Lincoln's Dreams

“She asked me to drive her out,” I said. “She told me she asked you to take her, and you refused. So I figure you had your chance.”

“Annie’s emotionally unstable. By taking her out there, you could have sent her into a complete psychotic break.”

“Like that nutso Lincoln?” I said. “You told Broun old Abe was heading for a psychotic break because he’d dreamed, of all things, about his own assassination. Are you trying to tell me that anybody who dreams about the Civil War is crazy?”

“She’s not dreaming about the Civil War.”

“Then where in the hell did the Union soldiers come from?”

“You did this, didn’t you? While I was upstairs talking to Broun, you were filling her head with a lot of nonsense about soldiers being buried in the front lawn out at Arlington, encouraging this neurotic fantasy of hers. You told her Robert E. Lee had a cat, didn’t you?”

“He did have a cat.”

“And as soon as you told Annie that, she told you the cat in her dream was exactly like Robert E. Lee’s cat, didn’t she?”

I didn’t answer him. I was thinking of Annie clutching the African violet and saying, “Did Robert E. Lee have a cat? A yellow cat? With darker stripes?”

“During dream recall the dreamer’s extremely suggestive,” Richard said. “Anything that’s told to the dreamer then can influence his memory of the dream. It’s called secondary elaboration.”

“Like telling her she’d shot somebody with a cap pistol?” I said. “The Springfield rifle had a percussion cap, did you know that? It looked just like a kid’s cap pistol. The Springfield rifle was used in the Civil War.”

“Did you tell her that?” he said, sounding almost frightened. “You had no business telling her that. You’re interfering with her therapy. As her psychiatrist, I have a duty to …”

“To what? Hit on your patients?”

“I wasn’t trying to hit on her, damn it. It just happened. I was trying to help her. She was afraid to be alone at night. It just happened. Damn it, you’ve seen her.”

I’d seen her, standing in the solarium in her gray coat saying, “You won’t believe me either.” I would have driven her out to Arlington right then, in spite of the snow, if she had asked me to. I would have scaled the locked gates and broken into the attic with an ax to look for Lee’s lost cat. I would have done anything to help her. Help her. Not take advantage of her fear and her helplessness.

“So you told her she was crazy and then climbed on top of her?” I said. “Is that how you helped her?”

“Keep away from her. You’re interfering with her therapy.”

“Is that what you call taking your patients home and fucking them when they’re too scared and tired to say no? What other therapies are you using, Doctor? Have you thought about drugging her so she’ll cooperate?”

He waited so long to say anything that even Broun’s patient answering machine would have switched off. I waited.

“You know what’s really ironic,” he said bitterly, “I tried to call you last week, but you weren’t there,” and hung up.

I looked out at the snow some more and then called the clinic to find out if Richard had phoned me from there. His secretary said, “I’m sorry. He’s not in right now. Can I take a message?”

“Will he be in at all today?”

“Well …” she said as if she were looking at an appointment book. “He has a general staff meeting at four, but that may be canceled because of the weather.”

I didn’t wait for her to ask for my name. “Thanks. I’m a friend of his from out of town, and I’ve got to catch a plane in about five minutes. I just thought I’d give him a call while I was in Washington.”

The phone rang as soon as I pressed down the button. I had the crazy idea that Richard had been listening in on the call and was going to threaten me again, but it was Broun.

“I didn’t make it up here with the last two pages of that damned scene,” he said. “It’s probably on my desk. Can you look for it?”

I rummaged through the pile on his desk. He had stuck it in Randall’s Lincoln the President. “It’s right here,” I said. “Do you want me to Federal Express it?”

“There’s no time for that. They’ve got the book all set up to print. If these changes don’t go in right now, they don’t go in at all. You’ll have to read it over the phone. McLaws and Herndon are set up to record your call at this number.” He gave me the number.

“Are you going to try to come home tonight?”

“No. It’s a real blizzard up here,” he said, and then seemed to catch something in my voice. “Are you all right?”

No, I thought. I’ve just had a conversation I would never have believed I’d have with my old roommate over a girl I’ve just met, and I want you to come home and tell me she’s not crazy. I want you to come home and tell me I’m not crazy. “I’m fine,” I said. “I was just wondering.”

He still sounded worried. “You got my message this morning, didn’t you? You didn’t go out to Arlington in this mess?”

“No,” I said. “The weather’s terrible here, too.”