Lincoln's Dreams

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.”