Characters in Dolores Claiborne

… is Alan Greenbush calling,” she says. “Funny,” I says, pert’s you please, “you don’t sound like an Alan Greenbush.” “It’s his office calling,” she says, like I was about the dumbest thing she ever heard of. “Will you hold for Mr. Greenbush?” She caught …

They did it the very day they found him, and I guess it might have still been goin on when Jack n Alicia Forbert brought the boys back around dusk.

… What did you ask, Andy Bissette? Do I “understand these rights as you’ve explained em to me”? Gorry! What makes some men so numb? No, you never mind—still your jawin and …

In the summer I left him with Arlene Cullum—Vera wouldn’t have a crying baby in the house, not her—but when she and her husband were gone, I’d bring both him and Selena in with me.

… Greenbush, a reputable New York attorney and certified public accountant,” said a visibly flustered Brandon Jaegger, head of the N.E.H.L.W.’s board of directors. “It appears to be completely on the level, but the person behind this contribution—the …

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.

She’d be happy to go back if Mrs. Devereaux or Cindy called again, too, and if she got offered a job as a part-time chambermaid at the hotel next summer, she’d prob’ly try to talk me into …

The next hour and a half passed slower’n any time had since I was a little girl, and my Aunt Cloris promised to come n take me to my first movie down in Ellsworth.

He came over from Jonesport in Collie Violette’s speedboat.

About that same time, Dave Pelletier—he delivered mail on the island back in those days—drove back toward town, hell bent for election and pullin a long rooster-tail of dust …

He said that goddam little sheeny Dicky O’Hara pushed him down. I told him goddam was swearin and he shouldn’t say it, then asked him if he knew what a sheeny was.

… no more’n eight or nine then, but I’m pretty sure she had a crush the size of a pickup truck on Donald Donovan, just the same. So they took Thanksgiving on the island one year and Christmas on it another, but that was all. They were summer people . . …

Before she did, she called me on the phone and told me to have Dougie Tappert check the furnace, and to leave the dust-sheets off the furniture.

Some people get thin as jerky in their sundown years, but not Vera Donovan. Dr. Freneau said it was because her kidneys weren’t doin their job.

Garrett wasn’t alone. Dr. John McAuliffe was with him. I’d more or less expected that, too, but my heart still sank a little in my breast.

… twenty-five, but his Dad was in the search-party that found Joe, and I all at once realized that Duke Marchant’d probably raised Sammy and all the rest of his not-too-brights on the notion that Dolores Claiborne St. George had done away with her old …

Edgar Sherrick, who was our constable back then, came around n told him that he could drink until the cows came home, if that was what he wanted, but the …

It’s just that nobody could prove it. And I wouldn’t be here now, admittin it in front of Frank Proulx and Nancy Bannister from Kennebunk if it hadn’t been for that stupid bitch Vera, gettin up to more of her nasty old tricks.

… In the late forties, that patch had been flowers and fieldgrass, with the wellhead sittin on the shed side of it, but about six years after me n Joe were married and moved onto the place—which his Uncle Freddy left him when he died—the well went dry.

I stuck with the warshinup until one o’clock or so, then told Gail Lavesque, who was more or less my second in command that day, that I felt a little headachey n sick to my stomach, and I was gonna go on home now …

… if he keeps screamin for help until one of the Carons or Langills or Jolanders hears him and calls Garrett Thibodeau? Or what if someone comes to the house tomorrow—one of his drinkin buddies, or someone wantin him to crew on their boat or fix an …

… 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 …

… The kids were in school and Joe was out on the boundin main with Mike Stargill and his brother Gordon, playin with the lobster-pots—he wouldn’t be back til almost sundown. I had the kids’ savins account passbooks with me. We’d been puttin …

She was about four years old, n wearin the pink dress her Gramma Trisha bought her just before she died. Selena come up to me in the dooryard, I saw she had my sewin scissors in her hand.

The picture showed Jimmy Gagnon and Harley Fox doin some sort of carpentry on the hotel roof, which was as flat n broad then as it is now. And do you know what?

He wa’ant a week in the ground before that rumpot Harry Doucette come over with a friggin IOU that said Joe owed him twenty dollars on a baseball bet!

Did I have to? I dunno. I guess not. I had my Sociable Security, as old Hattie McLeod used to call it.

“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.

He died three years later when a snow-plow hit his little Volkswagen Beetle. It was Henry Briarton took over the job when McAuliffe died.

I got an idear Jack Forbert was prob’ly a little less glad than she was, but Alicia wagged the tail on that dog, so there wasn’t no problem—at least not there.

And then I remembered somethin else, somethin Jimmy DeWitt told me in the fall of that year. “They had a wowser of an argument in a restaurant just after the Fourth of July in ’61,” I says.

The picture showed Jimmy Gagnon and Harley Fox doin some sort of carpentry on the hotel roof, which was as flat n broad then as it is now. And do you know what?

… the only pitcher I could make inside my head was like the ones in the Scrooge McDuck comic books Joe Junior used to read Little Pete when Pete was four or five. I saw a great big vault fulla coins n bills, only instead of Scrooge McDuck paddlin …

… sayin, “You got away with it once, Dolores Claiborne, and considerin the kind of man my Dad says Joe St. George was, maybe that was all right. But what did this woman ever do to you besides feed you n keep a roof over your head n pay you a …

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.

I know that’s hard to believe, listenin to me tonight, but it’s true. I remember one time when I was workin part-time for the Marshalls—remember John Marshall, Andy, how he was always talkin about buildin a bridge over to the mainland?—and the doorbell rang.

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.

… but I was still glad to get away each day, and on Thursday the eighteenth she fired another girl—Karen Jolander, that one was. Her big crime was droppin a plate that had been cracked to begin with. Karen wasn’t cryin when she went down the driveway, …

… and she didn’t understand how bringin him a glass of iced tea in the afternoon and tellin him about Laurie Langill’s new puppy had given him the idear that he could reach between her legs n squeeze her there whenever he wanted, but she was convinced she …

Me and Lisa McCandless were going to turn those fancy Persian rugs downstairs—you’re supposed to do that every six months so they won’t fade, or so they’ll fade …

… and when he died in the summer of ’63, Selena was fifteen, Joe Junior was thirteen, and Little Pete was just nine. Well, Joe didn’t leave me a pot to piss in and hardly a window to throw it out of— I guess you’ll have to fix this up some, …

“Too bad—Joe was partial to em, and I don’t know how Lucien Mercier’s gonna make him look just right for the viewin without em.” McAuliffe’s lips drew back when I said that n I got a good look at his teeth.

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.

Marky Benoit had been arrested by the Coast Guard just that summer—they found four bales of the stuff in the hold of the Maggie’s Delight.

… swim like fish, Huffy knew it, and to make a long story at least a little shorter, me n Melissa Caron saw our daughters off on the ferry the week after school let out, them wavin from the boat and us wavin from the dock and all four of us …

They were summer people . . . or at least Michael Donovan and the kids were. Vera was from away, but in the end she turned out to be as much an island woman as I am. Maybe more.

The kids were in school and Joe was out on the boundin main with Mike Stargill and his brother Gordon, playin with the lobster-pots—he wouldn’t be back til almost sundown.

Mr. Pease had gone as red as the side of old dad’s barn. Even his sweaty old bald head had turned bright red. “Please, Mrs. St. George,” he says.

… when I got back—the boys were off playin, and Selena had left a note sayin she’d gone over to Mrs. Devereaux’s to help her do a laundry . . . she did all the sheets from The Harborside Hotel in those days, you know. I didn’t have any idear where …

16) Notes from Little Tall By “Nosy Nettie” Mrs. Lottie McCandles 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!

I had bruises on it the next day. “I thought about how it’d be to sit down and say, ‘Mrs. Sheets, my Dad is trying to do you-know-what to me.’ And she’s so dense—and so old—she’d probably say, ‘No, I don’t know-what, Selena.

1): ISLAND WOMAN CLEARED Dolores Claiborne of Little Tall Island, long-time 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.

I’ll never tell a soul. Thank you. And thank you, Nancy Bannister, for puttin up with such a long-winded old broad as me. How your fingers holdin out? Are they? Good.

… folks on the island know most of it already, and I’m just about half-past give-a-shit, as old Neely Robichaud used to say when he was in his cups. Which was most of the time, as anyone who knew him will tell you. I do give a shit about one thing, …

I sold the old shortwave radio he’d been tinkerin on for ten years to Norris Pinette for twenty-five dollars, and the three junk trucks settin in the back yard to Tommy Anderson.

Nosy Nettie is soooo jealous! Seriously, congratulations, Lottie!

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!

Patricia Claiborne didn’t raise any fools, like I told you. There was some more quiet.

Joe got Peter Doyon to come over and dowse us a new one, on the west side of the house. We’ve never had a spot of water-trouble since.

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.

I said I wouldn’t, and he run off to shoot baskets with his friend Randy Gigeure. I watched him go, holdin his report and thinkin about what had just passed between us.

Reverend Huff, who was the Methodist minister back then, came around to talk to me n Joe.

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.

When my anger tried to take me past that place, I stopped it happenin by thinkin of Sammy Marchant, how his eyes had looked as he knelt there on the stairs lookin first at that rollin pin and then up at me—as dark as the ocean just ahead …

The girl—it was Sandra Mulcahey—went down the driveway with her head dropped, sobbin like her heart was gonna break.

The only thing that really changed durin the rest of 1963 was that I had Seth Reed come over n put a cement cap on the old well. Six months after he died, Joe’s estate was settled in County Probate. I wa’ant even there.

… 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 …

I stood there watchin Skippy Porter weigh my chops, my marketbasket over my arm and my head thrown back, laughin from way down deep inside my belly, the way you do when you …

But they kept on comin. All at once I heard Sonny Benoit scream: “Hey, Garrett! Over here! Git over here!” and I knew that, for better or worse, Joe had been found. There was an autopsy, accourse.

Sonny Quist came once a week to pick up the swill, and either the housekeeper or one of the maids—whoever was most handy—was supposed to bring those …

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.

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.

Her color was off, and her appetite, too. She still went to see her two best friends, Tanya Caron and Laurie Langill, once in awhile, but not anywhere near as much as she had in junior high.

“Yes,” Greenbush said. “It so happens that I knew from Ted Kenopensky what that argument was about. Donald had gotten his driver’s license that spring, and Mrs. Donovan had gotten him a car for his birthday.

A few other people looked at me like I’d gone nuts, but I didn’t care. Sometimes life is so goddam funny you just have to laugh. Yvette’s married to Tommy Anderson, accourse, and Tommy was one of Joe’s beer-and-poker buddies in the late fifties and early sixties.

From the Early Recovery Dept., Nosy hears that Vincent Bragg, who broke his arm playing football last October . . . October 1989–February 1992 …

I thought about what might’ve happened if Joe Junior hadn’t cut his playin with Willy Bramhall short a few times n come home early, or if I hadn’t finally opened my eyes enough to get a really good look at her.

… bruise was goin from dark brown to a kind of yellow-green like they do, I ran into Yvette Anderson in the village. She was comin out of the grocery and I was goin in. She looked at the bruise on my arm, and when she spoke to me, her voice …