Dolores Claiborne

There, you nasty old quim, I was sayin with my face. I’ve caught up with you again, and how do you like it?

Not much, Dolores, she was sayin with hers, but that’s all right; just because you’ve got caught up doesn’t mean you’ll stay caught up.

I did, though—that time I did. There were a few more little messes, but never again anythin like the time I told you about, when there was even shit on the curtains. That was really her last hurrah. After that, the times when her mind was clear got fewer and fewer, and when they came, they were short. It saved my achin back, but it made me sad, too. She was a pain, but she was one I’d gotten used to, if you see what I mean.

Could I have another glass of water, Frank?

Thank you. Talkin’s thirsty work. And if you decide to let that bottle of Gentleman Jim Beam out of your desk for a little fresh air, Andy, I’ll never tell.

No? Well, that’s about what I expected from the likes of you.

Now—where was I?

Oh, I know. About how she was. Well, the third way she had of bein a bitch was the worst. She was a bitch because she was a sad old lady who had nothin to do but die in an upstairs bedroom on an island far from the places and the people she’d known most of her life. That was bad enough, but she was losin her mind while she did it… and there was part of her that knew the rest of her was like an undercut riverbank gettin ready to slide down into the stream.

She was lonely, you see, and that I didn’t understand—I never understood why she threw over her whole life to come out to the island in the first place. At least not until yesterday. But she was scared, too, and I could understand that just fine. Even so, she had a horrible, scary kind of strength, like a dyin queen that won’t let go of her crown even at the end; it’s like God Himself has got to pry it loose a finger at a time.

She had her good days and her bad ones—I told you that. What I call her fits always happened in between, when she was changin from a few days of bein bright to a week or two of bein fogged in, or from a week or two of bein fogged in to a time of bein bright again. When she was changin, it was like she was nowhere… and part of her knew that, too. That was the time when she’d have her hallucinations.

If they were all hallucinations. I’m not so sure about that as I used to be. Maybe I’ll tell you that part and maybe I won’t—I’ll just have to see how I feel when the time comes.

I guess they didn’t all come on Sunday afternoons or in the middle of the night; I guess it’s just that I remember those ones the best because the house was so quiet and it would scare me so when she started screaming. It was like havin somebody throw a bucket of ice-cold water over you on a hot summer’s day; there never was a time I didn’t think my heart would stop when her screams began, and there never was a time I didn’t think I’d come into her room and find her dyin. The things she was ascairt of never made sense, though. I mean, I knew she was scared, and I had a pretty good idear what she was scared of, but never why.

“The wires!” she’d be screamin sometimes when I went in. She’d be all scrunched up in bed, her hands clutched together between her boobs, her punky old mouth drawn up and tremblin; she’d be as pale as a ghost, and the tears’d be runnin down the wrinkles under her eyes. “The wires, Dolores, stop the wires!” And she’d always point at the same place… the baseboard in the far corner.

Wasn’t nothing there, accourse, except there was to her. She seen all these wires comin out of the wall and scratchin across the floor toward her bed—at least that’s what I think she seen. What I’d do was run downstairs and get one of the butcher-knives off the kitchen rack, and then come back up with it. I’d kneel down in the corner—or closer to the bed if she acted like they’d already progressed a fairish way—and pretend to chop them off. I’d do that, bringin the blade down light and easy on the floor so I wouldn’t scar that good maple, until she stopped cryin.

Then I’d go over to her and wipe the tears off her face with my apron or one of the Kleenex she always kept stuffed under her pillow, and I’d kiss her a time or two and say, “There, dear—they’re gone. I chopped off every one of those pesky wires. See for yourself.”

She’d look (although at these times I’m tellin you about she couldn’t really see nothing), and she’d cry some more, like as not, and then she’d hug me and say, “Thank you, Dolores. I thought this time they were going to get me for sure.”

Or sometimes she’d call me Brenda when she thanked me—she was the housekeeper the Donovans had in their Baltimore place. Other times she’d call me Clarice, who was her sister and died in 1958.

Some days I’d get up there to her room and she’d be half off the bed, screamin that there was a snake inside her pillow. Other times she’d be settin up with the blankets over her head, hollerin that the windows were magnifyin the sun and it was gonna burn her up. Sometimes she’d swear she could already feel her hair frizzin. Didn’t matter if it was rainin, or foggier’n a drunk’s head outside; she was bound and determined the sun was gonna fry her alive, so I’d pull down all the shades and then hold her until she stopped cryin. Sometimes I held her longer, because even after she’d gotten quiet I could feel her tremblin like a puppy that’s been mistreated by mean kids. She’d ask me over and over again to look at her skin and tell her if it had blistered anywhere. I’d tell her over and over again that it hadn‘t, and after a little of that she’d sometimes go to sleep. Other times she wouldn’t—she’d just fall into a stupor, mutterin to people who weren’t there. Sometimes she’d talk French, and I don’t mean that parley-voo island French, either. She and her husband loved Paris and went there every chance they got, sometimes with the kids and sometimes by themselves. Sometimes she talked about it when she was feelin perky—the cafes, the nightclubs, the galleries, and the boats on the Seine—and I loved to listen. She had a way with words, Vera did, and when she really talked a thing up, you could almost see it.

But the worst thing—what she was scared of most of all—were nothing but dust bunnies. You know what I mean: those little balls of dust that collect under beds and behind doors and in corners. Look sort of like milkweed pods, they do. I knew it was them even when she couldn’t say it, and most times I could get her calmed down again, but why she was so scared of a bunch of ghost-turds —what she really thought they were—that I don’t know, although I once got an idear. Don’t laugh, but it come to me in a dream.

Luckily, the business of the dust bunnies didn’t come up so often as the sun burnin her skin or the wires in the corner, but when that was it, I knew I was in for a bad time. I knew it was dust bunnies even if it was the middle of the night and I was in my room, fast asleep with the door closed, when she started screamin. When she got a bee in her bonnet about the other things—

What, honey?

Oh, wasn’t I?

No, you don’t need to move your cute little recorder any closer; if you want me to talk up, I will. Most generally I’m the bawlinest bitch you ever run across—Joe used to say he wished for cotton to stick in his ears every time I was in the house. But the way she was about the dust bunnies gave me the creeps, and if my voice dropped I guess that just proves they still do. Even with her dead, they still do. Sometimes I used to scold her about it. “Why do you want to get up to such foolishness, Vera?” I’d say. But it wa’ant foolishness. Not to Vera, at least. I thought more’n once that I knew how she’d finally punch out—she’d scare herself to death over those friggin dust bunnies. And that ain’t so far from the truth, either, now that I think about it.

What I started to say was that when she got a bee in her bonnet about the other things—the snake in the pillowslip, the sun, the wires—she’d scream. When it was the dust bunnies, she’d shriek. Wasn’t even words in it most times. Just shriekin so long and loud it put ice-cubes in your heart.

I’d run in there and she’d be yankin at her hair or harrowin her face with her fingernails and lookin like a witch. Her eyes’d be so big they almost looked like softboiled eggs, and they were always starin into one corner or the other.

Sometimes she was able to say “Dust bunnies, Dolores! Oh my God, dust bunnies!” Other times she could only cry and gag. She’d clap her hands over her eyes for a second or two, but then she’d take em back down. It was like she couldn’t bear to look, but couldn’t bear not to look, either. And she’d start goin at her face with her fingernails again. I kep em clipped just as short as I could, but she still drew blood lots of times, and I wondered every time it happened how her heart could stand the plain terror of it, as old and fat’s she was.

One time she fell right out of bed and just lay there with one leg twisted under her. Scared the bejesus out of me, it did. I ran in and there she was on the floor, beatin her fists on the boards like a kid doin a tantrum and screamin fit to raise the roof. That was the only time in all the years I did for her that I called Dr. Freneau in the