Dolores Claiborne

right.

That feelin only lasted as long’s it took me to get from the car to my back door. There was a note thumbtacked to it. Just a plain sheet of notebook paper. It had a smear of grease on it, like it’d been torn from a book some man’d been carryin around in his hip pocket. YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY WITH IT AGAIN, the note said. That was all. Hell, it was enough, wouldn’t you say?

I went inside n cracked open the kitchen windows to let out the musty smell. I hate that smell, n the house always seems to have it these days, no matter if I air it out or not. It’s not just because I mostly live at Vera’s now—or did, at least—although accourse that’s part of it; mostly it’s because the house is dead… as dead as Joe n Little Pete.

Houses do have their own life that they take from the people who live in em; I really believe that. Our little one-storey place lived past Joe’s dyin and the two older kids goin away to school, Selena to Vassar on a full scholarship (her share of that college money I was so concerned about went to buy clothes n textbooks), and Joe Junior just up the road to the University of Maine in Orono. It even survived the news that Little Pete had been killed in a barracks explosion in Saigon. It happened just after he got there, and less’n two months before the whole shebang was over. I watched the last of the helicopters pull away from the embassy roof on the TV in Vera’s livin room and just cried n cried. I could let myself do that without fear of what she might say, because she’d gone down to Boston on a shoppin binge.

It was after Little Pete’s funeral that the life went out of the house; after the last of the company had left and the three of us—me, Selena, Joe Junior—was left there with each other. Joe Junior’ d been talkin about politics. He’d just gotten the City Manager job in Machias, not bad for a kid with the ink still wet on his college degree, and was thinkin about runnin for the State Legislature in a year or two.

Selena talked a little bit about the courses she was teachin at Albany Junior College—this was before she moved down to New York City and started writin full time—and then she went quiet. She n I were riddin up the dishes, and all at once I felt somethin. I turned around quick n saw her lookin at me with those dark eyes of hers. I could tell you I read her mind—parents can do that with their kids sometimes, you know—but the fact is I didn’t need to; I knew what she was thinkin about, I knew that it never entirely left her mind. I saw the same questions in her eyes then as had been there twelve years before, when she came up to me in the garden, amongst the beans n the cukes: “Did you do anything to him?” and “Is it my fault?” and “How long do I have to pay?”

I went to her, Andy, n hugged her. She hugged me back, but her body was stiff against mine—stiff’s a poker—and that’s when I felt the life go out of the house. It went like the last breath of a dyin man. I think Selena felt it, too. Not Joe Junior; he puts the pitcher of the house on the front of some of his campaign fliers—it makes him look like home-folks and the voters like that, I’ve noticed—but he never felt it when it died because he never really loved it in the first place. Why would he, for Christ’s sake? To Joe Junior, that house was just the place where he came after school, the place where his father ragged him n called him a book-readin sissy. Cumberland Hall, the dorm he lived in up to the University, was more home to Joe Junior than the house on East Lane ever was.

It was home to me, though, and it was home to Selena. I think my good girl went on livin here long after she’d shaken the dust of Little Tall Island off her feet; I think she lived here in her memories… in her heart… in her dreams. Her nightmares.

That musty smell—you c’n never get rid of it once it really settles in.

I sat by one of the open windows to get a noseful of the fresh sea-breeze for awhile, then I got feelin funny and decided I ought to lock the doors. The front door was easy, but the thumb-bolt on the back one was so balky I couldn’t budge it until I put a charge of Three in One in there. Finally it turned, and when it did I realized why it was so stubborn: simple rust. I sometimes spent five n six days at a stretch up to Vera’s, but I still couldn’t remember the last time I’d bothered to lock up the house.

Thinkin about that just seemed to take all the guts outta me. I went into the bedroom n laid down n put my pillow over my head like I used to do when I was a little girl n got sent to bed early for bein bad. I cried n cried n cried. I would never have believed I had so many tears in me. I cried for Vera and Selena and Little Pete; I guess I even cried for Joe. But mostly I cried for myself. I cried until my nose was plugged up and I had cramps in my belly. Finally I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was dark and the telephone was ringin. I got up n felt my way into the living room to answer it. As soon as I said hello, someone—some woman—said, “You can’t murder her. I hope you know that. If the law doesn’t get you, we will. You aren’t as smart as you think you are. We don’t have to live with murderers here, Dolores Claiborne; not as long as there’s still some decent Christians left on the island to keep it from happenin. ”

My head was so muzzy that at first I thought I was havin a dream. By the time I figured out I was really awake, she’d hung up. I started for the kitchen, meanin to put on the coffee-pot or maybe grab a beer out of the fridge, when the phone rang again. It was a woman that time, too, but not the same one. Filth started to stream out of her mouth n I hung up quick. The urge to cry come over me again, but I was damned if I’d do it. I pulled the telephone plug outta the wall instead. I went into the kitchen n got a beer, but it didn’t taste good to me n I ended up pourin most of it down the sink. I think what I really wanted was a little Scotch, but I haven’t had a drop of hard liquor in the house since Joe died.

I drew a glass of water n found I couldn’t abide the smell of it—it smelled like pennies that’ve been carried around all day in some kid’s sweaty fist. It made me remember that night in the blackberry tangles—how that same smell came to me on a little puff of breeze—n that made me think of the girl in the pink lipstick n the striped dress. I thought of how it’d crossed my mind that the woman she’d grown into was in trouble. I wondered how she was n where she was, but I never once wondered if she was, if you see what I mean; I knew she was. Is. I have never doubted it.

But that don’t matter; my mind’s wanderin again n my mouth’s followin right along behind, like Mary’s little lamb. All I started to say was that the water from my kitchen sink didn’t use me any better than Mr. Budweiser’s finest had—even a couple of ice-cubes wouldn’t take away that coppery smell—and I ended up watchin some stupid comedy show and drinkin one of the Hawaiian Punches I keep in the back of the fridge for Joe Junior’s twin boys. I made myself a frozen dinner but didn’t have no appetite for it once it was ready n ended up scrapin it into the swill. I settled for another Hawaiian Punch instead—took it back into the livin room n just sat there in front of the TV. One comedy’d give way to another, but I didn’t see a dime’s worth of difference. I s‘pose it was because I wa’ant payin much attention.

I didn’t try to figure out what I was gonna do; there’s some figurin you’re wiser not to try at night, because that’s the time your mind’s most apt to go bad on you. Whatever you figure out after sundown, nine times outta ten you got it all to do over again in the mornin. So I just sat, and some time after the local news had ended and the Tonight show had come on, I fell asleep again.

I had a dream. It was about me n Vera, only Vera was the way she was when I first knew her, back when Joe was still alive and all our kids, hers as well as mine, were still around n underfoot most of the time. In my dream we were doin the dishes—her warshin n me wipin. Only we weren’t doin em in the kitchen; we were standin in front of the little Franklin stove in the livin room of my house. And that was funny, because Vera wasn’t ever in my house—not once in her whole life.

She was there in this dream, though. She had the dishes in a plastic basin on top of the stove—not my old stuff but her good Spode china. She’d warsh a plate n then hand it to me, and each one of em’d slip outta my hands and break on the bricks the Franklin stands on. Vera’d say, “You have to be more careful than that, Dolores; when accidents happen and you’re not careful, there’s always a hell of a mess. ”

I’d promise her to be careful, and I’d try, but the next plate’d slip through my fingers, n the next, n the next, n the next.

“This is no good at all,” Vera said at last. “Just look at the mess you’re making!”

I looked down, but instead of pieces of broken plates, the bricks were littered with little pieces of Joe’s dentures n broken stone. “Don’t you hand me no more, Vera,” I said, startin to cry. “I guess I ain’t up to doing no dishes. Maybe I’ve got too old, I dunno, but I don’t want to break the whole job lot of em, I know that.”

She kep on handin em to me just the same, though, and I kep droppin em, and the sound they made when they hit the bricks kep gettin louder n deeper, until it was more a boomin sound than the brittle crash china makes when it hits somethin hard n busts. All at once I knew I was havin a dream n those booms weren’t part of it. I snapped awake s’hard I almost fell outta the chair n onto the floor. There was another of those