The Cure for Dreaming

by Cat Winters

  Father pushed the pail into my sweating hands, and I half expected the preposterous name for the treatment to materialize on the side of the container, scrawled in the curved black lettering of traveling hucksters’ tonics and cure-alls.

  Father lifted a piece of plain white paper from the bottom of the pail. “Mrs. Underhill, will you please do me the honor of slowly reading the words on this page so I may demonstrate the fruits of young Mr. Reverie’s work?”

  Mrs. Underhill took the paper and again raised her brows. She cleared her throat and looked between me and that bucket, while Sunken-Eyed John and his tall, mustached father blocked my path to the door.

  To escape or not to escape . . .

  Mrs. Underhill drew in her breath and spoke the first word.

  “Suffrage.”

  My stomach moaned loudly enough to make John chuckle. He scratched his nose and muttered, “That’s what happens when you dine where you shouldn’t.”

  Mrs. Underhill ignored her son and inhaled another short breath.

  “Women’s rights.”

  I gagged and dropped the bucket to the floor with a clank.

  Mrs. Underhill’s next three phrases pelted my stomach like white-hot bullets.

  “Suffragist. Votes for women. Susan B. Anthony.”

  I covered my mouth and shoved my way to the door.

  “College,” called Mrs. Underhill after me, and I tore out to the front porch, leaned my chest over the rail, and vomited into the bushes. Sweat dripped off my forehead and nose. Shivers racked my body. I just hung there, my ribs pressed against the rail, and let the fresh night air swim inside my head.

  The soles of fine leather shoes pattered out to the porch behind me, but no one spoke a word until I turned around and slid down the splintery rail to the ground with a thump.

  “You are most definitely coming to my election-night party, Dr. Mead,” said the missus, whose face blurred and wavered before my eyes—veering from slick carnival barker to silken society queen. “It’ll be held at the Portland Hotel at seven o’clock. Bring that hypnotist. Bring this girl. And let’s end this ridiculous fight for the vote.”

  slammed my bedroom door shut behind me. Shelves rattled, wall lamps flickered, and wide-eyed china dolls smacked to the floor. A new sort of growl roared up from the pit of my stomach—not a moan of nausea, but a primal howl.

  “I hate this!” I yanked on my hair and pulled out the tight pins. “I hate my life!”

  I lunged toward the window and pulled back the curtains, ready to fling up the sash and climb down the trellis, despite my shoeless feet.

  Bars blocked my exit. Thick copper bars that shone in the moonlight, secure as jail cell barriers—or the rungs of an enormous birdcage, as in the popular song.

  She’s only a bird in a gilded cage . . .

  “You’re not real.” I backed away. “I know you’re not real. Stop looking like you’re actually there.”

  I grabbed my shoes and house key, shut my bedroom door, and stole downstairs to our tiny wood-paneled bathroom, a pine-scented closet added behind the kitchen when I was thirteen. Father—probably already sloshing about in a brandy-induced stupor—didn’t make a peep from his closed office hideout.

  I gave the sink’s stiff spigot a twist, and the pipes trumpeted their usual high-pitched racket before water squirted into the cast-iron basin. I washed my face, scrubbed my teeth, and gargled with Holmes’s Sure Cure Mouth Wash until my tongue and cheeks burned.

  My feet then swished back down the hall, silent as spider-webs, while I carried my shoes in my left hand. In his office, Father began singing some old ditty from before I was born.

  I held my breath and opened the front entrance.

  More bars—fat steel ones. I shut the door and bang-bang-banged my forehead against the wood.

  You will see the world the way it truly is—not accept it. You will not accept it.

  I lifted my smarting head with gold specks buzzing before my eyes.

  You will not accept it.

  I reopened the door. The bars vanished.

  Without even grabbing my coat or hat, I closed up the house and leapt into the night.

  Out in the side yard, my red bicycle waited for me against the house’s chipped planks. After buttoning up my shoes, I hopped onto the saddle like a dime-novel cowboy, wobbled my way across the front yard’s sparse and lumpy patches of grass, and pedaled toward the city with legs propelled by wrath.

  The streets lay empty and silent, with rows of white arc lamps dangling from wires overhead, guiding the way, whispering, This way, this way, kill him, kill him. I pedaled faster, faster, faster, faster, hopping aboard smooth sidewalks to avoid getting slowed by ruts in the streets. A man stumbled out of a tavern and tottered into my path, but I swerved to avoid him and felt the graze of his arm against my elbow. He shouted a curse word, so I shouted it right back at him, even though I’d never cussed aloud in my life.

  Outside the great Henri Reverie’s hotel, I tossed my bicycle to the ground and threw open the establishment’s front door. I marched straight toward the staircase sign at the back of the lobby with my nails sharp and poised to fight.

  “Olivia?” asked a voice from one of the lobby’s chairs.

  I stopped and whipped my head toward the sound.

  Henry set aside a newspaper and rose from an armchair with a baffled expression that grew even more perplexed when I walked over and pushed him three feet backward.

  “You made me vomit! In public!”

  “I told you to trust me.”

  I pushed him again. “You humiliated me.”

  “You made your father torture me.”

  “I threw up in the bushes in front of those people.” I kept shoving. “I got sick as a dog.”

  “Olivia, stop. Be quiet.”

  “Don’t tell me to be quiet. Who do you think you are?”

  “Please—”

  “You made me vomit, Henry. You’re as horrible and controlling a jackass as he is.” I raised my arm. “I could kill you!”

  My nails sliced down his cheek, and to my horror, blood rose to the surface of four long gashes that stretched from his eye to his mouth.

  He cradled his skin and staggered backward, dazed and whey-faced.

  “Take your lovers’ quarrel outside, you animals!” yelled the hotel clerk with the Vandyke beard, and other voices joined in the commotion—those of concerned guests, a hotel employee in a round cap, and then Henry, who took hold of my arm and tried pulling me away while telling the clerk that everything was fine.

  But my feet wouldn’t budge.

  In a gilded mirror across the lobby, a red-eyed devil stared me down, her dark hair hanging in her face like poisonous black asps, her teeth bared and clenched, the dagger nails of her right hand dripping fresh red blood that stained the green rug below her. Every muscle in my body stiffened at the sight of her—of me—yet I couldn’t pull my eyes away.

  “Olivia, please! Come outside.” Henry gave my arm a good yank and guided me out of the hotel.

  The crisp blast of autumn air snuffed out some of the fire blazing inside me. With a whimper of exhaustion, I collapsed against a brick wall beyond the front window and leaned my cheek into a fuzzy blanket of moss. My legs quivered, the muscles and tendons straining to keep me upright.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Henry pull a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and cover his bleeding face.

  I squeezed my eyes shut and sucked in my breath. “How much blood is there?”

  “Hardly any. It mainly stings.”

  “It looked as if it could turn into gallons.”

  “You’re probably seeing it worse than it is.” He stepped closer. “Olivia, I promised you we were partners, not enemies. Why’d you have to bring up Genevieve and let it slip that we’ve seen each other?”

  “I was trying to appeal . . . I just . . . he’s still my father. I thought . . .” I rubbed my forehead. “We’re not partners. A partner wouldn’t
allow me to retch in front of strangers.”

  “Your father gave me those orders when he had that medieval contraption wedged in my mouth.”

  “But he took out the gag eventually.”

  “We signed a contract back there in his office. A mutual agreement, saying if I completed the tasks asked of me, he would give me the full remainder of Genevieve’s surgeon’s fees.”

  I closed my eyes again. “I’ll give you one hundred twenty-three dollars if we end everything tonight and send you on your way right now.”

  Henry didn’t answer, and for a moment I thought he might have run away.

  “Are you still here?” I raised my head and found him in the same spot as before, his mouth hanging open, the cloth pressed against his face.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “My mother has been sending me birthday and Christmas money ever since she left us when I was four. I’ve been saving the cash in a box in my room all these years.”

  “What have you been saving it for?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I used to imagine heading out on great adventures, circumnavigating the world like Nellie Bly.”

  “But”—he lowered the handkerchief—“what had you been planning to use it for before Genevieve and I came to town?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  I hugged my arms around my middle. “I can’t tell you what I’ve imagined doing with the money. You’ve made sure I’ll be sick if I say the word out loud.”

  “Does it have to do with education?”

  “Yes, but I’m not even sure it’s enough for one year’s tuition. I’d probably have to apply for a scholarship, anyway.”

  “Olivia . . .” He stepped in front of me. “Look at me.”

  I peeked up and saw pink fingernail marks on his cheek in the lamplight shining out through the hotel window.

  “Listen to me,” he said, and his wounds and his lips and his nose blurred away. Only his eyes remained. “Listen carefully, for what I am going to tell you is extremely important. You will no longer feel nauseated and vomit when you hear or say the following words: Suffrage. Women’s rights. Suffragist. Votes for women. Susan B. Anthony. College. In fact, you feel healthy and fully recovered from what happened to you this evening.”

  The disgusting tempest in my stomach settled into peaceful seas. The clouds in my head cleared away.

  “However,” he continued, “you will feel compelled to cover your mouth and make a gagging sound whenever you hear or say those words. Suffrage. Women’s rights. Suffragist. Votes for women. Susan B. Anthony. College. You will not suffer any pain or nausea. You will simply cover your mouth and make a sound. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Now, slowly, gently”—he pressed his hand against my forehead—“awake.”

  I blinked and wobbled.

  Henry lowered his arm and cleared his throat. “I would have liked to do that before, but I couldn’t with him watching.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m not taking your money.”

  “But . . . election night . . .” I braced my hand against the wall. “Genevieve . . .”

  “We have three days left to figure out a way for it to seem that I’m hypnotizing you in front of that election-night crowd—without doing a single thing to you. I want to give a performance that will somehow end up teaching your father and all those antis a lesson.”

  “How on earth would we do that?”

  “I don’t know.” He leaned his back against the bricks beside me. “But you’re obviously smart, and I’ve had years of experience in putting on a good show. I’m certain we can think of something.”

  “What about Father?”

  “Well . . .” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “Subtlety will have to be the key to this performance. We’ve got to make him think we’re following his directions.”

  “And then you’ll leave and take care of your sister?”

  “Yes. I promise. We’ll catch the last train south that night.” He turned his head my way and pressed his lips together. His forehead puckered, suggesting a flaw in the plan.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You should come with us.”

  I blinked as if he’d just flicked water into my eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You could finish getting your high school diploma in San Francisco. Stanford’s not far, and I’ve heard they allow women.”

  I pushed myself off the wall. “I can’t go with you. I hardly even know you.”

  “My father’s cousin Anne lives in the city, and she’ll be housing me while Genevieve undergoes her surgery. She doesn’t have the money to help us with medical payments, but she’s able to provide a roof over our heads. I’m sure she’d welcome you, too.”

  “I cannot run away with you.” I walked over to my tossed-aside bicycle and hoisted it onto its wheels.

  “You have money.” Henry followed me to the bike. “You wouldn’t have to rely on me or any other man for income. But I’d be there for you, as a friend, if you needed anything.”

  “I told you”—I hiked up the bottom of my skirt and swung my right leg over the bicycle’s red bar—“I don’t even know you.”

  “Think about it, at least. Please, consider joining us.”

  I tried to roll forward, but he pushed against my handlebars and blocked my escape with his body.

  “I don’t want to leave you behind,” he said, “when I know I caused your life in Portland to crumble before your eyes.”

  I scratched at a small bump on my turtle-shaped bicycle bell and mulled over the idea of my life crumbling before my eyes. An entertaining thought struck me during the mulling. A highly entertaining thought that led to an embarrassing snort.

  Henry shifted his weight. “What’s so funny?”

  Another snort erupted, one that progressed into a full-blown laugh that made my shoulders shake.

  “What’s so funny, Olivia?”

  “I just realized all the things I’ve done since I’ve met you and undergone your Cure for Female Rebellion and Unladylike Dreams—in bold, capital letters. Think about it, Henry.” I counted off each transgression by lifting my fingers on the handlebars. “I walked out on a formal dinner party. I rode in a two-seater buggy with two young men—and sat on your lap, no less. I accompanied you into your hotel room. I played hooky. I published a suffragist letter in the newspaper—”

  “You what?”

  “Read the front page of today’s Oregonian.” I tilted my head at the nail marks on his face. “I scratched you up like a wild woman. I caused a terrible uproar in a hotel lobby. Oh, I even cursed at a drunkard I almost ran over with my bike. And I rode through the city by myself after dark, while my father imagined me sulking in my bedroom. We’re not curing my dreams.”

  He arched his eyebrows at the emphasis on my. “Are we curing someone else’s?”

  “My father’s. His life is the one that’s crumbling, because he’s doing exactly what he wanted to avoid—driving me away.” I kicked up my foot to find the right pedal and rang my little bell. “Now move, s’il vous plaît. I need to ride home before my empty bedroom gets discovered.”

  I pedaled toward him, but he pushed me backward by the handlebars again and said, “I’m going to escort you home.”

  “How are you going to keep up with me while I’m riding?”

  “You can’t ride through the dark streets on your own. If you fall and hit your head, who would know?”

  “As I just said”—I steered the handlebars out of his grip— “how are you going to keep up while I’m riding?”

  “I’ll sit on the handlebars if I have to.” He lifted his knee as if he were going to climb aboard.

  “No, Henry!” I laughed and managed to back the bike out of his reach. “You’ll tip me forward.”

  “Then let me sit in front of you so I can pedal while you hang on.”

  “Ha!�
�� I rode the bicycle off the curb with a jolting bump that startled more hair out of pins. “That would be a laugh.”

  He leapt into the street behind me. “I’ll bet you’re strong enough to pedal us both.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I rode around him in a wide circle. “I’m only a girl.”

  “I’ll just chase after you, then, and try to keep up.” He laughed, a throaty chuckle—an enjoyable sound I don’t think I’d ever heard from him before. “Stop riding circles around me, Olivia. Let me get on. I’m willing to sit in back.”

  “You’ll probably fall off.” I planted my feet on the ground. “I ride fast.”

  “I bet you do.”

  I hopped down from the saddle while still holding the handlebars, and—adding yet another transgression to my growing list of sins against my father—allowed Henry to climb onto the seat behind me. He tried putting his hands on the bars, next to mine, but I nudged them away.

  “I’ll need to steer. You’ll make us fall if you’re hanging on, too.”

  He held up his palms. “What should I hang on to, then?”

  “I don’t . . .” I laughed and blushed and couldn’t believe I was letting him sit on my bicycle behind me, pressed up against my back, his mouth so close to my neck. I got chills just from the thought of him breathing against me. “Oh, just put your blasted hands around my waist. Help me push off, and if we somehow stay balanced, put your feet on the mounting pegs on the rear wheel.”

  I pressed my right foot against the top pedal. “I’ll count to three, and then we both need to give a big push. Ready?”

  He squeezed his arms around my waist and answered, “Oui.”

  “One, two, three.”

  He pushed, I pushed, and both of my feet left the ground. We wobbled and tipped, and he had to shove the soles of his shoes against the road more than once to keep us from falling on our sides like a capsizing ship. My legs pumped and strained, and somehow, one block south of the hotel, we managed to gain speed. Balancing became easier; the act of pedaling turned smooth and as simple as riding on my own. Our chances of serious injury increased, but my legs no longer ached from powering us along.