The Cure for Dreaming(66)
The carriage eased down the Yamhill Street slope, but to my consternation, I did not see all those wonderful chimneys. On a tall, lumpy hill, in the erratic shots of light from the streaks of blue fireworks, stood a castle with towers severe and black.
“No, that’s absurd.” I turned away from the carriage window and covered my eyes with the lace scarf.
“What’s absurd?” asked Father.
“It’s not a good sign.” I squeezed the lace and spoke more to myself than Father. “It shouldn’t look like Dracula’s castle—and death. I shouldn’t be afraid.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” Father shifted his position on his seat with a squeak of leather. “And you should stop reading that damned horror novel. Perhaps that’s one more item I should have Mr. Reverie remove from—”
He cut himself off, and at first I wondered if he was about to revise his stance on the hypnosis. A second later, a sound that must have distracted him reached my ears.
Singing.
Women’s voices singing.
I lowered the scarf and shifted toward the window again.
Outside our carriage, females of all ages, sizes, and backgrounds lined the lamp-lit sidewalks in front of our beautiful Portland Hotel with its soaring walls of dark stone and terracotta. The women and girls wore yellow ribbons on their coats and their hats, and they belted out a song while raising homemade cloth flags bearing the words VOTES FOR WOMEN!
I slid across the seat and stuck my head into the chimneyscented air to better hear them sing the satirical lyrics of “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be?”
“Put your head back inside the carriage.” Father pulled me down to my seat by my shoulder. “If those are the type of women I think they are, you’ll get sick to your stomach.”
The driver steered the trotting horses into the hotel’s circular driveway, a grand roundabout surrounded by shrubberies and ornamental trees, almost as green in the nighttime lighting as during the sunshine splendor of day. The line of singing women and girls stretched clear up to the front doors.
The carriage rocked to a stop, and Father opened the door and clambered out. He turned around to help me down, just as the chorus of females switched to “Keep Woman in Her Sphere,” another saucy anthem, sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.”
I spotted Frannie and Kate near the hotel’s front doors, but I turned my face away and pretended not to notice or hear them, even though my eyes swam with tears of gratitude.
Father offered me his elbow and helped me down to the ground. With my head held high—I swear, I grew four inches—we trod forward to my fate.
A wind snapped at my ears.
The world went black and tipped off balance, and the ladies’ voices seemed distorted into muffled wails. The scents of death and decay breathed in my face, and fiery torches guided our way to the hotel’s double doors, which stretched open before us like a pair of jaws with jagged teeth.
“I can’t do this.” I pulled back. “Something’s not right. It reminds me too much of death.”
“Don’t be silly.” Father tugged me onward. “Your fears are all in your head.”
With a firm pull, he wrenched me inside.
banner for the Oregon Association Opposed to the Extension of Suffrage to Women hung above a white semicircular stage, its letters as bold and red as knife wounds. Below the sign a twelve-piece orchestra strummed their bows at a dizzying pace for the brisk Viennese waltz careering around the waxed parquet floor.
The first dancer I saw was none other than Sadie Eiderling, dressed in a long scarlet gown, whirling about in the arms of bespectacled Teddy from her party. Sunken-Eyed John waltzed with a blond girl in black, while his sister, Eugenia, danced with the leering, long-nosed fellow who had called me a tart. They held their upper bodies as stiff as shop-window mannequins, and their faces appeared handsome and young in the bright wattage of the crystal chandeliers.
Whenever they veered into shadow, however, oh, how they changed. Their teeth, their burning eyes, the black-tinged blood on their lips—all their hidden savagery—triggered an ache in the marks on my neck.
Percy, primped like a peacock in a dark suit and tails, strutted our way with his hands folded behind his back. “Dr. Mead, Olivia, how lovely to see you. Pretty scarf, Olivia.”
“Father knows about my neck,” I said, and Percy turned and skedaddled to the opposite end of the room.
Father kept me pulled against his side and didn’t even mention a word about Percy. “I don’t see the hypnotist.” He gazed about the throng of Portland’s wealthiest, who danced and milled about and drank champagne at round tables draped in red, white, and blue. “Let’s go pay our regards to the Underhills.”
I scanned the room for Henry as well, but he was nowhere to be found amid all the jewels and stiff collars. Waiters in white coats glided about with trays of savory-smelling appetizers and flutes of bubbling gold liquid, but they and Father were the only non-society men in the entire place.
On our way to the Underhills, we passed Percy’s bald father, Judge Acklen, whom I recognized from the newspapers. He sipped a dark drink that resembled a vial of blood and appeared to be alone, until a vaporous haze of a woman, perhaps Mrs. Acklen, slipped into view beside him.
Father pressed onward to Mr. Underhill, who was conversing with another young couple I recognized from Sadie’s birthday party. They chatted in front of an eight-foot-tall ice sculpture carved like the Statue of Liberty, propped on a round table with a star-spangled cloth. The air around them chilled me more than our mudroom in January.