by Cat Winters
I tripped over my skirt and petticoat on my way up the steps, for the whole room spun, and all I could see were crystal chandeliers whisking over my head. A warm hand slipped into mine and helped guide me to my feet.
“It’s all right, Olivia,” said Henry, putting his other hand around my waist. “I’m here. Just keep breathing.”
With his assistance, I regained my balance and found myself wandering with him to the middle of the stage. Unlike the last time I joined him in such a way, it was the audience below us that resembled devils, not he. No matter how hard I blinked, I couldn’t shake the sight of sharp teeth, anemic skin, and hungry stares in that sea of sky-high pompadours and slicked male hair that glistened with greasy spiced oils. Sadie Eiderling stood in the front row, peering at me with a viper-toothed grin, her hair a huge and untamed nest on the top of her head.
Henry slid his hand out of mine and turned to face the monsters. After a deep inhale, he rolled back his shoulders, lifted his chin, and with the magic of a metamorphosing butterfly, transformed into the performer version of himself.
“Good evening, mesdames et messieurs. My name is Henri Reverie, and I have been studying the arts of mesmerism and hypnotism with my uncle ever since I was twelve. I use a combination of techniques from the great masters, including animal magnetism, deep relaxation, and the remarkable power of suggestion. As you heard from our lovely hostess, Madame Underhill, I recently received the fascinating challenge of curing this young woman”—he half turned toward me—“of her dreams to vote for president. Un remède pour des rêveries. A remedy for daydreams.” He rubbed his right fingers together in the air and seemed to taste the phrase on his tongue. “The cure for dreaming. A beguiling possibility, no?”
Spellbound, the rapt devil faces in the audience watched him walk toward them across the stage. “Over the past five days,” he said, “I have administered two separate treatments to this young woman. When I first came to her, just last Thursday, she was participating in scandalous rallies for the vote and scrambling to finish her high school diploma so she could attend a university.”
“You actually met her last Wednesday,” called the gaunt and long-toothed version of Percy from the crowd, his hands cupped around his mouth, “when you stood on top of her at your Halloween show.”
“Yes, merci. Thank you for reminding me, Monsieur Acklen. I first saw Miss Mead the very day she attended the rally, and I subdued her in front of the eyes of Portland that very night. Now she cannot even hear certain words related to the vote and higher education without getting sick to her stomach. Shall I demonstrate?”
The audience, at first, seemed taken aback by his proposal. They darted skeptical glances at one another, chuckled, and shook their heads. My eyes stopped seeing them as monsters. Now they were a crowd in white summer dresses and suits, gathered to witness a miracle maker at a county fair.
Sadie, decked out in a straw hat and red gingham, lifted her hand and asked, “Will this demonstration be disgusting?”
“Only if we badger her with the words too long,” said Henry. “Go ahead, Mademoiselle Eiderling. Say something to her yourself. Try the word that starts with an s —the one those singing women out there adore.”
Sadie shrugged. “Song?”
“No”—Henry helped her along—“s-u-f-f . . .”
“Ohhh.” Sadie balled her hands into fists and drew a large intake of air through her nose. “Suffrage,” she said with the breath of a birthday-candle wish.
I covered my mouth and made yet another gagging racket, and I glared at Henry out of the tops of my eyes. Do not prolong this part of the demonstration, I mentally willed him. Do not.
“Susan B. Anthony,” called Mrs. Underhill from her new position down below the stage, and I coughed into my hand until my throat hurt. “Votes for women,” she also added. “Women’s rights.”
“Merci.” Henry held up his hands. “Thank you, ladies, for helping me with that particular demonstration. I am proud to say that with the subtlest of commands”—he circled around me with solid thumps of his soles—“I have also instilled in Miss Mead a higher moral standard. This virtuous girl before you now possesses a hatred of higher education, bicycle bloomers, and dalliances with the wrong sorts of boys.”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from grinning at those last parts. My nerves settled a tad, and the audience shifted back to its regular appearance. Rich folk in ball gowns and evening suits.
Henry stopped right beside me and clasped hold of his lapel. “However, as Madame Underhill so eloquently stated, one of the most pressing problems with these suff—” He cut the word short. “The problem with these young ladies is that they are loud. They certainly want to have a voice, don’t they?”
“They certainly do,” shouted a red-cheeked gentleman in the midst of the nodding male and female heads.
“Wouldn’t it be magnifique if we could silence these girls?” asked Henry in a tone that worried me a little with its seriousness. “Simply take away their voices and make them as quiet and gentle as women ought to be?”
Another round of applause echoed across the room.
“Would you like me to prove to you that the silencing of wayward young women is a genuine possibility in this modern era of hypnosis?”
The applause strengthened in volume—its vibrations trembled in the soles of my shoes and the surfaces of my teeth.
“Monsieur Conductor . . .” Henry whisked around to face the orchestra. “Would you kindly have your orchestra play a soothing piece of music for me? A lullaby, if you please.”
The conductor and the orchestra flipped through their sheet music, and Henry peeked at me for the swiftest of moments. His gallant stage voice and mannerisms failed to conceal the dark circles beneath his eyes or the fact that his bottom lip was so dry and cracked, it now bled almost as much as when Father had gagged him. I wondered when he last took a sip of water, and I sealed my mouth shut so I wouldn’t feel compelled to ask.
The conductor must have raised his baton and signaled to his orchestra to commence, for the strings played a lullaby that filled the room with the delicacy of the fog settling over the roofs and the pines and the big-leaf maples of my street.
“Miss Mead.” Henry faced me with his side to the audience. He bumped his fingers against my wrist so that I would position myself the same way.
I hesitated. A spark of fear shot through me. Before I could even think to try the tongue trick, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward him.
“Sleep!”
My face smashed against his shoulder blade, and I dropped down, down, down, until the orchestra’s lullaby folded over me in black sheets of musical ecstasy. Henry turned me toward the audience and tipped me backward, dragging me with my heels skiing across the stage. My arms flopped below me, and my fingertips skated along the wood.
“Olivia,” said Henry with his mouth behind my head. The strings of the orchestra nearly swallowed up his voice, but I heard him say, for my ears alone, “You no longer feel compelled to cover your mouth and make a gagging sound when you hear the words suffrage, women’s rights, suffragist, votes for women, Susan B. Anthony, or college. You can argue with your father as much as you’d like and be as angry as you’d like.”
He draped my body in a chair in front of the gentle purr of the violins. My utter lack of control over my limbs sent my legs falling open and my head tipping backward, and I could feel him hurrying to close my knees and reposition my torso.
“Stop.” He took his hands off me. “Wait, wait, wait. Stop the music. I’m sorry, but this particular feat seems ridiculously easy. Hypnotizing one girl into losing her voice means nothing to the giant world outside those doors. Hundreds to thousands of suffragists are busily working away right now, spinning their webs, making their next plans to slap another referendum onto your ballots. If we want to rid this state and this country of suffragists, I need to prove to you that I can hypnotize an entire stage full of women into silence.”
Henry’s hand cupped my forehead.
“Awake,” he said while sitting me upright. “Please stand, Miss Mead, to allow room for more chairs.”
I let him help me to my feet, even though my legs bent and bobbed at all sorts of odd angles.
Henry readdressed the audience. “Would some of you gentlemen kindly fetch at least five of those singing women from outside this hotel? And then I’ll need a few more volunteers to help bring some chairs upon this stage.”
The young men and their fathers just stood there and stared as if they had never been asked to carry a stick of furniture in their lives. Before long, the poor waiters were setting down their trays, lugging around chairs, and running out to the street to wrangle women.
I pulled at my lace scarf and pleaded to Frannie and the other girls, Please be gone! Be gone! My grand scheme for the evening suddenly struck me as ridiculous and selfish, and I hated myself for convincing Henry to conspire with me.
A curly-haired waiter ran back inside from the lobby. “The women left.”
I covered a relieved smile with my hand.
“They left?” asked Mrs. Underhill, and other disappointed murmurings and snorts shook loose from the crowd.
Henry held up his hands. “Do not worry, mesdames et messieurs. I am still able to show you how to tame a roomful of tigresses into docile, silent kittens. I simply need some of the beautiful ladies in this audience to temporarily stand in as the rebels.”
The women froze.
Henry clasped his hands together in the direction of Sadie’s bloodstain of a dress. “Mademoiselle Eiderling, would you care to be one of our volunteers?”
Sadie narrowed her eyes. “No.”
“I believe I owe you the chance for an operatic solo,” said Henry, “which can certainly be arranged while you’re up on this stage. I do not think there would be a sound more breathtaking this election night than your sweet voice filling this room with the national anthem.”
Sadie folded her arms over her chest and didn’t budge.
Teddy slung his hand over her shoulder. “Do it, Sadie.”
Sunken-Eyed John raised a champagne flute and said, “Yes, do it,” and his sister Eugenia clapped and added, “Yes, please, go up there, Sadie. What a laugh that would be”—all of them prodding at Sadie just as she had tried to bully Henry at her party.
“All right.” Sadie jutted her chin in the air. “But Eugenia and my mother have to come with me, and my voice had better sound like an angel’s when I sing the national anthem.”
“Bien sûr, an angel,” said Henry with a wobble in his footing that got me worrying about his health again. “Certainly, mademoiselle. Please come up and sit in one of these chairs.”
The partygoers cleared a path for Sadie, Eugenia, and an older woman in a gown dripping in ecru lace, her hair a squat version of Sadie’s strawberry-gold pompadour. Mrs. Underhill trooped up on stage with them as well, followed by Lizzie—the squeaky girl who had called me a freakish man with bosoms—and her equally sulky-lipped mother.
I perched myself on the leftmost chair and cleared the nervousness from my throat as the six other ladies joined me in sitting up there, all of us facing the audience in front of the orchestra.
“Thank you for helping us, ladies,” said Henry, angled toward both us and the crowd below. “Your cooperation will reward you in the future, for when we silence the suffragists—”
I forgot to gag, but Henry’s pause pushed me into action. I choked with passion to compensate.
“—you will no longer need to concern yourselves with organizations such as this one. You will be able to devote your time to charities and other, worthier endeavors instead of hushing up women with pluck.”
The mothers on the stage nodded their approval, while their daughters fussed with their skirts and slumped as if bored. I folded my hands in my lap and tried to ignore Father’s watchful face out of the corner of my eye.
“Ladies and gentlemen”—Henry pivoted toward the audience and raised his hands—“I present to you America’s idyllic future.”
He swirled around to us ladies and started work on Lizzie at the opposite end of the line from me.
“Close your eyes.” He stroked the girl’s head of jostling brown ringlets. “You are drowsy. You can think of nothing but sleep. Melt down, melt down into sleep.”
He moved on to Lizzie’s mother and embarked upon the same routine. “Close your eyes.” He kneaded the woman’s supple forehead. “Think of nothing but sleep. You feel very sleepy. You are so tired. Melt down.”
He continued down the line of women, repeating the same phrases and massaging everyone’s skulls and foreheads. This time I had ample warning to keep myself alert. I wedged my tongue against the roof of my mouth. Henry’s silky voice alone was already persuading my chin to drop to my chest, but I forced myself to envision slamming a door in his face.
“You feel very sleepy,” he said to Mrs. Eiderling next to me. “You are drowsy. Think of nothing but sleep.”
Mrs. Eiderling’s head and shoulders slumped forward.
Henry moved over to me and put his hands on the sides of my head. “Close your eyes.”
I pressed my tongue to my palate with all my might and shut my lids.
“Think of nothing but sleep.” He caressed my temples. “Go to sleep.”
I held my breath and strained to block out the potency of his words. Slam the door. Slam it hard! My thoughts strained toward suffragist anthems, train rides to New York City, moonlit bicycle rides in garnet-brown bloomers . . .
Henry left my side. My mind remained my own.
“You now feel your right arm drifting into the air,” he said. “You cannot help it—the arm is simply moving on its own, rising higher and higher.”
I played along and raised my arm, my eyes still closed.
“As you can see, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “some subjects are more susceptible to hypnosis than others. Miss . . . what is your name, mademoiselle ?”
“Lizzie Yves,” said the chirpy girl in a wide-awake voice.
“You still seem awake, Lizzie. Stand up, please—and sleep! Go down, go down, you are so tired you can do nothing but sleep. Very good. You are doing beautifully.”
I found myself tapping my foot to get him to hurry along with everything, but I stopped myself as soon as I realized the blunder.
“Now, ladies . . .” His footsteps traveled to the center of the stage. “What I am about to tell you is extremely important, so you must listen carefully. When I say the word awake, you will open your eyes, and you will not be able to speak. You will have no voice. No matter what anyone says to you, if you try to talk, all that will exit your mouth is soundless air. You will be silent.”
I bowed my head and heard the patter of his shoes leaving the stage, as if he were running away from the mess he was about to create.
“Awake!”
We all opened our eyes. Mrs. Eiderling spread her lips apart beside me, but all that came out was an empty gasp. Next to her, Sadie clutched her right hand around her throat and squirmed in her chair until the legs of the furniture tapped against the stage. Mrs. Underhill and Eugenia flapped their lips open and shut like wide-eyed fish.
“This, ladies and gentlemen,” said Henry from down in the middle of the crowd, “is the sound of silent women.”
The men in the audience let loose applause that threw us back in our chairs.
“Bravo,” shouted Judge Acklen. “Well done!”
Mr. Underhill whistled his approval, and his wife sat up with a fierce-eyed glare.
“Go ahead.” Henry grabbed Percy by the arm. “Tell those girls what you really think of women. They can’t say a word back to you.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Percy lifted his hands and retreated out of Henry’s grasp. “They can still slap, can’t they?”
The gentlemen laughed and patted Percy on the back.
Sadie stood and waved her arms.
“Oh, wait.” Henry wiggled a piece of paper and a pen out of his breast pocket. “One of them is trying to communicate.”
Sadie snatched the writing utensils from his hands and kneeled on the stage to scribble a note. She then shoved the paper down at Henry’s nose.
Henry read the note over and shifted back to the crowd. “Well, this is a historic moment indeed. For the first time ever, an anti-suffragist woman has written the words ‘Give us our voices!’”
A few gentlemen laughed, but a sobering silence threw a bucket of ice water over the party. Glimmers of suspicion awakened in the eyes of the Oregon Association crowd. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled.
“Ladies.” Henry turned toward us, and he swayed for a moment, as if he had moved too fast. “Gentlemen are not kind when it comes to you speaking your minds. You must be cautious about giving us full custody of your voices. I am afraid we will take unfair advantage, mes chéries.”
Sadie stomped her foot on the stage and made the whole room jump.
“All right, sit down, sit down.” Henry waved her back to her chair.
He moved to take a step away from the crowd, but he stopped and tipped as though dizzy, and his eyes rolled toward the back of his head. He fell forward but caught himself by bracing his hands against the front edge of the stage.
I bolted upright in my chair. “Henry?”
He stayed still for a moment, panting as though breathing were a struggle, his head hanging between his arms.
“I’m sorry.” He managed to lift his face, now as white as ash. “Oh, God . . . maybe the orchestra . . . I’m really sorry . . .” He staggered backward and collapsed on the waxed ballroom floor.
’m not sure how I got off that stage—I believe I may have taken a running leap and jumped to the hard parquet below. All I remember is Henry’s skin growing cold and gray beneath my hands.
“Are you breathing, Henry?” I shook his shoulders. “Oh, God. Please breathe! Please breathe!”
He turned paler by the second. The only thing I could think to do was jostle him.