The Cure for Dreaming (9 page)

Outside, the world felt as if it had tipped sideways and knocked everything askew. The air had grown too thin to breathe. Shop windows reflected blinding sunlight that throbbed behind my eyes. The city had turned as bright and vivid as a theater stage at the height of a performance, yet the
noises of my surroundings—carriage wheels, trotting hooves, peddlers hawking wares from carts—sounded muffled and tinny. Even my sense of smell dulled as my eyes viewed the world with startling clarity. I saw two women across the street with blood on their necks. A man in a business suit and derby hat came my way, and his face was as gaunt and pale and fanged as Father's.

I panted and slid my hand across the cold sandstone walls for support and somehow managed to run across the street and down the next block—before I stopped in front of an establishment that was caging up women.

Yes,
caging women
.

On a corner lot where a regular storefront should have stood, a giant copper cage held five ladies prisoner. Their shoulders and hats squished together in a crowd of feathers and fine wool dresses, and they buried their noses inside some sort of pamphlet that distracted their attention from the freak-show absurdity of their situation.

Out in front of the entrapment, a female carnival barker—I didn't even know women could be barkers!—in a red-striped jacket and a straw boater hat yelled, “Welcome! Welcome! Come see the only proper place for women and girls.”

A young blond woman in a tailored blue suit took a pamphlet from the barker and climbed inside the cage with the other ladies. The barker promptly shut the cage door and locked it tight.

“Miss Mead!”

Footsteps ran toward me, and before I knew what was coming, Henri Reverie grabbed me by my arm. “Are you all right?”

The hypnotist had returned to his shady young showman appearance, and he smelled as dusty and smoky as the letters Mother wrote from backstage dressing rooms. Sounds regained their full volume. Henri's hair lost its brilliance.

“Th-th-they're caging up women,” I said. “They're locking them up right here . . .”

I turned and pointed, but instead of the copper cage, I saw a brick building with a wide white banner hanging above the glass door.

HEADQUARTERS
THE OREGON ASSOCIATION OPPOSED TO THE
EXTENSION OF SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN

A slender middle-aged brunette with an entire stuffed quail perched upon her hat—not a strange female carnival barker—stood in front of the opened door, and she caught my eye and said, “Would you like to come inside and see what we're all about, dear?” She held out a pamphlet and smiled with a fine pair of false front teeth, undoubtedly fitted by Father. “Read about the hair-pulling, face-scratching women of Idaho who turned into heathens once their state allowed them to vote. We'll teach you about the proper sphere for ladies.”

I yanked myself free of Henri and continued down the block.

Henri followed, and our feet clapped across the sidewalk in near unison. He caught me by my elbow before I could cross another street. “What are you seeing?”

“All is well.”

“Tell me.” He grabbed both my shoulders and turned me around to face him.

“All is well!”

“I need to know if everything went as planned with our session. Tell me what you see.”

“All . . .” A frustrated cry burst from my lips. “All is . . .” Itchy tears filled my eyes, but the more I fought to hold back my emotions, the more a fit of crying longed to break free. A stray tear slipped down my cheek. A sob exploded from my mouth.

“No, do not cry, Miss Mead. Please . . .” He rubbed both my arms with a rapid
swish-swish-swish
against my white blouse sleeves. “Shh. Please do not cry. Try to talk in a calmer voice. Try to relax. Those three words will only come out of you if you're angry. Take a deep breath.”

“No, I don't want to do anything you ask of me. You got your money; now leave me alone, you—” A vicious insult burned up my throat, but the words hardened into a lump of simmering coal that lodged in the back of my mouth. I coughed out that stupid phrase again: “All is well.” I shook Henri's hands off me. “Never come near me again.”

A swift kick in his shin with the pointed toe of my shoe sent him doubling over to clutch his leg. I tore down the street again, away from the anti-suffrage headquarters and Father's cruel teeth and Henri Reverie's disorienting blue eyes.

You will see the world the way it truly is. The roles of men and women will be clearer than they have ever been before
.
You will know whom to avoid.

HARRISON'S BOOKS SAT THREE BLOCKS NORTH OF THE
courthouse, nestled between a dry-goods store and a small hotel, in a row of storefronts Frannie and I affectionately called
Eat, Read, Sleep, and Be Merry
. I panted in front of the bookshop's leftmost display window. When I had caught my breath, I dared a peek inside.

Just beyond the glass the new and successful novels of the season were propped upon low wooden stands—
The Touchstone
, by an author named Edith Wharton.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
, the delightful children's book I had read over the summer.
To Have and to Hold. Richard Carvel. A Man's Woman.
And, of course,
Dracula
. My nose bumped against the cool glass, and my shaky breath left a foggy circle on the pane.

A movement beyond the books caught my eye: Frannie's father, with his curly gray hair and little potbelly, passed through the store with a cloth-bound volume in hand. He wore his usual three-piece suit—tan and lined in pale gray stripes—and he fitted his round spectacles over his bulbous nose that was the shape of my rubber bicycle horn.

I dipped down behind the window's display and watched him flip open the book on the front counter, next to the brass cash register. Unlike Father's, his cheeks were pink and healthy. His teeth weren't overly long and barbaric. Everything about him seemed as regular as could be.

I sprang to my feet and pushed my way inside the shop door.

“Oh, thank heavens, Mr. Harrison!” I clasped Frannie's father in a huge hug and buried my face in his itchy striped coat. “You look so normal.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Mr. Harrison held me at arm's length and took a long look at my face. “What's all this about, Olivia? Has someone hurt you?”

I nodded but then shook my head in an adamant no. “Is Frannie home?”

“She's doing homework upstairs.”

“May I go see her?”

“Of course.”

Mr. Harrison dropped his hands from my arms, and I bounded up the staircase that led to the Harrisons' crowded yet homey apartment above the shop.

The front room bustled with the usual whoops and laughter of Frannie's five younger siblings—Martha, Carl, Annie, Willie, and Pearl. They were like a hill of ants, spilling over furniture and books, piling on top of one another, and bumping into the blue-papered walls. Off in the kitchen, around the right bend, someone rapped a spoon against the
rim of a pot. I followed a divine scented trail of boiled beef and carrots and found Mrs. Harrison preparing a stew over her big black cookstove, amid a cloud of steam that drifted past her round face. The copper pot spat wet polka dots across the clean white front of her pinafore apron, and she could have used a few more pins to hold down her brown topknot, which was flecked with a scattering of gray hairs. Otherwise, she was perfect.

“Mrs. Harrison!” I threw my arms around her sturdy shoulders. “It's wonderful to see you looking healthy and happy.”

“My goodness.” Mrs. Harrison patted my elbow with a hand that dampened my blouse. “What's all this about, Livie?”

Frannie peeked up from her McGuffey's Reader at the round kitchen table. “Yes, what is all this about, Livie?”

I let go of Mrs. Harrison, despite her warmth. “I need to talk to you privately, Frannie. As soon as possible.”

“All right.” Frannie neatened her pile of homework papers and stood. “We'll be up in my bedroom, Mama.”

“That's fine, dear.” Mrs. Harrison stirred her pot and pressed her lips into a thin smile, but I could tell from her watchful Mama-bird eyes that she sensed something wasn't quite right.

Frannie and I climbed the second flight of stairs, past piles of books perched on the rickety wooden steps—books that always appeared to have wandered in from the shop of their own accord and made themselves at home wherever they
found space. The air up there was rich with the perfumes of paper and ink, along with a fine peppering of dust.

Frannie led me into the room she shared with all three of her sisters, a cramped space with two beds, a chest of drawers, and a tall pine wardrobe. She planted herself on the bed that belonged to her and Martha.

“What's wrong?” she asked. “Did your father say something to you?”

“I . . . um . . .” I balled my hands into fists. “I . . . Oh, criminy. When I tell you what just happened, you're going to think I've gone nutty.”

“Just tell me. You're clearly not yourself. Wait—” She sat up straight, her brown eyes enormous. “Oh . . . This doesn't have anything to do with Percy, does it?”

“No. It has to do with Monsieur Henri Reverie,
the marvel of the new century
. . . and all that other hogwash.”

She knitted her eyebrows. “The hypnotist?”

“Yes. He hypnotized me again, just now, in Father's office.”

“What? Why?”

“Father heard . . .” I braced my back against the wardrobe. “He found out I was at the rally yesterday. He thinks I'm turning into my mother. He decided I needed my unfeminine thoughts removed from my brain.”

Frannie's mouth fell open. “What? No! Did he really say such a thing?”

“I've heard horror stories of troublesome daughters and
wives getting sent away to asylums. I've read Nellie Bly's
Ten Days in a Mad-House
. What if this is only the first step?”

“What did that hypnotist do to you?”

“Henri told me”—I rubbed my forehead—“I'd see the world the way it truly is, and the roles of men and women would be clearer than they've ever been before. I don't think my father understood what that meant. I'm not sure I do, either . . . Your father looks like someone we can trust. But my father . . .” I tucked my hands behind my back, between the wardrobe and my lower spine, to quiet the tremors shaking through my fingers.

Frannie leaned forward. “Your father what?”

“He looked like a vampire. I swear upon a stack of Bibles, he had fangs and flesh as pale as a corpse's.”

Her eyes scanned my face, as if she were waiting for a twitch of my mouth or a flash of laughter in my eyes to reveal I was joking.

I chewed my lip, but I most certainly did not laugh.

“Livie . . .” She let loose a nervous giggle. “You've read
Dracula
at least four times in the past year.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“And now you're telling me your father looks like a vampire?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you think that's a little . . . peculiar?”

“Yes, it is peculiar, but I was hypnotized, Frannie. You saw
the power Henri Reverie had over me last night. He's like a sorcerer who changed the world for my eyes alone, and I can't bear the thought of going out there and seeing my father—or any other man—with fangs and bloodless skin and—”

“All right.” She sprang off the bed. “I believe you're truly seeing something troubling, but perhaps Mr. Reverie simply stirred up your imagination.”

“He's supposed to be
killing off
my imagination. Father hired him to cure me of my dreams.”

She winced. “But if these aren't dreams or imaginings . . . what are they?”

“They seem real. They seem true. How can I go home to Father when he looks like that?”

My nose itched as if it required either a cry or a good sneeze. I scratched the tip with the back of one hand.

Frannie walked over to me and coaxed my hand between her palms. “Have supper with us tonight.”

I shook my head. “Father will worry when he sees I'm not home.”

“We'll ask Carl to run over to his office and tell him we've invited you to stay. And then Carl and I will take you home after supper so I can see for myself if anything looks different about your father. I'll even give you a little sign if he appears to be normal.”

“What type of sign?”

“Well . . .” She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip. “I'll say, ‘I still can't believe how many times you've read
Dracula
,
Livie. One too many times, that's for sure.' If you hear that, it means what you're seeing is truly just in your mind, and so it must be the work of that malicious, selfish, conniving hypnotist— Oh, wait.” She squeezed my hand and looked me straight in the eye. “You didn't tell me how Henri Reverie appeared after the hypnosis.”

I groaned and hunched my shoulders.

“What?” She squeezed my hand again. “Was he even worse than your father?”

I shook my head. “That would have made everything far less confusing.”

“What did he look like?”

I sighed. “He looked like . . . I can't even bring myself to say it. It almost hurts to admit what he made me feel.”

“What?” Her face paled. “What did he make you feel?”

“He looked . . .” I swallowed. “He looked like someone I should trust utterly.”