Dolores Claiborne

  I still remember the headline of that article word for word after all these years, because when I read it, it felt like somethin turned over inside me. TOTAL ECLIPSE TO DARKEN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND SKIES NEXT SUMMER, it said. There was a little map that showed what part of Maine would be in the path of the eclipse, and Vera'd made a little red pen-mark on it where Little Tall was.

  "There won't be another one until late in the next century," she says. "Our great-grandchildren might see it, Dolores, but we'll be long gone ... so we better appreciate this one!"

  "It'll prob'ly rain like a bugger that day," I says back, hardly even thinkin about it, and with the dark temper Vera'd been in almost all the time since her husband died, I thought she'd snap at me. Instead she just laughed and went upstairs, hummin. I remember thinkin that the weather in her head really had changed. Not only was she hummin, she didn't have even a trace of a hangover.

  About two hours later I was up in her room, changin the bed where she'd spend so much time layin helpless in later years. She was sittin in her chair by the window, knittin an afghan square n still hummin. The furnace was on but the heat hadn't really took yet--those big houses take donkey's years to get warm, winterized or not--and she had her pink shawl thrown over her shoulders. The wind had come up strong from the west by then, and the rain hittin the window beside her sounded like handfuls of thrown sand. When I looked out that one, I could see the gleam of light comin from the garage that meant the hunky was up there in his little apartment, snug as a bug in a rug.

  I was tuckin in the corners of the ground sheet (no fitted sheets for Vera Donovan, you c'n bet your bottom dollar on that--fitted sheets woulda been too easy), not thinkin about Joe or the kids at all for a change, and my lower lip started to tremble. Quit that, I told myself. Quit it right now. But that lip wouldn't quit. Then the upper one started to shimmy, too. All at once my eyes filled up with tears n my legs went weak n I sat down on the bed n cried.

  No. No.

  If I'm gonna tell the truth, I might's well go whole hog. The fact is I didn't just cry; I put my apron up over my face and wailed. I was tired and confused and at the end of my thinkin. I hadn't had anything but scratch sleep in weeks and couldn't for the life of me see how I was going to go on. And the thought that kept comin into my head was Guess you were wrong, Dolores. Guess you were thinkin about Joe n the kids after all. And accourse I was. It had got so I wasn't able to think of nothin else, which was exactly why I was bawlin.

  I dunno how long I cried like that, but I know when it finally stopped I had snot all over my face and my nose was plugged up n I was so out of breath I felt like I'd run a race. I was afraid to take my apron down, too, because I had an idear that when I did, Vera would say, "That was quite a performance, Dolores. You can pick up your final pay envelope on Friday. Kenopensky"--there, that was the hunky's name, Andy, I've finally thought of it--"will give it to you." That woulda been just like her. Except anythin was just like her. You couldn't predict Vera even back in those days, before her brains turned mostly to mush.

  When I finally took the apron off my face, she was sittin there by the window with her knittin in her lap, lookin at me like I was some new and int'restin kind of bug. I remember the crawly shadows the rain slidin down the windowpanes made on her cheeks and forehead.

  "Dolores," she said, "please tell me you haven't been careless enough to allow that mean-spirited creature you live with to knock you up again."

  For a second I didn't have the slightest idear what she was talkin about--when she said "knock you up," my mind flashed to the night Joe'd hit me with the stovelength and I hit him with the creamer. Then it clicked, and I started to giggle. In a few seconds I was laughin every bit as hard as I'd cried before, and not able to help that any more'n I'd been able to help the other. I knew it was mostly horror--the idear of bein pregnant again by Joe was about the worst thing I could think of, and the fact that we weren't doin the thing that makes babies anymore didn't change it--but knowin what was makin me laugh didn't do a thing about stoppin it.

  Vera looked at me a second or two longer, then picked her knittin up out of her lap and went back to it, as calm as you please. She even started to hum again. It was like havin the housekeeper sittin on her unmade bed, bellerin like a calf in the moonlight, was the most natural thing in the world to her. If so, the Donovans must have had some peculiar house-help down there in Baltimore.

  After awhile the laughin went back to cryin again, the way rain sometimes turns to snow for a little while durin winter squalls, if the wind shifts the right way. Then it finally wound down to nothin and I just sat there on her bed, feelin tired n ashamed of myself ... but cleaned out somehow, too.

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Donovan," I says. "I truly am."

  "Vera," she says.

  "I beg pardon?" I ast her.

  "Vera," she repeated. "I insist that all women who have hysterics on my bed call me by my Christian name thenceforward."

  "I don't know what came over me," I said.

  "Oh," she says right back, "I imagine you do. Clean yourself up, Dolores--you look like you dunked your face in a bowl of pureed spinach. You can use my bathroom."

  I went in to warsh my face, and I stayed in there a long time. The truth was, I was a little afraid to come out. I'd quit thinkin she was gonna fire me when she told me to call her Vera instead of Mrs. Donovan--that ain't the way you behave to someone you mean to let go in five minutes--but I didn't know what she was gonna do. She could be cruel; if you haven't gotten at least that much out of what I been tellin you, I been wastin my time. She could poke you pretty much when n where she liked, and when she did it, she usually did it hard.

  "Did you drown in there, Dolores?" she calls, and I knew I couldn't delay any longer. I turned off the water, dried my face, and went back into her bedroom. I started to apologize again right away, but she waved that off. She was still lookin at me like I was a kind of bug she'd never seen before.

  "You know, you startled the shit out of me, woman," she says. "All these years I wasn't sure you could cry--I thought maybe you were made of stone. "

  I muttered somethin about how I hadn't been gettin my rest lately.

  "I can see you haven't," she says. "You've got a matching set of Louis Vuitton under your eyes, and your hands have picked up a piquant little quiver."

  "I got what under my eyes?" I asked.

  "Never mind," she says. "Tell me what's wrong. A bun in the oven was the only cause of such an unexpected outburst I could think of, and I must confess it's still the only thing I can think of. So enlighten me, Dolores."

  "I can't," I says, and I'll be goddamned if I couldn't feel the whole thing gettin ready to kick back on me again, like the crank of my Dad's old Model-A Ford used to do when you didn't grab it right; if I didn't watch out, pretty soon I was gonna be settin there on her bed again with my apron over my face.

  "You can and you will," Vera said. "You can't spend the day howling your head off. It'll give me a headache and I'll have to take an aspirin. I hate taking aspirin. It irritates the lining of the stomach."

  I sat down on the edge of the bed n looked at her. I opened my mouth without the slightest idear of what was gonna come out. What did was this: "My husband is trying to screw his own daughter, and when I went to get their college money out of the bank so I could take her n the boys away, I found he'd scooped up the whole kit n caboodle. No, I ain't made out of stone. I ain't made out of stone at all."

  I started to cry again, and I cried for quite awhile, but not so hard as before and without feelin the need to hide my face behind my apron. When I was down to sniffles, she said to tell her the whole story, right from the beginnin and without leavin a single thing out.

  And I did. I wouldn't have believed I could have told anyone that story, least of all Vera Donovan, with her money and her house in Baltimore and her pet hunky, who she didn't keep around just to Simonize her car, but I did tell her, and I could feel the weight on my heart gettin lighter with ev
ery word. I spilled all of it, just like she told me to do.

  "So I'm stuck," I finished. "I can't figure out what to do about the son of a bitch. I s'pose I could catch on someplace if I just packed the kids up and took em to the mainland--I ain't never been afraid of hard work--but that ain't the point."

  "What is the point, then?" she asked me. The afghan square she was workin on was almost done--her fingers were about the quickest I've ever seen.

  "He's done everything but rape his own daughter," I says. "He's scared her so bad she may never get all the way over it, and he's paid himself a reward of purt-near three thousand dollars for his own bad behavior. I ain't gonna let him get away with it--that's the friggin point."

  "Is it?" she says in that mild voice of hers, and her needles went click-click-click, and the rain went rollin down the windowpanes, and the shadows wiggled n squiggled on her cheek and forehead like black veins. Lookin at her that way made me think of a story my grandmother used to tell about the three sisters in the stars who knit our lives ... one to spin and one to hold and one to cut off each thread whenever the fancy takes her. I think that last one's name was Atropos. Even if it's not, that name has always given me the shivers.

  "Yes," I says to her, "but I'll be goddamned if I see a way to do him the way he deserves to be done."

  Click-click-click. There was a cup of tea beside her, and she paused long enough to have a sip. There'd come a time when she'd like as not try to drink her tea through her right ear n give herself a Tetley shampoo, but on that fall day in 1962 she was still as sharp as my father's cutthroat razor. When she looked at me, her eyes seemed to bore a hole right through to the other side.

  "What's the worst of it, Dolores?" she says finally, puttin her cup down and pickin up her knittin again. "What would you say is the worst? Not for Selena or the boys, but for you?"

  I didn't even have to stop n think about it. "That sonofawhore's laughin at me," I says. "That's the worst of it for me. I see it in his face sometimes. I never told him so, but he knows I checked at the bank, he knows damned well, and he knows what I found out."

  "That could be just your imagination," she says.

  "I don't give a frig if it is," I shot right back. "It's how I feel."

  "Yes," she says, "it's how you feel that's important. I agree. Go on, Dolores."

  What do you mean, go on? I was gonna say. That's all there is. But I guess it wasn't, because somethin else popped out, just like Jack out of his box. "He wouldn't be laughin at me," I says, "if he knew how close I've come to stoppin his clock for good a couple of times. "

  She just sat there lookin at me, those dark thin shadows chasin each other down her face and gettin in her eyes so I couldn't read em, and I thought of the ladies who spin in the stars again. Especially the one who holds the shears.

  "I'm scared," I says. "Not of him--of myself. If I don't get the kids away from him soon, somethin bad is gonna happen. I know it is. There's a thing inside me, and it's gettin worse."

  "Is it an eye?" she ast calmly, and such a chill swept over me then! It was like she'd found a window in my skull and used it to peek right into my thoughts. "Something like an eye?"

  "How'd you know that?" I whispered, and as I sat there my arms broke out in goosebumps n I started to shiver.

  "I know," she says, and starts knittin a fresh row. "I know all about it, Dolores."

  "Well ... I'm gonna do him in if I don't watch out. That's what I'm afraid of. Then I can forget all about that money. I can forget all about everythin."

  "Nonsense," she says, and the needles went click-click-click in her lap. "Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why, one is probably dying right now, while we're sitting here talking. They die and leave their wives their money." She finished her row and looked up at me but I still couldn't see what was in her eyes because of the shadows the rain made. They went creepin and crawlin all acrost her face like snakes. "I should know, shouldn't I?" she says. "After all, look what happened to mine."

  I couldn't say nothing. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth like an inchbug to flypaper.

  "An accident," she says in a clear voice almost like a schoolteacher's, "is sometimes an unhappy woman's best friend."

  "What do you mean?" I asked. It was only a whisper, but I was a little surprised to find I could even get that out.

  "Why, whatever you think," she says. Then she grinned--not a smile but a grin. To tell you the truth, Andy, that grin chilled my blood. "You just want to remember that what's yours is his and what's his is yours. If he had an accident, for instance, the money he's holding in his bank accounts would become yours. It's the law in this great country of ours."

  Her eyes fastened on mine, and for just a second there the shadows were gone and I could see clear into them. What I saw made me look away fast. On the outside, Vera was just as cool as a baby sittin on a block of ice, but inside the temperature looked to be quite a bit hotter; about as hot as it gets in the middle of a forest fire, I'd say at a guess. Too hot for the likes of me to look at for long, that's for sure.

  "The law is a great thing, Dolores," she says. "And when a bad man has a bad accident, that can sometimes be a great thing, too."

  "Are you sayin--" I begun. I was able to get a little above a whisper by then, but not much.

  "I'm not saying anything," she says. Back in those days, when Vera decided she was done with a subject, she slammed it closed like a book. She stuck her knittin back in her basket and got up. "I'll tell you this, though--that bed's never going to get made with you sitting on it. I'm going down and put on the tea-kettle. Maybe when you get done here, you'd like to come down and try a slice of the apple pie I brought over from the mainland. If you're lucky, I might even add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. "

  "All right," I says. My mind was in a whirl, and the only thing I was completely sure of was that a piece of pie from the Jonesport Bakery sounded like just the thing. I was really hungry for the first time in over four weeks--gettin the business off my chest done that much, anyway.

  Vera got as far as the door and turned back to look at me. "I feel no pity for you, Dolores," she said. "You didn't tell me you were pregnant when you married him, and you didn't have to; even a mathematical dunderhead like me can add and subtract. What were you, three months gone?"

  "Six weeks," I said. My voice had sunk back to a whisper. "Selena come a little early."

  She nodded. "And what does a conventional little island girl do when she finds the loaf's been leavened? The obvious, of course ... but those who marry in haste often repent at leisure, as you seem to have discovered. Too bad your sainted mother didn't teach you that one along with there's a heartbeat in every potato and use your head to save your feet. But I'll tell you one thing, Dolores: bawling your eyes out with your apron over your head won't save your daughter's maidenhead if that smelly old goat really means to take it, or your children's money if he really means to spend it. But sometimes men, especially drinking men, do have accidents. They fall downstairs, they slip in bathtubs, and sometimes their brakes fail and they run their BMWs into oak trees when they are hurrying home from their mistresses' apartments in Arlington Heights. "

  She went out then, closin the door behind her. I made up the bed, and while I did it I thought about what she'd said ... about how when a bad man has a bad accident, sometimes that can be a great thing, too. I began to see what had been right in front of me all along--what I would have seen sooner if my mind hadn't been flyin around in a blind panic, like a sparrow trapped in an attic room.

  By the time we'd had our pie and I'd seen her upstairs for her afternoon nap, the could-do part of it was clear in my mind. I wanted to be shut of Joe, I wanted my kids' money back, and most of all, I wanted to make him pay for all he'd put us through ... especially for all he'd put Selena through. If the son of a bitch had an accident--the right kind of accident--all those things'd happen. The money I couldn't get at while he was alive would come to me when he died. He might've snuck off to ge
t the money in the first place, but he hadn't ever snuck off to make a will cuttin me out. It wasn't a question of brains--the way he got the money showed me he was quite a bit slyer'n I'd given him credit for--but just the way his mind worked. I'm pretty sure that down deep, Joe St. George didn't think he was ever gonna die.

  And as his wife, everything would come right back to me.

  By the time I left Pinewood that afternoon the rain had stopped, and I walked home real slow. I wasn't even halfway there before I'd started to think of the old well behind the woodshed.

  I had the house to myself when I got back--the boys were off playin, and Selena had left a note sayin she'd gone over to Mrs. Devereaux's to help her do a laundry ... she did all the sheets from The Harborside Hotel in those days, you know. I didn't have any idear where Joe was and didn't care. The important thing was that his truck was gone, and with the muffler hangin by a thread the way it was, I'd have plenty of warnin if he came back.

  I stood there a minute, lookin at Selena's note. It's funny, the little things that finally push a person into makin up her mind--sendin her from could-do to might-do to will-do, so's to speak. Even now I'm not sure if I really meant to kill Joe when I came home from Vera Donovan's that day. I meant to check on the well, yes, but that could have been no more than a game, the way kids play Let's Pretend. If Selena hadn't left that note, I might never have done it ... and no matter what else comes of this, Andy, Selena must never know that.

  The note went somethin like this: "Mom--I have gone over to Mrs. Devereaux's with Cindy Babcock to help do the hotel wash--they had lots more people over the holiday weekend than they expected, and you know how bad Mrs. D.'s arthritis has gotten. The poor dear sounded at her wit's end when she called. I will be back to help with supper. Love and kisses, Sel."

  I knew Selena'd come back with no more'n five or seven dollars, but happy as a lark to have it. She'd be happy to go back if Mrs. Devereaux or Cindy called again, too, and if she got offered a job as a part-time chambermaid at the hotel next summer, she'd prob'ly try to talk me into lettin her take it. Because money is money, and on the island in those days, tradin back n forth was still the most common way of life and cash a hard commodity to come by. Mrs. Devereaux would call again, too, and be delighted to write a hotel reference for Selena if Selena ast her to, because Selena was a good little worker, not afraid to bend her back or get her hands dirty.