Dolores Claiborne

    “Nonsense,” she says, and the needles went click-click-click in her lap. “Husbands die every day, Dolores. Why, one is probably dying right now, while we're sitting here talking. They die and leave their wives their money. “ She finished her row and looked up at me but I still couldn't see what was in her eyes because of the shadows the rain made. They went creepin and crawlin all acrost her face like snakes. “I should know, shouldn't I?” she says. “After all, look what happened to mine.”

    I couldn't say nothing. My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth like an inchbug to flypaper.

    “An accident,” she says in a clear voice almost like a schoolteacher's, “is sometimes an unhappy woman's best friend.”

    “What do you mean?” I asked. It was only a whisper, but I was a little surprised to find I could even get that out.

    “Why, whatever you think,” she says. Then she grinned-not a smile but a grin. To tell you the truth, Andy, that grin chilled my blood. “You just want to remember that what's yours is his and what's his is yours. If he had an accident, for instance, the money he's holding in his bank accounts would become yours. It's the law in this great country of ours.

    Her eyes fastened on mine, and for just a second there the shadows were gone and I could see clear into them. What I saw made me look away fast. On the outside, Vera was just as cool as a baby sittin on a block of ice, but inside the temperature looked to be quite a bit hotter; about as hot as it gets in the middle of a forest fire, I'd say at a guess. Too hot for the likes of me to look at for long, that's for sure.

    “The law is a great thing, Dolores,” she says. “And when a bad man has a bad accident, that can sometimes be a great thing, too.”

    “Are you sayin-” I begun. I was able to get a little above a whisper by then, but not much.

    “I'm not saying anything,” she says. Back in those days, when Vera decided she was done with a subject, she slammed it closed like a book. She stuck her knittin back in her basket and got up. “I'll tell you this, though-that bed's never going to get made with you sitting on it. I'm going down and put on the tea-kettle. Maybe when you get done here, you'd like to come down and try a slice of the apple pie I brought over from the mainland. If you're lucky, I might even add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.”

    “All right,” I says. My mind was in a whirl, and the only thing I was completely sure of was that a piece of pie from the Jonesport Bakery sounded like just the thing. I was really hungry for the first time in over four weeks-gettin the business off my chest done that much, anyway.

    Vera got as far as the door and turned back to look at me. “I feel no pity for you, Dolores,” she said. “You didn't tell me you were pregnant when you married him, and you didn't have to; even a mathematical dunderhead like me can add and subtract. What were you, three months gone?”

    “Six weeks,” I said. My voice had sunk back to a whisper. “Selena come a little early.”

    She nodded. “And what does a conventional little island girl do when she finds the loaf's been leavened? The obvious, of course… but those who marry in haste often repent at leisure, as you seem to have discovered. Too bad your sainted mother didn't teach you that one along with there's a heartbeat in every potato and use your head to save your feet. But I'll tell you one thing, Dolores: bawling your eyes out with your apron over your head won't save your daughter's maidenhead if that smelly old goat really means to take it, or your children's money if he really means to spend it. But sometimes men, especially drinking men, do have accidents. They fall downstairs, they slip in bath-tubs, and sometimes their brakes fail and they run their BMWs into oak trees when they are hurrying home from their mistresses” apartments in Arlington Heights.”

    She went out then, closin the door behind her. I made up the bed, and while I did it I thought about what she'd said… about how when a bad man has a bad accident, sometimes that can be a great thing, too. I began to see what had been right in front of me all along-what I would have seen sooner if my mind hadn't been flyin around in a blind panic, like a sparrow trapped in an attic room.