Dolores Claiborne (5 page)

On Thursday, instead of gettin half a bedpan filled with pee at six in the morning, I’d get just a dribble. The same thing at nine. And at noon, instead of some pee and a clinker, there was apt to be nothing at all. I’d know 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 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.