Lincoln's Dreams

“Oh, yes. Eating causes certain enzymes to be released into the dreamer’s system, and those trigger…

The phone rang. I turned and looked at the answering machine. Broun put his pen down. Dr. Stone leaned forward in his chair watching both of us.

“Do you want to get that?” Broun asked.

“No,” I said. I pushed the message button. “It’s probably only the librarian. She promised to get me some information on Lincoln’s dreams. I’ll call her back.”

The phone rang a second time, finally, and the message light came on. I could hear the click as the recorder started its spiel, telling whoever it was that there was no one here and would they leave a message at the sound of the tone. And who was it? Annie, saying, “I had another dream”? Or Richard, calling to tell me to stop interfering with his treatment? The message light went out.

I turned back to Dr. Stone. “You were saying?”

“Digestion can have an effect on dreaming because the digestive enzymes in the bloodstream trigger chemical changes in the brain.”

“What about drugs?” I said. “Drugs cause chemical changes in the blood, too, don’t they? Could Lincoln’s dreams have been the effect of some drug he was taking?”

“Yes, certainly. Laudanum was known to cause—”

“What about Elavil? Could it cause dreams?”

He frowned. “No, actually Elavil represses the dream cycle. All the antidepressants do, and of course the barbiturates: Seconal, phenobarbital. Nembutal. The patient usually doesn’t dream at all when he’s on those drugs. Of course, when he’s taken off them, the number and vividness increase dramatically, so I suppose you could say in that respect they cause dreams. But of course those are modern drugs,” he said, looking at Broun. “Lincoln wouldn’t have taken any of them.”

“What do you mean, increase in vividness?” I asked.

“The drugs produce a dream deficit that is compensated for by a dream rebound as soon as the patient is taken off the drugs. The patient experiences what we call a ‘storm of dreams,’ for several days, powerful, frightening nightmares that rapidly succeed each other. It’s the same thing that happens when a patient’s been deprived of sleep for several days. We usually advise against abrupt discontinuation of antidepressants and sedatives to avoid triggering a storm of dreams.” He gave me a look almost as sharp as one of Broun’s. “Are you on Elavil?”

“No,” I said. “Lincoln had insomnia after Willie died. I thought maybe his doctor might have prescribed something to make him sleep that gave him bad dreams, so I looked up ‘Insomnia,’ and it said Elavil was a recommended treatment, but obviously I was in the wrong century.” I stood up. “Speaking of sleep and drugs and digestion, would anybody like some coffee? Or does coffee give you bad dreams, too?”

“As a matter of fact, caffeine has been shown to have marked effects on dreaming.”

“I’ll make it decaffeinated,” I said, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

Broun had another phone there, a separate line. I called the number of the phone in the upstairs study, and before it could ring, punched in the remote code that would play back the message. The only message on the machine was Broun’s. “I’m on my way down from New York, Jeff I should be there around ten. I’m meeting with a Dr. Stone from the Sleep Institute at eleven. He’s been doing dream research in California, and I thought I’d see what he had to say about Lincoln’s dreams.”

I put the coffee on and tried to call Annie. There was no answer. I found a tray and put Styrofoam cups and the cream pitcher and sugar bowl on it. I tried Annie’s number again. Still no answer.

She’s sleeping, I told myself. Her subconscious is trying to make up for the REM sleep she lost when she was on the Elavil. It was a logical enough explanation. When Richard took her off the Elavil, she had had a “storm of dreams,” that was all. The dead Union soldiers and the horse with its legs shot off were nothing more than her subconscious trying to make up for lost time. When her dream deficit got caught up, she would stop dreaming about lost dispatches and Springfield rifles, and there was nothing to worry about.

But I had asked her, “When did Richard take you off the Elavil?” and she had told me it was after the dreams got suddenly clearer and more frightening, not before. Besides, the “storm of dreams” was only supposed to last a few days. Annie had had the dream about Antietam at least two weeks after Richard had taken her off the Elavil. And she had been dreaming about the dead Union soldiers for over a year.

Broun’s cat had followed me downstairs. I looked in the refrigerator to see what the caterers had left behind and found half a plate of soggy crackers with shrimp salad on them. I set it on the floor and tried to call Annie again, and then went back upstairs with the tray.