The Cure for Dreaming (13 page)

is dual names pulsed in my head all the way home.

Henri Reverie. Henry Rhodes. Henri Reverie. Henry Rhodes
.

And then
cancer, cancer, cancer, cancer. Tumor, tumor, tumor, tumor. Genevieve.

I quickened my pace and managed to find my way back to my house, despite the blurred and rippling sidewalks and the flashes of blue eyes from Henry's theater handbills, watching me from shop windows. Always watching me.

I tripped over the threshold of our front door, and Gerda
raised her head from dusting Father's antique denture collection in the parlor.

“What are you doing home from school, Miss Mead?”

I closed the door and inhaled a deep breath. “I have a headache.” I parked my lunch pail on the marble-topped hall table. My book bag slid off my shoulder to the floor.

“
Ja?
A headache?” Gerda lowered the duster. “I left a note with the Acklens. It said that you would go with their boy to the party tonight. Should I not have done that?”

“Oh.” I slumped against the wall. “Percy. How the blue blazes did I forget about him?” I massaged the aching bridge of my nose between my thumb and middle finger. “He's going to think I'm an absolute loon.”

“Shall I send another note?”

“No. Thank you. I need some sort of reward for surviving this day.” I pushed myself off the wall and headed for the staircase.

“Oh, Miss Mead—I almost forgot, your mother's birthday envelope arrived. I put it on your bed.”

“Oh? Thank you.” My stomach sank. “I suppose I had better go see what extraordinary adventures she's undertaken this year.”

I clambered up to my room with the same withered-hot-air-balloon sensation I'd experienced when Henry pulled me down from the theater's ceiling.

Halfway across the bedroom floor, my feet stopped. There wasn't an envelope waiting for me on my pink bedspread.
It was a ticket, a pale brown one with curved edges and the words
ONE-WAY PASSAGE TO NEW YORK CITY
written across the center in block letters. My skin warmed, and my ears buzzed. I rubbed my eyes and willed away the delusion, for that's what it had to have been.

I lowered my hands. The ticket disappeared, and a plain white envelope came into view, return address New York City. I picked it up and ripped it open.

October 10, 1900

My Dear, Darling Daughter,

Can you really be seventeen years old, my funny little lamb? You're more woman than girl now, which makes your poor mama feel like an ancient crone. My heavens, I was only three months younger than you are now when I became your mother. I hope and pray you don't follow my same path to early motherhood. Don't rush into relationships with boys, even if they are as handsome as a certain young dental apprentice who wooed me off the stage eighteen years ago. You know as well as I do about the heartbreak that can result when two fools hurry to play grown-up.

On a much happier note, I'm giddy with excitement to announce I'm now established in New York City, playing Titania in a little theater production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.” Oh, you should see my costume, my lamb—gold and purple silk, and a heaping crown of flowers upon my red curls.

I'm settled in an apartment near Barnard College, and I think of you every time I see those smart young women walking around with books tucked under their arms. I remember you trying to read your little collection of fairy tales to me when you were just four years old and how much I marveled at your intelligence. Does your father allow you to be bright? Or does he still insist young ladies ought to be silent idiots?

Oh, my darling, I would love to see what you look like as a grown-up young lady. As usual, I'm slipping a little bit of money into the envelope as a birthday present. If you'd care to come east and visit your wicked old mama, I would open my door to you with outstretched arms and hug away all the hurt I've caused you. I don't believe I did you any good when you were a wee little thing, and I still strongly feel our separation was the best for all of us. However, I certainly know a thing or two about being a young woman, and I could take better care of you now than I did back then. I would even let you take a tour of Barnard, and perhaps I'd allow you to watch that delicious play
Sapho
, if the moralists don't shut it down again.

Happy birthday, my Olivia.

Your Loving Mother

A ten-dollar bill fluttered down to my lap.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
must have been paying Mother well—or else she had found herself another wealthy suitor with a fat billfold. I crouched down on the floorboards and slid out one of Father's bright yellow cigar boxes from the
dusty depths beneath my bed. Inside I kept my collection of Mother's birthday and Christmas gifts, delivered in little envelopes throughout the years, minus a few missing dollars and coins that had paid for books and hair ribbons.

I counted the cash, including my newest contribution.

“Holy mackerel, Mother,” I said, followed by a long sigh.

One hundred twenty-three dollars now waited for me inside that old cigar box.

One hundred twenty-three
.

I re-counted the stockpile and sat back on my heels, wondering how much tuition would cost at faraway Barnard College, where young women walked around with books tucked under their arms, as if in a marvelous dream.

rannie stopped by for a rushed after-school visit.

“Are you unwell?” she asked from our front porch, where long shadows yawned across the scuffed red boards and the scraggly potted plants.

“I had a bad headache.”

“I worried the hypnosis made you sick—or that your father sent you away.” She hugged me against her chest. “You scared me to death with all that talk about asylums.”

“I'm all right.” I patted her on the back and let her squeeze me until my collarbones hurt. “In fact, I'm going to go to a party at Sadie Eiderling's house tonight. Can you believe it?”

She stiffened. “I beg your pardon?”

“Percy's taking me.”

She dropped her arms and pulled away.

“Don't worry, I'm going to be quite careful of his”—I tipped my face forward and lowered my voice —“grabby hands.”

“It's not a joke, Livie.”

“He didn't grab you, did he?”

“No!” She blushed so hard, she went practically mauve. “No, I've just heard rumors . . .” She backed away. “I've got to go help Papa at the store. Please be extremely careful with Percy—and your father.”

“Frannie?”

“Good-bye, Livie.”

She scrambled down the porch steps, and for a moment I thought I glimpsed a white handprint on the back of her blue skirt, below her swinging brown braid.

A shudder and a blink, and the print was gone.

FATHER CAME HOME FROM WORK AROUND FIVE THIRTY
that evening. I hid in my bedroom and pinned up my hair for the Eiderlings' party.

“Are you getting ready, Olivia?” he called up to me.

“Yes,” I yelled through my closed door. “Gerda is boiling a ham for your dinner, and then she'll help me dress. I can't come down right now.”

“Don't take too long. Young men don't like to be kept waiting.”

“I won't.”

I fussed with my hairpins in front of my mirror, my hands slippery and my mind squalling with fears about the visions. I kept expecting my mirror and my hairbrush to transform into nightmarish abominations—hissing creatures with snouts and needle-sharp teeth that would squeeze around my torso and take a bite.

My hair suffered from all that worrying. Most girls of Sadie Eiderling's caliber were wearing their long locks puffed high on their heads in enormous pompadours, like the fashionable girls in Charles Dana Gibson's drawings. On occasion, Frannie and I would try styling our hair in that manner, but our pompadours always turned out lopsided or collapsed like deflated soufflés—which was precisely the problem at the moment. My pinned-up mess of dark hair sagged as if I had just sprinted through the rain with Percy again. I hated it. Every strand.

“All is well!” I said, and I dropped my hands to my sides and growled.

All is well? Balderdash! Bull dung!

Even worse words entered my head, but they shall not be repeated.

I shoved more hairpins into my topknot, and my eyes drifted to a conjoined pair of silver picture frames that sat on top of my chest of drawers. In the rightmost frame sat a photograph of Mother, just sixteen years old, posed in a brocade Renaissance mourning costume in front of a backdrop
of painted vines. A black veil draped over her thick ringlets, which looked brown instead of their natural red in the sepia image. I remembered her explaining to me that she had been playing Olivia, my namesake, in a traveling production of Shakespeare's
Twelfth Night
, and that's how she met Father. Her pretty face—rosebud lips, arched brows, almond-shaped eyes, long lashes—seemed nothing like mine, save for perhaps the round tip of her nose. She looked like the type of person who never lacked confidence about anything.