Dolores Claiborne(45)

His drinkin wasn't no surprise to me; I'd been helpin him do it. The first time he opened the cupboard under the sink and saw a brand-new fifth of whiskey sittin in there, it struck him as odd - I remember him askin me if I'd fallen on my head or somethin. After that, though, he didn't ask any questions. Why would he? From the Fourth til the day he died, Joe St George was all in the bag some of the time and half in the bag most of the time, and a man in that condition don't take long to start seem his good fortune as one of his Constitutional rights - especially a man like Joe.

That was fine as paint with me, but the time after the Fourth - the week before the boys left and the week or so after - wasn't exactly pleasant, just the same. I'd go off to Vera's at seven with him layin in bed beside me like a lump of sour cheese, snorin away with his hair all stickin up n wild. I'd come home at two or three and he'd be plunked down out on the porch (he'd dragged that nasty old rocker of his out there), with his American in one hand and his second or third drink of the day in the other. He never had any comp'ny to help him with his whiskey; my Joe didn't have what you'd call a sharin heart.

There was a story about the eclipse on the front page of the American just about every day that July, but I think that, for all his newspaper-readin, Joe had only the fuzziest idear anything out of the ordinary was gonna happen later in the month. He didn't care squat about such things, you see. What Joe cared about were the Commies and the freedom-riders (only he called em 'the Greyhound niggers') and that goddam Catholic kike-lover in the White House. If he'd known what was gonna happen to Kennedy four months later, I think he almost coulda died happy, that's how nasty he was.

I'd sit beside him just the same, though, and listen to him rant about whatever he'd found in that day's paper to put his fur up. I wanted him to get used to me bein around him when I come home, but if I was to tell you the work was easy, I'd be a goddamned liar. I wouldn't have minded his drinkin half as much, you know, if he'd had a more cheerful disposition when he did it. Some men do, I know, but Joe wasn't one of em. Drinkin brought out the woman in him, and for the woman in Joe, it was always about two days before one godawful gusher of a period.

As the big day drew closer, though, leavin Vera's started to be a relief even though it was only a drunk smelly husband I was goin home to. She'd spent all of June bustlin around, jabberin away about this n that, checkin and recheckin her eclipse-gear, and callin people on the phone - she must have called the comp'ny caterin her ferry expedition at least twice a day durin the last week of June, and they was just one stop on her daily list.

I had six girls workin under me in June and eight after the Fourth of July; it was the most help Vera ever had, either before or after her husband died. The house was scrubbed from top to bottom -scrubbed until it shone - and every bed was made up. Hell, we added temporary beds in the solarium and on the second-floor porch as well. She was expectin at least a dozen overnight guests on the weekend of the eclipse, and maybe as many as twenty. There wasn't enough hours in the day for her and she went racin around like Moses on a motorcycle, but she was happy.

Then, right around the time I packed the boys off to their Aunt Alicia and Uncle Jack's - around the tenth or eleventh of July, that would be, and still over a week before the eclipse - her good mood collapsed.

Collapsed? Frig, no. That ain't right. It popped, like a balloon that's been stuck with a pin. One day she was zoomin like a jet plane; the next she was steppin on the corners of her mouth and her eyes had taken on the mean, haunted look I'd seen a lot since she started spendin so much time on the island alone.

She fired two girls that day, one for standin on a hassock to warsh the windows in the parlor, and the other for laughin in the kitchen with one of the caterers. That second one was especially nasty, cause the girl started to cry. She told Vera she'd known the young man in high school n hadn't seen him since n wanted to catch up a little on old times. She said she was sorry and begged not to be let go - she said her mother would be madder than a wet hen if that happened.

It didn't cut no ice with Vera. 'Look on the bright side, dear,' she says in her bitchiest voice. 'Your mother may be angry, but you'll have so much time to talk about all the fun you had at good old Jonesport High.'

The girl - it was Sandra Mulcahey - went down the driveway with her head dropped, sobbin like her heart was gonna break. Vera stood in the hall, bent over a little so she could watch her out the window by the front door. My foot itched to kick her ass when I seen her standin that way . . but I felt a little sad for her, too. It wasn't hard to figure out what had changed her mood, and before much longer I knew for sure. Her kids weren't comm to watch the eclipse with her after all, chartered ferry or no chartered ferry. Maybe it was just that they'd made other plans, as kids will do with never a thought for any feelins their parents might have, but my guess was that whatever had gone wrong between her and them was still wrong.

Vera's mood improved as the first of her other guests started to show up on the sixteenth n seventeenth, but I was still glad to get away each day, and on Thursday the eighteenth she fired another girl - Karen Jolander, that one was. Her big crime was droppin a plate that had been cracked to begin with. Karen wasn't cryin when she went down the driveway, but you could tell she was just holdin on until she was over the first hill to let loose.

Well, I went and did something stupid - but you have to remember I was pretty strung-up myself by then. I managed to wait until Karen was out of sight, at least, but then I went lookin for Vera. I found her in the back garden. She'd yanked her straw sunhat on so hard the brim touched her ears, and she was takin such snaps with those garden-shears of hers that you'd'a thought she was Madam Durfarge choppin off heads instead of Vera Donovan cuttin roses for the parlor n dinin room.