The Cure for Dreaming(14)

I eyed the main door to the street and debated bolting home. I can claim I never received the note, I realized. I could say that I—

The front door opened.

Henri Reverie stepped into the lobby.

I drew a sharp breath and averted my eyes. My shoulders inched toward my ears. He’s come to take away my free will. I knew it!

Henri removed a dark square-crown hat from his head, closed the door, and lowered himself into a chair across from me, below the painting of the forceps. He was dressed in a three-piece suit and tie, all as black as midnight—a shadow with cobalt-blue eyes and blond hair. His complexion was poorer than I remembered, probably due to all the lard-based greasepaint theater people had to wear on their faces, according to my mother. His slumped posture gave him the shifty look of a peddler trying to pass off bottles of booze as magical cure-alls.

“No!” cried the patient in the operatory.

I gave a start—as did Henri.

“Noooo! I’m not ready! Nooooooo!”

Shrieks and loud smacks and another fit of hysterical laughter came from beyond the glass. Henri grabbed hold of his armrests with whitening fingers, and his knees swerved to his right, toward the door, as if he were about to flee.

A smile twitched at the corners of my lips. I relaxed my shoulders and folded my hands in my lap, for I realized something absolutely delightful: Henri Reverie’s fear of my father’s dental practice gave me the upper hand in our current situation.

Interesting.

“Are you here for an appointment, Mr. Reverie?” I asked.

“Stay still, Mr. Dibbs!” yelled Father from beyond the door. “If you don’t stop flailing about, I’ll need to clamp your wrists to the chair in addition to your head.”

Henri grimaced as if his own head were being clamped to a chair, while Mr. Dibbs cackled and whooped and let loose the screams of a man suffering the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition.

“I said, are you here for an appointment, Mr. Reverie?”

“I—” Henri’s blue eyes shifted toward me for a swift moment, but they veered straight back to the bobbing and ducking figures beyond the frosted pane. “Yes, an appointment.”

“A bad tooth?” I asked, sitting up straighter, stifling another smile. “Swollen gums? Do you need your tissues leeched of blood?”

A howl of pain echoed through the office walls. “No!” cried Mr. Dibbs in a decibel that made my ears ring. “No! I wasn’t ready.”

“It’s all done,” said Father. “The extraction was a success. Hold this ice over the wound and rest a few minutes. You’re fine.”

The patient sobbed and moaned and then cackled with laughter. “You had a blasted smile on your face, Dr. Mead. You looked like you enjoyed ripping my tooth from its socket.”

“Nobody enjoys the sight of a decayed bicuspid rotting away in an inflamed mass of bleeding gums, Mr. Dibbs. Take better care of your oral health, sir.”

Father’s distorted image came closer to the frosted glass; his beard and white coat grew sharp and clear behind the pane until I could almost see the browns of his eyes. He opened the operatory door and poked out his head. “Ah, good. You’re both here. I’ll lay Mr. Dibbs on the cot and bring you in.”

I jumped to my feet. “I am not going in there like one of your patients.”

“Now, don’t be difficult, Olivia.” Father let go of the doorknob. “Mr. Reverie has kindly agreed to help you accept the world the way it is.”

“You actually hired this person”—I pointed toward the still-seated hypnotist—“to extract my thoughts in your operatory, as if my brain were a decayed thing, like Mr. Dibbs’s disgusting bicuspid? Do you know how cruel and horrifying this is?”

“Olivia . . .” Father put out a cautious hand and trod toward me as though I were a rabid dog. “I told you, I only want the best for you. Don’t have a conniption.”

I lunged for the front door, but my father pounced and took hold of both my arms before I could escape.

“Olivia, please.” He spun me toward him. “Please behave for me. Your mother—she abandoned the both of us, not just me. She left you behind, too.”

“I know that.” My eyes smarted with tears, and I saw a blurry version of Henri Reverie turning his face away from us, pretending not to hear, which made me want to cry all the more.

“She said she wanted the vote, too,” said Father. “I hear her voice in yours. You can’t do that to some poor husband and child one day. I won’t let you break people’s hearts.”

“I’m not going to be like her.”

“You’ve got to change.”

“No.”

“Think of your future sons and daughters. Think how much better your childhood would have been if your mother had accepted her place in the world and ignored her selfish dreams.”

“She did it all wrong.” I wriggled my shoulders and struggled to break free of his grip. “I won’t be like her, I swear. Please don’t pay him to take away my thoughts.”

“Please do not be afraid, Miss Mead.”

I turned and looked straight into Henri Reverie’s eyes—a mistake.

“Do not be afraid,” said the hypnotist again in a voice that soothed me as much as when I had succumbed to his anesthetizing words on the stage. Those eyes of his—those potent blue irises that tugged me toward him—swallowed me whole and assured me there was nothing to fear inside that dental office. There was nothing to fear in the entire world. My muscles slackened. My worries evaporated into the sweet nitrous oxide in the air.