Dolores Claiborne(9)

'What did you say, dear?' she asks back, so sweet you'd've thought sugar wouldn't melt in her mouth.

'I said I can't just stand around here waitin for you to go number two,' I said. 'I got housework. It's cleaning day, you know.'

'Oh, is it?' she says back, just as if she hadn't known what day it was from the first second she woke up that morning. 'Then you go on, Dolores. If I feel the need to move my bowels, I'll call you.

I bet you will, I was thinkin, about five minutes after it happens. But I didn't say it; I just went on back downstairs.

I got the vacuum cleaner out of the kitchen closet, took it into the parlor, and plugged it in. I didn't start it up right away, though; I spent a few minutes dusting first. I had gotten so I could depend on my instincts by then, and I was waiting for somethin inside to tell me the time was right.

When that thing spoke up and said it was, I hollered to Susy and Shawna that I was going to vacuum the parlor. I yelled loud enough so I imagine half the people down in the village heard me right along with the Queen Mother upstairs. I started the Kirby, then went to the foot of the stairs. I didn't give it long that day; thirty or forty seconds was all. I figured she had to be hangin on by a thread. So up I went, two stairs at a time, and what do you think?

Nothin!

Not. . . one. . . thing.

Except.

Except the way she was lookin at me, that was. Just as calm and as sweet as you please.

'Did you forget somethin, Dolores?' she coos.

'Ayuh,' I says back, 'I forgot to quit this job five years ago. Let's just stop it, Vera.'

'Stop what, dear?' she asks, kinda flutterin her eyelashes, like she didn't have the slightest idear what I could be talkin about.

'Let's quit evens, is what I mean. Just tell me straight out - do you need the bedpan or not?'

'I don't,' she says in her best, most totally honest voice. 'I told you that!' And just smiled at me. She didn't say a word, but she didn't have to. Her face did all the talkin that needed to be done. I got you, Dolores, it was sayin. I got you good.

But I wasn't done. I knew she was holdin onto one gut-buster of a b.m., and I knew there'd be hell to pay if she got a good start before I could get the bedpan under her. So I went downstairs and stood by that vacuum, and I waited five minutes, and then I ran up again. Only that time she didn't smile at me when I came in. That time she was lyin on her side, fast asleep . . . or that was what I thought. I really did. She fooled me good and proper, and you know what they say - fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

When I went back down the second time, I really did vacuum the parlor. When the job was done, I put the Kirby away and went back to check on her. She was sittin up in bed, wide awake, covers thrown back, her rubber pants pushed down to her big old flabby knees and her diapers undone. Had she made a mess? Great God! The bed was full of shit, she was covered with shit, there was shit on the rug, on the wheelchair, on the walls. There was even shit on the curtains. It looked like she musta taken up a handful and flang it, the way kids'll fling mud at each other when they're swimmin in a cow-pond.

Was I mad! Mad enough to spit!

'Oh, Vera! Oh, you dirty BITCH!' I screamed at her. I never killed her, Andy, but if I was gonna, I would've done it that day, when I saw that mess and smelled that room. I wanted to kill her, all right; no use lyin about that. And she just looked at me with that foozled expression she got when her mind was playing tricks on her . . . but I could see the devil dancin in her eyes, and I knew well enough who the trick had been played on that time. Fool me twice, shame on me.

'Who's that?' she asked. 'Brenda, is that you, dear? Have the cows got out again?'

'You know there ain't been a cow within three miles of here since 1955!' I hollered. I came across the room, takin great big strides, and that was a mistake, because one of my loafers come down on a turd and I damn near went spang on my back. If I had done, I guess I really might have killed her; I wouldn't have been able to stop myself. Right then I was ready to plow fire and reap brimstone.

'I dooon't,' she says, tryin to sound like the poor old pitiful lady she really was on a lot of days. 'I doooooon't! I can't see, and my stomach is so upset. I think I'm going to be whoopsy. Is it you, Dolores?'

'Coss it's me, you old bat!' I said, still hollerin at the top of my lungs. 'I could just kill you!'

I imagine by then Susy Proulx and Shawna Wyndham were standin at the foot of the stairs, gettin an earful, and I imagine you've already talked to em and that they've got me halfway to hung. No need to tell me one way or the other, Andy; awful open, your face is.

Vera seen she wasn't fooling me a bit, at least not anymore, so she gave up tryin to make me believe she'd gone into one of her bad times and got mad herself in self-defense. I think maybe I scared her a little, too. Lookin back on it, I scared myself - but Andy, if you'd seen that room! It looked like dinnertime in hell.

'I guess you'll do it, too!' she yelled back at me. 'Someday you really will, you ugly, bad-natured old harridan! You'll kill me just like you killed your husband!'

'No, ma'am,' I said. Not exactly. When I get ready to settle your hash, I won't bother makin it look like an accident - I'll just shove you out the window, and there'll be one less smelly bitch in the world.'