Stephen King - Dolores Claiborne

Saturday—the twentieth of July, 1963—come up hot n muggy n cloudy. The radio said there most likely wouldn’t be any rain after all, unless it was just a few thundershowers late in the evenin, but the clouds were gonna hang around most of the day, and chances of the coastal communities actually seein the eclipse were no better’n fifty-fifty.

It felt like a big weight had slipped off my shoulders just the same, and when I went off to Vera’s to help serve the big brunch buffet she had planned, my mind was calm and my worries behind me. It didn’t matter that it was cloudy, you see; it wouldn’t even matter if it showered off n on. As long as it didn’t pour, the hotel-people would be up on the roof and Vera’s people would be out on the reach, all of em hopin there’d be just enough of a break in the cloud-cover to let em get a look at what wasn’t gonna happen again in their lifetimes… not in Maine, anyhow. Hope’s a powerful force in human nature, you know—no one knows that better’n me.

As I remember, Vera ended up havin eighteen houseguests that Friday night, but there were even more at the Saturday-mornin buffet—thirty or forty, I’d say. The rest of the people who’d be goin with her on the boat (and they were island folk for the most part, not from away) would start gatherin at the town dock around one o’clock, and the old Princess was due to set out around two. By the time the eclipse actually began—four-thirty or so—the first two or three kegs of beer’d probably be empty.

I expected to find Vera all nerved up and ready to fly out of her own skin, but I sometimes think she made a damn career outta surprisin me. She was wearin a billowy red-n-white thing that looked more like a cape than a dress—a caftan, I think they’re called—and she’d pulled her hair back in a simple hosstail that was a long way from the fifty-buck hairdos she usually sported in those days.

She went around and around the long buffet table that was set up on the back lawn near the rose garden, visitin and laughin with all her friends—most of em from Baltimore, judgin by the look n sound—but she was different that day than she had been durin the week leadin up to the eclipse. Remember me tellin you how she went zoomin back n forth like a jet plane? On the day of the eclipse, she was more like a butterfly visitin among a lot of plants, and her laugh wasn’t so shrill or loud.

She seen me bringin out a tray of scrambled eggs n hurried over to give me some instructions, but she didn’t walk like she had been walkin the last few days—like she really wanted to be runnin—and the smile stayed on her face. I thought, She’s happy—that’s all it is. She’s accepted that her kids aren’t comin and has decided she can be happy just the same. And that was all… unless you knew her, and knew how rare a thing it was for Vera Donovan to be happy. Tell you somethin, Andy—I knew her another thirty years, almost, but I don’t think I ever saw her really happy again. Content, yes, and resigned, but happy? Radiant n happy, like a butterfly wanderin a field of flowers on a hot summer afternoon? I don’t think so.

“Dolores!” she says. “Dolores Claiborne!” It never occurred to me until a lot later that she’d called me by my maiden name, even though Joe was still alive n well that morning, and she never had before. When it did occur to me I shivered all over, the way you’re s’posed to do when a goose walks acrost the place where you’ll be buried someday.

“Mornin, Vera,” I said back. “I’m sorry the day’s so gray.”

She glanced up at the sky, which was hung with low, humid summer clouds, then smiled. “The sun will be out by three o’clock,” she says.

“You make it sound like you put in a work-order for it,” I says.

I was only teasin, accourse, but she gave me a serious little nod and said, “Yes—that’s just what I did. Now run into the kitchen, Dolores, and see why that stupid caterer hasn’t brought out a fresh pot of coffee yet.”

I set out to do as she ast, but before I got more’n four steps toward the kitchen door, she called after me just like she’d done two days before, when she told me that sometimes a woman has to be a bitch to survive. I turned around with the idear in my head that she was gonna tell me that same thing all over again. She didn’t though. She was standin there in her pretty red-n-white tent-dress, with her hands on her hips n that hosstail lyin over one shoulder, lookin not a year over twenty-one in that white mornin light.

“Sunshine by three, Dolores!” she says. “See if I’m not right!”

The buffet was over by eleven, and me n the girls had the kitchen to ourselves by noon, the caterer and his people havin moved on down to the Island Princess to start gettin ready for Act Two. Vera herself left fairly late, around twelve-fifteen, drivin the last three or four of her comp‘ny down to the dock herself in the old Ford Ranch Wagon she kep on the island. I stuck with the warshin-up until one o’clock or so, then told Gail Lavesque, who was more or less my second in command that day, that I felt a little headachey n sick to my stomach, and I was gonna go on home now that the worst of the mess was ridded up. On my way out, Karen Jolander gave me a hug and thanked me. She was cryin again, too. I swan to goodness, that girl never stopped leakin around the eyes all the years I knew her.

“I don’t know who’s been talkin to you, Karen,” I said, “but you don’t have nothing to thank me for—I didn’t do a single solitary thing.”

“No one’s said a word to me,” she says, “but I know it was you, Missus St. George. No one else’d dare speak up to the old dragon. ”

I gave her a kiss on the cheek n told her I thought she wouldn’t have nothing to worry about as long as she didn’t drop any more plates. Then I set out for home.

I remember everythin that happened, Andy— everythin— but from the time I stepped off Vera’s driveway and onto Center Drive, it’s like rememberin things that’ve happened in the brightest, most real-seemin dream you’ve ever had in your life. I kep thinkin “I’m goin home to kill my husband, I’m goin home to kill my husband,” like I could pound it into my head the way you’d pound a nail into some thick wood like teak or mahogany, if I only kept at it long enough. But lookin back on it, I guess it was in my head all the time. It was my heart that couldn’t understand.

Although it was only one-fifteen or so when I got to the village and the start of the eclipse still over three hours away, the streets were so empty it was spooky. It made me think of that little town down in the southern part of the state where they say no one lives. Then I looked up at the roof of The Harborside, and that was spookier still. There must’ve been a hundred people or more up there already, strollin around n checkin the sky like farmers at plantin time. I looked downhill to the dock and seen the Princess there, her gangplank down and the auto deck full of people instead of cars. They was walkin around with drinks in their hands, havin themselves a big open-air cocktail-party. The dock itself was crammed with people, and there musta been five hundred small boats—more’n I’d ever seen out there at one time anyway—on the reach already, anchored and waitin. And it seemed like everyone you saw, whether they was on the hotel roof or the town dock or the Princess, was wearin dark glasses and holdin either a smoked-glass eclipse-viewer or a reflector-box. There’s never been a day like it on the island before or since, and even if I hadn’t had in mind what I did have in mind, I think it woulda felt like a dream to me.

The greenfront was open, eclipse or no eclipse —I expect that booger’ll be doin business as usual even on Apocalypse Morn. I stopped in, bought a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, then walked on out East Lane to the house. I gave the bottle to Joe first thing—didn’t make any bones about it, just plopped it into his lap. Then I walked into the house n got the bag Vera had given me, the one with the eclipse-viewers and reflector-boxes in it. When I came out on the back porch again, he was holdin that bottle of Scotch up so he could see the color.