Dolores Claiborne

then I might be in for it. The only times I absolutely knew I was in for it were the times when I hadn’t gotten a clinker out of her Wednesday noon, either.

I see you tryin not to laugh, Andy, but that’s all right—you let it out if you have to. It wasn’t no laughing matter then, but it’s over now, and what you’re thinkin ain’t nothin but the truth. The dirty old bag had her a shit savings account, and it was like some weeks she banked it in order to collect the interest… only I was the one who got all the withdrawals. I got em whether I wanted em or not.

I spent most of my Thursday afternoons runnin upstairs, tryin to catch her in time, and sometimes I even did. But whatever the state of her eyes might be, there was nothing wrong with her ears, and she knew I never let any of the town girls vacuum the Aubusson rug in the parlor. And when she heard the vacuum cleaner start up in there, she’d crank up her tired old fudge factory and that Shit Account of hers’d start payin dividends.

Then I thought up a way of catchin her. I’d yell to one of the girls that I guessed I’d vacuum the parlor next. I’d yell that even if they was both right next door in the dinin room. I’d turn on the vacuum, all right, but instead of usin it, I’d go to the foot of the stairs and stand there with one foot on the bottom step and my hand on the knob of the newel post, like one of those track fellows all hunkered down waitin for the starter to shoot off his gun and let them go.

Once or twice I went up too soon. That wa’ant no good. It was like a racer gettin disqualified for jumpin the gun. You had to get up there after she had her motor runnin too fast to shut down, but before she’d actually popped her clutch and dumped a load into those big old continence pants she wore. I got pretty good at it. You would, too, if you knew you’d end up hossin a hundred and ninety pounds of old lady around if you timed it wrong. It was like tryin to deal with a hand grenade loaded with shit instead of high explosives.

I’d get up there and she’d be layin in that hospital bed of hers, face all red, her mouth all screwed up, her elbows diggin into the mattress and her hands balled up in fists, and she’d be goin “Unnh! Unnnnnhhhh! UNNNNNNNNNHHHH!” I tell you something—all she needed was a coupla rolls of flypaper danglin down from the ceilin and a Sears catalogue in her lap to look right at home.

Aw, Nancy, quit bitin the insides of y’cheeks—better to let it out n bear the shame than hold it in n bear the pain, as they say. Besides, it does have its funny side; shit always does. Ask any kid. I c’n even let it be a little funny to me now that it’s over, and that’s somethin, ain’t it? No matter how big a jam I’m in, my time of dealin with Vera Donovan’s Shit Thursdays is over.

She’d hear me come in, and mad? She’d be just as mad as a bear with one paw caught in a honey-tree. “What are you doing up here?” she’d ask in that hoity-toity way of talking she’d use whenever you caught her gettin up to dickens, like she was still going to Vassar or Holy Oaks or whichever one of the Seven Sisters it was her folks sent her to. “This is cleaning day, Dolores! You go on about your business! I didn’t ring for you and I don’t need you!”

She didn’t scare me none. “I think you do need me,” I’d say. “That ain’t Chanel Number Five I smell comin from the direction of your butt, is it?”

Sometimes she’d even try to slap at my hands when I pulled down the sheet and the blanket. She’d be glarin like she meant to turn me to stone if I didn’t leave off and she’d have her lower lip all pooched out like a little kid who don’t want to go to school. I never let any of that stop me, though. Not Patricia Claiborne’s daughter Dolores. I’d get the sheet down in about three seconds, and it never took much more’n another five to drop her drawers and yank the tapes on those diapers she wore, whether she was slappin my hands or not. Most times she left off doin that after a couple of tries, anyway, because she was caught and we both knew it. Her equipment was so old that once she got it goin, things just had to run their course. I’d slide the bedpan under her just as neat as you please, and when I left to go back downstairs n really vacuum the parlor, she was apt to be swearin like a dock walloper—didn’t sound a bit like a Vassar girl then, let me tell you! Because she knew that time she’d lost the game, you see, and there was nothing Vera hated worsc’n that. Even in her dotage, she hated to lose somethin fierce.

Things went on that way for quite awhile, and I started to think I’d won the whole war instead of just a couple of battles. I should have known better.

There came a cleaning day—this was about a year and a half ago—when I was all set and ready to run my race upstairs and catch her again. I’d even got to like it, sort of; it made up for a lot of times in the past when I’d come off second best with her. And I figured she was plannin on a real shit tornado that time, if she could get away with it. All the signs were there, and then some. For one thing, she wasn’t just havin a bright day, she’d been havin a bright week—she’d even asked me that Monday to put the board across the arms of her chair so she could have a few games of Big Clock solitaire, just like in the old days. And as far as her bowels went, she was havin one hell of a dry spell; she hadn’t dropped nothing in the collection plate since the weekend. I figured that particular Thursday she was plannin on givin me her goddam Christmas Club as well as her savins account.

After I took the bedpan out from under her that cleaning day noon and saw it was as dry as a bone, I says to her, “Don’t you think you could do something if you tried a little bit harder, Vera?”

“Oh Dolores,” she says back, looking up at me with her filmy blue eyes just as innocent as Mary’s little lamb, “I’ve already tried as hard as I can—I tried so hard it hurt me. I guess I am just constipated. ”

I agreed with her right off. “I guess you are, and if it doesn’t clear up soon, dear, I’ll just have to feed you a whole box of Ex-Lax to dynamite you loose. ”

“Oh, I think it’ll take care of itself in time,” she said, and give me one of her smiles. She didn’t have any teeth by then, accourse, and she couldn’t wear her lower plate unless she was sittin up in her chair, in case she might cough and pull it down her throat and choke on it. When she smiled, her face looked like an old piece of tree-trunk with a punky knothole in it. “You know me, Dolores—I believe in letting nature take her course.”

“I know you, all right,” I kind of muttered, turnin away.

“What did you say, dear?” she asks back, so sweet you’d’ve thought sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

“I said I can’t just stand around here waitin for you to go number two,” I said. “I got housework. It’s cleaning day, you know.”

“Oh, is it?” she says back, just as if she hadn’t known what day it was from the first second she woke up that morning. “Then you go on, Dolores. If I feel the need to move my bowels, I’ll call you.”

I bet you will, I was thinkin, about five minutes after it happens. But I didn’t say it; I just went on back downstairs.

I got the vacuum cleaner out of the kitchen closet, took it into the parlor, and plugged it in. I didn’t start it up right away, though; I spent a few minutes dusting first. I had gotten so I could depend on my instincts by then, and I was waiting for somethin inside to tell me the time was right.

When that thing spoke up and said it was, I hollered to Susy and Shawna that I was going to vacuum the parlor. I yelled loud enough so I imagine half the people down in the village heard me right along with the Queen Mother upstairs. I started the Kirby, then went to the foot of the stairs. I didn’t give it long that day; thirty or forty seconds was all. I figured she had to be hangin on by a thread. So up I went, two stairs at a time, and what do you think?

Nothin!

Not… one… thing.

Except.

Except the way she was lookin at me, that was. Just as calm and as sweet as you please.

“Did you forget somethin, Dolores?” she coos.

“Ayuh,” I says back, “I forgot to quit this job five years ago. Let’s just stop it, Vera.”

“Stop what, dear?” she asks, kinda flutterin her eyelashes, like she didn’t have the slightest idear what I could be talkin about.

“Let’s quit evens, is what I mean. Just tell me straight out—do you need the bedpan or not?”

“I don’t,” she says in her best, most totally honest voice. “I told you that!” And just smiled at me. She didn’t say a word, but she didn’t have to. Her face did all the talkin that needed to be done. I got you, Dolores, it was sayin. I got you good.

But I wasn’t done. I knew she was holdin onto one gut-buster of a b.m., and I