Mohawk

daily affairs. He had always liked Loraine’s house and was more comfortable there than just about any place he knew, except maybe the track or Greenie’s Tavern after work. He was so comfortable in his brother’s house that he disliked even the smallest changes or additions, and on those rare occasions when Loraine bought something small and bright and new for the house, he couldn’t help but wonder what she wanted with it. Fortunately, she wasn’t one of those women who liked to move furniture around. She was far too sensible to suppose that rearranging resulted in improvement.
    “You never see anything,” she told him, “but the whole place needs work. The cold seeps in everywhere during the winter. The lower cabinets are rotting where the plumbing leaks. None of the doors hang right anymore. I can’t even close the one in the bathroom. Not that it matters.”
    “I could—” Dallas began.
    “Don’t go making offers. I’m just fed up, that’s all.”
    “Don’t,” she insisted. “You’ll promise and then half an hour from now you’ll forget, and then I’ll dislike you for a while until I forget. Then in a few weeks you’ll remember and be mad at yourself until you forget again. So spare us both.”
    Dallas could tell that she was already angry with him, and he knew, of course, that what she said was true.He doubted she was miffed about this, though. And he knew enough about women to guess that she wasn’t mad about anything as obvious as his having awakened her in the middle of the night. No, she was mad at him for something else, and she wasn’t going to tell. That much was for sure. In the three years he was married to Anne she was always miffed and never once willing to say what about. Maybe Loraine just needed to hurt somebody’s feelings, and he was handy. He hoped it was just that and nothing more. He liked Loraine. She was one of the few people who seemed to know that he had feelings to hurt. They weren’t, he had to admit, regular and predictable like other people’s feelings; they came and went in ways that Dallas himself didn’t begin to comprehend. After he left Loraine’s house, he’d probably get sidetracked and not think of her again for a long time. The little girl’s birthday would come and go. Maybe that was why he had convinced himself it was today, knowing that when it really did come he’d be someplace else. “I guess you married the right brother,” he admitted.
    “A lot of good it did me.” She had her back to him and was staring out the tiny kitchen window above the sink as if something outside had caught her attention. “Why don’t you run along to work,” she suggested. “I’ve got a lot to do and for some reason I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    Dallas started to leave, then noticed that Loraine was crying. When he touched her, she broke down completely. “Christ, I miss him.”
    “I know,” Dallas said weakly, guessing that maybe something was required of him but having no idea what it might be.
    “Of all the people in the world that God could havetaken, and it wouldn’t have amounted to anything. No loss.…”
    What she said was true. Dallas knew practically everyone in Mohawk, and there weren’t many that God, if there was one, wouldn’t have been smarter to take. “Like me,” he admitted, since it was something he’d thought many times since his brother’s death.
    Loraine spun around to face him, her face desperate with rage and pain. “Yes, damn it!”
    He figured there wasn’t anything to do but leave, so after muttering something like an apology, he did. But Loraine caught up to him before he could drive away. He would’ve been gone already if he hadn’t stopped to check the floor of the car and under the seat for his teeth. “I’m sorry, Dallas,” she cried through the rolled-down passenger-side window. “God, I don’t know what made me say that.”
    “Forget it,” he told her. “Besides, it was true.”
    “No,” she insisted. “I was just mad. If I were you, I’d go see Anne and make her marry me again. You’re a nice man. You just need somebody to look after you.”
    “Or five somebodies.”
    She smiled and snuffed her nose. “David worshiped you, you know. You were the only one in the family he cared anything for, really.”
    “And vice versa.”
    She looked off down the street and neither said anything for a while. “I guess I’ve got to forget him,” Loraine said finally. Then she studied