Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [21]
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,