by Cat Winters
“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.”
t supper that evening, the noisy passel of Harrisons chatted and joked about school escapades and camping trips while they stuffed me full of stew and potatoes. Every now and again I caught Mr. and Mrs. Harrison glancing at me with worried expressions, as if they couldn’t quite shake the memory of my emotional entrance earlier that afternoon.
After supper, I slid my arms into the thick sleeves of my coat, which, along with my book bag, had been fetched by Frannie’s fourteen-year-old brother, Carl, when he went to tell Father I’d be home late. The woolen collar snuggled up to my neck and pervaded my nostrils with the dental office’s distinctive odor—a sweet, antiseptic, and metallic potpourri that now flooded me with memories of Henri’s hands on my head.
I buttoned up for the outside chill. “How did my father look when you saw him, Carl?”
Carl smiled. “Bloody.”
“Bloody?” I asked with a gasp.
“He was leeching some woman, and he had her head locked into a metal contraption to keep her still.” Carl tilted his head back to demonstrate, his hands clamped around his temples beneath his curly brown hair. “The leech had wiggled out of the tube wrong and bloodied up the woman’s lip, so your father was trying to get the little bugger to travel down to her gums. His hands were smeared in bright red blood.”
I lowered my shoulders and steadied my breathing. The fact that the blood was leech related and had nothing to do with fangs and lacerated throats was the best news I’d heard all day.
“I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MANY TIMES YOU’VE READ Dracula,” said Frannie from beneath a hissing gas lamp in the dim hallway of my house. “One too many times, that’s for sure.”
The soles of Father’s house slippers whispered their way from his office in the back. I kept my face turned toward the tan rug by the front door as long as I could, but then Frannie gave my back a gentle pat, and I gained the courage to raise my chin.
Father—regular Father, not the cadaverous fiend with the rat-fur beard—frowned at me in the hallway.
“You’re not reading that ghastly novel again, are you, Olivia?” he asked. “Haven’t you had enough of Dracula by now?”
“Yes.” I gulped down a nasty taste of bile. “Quite enough.”
Carl stuffed his hands into his coat pockets. “You should come to supper again on Sunday, Livie,” he said. “Our parents are celebrating—what is it, Frannie?—their hundredth anniversary now?”
“Their twentieth,” said Frannie with a roll of her eyes at Carl’s exaggeration. “Yes, come. We’re planning to sit down at five o’clock. We’d love to have you join us.”
“I’d love to be there. Thank you.”
Carl opened the door to take his leave, but before following him, Frannie grabbed my hand and leaned in close with a whisper: “Come back to my house if you need anything else. At any time.”
I mustered a weak smile. “Thank you.”
They closed the door and went on their way.
I stood with my back to Father, facing the exit through which my friends had just vanished while the cool taste of the outside air lingered on my tongue.
“I was so worried about you this afternoon,” said Father in a voice cozy and warm with paternal concern.
Despite his tone, I didn’t dare turn around.
“Why did you run away like that?” he asked. “You just left me standing there.”
“What did you expect me to do? Thank you?”
“No—but you made me worry something had gone terribly wrong. Mr. Reverie assured me he found you. He said you had simply been spooked by your new view of the world. But still . . . I was troubled.”
I stared at the door.
“Why won’t you turn around and look at me, Olivia? Do I look different to you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed. “I . . . um . . .”
“What?”
“I . . . I see the world . . . the way it truly is. The roles of men and women are clearer than they have ever been before.” I slipped my hands inside my warm coat sleeves and clung to the woolen lining. “I saw a storefront—women, suffrage—a cage.”
“What?”
“I saw a cage.”
“Suffrage is like a restrictive cage, you mean?”
I pursed my lips. “All is well.”
“You understand your place in the world, then?”
I opened my eyes and again peered at the door to the world beyond. “Yes. I understand precisely where I do and don’t belong.”
Father breathed a sigh. “Thank heavens. It worked.” Another deep sigh, this one accompanied by a small belch. “Well, in light of this new outlook on life, I’ll be more than happy to allow you to accompany Percy Acklen to the party tomorrow evening. As long as you promise to be well behaved—and to represent our family with utmost care in front of both Percy and the Eiderlings—I’ll have Gerda take a note to the Acklen household tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you.”
Silence wedged between us again. I assumed he was waiting for me to turn around and face him, perhaps even to fling my arms around his shoulders and tell him, You were right, Father. My life is so much better now that I hallucinate and can no longer articulate my anger.
When I showed no signs of moving, he retreated down the hall, his house slippers swishing across the floorboards.
“Time to ready yourself for bed, Olivia,” he said as he went. “I’ll be finishing my nightcap in my office if you need me.”
My stomach clenched into a knot. I steadied myself against the little marble-topped side table we used for collecting mail, and my palm crinkled the copy of the newspaper that featured the illustration of Henri and me. Farther down on the page, a headline I had failed to see that morning jumped out at me in boldfaced letters:
WHY THE WOMEN OF THIS STATE
SHOULD BE SILENCED
The author: Judge Percival R. Acklen.
Percy’s father.
I grabbed the paper off the table and tore up the staircase.
Behind my closed door, seated on the edge of my bed, I devoured the entire piece, still buttoned inside my coat and shoes. The letter stated the following:
As nearly everyone knows, in June of this year, the men of Oregon
voted down a referendum that would have given the women of this great state of ours the right to vote. As this upcoming Tuesday’s presidential election draws nearer, irate females have taken to the steps of the courthouse in downtown Portland to complain about their lack of a voice in American politics—and to bemoan their jealousies over their voting sisters in neighboring Idaho.
What these unbridled women lack is a thorough knowledge of the female brain. Two of my closest friends, Drs. Cornelius Piper and Mortimer Yves, two fine gentlemen educated at East Coast universities, both support the staggering wealth of scientific research that proves women were created for domestic duties alone, not higher thinking. A body built for childbearing and mothering is clearly a body meant to stay in the home. If females muddle their minds with politics and other matters confusing to a woman’s head, they will abandon their wifely and motherly duties and inevitably trigger the downfall of American society.
Moreover, we would never allow an unqualified, undereducated, ignorant citizen to run our country as president. Why, therefore, would we allow such a person to vote for president?
Women of Oregon, you preside over our children and our homes. Rejoice in your noble position upon this earth. Return to your children and husbands, and stop concerning yourselves with masculine matters beyond your understanding. Silence in a woman is feminine, honorable, and, above all else, natural. Save your voices for sweet words of support for your hardworking husbands and gentle lullabies for your babes—not for American politics.
I ground my teeth together until my jaw ached. This man—this silencer of women—was raising the first boy who had ever looked at me with longing and affection in his eyes.
Poor Percy.
Poor Mrs. Acklen.
Poor Oregon.
We were all being lectured by a buffoon.
I thought of Frannie’s mother and everything she did to keep their wild household and their bookstore running in tip-top order. A fire kindled in my chest, burning, spreading, crackling loudly enough for me to hear it, until I worried my breathing might singe the bedroom walls. My mouth filled with the taste of thick black smoke.