es,' he says, 'it was. How did you know that, Miz Claiborne?'

'I musta seen a pitcher of it sometime,' I said, but I hardly heard my own voice. The voice I heard was Vera's. 'I'm tired of seeing them winch that Corvette out of the quarry in the moonlight,' she told me as she lay dyin on the stairs. 'Tired of seem how the water ran out of the open window on the passenger side.'

'I'm surprised she kept a picture of it around,' Greenbush said. 'Donald and Helga Donovan died in that car, you see. It happened in October of 1961, almost a year to the day after their father died. It seemed the girl was driving.'

He went on talkin, but I hardly heard him, Andy - I was too busy fillin in the blanks for myself, and doin it so fast that I guess I musta known they were dead . . . somewhere way down deep I musta known it all along. Greenbush said they'd been drinkin and pushin that Corvette along at better'n a hundred miles an hour when the girl missed a turn and went into the quarry; he said both of em were prob'ly dead long before that fancy two-seater sank to the bottom.

He said it was an accident, too, but maybe I knew a little more about accidents than he did.

Maybe Vera did, too, and maybe she'd always known that the argument they had that summer didn't have Jack Shit to do with whether or not Helga was gonna get a State of Maine driver's licence; that was just the handiest bone they had to pick. When McAuliffe ast me what Joe and I argued about before he got chokin me, I told him it was money on top n booze underneath. The tops of people's arguments are mostly quite a lot different from what's on the bottom, I've noticed, and it could be that what they were really arguin about that summer was what had happened to Michael Donovan the year before.

She and the hunky killed the man, Andy - she did everything but come out n tell me so. She never got caught, either, but sometimes there's people inside of families who've got pieces of the jigsaw puzzle the law never sees. People like Selena, for instance. . . n maybe people like Donald n Helga Donovan, too. I wonder how they looked at her that summer, before they had that argument in The Harborside Restaurant n left Little Tall for the last time. I've tried n tried to remember how their eyes were when they looked at her, if they were like Selena's when she looked at me, n I just can't do it. P' raps I will in time, but that ain't nothing I'm really lookin forward to, if you catch my meanin.

I do know that sixteen was young for a little hellion like Don Donovan to have a driver's licence - too damned young - and when you add in that hot car, why, you've got a recipe for disaster. Vera was smart enough to know that, and she must have been scared sick; she might have hated the father, but she loved the son like life itself. I know she did. She gave it to him just the same, though. Tough as she was, she put that rocket in his pocket, n Helga's, too, as it turned out, when he wasn't but a junior in high school n prob'ly just startin to shave. I think it was guilt, Andy. And maybe I want to think it was just that because I don't like to think there was fear mixed in with it, that maybe a couple of rich kids like them could blackmail their mother for the things they wanted over the death of their father. I don't really think it. . . but it's possible, you know; it is possible. In a world where a man can spend months tryin to take his own daughter to bed, I believe anything is possible.

'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, too - this was after I'd stood up to her about firin the Jolander girl. When Vera come up to me later, I thought sure she was gonna fire me. Instead she give me a bagful of eclipse-watchin stuff n made what was - to Vera Donovan, at least - an apology. She said that sometimes a woman had to be a high-ridin bitch. 'Some-times,' she told me, 'being a bitch is all a woman has to hold onto.'

Ayuh, I thought. When there's nothin else left, there's that. There's always that.

'Miz Claiborne?' a voice said in my ear, and that's when I remembered he was still on the line; I'd gone away from him completely. 'Miz Claiborne, are you still there?'

'Still here,' I sez. He'd ast me what she told me about em, n that was all it took to set me off thinkin about those sad old times. . . but I didn't see how I could tell him all that, not some man from New York who didn't know nothin about how we live up here on Little Tall. How she lived up on Little Tall. Puttin it another way, he knew an almighty lot about Upjohn and Mississippi Valley Light n Power, but not bugger-all about the wires in the corners.

Or the dust bunnies.

He starts off, 'I asked what she told you -'She told me to keep their beds made up n plenty of Quaker Rolled Oats in the pantry,' I says. 'She said she wanted to be ready because they might decide to come back anytime.' And that was close enough to the truth of how it was, Andy - close enough for Greenbush, anyway.

'Why, that's amazing!' he said, and it was like listenin to some fancy doctor say, 'Why, that's a brain tumor!'

We talked some more after that, but I don't have much idear what things we said. I think I told him again that I didn't want it, not so much as one red penny, and I know from the way he talked to me -kind n pleasant n sorta jollyin me along - that when he talked to you, Andy, you must not've passed along any of the news flashes Sammy Marchant prob'ly gave you n anyone else on Little Tall that'd listen. I s'pose you figured it wa'ant none of his business, at least not yet.

I remember tellin him to give it all to the Little Wanderers, and him sayin he couldn't do that. He said I could, once the will had cleared through probate (although the biggest ijit in the world coulda told he didn't think I'd do any such thing once I finally understood what'd happened), but he couldn't do doodly-squat with it.

Finally I promised I'd call him back when I felt 'a little clearer in my mind,' as he put it, n then hung up. I just stood there for a long time - must've been fifteen minutes or more. I felt . . . creepy. I felt like that money was all over me, stuck to me like bugs used to stick to the flypaper my Dad hung in our outhouse every summer back when I was little. I felt afraid it'd just stick to me tighter n tighter once I started movin around, that it'd wrap me up until I didn't have no chance in hell of ever gettin it off again.

By the time I did start movin, I'd forgot all about comin down to the police station to see you, Andy. To tell the truth, I almost forgot to get dressed. In the end I pulled on an old pair of jeans n a sweater, although the dress I'd meant to wear was laid out neat on the bed (and still is, unless somebody's broke in and took out on the dress what they would've liked to've taken out on the person who b'longed inside of it). I added my old galoshes n called it good.

I skirted around the big white rock between the shed n the blackberry tangle, stoppin for a little bit to look into it n listen to the wind rattlin in all those thorny branches. I could just see the white of the concrete wellcap. Lookin at it made me feel shivery, like a person does when they're comm down with a bad cold or the flu. I took the short-cut across Russian Meadow and then walked down to where the Lane ends at East Head. I stood there a little while, lettin the ocean wind push back my hair n warsh me clean, like it always does, and then I went down the stairs.

Oh, don't look so worried, Frank - the rope acrost the top of em n that warnin sign are both still there; it's just that I wa'ant much worried about that set of rickety stairs after all I had to go through.

I walked all the way down, switchin back n forth, until I come to the rocks at the bottom. The old town dock - what the oldtimers used to call Simmons Dock - was there, you know, but there's nothin left of it now but a few posts n two big iron rings pounded into the granite, all rusty n scaly. They look like what I imagine the eye-sockets in a dragon's skull would look like, if there really were such things. I fished off that dock many a time when I was little, Andy, and I guess I thought it'd always be there, but in the end the sea takes everything.

I sat on the bottom step, danglin my galoshes over, and there I stayed for the next seven hours. I watched the tide go out n I watched it come most of the way in again before I was done with the place.

At first I tried to think about the money, but I couldn't get my mind around it. Maybe people who've had that much all their lives can, but I couldn't. Every time I tried, I just saw Sammy Marchant first lookin at the rollin pin. . . n then up at me. That's all the money meant to me then, Andy, and it's all it means to me now - Sammy Marchant lookin up at me with that dark glare n sayin, 'I thought she couldn't walk. You always told me she couldn't walk, Dolores.'

Then I thought about Donald n Helga. 'Fool me once, shame on you,' I says to no one at all as I sat there with my feet danglin so close over the incomers that they sometimes got splattered with curds of foam. 'Fool me twice, shame on me.' Except she never really fooled me. . . her eyes never fooled me.

I remembered wakin up to the fact - one day in the late sixties, this musta been - that I had never seen em, not even once, since I'd seen the hunky takin em back to the mainland that July day in 1961. And that so distressed me that I broke a long-standin rule of mine not to talk about em at all, ever, unless Vera spoke of em first. 'How are the kids doin, Vera?' I ast her - the words jumped outta my mouth before I knew they were comin - with God's my witness, that's just what they did. 'How are they really doin?'

I remember she was sittin in the parlor at the time, knittin in the chair by the bow windows, and when I ast her that she stopped what she was doin and looked up at me. The sun was strong that day, it struck across her face in a bright, hard stripe, and there was somethin so scary about the way she looked that for a second or two I came close to screamin. It wasn't until the urge'd passed that I realized it was her eyes. They were deep-set eyes, black circles in that stripe of sun where everything else was bright. They were like his eyes when he looked up at me from the bottom of the well like little black stones or lumps of coal pushed into white dough. For that second or two it was like seem a ghost. Then she moved her head a little and it was just Vera again, sittin there n lookin like she'd had too much to drink the night before. It wouldn't've been the first time if she had.

'I don't really know, Dolores,' she said. 'We are estranged.' That was all she said, n it was all she needed to say. All the stories she told me about their lives - made-up stories, I know now - didn't say as much as those three words: 'We are estranged.' A lot of the time I spent today down by Simmons Dock I spent thinkin about what an awful word that is. Estranged. Just the sound of it makes me shiver.

I sat there n picked over those old bones one last time, n then I put em aside and got up from where I'd spent most of the day. I decided that I didn't much care what you or anyone else believed. It's all over, you see - for Joe, for Vera, for Michael Donovan, for Donald n Helga . . . and for Dolores Claiborne, too. One way or another, all the bridges between that time n this one have been burned.

Time's a reach, too, you know, just like the one that lies between the islands and the mainland, but the only ferry that can cross it is memory, and that's like a ghost-ship - if you want it to disappear, after awhile it will.

But all that aside, it's still funny how things turned out, ain't it? I remember what went through my mind as I got up n turned back to them rickety stairs - the same thing that went through it when Joe snaked his arm outta the well n almost pulled me in with him: I have digged a pit for mine enemies, and am fallen into it myself. It seemed to me, as I laid hold of that old splintery bannister n got set to climb back up all those stairs (always assumin they'd hold me a second time, accourse), that it'd finally happened, n that I'd always known it would. It just took me awhile longer to fall into mine than it took Joe to fall into his.

Vera had a pit to fall into, too - and if I've got anything to be grateful for, it's that I haven't had to dream my children back to life like she did although sometimes, when I'm talkin to Selena on the phone and hear her slur her words, I wonder if there's any escape for any of us from the pain n the sorrow of our lives. I couldn't fool her, Andy -shame on me.

Still, I'll take what I can take n grit my teeth so it looks like a grin, just like I always have. I try to keep in mind that two of my three children live still, that they are successful beyond what anyone on Little Tall would've expected when they were babies, and successful beyond what they mabye could've been if their no-good of a father hadn't had himself an accident on the afternoon of July 20th, 1963. Life ain't an either-or proposition, you see, and if I ever forget to be thankful my girl n one of my boys lived while Vera's boy n girl died, I'll have to explain the sin of ingratitude when I get before the throne of the Almighty. I don't want to do that. I got enough on my conscience - and prob'ly on my soul, too -already. But listen to me, all three of you, n hear this if you don't hear nothing else: everything I did, I did for love. . . the love a natural mother feels for her children. That's the strongest love there is in the world, and it's the deadliest. There's no bitch on earth like a mother frightened for her kids.

I thought of my dream as I reached the top of the steps again, n stood on the landin just inside that guard-rope, lookin out to sea - the dream of how Vera kept handin me plates and I kep droppin em. I thought of the sound the rock made when it struck him in the face, and how the two sounds were the same sound.

But mostly I thought about Vera and me - two bitches livin on a little chunk of rock off the Maine coast, livin together most of the time in the last years. I thought about how them two bitches slep together when the older one was scared, n how they passed the years in that big house, two bitches who ended up spendin most of their time bitchin at each other. I thought of how she'd fool me, n how I'd go'n fool her right back, and how happy each of us was when we won a round. I thought about how she was when the dust bunnies ganged up on her, how she'd scream n how she trembled like an animal that's been backed into a corner by a bigger creature that means to tear it to pieces. I remember how I'd climb into the bed with her, n put my arms around her, n feel her tremblin that way, like a delicate glass that someone's tapped with the handle of a knife. I'd feel her tears on my neck, and I'd brush her thin, dry hair n say, 'Shhh, dear. . . shhh. Those pesky dust bunnies are all gone. You're safe. Safe with me.

But if I've found out anything, Andy, it's that they ain't never gone, not really. You think you're shut of em, that you neatened em all away and there ain't a dust bunny anyplace, n then they come back, they look like faces, they always look like faces, and the faces they look like are always the ones you never wanted to see again, awake or in your dreams.

I thought of her layin there on the stairs, too, and sayin she was tired, she wanted to be done. And as I stood there on that rickety landin in my wet galoshes, I knew well enough why I'd chosen to be on those stairs that are so rotted not even the hellions will play on em after school lets out, or on the days when they play hookey. I was tired, too. I've lived my life as best I could by my own lights. I never shirked a job, nor cried off from the things I had to do, even when those things were terrible.

Vera was right when she said that sometimes a woman has to be a bitch to survive, but bein a bitch is hard work, I'll tell the world it is, n I was so tired. I wanted to have done, and it occurred to me that it wasn't too late to go back down those stairs, n that I didn't have to stop at the bottom this time, neither. . . not if I didn't want to.

Then I heard her again Vera. I heard her like I did that night beside the well, not just in my head but my ear. It was a lot spookier this time, I c'n tell you; back in '63 she'd at least been alive.

'What can you be thinking about, Dolores?' she ast in that haughty Kiss-My-Back-Cheeks voice of hers. 'I paid a higher price than you did; I paid a higher price than anyone will ever know, but I lived with the bargain I made just the same. I did more than that. When the dust bunnies and the dreams of what could have been were all I had left, I took the dreams and made them my own. The dust bunnies?

Well, they might have gotten me in the end, but I lived with them for a lot of years before they did. Now you've got a bunch of your own to deal with, but if you've lost the guts you had on the day when you told me that firing the Jolander girl was a boogery thing to do, go on. Go on and jump. Because without your guts, Dolores Claiborne, you're just another stupid old woman.'

I drew back n looked around, but there was only East Head, dark n wet with that spray that travels in the air on windy days. There wasn't a soul in sight. I stood there awhile longer, lookin at the way the clouds ran across the sky - I like to watch em, they're so high n free n silent as they go their courses up there - and then I turned away n started back home. I had to stop n rest two or three times on the way, because that long time sittin in the damp air at the bottom of the steps put an awful misery in my back. But I made it. When I got back to the house I took three asp'rin, got into my car, n drove straight here.

And that's it.

Nancy, I see you've piled up purt-near a dozen of those little tiny tapes, n your cunning little recorder must be just about wore out. So'm I, but I come here to have my say, and I've had it - every damn word of it, and every word is true. You do what you need to do to me, Andy; I've done my part, n I feel at peace with myself. That's all that matters, I guess; that, n knowin exactly who you are. I know who I am: Dolores Claiborne, two months shy of my sixty-sixth birthday, registered Democrat, lifelong resident of Little Tall Island.

I guess I want to say two more things, Nancy, before you hit the STOP button on that rig of yours. In the end, it's the bitches of the world who abide ... and as for the dust bunnies: frig ya!

SCRAPBOOK

From the Ellsworth American, November 6, 1992 (p.1):

Island woman cleared

Dolores Claiborne of Little Tall Island, longtime companion of Mrs Vera Donovan, also of Little Tall, was absolved of any blame in the death of Mrs Donovan at a special coroner's inquest held in Machias yesterday. The purpose of the inquest was to determine if Mrs Donovan had suffered 'wrongful death,' meaning death as the result of neglect or criminal act. Speculation concerning Miss Claiborne's role in the death of her employer was fueled by the fact that Mrs Donovan, who was reputedly senile at the time of her death, left her companion and housekeeper the bulk of her estate. Some sources estimate the worth of the estate to be in excess of ten million dollars.

From the Boston Globe, November 20, 1992 (p.1):

A Happy Thanksgiving in Somerville

ANONYMOUS BENEFACTOR GIVES 30M TO ORPHANAGE

The stunned directors of The New England Home for Little Wanderers announced at a hastily called press conference late this afternoon that Christmas is coming a little early for the hundred-and-fifty-year-old orphanage this year, thanks to a thirty-million-dollar bequest from an anonymous donor.

'We received word of this amazing donation from Alan Greenbush, a reputable New York attorney and certified public accountant,' said a visibly flustered Brandon Jaegger, head of the NEHLW's board of directors. 'It appears to be completely on the level, but the person behind this contribution - the guardian angel behind it, I should perhaps say - is completely serious about his or her anonymity. It almost goes without saying that all of us associated with the Home are overjoyed.'

If the multi-million-dollar donation proves out, the Little Wanderers' windfall would be the largest single charitable contribution to such a Massachusetts institution since 1938, when ...

From The Weekly Tide, December 14, 1992 (p.16)

Notes from Little Tall By 'Nosy Nettie'

Mrs Lottie McCandless won the Christmas Cover-All at Friday Night Beano in Jonesport last week - the prize totaled $240, and that's a lot of Christmas presents! Nosy Nettie is soooo jealous! Seriously, congratulations, Lottie!

John Caron's brother, Philo, came down from Derry to help John caulk his boat, the Deepstar, while it was at drydock. There is nothing like a little 'brotherly love' in this blessed season, is there, boys?

Jolene Aubuchon, who lives with her granddaughter, Patricia, finished a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle of Mt St Helens last Thursday. Jolene says that she's going to celebrate her 90th birthday next year by doing a 5000-

piece puzzle of the Sistine Chapel. Hurrah, Jolene! Nosy Nettie and all at the Tide like your style!

Dolores Claiborne will be shopping for one extra this week! She knew her son Joe - 'Mr Democrat' - was coming home with his family from his toils in Augusta for an 'island Christmas', but now she says that her daughter, famous magazine scribe Selena St George, will be making her first visit in nearly twenty years! Dolores says she feels 'very blessed.' When Nosy asked if they would be discussing Selena's latest 'think-piece' in the Atlantic Monthly, Dolores would only smile and say, 'We'll find lots to talk about, I'm sure.'

From the Early Recovery Dept, Nosy hears that Vincent Bragg, who broke his arm playing football last October...

October 1989 - February 1992