Julia by Peter Straub Page B

had not opened her eyes when Markhad spoken, though all the others had. Mark now sat behind them, still facing Mrs. Fludd.
    “I need your help, Mrs. Lofting,” said Mrs. Fludd softly. “Make your mind empty, completely empty and white. Let nothing enter it.” Her voice was slowing and becoming deeper in timbre. Julia opened one eye and saw, looking up toward the couch, Mrs. Fludd’s heavy jowls outlined by the soft light behind her. Her hair was a white gauze. She seemed to have become heavier and older. Julia closed her eyes again and thought of a white saucer.
    Miss Tooth, at the left end of the seated line, began to breathe stertorously. Lily’s hand still lay utterly passively in Julia’s. After a bit, Julia felt an ache in her thighs. Her eyes closed, she began to see flashes of scenes, people’s faces or landscapes appearing momentarily before her and then melting into other scenes. Moses Herzog, his face that of an elderly English professor at Smith, metamorphosed into Blake’s flea. The hideous features of the flea in turn were transformed into Magnus’s face. By an effort of will, Julia dismissed this last vision—she thought of clouds covering that big, powerful face, obscuring it. When the clouds blew off, they revealed one of the lounging, shabby men who had been in her dream. Now the man was her father, and he examined her with an expression of exhausted pity. She could see herself standing on the black tarpaper of the rooftop, Kate dead in her arms. Both of her thighs ached; the right was on the verge of cramp. Julia lurched to one side and twisted her legs out before her. Mr. Piggot twitched at her hand in rebuke.
    Opening her eyes, Julia again saw Mrs. Fludd, who now sat slumped in the chair as if she had fallen asleep. Her mouth was open, black and toothless in the fleshy mass of her face surrounded by the penumbra of her hair. The woman’s squatbody was as if compressed—“slumped” was the wrong word, for she appeared to be under gathering tension.
    “Close eyes,” she said in a gravelly voice. Julia, startled, immediately pressed her eyes shut. She heard Mrs. Fludd’s heavy boots scuffing on the carpet. She was again on the rooftop, now alone with the men. Her father, who had died one summer while she and Magnus were in Perigord, turned his face from her. Internally, she began to speak to him, as she frequently did when moved by guilt.
You were a decent man, but too forceful. I can see that now. I married Magnus because he had your power, he could dominate like you, and then I saw what a weapon your power was. But Daddy, I loved you. I would have gone to your funeral if I had known, I want you to forgive me for being away, I loved you always, please forgive me, grant me that.…
 As the words became rote, the vision dissolved. She was alone on the roof, oppressed by the comprehensive atmosphere of moral loss. All was grimy, all was inferior and flawed. She bent her head. The scene turned to opaque blackness through which she fell: Julia was dizzied, and seemed actually to be slowly falling. The room seemed to have turned about; surely she was now facing the front window instead of Mrs. Fludd? She resisted the temptation to open her eyes. Again, she imagined the white saucer—cool, without blemish, entirely surface—and filled her mind with it.
    For a time the only noises in the room were Miss Tooth’s strained breathing and the hushing noise of Mrs. Fludd’s boot scuffing the carpet. Julia grew calmer and wondered what Mark, behind them, was doing and thinking in the darkness. He had begun to be uneasy after he had crossed the room to sit beside Mrs. Fludd. She must have said something to him—as she had to Julia. And now how did they look to him, seated on the carpet like fools before the massive image ofMrs. Fludd? She could scarcely restrain the impulse to turn her head to look for him. Mr. Piggot’s boneless hand, stirring momentarily in hers, returned her to her