Lincoln's Dreams (12 page)

“Dr. Barton’s office,” a woman’s voice said.

“Good,” I said. “This is Jeff Johnston. I’m Thomas Broun’s researcher. I’d like to make an appointment with Dr. Barton.”

“Is this about a horse?” she said.

“No,” I said, squinting at the paper Broun had given me. “Is this Dr. Henry Barton’s office?”

“Yes.”

“Dr. Barton’s name was given to my employer, Thomas Broun, by Dr. Stone in Washington, D.C. I’m doing research on Mr. Broun’s new book, and I wanted to ask Dr. Barton a few questions.”

“Oh, how interesting,” she said. “I know my husband will want to see you. Let me look at the appointment book.” There was a pause. “Could it be next week sometime? He’s very busy. It’s spring, you know.”

I didn’t know why spring was so busy, but I didn’t say that. “What about in the evening?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Could you come out tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you know how to get here?” she said. “We’re out of town.” While she gave me directions, I thumbed through the yellow pages again. Yep. There he was, Dr. Henry Barton, DVM. Practice Limited to Large Animals. No wonder his wife had wanted to know if it was about a horse.

I put the phone book back in the drawer, picked up the brochure of “Historic Fredericksburg,” and took it into Annie’s room. “Dr. Barton can’t see me till tomorrow, so we’ve got the whole day. What do you want to see? Mary Washington lived here. We could go tour the house. There’s a mirror in her bedroom that …”

“I shouldn’t have come with you,” she said. She was sitting on the four-poster bed. It had a green-and-white sprigged muslin coverlet with a ruffled flounce. Annie had her hands flat on either side of her, trying not to clutch at the muslin flowers the way she had Broun’s African violet. “When I started having the dreams I was so scared I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to be alone at night, and Richard was trying to help me….”

And it just happened.

“I’m not Richard,” I said. “I don’t know what kind of ideas you’ve got about me, but I didn’t bring you down here for a fun weekend on Broun’s expense account. I brought you down here because you were running away from Richard, and I thought this was a safe place for you to hide. That’s it. I’m here to read the galleys for
The Duty Bound
and talk to some guy with long bones and big ears. I got a suite and registered us under a phony name because that way Richard couldn’t call and find out you were here, but if you want a separate room, I can …”

“That’s not it,” she said, crushing the coverlet in her clenched hands. “I didn’t think you … the suite is fine, Jeff. I’m glad you didn’t get separate rooms because I need somebody in the room at night. And you shouldn’t blame Richard for what happened. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten involved with him. It just made things worse.” She let go of the coverlet and looked up at me. “The dreams scared Richard. He was afraid they were hurting me, and so he tried to stop them, but I couldn’t let him. I have a duty to the dreams.”

“And you’re afraid I’ll get scared, too, and start putting Thorazine in your food. I told you, I’m not Richard.”

“I’m all right. The Thorazine’s almost out of my system. I know. I’m feeling a lot better. There’s no reason to go see a doctor. He’ll try to stop the dreams. He’ll put me on some other drug.”

“I didn’t say anything about going to see a doctor,”
I said helplessly, and then realized I had. “You mean Dr. Barton? That’s the guy Broun asked me to interview. He’s got acromegaly, the same growth disorder Lincoln had, and he’s not even a doctor. He’s a vet. When I called, his wife asked me if I wanted to see him about a horse.” I tried to smile at her. “I know it’s your duty to have the dreams. It’s my duty to take care of you while you do. I promise I won’t try to stop the dreams.”

“Okay,” she said. She smoothed out the coverlet where she had wrinkled it.

“Now how about some breakfast, and then we’ll hit all the hot spots of Fredericksburg? Mary Washington’s got this mirror that people flock from miles around to see.”

“All right,” she said, smiling. “Who was Mary Washington?”

“I don’t know,” I said, looking down at the brochure. I had twisted it into an unreadable wad of colored paper. “George Washington’s mother? Or his daughter maybe? Did George Washington have any daughters?” She was staring at the brochure. “I’ll pick up another one in the lobby.” I dropped it in the wastebasket.

“Annie, it’s going to be all right,” I said. “I’ll take care of you.”

“I know.”

Mary Washington was George’s mother. We had breakfast in a coffee shop across from the inn and then walked downtown to see Mary’s dressing glass and her sundial in a little house at the foot of the formal gardens of Kenmore.

I watched Annie anxiously all morning, but she looked fine. Better than fine. The warm spring air and exercise seemed to be doing her a world of good. She laughed at my comments on what sort of person Mary Washington had been, considering that her daughter had stuck her as far away from the house as possible, and said, “She probably talked as much about that awful dressing glass as the tour guide did.”

She smiled, a beautiful, untroubled smile. Oddly, it made her look older, more like a woman and less like a ravaged child, and I thought. Good, I’m doing the right thing.

But after lunch, browsing through our third antique shop, she started to look tired. She picked up a china cat and started to say something, and then stopped in mid-sentence and went over to the window of the antique shop and looked anxiously out toward the south as though she were waiting for A.P. Hill’s men to come up.

“Are you all right?” I said, worried that this was some side effect of the Thorazine.

She was still holding the china cat.

“Let’s go get some coffee,” I said. I’d been pouring coffee into her all day, in spite of Dr. Stone’s theory that caffeine caused bad dreams. I couldn’t think of any other way to get the Thorazine out of her system.

“I think I’ve had enough coffee,” she said, smiling. “I’m fine. I just have a headache.”

“Well, how about some aspirin then?”

“No, I’m fine. I’m just tired. Maybe we should go back to the inn.”

“Sure thing. Do you want to walk? If you’re tired, I can run back and get the car. Or we can call a taxi.”

“I don’t think Fredericksburg’s got taxis,” she said, putting the china cat down carefully on a drop-leaf table. “There isn’t any reason to panic, Jeff. It’s a sinus headache. I get hay fever. It’s probably the apple blossoms.”

She seemed fine on the walk home. A breeze had come up, and it blew the light hair back from her face and colored her cheeks. “This is a pretty town,” she said, “all these old houses. Was there a battle here? In the Civil War?”

“Yes.” I pointed at a dilapidated blue Ford sedan with a hand-lettered sign on its side as it drove past. “I told you they had taxis in Fredericksburg.”

We went up the outside staircase of the inn to our rooms. A back cat with white paws was sunning itself on the second step from the top. It made no effort at all to get out of our way.

“Hello, there,” Annie said, reaching down to pet it. The cat closed its eyes and allowed itself to be petted as if it were doing Annie a favor. “I’ve always wished I could have a cat. My father was allergic to them.”

“Your father?”

“Yes. They gave him hives.”

“You know, I don’t know anything about you. Your family, where you come from, what you were doing before you started having Lee’s dreams. Where do you live?”

She straightened up, her smile gone. She looked the way she had that night when Richard had been ranting about Lincoln’s psychological problems. “A little town. About the size of Fredericksburg.”

“Broun has a cat,” I said hastily. “It’s a selfish brute. Like this one here.” I chucked the cat under its black chin and walked on up the stairs to open the door for Annie, hating Richard at that moment more than I had ever hated anyone.

I didn’t know anything at all about Annie. Correction: I knew she had a father who was allergic to cats, and that she came from a little town, and from the look on her face that was all she was going to tell me. I didn’t blame her. Richard knew all about her. If it wasn’t on the forms she had filled out at the Institute or the records her doctor had sent, Richard had found it out in his therapy sessions, and whatever he knew he had used: “I see your father died last year. Did you feel responsible for his death? What did he look like? Did he have a white beard? Like Robert E. Lee’s? Isn’t that what your dream is really all about?”

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, he had probably spent the morning calling those numbers on the forms. Next of Kin Not Living at Above Address,
and demanding to know where she was. No wonder she didn’t want to tell me anything. I might turn out to be another Richard, and when she ran from me, she would want to make sure I couldn’t follow.

“Broun’s really going to be mad when he gets back,” I said, opening the door to my room and smiling reassuringly. “I gave his cat the leftover shrimp doodads.”

She followed me into the room. “What did they taste like?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want Broun to find out, but I think they’re awful. I was afraid that night of the reception he was actually going to force us to eat some of them. Now you go ahead and take a nap if you’re tired. Is there anything I can get you?”

She rubbed her hand across her forehead. “Jeff, I think I could use some aspirin after all.”

“I’ll see if I’ve got any,” I said, knowing full well I hadn’t packed any in the mad dash down here, and went into my room. I had almost offered to go get some for her, but there was something I had to do first. I shut the door and called Broun’s answering machine.

Broun’s California-fog message repeated itself, and Richard had called.

“I’m calling to tell you that I’m not angry about your getting me hauled in for questioning by the police this morning,” the Good Shrink said. “I know you felt threatened, and I know Annie feels threatened, but I want to reassure you that my only concern is my patient and her welfare.”

The psychiatrist must convince the patient he has her own best interests at heart.

“Running away isn’t the answer, Jeff. You have to bring Annie back so she can get the proper treatment. I know you choose not to believe me, but this neurotic fantasy of hers is dangerous. She’s completely dissociated herself from her dreams. She told me they’re Robert E. Lee’s dreamy. She’s on the edge of a complete psychotic break, and taking her to California is only going to precipitate it.”

Good. He thought we were in California. That meant he wasn’t going to show up here while I was gone. I didn’t want to leave Annie alone, but I had to find out about the Thorazine Richard had given her. I hung up and went back into Annie’s room. She was standing by the window, looking out at the trees that lined the river.

“I didn’t bring any aspirin. I’ll run get you some. I saw a drugstore on the way back here.”

“You don’t have to…”

“I’ve got to go anyway. I forgot to pack my razor, too, and, unlike Broun, I have no desire to grow a beard. Is there anything else I can get you?”

“No.” She managed a fair smile. She was looking flushed again.

“You’re sure you’ll be okay here? I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. She tried for a better smile. A truck rumbled past the front of the inn, and Annie raised her head and gazed out over the trees as if what she had heard was the low thunder of artillery fire.

I took the car, bought the razor and some aspirin at a convenience store, and then drove downtown to the library. I’d seen it on our way back to the inn, a three-story brick building that looked like it had been a school.

The reference books were in a drab basement room lit by fluorescent lights. The only drug compendium they had was badly out-of-date, and it didn’t say anything about how to get Thorazine out of a person’s system, but it said abrupt withdrawal from a high dosage could cause nausea and dizziness.

It didn’t say what a high dosage was, and it didn’t particularly matter anyway since I didn’t have any idea how much Richard had given her, but how could he have given her any at all? The compendium described it as being just as dangerous as I thought it was.

Dozens of contraindications and warnings were
listed, drowsiness and jaundice and fainting spells, and there was a note set off in double borders that read, “Sudden death, apparently due to cardiac arrest, has been reported, but there is not sufficient evidence to establish a relationship between such deaths and the administration of the drug.” I wondered if in the ten years since the book had been published they had managed to establish a relationship, and if Richard cared.

He had to have known exactly what Thorazine could do to Annie, and yet he had given it to her anyway. Why? It wasn’t used to cure mental patients. It was used to keep them under control.

I couldn’t find anything about headaches or fever in the list of side effects, although it said infections could result after the fourth week. All of the side effects and warnings seemed to be related to long-term use of the drug, and the last page reassured me. In spite of all the warnings, it was recommended in the treatment of everything from hiccups to lockjaw.

I went back to the inn and found Annie sitting on the outside steps, playing with the black cat. “My headache’s gone,” she said when I handed her the aspirin. “I feel much better.”

We ate dinner at the coffee shop where we’d had breakfast. “How are you feeling now?” I asked her when the waitress brought our check. “Have you been dizzy at all today?”

“No.”

“Nauseated?”

“No. Why?”

“You still may have some Thorazine in your system.”

“I don’t see how,” she said. “Between you and the waitress I’ve drunk enough coffee today to get anything out of my system. You don’t have to worry about the Thorazine.”

“Okay,” I said, picking up the check. “Then I won’t.”

She stood up and looked across at the inn as if she were afraid of it. “Now all we have to worry about is the dreams.”

I went back to the table to leave the tip. Her paper napkin was lying on the seat of the booth. She had shredded it into tiny pieces.