The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers Read Free Book Online

preparations, and she was still dressed casually in a green cotton dress. With her shoes off she seemed even shorter than usual, making her abundant figure and narrow waist even more startling. Her long brown hair was still slightly damp from a recent washing.
    "You're nearly a full day late," she said after she'd kissed him. "Break a wheel?"
    "Delayed by a rough delivery," he told her. "A charity ward case—her family only got her to the hospital after some midwife had made an almost fatal hash of the job." He sat down on the window seat. "I finally got to see your sister, out front just now. She really doesn't look well."
    Julia sat beside him and took his hand. "Oh, poor Josephine is just upset that you're taking me away. I'll miss her, too, but I've got a life of my own. She's got to . . . become Josephine." Julia shrugged. "Whoever that may turn out to be."
    "Somebody in some trouble, I think. How long has she been doing that mechanical trick?"
    "Oh, ever since she was a baby, practically—she asked me once when we were children what I did to keep the night-scaries from getting me when I was in bed at night. I asked her what
she
did, and she said she would rock back and forth like a pump-arm or a clockwork or something, so that the scaries would say to themselves," Julia assumed a deep voice, "oh,
this
isn't human,
this
isn't prey—this is some kind of a
construction
." Julia smiled sadly.
    "She did it out in the yard a little while ago, though, when your father mentioned your mother. She could hardly have thought the night-boogers were after her then."
    "No, she isn't afraid of ghosty things anymore, poor thing. Now she just does her clockwork trick when things happen that she can't bear—I guess she reckons that if Josephine can't stand whatever's going on right now, it's best if Josephine stops existing for a while, until it's over."
    "Jesus." Crawford looked out the window at the sunlit leaves in the high branches. "Is that . . . I mean, did you and your father . . . you
have
tried to help her over this, this thing about her, your mother, have you? Because—"
    "Of course we have." Julia spread her hands. "But it's never done any good. We've
always
told her that my mother's death wasn't her fault. She just won't listen—ever since she was a little girl she's had the idea that she killed her."
    Crawford looked out the window at the path on which he'd first seen Josephine, and he shook his head.
    "We really have tried to help her, Michael. You know me, you know I would. But it's useless—and really,
try
to imagine what we've gone through living with her! Good lord, until only a few years ago she'd every now and then believe she was me—it was humiliating, she'd wear my clothes, visit my friends—I can't . . .
tell
you how I felt. You must have known some young girls when you were growing up, you must have seen how easily their feelings get hurt! Honestly, I really thought sometimes that I'd have to run away, make new friends somewhere else. And of course my friends had a fine time then pretending to mistake
me
for
her
."
    Crawford nodded sympathetically. "Say, she's not going to do it now, is she?" He winced at the thought of Josephine—making some scene by pretending that
she
was his bride.
    Julia laughed. "That would be dramatic, wouldn't it? No, I finally stopped it by following her one day and confronting her as she was harassing some of my friends. And even then she tried to continue the . . .
pretense
for a minute or so. My friends nearly choked, they were laughing so hard. It was hard for me to do, to humiliate both of us that way, but it worked."
    Julia stood up and smiled. "Now you're not supposed to be in here—scat and get dressed, we'll be seeing each other soon enough."
     
    The wedding was performed at nine o'clock that evening in the wide Carmody drawing room, with the bride and groom kneeling on cushions on the floor. During almost the entire ceremony the late summer sun slanted in through the