Then I looked back the other way, and I seen Vera. She was three-quarters of the way down the hall toward the front staircase, waddlin along with her back to me n screamin as she went. There was a big brown stain on the seat of her nightgown where she’d soiled herself—not out of meanness or bitchiness that last time, but out of plain cold fear.
Her wheelchair was stuck crosswise in her bedroom door. She must’ve released the brake when she saw whatever it was that had scared her so.
Always before when she come down with a case of the horrors, the only thing she could do was sit or lay where she was n bawl for help, and there’ll be plenty of people who’ll tell you she couldn’t move under her own power, but she did yesterday; I swear she did. She released the brake on her chair, turned it, wheeled it across the room, then somehow got out of it when it got stuck in the doorway n went staggerin off down the hall.
I stood there, just frozen to the spot for the first second or two, watchin her lurch along and wonderin what she’d seen that was terrible enough to get her to do what she was doin, to walk after her days of walkin should have been over—what that thing was that she could only think to call the dust bunnies.
But I seen where she was headed—right for the front stairs.
“Vera!” I yelled at her. “Vera, you just stop this foolishness! You’re going to fall! Stop!”
Then I ran just as fast as I could. That feelin that all this was happenin for the second time rolled over me again, only this time it felt like I was Joe, that I was the one tryin to catch up n catch hold.
I don’t know if she didn’t hear me, or if she did n thought in her poor addled brain that I was in front of her instead of behind. All I know for sure is that she went on screamin—“Dolores, help! Help me, Dolores! The dust bunnies!”—and lurched on a little faster.
She’d just about used the hallway up. I raced past the door to her room n clipped my ankle a goddam good one on one of the wheelchair’s footrests—here, you can see the bruise. I ran as fast’s I could, shoutin, “Stop, Vera! Stop!” until my throat was raw.
She crossed the landin and stuck one foot out into space. I couldn’t’ve saved her then, no matter what—all I coulda done was pull myself over with her—but in a situation like that, you don’t have time to think or count the cost. I jumped for her just as that foot of hers come down on thin air and she started to tilt forward. I had one last little glimpse of her face. I don’t think she knew she was goin over; there wasn’t nothing there but bug-eyed panic. I’d seen the look before, although never that deep, and I can tell you it didn’t have nothing to do with fear of fallin. She was thinkin about what was behind her, not what was ahead.
I snatched at the air and didn’t get nothing but the littlest fold of her nightie between the second n third fingers of my left hand. It slipped through em like a whisper.
“Duh-lorrrrr—” she screamed, and then there was a solid, meaty thud. It turns my blood cold to remember that sound; it was just like the one Joe made when he hit the bottom of the well. I seen her do a cartwheel n then heard somethin snap. The sound was as clear n harsh as a stick of kindlin when you break it over your knee. I saw blood squirt out of the side of her head n that was all I wanted to see. I turned away so fast my feet tangled in each other and I went to my knees. I was starin back down the hallway toward her room, and what I saw made me scream. It was Joe. For a few seconds I saw him as clear as I see you now, Andy; I saw his dusty, grinnin face peekin out at me from under her wheelchair, lookin through the wire spokes of the wheel that had got caught in the door.
Then it was gone, and I heard her moanin and cryin.
I couldn’t believe she’d lived through that fall; can’t believe it still. Joe hadn’t been killed outright either, accourse, but he’d been a man in the prime of life, and she was a flabby old woman who’d had half a dozen small strokes n at least three big ones. Also, there wasn’t no mud n squelch to cushion her landin like there had been to cushion his.
I didn’t want to go down to her, didn’t want to see where she was broken and bleedin, but there wa’ant no question, accourse; I was the only one there, and that meant I was elected. When I got up (I had to haul on the newel post at the top of the bannister to do it, my knees were so watery-feelin), I stepped one foot on the hem of my own slip. The other strap popped, n I raised up my dress a little so I could pull it off… and that was just like before, too. I remember lookin down at my legs to see if they were scratched and bleedin from the thorns in the blackberry tangle, but accourse there wasn’t nothing like that.
I felt feverish. If you’ve ever been really sick n your temperature’s gone way, way up, you know what I mean; you don’t feel out of the world, exactly, but you sure as hell don’t feel in it, either. It’s like every thin was turned to glass, and there isn’t anything you can get a solid grip on anymore; everythin’s slippery. That’s how I felt as I stood there on the landin, holdin the top of the bannister in a death-grip and lookin at where she’d finished up.
She was layin a little over halfway down the staircase with both legs twisted so far under her you couldn’t hardly see em. Blood was runnin down one side of her poor old face. When I stumbled down to where she lay, still clingin onto the bannister for dear life as I went, one of her eyes rolled up in its socket to mark me. It was the look of an animal caught in a trap.
“Dolores,” she whispered. “That son of a bitch has been after me all these years.”
“Shh,” I said. “Don’t try to talk.”
“Yes he has,” she said, as if I’d contradicted her. “Oh, the bastard. The randy bastard.”
“I’m going downstairs,” I says. “I got to call the doctor. ”
“No,” she says back. She reached up with one hand and took hold of my wrist. “No doctor. No hospital. The dust bunnies… even there. Everywhere. ”
“You’ll be all right, Vera,” I says, pullin my hand free. “As long as you lie still n don’t move, you’ll be fine.”
“Dolores Claiborne says I’m going to be fine!” she says, and it was that dry, fierce voice she used to use before she had her strokes n got all muddled in her head. “What a relief it is to have a professional opinion!”
Hearin that voice after all the years it had been gone was like bein slapped. It shocked me right out of my panic, and I really looked into her face for the first time, the way you look at a person who knows exactly what they’re sayin n means every word.
“I’m as good as dead,” she says, “and you know it as well as I do. My back’s broken, I think.”
“You don’t know that, Vera,” I says, but I wasn’t wild to get to the telephone like I had been. I think I knew what was comin, and if she ast what I thought she was gonna ask, I didn’t see how I could refuse her. I had owed her a debt ever since that rainy fall day in 1962 when I sat on her bed n bawled my eyes out with my apron up over my face, and the Claibornes have always cleared their debts.
When she spoke to me again, she was as clear and as lucid as she’d been thirty years ago, back when Joe was alive and the kids were still at home. “I know there’s only one thing left worth deciding,” she says, “and that’s whether I’m going to die in my time or in some hospital’s. Their time would be too long. My time is now, Dolores. I’m tired of seeing my husband’s face in the corners when I’m weak and confused. I’m tired of seeing them winch that Corvette out of the quarry in the moonlight, how the water ran out of the open window on the passenger side—”