The Cure for Dreaming(11)
Father picked up the paper again, but instead of bristling and grumbling, he sat there with the flames of fascination flaring in his pupils. “Young Mr. Reverie’s persuasion over you was clearly quite powerful.”
“Yes,” I said, a nervous quaver in my voice.
“I’m curious about hypnotherapy myself. I’ve read several articles about dentists who use trances to subdue their thrashing patients.” Father scratched his beard with an audible rustle of hairs. “The article states that between performances, Mr. Reverie is offering his hypnotism skills to help individuals overcome their addictions and fears. He’s staying in Portland until next week.”
“Oh.” I unfolded my napkin. “I’m sure he’ll be helpful to men addicted to drink.”
“Are you also becoming a temperance crusader, Olivia?”
I looked up, caught off guard by the question as well as the squeak of fear in his voice. “I beg your pardon?”
“I keep reading about that lunatic of a woman, Carrie Nation—the old hag who’s smashing up saloons in Kansas with stones and bricks and billiard balls.” He stared me down with probing brown eyes that themselves resembled billiard balls. “Do you ever harbor urges to commit violent acts against men?”
“No! Of course not. Just because I want to vote doesn’t mean I’m going to turn savage.”
“Women who want the vote seem hell-bent on outlawing liquor, too. They’re ready to attack.”
“Father, I just—”
“I’m considering telephoning this Henri Reverie and hiring him to help you.”
I half slipped off my chair. “Help me with what?”
“I want him to put an end to your growing signs of rebelliousness.”
“I am not rebellious.” I gripped the edge of the table. “I may have gone to a suffragist rally and upset one snobby patient, but no one else has ever complained about my behavior. Not at school—not anywhere. You’re just punishing me because of Mother.”
“I’m ensuring you won’t become like your mother.” Father folded the newspaper into two crisp halves. “If Percy Acklen drove you home last night because he has marriage on his mind, what do you think he’ll do if he catches word you were at that protest?”
“He probably won’t—”
“I’m not done talking, Olivia. If Percy feels he won’t be able to command his own domestic ship, if he worries you’ll turn wild on him, he’ll run as far as he can in the opposite direction. You’ll never again have a young man with means and money take an interest in you. You’ll have no options for your life.”
“I’m only seventeen. I don’t care about marriage right now. My schoolwork is good enough that I could go to college and study to be a teacher. Or a writer.”
“You are not going to be a teacher or a writer.”
“Why not? Plenty of young women are taking jobs these days.”
“Only desperate and unfeminine ones. The only reason I even allow you to go to that school is because I hate to think what would happen if you were on your own while I’m at work.”
“What?” I gasped. “School is my key to the future, not my nursemaid.”
“Your future is to become a respectable housewife and mother. Women belong in the home, and inside some man’s home you’ll stay.”
I squeezed the table’s edge until my fingers and my voice both shook. “You’re angry because you couldn’t keep my mother inside this home—that’s what this is all about. But it’s not my fault you drove her away.”
Father’s mouth fell open, and his eyes refused to blink, as if I’d stabbed his heart with the barbed tips of my words.
“I—I—I’m sorry,” I said. “Please, Father—please don’t hire that hypnotist to remove thoughts from my brain. My mind isn’t like a rotten tooth. You can’t just take it away.”
He stabbed at his egg with his fork, and that angry blue vein from the night before throbbed again in his forehead.
“Father, please—”
“Don’t you understand?” He slammed his fist to the table and made the dishes jump. “I’ll be making your life easier for you by freeing you of these unladylike dreams. It’s for your own good, so don’t make me out to be the villain here. The world will seem far less difficult when passions that can never be fulfilled are gone from your stubborn head.”
“I don’t want them to be gone. I’d rather be able to dream and fail than to never feel the pull of another way of life.”
“That’s a silly, frustrating way to live.”
“But—”
“The subject is closed. If I decide it best to hire the hypnotist, I will.”
ON MY WAY TO SCHOOL, I PASSED POSTERS FOR HENRI Reverie’s performances, taped to utility posts and shop windows. The corners of the papers curled and fluttered in the cool November breeze, and each notice resembled the other: a black background, tall yellow letters, and a pair of large blue eyes staring out from above the phrase YOUNG MARVEL OF THE NEW CENTURY!
I plodded onward, but every other block, Monsieur Reverie watched me travel through the city.
Up ahead of me, the high school’s spire clock tower pierced the gray sky high above the corner of Fourteenth and Morrison, a sight that always reminded me of a postcard my mother sent me from Notre Dame Cathedral on her thirtieth birthday. Our school was actually quite colossal and impressive on the inside, too, with dark wood fixtures, electric lighting, fifteen classrooms, a library, a laboratory, a museum, two recitation rooms, an art room, and an assembly hall. The curriculum was modern. The classrooms were integrated and coeducational.