Dolores Claiborne Read online

  I made as if to reach for it n he yanked it back real quick.

  "You been givin me one helluva lot of presents just lately," he says. "We can't afford stuff like this, eclipse or no eclipse." That didn't stop him from gettin out his pocket-knife and slittin the seal, though; didn't even seem to slow him down.

  "Well, to tell you the truth, it's not just the eclipse," I says. "I've just been feelin so good and so relieved that I wanted to share some of my happiness. And since I've noticed that most of what seems to make you happy comes out of a bottle ..."

  I watched him take the cap off n pour himself a knock. His hand was shakin a little bit, and I wasn't sorry to see it. The raggeder he was, the better my chances would be.

  "What have you got to feel good about?" he asks. "Did somebody invent a pill to cure ugly?"

  "That's a pretty mean thing to say to someone who just bought you a bottle of premium Scotch," I said. "Maybe I really should take it back." I reached for it again and he pulled it back again.

  "Fat chance," he says.

  "Then be nice," I told him. "What happened to all that gratitude you were s'posed to be learnin in your A.A.?"

  He never minded that, just went on lookin at me like a store-clerk tryin to decide if someone'd passed him a phony ten. "What's got you feelin so goddam good?" he asks again. "It's the brats, isn't it? Havin em outta the house."

  "Nope, I miss em already," I said, and it was the truth, too.

  "Yeah, you would," he says, n drinks his drink. "So what is it?"

  "I'll tell you later," I says, n starts gettin up.

  He grabbed my arm and said, "Tell me now, Dolores. You know I don't like it when you're fresh."

  I looked down at him and says, "You better take your hand off me, or that expensive bottle of hooch might end up gettin broke over your head. I don't want to fight with you, Joe, especially not today. I've got some nice salami, some Swiss cheese, and some water-biscuits."

  "Water-biscuits!" he says. "Jesus wept, woman!"

  "Never mind," I says. "I'm gonna make us a tray of hors d'oeuvres every bit as nice as the ones Vera's guests are gonna have out on the ferry."

  "Fancy food like that gives me the shits," he says. "Never mind any hosses' ovaries; just make me a sandwich. "

  "All right," I agreed. "I will."

  He was lookin toward the reach by then--probably me mentionin the ferry'd put him in mind of it--with his lower lip poochin out in that ugly way it had. There were more boats out there than ever, and it looked to me like the sky over em had lightened up a little bit. "Lookit em!" he says in that sneerin way of his--the one his youngest son was tryin so goddam hard to copy. "Ain't nothin gonna happen that's any more'n a thunderhead goin across the sun, and they're all just about shootin off in their pants. I hope it rains! I hope it comes down s'hard it drowns that snooty cunt you work for, and the rest of em, too!"

  "That's my Joe," I says. "Always cheery, always charitable. "

  He looked around at me, still holdin that bottle of Scotch curled against his chest like a bear with a chunk of honeycomb. "What in the name of Christ are you runnin on about, woman?"

  "Nothin," I says. "I'm going inside to fix the food--a sandwich for you and some hors d'oeuvres for me. Then we'll sit n have a couple of drinks n watch the eclipse--Vera sent down a viewer and a reflector-box thingamajig for each of us--and when it's over, I'll tell you what's got me feeling so happy. It's a surprise."

  "I don't like fucking surprises," he says.

  "I know you don't," I told him. "But you'll get a kick out of this one, Joe. You'd never guess it in a thousand years." Then I went into the kitchen so he could really get started on that bottle I'd bought him at the greenfront. I wanted him to enjoy it--I really did. After all, it was the last liquor he was ever gonna drink. He wouldn't need A.A. to keep him off the sauce, either. Not where he was goin.

  That was the longest afternoon of my life, and the strangest, too. There he was, sittin on the porch in his rocker, holdin the paper in one hand and a drink in the other, bitchin in the open kitchen window at me about somethin the Democrats were tryin to do down in Augusta. He'd forgot all about tryin to find out what I was happy about, and all about the eclipse, as well. I was in the kitchen, makin him a sandwich, hummin a tune, and thinkin, "Make it good, Dolores--put on some of that red onion he likes and just enough mustard to make it tangy. Make it good, cause it's the last thing he's ever gonna eat."

  From where I was standin, I could look out along the line of the woodshed and see the white rock and the edge of the blackberry tangle. The handkerchief I'd tied to the top of one of the bushes was still there; I could see that, too. It went noddin back n forth in the breeze. Every time it did, I thought of that spongy wellcap right under it.

  I remember how the birds sang that afternoon, and how I could hear some of the people out on the reach yellin back and forth to each other, their voices all tiny and far--they sounded like voices on the radio. I can even remember what I was hummin: "Amazin Grace, how sweet the sound." I went on hummin it while I made my crackers n cheese (I didn't want em any more'n a hen wants a flag, but I didn't want Joe wonderin why I wasn't eatin, either).

  It must have been quarter past two or so when I went back out on the porch with the tray of food balanced on one hand like a waitress and the bag Vera'd give me in the other. The sky was still overcast, but you could see it really had gotten quite a bit lighter.

  That was a good little feed, as things turned out. Joe wasn't much for compliments, but I could see from the way he put down his paper n looked at his sandwich while he was eatin that he liked it. I thought of somethin I'd read in some book or saw in some movie: "The condemned man ate a hearty meal. " Once I'd got that in my head, I couldn't get rid of the damned thing.

  It didn't stop me from diggin into my own kip, though; once I got started, I kept goin until every one of those cheese-n-cracker things were gone, and I drank a whole bottle of Pepsi as well. Once or twice I found myself wonderin if most executioners have good appetites on the days when they have to do their job. It's funny what a person's mind will get up to when that person's nervin herself up to do somethin, isn't it?

  The sun broke through the clouds just as we were finishin up. I thought of what Vera'd told me that mornin, looked down at my watch, and smiled. It was three o'clock, right on the button. About that same time, Dave Pelletier--he delivered mail on the island back in those days--drove back toward town, hell bent for election and pullin a long rooster-tail of dust behind him. I didn't see another car on East Lane until long after dark.

  I put the plates and my empty soda bottle on the tray, scoochin down to do it, n before I could stand up, Joe done somethin he hadn't done in years: put one of his hands on the back of my neck n give me a kiss. I've had better; his breath was all booze n onion n salami and he hadn't shaved, but it was a kiss just the same, and nothing mean or half-assed or peckish about it. It was just a nice kiss, n I couldn't remember the last time he'd give me one. I closed my eyes n let him do it. I remember that --closin my eyes and feelin his lips on mine and the sun on my forehead. One was as warm n nice as the other.

  "That wa'ant half-bad, Dolores," he said--high praise, comin from him.

  I had a second there when I kinda wavered--I ain't gonna sit here and say different. It was a second when it wasn't Joe puttin his hands all over Selena that I saw, but the way his forehead looked in study-hall back in 1945--how I saw that and wanted him to kiss me just the way he was kissin me now; how I thought, "If he kissed me I'd reach up and touch the skin there on his brow while he did it ... see if it's as smooth as it looks."

  I reached out my hand n touched it then, just like I'd dreamed of doin all those years before, when I'd been nothin but a green girl, and the minute I did, that inside eye opened wider'n ever. What it saw was how he'd go on if I let him go on--not just gettin what he wanted from Selena, or spendin the money he'd robbed out of his kids' bank accounts, but workin on em; belittlin Joe Junior for hi
s good grades n his love of history; clappin Little Pete on the back whenever Pete called somebody a sheeny or said one of his classmates was lazy as a nigger; workin on em; always workin on em. He'd go on until they were broke or spoiled, if I let him, and in the end he'd die n leave us with nothin but bills and a hole to bury him in.

  Well, I had a hole for him, one thirty feet deep instead of just six, and lined with chunks of field-stone instead of dirt. You bet I had a hole for him, and one kiss after three years or maybe even five wasn't gonna change it. Neither was touchin his forehead, which had been a lot more the cause of all my trouble than his pulin little dingus ever was ... but I touched it again, just the same; traced one finger over it and thought about how he kissed me on the patio of The Samoset Inn while the band inside played "Moonlight Cocktail," and how I'd been able to smell his father's cologne on his cheeks when he did.

  Then I hardened my heart.

  "I'm glad," I said, n picked up the tray again. "Why don't you see what you can make of those viewers and the reflector-boxes while I do up these few dishes?"

  "I don't give a fuck about anything that rich cunt gave you," he says, "and I don't give a fuck about the goddam eclipse, either. I've seen dark before. It happens every goddam night."

  "All right," I says. "Suit yourself."

  I got as far's the door and he says, "Maybe you n me can get up to dickens later on. What would you think about that, Dee?"

  "Maybe," I says, all the time thinkin there was gonna be plenty of dickens, all right. Before it got dark for the second time that day, Joe St. George was gonna get more dickens than he'd ever dreamed of.

  I kept my good weather eye on him while I was standin at the sink and doin up our few dishes. He hadn't done anything in bed but sleep, snore, n fart for years, and I think he knew as well's I did that the booze had as much to do with that as my ugly face ... prob'ly more. I was scared that maybe the idear of gettin his ashes hauled later on would cause him to put the cap back on that bottle of Johnnie Walker, but no such bad luck. For Joe, fuckin (pardon my language, Nancy) was just a fancy, like kissin me had been. The bottle was a lot realer to him. The bottle was right there where he could touch it. He'd gotten one of the eclipse-viewers out of the bag and was holdin it up by the handle, turnin it this way n that, squintin at the sun through it. He reminded me of a thing I saw on TV once--a chimpanzee tryin to tune a radio. Then he put it down and poured himself another drink.

  When I came back out on the porch with my sewin basket, I saw he was already gettin that owly, red-around-the-eyes look he had when he was on his way from moderately tickled to thoroughly tanked. He looked at me pretty sharp just the same, no doubt wonderin if I was gonna bitch at him.

  "Don't mind me," I says, sweet as sugar-pie, "I'm just gonna sit here and do a little mendin and wait for the eclipse to start. It's nice that the sun came out, isn't it?"

  "Christ, Dolores, you must think this is my birthday," he says. His voice had started to get thick and furry.

  "Well--somethin like it, maybe," I says, and began sewin up a rip in a pair of Little Pete's jeans.

  The next hour and a half passed slower'n any time had since I was a little girl, and my Aunt Cloris promised to come n take me to my first movie down in Ellsworth. I finished Little Pete's jeans, sewed patches on two pairs of Joe Junior's chinos (even back then that boy would absolutely not wear jeans--I think part of him'd already decided he was gonna be a politician when he grew up), and hemmed two of Selena's skirts. The last thing I did was sew a new fly in one of Joe's two or three pairs of good slacks. They were old but not entirely worn out. I remember thinkin they would do to bury him in.

  Then, just when I thought it was never gonna happen, I noticed the light on my hands seemed a little dimmer.

  "Dolores?" Joe says. "I think this is what you n all the rest of the fools've been waitin for."

  "Ayuh," I says. "I guess." The light in the dooryard had gone from that strong afternoon yellow it has in July to a kind of faded rose, and the shadow of the house layin across the driveway had taken on a funny thin kind of look I'd never seen before and never have since.

  I took one of the reflector-boxes from the bag, held it out the way Vera'd showed me about a hundred times in the last week or so, and when I did I had the funniest thought: That little girl is doin this, too, I thought. The one who's sittin on her father's lap. She's doin this very same thing.

  I didn't know what that thought meant then, Andy, and I don't really know now, but I'm tellin you anyway--because I made up my mind I'd tell you everythin, and because I thought of her again later. Except in the next second or two I wasn't just thinkin of her; I was seein her, the way you see people in dreams, or the way I guess the Old Testament prophets must have seen things in their visions: a little girl maybe ten years old, with her own reflector-box in her hands. She was wearin a short dress with red n yellow stripes--a kind of sundress with straps instead of sleeves, you know --and lipstick the color of peppermint candy. Her hair was blonde, and put up in the back, like she wanted to look older'n she really was. I saw somethin else, as well, somethin that made me think of Joe: her Daddy's hand was on her leg, way up high. Higher'n it ought to've been, maybe. Then it was gone.

  "Dolores?" Joe ast me. "You all right?"

  "What do you mean?" I asks back. "Course I am."

  "You looked funny there for a minute."

  "It's just the eclipse," I says, and I really think that's what it was, Andy, but I also think that little girl I saw then n again later was a real little girl, and that she was sittin with her father somewhere else along the path of the eclipse at the same time I was sittin on the back porch with Joe.

  I looked down in the box and seen a little tiny white sun, so bright it was like lookin at a fifty-cent piece on fire, with a dark curve bit into one side of it. I looked at it for a little while, then at Joe. He was holdin up one of the viewers, peerin into it.

  "Goddam," he says. "She's disappearin, all right. "

  The crickets started to sing in the grass right about then; I guess they'd decided sundown was comin early that day, and it was time for em to crank up. I looked out on the reach at all the boats, and saw the water they were floatin on looked a darker blue now--there was somethin about them that was creepy n wonderful at the same time. My brain kept tryin to believe that all those boats sittin there under that funny dark summer sky were just a hallucination.

  I glanced at my watch and saw it was goin on ten til five. That meant for the next hour or so everyone on the island would be thinkin about nothin else and watchin nothin else. East Lane was dead empty, our neighbors were either on the Island Princess or the hotel roof, and if I really meant to do him, the time'd come. My guts felt like they were all wound into one big spring and I couldn't quite get that thing I'd seen--the little girl sittin on her Daddy's lap--out of my mind, but I couldn't let either of those things stop me or even distract me, not for a single minute. I knew if I didn't do it right then, I wouldn't never.

  I put the reflector-box down beside my sewin and said, "Joe."

  "What?" he ast me. He'd pooh-poohed the eclipse before, but now that it'd actually started, it seemed like he couldn't take his eyes off it. His head was tipped back and the eclipse-viewer he was lookin through cast one of those funny, faded shadows on his face.

  "It's time for the surprise," I said.

  "What surprise?" he ast, and when he lowered the eclipse-viewer, which was just this double layer of special polarized glass in a frame, to look at me, I saw it wasn't fascination with the eclipse after all, or not completely. He was halfway to bein shit-faced, and so groggy I got a little scared. If he didn't understand what I was sayin, my plan was buggered before it even got started. And what was I gonna do then? I didn't know. The only thing I did know scared the hell outta me: I wasn't gonna turn back. No matter how wrong things went or what happened later, I wasn't gonna turn back.

  Then he reached out a hand, grabbed me by the shoulder, and shook me. "What i
n God's name're you talkin about, woman?" he says.

  "You know the money in the kids' bank accounts?" I asks him.

  His eyes narrowed a little, and I saw he wasn't anywhere near as drunk as I'd first thought. I understood something else, too--that one kiss didn't change a thing. Anyone can give a kiss, after all; a kiss was how Judas Iscariot showed the Romans which one was Jesus.

  "What about it?" he says.

  "You took it."

  "Like hell!"

  "Oh yes," I says. "After I found out you'd been foolin with Selena, I went to the bank. I meant to withdraw the money, then take the kids and get them away from you."

  His mouth dropped open and for a few seconds he just gaped at me. Then he started to laugh--just leaned back in his rocker and let fly while the day went on gettin darker all around him. "Well, you got fooled, didn't you?" he says. Then he helped himself to a little more Scotch and looked up at the sky through the eclipse-viewer again. This time I couldn't hardly see the shadow on his face. "Half gone, Dolores!" he says. "Half gone now, maybe a little more!"

  I looked down into my reflector-box and seen he was right; only half of that fifty-cent piece was left, and more was goin all the time. "Ayuh," I says. "Half gone, so it is. As to the money, Joe--"

  "You just forget that," he told me. "Don't trouble your pointy little head about it. That money's just about fine."

  "Oh, I'm not worried about it," I says. "Not a bit. The way you fooled me, though--that weighs on my mind."

  He nodded, kinda solemn n thoughtful, as if to show me he understood n even sympathized, but he couldn't hold onto the expression. Pretty soon he busted out laughin again, like a little kid who's gettin scolded by a teacher he ain't in the least afraid of. He laughed so hard he sprayed a little silver cloud of spit into the air in front of his mouth.

  "I'm sorry, Dolores," he says when he was able to talk again, "I don't mean to laugh, but I did steal a march on you, didn't I?"

  "Oh, ayuh," I agreed. It wasn't nothing but the truth, after all.

  "Fooled you right and proper," he says, laughin and shakin his head the way you do when someone tells a real knee-slapper.