Dolores Claiborne(4)

There were certain ways things had to be done if you worked for Mrs Kiss-My-Back-Cheeks Vera Donovan, and you didn't want to forget a single one of them. She told you how things were going to go right up front, and I'm here to tell you that's how things went. If you forgot something once, you got the rough side of her tongue. If you forgot twice, you got docked on payday. If you forgot three times, that was it - you were down the road, and no excuses listened to. That was Vera's rule, and it sat all right with me. I thought it was hard, but I thought it was fair. If you was told twice which racks she wanted the bakin put on after it came out of the oven, and not ever to stick it on the kitchen windowsills to cool like shanty Irish would do, and if you still couldn't remember, the chances were good you wasn't never going to remember.

Three strikes and you're out was the rule, there was absolutely no exceptions to it, and I worked with a lot of different people in that house over the years because of it. I heard it said more'n once in the old days that workin for the Donovans was like steppin into one of those revolvin doors. You might get one spin, or two, and some folks went around as many as ten times or a dozen, but you always got spat out onto the sidewalk in the end. So when I went to work for her in the first place - this was in 1949 - I went like you'd go into a dragon's cave. But she wasn't as bad as people liked to make out. If you kept your ears open, you could stay. I did, and the hunky did, too. But you had to stay on your toes all the time, because she was sharp, because she always knew more of what was going on with the island folk than any of the other summer people did . . . and because she could be mean. Even back then, before all her other troubles befell her, she could be mean. It was like a hobby with her.

'What are you doing here?' she says to me on that first day. 'Shouldn't you he home minding that new baby of yours and making nice big dinners for the light of your life?'

'Mrs Cullum's happy to watch Selena four hours a day,' I said. 'Part-time is all I can take, ma'am.'

'Part-time is all I need, as I believe my advertisement in the local excuse for a newspaper said,' she comes right back - just showin me the edge of that sharp tongue of hers, not actually cuttin me with it like she would so many times later. She was knittin that day, as I remember. That woman could knit like a flash - a whole pair of socks in a single day was no problem for her, even if she started as late as ten o'clock. But she said she had to be in the mood.

'Yessum,' I said. 'It did.'

'My name isn't Yessum,' she said, putting her knitting down. 'It's Vera Donovan. If I hire you, you'll call me Missus Donovan - at least until we know each other well enough to make a change -and I'll call you Dolores. Is that clear?'

'Yes, Missus Donovan,' I said.

'All right, we're off to a good start. Now answer my question. What are you doing here when you've got a house of your own to keep, Dolores?'

'I want to earn a little extra money for Christmas,' I said. I'd already decided on my way over I'd say that if she asked. 'And if I'm satisfactory until then and if I like working for you, of course - maybe I'll stay on a little longer.'

'If you like working for me,' she repeats back, then rolls her eyes like it was the silliest thing she'd ever heard - how could anybody not like working for the great Vera Donovan? Then she repeats back, 'Christmas money.' She takes a pause, lookin at me the whole time, then says it again, even more sarcastic. 'Kuh-risss-mas money!'

Like she suspected I was really there because I barely had the rice shook out of my hair and was havin marriage troubles already, and she only wanted to see me blush and drop my eyes to know for sure. So I didn't blush and I didn't drop my eyes, although I was only twenty-two and it was a near thing. Nor would I have admitted to a single soul that I was already havin trouble - wild hosses wouldn't have dragged it out of me. Christmas money was good enough for Vera, no matter how sarcastic she might say it, and all I'd allow to myself was that the house-money was a little tight that summer. It was only years later that I could admit the real reason why I went up to face the dragon in her den that day: I had to find a way to put back some of the money Joe was drinking up through the week and losin in the Friday-night poker games at Fudgy's Tavern over on the mainland. In those days I still believed the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man was stronger than the love of drinkin and hell-raisin - that love would eventually rise to the top like cream in a bottle of milk. I learned better over the next ten years. The world's a sorry schoolroom sometimes, ain't it?

'Well,' Vera said, 'we'll give each other a try, Dolores St George . . . although even if you work out, I imagine you'll be pregnant again in a year or so, and that's the last I'll see of you.'

The fact was I was two months pregnant right then, but wild hosses wouldn't have dragged that outta me, either. I wanted the ten dollars a week the job paid, and I got it, and you better believe me when I say I earned every red cent of it. I worked my tail off that summer, and when Labor Day rolled around, Vera ast me if I wanted to keep on after they went back to Baltimore - someone has to keep a big place like that up to snuff all the year round, you know - and I said fine.

I kep at it until a month before Joe Junior was born, and I was back at it even before he was off the titty. In the summer I left him with Arlene Cullum - Vera wouldn't have a crying baby in the house, not her - but when she and her husband were gone, I'd bring both him and Selena in with me. Selena could be mostly left alone - even at two going on three she could be trusted most of the time. Joe Junior I carted with me on my daily rounds. He took his first steps in the master bedroom, although you can believe Vera never heard of it.