Dolores Claiborne

    Selena was taken care of; that left the boys. I got Joe to call his sister in New Gloucester and ask if she and her husband would mind havin em for the last three weeks or so of July and the first week of August, as we'd had their two little hellions for a month or so in the summer a couple of times when they were younger. I thought Joe might balk at sendin Little Pete away, but he didn't-I s'pose he thought of how quiet the place'd be with all three gone and liked the idear.

    Alicia Forbert-that was his sister's married name-said they'd be glad to have the boys. I got an idear Jack Forbert was prob'ly a little less glad than she was, but Alicia wagged the tail on that dog,

    so there wasn't no problem-at least not there.

    The problem was that neither Joe Junior nor Little Pete much wanted to go. I didn't really blame em; the Forbert boys were both teenagers, and wouldn't have so much as the time of day for a couple of squirts like them. I wasn't about to let that stop me, though-I couldn't let it stop me. In the end I just put down my head n bulldozed em into it. Of the two, Joe Junior turned out to be the tougher nut. Finally I took him aside and said, “Just think of it as a vacation from your father. “ That convinced him where nothin else would, and that's a pretty sad thing when you think about it, wouldn't you say?

    Once I had the boys” midsummer trip settled, there was nothin to do but wait for em to be gone, and I think that in the end they were glad enough to go. Joe'd been drinkin a lot ever since the Fourth of July, and I don't think even Little Pete found him very pleasant to be around.

    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.