Dolores Claiborne (18 page)

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 every 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 get 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.

She was just like me when I was her age, in other words, n look how I turned out—just another cleanin-witch with a permanent stoop in her walk and a bottle of pain-pills in the medicine cabinet for my back. Selena didn’t see nothing wrong with that, but she’d just turned fifteen, and at fifteen a girl don’t know what the hell she’s seein even when she’s lookin spang at it. I read that note over n over and I thought, Frig it—she ain’t gonna end up like me, old n damn near used up at thirty-five. She ain’t gonna do that even if I have to die to keep her from it. But you know something, Andy? I didn’t think things’d have to go that far. I thought maybe Joe was gonna do all the dyin that needed to be done around our place.

I put her note back on the table, did up the snaps on my slicker again, and pulled on my gumrubber boots. Then I walked around back n stood by the big white stone where me’n Selena sat the night I told her she didn’t have to be afraid of Joe anymore, that he’d promised to let her alone. The rain’d stopped, but I could still hear the water drippin deep in the blackberry tangle behind the house, and see drops of water hangin off the bare branches. They looked like Vera Donovan’s diamond-drop earrings, only not so big.

That patch covered better’n half an acre, and by the time I’d pushed my way in, I was damned glad I had on my slicker and tall boots. The wet was the least of it; those thorns were murder. In the late forties, that patch had been flowers and field-grass, with the wellhead sittin on the shed side of it, but about six years after me n Joe were married and moved onto the place—which his Uncle Freddy left him when he died—the well went dry. Joe got Peter Doyon to come over and dowse us a new one, on the west side of the house. We’ve never had a spot of water-trouble since.

Once we stopped usin the old well, the half-acre behind the shed grew up in those chest-high snarls of scrub blackberry, and the thorns tore and pulled at my slicker as I walked back n forth, lookin for the board cap on the old well. After my hands got cut in three or four places, I pulled the sleeves down over em.

In the end, I almost found the damned thing by fallin into it. I took a step onto somethin that was both loose and kinda spongy, there was a cracklin noise under my foot, and I drew back just before the board I’d stepped on gave way. If I’d been unlucky, I’d’ve fallen forward, and the whole cap would most likely have collapsed. Ding-dong-bell, pussy’s in the well.

I got down on my knees, keepin one hand up in front of my face so the blackberry thorns wouldn’t scratch my cheeks or maybe put out one of my eyes, and took a good close look.

The cap was about four feet wide n five feet long; the boards were all white n warped n rotted. I pushed on one of em with my hand, and it was like pushin down on a licorice stick. The board I’d put my foot on was all bowed down, and I could see fresh splinters stickin up from it. I woulda fallen in, all right, and in those days I went about one-twenty. Joe weighed at least fifty pounds more’n that.