I remembered wakin up to the fact—one day in the late sixties, this musta been—that I had never seen em, not even once, since I’d seen the hunky takin em back to the mainland that July day in 1961. And that so distressed me that I broke a long-standin rule of mine not to talk about em at all, ever, unless Vera spoke of em first. “How are the kids doin, Vera?” I ast her—the words jumped outta my mouth before I knew they were comin—with God’s my witness, that’s just what they did. “How are they really doin?”
I remember she was sittin in the parlor at the time, knittin in the chair by the bow windows, and when I ast her that she stopped what she was doin and looked up at me. The sun was strong that day, it struck across her face in a bright, hard stripe, and there was somethin so scary about the way she looked that for a second or two I came close to screamin. It wasn’t until the urge’d passed that I realized it was her eyes. They were deep-set eyes, black circles in that stripe of sun where everythin else was bright. They were like his eyes when he looked up at me from the bottom of the well… like little black stones or lumps of coal pushed into white dough. For that second or two it was like seein a ghost. Then she moved her head a little and it was just Vera again, sittin there n lookin like she’d had too much to drink the night before. It wouldn’t’ve been the first time if she had.
“I don’t really know, Dolores,” she said. “We are estranged.” That was all she said, n it was all she needed to say. All the stories she told me about their lives—made-up stories, I know now—didn’t say as much as those three words: “We are estranged.” A lot of the time I spent today down by Simmons Dock I spent thinkin about what an awful word that is. Estranged. Just the sound of it makes me shiver.
I sat there n picked over those old bones one last time, n then I put em aside and got up from where I’d spent most of the day. I decided that I didn’t much care what you or anyone else believed. It’s all over, you see—for Joe, for Vera, for Michael Donovan, for Donald n Helga… and for Dolores Claiborne, too. One way or another, all the bridges between that time n this one have been burned. Time’s a reach, too, you know, just like the one that lies between the islands and the mainland, but the only ferry that can cross it is memory, and that’s like a ghost-ship—if you want it to disappear, after awhile it will.
But all that aside, it’s still funny how things turned out, ain’t it? I remember what went through my mind as I got up n turned back to them rickety stairs—the same thing that went through it when Joe snaked his arm outta the well n almost pulled me in with him: I have digged a pit for mine enemies, and am fallen into it myself. It seemed to me, as I laid hold of that old splintery bannister n got set to climb back up all those stairs (always assumin they’d hold me a second time, accourse), that it’d finally happened, n that I’d always known it would. It just took me awhile longer to fall into mine than it took Joe to fall into his.
Vera had a pit to fall into, too—and if I’ve got anything to be grateful for, it’s that I haven’t had to dream my children back to life like she did… although sometimes, when I’m talkin to Selena on the phone and hear her slur her words, I wonder if there’s any escape for any of us from the pain n the sorrow of our lives. I couldn’t fool her, Andy —shame on me.
Still, I’ll take what I can take n grit my teeth so it looks like a grin, just like I always have. I try to keep in mind that two of my three children live still, that they are successful beyond what anyone on Little Tall would’ve expected when they were babies, and successful beyond what they maybe could’ve been if their no-good of a father hadn’t had himself an accident on the afternoon of July 20th, 1963. Life ain’t an either-or proposition, you see, and if I ever forget to be thankful my girl n one of my boys lived while Vera’s boy n girl died, I’ll have to explain the sin of ingratitude when I get before the throne of the Almighty. I don’t want to do that. I got enough on my conscience—and prob’ly on my soul, too—already. But listen to me, all three of you, n hear this if you don’t hear nothing else: everything I did, I did for love… the love a natural mother feels for her children. That’s the strongest love there is in the world, and it’s the deadliest. There’s no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.
I thought of my dream as I reached the top of the steps again, n stood on the landin just inside that guard-rope, lookin out to sea—the dream of how Vera kept handin me plates and I kep droppin em. I thought of the sound the rock made when it struck him in the face, and how the two sounds were the same sound.
But mostly I thought about Vera and me—two bitches livin on a little chunk of rock off the Maine coast, livin together most of the time in the last years. I thought about how them two bitches slep together when the older one was scared, n how they passed the years in that big house, two bitches who ended up spendin most of their time bitchin at each other. I thought of how she’d fool me, n how I’d go’n fool her right back, and how happy each of us was when we won a round. I thought about how she was when the dust bunnies ganged up on her, how she’d scream n how she trembled like an animal that’s been backed into a corner by a bigger creature that means to tear it to pieces. I remember how I’d climb into the bed with her, n put my arms around her, n feel her tremblin that way, like a delicate glass that someone’s tapped with the handle of a knife. I’d feel her tears on my neck, and I’d brush her thin, dry hair n say, “Shhh, dear… shhh. Those pesky dust bunnies are all gone. You’re safe. Safe with me.”
But if I’ve found out anything, Andy, it’s that they ain’t never gone, not really. You think you’re shut of em, that you neatened em all away and there ain’t a dust bunny anyplace, n then they come back, they look like faces, they always look like faces, and the faces they look like are always the ones you never wanted to see again, awake or in your dreams.
I thought of her layin there on the stairs, too, and sayin she was tired, she wanted to be done. And as I stood there on that rickety landin in my wet galoshes, I knew well enough why I’d chosen to be on those stairs that are so rotted not even the hellions will play on em after school lets out, or on the days when they play hookey. I was tired, too. I’ve lived my life as best I could by my own lights. I never shirked a job, nor cried off from the things I had to do, even when those things were terrible. Vera was right when she said that sometimes a woman has to be a bitch to survive; but bein a bitch is hard work, I’ll tell the world it is, n I was so tired. I wanted to have done, and it occurred to me that it wasn’t too late to go back down those stairs, n that I didn’t have to stop at the bottom this time, neither… not if I didn’t want to.
Then I heard her again—Vera. I heard her like I did that night beside the well, not just in my head but my ear. It was a lot spookier this time, I c’n tell you; back in ’63 she’d at least been alive.
“What can you be thinking about, Dolores?” she ast in that haughty Kiss-My-Back-Cheeks voice of hers. “I paid a higher price than you did; I paid a higher price than anyone will ever know, but I lived with the bargain I made just the same. I did more than that. When the dust bunnies and the dreams of what could have been were all I had left, I took the dreams and made them my own. The dust bunnies? Well, they might have gotten me in the end, but I lived with them for a lot of years before they did. Now you’ve got a bunch of your own to deal with, but if you’ve lost the guts you had on the day when you told me that firing the Jolander girl was a boogery thing to do, go on. Go on and jump. Because without your guts, Dolores Claiborne, you’re just another stupid old woman.”