Wizard and glass - Stephen King [168]
“All right, Susan,” she said in a calm, modulated voice. The girl would never know what a strain it was to achieve that tone, let alone maintain it. Unless she was faced with a willful teenager of her own one day, that was. “What’s fashed thee so?”
Susan turned to her—Cordelia Delgado, just sitting there in her rocker, calm as a stone. In that moment Susan felt she could fly at her aunt and claw her thin, self-righteous face to strings, screaming This is your fault! Yours! All yours! She felt soiled—no, that wasn’t strong enough; she felt filthy, and nothing had really happened. In a way, that was the horror of it. Nothing had really happened yet.
“It shows?” was all she said.
“Of course it does,” Cordelia replied. “Now tell me, girl. Has he been on thee?”
“Yes. . .no. . .no.”
Aunt Cord sat in her chair, knitting in her lap, eyebrows raised, waiting for more.
At last Susan told her what had happened, speaking in a tone that was mostly flat—a little tremble intruded toward the end, but that was all. Aunt Cord began to feel a cautious sort of relief. Perhaps more goose-girl nerves was all it came down to, after all!
The substitute gown, like all the substitutes, hadn’t been finished off; there was too much else to do. Maria had therefore turned Susan over to blade-faced Conchetta Morgen-stern, the chief seamstress, who had led Susan into the downstairs sewing room without saying anything—if saved words were gold, Susan had sometimes reflected, Conchetta would be as rich as the Mayor’s sister was reputed to be.
Blue Dress With Beads was draped over a headless dressmaker’s dummy crouched beneath one low eave, and although Susan could see ragged places on the hem and one small hole around to the back, it was by no means the tattered ruin she had been expecting.
“Can it not be saved?” she asked, rather timidly.
“No,” Conchetta said curtly. “Get out of those trousers, girl. Shirt, too.”
Susan did as she was bid, standing barefoot in the cool little room with her arms crossed over her bosom . . . not that Conchetta had ever shown the slightest interest in what she had, back or front, above or below.
Blue Dress With Beads was to be replaced by Pink Dress With Appliqué, it seemed. Susan stepped into it, raised the straps, and stood patiently while Conchetta bent and measured and muttered, sometimes using a bit of chalk to write numbers on a wall-stone, sometimes grabbing a swag of material and pulling it tighter against Susan’s hip or waist, checking the look in the full-length mirror on the far wall. As always during this process, Susan slipped away mentally, allowing her mind to go where it wanted. Where it wanted to go most frequently these days was into a daydream of riding along the Drop with Roland, the two of them side by side, finally stopping in a willow grove she knew that overlooked Hambry Creek.
“Stand there still as you can,” Conchetta said curtly. “I be back.”
Susan was hardly aware she was gone; was hardly aware she was in Mayor’s House at all. The part of her that really mattered wasn’t there. That part was in the willow grove with Roland. She could smell the faint half-sweet, half-acrid perfume of the trees and hear the quiet gossip of the stream as they lay down together forehead to forehead. He traced the shape of her face with the palm of his hand before taking her in his arms . . .
This daydream was so strong that at first Susan responded to the arms which curled around her waist from behind, arching her back as they first caressed her stomach and then rose to cup her