Dolores Claiborne

  "If there's a problem, Mrs. St. George," Pease was sayin, "I'm very sorry, but--"

  "If you say you're sorry one more time, I'll kick your butt up so high you'll look like a hunchback," I says, but there was no real danger of me doin anything to him. Right about then I didn't feel like I had enough strength to kick a beer-can across the road. "Just tell me one thing and I'll get out of your hair: is the money spent?"

  "I would have no way of knowing!" he says in this prissy little shocked voice. You'da thought I'd told him I'd show him mine if he'd show me his.

  "This is the bank Joe's done business with his whole life, I says. "He could have gone down the road to Machias or Columbia Falls and stuck it in one of those banks, but he didn't--he's too dumb and lazy and set in his ways. No, he's either stuck it in a couple of Mason jars and buried it somewhere or put it right back in here. That's what I want to know--if my husband's opened some kind of new account here in the last couple of months." Except it felt more like I had to know, Andy. Findin out how he'd fooled me made me feel sick to my stomach, and that was bad, but not knowin if he'd pissed it all away somehow ... that was killin me.

  "If he's ... that's privileged information!" he says, and by then you'da thought I'd told him I'd touch his if he'd touch mine.

  "Ayuh," I says. "Figured it was. I'm askin you to break a rule. I know just lookin at you that you're not a man who does that often; I can see it runs against your grain. But that was my kids' money, Mr. Pease, and he lied to get it. You know he did; the proof's right there on your desk blotter. It's a lie that wouldn't have worked if this bank--your bank--had had the common courtesy to make a telephone call."

  He clears his throat and starts, "We are not required--"

  "I know you ain't," I says. I wanted to grab him and shake him, but I saw it wouldn't do no good --not with a man like him. Besides, my mother always said you c'n catch more flies with honey than you ever can with vinegar, and I've found it to be true. "I know that, but think of the grief and heartache you'da saved me with that one call. And if you'd like to make up for some of it--I know you don't have to, but if you'd like to--please tell me if he's opened an account here or if I've got to start diggin holes around my house. Please--I II never tell. I swear on the name of God I won't."

  He sat there lookin at me, drummin his fingers on those green accountants' sheets. His nails were all clean and it looked like he'd had a professional manicure, although I guess that ain't too likely--it's Jonesport in 1962 we're talkin about, after all. I s'pose his wife did it. Those nice neat nails made little muffled thumps on the papers each time they came down, n I thought, He ain't gonna do nothin for me, not a man like him. What's he care about island folk and their problems? His ass is covered, n that's all he cares about.

  So when he did speak up, I felt ashamed for what I'd been thinkin about men in general and him in particular.

  "I can't check something like that with you sitting right here, Mrs. St. George," he says. "Why don't you go down to The Chatty Buoy and order yourself a cruller and a nice hot cup of coffee? You look like you could use something. I'll join you in fifteen minutes. No, better make it half an hour."

  "Thank you," I said. "Thank you so very much."

  He sighed and began shufflin the papers back together. "I must be losin my mind," he says, then laughed kinda nervous-like.

  "No," I told him. "You're helpin a woman who don't have nowhere else to turn, that's all."

  "Ladies in distress have always been a weakness of mine," he says. "Give me half an hour. Maybe even a little longer."

  "But you'll come?"

  "Yes," he said. "I will."

  He did, too, but it was closer to forty-five minutes than half an hour, and by the time he finally got to the Buoy, I'd pretty well made up my mind he was gonna leave me in the lurch. Then, when he finally came in, I thought he had bad news. I thought I could read it in his face.

  He stood in the doorway a few seconds, takin a good look around to make sure there was nobody in the restaurant who might make trouble for him if we was seen together after the row I made in the bank. Then he came over to the booth in the corner where I was sittin, slid in acrost from me, and says, "It's still in the bank. Most of it, anyway. Just under three thousand dollars."

  "Thank God!" I said.

  "Well," he says, "that's the good part. The bad part is that the new account is in his name only."

  "Accourse it is," I said. "He sure didn't give me no new passbook account card to sign. That woulda tipped me off to his little game, wouldn't it?"

  "Many women wouldn't know one way or the other," he says. He cleared his throat, gave a yank on his tie, then looked around quick to see who'd come in when the bell over the door jingled. "Many women sign anything their husbands put in front of them."

  "Well, I ain't many women," I says.

  "I've noticed," he says back, kinda dry. "Anyway, I've done what you asked, and now I really have to get back to the bank. I wish I had time to drink a coffee with you."

  "You know," I says, "I kinda doubt that."

  "Actually, so do I," he says back. But he gave me his hand to shake, just like I was another man, and I took that as a bit of a compliment. I sat where I was until he was gone, and when the girl came back n asked me if I wanted a fresh cup of coffee, I told her no thanks, I had the acid indigestion from the first one. I had it, all right, but it wasn't the coffee that give it to me.

  A person can always find somethin to be grateful for, no matter how dark things get, and goin back on the ferry, I was grateful that at least I hadn't packed nothing; this way I didn't have all that work to undo again. I was glad I hadn't told Selena, either. I'd set out to, but in the end I was afraid the secret might be too much for her and she'd tell one of her friends and word might get back to Joe that way. It had even crossed my mind that she might get stubborn and say she didn't want to go. I didn't think that was likely, not the way she flinched back from Joe whenever he came close to her, but when it's a teenage girl you're dealin with, anythin's possible--anythin at all.

  So I had a few blessings to count, but no idears. I couldn't very well take the money outta the joint savings account me n Joe had; there was about forty-six dollars in it, and our checkin account was an even bigger laugh--if we weren't overdrawn, we were damned close. I wasn't gonna just grab the kids up and go off, though; no sir and no ma'am.

  If I did that, Joe'd spend the money just for spite. I knew that as well's I knew my own name. He'd already managed to get through three hundred dollars of it, accordin to Mr. Pease ... and of the three thousand or so left, I'd put at least twenty-five hundred away myself--I earned it scrubbin floors and warshin windows and hangin out that damned bitch Vera Donovan's sheets--six pins, not just four--all summer long. It wasn't as bad then as it turned out to be in the wintertime, but it still wasn't no day in the park, not by a long shot.

  Me n the kids were still gonna go, my mind was made up on that score, but I was damned if we was gonna go broke. I meant my children to have their money. Goin back to the island, standin on the foredeck of the Princess with a fresh open-water wind cuttin itself in two on my face and blowin my hair back from my temples, I knew I was going to get that money out of him again. The only thing I didn't know was how.

  Life went on. If you only looked at the top of things, it didn't look like anything had changed. Things never do seem to change much on the island ... if you only look at the top of things, that is. But there's lots more to a life than what a body can see on top, and for me, at least, the things underneath seemed completely different that fall. The way I saw things had changed, and I s'pose that was the biggest part of it. I'm not just talkin about that third eye now; by the time Little Pete's paper witch had been taken down and his pitchers of turkeys and Pilgrims had gone up, I was seein all I needed to with my two good natural eyes.

  The greedy, piggy way Joe'd watch Selena sometimes when she was in her robe, for instance, or how he'd look at her butt if she bent over to g
et a dishcloth out from under the sink. The way she'd swing wide of him when he was in his chair and she was crossin the livin room to get to her room; how she'd try to make sure her hand never touched his when she passed him a dish at the supper-table. It made my heart ache for shame and pity, but it also made me so mad that I went around most days feelin sick to my stomach. He was her father, for Christ's sake, his blood was runnin in her veins, she had his black Irish hair and double-jointed little fingers, but his eyes'd get all big and round if her bra-strap so much as fell down the side of her arm.

  I seen the way Joe Junior also swung wide of him, and wouldn't answer what Joe asked him if he could get away without doin it, and answered in a mutter when he couldn't. I remember the day Joe Junior brought me his report on President Roosevelt when he got it back from the teacher. She'd marked it A-plus and wrote on the front that it was the only A-plus she'd given a history paper in twenty years of teachin, and she thought it might be good enough to get published in a newspaper. I asked Joe Junior if he'd like to try sendin it to the Ellsworth American or maybe the Bar Harbor Times. I said I'd be glad to pay for the postage. He just shook his head and laughed. It wasn't a laugh I liked much; it was hard n cynical, like his father's. "And have him on my back for the next six months?" he asks. "No thanks. Haven't you ever heard Dad call him Franklin D. Sheenyvelt?"

  I can see him now, Andy, only twelve but already purt-near six feet tall, standin on the back porch with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, lookin down at me as I held his report with the A-plus on it. I remember the little tiny smile on the corners of his mouth. There was no good will in that smile, no good humor, no happiness. It was his father's smile, although I could never have told the boy that.

  "Of all the Presidents, Dad hates Roosevelt the most," he told me. "That's why I picked him to do my report on. Now give it back, please. I'm going to burn it in the woodstove. "

  "No you ain't, Sunny Jim," I says, "and if you want to see what it feels like to be knocked over the porch rail and into the dooryard by your own Mom, you just try to get it away from me."

  He shrugged. He done that like Joe, too, but his smile got wide, and it was sweeter than any his father ever wore in his life when it did that. "Okay," he said. "Just don't let him see it, okay?"

  I said I wouldn't, and he run off to shoot baskets with his friend Randy Gigeure. I watched him go, holdin his report and thinkin about what had just passed between us. Mostly what I thought about was how he'd gotten his teacher's only A-plus in twenty years, and how he'd done it by pickin the President his father hated the most to make his report on.

  Then there was Little Pete, always swaggerin around with his butt switchin and his lower lip pooched out, callin people sheenies and bein kept after school three afternoons outta every five for gettin in trouble. Once I had to go get him because he'd been fightin, and hit some other little boy on the side of the head so hard he made his ear bleed. What his father said about it that night was "I guess he'll know to get out of your way the next time he sees you comin, won't he, Petey?" I saw the way the boy's eyes lit up when Joe said that, and I saw how tenderly Joe carried him to bed an hour or so later. That fall it seemed like I could see everything but the one thing I wanted to see most ... a way to get clear of him.

  You know who finally gave me the answer? Vera. That's right--Vera Donovan herself. She was the only one who ever knew what I did, at least up until now. And she was the one who gave me the idear.

  All through the fifties, the Donovans--well, Vera n the kids, anyway--were the summer people of all summer people--they showed up Memorial Day weekend, never left the island all summer long, and went back to Baltimore on Labor Day weekend. I don't know's you could set your watch by em, but I know damn well you could set your calendar by em. I'd take a cleanin crew in there the Wednesday after they left and swamp the place out from stem to stern, strippin beds, coverin furniture, pickin up the kids' toys, and stackin the jigsaw puzzles down in the basement. I believe that by 1960, when the mister died, there must have been over three hundred of those puzzles down there, stacked up between pieces of cardboard and growin mildew. I could do a complete cleanin like that because I knew that the chances were good no one would step foot into that house again until Memorial Day weekend next year.

  There were a few exceptions, accourse; the year that Little Pete was born they come up n had their Thanksgiving on the island (the place was fully winterized, which we thought was funny, but accourse summer people mostly are funny), and a few years later they come up for Christmas. I remember the Donovan kids took Selena n Joe Junior sleddin with em Christmas afternoon, and how Selena come home from three hours on Sunrise Hill with her cheeks as red as apples and her eyes sparklin like diamonds. She couldn't have been no more'n eight or nine then, but I'm pretty sure she had a crush the size of a pickup truck on Donald Donovan, just the same.

  So they took Thanksgiving on the island one year and Christmas on it another, but that was all. They were summer people ... or at least Michael Donovan and the kids were. Vera was from away, but in the end she turned out to be as much an island woman as I am. Maybe more.

  In 1961 things started out just as they had all those other years, even though her husband had died in that car-crash the year before--she n the kids showed up on Memorial Day and Vera went to work knittin n doin jigsaw puzzles, collectin shells, smokin cigarettes, and havin her special Vera Donovan brand of cocktail hour, which started at five and finished around nine-thirty. But it wasn't the same, even I could see that, n I was only the hired help. The kids were drawn-in and quiet, still mournin their Dad, I guess, and not long after the Fourth of July, the three of em had a real wowser of an argument while they were eatin at The Harborside. I remember Jimmy DeWitt, who waited table there back then, sayin he thought it had somethin to do with the car.

  Whatever it was, the kids left the next day. The hunky took em across to the mainland in the big motorboat they had, and I imagine some other hired hand grabbed onto em there. I ain't seen neither one of em since. Vera stayed. You could see she wasn't happy, but she stayed. That was a bad summer to be around her. She must have fired half a dozen temporary girls before Labor Day finally came, and when I seen the Princess leavin the dock with her on it, I thought, I bet we don't see her next summer, or not for as long. She'll mend her fences with her kids--she'll have to, they're all she's got now--and if they're sick of Little Tall, she'll bend to them and go somewheres else. After all, it's comin to be their time now, and she'll have to recognize that.

  Which only shows you how little I knew Vera Donovan back then. As far as that kitty was concerned, she didn't have to recognize Jack Shit on a hill of beans if she didn't want to. She showed up on the ferry Memorial Day afternoon in 1962 --by herself--and stayed right through until Labor Day. She came by herself, she hadn't a good word for me or anybody else, she was drinkin more'n ever and looked like death's Gramma most days, but she came n she stayed n she did her jigsaw puzzles n she went down--all by herself now--n collected her shells on the beach, just like she always had. Once she told me that she believed Donald and Helga would be spending August at Pinewood (which was what they always called the house; you prob'ly know that, Andy, but I doubt if Nancy does), but they never showed up.

  It was durin 1962 that she started comin up regular after Labor Day. She called in mid-October and asked me to open the house, which I did. She stayed three days--the hunky come with her, and stayed in the apartment over the garage--then left again. Before she did, she called me on the phone and told me to have Dougie Tappert check the furnace, and to leave the dust-sheets off the furniture. "You'll be seeing a lot more of me now that my husband's affairs are finally settled," she says. "P'raps more of me than you like, Dolores. And I hope you'll be seeing the children, too. " But I heard somethin in her voice that makes me think she knew that part was wishful thinkin, even back then.

  She come the next time near the end of November, about a week after Thanksgivin, and she called right
away, wantin me to vacuum and make up the beds. The kids weren't with her, accourse--this was durin the school week--but she said they might decide at the last minute to spend the weekend with her instead of in the boardin schools where they were. She prob'ly knew better, but Vera was a Girl Scout at heart--believed in bein prepared, she did.

  I was able to come right away, that bein a slack time on the island for folks in my line of work. I trudged up there in a cold rain with my head down and my mind fumin away like it always did in the days after I found out what had happened to the kids' money. My trip to the bank had been almost a whole month before, and it had been eatin away at me ever since, the way bat'try acid will eat a hole in your clothes or your skin if you get some on you.

  I couldn't eat a decent meal, couldn't sleep more'n three hours at a stretch before some nightmare woke me up, couldn't hardly remember to change m'own underwear. My mind was never far from what Joe'd been up to with Selena, and the money he'd snuck out of the bank, and how was I gonna get it back again. I understood I had to stop thinkin about those things awhile to find an answer--if I could, one might come on its own--but I couldn't seem to do it. Even when my mind did go somewheres else for a little bit, the least little thing would send it tumblin right back down that same old hole. I was stuck in one gear, it was drivin me crazy, and I s'pose that's the real reason I ended up speakin to Vera about what had happened.

  I surely didn't mean to speak to her; she'd been as sore-natured as a lioness with a thorn in her paw ever since she showed her face the May after her husband died, and I didn't have no interest in spillin my guts to a woman who acted like the whole world had turned to shit on her. But when I come in that day, her mood had finally changed for the better.

  She was in the kitchen, pinnin an article she'd cut out of the front page of the Boston Globe to the cork bulletin board hung on the wall by the pantry door. She says, "Look at this, Dolores--if we're lucky and the weather cooperates, we're going to see something pretty amazing next summer."