Dolores Claiborne

knew there’d be hell to pay if she got a good start before I could get the bedpan under her. So I went downstairs and stood by that vacuum, and I waited five minutes, and then I ran up again. Only that time she didn’t smile at me when I came in. That time she was lyin on her side, fast asleep… or that was what I thought. I really did. She fooled me good and proper, and you know what they say—fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

When I went back down the second time, I really did vacuum the parlor. When the job was done, I put the Kirby away and went back to check on her. She was sittin up in bed, wide awake, covers thrown back, her rubber pants pushed down to her big old flabby knees and her diapers undone. Had she made a mess? Great God! The bed was full of shit, she was covered with shit, there was shit on the rug, on the wheelchair, on the walls. There was even shit on the curtains. It looked like she musta taken up a handful and flang it, the way kids’ll fling mud at each other when they’re swimmin in a cowpond.

Was I mad! Mad enough to spit!

“Oh, Vera! Oh, you dirty BITCH!” I screamed at her. I never killed her, Andy, but if I was gonna, I would’ve done it that day, when I saw that mess and smelled that room. I wanted to kill her, all right; no use lyin about that. And she just looked at me with that foozled expression she got when her mind was playing tricks on her… but I could see the devil dancin in her eyes, and I knew well enough who the trick had been played on that time. Fool me twice, shame on me.

“Who’s that?” she asked. “Brenda, is that you, dear? Have the cows got out again?”

“You know there ain’t been a cow within three mile of here since 1955!” I hollered. I came across the room, takin great big strides, and that was a mistake, because one of my loafers come down on a turd and I damn near went spang on my back. If I had done, I guess I really might have killed her; I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Right then I was ready to plow fire and reap brimstone.

“I dooon‘t,” she says, tryin to sound like the poor old pitiful lady she really was on a lot of days. “I dooo-ooon’t! I can’t see, and my stomach is so upset. I think I’m going to be whoopsy. Is it you, Dolores?”

“Coss it’s me, you old bat!” I said, still hollerin at the top of my lungs. “I could just kill you!”

I imagine by then Susy Proulx and Shawna Wyndham were standin at the foot of the stairs, gettin an earful, and I imagine you’ve already talked to em and that they’ve got me halfway to hung. No need to tell me one way or the other, Andy; awful open, your face is.

Vera seen she wasn’t fooling me a bit, at least not anymore, so she gave up tryin to make me believe she’d gone into one of her bad times and got mad herself in self-defense. I think maybe I scared her a little, too. Lookin back on it, I scared myself—but Andy, if you’d seen that room! It looked like dinnertime in hell.

“I guess you’ll do it, too!” she yelled back at me. “Someday you really will, you ugly, bad-natured old harridan! You’ll kill me just like you killed your husband!”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Not exactly. When I get ready to settle your hash, I won’t bother makin it look like an accident—I’ll just shove you out the window, and there’ll be one less smelly bitch in the world.”

I grabbed her around the middle and h’isted her up like I was Superwoman. I felt it in my back that night, I can tell you, and by the next morning I could hardly walk, I was in such pain. I went to that chiropractor in Machias and he did something to it that made it feel a little better, but it ain’t never really been right since that day. Right then I didn’t feel a thing, though. I pulled her out of that bed of hers like I was a pissed-off little girl and she was the Raggedy Ann doll I was gonna take it out on. She started to tremble all over, and just knowing that she really was scared helped me catch hold of my temper again, but I’d be a dirty liar if I didn’t say I was glad she was scared.

“Oooouuu!” she screams. “Ooouuuu, doooon’t! Don’t take me over to the window! Don’t you throw me out, don’t you dare! Put me down! You’re hurrrting me, Dolores! OOOUUUUU PUT ME DOOOWWWWN!”

“Oh quitcha yappin,” I says, and drops her into her wheelchair hard enough to rattle her teeth… if she’d had any teeth to rattle, that is. “Lookit the mess you made. And don’t try to tell me you can’t see it, either, because I know you can. Just look!”

“I’m sorry, Dolores,” she says. She started to blubber, but I saw that mean little light dancing way down in her eyes. I saw it the way you can sometimes see fish in clear water when you get up on your knees in a boat and look over the side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make a mess, I was just trying to help.” That’s what she always said when she shit the bed and then squooshed around in it a little… although that day was the first time she ever decided to fingerpaint with it as well. I was just tryin to help, Dolores—Jesus wept.

“Sit there and shut up,” I said. “If you really don’t want a fast ride over to that window and an even faster one down to the rock garden, you best mind what I say.” And those girls down there at the foot of the stairs, I have no doubt at all, listenin to every word we was sayin. But right then I was too goddam mad to think about anythin like that.

She had enough sense to shut up like I told her, but she looked satisfied, and why not? She’d done what she set out to do—this time it was her who’d won the battle, and made it clear as windowglass that the war wasn’t over, not by a long chalk. I went to work, cleaning and settin the place to rights again. It took the best part of two hours, and by the time I was done, my back was singin “Ave Maria.”

I told you about the sheets, how that was, and I could see by your faces that you understood some of that. It’s harder to understand about her messes. I mean, shit don’t cross my eyes. I been wipin it up all my life and the sight of it never crossed my eyes. It don’t smell like a flower-garden, accourse, and you have to be careful of it because it carries disease just like snot and spit and spilled blood, but it warshes off, you know. Anyone who’s ever had a baby knows that shit warshes off. So that wasn’t what made it so bad.

I think it was that she was so mean about it. So sly about it. She bided her time, and when she got a chance, she made the worst mess she could, and she did it just as fast as she could, because she knew I wouldn’t give her long. She did that nasty thing on purpose, do you see what I’m gettin at? As far as her fogged-in brain would let her, she planned it out, and that weighed on my heart and darkened my outlook while I was cleanin up after her. While I was strippin the bed; while I was takin the shitty mattress pad and the shitty sheets and the shitty pillowslips down to the laundry chute; while I was scrubbin the floor, and the walls, and the windowpanes; while I was takin down the curtains and puttin up fresh ones; while I was makin her bed again; while I was grittin my teeth n tryin to keep my back locked in place while I cleaned her up n got a fresh nightgown on her n then hossed her outta the chair and back into bed again (and her not helpin a bit but just lollin there in my arms, dead weight, although I know damn well that was one of the days when she could have helped, if she’d wanted to); while I was warshin the floor; while I was warshin off her goddam wheelchair, and really havin t’scrub by then because the stuff was dried on—while I was doin all that, my heart was low and my outlook was darkened. She knew it, too.

She knew it and it made her happy.

When I went home that night I took some Anacin-3 for my aching back and then I went to bed and I curled up in a little ball even though that hurt my back, too, and I cried and cried and cried. It seemed like I couldn’t stop. Never—at least since the old business with Joe—have I felt so downhearted and hopeless. Or so friggin old.

That was the second way she had of bein a bitch—by bein mean.

What say, Frank? Did she do it again?

You’re damned tooting. She did it again the next week, and the week after that. It wasn’t as bad as that first adventure either time, partly because she wasn’t able to save up such a dividend, but mostly because I was prepared for it. I went to bed crying again after the second time it happened, though, and as I lay there in bed feeling that misery way down low in my back, I made up my mind to quit. I didn’t know what’d happen to her or who would take care of her, but right then I didn’t care a fiddlyfuck. As far as I was concerned, she could starve to death layin in her own shitty bed.

I was still crying when I fell off to sleep, because the idear of quittin—of her gettin the best of me —made me