Dolores Claiborne (6 page)

“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.

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 feel worse’n ever, but when I woke up, I felt good. I guess it’s true how a person’s mind doesn’t go to sleep even if a person thinks it does; it just goes on thinkin, and sometimes it does an even better job when the person in charge isn’t there to frig it up with the usual run of chatter that goes on in a body’s head—chores to do, what to have for lunch, what to watch on TV, things like that. It must be true, because the
reason
I felt so good was that I woke up knowin how she was foolin me. The only reason I hadn’t seen it before was because I was apt to underestimate her—ayuh, even me, and I knew how sly she could be from time to time. And once I understood the trick, I knew what to do about it.

It hurt me to know I’d have to trust one of the Thursday girls to vacuum the Aubusson—and the idear of Shawna Wyndham doin it gave me what my grampa used to call the shiverin hits. You know how gormy she is, Andy—all the Wyndhams are gormy, accourse, but she’s got the rest of em beat seven ways to downtown. It’s like she grows bumps right out of her body to knock things over with when she goes by em. It ain’t her fault, it’s somethin in the blood, but I couldn’t bear thinkin of Shawna chargin around in the parlor, with all of Vera’s carnival glass and Tiffany just beggin to be knocked over.

Still, I had to do
somethin
—fool me twice, shame on me—and luckily there was Susy to fall back on. She wa’ant no ballerina, but it was her vacuumed the Aubusson for the next year, and she never broke a thing. She’s a good girl, Frank, and I can’t tell you how glad I was to get that weddin announcement from her, even if the fella was from away. How are they doin? What do you hear?

Well, that’s fine.
Fine.
I’m glad for her. I don’t s’pose she’s got a bun in the oven yet, does she? These days it seems like folks wait until they’re almost ready for the old folks’ home before they—

Yes, Andy, I
will!
I just wish you’d remember it’s my
life
I’m talkin about here—my goddam
life!
So why don’t you just flop back in that big old chair of yours and put your feet up and relax? If you keep pushin that way, you’re gonna give y’self a rupture.

Anyway, Frank, you give her my best, and tell her she just about saved Dolores Claiborne’s life in the summer of ’91. You c’n give her the inside story about the Thursday shitstorms n how I stopped em. I never told em exactly what was goin on; all they knew for sure was that I was buttin heads with Her Royal Majesty. I see now I was
ashamed
to tell em what was goin on. I guess I don’t like gettin beat any more than Vera did.

It was the sound of the vacuum, you see.
That
was what I realized when I woke up that mornin. I told you there was nothin wrong with her
ears,
and it was the sound of the vacuum that told her if I was really doin the parlor or standin at the foot of the stairs, on my mark. When a vacuum cleaner is sittin in one spot, it only makes one sound, you see. Just
zooooooo,
like that. But when you’re vacuumin a rug, it makes two sounds, and they go up and down in waves.
WHOOP,
that’s when you push it out. And
zoop,
that’s when you pull it back to you for another stroke.
WHOOP-zoop
,
WHOOP-zoop
,
WHOOP-zoop.

Quit scratchin your head, you two, and look at the smile Nancy’s wearin. All a body’d have to do to know which of you has spent some time runnin a vacuum cleaner is look at your faces. If you really feel like it’s that important, Andy, try it for yourself. You’ll hear it right off, though I imagine Maria’ d just about drop dead if she came in and saw you vacuumin the livin-room rug.

What I realized that mornin was that she’d stopped just listenin for when the vacuum cleaner started runnin, because she’d realized that wasn’t good enough anymore. She was listenin to see if the sound went up and down like it does when a vacuum’s actually workin. She wouldn’t pull her dirty little trick until she heard that
WHOOP-zoop
wave.

I was crazy to try out my new idear, but I couldn’t right away, because she went into one of her bad times right about then, and for quite awhile she just did her business in the bedpan or peed a little in her diapers if she had to. And I started to get scared that this would be the time she wouldn’t come back out of it. I know that sounds funny, since she was so much easier to mind when she was confused in her thinkin, but when a person gets a good idear like that, they kinda want to take it for a test-drive. And you know, I felt
somethin
for that bitch besides wanting to throttle her. After knowin her over forty years, it’d be goddam strange if I didn’t. She knitted me an afghan once, you know—this was long before she got really bad, but it’s still on my bed, and it’s some warm on those February nights when the wind plays up nasty.

Then, about a month or a month and a half after I woke up with my idear, she started to come around again. She’d watch
Jeopardy
on the little bedroom TV and rag the contestants if they didn’t know who was President durin the Spanish-American War or who played Melanie in
Gone With the Wind.
She started all her old globber about how her kids might come n visit her before Labor Day. And, accourse, she pestered to be put in her chair so she could watch me hang the sheets and make sure I used six pins and not just four.

Then there come a Thursday when I pulled the bedpan out from under her at noon dry as a bone and empty as a car salesman’s promises. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see that empty bedpan. Here we go, you sly old fox, I thought. Now ain’t we gonna see. I went downstairs and called Susy Proulx into the parlor.

“I want
you
to vacuum in here today, Susy,” I told her.

“Okay, Missus Claiborne,” she said. That’s what both of them called me, Andy—what most people on the island call me, s’far’s that goes. I never made an issue of it at church or anywhere else, but that’s how it is. It’s like they think I was married to a fella named Claiborne at some point in my checkered past ... or maybe I just want to believe most of em don’t remember Joe, although I guess there’s plenty who do. It don’t matter too much, one way or the other, in the end; I guess I am entitled to believe what I want to believe. I was the one married to the bastard, after all.

“I don’t mind,” she goes on, “but why are you whisperin?”

“Never mind,” I said, “just keep your own voice down. And don’t you break anything in here, Susan Emma Proulx—don’t you dare. ”

Well, she blushed just as red as the side of the volunteer fire truck; it was actually sorta comical. “How’d you know my middle name was Emma?”

“None of your beeswax,” I says. “I’ve spent donkey’s years on Little Tall, and there’s no end to the things I know, and the people I know em about. You just be careful of your elbows around the furniture and Missus God’s carnival glass vases, especially when you’re backin up, and you won’t have a thing to worry about.”

“I’ll be extra careful,” she said.

I turned the Kirby on for her, and then I stepped into the hall, cupped my hands around my mouth, and hollered: “Susy! Shawna! I’m gonna vacuum the parlor now!”

Susy was standin right there, accourse, and I tell you that girl’s entire
face
was a question mark. I just kinda flapped my hand at her, tellin her to go on about her business and never mind me. Which she did.

I tiptoed over to the foot of the stairs n stood in my old place. I know it’s silly, but I ain’t been so excited since my Dad took me huntin for the first time when I was twelve. It was the same kind of feelin, too, with your heart beatin hard and kinda
flat
in your chest and neck. The woman had dozens of valuable antiques as well as all that expensive glass in the parlor, but I never spared a thought to Susy Proulx in there, whirlin and twirlin amongst them like a dervish. Do you believe it?

I made myself stay where I was as long as I could, about a minute and a half, I think. Then I dashed. And when I popped into her room, there she was, face red, eyes all squinched down into slits, fists balled up, goin
“Unhh! Unhhhhh! UNHHHHH!”
Her eyes flew open in a hurry when she heard the bedroom door bang open, though. Oh, I wish I’d had a camera—it was priceless.

“Dolores, you get right back out of here!” she kinda squeaks. “I’m tryin to have a nap, and I can’t do it if you’re going to come busting in here like a bull with a hard-on every twenty minutes!”

“Well,” I said, “I’ll go, but first I think I’ll put this old fanny-pan under you. From the smell, I’d say a little scare was about all you needed to take care of your constipation problem.”

She slapped at my hands and cussed me—she could cuss somethin fierce when she wanted to, and she wanted to every time somebody crossed her—but I didn’t pay much attention. I got the bedpan under her slick as a whistle, and, like they say, everythin came out all right. When it was done, I looked at her and she looked at me and neither one of us had to say a thing. We knew each other of old, you see.

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.