Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

I woke myself up with such a godawful jerk that I almost fell out of bed myself. It was early mornin, with the first sun layin across the floor in a stripe. Vera was still sleepin. She’d drooled all over my arm, but at first I didn’t even have the strength to wipe it off. I just laid there trembling, all covered with sweat, tryin to make myself believe I was really awake and things was really all right—the way you do, y’know, after a really bad nightmare. And for a second there I could still see that dust-head with its big empty eyes and long dusty teeth layin on the floor beside the bed. That’s how bad the dream was. Then it was gone; the floor and the corners of the room were as clean and empty as always. But I’ve always wondered since then if maybe she didn’t send me that dream, if I didn’t see a little of what she saw those times when she screamed. Maybe I picked up a little of her fear and made it my own. Do you think things like that ever happen in real life, or only in those cheap newspapers they sell down to the grocery? I dunno… but I know that dream scared the bejesus out of me.

Well, never mind. Suffice it to say that screamin her friggin head off on Sunday afternoons and in the middle of the night was the third way she had of bein a bitch. But it was a sad, sad thing, all the same. All her bitchiness was sad at the bottom, although that didn’t stop me from sometimes wantin to spin her head around like a spool on a spindle, and I think anybody but Saint Joan of Friggin Arc woulda felt the same. I guess when Susy and Shawna heard me yellin that day that I’d like to kill her… or when other people heard me… or heard us yellin mean things at each other… well, they must have thought I’d hike up my skirts and tapdance on her grave when she finally give over. And I imagine you’ve heard from some of em yesterday and today, haven’t you, Andy? No need to answer; all the answer I need’s right there on your face. It’s a regular billboard. Besides, I know how people love to talk. They talked about me n Vera, and there was a country-fair amount of globber about me n Joe, too—some before he died and even more after. Out here in the boondocks about the most int’restin thing a person can do is die sudden, did you ever notice that?

So here we are at Joe.

I been dreadin this part, and I guess there’s no use lyin about it. I already told you I killed him, so that’s over with, but the hard part is still all ahead: how… and why… and when it had to be.

I been thinkin about Joe a lot today, Andy—more about him than about Vera, truth to tell. I kep tryin to remember just why I married him in the first place, for one thing, and at first I couldn’t do it. After awhile I got into a kind of panic about it, like Vera when she’d get the idear there was a snake inside her pillowslip. Then I realized what the trouble was—I was lookin for the love part, like I was one of those foolish little girls Vera used to hire in June and then fire before the summer was halfway done because they couldn’t keep to her rules. I was lookin for the love part, and there was precious little of that even back in 1945, when I was eighteen and he was nineteen and the world was new.

You know the only thing that come to me while I was out there on the steps today, freezin my tookus off and tryin to remember about the love part? He had a nice forehead. I sat near him in study-hall back when we was in high school together—during World War II, that was—and I remember his forehead, how smooth it looked, without a single pimple on it. There were some on his cheeks and chin, and he was prone to black-heads on the sides of his nose, but his forehead looked as smooth as cream. I remember wantin to touch it… dreamin about touchin it, to tell the truth; wantin to see if it was as smooth as it looked. And when he asked me to the Junior-Senior Prom, I said yes, and I got my chance to touch his forehead, and it was every bit as smooth as it looked, with his hair goin back from it in these nice smooth waves. Me strokin his hair and his smooth forehead in the dark while the band inside the ballroom of The Samoset Inn played “Moonlight Cocktail”… After a few hours of sittin on those damned rickety steps and shiverin, that came back to me, at least, so you see there was a little something there, after all. Accourse I found m’self touchin a lot more than just his forehead before too many more weeks had passed, and that was where I made my mistake.

Now let’s get one thing straight—I ain’t tryin to say I ended up spendin the best years of my life with that old rumpot just because I liked the look of his forehead in period seven study-hall when the light came slantin in on it. Shit, no. But I am tryin to tell you that’s all the love part I was able to remember today, and that makes me feel bad. Sittin out on the stairs today by the East Head, thinkin over those old times… that was damned hard work. It was the first time I saw that I might have sold myself cheap, and maybe I did it because I thought cheap was the best the likes of me could expect to get for herself. I know it was the first time I dared to think that I deserved to be loved more’n Joe St. George could love anybody (except himself, maybe). You mightn’t think a hard-talking old bitch like me believes in love, but the truth is it’s just about the only thing I do believe in.

It didn’t have much to do with why I married him, though—I got to tell you that straight out. I had six weeks’ worth of baby girl in my belly when I told him I did n I would, until death do us part. And that was the smartest part of it… sad but true. The rest of it was all the usual stupid reasons, and one thing I’ve learned in my life is that stupid reasons make stupid marriages.

I was tired of fightin with my mother.

I was tired of bein scolded by my father.

All my friends was doin it, they was gettin homes of their own, and I wanted to be a grownup like them; I was tired of bein a silly little girl.

He said he wanted me, and I believed him.

He said he loved me, and I believed that, too… and after he’d said it n asked me if I felt the same for him, it only seemed polite to say I did.

I was scared of what would happen to me if I didn’t—where I’d have to go, what I’d have to do, who’d look after my baby while I was doin it.

All that’s gonna look pretty silly if you ever write it up, Nancy, but the silliest thing is I know a dozen women who were girls I went to school with who got married for those same reasons, and most of them are still married, and a good many of em are only holdin on, hopin to outlive the old man so they can bury him and then shake his beer-farts out of the sheets forever.

By 1952 or so I’d pretty well forgotten his forehead, and by 1956 I didn’t have much use for the rest of him either, and I guess I’d started hatin him by the time Kennedy took over from Ike, but I never had a thought of killing him until later. I thought I’d stay with him because my kids needed a father, if for no other reason. Ain’t that a laugh? But it’s the truth. I swear it is. And I swear somethin else as well: if God gave me a second chance, I’d kill him again, even if it meant hellfire and damnation forever… which it probably does.

I guess everybody on Little Tall who ain’t a johnny-come-lately knows I killed him, and most of em prob‘ly think they know why—because of the way he had of usin his hands on me. But it wasn’t his hands on me that brought him to grief, and the simple truth is that, no matter what people on the island might have thought at the time, he never hit me a single lick during the last three years of our marriage. I cured him of that foolishness in late 1960 or early ’61.