? Or, more embarrassingly, thinks she has the wrong idea? What if her family gets the wrong idea?
No, organic soy eggnog after an evening at the ballet is one thing.
Spending an entire holiday together would be quite another.
I’ll just leave it at this, she tells herself as she opens the door to her apartment and ushers him in.
After all, he isn’t Jed.
And if I can’t have Jed…
I don’t really want anybody.
On Christmas morning, Clara awakens early to pale winter sun slanting in the window and church bells ringing once again.
This time, it’s “Joy to the World”; she hums and gurgles along as she brushes her teeth.
In the kitchen, she puts on a pot of coffee and washes the two white-film-covered glasses in the sink.
Drew lingered well into the wee hours. Somehow, there was a tremendous amount of conversational ground to cover.
No, he isn’t Jed. But he’s a good guy who managed to salvage what might have been a lonely Christmas Eve.
When he left at last, it was with a kiss on the cheek and a warm “Merry Christmas. I guess I’ll see you around.”
She couldn’t help but be disappointed.
Not that she wanted him to take her into his arms and ravish her.…
No, not at all.
Still, if he had mentioned anything specific about getting together again, she would have invited him to come to her mother’s today.
Oh, well.
She puts on the Bing Crosby CD he gave her and settles in the living room to wrap her gifts. Freed from her film production schedule, she managed to go Christmas shopping after all. Her heart wasn’t really in it, thanks to her lingering grief for Jed and anxiety over the looming surgery. But at least she picked out special gifts for everyone on her list.
She’s folding a cashmere sweater for Stan into a boxed layer of tissue when the door buzzes unexpectedly.
It’s Drew is her first thought, and her pulse quickens in reaction.
Then she realizes that Drew wouldn’t buzz from outside. He’d just come up and knock.
“Yes?” she calls into the speaker panel by the door.
“Clara McCallum?” a strange female voice crackles over the intercom.
“Yes?”
“May I come up? I have something for you.”
“Who are you?”
There’s a pause.
Then comes the name that steals Clara’s breath away in a gasp.
“Doris Landry.”
Opening the door with a violently trembling hand, Clara can hear her visitor in the vestibule two flights below.
She’s an old woman now, Clara’s muddled brain realizes, trying to reconcile the painstaking footsteps with the memory of the young girl scampering up the steep stairs to her big brother’s apartment.
Yes, Doris would have to be closing in on eighty.…
The stark realization washes over her like the first big wave of an incoming tide, followed directly by another: It was her!
The old woman who’s been here, looking for Clara.…
It wasn’t an autograph-seeking soap opera fanatic.
No, it was, incredibly, Jed’s kid sister.
Hearing a thump and a grunt from below, Clara calls, “Are you all right?”
“I… not really,” i
s the warbled reply.
Clara leaps into motion. Flipping the brass security hook outside the jamb, she closes the door against it so she won’t be locked out.
Then she flies down the stairs in her bathrobe, calling, “I’m coming, Doris… hang on!”
She stops short on the second-floor landing, caught entirely off guard by the sight below.
A stooped, white-haired figure in a baggy coat, stockings, and black oxfords is at the base of the stairs, struggling to lift a large, familiar suitcase onto the second step.
Can it really be…?
The woman looks up apologetically. “I guess I might need a little help.”
It really is Doris.
Her face is a network of wrinkles; her hair is a mass of white waves… but behind her wire-rimmed glasses, a pair of bright blue eyes twinkle up at Clara, taking her breath away.
Jed’s blue eyes, alive again.
Clara rushes to her, enveloping Doris with a hug and a sob.
“Well, my goodness, take it easy there,” Doris exclaims, her face muffled against Clara’s robe. “These old bones are pretty brittle—you don’t want to snap one on me.”
“I’m so sorry.…” Finally getting hold of her emotions, Clara releases her visitor. “You just… surprised me.”
“At least this time you’re talking to me,” Doris replies in her sassy, straightforward way with just a hint of old-lady quaver in her voice. “You could have saved me a lot of trouble if you hadn’t been so skittish the night I called to you from my car.”
“I’m sorry… I had no idea—”
“Oh, ish kabibble, relax. I’m just breaking your chops.” Doris’s grin is hauntingly familiar. “Just give me a hand with this darned bag of yours, will you? It weighs a ton and a half.”
Clara hoists it, wincing only slightly at the pain in her surgical site. Step by step, she and Doris climb to the third floor.
Clara’s mind is racing with questions, but she doesn’t even know where to start.
Reaching her apartment, she holds open the door and offers, “Have a seat… Doris.”
I still can’t believe this. Can it really be her?
Of course it can.
Clara herself perceived back in 1941 that Doris would be an old lady by now. It’s just a little shocking to come face-to-face with the evidence.
“Nice place,” Doris pronounces, looking around with approval. “Spacious. I’ve got a two-bedroom up in the Bronx. Rent-controlled.”
“That’s nice.”
“It is nice. I could have moved to fancier digs after I made all that money in the stock market a few years back, thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?”
“Apple,” Doris says mysteriously, and reaches into her pocket. She holds up Clara’s iPod with a grin. “When the computer age dawned, I realized right away what was going on with that little Apple you had left behind. So I bought into Mac stock, big, first chance I got.”
Clara bursts out laughing. “That’s wonderful.”
“It is. I’m a rich old broad… but like I said, I’m not moving. Too many memories where I am. I’ve been there since the day I came home from my honeymoon over fifty years ago.”
“You’re married?”
“Widowed, now.” Doris sinks into the couch, noting Clara’s expression. “Oh, don’t be sad for me. We had a good, long life together. And a bonus: three great kids who take care of their mother.”
Three kids… Jed’s nieces and nephews. But he never would have known them.
Tears spring to Clara’s eyes.
“You’re thinking about my brother, aren’t you?” Doris’s voice is laced with uncharacteristic tenderness. She pats the cushion beside her. “Come here.”
Clara sits beside her, and in a peculiar turning of the tables, Doris puts a comforting, motherly arm around her.
“You know about Jed, of course.”
Clara manages only to nod.
“It’s been a long time, for me. Of course I still feel sad when I think about him, but… it does get easier with time. I know the pain is fresh for you.”
“Yes.” She clears her throat. “I just thought… I mean, I hoped… he wouldn’t go after all.”
“We all did. He enlisted the summer after Gilbert came back… but only after trying to find you for months.”
“He promised me he would.” Clara’s voice is choked with emotion. “He told me he was going to find me, no matter what. And I tried to tell him it was impossible.…”
Even though I had already told him nothing is impossible.
That’s why she’s had herself believing, all this time, that Jed was going to find his way back to her somehow. Even now. Even last night…
Until it turned out to be Drew.
“Well,” Doris is saying, “in the end, when Jed couldn’t find you anywhere… not even a trace or a hint that you had ever existed… I think he finally believed you.”
“Believed me?” Clara wonders how much Doris knows.
But then, she must know.
She’s here, isn’t she?
“I heard what you told him that night… the night before Pearl Harbor, and… everything. I was right there, of course… lurking outside the door, eavesdropping. I was a sneaky little stinker back then; what can I say?”
“So… you knew? About me? About what I was trying to tell him?”
Doris nods. “I heard everything you said. And I, of course, bought every word of it. I was just a kid. Logic didn’t matter to me. It made my brother even cooler, in my eyes, that his new girlfriend was a time traveler from the future.”
Clara can’t help but laugh.
Doris does, too. Then she adds, “Even now that I’m all grown up, I don’t find it all that hard to believe. I’ve seen a lot of miracles in my lifetime. Just not the one or two that I wanted the most.”
Clara’s smile is swept away on a wave of renewed grief for Jed. “So your brother only enlisted when he gave up looking for me?”
“Yes, but don’t blame yourself. It was what he had to do. It was just who he was. Things were different back then. There was such a sense of patriotic duty—”
“Yes, but I had warned him that if he went, he wouldn’t come home.”
“He knew that. But it didn’t make a difference. Maybe in part because…”
“Because?” Clara prods when Doris trails off.
But she knows the rest.
Because you left him. Because there was no one to come home to.
“You can’t blame yourself,” Doris repeats firmly.
“Did you ever tell Jed that you knew about me?”
“Before he left, I admitted that I had been eavesdropping and I knew. He seemed relieved. That was when he asked me to find you someday… and give you your things. As proof. In case you doubted that any of it had really happened.”
“I don’t doubt it… not anymore. I know it was real… and I’m so glad you came.”
“I just wish I could have gotten to you sooner. But of course, I had to wait… more than sixty years, until after you had been there and back. Otherwise, you would have thought I was just some nutty old broad. But I found you years ago, you know.”
“You did?”
“Sure. I’ve watched you grow up, you know. I’ve been in the audience at every Broadway opening… I even got hooked on that damned soap opera because of you.”
Clara laughs through her tears.
“You’ve done beautifully, and you’re going to be around for a while to make it all last. Your best years are still ahead of you,” Doris tells her firmly.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been around long enough to be able to sense these things. I knew, deep down, that my brother wasn’t coming home from Europe… and that my son was, from Vietnam. I even knew that my Henry was going to pull through when his appendix burst on our tenth wedding anniversary… even though the doctors warned me that he might not make it.”
“I’m glad they w
ere wrong.”
“Oh, I knew they were. Just as I know that you, my dear, are going to survive, like I said. Some day you’re going to be a little old lady, like me… hard as it might be to believe. You’ve got a good long lifetime ahead of you, and my brother would have wanted you to live it to the fullest… even without him.”
Clara nods, knowing it’s true… because she felt the same way about Jed.
“Thank you, Doris.” Clara hugs her, hard. “You’ll never know what this means to me. I’m so sorry I was so evasive.”
“Oh, that’s all right. When you wouldn’t see me before, I figured I might as well wait until today, so it would be… a Christmas gift from Jed.”
Maybe, Clara thinks, that’s what he meant when he promised to find me no matter what.
It might not be what she had in mind, but it will have to be enough.
Enough to last, as Doris said, a good long lifetime.
“One more thing,” the old woman says, reaching into her handbag. She takes out a yellowed envelope and wordlessly offers it to Clara.
“What… what is this?”
“It’s a letter from Jed. For you.”
July 4, 1942
Dearest Clara,
If you’re reading this letter, I’ve probably been gone a long time; otherwise I’ll be telling you all this myself. But Doris promised to find you and deliver this, and your Christmas present, if I can’t do it in person, and Landrys always keep their promises. She’s probably an old lady by now—imagine that!—and you’re probably sore at me, wondering why I didn’t listen to your warnings.
Well, today is Independence Day… not just on the calendar but in my heart, as well. I’m setting both of us free… but only for now. And only because I’ve spent more than six months trying to find you. I’ve looked everywhere, even though I realized quite awhile back that it’s not going to happen. Not in this lifetime or in this world, anyway.
I don’t know how you managed to do what you did, but I do believe you. This letter is proof of that. Yes, I believe what you told me about where you’re from, and I believe what you told me about nothing being impossible.
So that’s why I’m not giving up, Clara. Ever. I always keep my promises, and you can rest assured that I will come back to you someday, somehow.
If Only in My Dreams Page 32
