The Cure for Dreaming(74)

Mrs. Underhill slugged him in the arm.

“Ouch! Margaret!”

Eugenia shot up and yelled without words as well.

“I don’t know what either of you are saying.” Mr. Underhill scratched his head. “This is all very frustrating. We’ll check back here when you’re calmer. Come along, John.”

The gentlemen grabbed hold of each other and retreated as quickly as they’d arrived.

Sadie tore open one of the baskets and scooped out wrapped breads, cakes, and crab salad.

My stomach refused to register hunger. Beside me on our shared bench, Genevieve held her arms around herself and shivered.

“Do you know how to undo the hypnosis?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Uncle Lewis only ever wanted me to provide the accompaniment. At most, he’d make me the human plank and show how he could break boulders with a sledgehammer on top of me.”

I winced. “Oh. Well . . . then I suppose I’ve committed my worst transgression yet.”

“What’s that?”

I leaned forward and sank my head into my hands. “I made a group of women entirely dependent on a man.”


OUR QUIET VIGIL FOR HENRY STRETCHED LATE INTO THE night, with no news of his health from any of the doctors. Mrs. Underhill shared some of the food with Genevieve and me, an act that drove another spike of guilt through my heart. These women were my equals, I realized, as we sat there and dined as a group in the lobby. Despite our differences in wealth and political opinions, they were no better than me.

And . . . I was no better than them.

The nurse at the front desk fetched us glasses of water around eleven thirty, but she left her station at midnight, and the hospital slept. The lobby was transformed into an uncomfortable bedroom for seven females in lace and silk gowns, plus a fifteen-year-old girl in a gray traveling dress who should have been on her way to San Francisco.

I kept my arm around Genevieve on our creaking bench and refused to drift off until I heard her soft snores against my shoulder. Her flushed red cheeks radiated the heat of a fever.

Both Reveries were slipping out of my reach.


AT ONE POINT DURING THE NIGHT, I SLEPT ENOUGH TO dream I was typing up an article for a suffrage newspaper in an apartment overlooking the brick buildings of Barnard College. Below my opened window, young women walked the green grounds with books tucked under their arms.

Mother—her curls still red and soft, her white dress fragrant with the tea-rose perfume I remembered from our rocking-chair days—walked over to me with a smile on her lips.

“This came for you, Livie,” she said, and she set a postcard on the desk beside my typewriter.

On the front of the card was an illustration of Market Street in San Francisco, with cable cars trekking down the center of the road between flag-topped skyscrapers.

I flipped the postcard over to read the note.

All is well, ma chérie.


I awoke with a start and disturbed Genevieve with my elbow.

“What’s happening?” she asked—just a shadow of a girl in the hospital’s dim, early-morning light.

“Genevieve,” I said in a whisper, “do you remember Henry saying, because of my Halloween birthday, I’m a charmed individual who can read dreams?”

“Mmm. I think so.”

“Was he making that up?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged against my arm. “Sometimes he just seems like a talented boy with a wild imagination. Other times . . . I don’t know . . . Sometimes all his magic feels real.”

“Well”—I snuggled back down beside her, this time with my head on her shoulder—“if it is true, then we’re going to be all right. Soon.”

“Hmm. I like your dreams,” she said, and we eased back into sleep a while longer.


DAYLIGHT PUSHED THROUGH THE DRAFTY LOBBY windows sometime after seven in the morning. Across the room from me, the anti-suffragists wilted across the chairs and the benches, their colors as filmy as the delicate wings of moths. Genevieve rested her head against the armrest beside me and wavered between light and shadow.

The echo of approaching footsteps stirred us all out of our melancholy.

A doctor in a white coat similar to Father’s dentistry garb approached a new nurse at the front desk—a petite woman with big dark eyes who reminded me of ladies from Coca-Cola advertisements.

“Miss Reverie,” called the nurse, and all eight of us lobby dwellers sat up straight.

Genevieve, now a solid streak of a girl, jumped to her feet and walked over to the front desk. The doctor put his arm around her back, rumpling her long golden hair, and whisked her off to the far reaches of the hospital. I imagined her traveling in the central elevator that transported patients up and down floors without them needing to climb out of beds, and I hoped she was soaring upward, not down to the morgue.

Oh, Lord.

The morgue.

I stood up, wrapped my arms around my ribs, and paced the worn rug the way the silent anti-suffragists had done the night before. Sadie and the other girls and their mothers watched me with fear in the blacks of their pupils. When I wiped away tears, their eyes watered, and they sniffed along with me.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I spun in the opposite direction with a swift whoosh of purple satin. “You were all just so cruel. Why’d you have to be so awful to me?”