Dolores Claiborne

    “Yes,” I says, although I wasn't. He wasn't ever gonna be able to satisfy me again. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd worked the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I meant to get the kids out of that house or see him dead before the turn of the year. Which way it went didn't make much difference to me, but I didn't want him to know somethin was comin his way until it was too late for him to do anythin about it.

    “Good,” he says. “Then we're all done and buttoned up, ain't we, Dolores?” But he was lookin at me with a funny little gleam in his eyes that I didn't much like. “You think you're pretty smart, don't you?”

    “I dunno,” I says. “I used to think I had a fair amount of intelligence, but look who I ended up keepin house with.”

    “Oh, come on,” he says, still lookin at me in that funny half-wise way. “You think you're such hot shit you prob'ly look over your shoulder to make sure your ass ain't smokin before you wipe yourself. But you don't know everything.”

    “What do you mean by that?”

    “You figure it out,” he says, and shakes his paper out like some rich guy who wants to make sure the stock market didn't use him too bad that day. “It shouldn't be no trouble for a smartypants like you.

    I didn't like it, but I let it go. Partly it was because I didn't want to spend any more time knockin a stick against a hornet's nest than I had to, but that wasn't all of it. I did think I was smart, smarter'n him, anyway, and that was the rest of it. I figured if he tried to get his own back on me, I'd see what he was up to about five minutes after he got started. It was pride, in other words, pride pure n simple, and the idea that he'd already got started never crossed my mind.

    When the kids came back from the store, I sent the boys into the house and walked around to the back with Selena. There's a big tangle of blackberry bushes there, mostly bare by that time of the year. A little breeze had come up, and it made them rattle. It was a lonesome sound. A little creepy, too. There's a big white stone stickin out of the ground there, and we sat down on it. A half-moon had risen over East Head, and when she took my hands, her fingers were just as cold as that half-moon looked.

    “I don't dare go in, Mommy,” she said, and her voice was tremblin. “I'll go to Tanya's, all right? Please say I can.”

    “You don't have to be afraid of a thing, sweetheart,” I says. “It's all taken care of.”

    “I don't believe you,” she whispered, although her face said she wanted to-her face said she wanted to believe it more than anythin.

    “It's true,” I said. “He's promised to leave you alone. He doesn't always keep his promises, but he'll keep this one, now that he knows I'm watchin and he can't count on you to keep quiet. Also, he's scared to death.”

    “Scared to death-why?”

    “Because I told him I'd see him in Shawshank if he got up to any more nasty business with you.”

    She gasped, and her hands bore down on mine again. “Mommy, you didn't!”

    “Yes I did, and I meant it,” I says. “Best for you to know that, Selena. But I wouldn't worry too much; Joe probably won't come within ten feet of you for the next four years… and by then you'll be in college. If there's one thing on this round world he respects, it's his own hide.”

    She let go of my hands, slow but sure. I saw the hope comm into her face, and somethin else, as well. It was like her youth was comm back to her, and it wasn't until then, sittin in the moonlight by the blackberry patch with her, that I realized how old she'd come to look that fall.

    “He won't strap me or anything?” she asked.

    “No,” I says. “It's done.”

    Then she believed it all and put her head down on my shoulder and started to cry. Those were tears of relief, pure and simple. That she should have to cry that way made me hate Joe even more.

    I think that, for the next few nights, there was a girl in my house sleepin better'n she had for three months or more… but I laid awake. I'd listen to Joe snorin beside me, and look at him with that inside eye, and feel like turnin over and bitin his goddam throat out. But I wasn't crazy anymore, like I'd been when I almost poleaxed him with that stick of stovewood. Thinkin of the kids and what would happen to em if I was taken up for murder hadn't had any power over that inside eye then, but later on, after I'd told Selena she was safe and had a chance to cool off a little myself, it did. Still, I knew that what Selena most likely wanted-for things to go on like what her Dad had been up to had never happened-couldn't be. Even if he kep his promise and never touched her again, that couldn't be, and in spite of what I'd told Selena, I wasn't completely sure he'd keep his promise. Sooner or later, men like Joe usually persuade themselves that they can get away with it next time; that if they're only a little more careful, they can have whatever they like.