Dolores Claiborne Read online

"All right," I says, and then I took a little pause. She'd be expectin me to say goodbye, and when I said somethin else instead, she'd pay particular mind to it ... which was what I wanted. "You haven't seen Joe over there, have you?" I ast her.

  "Joe?" she says. "Your Joe?"

  "Ayuh."

  "No--I've never seen him up here. Why do you ask?"

  "He didn't come home last night."

  "Oh, Dolores!" she says, soundin horrified n int'rested at the same time. "Drinkin?"

  "Coss," I says. "Not that I'm really worried--this ain't the first time he's stayed out all night howlin at the moon. He'll turn up; bad pennies always do."

  Then I hung up, feelin I'd done a pretty fair job plantin the first seed.

  I made myself a toasted cheese sandwich for lunch, then couldn't eat it. The smell of the cheese n fried bread made my stomach feel all hot n sweaty. I took two asp'rins instead n laid down. I didn't think I'd fall asleep, but I did. When I woke up it was almost four o'clock n time to plant a few more seeds. I called Joe's friends--those few that had phones, that is--and asked each one if they'd seen him. He hadn't come home last night, I said, he still wa'ant home, and I was startin to get worried. They all told me no, accourse, and every one of em wanted to hear all the gory details, but the only one I said anything to was Tommy Anderson--prob'ly because I knew Joe'd bragged to Tommy before about how he kep his woman in line, and poor simple Tommy'd swallowed it. Even there I was careful not to overdo it; I just said me n Joe'd had an argument and Joe'd most likely gone off mad. I made a few more calls that evenin, includin a few to people I'd already called, and was happy to find that stories were already startin to spread.

  I didn't sleep very well that night; I had terrible dreams. One was about Joe. He was standin at the bottom of the well, lookin up at me with his white face and those dark circles above his nose that made him look like he'd pushed lumps of coal into his eyes. He said he was lonely, and kep beggin me to jump down into the well with him n keep him company.

  The other one was worse, because it was about Selena. She was about four years old, n wearin the pink dress her Gramma Trisha bought her just before she died. Selena come up to me in the dooryard, I saw she had my sewin scissors in her hand.

  I put out my hand for em, but she just shook her head. "It's my fault and I'm the one who has to pay," she said. Then she raised the scissors to her face and cut off her own nose with em--snip. It fell into the dirt between her little black patent-leather shoes n I woke up screamin. It was only four o'clock, but I was all done sleepin that night, and not too stupid to know it.

  At seven I called Vera's again. This time Kenopensky answered. I told him I knew Vera was expectin me that mornin, but I couldn't come in, at least not til I found out where my husband was. I said he'd gone missin two nights, and one night out drunk had always been his limit before.

  Near the end of our talk, Vera herself picked up on the extension and ast me what was goin on. "I seem to've misplaced my husband," I said.

  She didn't say nothing for a few seconds, and I would've given a pie to know what she was thinkin of. Then she spoke up n said that if she'd been in my place, misplacin Joe St. George wouldn't have bothered her at all.

  "Well," I says, "we've got three kids, and I've kind of got used to him. I'll be in later on, if he turns up."

  "That's fine," she says, and then, "Are you still there, Ted?"

  "Yes, Vera," says he.

  "Well, go do something manly," she says. "Pound something in or push something over. I don't care which."

  "Yes, Vera," he repeats, and there was a little click on the line as he hung up.

  Vera was quiet for a couple more seconds just the same. Then she says, "Maybe he's had an accident, Dolores."

  "Yes," I says, "it wouldn't surprise me none. He's been drinkin heavy the last few weeks, and when I tried to talk to him about the kids' money on the day of the eclipse, he damned near choked the life outta me."

  "Oh--really?" she says. Another couple of seconds went by, and then she said, "Good luck, Dolores. "

  "Thanks," I says. "I may need it."

  "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

  "That's very kind," I told her.

  "Not at all," she says back. "I'd simply hate to lose you. It's hard to find help these days who don't sweep the dirt under the carpets."

  Not to mention help that c'n remember to put the welcome mats back down pointin in the right direction, I thought but didn't say. I only thanked her n hung up. I gave it another half hour, then I rang Garrett Thibodeau. Wasn't nothin so fancy n modern as a police chief on Little Tall in those days; Garrett was the town constable. He took over the job when Edgar Sherrick had his stroke back in 1960.

  I told him Joe hadn't been home the last two nights, and I was gettin worried. Garrett sounded pretty muzzy--I don't think he'd been up long enough to have gotten outside his first cup of coffee yet--but he said he'd contact the State Police on the mainland n check with a few people on the island. I knew they'd be all the same people I'd already called--twice, in some cases--but I didn't say so. Garrett finished by sayin he was sure I'd see Joe by lunchtime. That's right, you old fart, I thought, hangin up, and pigs'll whistle. I guess that man did have brains enough to sing "Yankee Doodle" while he took a shit, but I doubt if he coulda remembered all the words.

  It was a whole damned week before they found him, and I was half outta my mind before they did. Selena came back on Wednesday. I called her late Tuesday afternoon to say her father had gone missin and it was startin to look serious. I asked her if she wanted to come home n she said she did. Melissa Caron--Tanya's mother, you know--went n fetched her. I left the boys right where they were--just dealin with Selena was enough for a start. She caught me out in my little vegetable garden on Thursday, still two days before they finally found Joe, and she says, "Mamma, tell me somethin."

  "All right, dear," I says. I think I sounded calm enough, but I had a pretty good idear of what was comin--oh yes indeed.

  "Did you do anything to him?" she asks.

  All of a sudden my dream came back to me--Selena at four in her pretty pink dress, raisin up my sewin scissors and cuttin off her own nose. And I thought--prayed--"God, please help me lie to my daughter. Please, God. I'll never ask You for nothing again if You'll just help me lie to my daughter so she'll believe me n never doubt."

  "No," I says. I was wearin my gardenin gloves, but I took em off so I could put my bare hands on her shoulders. I looked her dead in the eye. "No, Selena," I told her. "He was drunk n ugly n he choked me hard enough to leave these bruises on my neck, but I didn't do nothing to him. All I did was leave, n I did that because I was scairt to stay. You can understand that, can't you? Understand and not blame me? You know what it's like, to be scairt of him. Don't you?"

  She nodded, but her eyes never left mine. They were a darker blue than I've ever seen em--the color of the ocean just ahead of a squall-line. In my mind's eye I saw the blades of the scissors flashin, and her little button of a nose fallin plop into the dust. And I'll tell you what I think--I think God granted half my prayer that day. It's how He usually answers em, I've noticed. No lie I told about Joe later was any better'n the one I told Selena that hot July afternoon amongst the beans n cukes ... but did she believe me? Believe me n never doubt? As much as I'd like to think the answer to that is yes, I can't. It was doubt that made her eyes so dark, then n ever after.

  "The worst I'm guilty of," I says, "is buyin him a bottle of booze--of tryin to bribe him to be nice--when I shoulda known better."

  She looked at me a minute longer, then bent down n took hold of the bag of cucumbers I'd picked. "All right," she said. "I'll take these in the house for you."

  And that was all. We never spoke of it again, not before they found him n not after. She must have heard plenty of talk about me, both on the island and at school, but we never spoke of it again. That was when the coldness started to come in, though, that afternoon in the garden. And when th
e first crack in the wall families put between themselves n the rest of the world showed up between us. Since then it's only gotten wider n wider. She calls and writes me just as regular as clockwork, she's good about that, but we're apart just the same. We're estranged. What I did was mostly done for Selena, not for the boys or because of the money her Dad tried to steal. It was mostly for Selena that I led him on to his death, and all it cost me to protect her from him was the deepest part of her love for me. I once heard my own Dad say God pitched a bitch on the day He made the world, and over the years I've come to understand what he meant. And do you know the worst of it? Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's so funny you can't help from laughin even while it's all fallin apart around you.

  Meantime, Garrett Thibodeau and his barber-shop cronies kep busy not findin Joe. It'd gotten to the point where I thought I'd just have to stumble on him myself, as little as I liked the idear. If it hadn't been for the dough, I'd've been happy to leave him down there until the Last Trump blew. But the money was over there in Jonesport, sittin in a bank account with his name on it, and I didn't fancy waitin seven years to have him declared legally dead so I could get it back. Selena was gonna be startin college in just a little over two years, and she'd want some of that money to get herself goin.

  The idear that Joe mighta taken his bottle into the woods behind the house n either stepped in a trap or taken a fall walkin home tipsy in the dark finally started to go the rounds. Garrett claimed it was his idear, but that's awful hard for me to believe, havin gone to school with him like I did. No matter. He put a sign-up sheet on the door of the town hall Thursday afternoon, and on Sat'dy mornin--a week after the eclipse, this was--he fielded a search-party of forty or fifty men.

  They formed up a line by the East Head end of Highgate Woods and worked their way toward the house, first through the woods n then across Russian Meadow. I seen em crossin the meadow in a long line around one o'clock, laughin and jokin, but the jokin stopped and the cursin begun when they crossed over onto our property n got into the blackberry tangle.

  I stood in the entry door, watchin em come with my heart beatin way up in my throat. I remember thinkin that at least Selena wa'ant home--she'd gone over to see Laurie Langill--and that was a blessin. Then I started thinkin that all those brambles would cause em to just say frig it n break off the search before they got anywhere near the old well. But they kept on comin. All at once I heard Sonny Benoit scream: "Hey, Garrett! Over here! Git over here!" and I knew that, for better or worse, Joe had been found.

  There was an autopsy, accourse. They did it the very day they found him, and I guess it might have still been goin on when Jack n Alicia Forbert brought the boys back around dusk. Pete was cryin, but he looked all confused--I don't think he really understood what'd happened to his Dad. Joe Junior did, though, and when he drew me aside, I thought he was gonna ask me the same question Selena had ast, n I steeled myself to tell the same lie. But he ast me somethin entirely different.

  "Ma," he says, "if I was glad he was dead, would God send me to hell?"

  "Joey, a person can't much help his feelins, and I think God knows that," I said.

  Then he started to cry, and he said somethin that broke my heart. "I tried to love him" is what he told me. "I always tried, but he wouldn't let me."

  I swep him into my arms n hugged him as hard as I could. I think that was about as close as I come to cryin in the whole business ... but accourse you have to remember that I hadn't been sleepin too well n still hadn't the slightest idear of how things was going to play out.

  There was to be an inquest on Tuesday, and Lucien Mercier, who ran the only mortuary on Little Tall back then, told me I'd finally be allowed to bury Joe in The Oaks on Wednesday. But on Monday, the day before the inquest, Garrett called me on the telephone n ast if I could come down to his office for a few minutes. It was the call I'd been expectin and dreadin, but there wasn't nothing to do but go, so I ast Selena if she'd give the boys their lunch, and off I went. Garrett wasn't alone. Dr. John McAuliffe was with him. I'd more or less expected that, too, but my heart still sank a little in my breast.

  McAuliffe was the county medical examiner back then. He died three years later when a snow-plow hit his little Volkswagen Beetle. It was Henry Briarton took over the job when McAuliffe died. If Briarton had been the county man in '63, I'd've felt a good deal easier in my mind about our little talk that day. Briarton's smarter than poor old Garrett Thibodeau was, but only by a little. John McAuliffe, though ... he had a mind like the lamp that shines outta Battiscan Light.

  He was a genuine bottled-in-bond Scotsman who turned up in these parts right after World War II ended, hoot-mon burr n all. I guess he musta been an American citizen, since he was both doctorin and holdin a county position, but he sure didn't sound much like folks from around here. Not that it mattered to me; I knew I'd have to face him down, no matter if he was an American or a Scotsman or a heathen Chinee.

  He had snowy white hair even though he couldn't have been more'n forty-five, and blue eyes so bright n sharp they looked like drillbits. When he looked at you, you felt like he was starin right into your head and puttin the thoughts he saw there into alphabetical order. As soon as I seen him sittin beside Garrett's desk n heard the door to the rest of the Town Office Building click closed behind me, I knew that what happened the next day over on the mainland didn't matter a tinker's damn. The real inquest was gonna happen right there in that tiny town constable's office, with a Weber Oil calendar hangin on one wall and a pitcher of Garrett's mother hangin on another.

  "I'm sorry to bother you in your time of grief, Dolores," Garrett said. He was rubbin his hands together, kinda nervous, and he reminded me of Mr. Pease over at the bank. Garrett musta had a few more calluses on his hands, though, because the sound they made goin back n forth was like fine sandpaper rubbin along a dry board. "But Dr. McAuliffe here has a few questions he'd like to ask you."

  I seen by the puzzled way Garrett looked at the doc that he didn't know what those questions might be, though, and that scared me even more. I didn't like the idear of that canny Scotsman thinkin matters were serious enough for him to keep his own counsels n not give poor old Garrett Thibodeau any chance at all to frig up the works.

  "Ma deepest sympathies, Mrs. St. George," McAuliffe says in that thick Scots accent of his. He was a little man, but compact n well put together for all that. He had a neat little mustache, as white's the hair on his head, he was wearin a three-piece wool suit, n he didn't look no more like home folks than he sounded like em. Those blue eyes went drillin away at my forehead, and I seen he didn't have a bit of sympathy for me, no matter what he was sayin. Prob'ly not for nobody else, either... includin himself. "I'm verra, verra sorry for your grief and misfortune."

  Sure, and if I believe that, you'll tell me one more, I thought. The last time you was really sorry, doc, was the last time you needed to use the pay toilet and the string on your pet dime broke. But I made up my mind right then that I wasn't goin to show him how scared I was. Maybe he had me n maybe he didn't. You've got to remember that, for all I knew, he was gonna tell me that when they laid Joe on the table there in the basement of County Hospital n opened his hands, a little piece of white nylon fell outta one; a scrid of a lady's slip. That could be, all right, but I still wasn't gonna give him the satisfaction of squirmin under his eyes. And he was used to havin people squirm when he looked at em; he'd come to take it as his due, and he liked it.

  "Thank you very much," I said.

  "Will ye sit doon, madam?" he asks, like it was his office instead of poor old confused Garrett's.

  I sat down and he ast me if I'd kindly give him permission to smoke. I told him the lamp was lit as far's as I was concerned. He chuckled like I'd made a funny... but his eyes didn't chuckle. He took a big old black pipe out of his coat pocket, a briar, and stoked it up. His eyes never left me while he was doin it, either. Even after he had it clamped between his teeth and the smoke was risin outta the bowl, he
never took his eyes off me. They gave me the willies, peerin at me through the smoke like they did, and made me think of Battiscan Light again--they say that one shines out almost two mile even on a night when the fog's thick enough to carve with your hands.

  I started to squirm under that look of his in spite of all my good intentions, and then I thought of Vera Donovan sayin "Nonsense--husbands die every day, Dolores." It occurred to me that McAuliffe could stare at Vera until his eyes fell out n never get her to so much as cross her legs the other way. Thinkin of that eased me a little, and I grew quiet again; just folded my hands on top of my handbag n waited him out.

  At last, when he seen I wasn't just gonna fall outta my chair onto the floor n confess to murderin my husband--through a rain of tears is how he would've liked it, I imagine--he took the pipe out of his mouth n said, "You told the constable 'twas your husband who put those bruises on your neck, Mrs. St. George."

  "Ayuh," I says.

  "That you and he had sat down on the porch to watch the eclipse, and there commenced an argument."

  "Ayuh."

  "And what, may I ask, was the argument about?"

  "Money on top," I says, "booze underneath."

  "But you yourself bought him the liquor he got drunk on that day, Mrs. St. George! Isna that right?"

  "Ayuh," I says. I could feel myself wantin to say somethin more, to explain myself, but I didn't, even though I could. That's what McAuliffe wanted, you see--for me to go on rushin ahead. To explain myself right into a jail-cell someplace.

  At last he give up waitin. He twiddled his fingers like he was annoyed, then fixed those lighthouse eyes of his on me again. "After the choking incident, you left your husband; you went up to Russian Meadow, on the way to East Head, to watch the eclipse by yourself."

  "Ayuh."

  He leaned forward all of a sudden, his little hands on his little knees, and says, "Mrs. St. George, do you know what direction the wind was from that day?"

  It was like the day in November of '62, when I almost found the old well by fallin into it--I seemed to hear the same crackin noise, and I thought, "You be careful, Dolores Claiborne; you be oh so careful. There's wells everywhere today, and this man knows where every goddam one of em is."