Dolores Claiborne

by Stephen King

  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.

  Up until then, he hit me quite a lot, yes. I can't deny it. And I stood for it--I can't deny that, either. The first time was the second night of the marriage. We'd gone down to Boston for the weekend--that was our honeymoon--and stayed at the Parker House. Hardly went out the whole time. We was just a couple of country mice, you know, and afraid we'd get lost. Joe said he was damned if he was gonna spend the twenty-five dollars my folks'd given us for mad-money on a taxi ride just because he couldn't find his way back to the hotel. Gorry, wa'ant that man dumb! Of course I was, too ... but one thing Joe had that I didn't (and I'm glad of it, too) was that everlastin suspicious nature of his. He had the idear the whole human race was out to do him dirty, Joe did, and I've thought plenty of times that when he did get drunk, maybe it was because it was the only way he could go to sleep without leavin one eye open.

  Well, that ain't neither here nor there. What I set out to tell you was that we went down to the dinin room that Sat'dy night, had a good dinner, and then went back up to our room again. Joe was listin considerably to starboard on the walk down the hall, I remember--he'd had four or five beers with his dinner to go with the nine or ten he'd took on over the course of the afternoon. Once we were inside the room, he stood there lookin at me so long I asked him if he saw anythin green.

  "No," he says, "but I seen a man down there in that restaurant lookin up your dress, Dolores. His eyes were just about hangin out on springs. And you knew he was lookin, didn't you?"

  I almost told him Gary Cooper coulda been sittin in the corner with Rita Hayworth and I wouldn't have known it, and then thought, Why bother? It didn't do any good to argue with Joe when he'd been drinkin; I didn't go into that marriage with my eyes entirely shut, and I'm not gonna try to kid you that I did.

  "If there was a man lookin up my dress, why didn't you go over and tell him to shut his eyes, Joe?" I asked. It was only a joke--maybe I was tryin to turn him aside, I really don't remember--but he didn't take it as a joke. That I do remember. Joe wasn't a man to take a joke; in fact, I'd have to say he had almost no sense of humor at all. That was something I didn't know goin into it with him; I thought back then that a sense of humor was like a nose, or a pair of ears--that some worked better than others, but everybody had one.

  He grabbed me, and turned me over his knee, and paddled me with his shoe. "For the rest of your life, nobody's gonna have any idear what color underwear you've got on but me, Dolores," he said. "Do you hear that? Nobody but me."

  I actually thought it was a kind of love-play, him pretendin to be jealous to flatter me--that's what a little ninny I was. It was jealousy, all right, but love had nothing to do with it. It was more like the way a dog will put a paw over his bone and growl if you come too near it. I didn't know that then, so I put up with it. Later on I put up with it because I thought a man hittin his wife from time to time was only another part of bein married--not a nice part, but then, cleanin toilets ain't a nice part of bein married, either, but most women have done their fair share of it after the bridal dress and veil have been packed away in the attic. Ain't they, Nancy?

  My own Dad used his hands on my Mum from time to time, and I suppose that was where I got the idear that it was all right--just somethin to be put up with. I loved my Dad dearly, and him and her loved each other dearly, but he could be a handsy kind of man when he had a hair layin just right across his ass.

  I remember one time, I must have been, oh I'm gonna say nine years old, when Dad came in from hayin George Richards's field over on the West End, and Mum didn't have his dinner on. I can't remember anymore why she didn't, but I remember real well what happened when he came in. He was wearin only his biballs (he'd taken his workboots and socks off out on the stoop because they were full of chaff), and his face and shoulde
rs was burned bright red. His hair was sweated against his temples, and there was a piece of hay stuck to his forehead right in the middle of the lines that waved across his brow. He looked hot and tired and ready to be pissed off.

  He went into the kitchen and there wasn't nothing on the table but a glass pitcher with flowers in it. He turns to Mum and says, "Where's my supper, dummy?" She opened her mouth, but before she could say anythin, he put his hand over her face and pushed her down in the corner. I was standin in the kitchen entry and seen it all. He come walkin toward me with his head lowered and his hair kinda hangin in his eyes--whenever I see a man walkin home that way, tired out from his day of work and his dinner-bucket in his hand, it makes me think of my Dad--and I was some scared. I wanted to get out of his way because I felt he would push me down, too, but my legs was too heavy to move. He never, though. He just took hold of me with his big warm hard hands and set me aside and went out back. He sat down on the choppin block with his hands in his lap and his head hung down like he was lookin at them. He scared the chickens away at first, but they come back after awhile and started peckin all around his shoes. I thought he'd kick out at em, make the feathers fly, but he never done that, either.

  After awhile I looked around at my Mum. She was still sittin in the corner. She'd put a dishtowel over her face and was cryin underneath it. Her arms were crossed over her bosom. That's what I remember best of all, though I don't know why--how her arms were crossed over her bosom like that. I went over and hugged her and she felt my arms around her middle and hugged me back. Then she took the dishtowel off her face and used it to wipe her eyes and told me to go out back and ask Daddy if he wanted a glass of cold lemonade or a bottle of beer.

  "Be sure to tell him there's only two bottles of beer," she said. "If he wants more'n that, he better go to the store or not get started at all."

  I went out and told him and he said he didn't want no beer but a glass of lemonade would hit the spot. I ran to fetch it. Mum was gettin his supper. Her face was still kinda swole from cryin, but she was hummin a tune, and that night they bounced the bedsprings just like they did most nights. Nothing else was ever said or made of it. That sort of thing was called home correction in those days, it was part of a man's job, and if I thought of it afterward at all, I only thought that my Mum must have needed some or Dad never would have done what he did.

  There was a few other times I saw him correct her, but that's the one I remember best. I never saw him hit her with his fist, like Joe sometimes hit me, but once he stropped her across the legs with a piece of wet canvas sailcloth, and that must have hurt like a bastard. I know it left red marks that didn't go away all afternoon.

  No one calls it home correction anymore--the term has passed right out of conversation, so far as I can tell, and good riddance--but I grew up with the idear that when women and children step off the straight n narrow, it's a man's job to herd them back onto it. I ain't tryin to tell you that just because I grew up with the idear, I thought it was right, though--I won't let myself slip off that easy. I knew that a man usin his hands on a woman didn't have much to do with correction ... but I let Joe go on doin it to me for a long time, just the same. I guess I was just too tired from keeping house, cleanin for the summer people, raisin m'family, and tryin to clean up Joe's messes with the neighbors to think much about it.

  Bein married to Joe ... aw, shit! What's any marriage like? I guess they are all different ways, but there ain't one of em that's what it looks like from the outside, I c'n tell you that. What people see of a married life and what actually goes on inside it are usually not much more than kissin cousins. Sometimes that's awful, and sometimes it's funny, but usually it's like all the other parts of life--both things at the same time.

  What people think is that Joe was an alcoholic who used to beat me--and probably the kids, too --when he was drunk. They think he finally did it once too often and I punched his ticket for it. It's true that Joe drank, and that he sometimes went to the A.A. meetins over in Jonesport, but he was no more an alcoholic than I am. He'd throw a drunk every four or five months, mostly with trash like Rick Thibodeau or Stevie Brooks--those men really were alcoholics--but then he'd leave it alone except for a nip or two when he come in at night. No more than that, because when he had a bottle he liked to make it last. The real alkies I've known in my time, none of em was int'rested in makin a bottle of anythin last--not Jim Beam, not Old Duke, not even derail, which is antifreeze strained through cotton battin. A real drunk is only int'rested in two things: puttin paid to the jug in the hand, and huntin for the one still in the bush.

  No, he wasn't an alcoholic, but he didn't mind if people thought he'd been one. It helped him get work, especially in the summer. I guess the way people think about Alcoholics Anonymous has changed over the years--I know they talk about it a lot more than they used to--but one thing that hasn't changed is the way people will try to help somebody who claims he's already gone to work helpin himself. Joe spent one whole year not drinkin--or at least not talkin about it when he did--and they had a party for him over in Jonesport. Gave him a cake and a medallion, they did. So when he went for a job one of the summer people needed done, the first thing he'd tell em was that he was a recoverin alcoholic. "If you don't want to hire me because of that, I won't have any hard feelins," he'd say, "but I have to get it off my chest. I been goin to A.A. meetins for over a year now, and they tell us we can't stay sober if we can't be honest."

  And then he'd pull out his gold one-year medallion and show it to em, all the while lookin like he hadn't had nothin to eat but humble pie for a month of Sundays. I guess one or two of em just about cried when Joe told em about how he was workin it a day at a time and takin it easy and lettin go and lettin God whenever the urge for a drink hit him ... which it did about every fifteen minutes, accordin to him. They'd usually fall all over themselves takin him on, and at fifty cents or even a dollar an hour more than they'd intended to pay, like as not. You'd have thought the gimmick would have fallen flat after Labor Day, but it worked amazin well even here on the island, where people saw him every day and should have known better.

  The truth is most of the times Joe hit me, he was cold sober. When he had a skinful, he didn't much mind me at all, one way or the other. Then, in '60 or '61, he come in one night after helpin Charlie Dispenzieri get his boat out of the water, and when he bent over to get a Coke out of the fridge, I seen his britches were split right up the back. I laughed. I couldn't help myself. He didn't say nothin, but when I went over to the stove to check on the cabbage--I was makin a boiled dinner that night, I remember like it was yesterday--he got a chunk of rock maple out of the woodbox and whacked me in the small of the back with it. Oh, that hurt. You know what I mean if anyone's ever hit you in the kidneys. It makes them feel small and hot and so heavy, like they're gonna bust loose from whatever holds them where they're supposed to be and they'll just sink, like lead shot in a bucket.

  I hobbled as far as the table and sat in one of the chairs. I woulda fallen on the floor if that chair'd been any further away. I just sat there, waitin to see if the pain was gonna pass. I didn't cry, exactly, because I didn't want to scare the kids, but the tears went rollin down my face just the same. I couldn't stop them. They were tears of pain, the kind you can't hold back for anybody or anythin.

  "Don't you ever laugh at me, you bitch," Joe says. He slang the stovelength he hit me with back into the woodbox, then sat down to read the American. "You ought to have known better'n that ten year ago."

  It was twenty minutes before I could get outta that chair. I had to call Selena to turn down the heat under the veg and the meat, even though the stove wasn't but four steps away from where I was sittin.

  "Why didn't you do it, Mommy?" she asked me. "I was watchin cartoons with Joey."

  "I'm restin," I told her.

  "That's right," Joe says from behind his paper, "she ran her mouth until she got all tuckered out." And he laughed. That did it; that one laugh was all it t
ook. I decided right then he wasn't never going to hit me again, unless he wanted to pay a dear price for it.

  We had supper just like usual, and watched the TV just like usual afterward, me and the big kids on the sofa and Little Pete on his father's lap in the big easy-chair. Pete dozed off there, same as he almost always did, around seven-thirty, and Joe carried him to bed. I sent Joe Junior an hour later, and Selena went at nine. I usually turned in around ten and Joe'd sit up until maybe midnight, dozin in and out, watchin a little TV, readin parts of the paper he'd missed the first time, and pickin his nose. So you see, Frank, you're not so bad; some people never lose the habit, even when they grow up.

  That night I didn't go to bed when I usually did. I sat up with Joe instead. My back felt a little better. Good enough to do what I had to do, anyway. Maybe I was nervous about it, but if I was, I don't recall. I was mostly waitin for him to doze off, and finally he did.

  I got up, went into the kitchen, and got the little cream-pitcher off the table. I didn't go out lookin for that special; it was only there because it was Joe Junior's night to clean off the table and he'd forgotten to put it in the refrigerator. Joe Junior always forgot something--to put away the cream-pitcher, to put the glass top on the butter dish, to fold the bread-wrapper under so the first slice wouldn't get all hard overnight--and now when I see him on the TV news, makin a speech or givin an interview, that's what I'm most apt to think about ... and I wonder what the Democrats would think if they knew the Majority Leader of the Maine State Senate couldn't never manage to get the kitchen table completely cleared off when he was eleven. I'm proud of him, though, and don't you ever, ever think any different. I'm proud of him even if he is a goddam Democrat.