The Cure for Dreaming

by Cat Winters

  “Don’t die. Don’t die. You can’t die. Isn’t there a doctor in this room? Why isn’t someone helping him?”

  I peeked up at the crowd and discovered that the floor around us had cleared. Everyone stood back in their fine tailored clothing, watching me fumble to save his life.

  “Why are you just standing there?” I asked. “This isn’t part of the show. Someone needs to get him to a hospital. Put him in one of your carriages. Help him!”

  Mr. Underhill grimaced at Henry. “He’s a theater person. Some of us would rather not have him in our carriages.”

  “Oh, Christ, you’re idiots.” I cradled Henry’s head against my chest. “If he dies, then your wives and daughters are going to be stuck without voices forever.”

  Some of the men and boys actually laughed at that statement—they laughed!

  Claps of thunder erupted from the stage behind me. I gave a start and peered over my shoulder to discover the silenced mothers and daughters hurling themselves down the staircases at the sides of the stage in their long, shimmering gowns. They barreled toward us and shoved me away from Henry. Sadie and her mother lifted him by his shoulders. Mrs. Underhill and Eugenia grabbed his legs. Lizzie and her mother hoisted him up beneath his back. In less than two seconds, those women had his limp body up in the air and were rushing him across the room.

  I jumped to my feet and chased after them through the palm-lined lobby and out to the cold night air. With Henry bouncing in their arms, the ladies reached an enclosed black carriage parked near Sixth.

  I lunged to help them open the door and told them, “Be careful,” as they maneuvered Henry’s head inside and spread him across a padded seat.

  Sadie waved her arms at the driver and mouthed the word hospital.

  The driver shrugged his broad shoulders. “Speak up. I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You need to drive this carriage to the hospital,” I said for her. “Quickly!”

  Sadie dove inside the vehicle with her mother and Henry, and the other ladies ran to the carriage behind them. I tried to follow Sadie into her carriage, but the door slammed shut in my face, and the horses trotted away.

  “Olivia!” Father stormed toward me with my coat hanging off his arm. “We’re going home. That was a shocking thing you two did in there. I’m appalled beyond words.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He gripped my arm with a squeeze that made me gasp.

  “I’m not stupid, Olivia. You’re able to speak when the rest of those women were silenced.”

  “I just—”

  “You conspired with that hypnotist behind my back again and put those ladies in peril. What else have you been doing with him in secret, you lying little hussy?”

  “I . . . what does any of that matter right now? Something’s terribly wrong with Henry. His sister’s waiting for him in the hotel. She’s supposed to have surgery in San Francisco this Friday.”

  “That’s Reverie’s problem, not mine.”

  “We only conspired against you because he thought what you were doing to me was horrible. Don’t punish his sister for our actions.”

  Father hardened his jaw but eased his grip.

  “Please,” I said, “she’s done nothing wrong, and she’s waiting for her brother. Go with me to fetch her so we can tell her about Henry and take her to him.”

  He puffed a loud sigh.

  “Father?”

  “All right, I’ll give that poor girl a ride, but I’m not paying her brother one cent of my money. Come along.” He wrapped my coat around my shoulders. “Let’s go find our driver and be quick about this.”

  GENEVIEVE’S DOOR ALREADY SAT AJAR.

  “Oh, no! What’s happened here?” I hurried down the hall and pushed my way inside, expecting kidnappers and murderers and chaos.

  Instead, I encountered the strange scene of Genevieve, Frannie, Kate, and Agnes sipping mugs of steaming tea on the Rhodeses’ hotel sofa. Genevieve—solid and sturdy— wiped away tears with a handkerchief and smiled.

  I blinked to ensure they wouldn’t all disappear. “What’s happening?”

  Father strode into view behind me, and all four pairs of eyes seemed to ask the same question of me.

  Frannie stood up from the right-hand arm of the sofa. “We raised money for Genevieve, just in case . . .” She looked between Father and me. “In case there was no other money to be had.”

  Father and I eyed each other.

  “Between school, the bookstore, and this evening,” said Kate, nestled beside Genevieve on one of the sofa cushions, “Frannie was able to collect close to seventy-five dollars.”

  “Seventy-five?” I stumbled toward them.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Genevieve rose with her mug. “I don’t even know what to say. I never dreamed of such kindness.” She stood on tiptoe and peeked over my shoulder. “Where’s Henry?”

  “He’s . . .” I swallowed and clamped my hands into fists.

  Genevieve’s tea sloshed over the rim. “What’s wrong?”

  “Your brother,” said Father, “collapsed after he and Olivia played a dirty hypnotist trick upon a group of women. He’s on his way to the hospital.”

  Genevieve flickered out.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” I said, rubbing my temples to bring her back into view, “but he’s there, and we’ll take you to him.”

  “Is he all right?” she asked, now a weak sputter of light. “Was he able to speak?”

  I shook my head. “You had better come.”

  The mugs were set aside, the door locked, and our six pairs of feet thundered down the hotel staircase.

  Out by the carriage, Frannie folded me up in a hug. “You’re still leaving after all of this, aren’t you?”

  “As I told you,” I said into her ear, “train rides are faster and easier these days. Thank you for helping Genevieve.”

  “You’re welcome. Please be extremely careful, Responsible Woman.” She gave my lips a quick peck and sent me into the hired carriage with Father and Henry’s wavering ghost of a sister.

  THE LAMP-LIT HOSPITAL ON DARK AND HILLY CORNELL Street appeared to me as a regular brick-and-stone medical building—not a mausoleum or an undertaker’s parlor or anything else more funereal than an actual hospital. All the same, a helpless sense of panic gripped my chest when I jumped out of the carriage below the five-story structure. I felt I’d forgotten something, or I’d lost something, and my mind kept racing back to shaking Henry’s heavy shoulders as he lay there on the cold parquet floor. If only I’d moved a little faster to reach him, rustled him a little harder. If only I could have kept him from slipping out of reach.

  I put my arm around Genevieve, and we climbed the steps to the hospital’s tall doorway beneath an archway of bricks, with Father following us.

  Inside the lobby—a cold, wood-paneled room I remembered from my grandmother’s battle with pneumonia—the Eiderling, Underhill, and Yves ladies paced across a worn beige rug with their hands on their hips. The floral garden of their perfumes melded into the sticky smells of sweet medicine.

  A nurse in a small white cap and an apron-covered dress peeked up from the front desk. “May I help you?”

  Genevieve and I walked over to her, still attached to each other.

  “You just admitted this girl’s brother, Henry Rhodes,” I said. “Or . . . Henri Reverie, as these ladies might have called him.”

  “They didn’t call him anything.” The nurse craned her neck toward the pacing collection of ladies in ball gowns. “What is wrong with their voices?”

  “This is all the result of a hypnotism show gone terribly wrong.”

  “They’re hypnotized?”

  “How is Henry?” asked Genevieve. “May we see him?”

  The nurse shook her head. “Visiting hours already ended, I’m afraid.”

  “Is he alive?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how he is. I only filled out his paper
work . . . or what I could of it.” She glanced at the mute women again. “You’ll need to wait here in the lobby, and the doctors will speak to his sister when they have information to give.”

  I turned and bumped straight into Father’s chest.

  “Oh, I didn’t know you were there . . .”

  “I don’t want to stay here with these . . . women,” he said under his breath with a sharp eye on Mrs. Underhill. “They’re probably plotting a way to murder me right now. We’re going home.”

  “I can’t.”

  “We took care of Miss Reverie. Now it’s time for you to leave.” He took me by the hand and jerked me away from Genevieve.

  “Wait! I need to fix all the messes I’ve made.”

  He hauled me toward the door.

  “Father, please”—I pushed his fingers off mine—“stop! I need to take responsibility—”

  “Do not test me any further tonight,” he said through gritted teeth, leaning toward me, “or I swear, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? What more can you possibly do?”

  “Don’t you dare complain again about my choice to help you.”

  “You hired someone to make me sick and helpless.”

  “I spared the rod and spoiled the child, is what I did.”

  “I’m ‘A Responsible Woman,’” I said, and the words echoed across the hospital’s walls and stopped the silenced ladies from pacing. “I’m the person who wrote that letter to Judge Acklen in Saturday’s paper, and I’m more of a suffragist now than when you first hired Henry to control me. You struck a match and lit a fire.”

  Father’s chin quivered. “Well . . .” He fumbled for his handkerchief in his coat pocket. “It’s a damned good thing Mr. Reverie—or Rhodes, or whatever the hell his name is—it’s a damned good thing he might already be dead, because I would love more than anything to kill him right now.”

  “No, you did this to me. You made me want to fight. And I bet you did this to Mother, too.”

  “Women belong—”

  I covered my ears. “I don’t want to hear any more of your theories about women. I want you to go home and live by yourself, because I’m done living with you and cooking for you and worrying about you drinking away your misery. If Henry is gone, then I’m taking Genevieve to San Francisco. If he’s able to take her himself, then I’m traveling to New York. My bags are already packed.”

  “Olivia—”

  “All is well.” I closed my eyes and kept my hands over my ears.

  Father didn’t respond. When I raised my lashes, all I saw was an eight-year-old boy in a long evening coat and an oversized silk hat. He backed toward the hospital’s front entrance in shoes too big for his feet, his lips sputtering to find something more to say.

  A tear slid down my cheek to my mouth.

  “You and your mother deserve each other,” said the boy, and he slipped out the door—his most painful extraction yet.

  round nine o’clock at night, Mr. Underhill, John, and two waiters from the party lugged in baskets full of leftover food. Mrs. Underhill greeted them with flailing arms and an attack of noiseless mouthed words.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, Margaret.” Mr. Underhill plunked down a bottle of wine on a small lobby table and squinted at his wife’s lips. “I know you’re upset we all laughed, but it was funny at the moment, dear.”

  Mrs. Underhill slugged him in the arm.

  “Ouch! Margaret!”

  Eugenia shot up and yelled without words as well.

  “I don’t know what either of you are saying.” Mr. Underhill scratched his head. “This is all very frustrating. We’ll check back here when you’re calmer. Come along, John.”

  The gentlemen grabbed hold of each other and retreated as quickly as they’d arrived.

  Sadie tore open one of the baskets and scooped out wrapped breads, cakes, and crab salad.

  My stomach refused to register hunger. Beside me on our shared bench, Genevieve held her arms around herself and shivered.

  “Do you know how to undo the hypnosis?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “Uncle Lewis only ever wanted me to provide the accompaniment. At most, he’d make me the human plank and show how he could break boulders with a sledgehammer on top of me.”

  I winced. “Oh. Well . . . then I suppose I’ve committed my worst transgression yet.”

  “What’s that?”

  I leaned forward and sank my head into my hands. “I made a group of women entirely dependent on a man.”

  OUR QUIET VIGIL FOR HENRY STRETCHED LATE INTO THE night, with no news of his health from any of the doctors. Mrs. Underhill shared some of the food with Genevieve and me, an act that drove another spike of guilt through my heart. These women were my equals, I realized, as we sat there and dined as a group in the lobby. Despite our differences in wealth and political opinions, they were no better than me.

  And . . . I was no better than them.

  The nurse at the front desk fetched us glasses of water around eleven thirty, but she left her station at midnight, and the hospital slept. The lobby was transformed into an uncomfortable bedroom for seven females in lace and silk gowns, plus a fifteen-year-old girl in a gray traveling dress who should have been on her way to San Francisco.

  I kept my arm around Genevieve on our creaking bench and refused to drift off until I heard her soft snores against my shoulder. Her flushed red cheeks radiated the heat of a fever.

  Both Reveries were slipping out of my reach.

  AT ONE POINT DURING THE NIGHT, I SLEPT ENOUGH TO dream I was typing up an article for a suffrage newspaper in an apartment overlooking the brick buildings of Barnard College. Below my opened window, young women walked the green grounds with books tucked under their arms.

  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.”