Mohawk

and works her feet into the slippers at the foot of the bed. When she finds Mather Grouse in his chair, she isn’t surprised, for he often sits there at night when he cannot sleep.
    “Dear?” she inquires.
    Mather Grouse does not respond.
    “Dear?”
    When she touches his hand, it is cold, and Mrs. Grouse steps back quickly, fear registering in her expression. Luckily, she has encountered fear before and quickly banishes it. For a moment she is immobile, but then she takes the heavy quilt from the sofa and covers him, careful this time not to touch his cold flesh. “There,” she says, her voice rather louder than she intended. “Warm.”
    Mrs. Grouse returns to the bedroom, but not to sleep. She is a patient woman. Morning will come.

28
    There were problems from the start, especially finding pallbearers. Mather Grouse had no relatives outside the immediate family, and Anne didn’t realize how small the circle of his acquaintance was until she began to call the few names she and her mother were able to recall from his working days. Randall would be a bearer, of course, and Dr. Walters had called immediately to offer. But from there it wasn’t easy. Dallas called and asked if there was anything he could do, but she put him on hold. He often forgot important engagements, and besides, more than once he had borrowed money from her father and not repaid it. After several phone calls to people she didn’t know and who didn’t know her, she became so depressed that she called the Woods. Blessedly, Dan answered. He and her father never had much good to say about each other, but under the circumstances Anne knew that she could count on him to be kind. Yet, it annoyed her when she confessed her predicament that Dan professed no surprise. What he did offer, as usual, was help, suggesting a nephew, a few years older than Randall, who owed him a favor. “Did he know my father?” Anne said.
    “I haven’t any idea. Is that the issue?”
    “No … you’re right.”
    “He’ll be on time, and he’ll wear a suit. Wish I could do the deed myself, kid.”
    Cheered by this qualified success, she went back to her list and succeeded in enlisting two more. One was an old Italian by the name of Maroni, who was clearly delighted. “I wanna say wonna thing about you poppa,” he told her over the phone. “He was gooda man. Everybody make a mistake. I am too.”
    That left them one bearer short and when Dallas called back a second time, Anne relented. He not only offered himself but a couple of his cronies. “I know a couple of guys—” he began.
    “We’re going to be all right, I think,” Anne said. Mr. Maroni had sounded positively ancient, but she had to assume he wouldn’t die until the funeral was over.
    “I just thought you might be short—”
    The whole world seemed to know what had occurred to her within the last twenty-four hours—that her father had died essentially friendless.
    At the viewing, the day before the funeral, Anne admitted to herself that she was in bad shape. All the arrangements, it turned out, were her responsibility. Each time something came up, she asked Mrs. Grouse if she’d rather, and each time her mother had looked unsure and said, “Maybe you’d better.” Only once everything was taken care did she understand that Mrs. Grouse had done her a favor. Now she felt herself slipping into a black numbness from which she was able to extract herself just enough to get annoyed at people who didn’t deserve it. The Woods arrived at the funeral home early, and to everyone’s surprise they brought old Milly, who hadn’t been out of the house on Kings Road since October, except for emergencytrips to the hospital. The old woman immediately hobbled over to Mrs. Grouse and proclaimed in her loudest voice, “You poor dear, I never
heard
of such a thing.” Just a figure of speech, Anne knew. All her life the women of Mrs. Grouse’s family had “never heard of” life’s less pleasant aspects. Still, Anne had to fight back the urge to attack—“Never heard of death, Aunt Milly? Eighty years old, a husband in the grave, and you’ve never heard of such a thing?”
    She was not the only irritant. Diana joined the receiving line as a bereaved survivor, which made that line longer than the line of potential mourners it was meant to receive. Dallas arrived fresh from work, his hands and work clothes greasy. He was full of apologies for his appearance, and reiterated that he knew a couple of