Mohawk

begin, theugly truth of this situation came home to her. She was going to be thirty-five, and she hadn’t anyone of her own. No one, as Diana once remarked, she “didn’t have to share.” There was Randall, but sons grew up and married, and Anne wouldn’t have wanted to hold onto him even if she could have. Once upon a time, she was confident, Dan had thought her the most important person in the world. Once he had even said so. But that was a long time ago, and such sentiments needed periodic validation. She didn’t doubt that he still thought of her, maybe even thought of her often. But she doubted he thought in terms of her. She doubted he asked himself a hundred times a day, when he read something in a magazine or saw something on the news, or met someone—what would Anne make of this?
    The Woods were a few feet away, across the semicircle that enclosed her father’s grave. She watched Dan until he felt her and their eyes met. His expression was tender, as always, and genuine. But it was an act of kindness, arising out of what he felt was her need, not his own. Dallas was there, too, and if smiling had been a possibility, she would’ve smiled then. Dallas, as she might have predicted, was wearing a blazer that neither fit him nor matched anything else he was wearing. Despite the subfreezing temperature, he wasn’t wearing an overcoat, and Anne still knew him well enough to guess why. No doubt he owned several warm jackets but none of them would be long enough to cover the blazer, which he wore so seldom that he had no reason to invest in an outer garment to cover it. A simpler and far less expensive solution was to pretend he wasn’t cold, which now he was valiantly doing. She wondered from time to time what her life would’ve been like ifshe had tried to tough out the marriage. Though it was conceivable she might have developed a sense of humor, she doubted it.
    One night a month earlier he had awakened her at three A.M. to ask her to give his sister-in-law Loraine a job, which she had done. Then, yesterday at the funeral home, when the poor girl was kind enough to pay her respects to the family of a man she’d never met, he had cut her as if she had the plague. Dallas, always careening about town, out of control, always landing on his feet, always vaguely wondering about the sound of screeching tires and crashing metal wherever he went, never suspecting a causal connection.
    And, of course, there was her mother. It would have been comforting to think that Mather Grouse’s death would draw them closer together. After all, in a sense they’d been fighting over him all these years. And certainly there ought to be some way that two grown women could keep from agitating each other. But so far there was no indication that things would change. They hadn’t talked much since that morning when Mrs. Grouse climbed the stairs, a very few minutes before the moving crew arrived, to tell her daughter what had happened in the night. “Your father has died,” she said firmly, as if Anne might not trust her diagnosis and rush downstairs to administer mouth-to-mouth. “We had better call the people.”
    Mother and daughter had shared no moment of grief together in the days that followed, though from her mother’s swollen eyes Anne could tell that she’d wept privately. But Mrs. Grouse had little need of strength. If she needed to lean at all, she could lean on Milly, who rose up like a mountain of granite for the occasion. Usually a bundle of infirmities that prevented her doingfor herself what she had grown accustomed to her daughter doing for her, Milly put age and infirmity on hold, and the two old women clasped hands and teetered against each other in a way that would’ve made anyone who didn’t know them fear for their collective safety.
    With the service at the grave concluded, people began to file back to the procession of cars, eager to warm up again. Randall walked part way with his mother, but within sight of the black limo he said he’d rather walk home. She couldn’t think of any reason why he shouldn’t. There were times when she couldn’t understand him, and others when she understood perfectly. On this day, so bitter and cruel, he wanted no part of warmth and comfort.
    Diana offered to return to the house with them, but that would’ve meant old Milly coming too, and Anne doubted she could suffer even one of the old woman’s remarks. Dallas, in a moment of uncharacteristic humility,