Dolores Claiborne

same. He’d told Tommy Anderson one kind of story; the one he told his daughter was in a different pew but the same church. I don’t think there was anything in his mind at first but spite; he knew how much I loved Selena, and he must have thought tellin her how mean and bad-tempered I was—maybe even how dangerous I was—would be a fine piece of revenge. He tried to turn her against me, and while he never really succeeded at that, he did manage to get closer to her than he’d been since she was a little girl. Why not? She was always tender-hearted, Selena was, and I never ran up against a man as good at the poor- me’s as Joe was.

He got inside her life, and once he was in there, he must have finally noticed just how pretty she was getting, and decided he wanted somethin more from her than just to have her listen when he talked or hand him the next tool when he was head-down in the engine compartment of some old junk truck. And all the time this was goin on and the changes were happenin, I was runnin around, workin about four different jobs, and tryin to stay far enough ahead of the bills to sock away a little each week for the kids’ college educations. I never saw a thing until it was almost too late.

She was a lively, chatty girl, my Selena, and she was always eager to please. When you wanted her to fetch somethin, she didn’t walk; she went on the run. As she got older, she’d put supper on the table when I was workin out, and I never had to ask her. She burned some at first and Joe’d carp at her or make fun of her—he sent her cryin into her room more’n once—but he quit doin that around the time I’m tellin you about. Back then, in the spring and summer of 1962, he acted like every pie she made was pure ambrosia even if the crust was like cement, and he’d rave over her meatloaf like it was French cuisine. She was happy with his praise—accourse she was, anyone would have been—but she didn’t get all puffed up with it. She wasn’t that kind of girl. Tell you one thing, though: when Selena finally left home, she was a better cook on her worst day than I ever was on my best.

When it came to helpin out around the house, a mother never had a better daughter… especially a mother who had to spend most of her time cleanin up other people’s messes. Selena never forgot to make sure Joe Junior and Little Pete had their school lunches when they went out the door in the mornin, and she covered their books for em at the start of every year. Joe Junior at least could have done that chore for himself, but she never gave him the chance.

She was an honor roll student her freshman year, but she never lost interest in what was goin on around her at home, the way some smart kids do at that age. Most kids of thirteen or fourteen decide anyone over thirty’s an old fogey, and they’re apt to be out the door about two minutes after the fogies come through it. Not Selena, though. She’d get em coffee or help with the dishes or whatever, then sit down in the chair by the Franklin stove and listen to the grownups talk. Whether it was me with one or two of my friends or Joe with three or four of his, she’d listen. She would have stayed even when he and his friends played poker, if I’d let her. I wouldn’t, though, because they talked so foul. That child nibbled conversation the way a mouse’ll nibble a cheese-rind, and what she couldn’t eat, she stored away.

Then she changed. I don’t know just when that change started, but I first saw it not too long after she’d started her sophomore year. Toward the end of September, I’m gonna say.

The first thing I noticed was that she wasn’t comin home on the early ferry like she had at the end of most school-days the year before, although that had worked out real well for her—she was able to get her homework finished in her room before the boys showed up, then do a little cleanin or start supper. Instead of the two o’clock, she was takin the one that leaves the mainland at four-forty-five.

When I asked her about it, she said she’d just decided she liked doin her homework in the study-hall after school, that was all, and gave me a funny little sidelong look that said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I thought I saw shame in that look, and maybe a lie, as well. Those things worried me, but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to push on with it no further unless I found out for sure something was wrong. Talking to her was hard, you see. I’d felt the distance that had come between us, and I had a pretty good idear what it all traced back to: Joe half outta his chair, bleedin, and me standin over him with the hatchet. And for the first time I realized that he’d prob’ly been talkin to her about that, and other things. Puttin his own spin on em, so to speak.

I thought if I chaffed Selena too hard on why she was stayin late at school, my trouble with her might get worse. Every way I thought of askin her more questions came out soundin like What have you been up to, Selena, and if it sounded that way to me, a thirty-five-year-old woman, how was it gonna sound to a girl not quite fifteen? It’s so hard to talk to kids when they’re that age; you have to walk around em on tiptoe, the way you would ajar of nitroglycerine sittin on the floor.

Well, they have a thing called Parents Night not long after school lets in, and I took special pains to get to it. I didn’t do as much pussyfootin around with Selena’s home-room teacher as I had with Selena herself; I just stepped right up n asked her if she knew any particular reason why Selena was stayin for the late ferry this year. The home-room teacher said she didn’t know, but she guessed it was just so Selena could get her homework done. Well, I thought but didn’t say, she was gettin her homework done just fine at the little desk in her room last year, so what’s changed? I might have said it if I thought that teacher had any answers for me, but it was pretty clear she didn’t. Hell, she was probably scat-gone herself the minute the last bell of the day rung.

None of the other teachers were any help, either. I listened to them praise Selena to the skies, which wa’ant hard work for me to do at all, and then I went back home again, feelin no further ahead than I’d been on my way over from the island.

I got a window-seat inside the cabin of the ferry, and watched a boy n girl not much older’n Selena standin outside by the rail, holdin hands and watchin the moon rise over the ocean. He turned to her and said somethin that made her laugh up at him. You’re a fool if you miss a chance like that, sonny-boy, I thought, but he didn’t miss it— just leaned toward her, took her other hand, and kissed her as nice as you please. Gorry, ain’t you foolish, I said to myself as I watched em. Either that or too old to remember what it’s like to be fifteen, with every nerve in your body blastin off like a Roman candle all of the day and most of the night. Selena’s met a boy, that’s all. She’s met a boy and they are probably doin their studies together in that room after school. Studyin each other more’n their books, most likely. I was some relieved, I can tell you.

I thought about it over the next few days—one thing about warshin sheets and ironin shirts and vacuumin rugs, you always have lots of time to think—and the more I thought, the less relieved I was. She hadn’t been talkin about any boy, for one thing, and it wasn’t ever Selena’s way to be quiet about what was goin on in her life. She wasn’t as open and friendly with me as she’d been before, no, but it wasn’t like there was a wall of silence between us, either. Besides, I’d always thought that if Selena fell in love, she’d probably take out an ad in the paper.

The big thing—the scary thing—was the way her eyes looked to me. I’ve always noticed that when a girl’s crazy about some boy, her eyes are apt to get so bright it’s like someone turned on a flashlight behind there. When I looked for that light in Selena’s eyes, it wasn’t there… but that wasn’t the bad part. The light that’d been there before had gone out of em, too—that was the bad part. Lookin into her eyes was like lookin at the windows of a house where the people have left without rememberin to pull down the shades.

Seein that was what finally opened my eyes, and I began to notice all sorts of things I should have seen earlier—would have seen earlier, I think, if I hadn’t been workin so hard, and if I hadn’t been so convinced Selena was mad at me for hurtin her Dad that time.

The first thing I saw was that it wasn’t just me anymore—she d drawn away from Joe, too. She’d stopped goin out to talk to him when he was workin on one of his old junks or somebody’s outboard motor, and she’d quit sittin beside him on the couch at night to watch TV. If she stayed in the living room, she’d sit in the rocker way over by the stove with a piece of knittin in her lap. Most nights she didn’t stay, though. She’d go in her room and shut the door. Joe didn’t seem to mind, or even to notice. He just went back to his easy-chair, holdin Little Pete on his lap until it was time for Pete to go to bed.

Her hair was another thing—she didn’t warsh it every day like she used to. Sometimes it looked almost greasy enough to fry eggs in, and that wasn’t like Selena. Her complexion was always so pretty —that nice peaches n cream skin she prob’ly got from Joe’s side of the family tree—but that October pimples sprang up on her face like dandelions on the town common after Memorial Day. Her color was off, and her appetite, too.

She still went to see her two best friends, Tanya Caron and Laurie Langill, once in awhile, but not anywhere near as much as she had in junior high. That made me realize neither Tanya nor Laurie had been over to our house since school let back in… and maybe not durin the last month of the summer vacation, neither. That scared me,