Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [111]
They're dead, I said to Greenbush. That's what you're telling me.
Yes, he says.
They've been dead, thirty years n more, I says.
Yes, he says again.
And everything she told me about em, I says, it was a lie.
He cleared his throat again-that man's one of the world's greatest throat-clearers, if my talk with him today's any example-and when he spoke up, he sounded damned near human. What did she tell you about them, Miz Claiborne? he ast.
And when I thought about it, Andy, I realized she'd told me a hell of a lot, startin in the summer of 62, when she showed up lookin ten years older n twenty pounds lighter'n the year before. I remember her tellin me that Donald n Helga might be spendin August at the house n for me to check n make sure we had enough Quaker Rolled Oats, which was all they'd eat for breakfast. I remember her comm back up in October-that was the fall when Kennedy n Khrushchev were decidin whether or not they was gonna blow up the whole shootin match-and tellin me I'd be seem a lot more of her in the future. I hope you'll be seem the kids, too, she'd said, but there was somethin in her voice, Andy and in her eyes.
Mostly it was her eyes I thought of as I stood there with the phone in my hand. She told me all sorts of things with her mouth over the years, about where they went to school, what they were doin, who they were seem (Donald got married n had two kids, accordin to Vera; Helga got married n divorced), but I realized that ever since the summer of 1962, her eyes'd been tellin me just one thing, over n over again: they were dead. Ayuh but maybe not completely dead. Not as long as there was one scrawny, plain-faced housekeeper on an island off the coast of Maine who still believed they were alive.
From there my mind jumped forward to the summer of 1963-the summer I killed Joe, the summer of the eclipse. She'd been fascinated by the eclipse, but not just because it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Nossir. She was in love with it because she thought it was the thing that'd bring Donald n Helga back to Pinewood. She told me so again n again n again. And that thing in her eyes, the thing that knew they were dead, went away for awhile in the spring n early summer of that year.
You know what I think? I think that between March or April of 1963 and the middle of July, Vera Donovan was crazy; I think for those few months she really did believe they were alive. She wiped the sight of that Corvette comm outta the quarry where it'd fetched up from her memory; she believed em back to life by sheer force of will. Believed em back to life? Nope, that ain't quite right. She eclipsed em back to life.
She went crazy n I believe she wanted to stay crazy-maybe so she could have em back, maybe to punish herself, maybe both at the same time-but in the end, there was too much bedrock sanity in her n she couldn't do it. In the last week or ten days before the eclipse, it all started to break down. I remember that time, when us who worked for her was gettin ready for that Christless eclipse expedition n the party to follow, like it was yesterday. She'd been in a good mood all through June and early July, but around the time I sent my kids off, everythin just went to hell. That was when Vera started actin like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, yellin at people if they s'much as looked at her crosseyed, n firin house-help left n right. I think that was when her last try at wishin em back to life fell apart. She knew they were dead then and ever after, but she went ahead with the party she'd planned, just the same. Can you imagine the courage that took? The flat-out coarse-grained down-in-your-belly guts?
I remembered somethin she said,