The Cure for Dreaming(65)
Two blocks later, a wagon led by a handsome pair of chestnut horses rolled past me with flags waving and cornets and trombones blaring “Yankee Doodle.” Banners hung off the wooden slats in the back, shouting, WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN! and ANTI-IMPERIALISM!
“Tell your father to vote for Bryan, little lady,” called out a man around Father’s age in red-striped suspenders that looked more like Henry’s peppermint candies than the American flag.
“I’m not supposed to have any say in politics,” I called back, but then I squeezed my lips shut and eyed the nearby pedestrians. My heart jumped around in my chest until I assured myself Father hadn’t just witnessed me sassing a political campaigner while wandering the streets with my worldly possessions. I kept my head down and my mouth closed until I reached the front desk at the Hotel Vernon.
“I’d like a room, please,” I said to the hotel clerk with the devilish Vandyke beard—the same terrible little man who had belittled the Negro customers and yelled at Henry and me to take our lovers’ quarrel outside.
“A room for one?” he asked.
“Yes, a place of my own.” Oh, how I loved the sound of that! “And I’d like to pay in advance to ensure there will be no trouble finding you if I need to check out early.”
Even if the clerk did remember me as the screeching lunatic from three days before, he made no complaint about my presence once I plunked a dollar bill onto his desk.
“Room eight,” he said with a smile above his pointy umber beard, and he slid a golden key across the polished mahogany.
I left my suitcase in the first-floor room with a quilt-covered bed that appeared to be collapsing on one side. Another whiff of the establishment’s mold met my nose, but I had no plans to stay. I shut the door behind me, locked up my possessions, and exited the hotel without checking on Henry and Genevieve upstairs.
The night before, I had awoken in a panicked sweat from a dream in which I smashed a sledgehammer over a gravestone marked RHODES.
Instead of confronting that fear, I preferred to walk back home and cling to the illusion that everything would unfold as planned.
WITHOUT GERDA’S HELP, I SOMEHOW MANAGED TO BUTTON myself up in the same eggplant-purple dress I’d worn to Sadie’s party, the only gown in my wardrobe suitable for an election-night soiree. Gerda must have scrubbed the mud off the hem Saturday morning, for the fabric betrayed no signs of Percy chasing me down in his buggy.
I descended the staircase toward Father, who was reading the mail in his best wool suit and a crisp black bow tie. The air was rich with the scent of Macassar hair oil.
He peeked up at me. “You’re finally ready. Why are you wearing that lace scarf?”
I left the bottom step. “It’s the latest fashion.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“How would you know what young ladies are wearing?”
“I know what does and doesn’t look garish.” He set down the mail on the hall table. “Please take that off.”
I pressed the lace against my neck. “I can’t.”
“You can’t?”
“It’s covering a blemish.”
“There’s no such thing as a neck blemish, Olivia. Now, take that thing off”—he reached for the scarf—“before the ladies at the party see you.”
He gave a firm tug, and the lace unspooled.
My neck fell bare.
“The marks are from Percy,” I said before he could match words to his open-mouthed stare. “He tried forcing himself upon me the night of Sadie Eiderling’s party, but all I could say was ‘All is well.’” I yanked the scarf free of Father’s hands and wound the lace back around my neck. “I worried you’d ask Mr. Reverie to do something more to me if I told you what had happened.”
He just stood there, paralyzed and mute.
“Are you ready?” I asked with a glance at the door.
“Um . . . yes.” He blinked and fitted his head with a tall silk hat dating back to the Garfield administration. “I’ve hired a driver and carriage for the night. We’re traveling in high style, which ought to tell you how important I consider this event. Behave as if your life depended on it.”
“Of course,” I said. “My life indeed depends on it.”
FIREWORKS LIT UP THE PORTLAND SKYLINE IN BLASTS OF indigo that rattled my seat in the carriage. Along the side of one of downtown’s tallest buildings, an enormous projection of President McKinley’s clean-shaven face and balding head glowed across a sandstone wall.
“It doesn’t actually feel as if my eyes are playing tricks on me right now,” I said to Father, whose toes kept bumping into mine, “but I see President McKinley’s giant white face watching over the city. Do you see it, too?”
Father craned his neck to get a peek outside the carriage window. “That’s a stereopticon slide. The newspaper said that’s how the city would announce who’s ahead in the election.”
“He looks like the Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was just a huge head sitting in a chair.” I gawked at the passing black-and-white image. “How peculiar.”
The whimsical rooftop dormers and chimneys of the eight-story Portland Hotel would be coming up next, within a block, across from the courthouse on Sixth Street. I had walked by its opulent grounds hundreds of times.