The Cure for Dreaming(61)

“My mother lives in New York City now.” I bit my lip and glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. “I’m thinking of going to live with her after everything’s over Tuesday night.”

A shadow darkened his face. He dropped his coat to the floor beside him, and the movement reminded me of a rosebush weeping petals.

“I want to be with family,” I said. “I know you asked me to go with you and Genevieve, but . . .”

“No.” He swallowed and nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I do.” He nodded again, but I could see disappointment dimming the sparks in his eyes.

“Will this change any of our plans we just discussed for Tuesday night?”

“No.” His brow creased. “Of course not. No matter what happens, I’m going to help you.”

“We’re still partners, then? Partenaires?”

“Oui.” A small smile rose to his lips. “Des partenaires qui s’embrassent.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you should learn more French if you’re going to partner with me, ma chérie.”

“No, be honest”—I nudged his knee—“what does it mean?”

He smirked and blushed a little. “Partners who kiss.”

I snickered. “Partners who kiss?”

“Oui.”

“What a marvelous concept.”

He smiled, and I smiled, and we both broke into a fit of tipsy-sounding laughter.

Our faces gradually sobered. Silence stole over the room again, aside from those footsteps shuffling above.

I leaned toward Henry and his lovely mussed-up hair and peppermint-scented lips, and for a little while longer, we enjoyed our lives as des partenaires qui s’embrassent.





thought I saw Father on my journey northward on Yamhill Street.

I spun around, and with my back to Fourth, I stood with Frannie’s hood pulled over my head—a deer freezing to blend in with the trees. None of it seemed right: me hiding from Father, Father fearful for me—or maybe even of me. In his view of the world, I likely resembled a fairy-tale witch who baked children in pies. Or, even worse in his eyes, a witch who could destroy both his home and his right to drink.

I strode to Harrison’s Books on unsteady legs, looking over my shoulder every few seconds.

Frannie let me inside after I knocked on the glass door. “Is everything all right?” she asked, and she locked the shop back up behind me.

“Well . . .” I sighed and unbuttoned the cloak. “I think we might be ready for Tuesday.”

Phonograph music drifted downstairs—a piano song that sounded as old and romantic as the Harrisons’ twenty-year marriage.

She took the cloak. “Is this to be a farewell supper, then?”

I couldn’t meet her eyes.

“It is, isn’t it?” Her voice cracked.

“I’m not sure. I’m worried everything will go terribly wrong.”

“Just be careful, no matter what happens. Please promise me that.”

I nodded and rubbed my knotted-up stomach. “I promise.”

She wiped her eyes with the cloak. “Let me know when I should properly say good-bye, all right? I don’t want to suddenly find out you’re in New York without me realizing you’re gone.”

I fussed with the folds of my skirt, which was hiding the bloomers I had slipped over my legs in the theater. “The world is getting smaller, you know. A train ride across the country is so much easier than before.”

Frannie sniffed and nodded. “I suppose that’s true.”

“It is.”

Without another word, we linked arms and headed upstairs to a celebration of two people who had learned to be kissing partners long before Frannie and I were born.

For a short while, all was indeed well.

Bittersweet, but well.


FATHER FETCHED ME AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, AND WE WALKED through the dark streets in silence with the soft swish of the bloomers brushing beneath my petticoat. Near the Park Blocks, I saw our shadows drifting ahead of us in the lamplight and, in them, the silhouette of a little girl with braided hair, sitting on the shoulders of a trim young man in a tall hat. Two steps later, the image shifted, and all that was left were the regular shadows of Father and me, walking three feet apart from each other.

“I miss when you used to carry me on your shoulders,” I said, still watching the sidewalk ahead of us.

“Yes, well . . .” Father cleared his throat. “I think you might be getting a little too big for that nowadays.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and I could have sworn I heard a low chuckle rumble from above his thick beard.

The wedge soon formed between us again. Our shadows spread farther apart, and they looked hunched and cold and lonely.


OUT IN THE BACKYARD ON MONDAY MORNING, WHILE MY classmates wrote compositions and solved algebraic equations in school, I scrubbed brown soap and Father’s undergarments across the zinc grooves of our washboard in the steaming double boiler. Hair fell into my face from the force of all the rubbing, and my hands reddened and absorbed the smell of lye.

After the washing, I pinned the laundry to the clothesline, and little flecks of rain flew at my eyelids and cheeks. “Don’t pour, don’t pour,” I begged of the sky, for I had come too far to lug everything down to our drying racks in the dark basement, where mice skittered about. I rushed to clip every garment to the line, and our backyard became a white wonderland of undershirts, petticoats, and drawers. Ghosts without bodies, just hovering in the mist.