Dolores Claiborne(32)

'Scared to death - 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 comm into her face, and somethin else, as well. It was like her youth was comm 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 wipen 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-blahblahdy-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.