Dolores Claiborne

ain’t that’s knocked me for a loop here… it’s how you never once thought that someone else might be concerned about what happened to that money. Don’t ‘standard bank practice’ ever allow you folks to make a single goddam phone call? I mean, the number’s right there on all those forms, and it ain’t changed.”

“Mrs. St. George, I’m very sorry, but—”

“If it’d been the other way around,” I says, “if I’d been the one with a story about how the passbooks was lost and ast for new ones, if I’d been the one who started drawin out what took eleven or twelve years to put in… wouldn’t you have called Joe? If the money’d still been here for me to withdraw today, like I came in meanin to do, wouldn’t you have called him the minute I stepped out the door, to let him know—just as a courtesy, mind you!—what his wife’d been up to?”

Because I’d expected just that, Andy—that was why I’d picked a day when he was out with the Stargills. I’d expected to go back to the island, collect the kids, and be long gone before Joe come up the driveway with a six- pack in one hand and his dinnerpail in the other.

Pease looked at me n opened his mouth. Then he closed it again and didn’t say nothing. He didn’t have to. The answer was right there on his face. Accourse he—or someone else from the bank— would have called Joe, and kep on tryin until he finally got him. Why? Because Joe was the man of the house, that’s why. And the reason nobody’d bothered to tell me was because I was just his wife. What the hell was I s‘posed to know about money, except how to earn some down on my knees scrubbin floors n baseboards n toilet-bowls? If the man of the house decided to draw out all his kids’ college money, he must have had a damned good reason, and even if he didn’t, it didn’t matter, because he was the man of the house, and in charge. His wife was just the little woman, and all she was in charge of was baseboards, toilet-bowls, and chicken dinners on Sunday afternoons.

“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