Dolores Claiborne(39)

When I finally took the apron off my face, she was sittin there by the window with her knittin in her lap, lookin at me like I was some new and int'restin kind of bug. I remember the crawly shadows the rain slidin down the windowpanes made on her cheeks and forehead.

'Dolores,' she said, 'please tell me you haven't been careless enough to allow that mean-spirited creature you live with to knock you up again.'

For a second I didn't have the slightest idear what she was talkin about - when she said 'knock you up,' my mind flashed to the night Joe'd hit me with the stovelength and I hit him with the creamer. Then it clicked, and I started to giggle. In a few seconds I was laughin every bit as hard as I'd cried before, and not able to help that any more'n I'd been able to help the other. I knew it was mostly horror - the idear of bein pregnant again by Joe was about the worst thing I could think of, and the fact that we weren't doin the thing that makes babies anymore didn't change it - but knowin what was makin me laugh didn't do a thing about stoppin it.

Vera looked at me a second or two longer, then picked her knittin up out of her lap and went back to it, as calm as you please. She even started to hum again. It was like havin the housekeeper sittin on her unmade bed, bellerin like a calf in the moonlight, was the most natural thing in the world to her. If so, the Donovans must have had some peculiar house-help down there in Baltimore.

After awhile the laughin went back to cryin again, the way rain sometimes turns to snow for a little while durin winter squalls, if the wind shifts the right way. Then it finally wound down to nothin and I just sat there on her bed, feelin tired n ashamed of myself. . . but cleaned out somehow, too.

'I'm Sorry, Mrs Donovan,' I says. 'I truly am.'

'Vera,' she says.

'I beg pardon?' I ast her.

'Vera,' she repeated. 'I insist that all women who have hysterics on my bed call me by my Christian name thenceforward.'

'I don't know what came over me,' I said.

'Oh,' she says right back, 'I imagine you do. Clean yourself up, Dolores - you look like you dunked your face in a bowl of pureed spinach. You can use my bathroom.'

I went in to warsh my face, and I stayed in there a long time. The truth was, I was a little afraid to come out. I'd quit thinkin she was gonna fire me when she told me to call her Vera instead of Mrs Donovan - that ain't the way you behave to someone you mean to let go in five minutes - but I didn't know what she was gonna do. She could be cruel; if you haven't gotten at least that much out of what I been tellin you, I been wastin my time. She could poke you pretty much when n where she liked, and when she did it, she usually did it hard.

'Did you drown in there, Dolores?' she calls, and I knew I couldn't delay any longer. I turned off the water, dried my face, and went back into her bedroom. I started to apologize again right away, but she waved that off. She was still lookin at me like I was a kind of bug she'd never seen before.

'You know, you startled the shit out of me, woman,' she says. 'All these years I wasn't sure you could cry - I thought maybe you were made of stone.'

I muttered somethin about how I hadn't been gettin my rest lately.

'I can see you haven't,' she says. 'You've got a matching set of Louis Vuitton under your eyes, and your hands have picked up a piquant little quiver.'

'I got what under my eyes?' I asked.

'Never mind,' she says. 'Tell me what's wrong. A bun in the oven was the only cause of such an unexpected outburst I could think of, and I must confess it's still the only thing I can think of. So enlighten me, Dolores.'

'I can't,' I says, and I'll be goddamned if I couldn't feel the whole thing gettin ready to kick back on me again, like the crank of my Dad's old Model-A Ford used to do when you didn't grab it right; if I didn't watch out, pretty soon I was gonna be settin there on her bed again with my apron over my face.

'You can and you will,' Vera said. 'You can't spend the day howling your head off. It'll give me a headache and I'll have to take an aspirin. I hate taking aspirin. It irritates the lining of the stomach.'

I sat down on the edge of the bed n looked at her. I opened my mouth without the slightest idear of what was gonna come out. What did was this: 'My husband is trying to screw his own daughter, and when I went to get their college money out of the bank so I could take her n the boys away, I found he'd scooped up the whole kit n caboodle. No, I ain't made out of stone. I ain't made out of stone at all.'

I started to cry again, and I cried for quite awhile, but not so hard as before and without feelin the need to hide my face behind my apron. When I was down to sniffles, she said to tell her the whole story, right from the beginnin and without leavin a single thing out.

And I did. I wouldn't have believed I could have told anyone that story, least of all Vera Donovan, with her money and her house in Baltimore and her pet hunky, who she didn't keep around just to Simonize her car, but I did tell her, and I could feel the weight on my heart gettin lighter with every word. I spilled all of it, just like she told me to do.

'So I'm stuck,' I finished. 'I can't figure out what to do about the son of a bitch. I s'pose I could catch on someplace if I just packed the kids up and took em to the mainland - I ain't never been afraid of hard work - but that ain't the point.'