Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

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Dolores Claiborne
WHAT did you ask, Andy Bissette?
Do I 'understand these rights as you've explained em to me'?
Gorry! What makes some men so numb?
No, you never mind - still your jawin and listen to me for awhile. I got an idear you're gonna he listenin to me
most of the night, so you might as well get used to it. Coss I understand what you read to me! Do I look like I lost
all m'brains since I seen you down to the market? That was just Monday afternoon, in case you lost track. I told
you your wife would give you merry hell about buying that day-old bread - penny wise and pound foolish, the
old saying is - and I bet I was right, wasn't I?
I understand my rights just fine, Andy; my mother never raised no fools. I understand my responsibilities too,
God help me.
Anything I say might be used against me in a court of law, you say? Well will wonders never cease! And you can
just get that smirk off your face, Frank Proulx. You may be a hot-shot town cop these days, but it hasn't been too
long since I seen you runnin around in a saggy diaper with that same foolish grin on your face. I'll give you a
little piece of advice -when you get around an old biddy like me, you just want to save that grin. I c'n read you
easier'n an underwear ad in the Sears catalogue.
All right, we've had our fun; might as well get down to it. I'm gonna tell you three a hell of a lot startin right
about now, and a hell of a lot of it prob'ly could be used against me in a court of law, if anyone wanted to at this
late date. The joke of it is, folks on the island know most of it already, and I'm just about half-past give-a-shit, as
old Neely Robichaud used to say when he was in his cups. Which was most of the time, as anyone who knew him
will tell you.
I do give a shit about one thing, though, and that's why I come down here on my own hook. I didn't kill that bitch
Vera Donovan, and no matter what you think now, I intend to make you believe that. I didn't push her down that
frigging staircase. It's fine if you want to lock me up for the other, but I don't have none of that bitch's blood on
my hands. And I think you will believe that by the time I'm finished, Andy. You was always a good enough boy,
as boys go - fair-minded, is what I mean - and you've turned into a decent man. Don't let it go to your head,
though; you grew up same as any other man, with some woman to warsh your clothes and wipe your nose and
turn you around when you got y'self pointed in the wrong direction.
One other thing before we get started - I know you, Andy, and Frank, accourse, but who's this woman with the
tape-recorder?
Oh Christ, Andy, I know she's a stenographer! Didn't I just tell you my Mamma didn't raise any fools? I may be
sixty-six come this November, but I still got all my marbles. I know a woman with a tape-recorder and a
shorthand pad's a stenographer. I watch all those courtroom shows, even that LA Law where nobody can seem to
keep their clothes on for fifteen minutes at a time.
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Dolores Claiborne
What's your name, honey?
Uh-huh. . . and whereabouts do you hail from?
Oh, quit it, Andy! What else you got to do tonight? Was you plannin to go over to the shingle and see if you
could catch a few fellas diggin qua-hogs without a licence? That'd prob'ly be more excitement than your heart
could take, wouldn't it? Ha!
There. That's better. You're Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk, and I'm Dolores Claiborne from right here on
Little Tall Island. Now I already said I'm going to do a country-fair job of talking before we're done in here, and
you're going to find I wasn't lyin a bit. So if you need me to speak up or to slow down, just say so. You needn't be
shy with me. I want you to get every goddam word, startin with this: twenty-nine years ago, when Police Chief
Bissette here was in the first grade and still eatin the paste off the back of his pitchers, I killed my husband, Joe St
George.
I feel a draft in here, Andy. Might go away if you shutcha goddam trap. I don't know what you're lookin so
surprised about, anyway. You know I killed Joe. Everybody on Little Tall knows it, and probably half the people
across the reach in Jonesport know it, too. It's just that nobody could prove it. And I wouldn't be here now,
admittin it in front of Frank Proulx and Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk if it hadn't been for that stupid bitch
Vera, gettin up to more of her nasty old tricks.
Well, she'll never get up to any more of em, will she? There's that for consolation, at least.
Shift that recorder a little closer to me, Nancy, dear - if this is going to get done, it'll get done right, I'll be bound.
Don't those Japanese just make the most cunning little things? Yes indeed . . . but I guess we both know that
what's going on the tape inside that little cutie-pie could put me in the Women's Correctional for the rest of my
life. Still, I don't have no choice. I swear before heaven I always knew that Vera Donovan'd just about be the
death of me - I knew it from the first time I saw her.. And look what she's done - just look what that goddamned
old bitch has done to me. This time she's really stuck her gum in my gears. But that's rich people for you; if they
can't kick you to death, they're apt to kiss you to death with kindness.
What?
Oh, gorry! I'm gettin to it, Andy, if you'll just give me a little peace! I'm just tryin to decide if I should tell it back
to front or front to back. I don't s'pose I could have a little drink, could I?
Oh, frig ya coffee! Take the whole pot and shove it up your kazoo. Just gimme a glass of water if you're too
cheap to part with a swallow of the Beam you keep in your desk drawer. I ain't -What do you mean, how do I
know that? Why, Andy Bissette, someone who didn't know better'd think you just toddled out of a Saltines box
yesterday. Do you think me killin my husband is the only thing the folks on this island have got to talk about?
Hell, that's old news. You, now - you still got some juice left in you.
Thank you, Frank. You was always a pretty good boy, too, although you was kinda hard to look at in church until
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Dolores Claiborne
your mother got you cured of the booger-hookin habit. Gorry, there were times when you had that finger so far
up y'nose it was a wonder you didn't poke your brains out. And what the hell are you blushin for? Was never a
kid alive who didn't mine a little green gold outta their old pump every now and again. At least you knew enough
to keep your hands outta your pants and off your nuts, at least in church, and there's a lot of boys who never -Yes,
Andy, yes - I am gonna tell it. Jeezly-crow, you ain't never shook the ants out of your pants, have you?
Tell you what: I'm gonna compromise. Instead of telling her front to back or back to front, I'm gonna start in the
middle and just kinda work both ways. And if you don't like it, Andy Bissette, you can write it up on your TS list
and mail it to the chaplain.
Me and Joe had three kids, and when he died in the summer of '63, Selena was fifteen, Joe Junior was thirteen,
and Little Pete was just nine. Well, Joe didn't leave me a pot to piss in and hardly a window to throw it out of - I
guess you'll have to fix this up some, Nancy, won't you? I'm just an old woman with a foul temper and a fouler
mouth, but that's what happens, more often than not, when you've had a foul life.
Now, where was I? I ain't lost my place already, have I?
Oh - yes. Thank you, honeybunch.
What Joe left me with was that shacky little place out by the East Head and six acres of land, most of it
blackberry tangles and the kind of trashwood that grows back after a clear-cut operation. What else? Lemme see.
Three trucks that didn't run - two pickups and a pulp-hauler - four cord of wood, a bill at the grocery, a bill at the
hardware, a bill with the oil company, a bill with the funeral home and do you want the icing on the goddam
cake? He wa'ant a week in the ground before that rumpot Harry Doucette come over with a friggin IOU that said
Joe owed him twenty dollars on a baseball bet!
He left me all that, but do you think he left me any goddam insurance money? Nossir! Although that might have
been a blessin in disguise, the way things turned out. I guess I'll get to that part before I'm done, but all I'm trying
to say now is that Joe St George really wa'ant a man at all; he was a goddam millstone I wore around my neck.
Worse, really, because a millstone don't get drunk and then come home smellin of beer and wantin to throw a
fuck into you at one in the morning. Wasn't none of that the reason why I killed the sonofawhore, but I guess it's
as good a place as any to start.
An island's not a good place to kill anybody, I can tell you that. Seems like there's always someone around,
itching to get his nose into your business just when you can least afford it. That's why I did it when I did, and I'll
get to that, too. For now suffice it to say that I did it just about three years after Vera Donovan's husband died in a
motor accident outside of Baltimore, which was where they lived when they wasn't summerin on Little Tall.
Back in those days, most of Vera's screws were still nice and tight.
With Joe out of the pitcher and no money coming in, I was in a fix, I can tell you - I got an idear there's no one in
the whole world feels as desperate as a woman on her own with kids dependin on her. I'd 'bout decided I'd better
cross the reach and see if I couldn't get a job in Jonesport, checkin out groceries at the Shop n Save or waitressin
in a restaurant, when that numb pussy all of a sudden decided she was gonna live on the island all year round.
Most everyone thought she'd blown a fuse, but I wasn't all that surprised - by then she was spendin a lot of time
up here, anyway.
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Dolores Claiborne
The fella who worked for her in those days - I don't remember his name - but you know who I mean, Andy, that
dumb hunky that always wore his pants tight enough to show the world he had balls as big as Mason jars - called
me up and said The Missus (that's what he always called her, The Missus; my, wasn't he dumb) wanted to know
if I'd come to work for her full-time as her housekeeper. Well, I'd done it summers for the family since 1950, and
I s'pose it was natural enough for her to call me before she called anyone else, but at the time it seemed like the
answer to all my prayers. I said yes right on the spot, and I worked for her right up until yest'y forenoon, when
she went down the front stairs on her stupid empty head.
What was it her husband did, Andy? Made airplanes, didn't he?
Oh. Ayuh, I guess I did hear that, - but you know how people on the island talk. All I know for sure is that they
was well-fixed, mighty well-fixed, and she got it all when he died. Except for what the government took,
accourse, and I doubt if it got anywhere near as much as it was. probably owed. Michael Donovan was sharp as a
tack. Sly, too. And although nobody would believe it from the way she was over the last ten years, Vera was as
sly as he was... and she had her sly days right up until she died. I wonder if she knew what kind of a jam she'd be
leavin me in if she did anything besides die in bed of a nice quiet heart-attack? I been down by East Head most of
the day, sittin on those rickety stairs and thinkin about that. . . that and a few hundred other things. First I'd think
no, a bowl of oatmeal has more brains than Vera Donovan had at the end, and then I'd remember how she was
about the vacuum cleaner and I'd think maybe . . . yes, maybe...
But it don't matter now. The only thing that matters now is that I have flopped out of the frying pan and into the
fire, and I'd dearly love to drag myself clear before my ass gets burned any worse. If I still can.
I started off as Vera Donovan's housekeeper, and I ended up bein something they call a 'paid companion.' It didn't
take me too long to figure out the difference. As Vera's housekeeper, I had to eat shit eight hours a day, five days
a week. As her paid companion, I had to eat it around the clock.
She had her first stroke in the summer of 1968, while she was watchin the Democratic National Convention in
Chicago on her television. That was just a little one, and she used to blame it on Hubert Humphrey. 'I finally
looked at that happy asshole one too many times,' she said, 'and I popped a god-dam blood-vessel. I should have
known it was gonna happen, and it could just as easily have been Nixon.'
She had a bigger one in 1975, and that time she didn't have no politicians to blame it on. Dr Freneau told her she
better quit smokin and drinkin, but he could have saved his breath - no high-steppin kitty like Vera Kiss-My-
Back-Cheeks Donovan was going to listen to a plain old country doctor like Chip Freneau. 'I'll bury him,' she
used to say, 'and have a Scotch and soda sitting on his headstone.'
For awhile it seemed like maybe she would do just that - he kept scoldin her, and she kept sailin along like the
Queen Mary. Then, in 1981, she had her first whopper, and the hunky got killed in a car-wreck over on the
mainland the very next year. That was when I moved in with her - October of 1982.
Did I have to? I dunno, I guess not. I had my Sociable Security, as old Hattie McLeod used to call it. It wasn't
much, but the kids were long gone by then - Little Pete right off the face of the earth, poor little lost lamb - and I
had managed to put a few dollars away, too. Living on the island has always been cheap, and while it ain't what it
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Dolores Claiborne
once was, it's still a whale of a lot cheaper than livin on the mainland. So I guess I didn't have to go live with
Vera, no.
But by then her and me was used to each other. It's hard to explain to a man. I 'spect Nancy there with her pads n
pens n tape-recorder understands, but I don't think she's s'posed to talk. We was used to each other in the way I
s'pose two old bats can get used to hangin upside-down next to each other in the same cave, even though they're a
long way from what you'd call the best of friends. And it wasn't really no big change. Hanging my Sunday
clothes in the closet next to my house-dresses was really the biggest part of it, because by the fall of '82 I was
there all day every day and most nights as well. The money was a little better, but not so good I'd made the
downpayment on my first Cadillac, if you know what I mean. Ha!
I guess I did it mostly because there wasn't nobody else. She had a business manager down in New York, a man
named Greenbush, but Greenbush wa'ant going to come up to Little Tall so she could scream down at him from
her bedroom window to be sure and hang those sheets with six pins, not four, nor was he gonna move into the
guest-room and change her diapers and wipe the shit off her fat old can while she accused him of stealin the
dimes out of her goddam china pig and told him how she was gonna see him in jail for it. Greenbush cut the
checks; I cleaned up her shit and listened to her rave on about the sheets and the dust bunnies and her goddam
china pig.
And what of it? I don't expect no medal for it, not even a Purple Heart. I've wiped up a lot of shit in my- time,
listened to even more of it (I was married to Joe St George for sixteen years, remember), and none of it ever gave
me the rickets. I guess in the end I stuck with her because she didn't have nobody else; it was either me or the
nursin home. Her kids never came to see her, and that was one thing I felt sorry for her about. I didn't expect
them to pitch in, don't get that idear, but I didn't see why they couldn't mend their old quarrel, whatever it was,
and come once in awhile to spend the day or maybe a weekend with her. She was a miserable bitch, no doubt
about it, but she was their Ma. And by then she was old. Accourse I know a lot more now than I did then, but -
What?
Yes, it's true. If I'm lyin, I'm dyin, as my grand-sons like to say. You just call that fella Greenbush if you don't
believe me. I expect when the news gets out - and it will, it always does there'll be one of those soppy articles in
the Bangor Daily News about how wonderful it all is. Well, I got news for you it ain't wonderful. A friggin
nightmare is what it is. No matter what happens in here, folks are gonna say I brainwarshed her into doin what
she done n then killed her. I know it, Andy, n so do you. There ain't no power in heaven or on earth that can stop
people from thinkin the worst when they want to.
Well, not one goddam word of it's true. I didn't force her to do nothing, and she sure didn't do what she did
because she loved me, or even liked me. I suppose she might have done it because she thought she owed me - in
her own peculiar way she could have thought she owed me plenty, and t'wouldn't have been her way to say
anything. Could even be what she done was her way of thankin me . not for changin her shitty diapers but for
bein there on all the nights when the wires came out of the corners or the dust bunnies came out from under the
bed.
You don't understand that, I know, but you will. Before you open that door and walk out of this room, I promise
you'll understand everything.
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Dolores Claiborne
She had three ways of bein a bitch. I've known women who had more, but three's good for a senile old lady
mostly stuck in a wheelchair or in bed. Three's damn good for a woman like that.
The first way was when she was a bitch because she couldn't help it. You remember what I said about the
clothespins, how you had to use six of em to hang the sheets, never just four? Well, that was just one example.
There were certain ways things had to be done if you worked for Mrs Kiss-My-Back-Cheeks Vera Donovan, and
you didn't want to forget a single one of them. She told you how things were going to go right up front, and I'm
here to tell you that's how things went. If you forgot something once, you got the rough side of her tongue. If you
forgot twice, you got docked on payday. If you forgot three times, that was it - you were down the road, and no
excuses listened to. That was Vera's rule, and it sat all right with me. I thought it was hard, but I thought it was
fair. If you was told twice which racks she wanted the bakin put on after it came out of the oven, and not ever to
stick it on the kitchen windowsills to cool like shanty Irish would do, and if you still couldn't remember, the
chances were good you wasn't never going to remember.
Three strikes and you're out was the rule, there was absolutely no exceptions to it, and I worked with a lot of
different people in that house over the years because of it. I heard it said more'n once in the old days that workin
for the Donovans was like steppin into one of those revolvin doors. You might get one spin, or two, and some
folks went around as many as ten times or a dozen, but you always got spat out onto the sidewalk in the end. So
when I went to work for her in the first place - this was in 1949 - I went like you'd go into a dragon's cave. But
she wasn't as bad as people liked to make out. If you kept your ears open, you could stay. I did, and the hunky
did, too. But you had to stay on your toes all the time, because she was sharp, because she always knew more of
what was going on with the island folk than any of the other summer people did . . . and because she could be
mean. Even back then, before all her other troubles befell her, she could be mean. It was like a hobby with her.
'What are you doing here?' she says to me on that first day. 'Shouldn't you he home minding that new baby of
yours and making nice big dinners for the light of your life?'
'Mrs Cullum's happy to watch Selena four hours a day,' I said. 'Part-time is all I can take, ma'am.'
'Part-time is all I need, as I believe my advertisement in the local excuse for a newspaper said,' she comes right
back - just showin me the edge of that sharp tongue of hers, not actually cuttin me with it like she would so many
times later. She was knittin that day, as I remember. That woman could knit like a flash - a whole pair of socks in
a single day was no problem for her, even if she started as late as ten o'clock. But she said she had to be in the
mood.
'Yessum,' I said. 'It did.'
'My name isn't Yessum,' she said, putting her knitting down. 'It's Vera Donovan. If I hire you, you'll call me
Missus Donovan - at least until we know each other well enough to make a change -and I'll call you Dolores. Is
that clear?'
'Yes, Missus Donovan,' I said.
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Dolores Claiborne
'All right, we're off to a good start. Now answer my question. What are you doing here when you've got a house
of your own to keep, Dolores?'
'I want to earn a little extra money for Christmas,' I said. I'd already decided on my way over I'd say that if she
asked. 'And if I'm satisfactory until then and if I like working for you, of course – maybe I'll stay on a little
longer.'
'If you like working for me,' she repeats back, then rolls her eyes like it was the silliest thing she'd ever heard -
how could anybody not like working for the great Vera Donovan? Then she repeats back, 'Christmas money.' She
takes a pause, lookin at me the whole time, then says it again, even more sarcastic. 'Kuh-risss-mas money!'
Like she suspected I was really there because I barely had the rice shook out of my hair and was havin marriage
troubles already, and she only wanted to see me blush and drop my eyes to know for sure. So I didn't blush and I
didn't drop my eyes, although I was only twenty-two and it was a near thing. Nor would I have admitted to a
single soul that I was already havin trouble - wild hosses wouldn't have dragged it out of me. Christmas money
was good enough for Vera, no matter how sarcastic she might say it, and all I'd allow to myself was that the
house-money was a little tight that summer. It was only years later that I could admit the real reason why I went
up to face the dragon in her den that day: I had to find a way to put back some of the money Joe was drinking up
through the week and losin in the Friday-night poker games at Fudgy's Tavern over on the mainland. In those
days I still believed the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man was stronger than the love of drinkin
and hell-raisin - that love would eventually rise to the top like cream in a bottle of milk. I learned better over the
next ten years. The world's a sorry schoolroom sometimes, ain't it?
'Well,' Vera said, 'we'll give each other a try, Dolores St George . . . although even if you work out, I imagine
you'll be pregnant again in a year or so, and that's the last I'll see of you.'
The fact was I was two months pregnant right then, but wild hosses wouldn't have dragged that outta me, either. I
wanted the ten dollars a week the job paid, and I got it, and you better believe me when I say I earned every red
cent of it. I worked my tail off that summer, and when Labor Day rolled around, Vera ast me if I wanted to keep
on after they went back to Baltimore - someone has to keep a big place like that up to snuff all the year round,
you know - and I said fine.
I kep at it until a month before Joe Junior was born, and I was back at it even before he was off the titty. In the
summer I left him with Arlene Cullum - Vera wouldn't have a crying baby in the house, not her - but when she
and her husband were gone, I'd bring both him and Selena in with me. Selena could be mostly left alone - even at
two going on three she could be trusted most of the time. Joe Junior I carted with me on my daily rounds. He
took his first steps in the master bedroom, although you can believe Vera never heard of it.
She called me a week after I delivered (I almost didn't send her a birth announcement, then decided if she thought
I was lookin for a fancy present that was her problem), congratulated me on givin birth to a son, and then said
what I think she really called to say - that she was holdin my place for me. I think she intended me to be flattered,
and I was. It was about the highest compliment a woman like Vera can pay, and it meant a lot more to me than
the twenty-five dollar bonus check I got in the mail from her in December of that year.
She was hard but she was fair, and around that house of hers she was always the boss. Her husband wasn't there
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Dolores Claiborne
but one day in ten anyway, even in the summers when they were supposed to be livin there full-time, but when he
was, you still knew who was in charge. Maybe he had two or three hundred executives who dropped their
drawers every time he said shit, but Vera was boss of the shootin match on Little Tall Island, and when she told
him to take his shoes off and stop trackin dirt on her nice clean carpet, he minded.
And like I say, she had her ways of doin things. Did she ever! I don't know where she got her idears, but I do
know she was a prisoner of them. If things wasn't done a certain way; she'd get a headache or one in her gut. She
spent so much of her day checkin up on things that I thought plenty of times she would have had more peace of
mind if she'd just given over and kep that house herself.
All the tubs had to be scrubbed out with Spic n Span, that was one thing. No Lestoil, no Top Job, no Mr Clean.
Just Spic n Span. If she caught you scrubbin one of the tubs with anything else, God help you.
When it came to the ironin, you had to use a special spray-bottle of starch on the collars of the shirts and the
blouses, and there was a piece of gauze you were supposed to put over the collar before you sprayed. Friggin
gauze didn't do a god-dam thing, so far as I could ever tell, and I must have ironed at least ten thousand shirts and
blouses in that house, but if she came into the laundry room and saw you was doin shirts without that little piece
of netting on a collar, or at least hung over the end of the ironin board, God help you.
If you didn't remember to turn on the exhaust fan in the kitchen when you were fryin somethin, God help you.
The garbage cans in the garage, that was another thing. There was six of em. Sonny Quist came over once a week
to pick up the swill, and either the housekeeper or one of the maids - whoever was most handy - was supposed to
bring those cans back into the garage the minute, the very second, he was gone. And you couldn't just drag em
into the corner and leave em; they had to be lined up two and two and two along the garage's east wall, with their
covers turned upside-down on top of em. If you forgot to do it just that way, God help you.
Then there was the welcome mats. There were three of em - one for the front door, one for the patio door, and
one for the back door, which had one of those snooty TRADESMAN'S ENTRANCE signs on it right up until last
year, when I got tired of looking at it and took it down. Once a week I had to take those welcome mats and lay
em on a big rock at the end of the back yard, oh, I'm gonna say about forty yards down from the swimmin pool,
and heat the dirt out of em with a broom. Really had to make the dust fly. And if you lagged off, she was apt to
catch you. She didn't watch every time you heat the welcome mats, but lots of times she would.
She'd stand on the patio with a pair of her husband's binoculars. And the thing was when you brought the mats
back to the house, you had to make sure WELCOME was pointin the right way. The right way was so people
walkin up to whichever door it was could read it. Put a welcome mat back on the stoop upside-down and God
help you.
There must have been four dozen different things like that. In the old days, back when I started as a day-maid,
you'd hear a lot of bitching about Vera Donovan down at the general store. The Donovans entertained a lot, all
through the fifties they had a lot of house-help, and usually the one bitching loudest was some little girl who'd
been hired for part-time and then got fired for forgetting one of the rules three times in a row. She'd be tellin
anyone who wanted to listen that Vera Donovan was a mean, sharp-tongued old bat, and crazy as a loon in the
bargain. Well, maybe she was crazy and maybe she wasn't, but I can tell you one thing - if you remembered, she
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Dolores Claiborne
didn't give you the heat. And my way of thinking is this: anyone who can remember who's sleepin with who on
all those soap opera stories they show in the afternoon should be able to remember to use Spic n Span in the tubs
and put the welcome mats back down facin the right way.
But the sheets, now. That was one thing you didn't ever want to get wrong. They had to be hung perfectly even
over the lines - so the hems matched, you know - and you had to use six clothespins on each one. Never four;
always six. And if you dragged one in the mud, you didn't have to worry about waitin to get something wrong
three times. The lines have always been out in the side yard, which is right under her bedroom window. She'd go
to that window, year in and year out, and yell at me: 'Six pins, now, Dolores! You mind me, now! Six, not four!
I'm counting, and my eyes are just as good now as they ever were!' She'd -What, honey?
Oh bosh, Andy - let her alone. That's a fair enough question, and it's one no man would have brains enough to ask.
I'll tell you, Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk, Maine - yes, she did have a dryer, a nice big one, but we were
forbidden to put the sheets in it unless there was five days' rain in the forecast. 'The only sheet worth having on a
decent person's bed is a sheet that's been dried out-of-doors,' Vera'd say, 'because they smell sweet. They catch a
little bit of the wind that flapped them, and they hold it, and that smell sends you off to sweet dreams.'
She was full of bull about a lot of things, but not about the smell of fresh air in the sheets; about that I thought she
was dead right. Anyone can smell the difference between a sheet that was tumbled in a Maytag and one that was
flapped by a good south wind. But there were plenty of winter mornins when it was just ten degrees and the wind
was strong and damp and comm from the east, straight in off the Atlantic. On mornins like that I would have
given up that sweet smell without a peep of argument. Hangin sheets in deep cold is a kind of torture. Nobody
knows what it's like unless they've done it, and once you've done it, you never ever forget it.
You take the basket out to the lines, and the steam comes risin off the top, and the first sheet is warm, and maybe
you think to y'self - if you ain't never done it before, that is - 'Aw, this ain't so bad.' But by the time you've got
that first one up, and the edges even, and those six pins on, it's stopped steaming. It's still wet, but now it's cold,
too. And your fingers are wet, and they're cold. But you go on to the next one, and the next, and the next, and
your fingers turn red, and they slow up, and your shoulders ache, and your mouth is cramped from holdin pins in
it so your hands are free to keep that befrigged sheet nice and even the whole while, but most of the misery is
right there in your fingers. If they'd go numb, that'd be one thing. You almost wish they would. But they just get
red, and if there are enough sheets they go beyond that to a pale purple color, like the edges of some lilies. By the
time you finish, your hands are really just claws. The worst thing, though, is you know what's gonna happen
when you finally get back inside with that empty laundry basket and the heat hits your hands. They start to tingle,
and then they start to throb in the joints - only it's a feelin so deep it's really more like cryin than throbbin; I wish
I could describe it to you so you'd know, Andy, but I can't. Nancy Bannister there looks like she knows, a little
bit, anyway, but there is a world of difference between hangin out your warsh on the mainland in winter and
hangin it out on the island. When your fingers start to warm up again, it feels like there's a hive of bugs in em. So
you rub em all over with some kind of hand lotion and wait for the itch to go away, and you know it don't matter
how much store lotion or plain old sheep-dip you rub into your hands; by the end of February the skin is still
going to be cracked so bad that it'll break open and bleed if you clench a hard fist. And sometimes, even after
you've gotten warm again and maybe even gone to bed, your hands will wake you up in the middle of the night,
sobbin with the memory of that pain. You think I'm jokin? You can laugh if you want to, but I ain't, not a bit.
You can almost hear em, like little children who can't find their mammas. It comes from deep inside, and you lie
there and listen to it, knowin all the time that you'll be goin back outside again just the same, nothin can stop it,
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Dolores Claiborne
and it's a part of woman's work no man knows about or wants to know about.
And while you were goin through that, hands numb, fingers purple, shoulders achin, snot leakin off the end of
y'nose and freezin tight as a tick to your upper lip, she'd more often than not be standin or sittin there in her
bedroom window, lookin out at you. Her forehead'd be furrowed and her lips drawed down and her hands workin
on each other - all tensed up, she'd be, like it was some kind of complicated hospital operation instead of just
hangin sheets out to dry in the winter wind. You could see her tryin to hold herself back, to keep her big trap shut
this time, but after awhile she wouldn't be able to no more and she'd throw up the window and lean out so that
cold east wind streamed her hair back, and she'd howl down, 'Six pins! Remember to use six pins! Don't you let
the wind blow my good sheets down to the corner of the yard! Mind me, now! You better, because I'm watching,
and I'm counting!'
By the time March came, I'd be dreamin of gettin the hatchet me n the hunky used to chop up kindling for the
kitchen stove (until he died, that is; after that I had the job all to myself, lucky me) and hittin that loudmouth
bitch a good lick with it right between the eyes. Sometimes I could actually see myself doin it, that's how mad
she made me, but I guess I always knew there was a part of her that hated yellin down that way as much as I
hated hearin it.
That was the first way she had of bein a bitch - not bein able to help it. It was really worse for her than it was for
me, specially after she'd had her bad strokes. There was a lot less warshin to hang out by then, but she was just as
crazy on the subject as she'd been before most of the rooms in the house were shut off and most of the guest-beds
stripped and the sheets wrapped in plastic and put away in the linen closet.
What made it hard for her was that by 1985 or so, her days of surprisin folks was through - she had to depend on
me just to get around. If I wa'ant there to lift her out of bed and set her in her wheelchair, in bed she stayed. She'd
porked up a lot, you see -went from a hundred and thirty or so in the early sixties to a hundred and ninety, and
most of the gain was that yellowish, blubbery fat you see on some old people. it hung off her arms and legs and
butt like bread-dough on a stick. Some people get thin as jerky in their sundown years, but not Vera Donovan. Dr
Freneau said it was because her kidneys weren't doin their job. I s'pose so, but I had plenty of days when I
thought she put on that weight just to spite me.
The weight wasn't all, either; she was halfway to hem blind, as well. The strokes done that. What eyesight she
had left came and went. Some days she could see a little bit out her left eye and pretty damned good out of the
right one, but most times she said it was like lookin through a heavy gray curtain. I guess you can understand
why it drove her crazy, her that was such a one to always keep her eye on everythin. A few times she even cried
over it, and you want to believe that it took a lot to make a hard baby like her to cry. . . and even after the years
had beat her to her knees, she was still a hard baby.
What, Frank?
Senile?
I dunno for sure, and that's the truth. I don't think so. And if she was, it sure wasn't in the ordinary way old folks
go senile. And I'm not just sayin that because if it turns out she was, the judge in charge of probatin her will's apt
to use it to blow his nose with. He can wipe his ass with it, for all of me; all I want's to get outta this friggin mess
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摘要：

DoloresClaiborneWHATdidyouask,AndyBissette?DoI'understandtheserightsasyou'veexplainedemtome'?Gorry!Whatmakessomemensonumb?No,younevermind-stillyourjawinandlistentomeforawhile.Igotanidea\ryou'regonnahelistenintomemostofthenight,soyoumightaswellgetusedtoit.CossIunderstandwhatyoureadtome!DoIlooklikeIlo...

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