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 flat 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 comin 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 cafés, 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.