Free Mohawk by Richard Russo

want him there. And he hadn’t been back since the morning he’d been confused about his niece’s birthday and only now, as he pulled up in front of his brother’s house, did he remember his promise to Loraine to keep an eye out for a job. He couldn’t remember having heard of anything, though, and he was grateful for that.
    Loraine answered the door in her bathrobe again, looking surprised to see him or, maybe, anyone. “What’s the story,” Dallas asked. “It’s ten o’clock. How about getting dressed?”
    “Thanks for the advice. For your information, I’vebeen up all night with a sick child. Hundred and two fever.”
    “How about me cheering her up?”
    “Like hell. I just got her to sleep.”
    “Oh,” Dallas said. He had wondered if he would end up sorry he came over, and sure enough he was. Loraine looked tired and grumpy, and there was no cinnamon-roll smell in the kitchen.
    “Come on in, though. There’s coffee, and I could use a little cheering up myself.”
    Dallas took his usual seat and immediately began to feel more comfortable. In the unlikely event that he ever owned a house, he would want it to be one like David and Loraine’s. It wasn’t that much of a house, really, but somehow it felt right. When coffee brewed, you could smell it everywhere in the house, and on holidays with a turkey in the oven you could feast on the aroma. Though today there were dishes stacked in the sink, several days’ worth, and it occurred to Dallas that his sister-in-law’s explanation for still being in her bathrobe might be a convenient excuse. She poured them each a cup of coffee. “The paper’s in the living room if you want it.”
    “Maybe later.”
    Loraine stirred some cream into her coffee. “I figured you must be mad at me for treating you so rotten.”
    Dallas made a face. “You know better. I’ve been busy, is all.”
    “I know how busy
you
get,” Loraine said. “That the same set of choppers you had before or different ones?”
    “Don’t get smart. What’s wrong with Little One?”
    “Flu, prob’ly.”
    “Want me to take her to the doctor?”
    “Where? It’s Sunday.”
    “There’s the hospital.”
    Loraine shook her head. “I’m not that scared yet. Besides, I can take care of her. What I need is someone to take care of me.”
    “If it’s money.…”
    She smiled. “No. What I need is a good hot beach someplace. Where I can lie in the sand and have somebody whose only job it is to bring me those tall native fruit drinks with miniature palm trees in ’em. He could also rub suntan oil on my back if he felt like it.”
    Dallas was surprised by his sister-in-law’s mood and, for some reason, a little embarrassed by it.
    “You don’t have to look at me like that,” Loraine said. “There was a time when the boys would have fought for the privilege of greasing me up.”
    “What did I say?”
    “Nothing. You’re too kind to say it.”
    They drank their coffee, Dallas stirring his in order to appear occupied. Again it was clear to him that he shouldn’t have come, and he wondered if there was any way he could leave without offending. He hated not knowing what people were thinking. It happened mostly with women. When he married, he had never known what to make of Anne, whose moods were unpredictable and far too subtle for him to read accurately. He always laughed at the wrong times, thinking he was supposed to, and then got serious when she was trying to joke with him. It made him grateful that women didn’t play poker, because then he’d always be folding and raising at the wrong times, a problem he had anyway.
    “Don’t you ever wish someone would take care of you?” Loraine said. “Cook you a meal? Iron you a shirt? Someone who’d always know where your teeth were?”
    “Keep it up.”
    She frowned. “That’s no answer.”
    “No, then. I don’t want anyone to take care of me. I live the way I want.”
    “That’s crazy. Nobody lives the way they