Dolores Claiborne

    Me n the kids were still gonna go, my mind was made up on that score, but I was damned if we was gonna go broke. I meant my children to have their money. Goin back to the island, standin on the foredeck of the Princess with a fresh open-water wind cuttin itself in two on my face and blowin my hair back from my temples, I knew I was going to get that money out of him again. The only thing I didn't know was how.

    Life went on. If you only looked at the top of things, it didn't look like anything had changed. Things never do seem to change much on the island if you only look at the top of things, that is. But there's lots more to a life than what a body can see on top, and for me, at least, the things underneath seemed completely different that fall. The way I saw things had changed, and I s'pose that was the biggest part of it. I'm not just talkin about that third eye now; by the time Little Pete's paper witch had been taken down and his pitchers of turkeys and Pilgrims had gone up, I was seem all I needed to with my two good natural eyes.

    The greedy, piggy way Joe'd watch Selena sometimes when she was in her robe, for instance, or how he'd look at her butt if she bent over to get a dishcloth out from under the sink. The way she'd swing wide of him when he was in his chair and she was crossin the livin room to get to her room; how she'd try to make sure her hand never touched his when she passed him a dish at the supper-table. It made my heart ache for shame and pity, but it also made me so mad that I went around most days feelin sick to my stomach. He was her father, for Christ's sake, his blood was runnin in her veins, she had his black Irish hair and double-jointed little fingers but his eyes'd get all big and round if her bra-strap so much as fell down the side of her arm.

    I seen the way Joe Junior also swung wide of him, and wouldn't answer what Joe asked him if he could get away without doin it, and answered in a mutter when he couldn't. I remember the day Joe Junior brought me his report on President Roosevelt when he got it back from the teacher. She'd marked it A-plus and wrote on the front that it was the only A-plus she'd given a history paper in twenty years of teachin, and she thought it might be good enough to get published in a newspaper. I asked Joe Junior if he'd like to try sendin it to the Ellsworth American or maybe the Bar Harbor Times. I said I'd be glad to pay for the postage. He just shook his head and laughed. It wasn't a laugh I liked much; it was hard n cynical, like his father's. “And have him on my back for the next six months?” he asks. “No thanks. Haven't you ever heard Dad call him Franklin D. Sheenyvelt?”

    I can see him now, Andy, only twelve but already purt-near six feet tall, standin on the back porch with his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, lookin down at me as I held his report with the A-plus on it. I remember the little tiny smile on the corners of his mouth. There was no good will in that smile, no good humor, no happiness. It was his father's smile, although I could never have told the boy that.

    “Of all the Presidents, Dad hates Roosevelt the most,” he told me. “That's why I picked him to do my report on. Now give it back, please. I'm going to burn it in the woodstove.”

    “No you aint, Sunny Jim,” I says, “and if you want to see what it feels like to be knocked over the porch rail and into the dooryard by your own Mom, you just try to get it away from me.”

    He shrugged. He done that like Joe, too, but his smile got wide, and it was sweeter than any his father ever wore in his life when it did that. “Okay,” he said. “Just don't let him see it, okay?”

    I said I wouldn't, and he run off to shoot baskets with his friend Randy Gigeure. I watched him go, holdin his report and thinkin about what had just passed between us. Mostly what I thought about was how he'd gotten his teacher's only A-plus in twenty years, and how he'd done it by pickin the President his father hated the most to make his report on.

    Then there was Little Pete, always swaggern around with his butt switchin and his lower lip pooched out, callin people sheenies and bein kept after school three afternoons outta every five for get-tin in trouble. Once I had to go get him because he'd been fightin, and hit some other little boy on the side of the head so hard he made his ear bleed. What his father said about it that night was “I guess he'll know to get out of your way the next time he sees you comm, won't he, Petey?” I saw the way the boy's eyes lit up when Joe said that, and I saw how tenderly Joe carried him to bed an hour or so later. That fall it seemed like I could see everything but the one thing I wanted to see most… a way to get clear of him.

    You know who finally gave me the answer? Vera. That's right-Vera Donovan herself. She was the only one who ever knew what I did, at least up until now. And she was the only one who gave me the idear.