Dolores Claiborne

  When the kids came back from the store, I sent the boys into the house and walked around to the back with Selena. There's a big tangle of blackberry bushes there, mostly bare by that time of the year. A little breeze had come up, and it made them rattle. It was a lonesome sound. A little creepy, too. There's a big white stone stickin out of the ground there, and we sat down on it. A half-moon had risen over East Head, and when she took my hands, her fingers were just as cold as that half-moon looked.

  "I don't dare go in, Mommy," she said, and her voice was tremblin. "I'll go to Tanya's, all right? Please say I can."

  "You don't have to be afraid of a thing, sweetheart," I says. "It's all taken care of."

  "I don't believe you," she whispered, although her face said she wanted to--her face said she wanted to believe it more than any thin.

  "It's true," I said. "He's promised to leave you alone. He doesn't always keep his promises, but he'll keep this one, now that he knows I'm watchin and he can't count on you to keep quiet. Also, he's scared to death."

  "Scared to dea--why?"

  "Because I told him I'd see him in Shawshank if he got up to any more nasty business with you."

  She gasped, and her hands bore down on mine again. "Mommy, you didn't!"

  "Yes I did, and I meant it," I says. "Best for you to know that, Selena. But I wouldn't worry too much; Joe probably won't come within ten feet of you for the next four years ... and by then you'll be in college. If there's one thing on this round world he respects, it's his own hide."

  She let go of my hands, slow but sure. I saw the hope comin into her face, and somethin else, as well. It was like her youth was comin back to her, and it wasn't until then, sittin in the moonlight by the blackberry patch with her, that I realized how old she'd come to look that fall.

  "He won't strap me or anything?" she asked.

  "No," I says. "It's done."

  Then she believed it all and put her head down on my shoulder and started to cry. Those were tears of relief, pure and simple. That she should have to cry that way made me hate Joe even more.

  I think that, for the next few nights, there was a girl in my house sleepin better'n she had for three months or more ... but I laid awake. I'd listen to Joe snorin beside me, and look at him with that inside eye, and feel like turnin over and bitin his goddam throat out. But I wasn't crazy anymore, like I'd been when I almost poleaxed him with that stick of stovewood. Thinkin of the kids and what would happen to em if I was taken up for murder hadn't had any power over that inside eye then, but later on, after I'd told Selena she was safe and had a chance to cool off a little myself, it did. Still, I knew that what Selena most likely wanted--for things to go on like what her Dad had been up to had never happened--couldn't be. Even if he kep his promise and never touched her again, that couldn't be ... and in spite of what I'd told Selena, I wasn't completely sure he'd keep his promise. Sooner or later, men like Joe usually persuade themselves that they can get away with it next time; that if they're only a little more careful, they can have whatever they like.

  Lyin there in the dark and calm again at last, the answer seemed simple enough: I had to take the kids and move to the mainland, and I had to do it soon. I was calm enough right then, but I knew I wasn't gonna stay that way; that inside eye wouldn't let me. The next time I got hot, it would see even better and Joe would look even uglier and there might not be any thought on earth that could keep me from doin it. It was a new way of bein mad, at least for me, and I was just wise enough to see the damage it could do, if I let it. I had to get us away from Little Tall before that madness could break all the way out. And when I made my first move in that direction, I found out what that funny half-wise look in his eyes meant. Did I ever!

  I waited awhile for things to settle, then I took the eleven o'clock ferry across to the mainland one Friday mornin. The kids were in school and Joe was out on the boundin main with Mike Stargill and his brother Gordon, playin with the lobster-pots--he wouldn't be back til almost sundown.

  I had the kids' savins account passbooks with me. We'd been puttin money away for their college ever since they were born ... I had, anyway; Joe didn't give a squitter if they went to college or not. Whenever the subject came up--and it was always me who brought it up, accourse--he'd most likely be sittin there in his shitty rocker with his face hid behind the Ellsworth American and he'd poke it out just long enough to say, "Why in Christ's name are you so set on sendin those kids to college, Dolores? I never went, and I did all right."

  Well, there's some things you just can't argue with, ain't there? If Joe thought that readin the paper, minin for boogers, and wipin em on the runners of his rockin chair was doin all right, there wasn't no room at all for discussion; it was hopeless from the word go. That was all right, though. As long as I could keep makin him kick in his fair share if he happened to fall into somethin good, like when he got on the county road crew, I didn't give a shit if he thought every college in the country was run by the Commies. The winter he worked on the road crew on the mainland, I got him to put five hundred dollars in their bank accounts, and he whined like a pup. Said I was takin all his dividend. I knew better, though, Andy. If that sonofawhore didn't make two thousand, maybe twenty-five hundred, dollars that winter, I'll smile n kiss a pig.

  "Why do you always want to nag me so, Dolores?" he'd ask.

  "If you were man enough to do what's right for your kids in the first place, I wouldn't have to," I'd tell him, and around n around it'd go, blah-blah-blahdy-blah. I got pretty sick of it from time to time, Andy, but I almost always got out of him what I thought the kids had comin. I couldn't get too sick of it to do that, because they didn't have nobody else to make sure their future'd still be there for em when they got to it.

  There wasn't a lot in those three accounts by today's standards--two thousand or so in Selena's, about eight hundred in Joe Junior's, four or five hundred in Little Pete's--but this is 1962 I'm talkin about, and in those days it was a fairish chunk of change. More'n enough to get away on, that was for sure. I figured to draw Little Pete's in cash and take cashier's checks for the other two. I'd decided to make a clean break and move us all the way down to Portland--find a place to live and a decent job. We wasn't none of us used to city livin, but people can get used to damned near anything if they have to. Besides, Portland wasn't really much more than a big town back then--not like it is now.

  Once I got settled, I could start puttin back the money I'd had to take, and I thought I could do it. Even if I couldn't, they was bright kids, and I knew there were such things as scholarships. If they missed out on those, I decided I wasn't too proud to fill out a few loan applications. The major thing was to get them away--right then doin that seemed a lot more important than college. First things first, as the bumper sticker on Joe's old Farmall tractor used to say.

  I've run m'gums for pretty near three-quarters of an hour about Selena, but it wasn't only her who'd suffered from him. She got the worst of it, but there was plenty of black weather left over for Joe Junior. He was twelve in 1962, a prime age for a boy, but you wouldn't know it lookin at him. He hardly ever smiled or laughed, and it really wasn't any wonder. He'd no more'n come into the room and his Dad'd be on him like a weasel on a chicken, tellin him to tuck in his shirt, to comb his hair, to quit slouchin, to grow up, stop actin like a goddam sissy with his nose always stuck in a book, to be a man. When Joe Junior didn't make the Little League All-Star team the summer before I found out what was wrong with Selena, you would have thought, listenin to his father, that he'd been kicked off the Olympic track team for takin pep-pills. Add to that whatever he'd seen his father gettin up to with his big sister, and you got a real mess on your hands, Sunny Jim. I'd sometimes look at Joe Junior lookin at his father and see real hate in that boy's face--hate, pure n simple. And durin the week or two before I went across to the mainland with those passbooks in my pocket, I realized that, when it came to his father, Joe Junior had his own inside eye.

  Then there
was Little Pete. By the time he was four, he'd go swaggerin around right behind Joe, with the waist of his pants pulled up like Joe wore his, and he'd pull at the end of his nose and his ears, just like Joe did. Little Pete didn't have any hairs there to pull, accourse, so he'd just pretend. On his first day at first grade, he come home snivellin, with dirt on the seat of his pants and a scratch on his cheek. I sat down beside him on the porch step, put my arm around his shoulders, and asked him what happened. He said that goddam little sheeny Dicky O'Hara pushed him down. I told him goddam was swearin and he shouldn't say it, then asked him if he knew what a sheeny was. I was pretty curious to hear what might pop out of his mouth, to tell you the truth.

  "Sure I do," he says. "A sheeny's a stupid jerk like Dicky O'Hara." I told him no, he was wrong, and he asked me what it did mean, then. I told him to never mind, it wasn't a nice word and I didn't want him sayin it anymore. He just sat there glarin at me with his lip pooched out. He looked just like his old man. Selena was scared of her father, Joe Junior hated him, but in some ways it was Little Pete who scared me the most, because Little Pete wanted to grow up to be just like him.

  So I got their passbooks from the bottom drawer of my little jewelry box (I kep em there because it was the only thing I had in those days with a lock on it; I wore the key around my neck on a chain) and walked into the Coastal Northern Bank in Jonesport at about half-past noon. When I got to the front of the line, I pushed the passbooks across to the teller, said I meant to close all three accounts out, and explained how I wanted the money.

  "That'll be just a moment, Mrs. St. George," she says, and goes to the back of the tellers' area to pull the accounts. This was long before computers, accourse, and they had to do a lot more fiddlin and diddlin.

  She got em--I saw her pull all three--and then she opened em up and looked at em. A little line showed up down the middle of her brow, and she said somethin to one of the other women. Then they both looked for awhile, with me standin out there on the other side of the counter, watchin em and tellin myself there wasn't a reason in the world to feel nervous and feelin pretty goddam nervous just the same.

  Then, instead of comin back to me, the teller went into one of those jumped-up little cubbyholes they called offices. It had glass sides, and I could see her talkin to a little bald man in a gray suit and a black tie. When she came back to the counter, she didn't have the account files anymore. She'd left them on the bald fella's desk.

  "I think you'd better discuss your children's savings accounts with Mr. Pease, Mrs. St. George," she says, and pushes the passbooks back to me. She did it with the side of her hand, like they were germy and she might get infected if she touched em too much or too long.

  "Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with em?" By then I'd given up the notion that I didn't have anythin to feel nervous about. My heart was rappin away double-time in my chest and my mouth had gone all dry.

  "Really, I couldn't say, but I'm sure that if there's a misunderstanding, Mr. Pease will straighten it right out," she says, but she wouldn't look me in the eye and I could tell she didn't think any such thing.

  I walked to that office like I had a twenty-pound cake of cement on each foot. I already had a pretty good idear of what must have happened, but I didn't see how in the world it could have happened. Gorry, I had the passbooks, didn't I? Joe hadn't got em outta my jewelry box and then put em back, either, because the lock woulda been busted and it wasn't.

  Even if he'd picked it somehow (which is a laugh; that man couldn't get a forkful of lima beans from his plate to his mouth without droppin half of em in his lap), the passbooks would either show the withdrawals or be stamped ACCOUNT CLOSED in the red ink the bank uses ... and they didn't show neither one.

  Just the same, I knew that Mr. Pease was gonna tell me my husband had been up to fuckery, and once I got into his office, that was just what he did tell me. He said that Joe Junior's and Little Pete's accounts had been closed out two months ago and Selena's less'n two weeks ago. Joe'd done it when he did because he knew I never put money in their accounts after Labor Day until I thought I had enough squirreled away in the big soup-kettle on the top kitchen shelf to take care of the Christmas bills.

  Pease showed me those green sheets of ruled paper accountants use, and I saw Joe had scooped out the last big chunk--five hundred dollars from Selena's account--the day after I told him I knew what he'd been up to with her and he sat there in his rocker and told me I didn't know everything. He sure was right about that.

  I went over the figures half a dozen times, and when I looked up, Mr. Pease was sittin acrost from me, rubbin his hands together and lookin worried. I could see little drops of sweat on his bald head. He knew what'd happened as well as I did.

  "As you can see, Mrs. St. George, those accounts have been closed out by your husband, and--"

  "How can that be?" I asks him. I threw the three passbooks down on his desk. They made a whacking noise and he kinda blinked his eyes and jerked back. "How can that be, when I got the Christly savings account books right here?"

  "Well," he says, lickin his lips and blinkin like a lizard sunnin itself on a hot rock, "you see, Mrs. St. George, those are--were--what we call 'custodial savings accounts.' That means the child in whose name the account is held can--could--draw from it with either you or your husband to countersign. It also means that either of you can, as parents, draw from any of these three accounts when and as you like. As you would have done today, if the money had still, ahem, been in the accounts. "

  "But these don't show any goddam withdrawals!" I says, and I must have been shoutin, because people in the bank were lookin around at us. I could see em through the glass walls. Not that I cared. "How'd he get the money without the goddam passbooks?"

  He was rubbin his hands together faster n faster. They made a sandpapery kind of sound, and if he'd had a dry stick between em, I b'lieve he coulda set fire to the gum-wrappers in his ashtray. "Mrs. St. George, if I could ask you to keep your voice down--"

  "I'll worry about my voice," I says, louder'n ever. "You worry about the way this beshitted bank does business, chummy! The way it looks to me, you got a lot to worry about. "

  He took a sheet of paper off his desk and looked at it. "According to this, your husband stated the passbooks were lost," he says finally. "He asked to be issued new ones. It's a common enough--"

  "Common-be-damned!" I yelled. "You never called me! No one from the bank called me! Those accounts were held between the two of us--that's how it was explained to me when we opened Selena's and Joe Junior's back in '51, and it was still the same when we opened Peter's in '54. You want to tell me the rules have been changed since then?"

  "Mrs. St. George--" he started, but he might as well have tried whistlin through a mouthful of crackers; I meant to have my say.

  "He told you a fairy-story and you believed it--asked for new passbooks and you gave em to him. Gorry sakes! Who the hell do you think put that money in the bank to begin with? If you think it was Joe St. George, you're a lot dumber'n you look!"

  By then everybody in the bank'd quit even pretendin to be goin about their business. They just stood where they were, lookin at us. Most of em must have thought it was a pretty good show, too, judgin by the expressions on their faces, but I wonder if they would have been quite so entertained if it had been their kids' college money that'd just flown away like a bigass bird. Mr. Pease had gone as red as the side of old dad's barn. Even his sweaty old bald head had turned bright red.

  "Please, Mrs. St. George," he says. By then he was lookin like he might break down n cry. "I assure you that what we did was not only perfectly legal, but standard bank practice."

  I lowered my voice then. I could feel all the fight runnin outta me. Joe had fooled me, all right, fooled me good, and this time I didn't have to wait for it to happen twice to say shame on me.

  "Maybe it's legal and maybe it ain't," I says. "I'd have to haul you into court to find out one way or the other, wouldn't I, and I ain't go
t either the time or the money to do it. Besides, it ain't the question what's legal or what ain't that's knocked me for a loop here ... it's how you never once thought that someone else might be concerned about what happened to that money. Don't 'standard bank practice' ever allow you folks to make a single goddam phone call? I mean, the number's right there on all those forms, and it ain't changed."

  "Mrs. St. George, I'm very sorry, but--"

  "If it'd been the other way around," I says, "if I'd been the one with a story about how the passbooks was lost and ast for new ones, if I'd been the one who started drawin out what took eleven or twelve years to put in ... wouldn't you have called Joe? If the money'd still been here for me to withdraw today, like I came in meanin to do, wouldn't you have called him the minute I stepped out the door, to let him know--just as a courtesy, mind you!--what his wife'd been up to?"

  Because I'd expected just that, Andy--that was why I'd picked a day when he was out with the Stargills. I'd expected to go back to the island, collect the kids, and be long gone before Joe come up the driveway with a six-pack in one hand and his dinnerpail in the other.

  Pease looked at me n opened his mouth. Then he closed it again and didn't say nothing. He didn't have to. The answer was right there on his face. Accourse he--or someone else from the bank--would have called Joe, and kep on tryin until he finally got him. Why? Because Joe was the man of the house, that's why. And the reason nobody'd bothered to tell me was because I was just his wife. What the hell was I s'posed to know about money, except how to earn some down on my knees scrubbin floors n baseboards n toilet-bowls? If the man of the house decided to draw out all his kids' college money, he must have had a damned good reason, and even if he didn't, it didn't matter, because he was the man of the house, and in charge. His wife was just the little woman, and all she was in charge of was baseboards, toilet-bowls, and chicken dinners on Sunday afternoons.