Dolores Claiborne

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.”

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