The Cure for Dreaming (36 page)

Mother—her curls still red and soft, her white dress fragrant with the tea-rose perfume I remembered from our rocking-chair days—walked over to me with a smile on her lips.

“This came for you, Livie,” she said, and she set a postcard on the desk beside my typewriter.

On the front of the card was an illustration of Market
Street in San Francisco, with cable cars trekking down the center of the road between flag-topped skyscrapers.

I flipped the postcard over to read the note.

All is well, ma chérie.

I awoke with a start and disturbed Genevieve with my elbow.

“What's happening?” she asked—just a shadow of a girl in the hospital's dim, early-morning light.

“Genevieve,” I said in a whisper, “do you remember Henry saying, because of my Halloween birthday, I'm a charmed individual who can read dreams?”

“Mmm. I think so.”

“Was he making that up?”

“I don't know.” She shrugged against my arm. “Sometimes he just seems like a talented boy with a wild imagination. Other times . . . I don't know . . . Sometimes all his magic feels real.”

“Well”—I snuggled back down beside her, this time with my head on her shoulder—“if it is true, then we're going to be all right. Soon.”

“Hmm. I like your dreams,” she said, and we eased back into sleep a while longer.

DAYLIGHT PUSHED THROUGH THE DRAFTY LOBBY
windows sometime after seven in the morning. Across the room
from me, the anti-suffragists wilted across the chairs and the benches, their colors as filmy as the delicate wings of moths. Genevieve rested her head against the armrest beside me and wavered between light and shadow.

The echo of approaching footsteps stirred us all out of our melancholy.

A doctor in a white coat similar to Father's dentistry garb approached a new nurse at the front desk—a petite woman with big dark eyes who reminded me of ladies from Coca-Cola advertisements.

“Miss Reverie,” called the nurse, and all eight of us lobby dwellers sat up straight.

Genevieve, now a solid streak of a girl, jumped to her feet and walked over to the front desk. The doctor put his arm around her back, rumpling her long golden hair, and whisked her off to the far reaches of the hospital. I imagined her traveling in the central elevator that transported patients up and down floors without them needing to climb out of beds, and I hoped she was soaring upward, not down to the morgue.

Oh, Lord.

The morgue
.

I stood up, wrapped my arms around my ribs, and paced the worn rug the way the silent anti-suffragists had done the night before. Sadie and the other girls and their mothers watched me with fear in the blacks of their pupils. When I
wiped away tears, their eyes watered, and they sniffed along with me.

“I'm sorry,” I said, and I spun in the opposite direction with a swift whoosh of purple satin. “You were all just so cruel. Why'd you have to be so awful to me?”

They didn't answer, of course, so I continued pacing.

“No one should ever be silenced. Not you. Not me. Not any other woman or man. Please, open your eyes and see”—I stopped and swept my gaze across every single one of them—“we're all on the same side. We're all being treated as second-class citizens. Why are you just sitting beside your husbands and fathers and accepting this rubbish?”

Their dead-eyed lack of a response troubled me more than if they had shouted vicious retorts. I left the hospital and walked the length of Irving Street for the better part of an hour, crunching through thick piles of leaves and brushing my hand across brittle overhead branches.

When I returned—no wiser or calmer than when I'd left—I found Genevieve standing on the front steps in Henry's black coat, her hands hidden inside the sleeves. A gentle wind tugged on her skirts and loose hair.

“The fool still wasn't eating or drinking,” she called down to me. “The doctor said he had an attack of fatigue and anxiety. They're feeding him his third meal since his arrival right now, and he's dopey with laudanum. His chest hurt him too much to breathe.”

A smile stretched across my face. “He's alive, then?”

She nodded.

I ran up the steps. “You saw him?”

“He's eating and restoring those ladies' voices as we speak. The men's ward is a circus, but the staff members were getting tired of seeing millionaires' wives and daughters glaring like vultures in the lobby.”

“May I see him?”

She shook her head. “Not until he's discharged. They made an exception for the hypnotized women.”

I joined her inside, and another long bout of painful waiting ensued, interrupted early on by the society ladies in their red, white, and blue dresses, parading out to the hospital's exit from somewhere in the back. They spoke again—I heard complaints about sore backs and idiotic husbands mainly— but the return of those voices allowed me to better breathe.

Before she reached the front door with the others, Sadie turned her face my way, and I braced myself for bared teeth or a verbal dart that would make me feel even worse than I already did about the silencing.

She offered neither.

But I saw her—the true Sadie, a newer version. The rest of the hospital dulled around her, and she brightened before my eyes, a girl in plaid trousers and a thick red tie, with a bouquet of yellow ribbons pinned to her left shoulder. I swear she even offered me a smile of camaraderie, but perhaps that was my imagination stretching too far.

In any case, Mademoiselle Sadie Eiderling, the beer baron's daughter, left the hospital that morning a burgeoning suffragist and a modern woman.

Of that, I'm certain.

ear three o'clock in the afternoon, Henry materialized. Not from a cloud of orange smoke on a stage but from the back hallway of the hospital—a far more impressive feat, considering the state of him the night before. His red vest and black necktie dangled over his arm, and he wore just his striped shirtsleeves and trousers and a pair of brown suspenders.

Genevieve and I sprang up from the bench and hurried toward him. I lagged behind a couple of feet so she could embrace him first.

She clamped his middle like a vise. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” he told her. “No need to worry anymore.”

She lowered her arms, and Henry moved on to me with an embarrassed-looking smile and a warm hug. His lips nuzzled against my hair near the top of my head.

“That wasn't part of the plan, Monsieur Reverie,” I said into the soft sheen of his shirt.

“Those women were in a hell of a panic, weren't they?”

“We all were.”

“I know.” He rubbed my back. “I'm sorry.”

“What about the hospital bill, Henry?” asked Genevieve.

“I told them to send it to Anne's house in San Francisco.”

“Did Genevieve tell you about Frannie's collection?” I asked.

“Yes, that was far too kind. I'm deeply grateful.” He stepped back and regarded my purple gown, his hand in mine. “You never went home last night?”

“I'm never going back home. Father knows.”

“New York City, then?”

“Yes.” I gave a small nod and a weak smile.

He swallowed as if tasting a bitter pill.

Genevieve cleared her throat. “Our bags are at the hotel. We still have the rooms if you want to change first. There's a nearby streetcar if you're too tired to walk all that way.”

Henry dropped his hand away from mine. “Then let's get going. I don't want to think about this departure much longer.”

BRUSHED AND SCRUBBED AND DRESSED IN MY ORDINARY
brown skirt and winter coat, I stood in front of Henry and Genevieve on the vast tile floor of Portland's Union Depot, waiting to purchase a railroad ticket that would take me up through Washington and then east. By the time I reached the ticket counter, my hands were sweating. I dropped my slick coins all over the place.

“I'm sorry,” I said to the grandfatherly man working the counter, and I caught a nickel before it clanked to the ground. “I'm a little nervous.”

“Going on a grand adventure?” he asked.

“That's my hope.”

I sorted out the money, and in a matter of seconds I clutched a ticket between my fingers. The Rhodeses purchased their southbound fares and tucked the papers in their coat pockets.

Henry peeked at my ticket over my shoulder. “Your train leaves soon. We had better walk you out to the platform.”

I nodded and ventured outside the depot with the two of them by my side.

A black locomotive breathed white steam on the northbound tracks, while arriving travelers climbed out of the green passenger cars in their winter hats and traveling coats. Porters in blue jackets and caps lugged large leather bags and pointed the lost in the correct directions.

“Henry.” I grabbed his arm before we strayed too far from the bright terra-cotta bricks of the main building. “Don't forget, I'm still under hypnosis.”

“Ah.” He swung around to face me. “I was wondering if you wanted to let go of that one lingering part.”