The Cure for Dreaming(75)

They didn’t answer, of course, so I continued pacing.

“No one should ever be silenced. Not you. Not me. Not any other woman or man. Please, open your eyes and see”—I stopped and swept my gaze across every single one of them—“we’re all on the same side. We’re all being treated as second-class citizens. Why are you just sitting beside your husbands and fathers and accepting this rubbish?”

Their dead-eyed lack of a response troubled me more than if they had shouted vicious retorts. I left the hospital and walked the length of Irving Street for the better part of an hour, crunching through thick piles of leaves and brushing my hand across brittle overhead branches.

When I returned—no wiser or calmer than when I’d left—I found Genevieve standing on the front steps in Henry’s black coat, her hands hidden inside the sleeves. A gentle wind tugged on her skirts and loose hair.

“The fool still wasn’t eating or drinking,” she called down to me. “The doctor said he had an attack of fatigue and anxiety. They’re feeding him his third meal since his arrival right now, and he’s dopey with laudanum. His chest hurt him too much to breathe.”

A smile stretched across my face. “He’s alive, then?”

She nodded.

I ran up the steps. “You saw him?”

“He’s eating and restoring those ladies’ voices as we speak. The men’s ward is a circus, but the staff members were getting tired of seeing millionaires’ wives and daughters glaring like vultures in the lobby.”

“May I see him?”

She shook her head. “Not until he’s discharged. They made an exception for the hypnotized women.”

I joined her inside, and another long bout of painful waiting ensued, interrupted early on by the society ladies in their red, white, and blue dresses, parading out to the hospital’s exit from somewhere in the back. They spoke again—I heard complaints about sore backs and idiotic husbands mainly— but the return of those voices allowed me to better breathe.

Before she reached the front door with the others, Sadie turned her face my way, and I braced myself for bared teeth or a verbal dart that would make me feel even worse than I already did about the silencing.

She offered neither.

But I saw her—the true Sadie, a newer version. The rest of the hospital dulled around her, and she brightened before my eyes, a girl in plaid trousers and a thick red tie, with a bouquet of yellow ribbons pinned to her left shoulder. I swear she even offered me a smile of camaraderie, but perhaps that was my imagination stretching too far.

In any case, Mademoiselle Sadie Eiderling, the beer baron’s daughter, left the hospital that morning a burgeoning suffragist and a modern woman.

Of that, I’m certain.





ear three o’clock in the afternoon, Henry materialized. Not from a cloud of orange smoke on a stage but from the back hallway of the hospital—a far more impressive feat, considering the state of him the night before. His red vest and black necktie dangled over his arm, and he wore just his striped shirtsleeves and trousers and a pair of brown suspenders.

Genevieve and I sprang up from the bench and hurried toward him. I lagged behind a couple of feet so she could embrace him first.

She clamped his middle like a vise. “Are you all right?”

“I am,” he told her. “No need to worry anymore.”

She lowered her arms, and Henry moved on to me with an embarrassed-looking smile and a warm hug. His lips nuzzled against my hair near the top of my head.

“That wasn’t part of the plan, Monsieur Reverie,” I said into the soft sheen of his shirt.

“Those women were in a hell of a panic, weren’t they?”

“We all were.”

“I know.” He rubbed my back. “I’m sorry.”

“What about the hospital bill, Henry?” asked Genevieve.

“I told them to send it to Anne’s house in San Francisco.”

“Did Genevieve tell you about Frannie’s collection?” I asked.

“Yes, that was far too kind. I’m deeply grateful.” He stepped back and regarded my purple gown, his hand in mine. “You never went home last night?”

“I’m never going back home. Father knows.”

“New York City, then?”

“Yes.” I gave a small nod and a weak smile.

He swallowed as if tasting a bitter pill.

Genevieve cleared her throat. “Our bags are at the hotel. We still have the rooms if you want to change first. There’s a nearby streetcar if you’re too tired to walk all that way.”

Henry dropped his hand away from mine. “Then let’s get going. I don’t want to think about this departure much longer.”




BRUSHED AND SCRUBBED AND DRESSED IN MY ORDINARY brown skirt and winter coat, I stood in front of Henry and Genevieve on the vast tile floor of Portland’s Union Depot, waiting to purchase a railroad ticket that would take me up through Washington and then east. By the time I reached the ticket counter, my hands were sweating. I dropped my slick coins all over the place.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the grandfatherly man working the counter, and I caught a nickel before it clanked to the ground. “I’m a little nervous.”

“Going on a grand adventure?” he asked.