Lincoln's Dreams

I had felt all along that these calls, these theories, were leading somewhere, that they were all part of a pitch to persuade me to bring Annie back, but now I was not so sure. The theories didn’t fit together. Sometimes they even contradicted each other, and he jumped from one to another with the same quiet urgency of a man recounting a dream. He still used his Good Shrink voice, but, listening to him, I had the feeling that it was not me he was trying to convince, but himself.

“I talked to a Jungian psychiatrist today,” Broun said after Richard ran down. He pronounced Jung to rhyme with “hung.”

“He’s got a theory that our subconscious is really a storage bin for everything that’s ever happened in the past. Jung’s collective unconscious, only he says it’s not just common racial memories, it’s everything.”

He sounded excited, agitated. Maybe he was getting obsessed with Lincoln’s dreams. “Dates, people, places. It’s all down there, but people only dream bits and pieces of it, and even then something has to trigger the memories. That’s where Lincoln’s acromegaly comes in. He says a hormonal imbalance can unlock the collective unconscious. I know, I know, this sounds like the fortune-teller, but I think he’s on to something.”

I erased the messages, thinking about what he’d said. If a hormonal imbalance could unlock the collective unconscious, maybe a chemical imbalance could, too, and that was where the drugs came in. It would explain why the dreams had suddenly gotten clearer when Annie was on the Elavil. Maybe the phenobarbital had started to let down some kind of guard in the subconscious, and then the Elavil had completed the process, so that Lee’s dreams came through loud and clear.

If that was the case, then the dreams would gradually lose their power and clarity now that Annie was off the drugs, and the best thing to do was to wait them out till the chemical balance in her brain was restored and the dreams faded away.

I shut off the lights and went back into Annie’s room to wait it out with her, and was asleep in the chair within minutes. When I woke up it was three-thirty by the lighted dial of my watch. Annie was still sleeping peacefully, though she had flung most of the covers off. I thought, with the confused logic of the half-awake, that I must somehow have slept through her dream, but her breathing wasn’t the heavy, almost drugged-sounding breathing she had after the dreams, and my next thought, even more confused, was that I had stopped the dreams simply by telling her what caused them, and went back to sleep.

I must have heard the door slam because when I woke up again I was already halfway to it, only barely glancing at the bed because I knew she wasn’t there. I had it open and was out in the hall in time to hear the outside door close. The outside door that opened on the fire escape.

I ran to the end of the hall and pushed down on the metal bar. The bar gave, but the door wouldn’t open. Annie must be pushing on it from the outside. Or be lying crumpled against it. “Annie!” I shouted through the door, and then stopped. You weren’t supposed to startle a sleepwalker. If they were somewhere dangerous, on a cliff or something, they might fall. I tore back down the hall, down the front stairs, and through the empty lobby to the front door. It was locked, but from the inside. I got it open and raced around to the side of the building.

Annie was standing at the top of the stairs in her white nightgown, looking like a ghost in the gray, indistinct light of dawn. The cat was sitting on the top step, watching her.

“Annie,” I said quietly from the bottom of the stairs, “you’re having another dream.”

She was looking toward the Rappahannock. Fog lay along the line of trees like a gray blanket. “Goodbye, Katie,” she said with a catch in her voice. “Promise you’ll come back.”

“Stay there,” I said, “I’m coming.” I started up the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other held out to catch her if she fell. “What are you dreaming, Annie?”

She half-raised her hand in its full white sleeve as if to wave. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said, and then buried her face in her hand and began to cry. The cat watched her incuriously.

I stepped onto the landing and put my hand gently on her shoulder. “Annie, can you wake up? You’re having a bad dream.”

She took her hand away from her face and turned to me, her face alight. “No tears at Arlington!” she said brightly, “no tears,” and flung her arms around my neck and sobbed.

“Annie, don’t cry!” I put my arms around her. Sobs shuddered through her. “Honey, oh, don’t cry!”

She clung tighter to me, shivering in the thin nightgown. I patted her back and reached behind me for the door with one hand. I was afraid it would be locked from the outside, and how would I ever get her down these narrow stairs and back inside the inn? The metal bar gave under the pressure of my hand and opened. “Let’s go inside, Annie,” I said. “It’s cold out here, honey. Let’s go back to the room.”