hat was the second way she had of bein a bitch - by bein mean.

What say, Frank? Did she do it again?

You're damned tooting. She did it again the next week, and the week after that. It wasn't as bad as that first adventure either time, partly because she wasn't able to save up such a dividend, but mostly because I was prepared for it. I went to bed crying again after the second time it happened, though, and as I lay there in bed feeling that misery way down low in my back, I made up my mind to quit. I didn't know what'd happen to her or who would take care of her, but right then I didn't care a fiddlyfuck. As far as I was concerned, she could starve to death layin in her own shitty bed.

I was still crying when I fell off to sleep, because the idear of quittin - of her gettin the best of me -made me feel worse'n ever, but when I woke up, I felt good. I guess it's true how a person's mind doesn't go to sleep even if a person thinks it does; it just goes on thinkin, -and sometimes it does an even better job when the person in charge isn't there to frig it up with the usual run of chatter that goes on in a body's head - chores to do, what to have for lunch, what to watch on TV, things like that. It must be true, because the reason I felt so good was that I woke up knowin how she was foolin me. The only reason I hadn't seen it before was because I was apt to underestimate her - ayuh, even me, and I knew how sly she could be from time to time. And once I understood the trick, I knew what to do about it.

It hurt me to know I'd have to trust one of the Thursday girls to vacuum the Aubusson - and the idear of Shawna Wyndham doin it gave me what my grampa used to call the shiverin hits. You know how gormy she is, Andy - all the Wyndhams are gormy, accourse, but she's got the rest of em beat seven ways to downtown. It's like she grows bumps right out of her body to knock things over with when she goes by em. It ain't her fault, it's somethin in the blood, but I couldn't bear thinkin of Shawna chargin around in the parlor, with all of Vera's carnival glass and Tiffany just beggin to be knocked over.

Still, I had to do somethin - fool me twice, shame on me - and luckily there was Susy to fall back on. She wa'ant no ballerina, but it was her vacuumed the Aubusson for the next year, and she never broke a thing. She's a good girl, Frank, and I can't tell you how glad I was to get that weddin announcement from her, even if the fella was from away. How are they doin? What do you hear?

Well, that's fine. Fine. I'm glad for her. I don't s'pose she's got a bun in the oven yet, does she? These days it seems like folks wait until they're almost ready for the old folks' home before they -Yes, Andy, I will! I just wish you'd remember it's my life I'm talkin about here - my goddam life! So why don't you just flop back in that big old chair of yours and put your feet up and relax? If you keep pushin that way, you're gonna give y'self a rupture.

Anyway, Frank, you give her my best, and tell her she just about saved Dolores Claiborne's life in the summer of '91. You c'n give her the inside story about the Thursday shitstorms n how I stopped em. I never told em exactly what was goin on; all they knew for sure was that I was buttin heads with Her Royal Majesty. I see now I was ashamed to tell em what was goin on. I guess I don't like gettin beat any more than Vera did.

It was the sound of the vacuum, you see. That was what I realized when I woke up that mornin. I told you there was nothin wrong with her ears, and it was the sound of the vacuum that told her if I was really doin the parlor or standin at the foot of the stairs, on my mark. When a vacuum cleaner is sittin in one spot, it only makes one sound, you see. Just zooooooo, like that. But when you're vacuumin a rug, it makes two sounds, and they go up and down in waves. WHOOP, that's when you push it out. And zoop, that's when you pull it back to you for another stroke. WHOOP-zoo p, WHOOP-zoo p, WHOOP-zoop.

Quit scratchin your head, you two, and look at the smile Nancy's wearn. All a body'd have to do to know which of you has spent some time runnin a vacuum cleaner is look at your faces. If you really feel like it's that important, Andy, try it for yourself. You'll hear it right off, though I imagine Maria'd just about drop dead if she came in and saw you vacuumin the livin-room rug.

What I realized that momin was that she'd stopped just listenin for when the vacuum cleaner started runnin, because she'd realized that wasn't good enough anymore. She was listenin to see if the sound went up and down like it does when a vacuum's actually workin. She wouldn't pull her dirty little trick until she heard that WHOOP-WOOOP wave.

I was crazy to try out my new idear, but I couldn't right away, because she went into one of her bad times right about then, and for quite awhile she just did her business in the bedpan or peed a little in her diapers if she had to. And I started to get scared that this would be the time she wouldn't come back out of it. I know that sounds funny, since she was so much easier to mind when she was confused in her thinkin, but when a person gets a good idear like that, they kinda want to take it for a test-drive. And you know, I felt somethin for that bitch besides wanting to throttle her. After knowin her over forty years, it'd be goddam strange if I didn't. She knitted me an afghan once, you know - this was long before she got really bad, but it's still on my bed, and it's some warm on those February nights when the wind plays up nasty.

Then, about a month or a month and a half after I woke up with my idear, she started to come around again. She'd watch Jeopardy on the little bedroom TV and rag the contestants if they didn't know who was President durin the Spanish-American War or who played Melanie in Gone With the Wind. She started all her old globber about how her kids might come n visit her before Labor Day. And, accourse, she pestered to be put in her chair so she could watch me hang the sheets and make sure I used six pins and not just four.

Then there come a Thursday when I pulled the bedpan out from under her at noon dry as a bone and empty as a car salesman's promises. I can't tell you how pleased I was to see that empty bedpan. Here we go, you sly old fox, I thought. Now ain't we gonna see. I went downstairs and called Susy Proulx into the parlor.

'I want you to vacuum in here today, Susy,' I told her.

'Okay, Missus Claiborne,' she said. That's what both of them called me, Andy - what most people on the island call me, s'far's that goes. I never made an issue of it at church or anywhere else, but that's how it is. It's like they think I was married to a fella named Claiborne at some point in my checkered past. . . or maybe I just want to believe most of em don't remember Joe, although I guess there's plenty who do. It don't matter too much, one way or the other, in the end; I guess I am entitled to believe what I want to believe. I was the one married to the bastard, after all.

'I don't mind,' she goes on, 'but why are you whisperin?'

'Never mind,' I said, 'just keep your own voice down. And don't you break anything in here, Susan Emma Proulx - don't you dare.'

Well, she blushed just as red as the side of the volunteer fire truck; it was actually sorta comical. 'How'd you know my middle name was Emma?'

'None of your beeswax,' I says. 'I've spent donkey's years on Little Tall, and there's no end to the things I know, and the people I know em about. You just be careful of your elbows around the furniture and Missus God's carnival glass vases, especially when you're backin up, and you won't have a thing to worry about.'

'I'll be extra careful,' she said.

I turned the Kirby on for her, and then I stepped into the hall, cupped my hands around my mouth, and hollered: 'Susy! Shawna! I'm gonna vacuum the parlor now!'

Susy was standin right there, accourse, and I tell you that girl's entire face was a question mark. I just kinda flapped my hand at her, tellin her to go on about her business and never mind me. Which she did.

I tiptoed over to the foot of the stairs n stood in my old place. I know it's silly, but I ain't been so excited since my Dad took me huntin for the first time when I was twelve. It was the same kind of feelin, too, with your heart beatin hard and kinda fiat in your chest and neck. The woman had dozens of valuable antiques as well as all that expensive glass in the parlor, but I never spared a thought to Susy Proulx in there, whirlin and twirlin amongst them like a dervish. Do you believe it?

I made myself stay where I was as long as I could, about a minute and a half, I think. Then I dashed. And when I popped into her room, there she was, face red, eyes all squinched down into slits, fists balled up, goin 'Unhh! Unhhhhh! UNHHHHH!' Her eyes flew open in a hurry when she heard the bedroom door bang open, though. Oh, I wish I'd had a camera - it was priceless.

'Dolores, you get right back out of here!' she kinda squeaks. 'I'm tryin to have a nap, and I can't do it if you're going to come busting in here like a bull with a hard-on every twenty minutes!'

'Well,' I said, 'I'll go, but first I think I'll put this old fanny-pan under you. From the smell, I'd say a little scare was about all you needed to take care of your constipation problem.'

She slapped at my hands and cussed me - she could cuss somethin fierce when she wanted to, and she wanted to every time somebody crossed her -but I didn't pay much attention. I got the bedpan under her slick as a whistle, and, like they say, everythin came out all right. When it was done, I looked at her and she looked at me and neither one of us had to say a thing. We knew each other of old, you see.

There, you nasty old quim, I was sayin with my face. I've caught up with you again, and how do you like it?

Not much, Dolores, she was sayin with hers, but that's all right; just because you've got caught up doesn't mean you'll stay caught up.

I did, though - that time I did. There were a few more little messes, but never again anythin like the time I told you about, when there was even shit on the curtains. That was really her last hurrah. After that, the times when her mind was clear got fewer and fewer, and when they came, they were short. It saved my achin back, but it made me sad, too. She was a pain, but she was one I'd gotten used to, if you see what I mean.

Could I have another glass of water, Frank?

Thank you. Talkin's thirsty work. And if you decide to let that bottle of Gentleman Jim Beam out of your desk for a little fresh air, Andy, I'll never tell.

No? Well, that's about what I expected from the likes of you.

Now - where was I?

Oh, I know. About how she was. Well, the third way she had of bein a bitch was the worst. She was a bitch because she was a sad old lady who had nothin to do but die in an upstairs bedroom on an island far from the places and the people she'd known most of her life. That was bad enough, but she was losin her mind while she did it . . . and there was part of her that knew the rest of her was like an undercut riverbank gettin ready to slide down into the stream.

She was lonely, you see, and that I didn't understand I never understood why she threw over her whole life to come out to the island in the first place. At least not until yesterday. But she was scared, too, and I could understand that just fine. Even so, she had a horrible, scary kind of strength, like a dyin queen that won't let go of her crown even at the end; it's like God Himself has got to pry it loose a finger at a time.

She had her good days and her bad ones - I told you that. What I call her fits always happened in between, when she was changin from a few days of bein bright to a week or two of bein fogged in, or from a week or two of bein fogged in to a time of bein bright again. When she was changin, it was like she was nowhere . . . and part of her knew that, too. That was the time when she'd have her hallucinations.

If they were all hallucinations. I'm not so sure about that as I used to be. Maybe I'll tell you that part and maybe I won't - I'll just have to see how I feel when the time comes.

I guess they didn't all come on Sunday afternoons or in the middle of the night; I guess it's just that I remember those ones the best because the house was so quiet and it would scare me so when she started screaming. It was like havin somebody throw a bucket of ice-cold water over you on a hot summer's day; there never was a time I didn't think my heart would stop when her screams began, and there never was a time I didn't think I'd come into her room and find her dyin. The things she was ascairt of never made sense, though. I mean, I knew she was scared, and I had a pretty good idear what she was scared of, but never why.

'The wires!' she'd be screamin sometimes when I went in. She'd be all scrunched up in bed, her hands clutched together between her boobs, her punky old mouth drawn up and tremblin; she'd be as pale as a ghost, and the tears'd be runnin down the wrinkles under her eyes. 'The wires, Dolores, stop the wires!' And she'd always point at the same place . . . the baseboard in the far corner.

Wasn't nothing there, accourse, except there was to her. She seen all these wires comm out of the wall and scratchin across the floor toward her bed - at least that's what I think she seen. What I'd do was run downstairs and get one of the butcher-knives off the kitchen rack, and then come back up with it. I'd kneel down in the corner - or closer to the bed if she acted like they'd already progressed a fairish way - and pretend to chop them off. I'd do that, bringin the blade down light and easy on the floor so I wouldn't scar that good maple, until she stopped cryin.

Then I'd go over to her and wipe the tears off her face with my apron or one of the Kleenex she always kept stuffed under her pillow, and I'd kiss her a time or two and say, 'There, dear - they're gone. I chopped off every one of those pesky wires. See for yourself.'

She'd look (although at these times I'm tellin you about she couldn't really see nothing), and she'd cry some more, like as not, and then she'd hug me and say, 'Thank you, Dolores. I thought this time they were going to get me for sure.'

Or sometimes she'd call me Brenda when she thanked me - she was the housekeeper the Donovans had in their Baltimore place. Other times she'd call me Clarice, who was her sister and died in 1958.

Some days I'd get up there to her room and she'd be half off the bed, screamin that there was a snake inside her pillow. Other times she'd be settin up with the blankets over her head, hollerin that the windows were magnifyin the sun and it was gonna burn her up. Sometimes she'd swear she could already feel her hair frizzin. Didn't matter if it was rainin, or foggier'n a drunk's head outside; she was bound and determined the sun was gonna fry her alive, so I'd pull down all the shades and then hold her until she stopped cryin. Sometimes I held her longer, because even after she'd gotten quiet I could feel her tremblin like a puppy that's been mistreated by mean kids. She'd ask me over and over again to look at her skin and tell her if it had blistered anywhere. I'd tell her over and over again that it hadn't, and after a little of that she'd sometimes go to sleep. Other times she wouldn't she'd just fall into a stupor, mutterin to people who weren't there. Sometimes she'd talk French, and I don't mean that parley-voo island French, either. She and her husband loved Paris and went there every chance they got, sometimes with the kids and sometimes by themselves. Sometimes she talked about it when she was feelin perky - the cafes, the nightclubs, the galleries, and the boats on the Seine - and I loved to listen. She had a way with words, Vera did, and when she really talked a thing up, you could almost see it.

But the worst thing - what she was scared of most of all - were nothing but dust bunnies. You know what I mean: those little balls of dust that collect under beds and behind doors and in comers. Look sort of like milkweed pods, they do. I knew it was them even when she couldn't say it, and most times I could get her calmed down again, but why she was so scared of a bunch of ghost-turds - what she really thought they were - that I don't know, although I once got an idear. Don't laugh, but it come to me in a dream.

Luckily, the business of the dust bunnies didn't come up so often as the sun burnin her skin or the wires in the corner, but when that was it, I knew I was in for a bad time. I knew it was dust bunnies even if it was the middle of the night and I was in my room, fast asleep with the door closed, when she started screamin. When she got a bee in her bonnet about the other things -

What, honey?

Oh, wasn't I?

No, you don't need to move your cute little recorder any closer; if you want me to talk up, I will.

Most generally I'm the bawlinest bitch you ever run across - Joe used to say he wished for cotton to stick in his ears every time I was in the house. But the way she was about the dust bunnies gave me the creeps, and if my voice dropped I guess that just proves they still do. Even with her dead, they still do. Sometimes I used to scold her about it. 'Why do you want to get up to such foolishness, Vera?' I'd say. But it wa'ant foolishness. Not to Vera, at least. I thought more'n once that I knew how she'd finally punch out - she'd scare herself to death over those friggin dust bunnies. And that ain't so far from the truth, either, now that I think about it.

What I started to say was that when she got a bee in her bonnet about the other things - the snake in the pillowslip, the sun, the wires - she'd scream. When it was the dust bunnies, she's shriek. Wasn't even words in it most times. Just shriekin so long and loud it put ice-cubes in your heart.

I'd run in there and she'd be yankin at her hair or harrowin her face with her fingernails and lookin like a witch. Her eyes'd be so big they almost looked like softboiled eggs, and they were always starin into one corner or the other.

Sometimes she was able to say 'Dust bunnies, Dolores! Oh my God, dust bunnies!' Other times she could only cry and gag. She'd clap her hands over her eyes for a second or two, but then she'd take em back down. It was like she couldn't bear to look, but couldn't bear not to look either. And she'd start goin at her face with her fingernails again. I kep em clipped just as short as I could, but she still drew blood lots of times, and I wondered every time it happened how her heart could stand the plain terror of it, as old and fat's she was.

One time she fell right out of bed and just lay there with one leg twisted under her. Scared the bejesus out of me, it did. I ran in and there she was on the floor, beatin her fists on the boards like a kid doin a tantrum and screamin fit to raise the roof. That was the only time in all the years I did for her that I called Dr Freneau in the middle of the night. He came over from Jonesport in Collie Violette's speedboat. I called him because I thought her leg was broken, had to be, the way it was bent under her, and she'd almost surely die of the shock. But it wasn't - I don't know how it wasn't, but Freneau said it was just sprained - and the next day she slipped into one of her bright periods again and didn't remember a thing of it. I asked her about the dust bunnies a couple of times when she had the world more or less in focus, and she looked at me like I was crazy. Didn't have the slightest idear what I was talkin about.

After it happened a few times, I knew what to do. As soon as I heard her shriekin that way, I was up from bed and out my door - my bedroom's only two doors down from hers, you know, with the linen closet in between. I kep a broom propped in the hall with the dustpan poked onto the end of the handle ever since she had her first hissy over the dust bunnies. I'd go peltin into her room, wavin the broom like I was tryin to flag down a goddam mail-train, screamin myself (it was the only way I could make myself heard).

'I'll get em, Vera!' I'd shout. 'I'll get em! Just hold the friggin phone!'

And I'd sweep at whatever corner she was starin into, and then I'd do the other one for good measure. Sometimes she'd calm down after that, but more often she'd start hollerin that there were more under the bed. So I'd get down on my hands n knees and make like I was sweepin under there, too. Once the stupid, scared, pitiful old dub almost fell right outta bed on top of me, tryin to lean over and look for herself. She prob'ly woulda squashed me like a fly. What a comedy that woulda been!

Once I'd swept everyplace that had her scared, I'd show her my empty dustpan and say, 'There, dear - see? I got every one of those prickish things.'

She'd look into the dustpan first, and then she'd look up at me, tremblin all over, her eyes so drowned in her own tears that they swam like rocks when you look down and see em in a stream, and she'd whisper, 'Oh, Dolores, they're so gray! So nasty! Take them away. Please take them away!'

I'd put the broom and the empty dustpan back outside my door, handy for action next time, and then I'd go back in to soothe her as best I could. To soothe myself, as well. And if you think I didn't need a little soothin, you try wakin up all alone in a big old museum like that in the middle of the night, with the wind screamin outside and an old crazy woman screamin inside. My heart'd be goin like a locomotive and I couldn't hardly get my breath. but I couldn't let her see how I was, or she'd have started to doubt me, and wherever would we have gone from there?

What I'd do most times after those set-to's was brush her hair - it was the thing that seemed to calm her down the quickest. She'd moan n cry at first, and sometimes she'd reach out her arms and hug me, pushin her face against my belly. I remember how hot her cheeks and forehead always were after she threw one of her dust bunny wingdings, and how sometimes she'd wet my nightie right through with her tears. Poor old woman! I don't guess any of us here know what it is to be that old, and to have devils after you you can't explain, even to yourself.

Sometimes not even half an hour with the hair-brush would do the trick. She'd keep lookin past me into the corner, and every so often she'd catch her breath n whimper. Or she'd flap her hand at the dark under the bed and then kinda snatch it back, like she expected somethin under there to try n bite it. Once or twice even I thought I saw some-thin movin under there, and I had to clamp my mouth shut to keep from screamin myself. All I saw was just the movin shadow of her own hand, accourse, I know that, but it shows what a state she got me in, don't it? Ayuh, even me, and I'm usually just as hardheaded as I am loudmouthed.

On those times when nothin else'd do, I'd get into bed with her. Her arms would creep around me and hold onto my sides and she'd lay the side of her head down on what's left of my bosom, and I'd put my arms around her and just hold her until she drifted off. Then I'd creep out of bed, real slow and easy, so as not to wake her up, and go back to my own room. There was a few times I didn't even do that. Those times - they always came when she woke me up in the middle of the night with her yowlin - I fell asleep with her.

It was on one of those nights that I dreamed about the dust bunnies. Only in the dream I wasn't me. I was her, stuck in that hospital bed, so fat I couldn't even hardly turn over without help, and my cooze burnin way down deep from the urinary infection that wouldn't never really go away on account of how she was always damp down there, and had no real resistance to anything. The welcome mat was out for any bug or germ that came along, you might say, and it was always turned around the right way.

I looked over in the corner, and what I saw was this thing that looked like a head made out of dust. Its eyes were all rolled up and its mouth was open and full of long snaggly dust-teeth. It started comm toward the bed, but slow, and when it rolled around to the face side again the eyes were lookin right at me and I saw it was Michael Donovan, Vera's husband. The second time the face came around, though, it was my husband. It was Joe St George, with a mean grin on his face and a lot of long dust-teeth all snappin. The third time it rolled around it wasn't nobody I knew, but it was alive, it was hungry, and it meant to roll all the way over to where I was so it could eat me.

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 wan-tin 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 blackheads 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.