Dolores Claiborne(34)

Just the same, I knew that Mr Pease was gonna tell me my husband had been up to f**kery, 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 its legal and maybe it aint,' 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 got 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.