Without much notice, Dottie was smoking a joint and, with her free hand, stroking Fredo’s ear. “So, Paige,” she said to me. “You’ve got problems.”

“Two problems, yes,” I said.

“Stop him! Stop him!” Dottie yelled at the television.

She drew on her cigarette. “Don’t ask what I’d do, I’m in the same position. Between Mario and Paul? You couldn’t know Paul. He’s a fellow I date, a vet from Hampham. I mean a pet vet. Anyway, the point is . . . just a second. First and ten, way to go! What they do decides . . . I’ve forgotten what.”

I said, “So have I. Blow that stuff the other way, Mother. Couldn’t I just live here and have Raymond and Raf take turns visiting me?”

“It would have to count as both your birthday and Christmas presents,” Dottie said.

“Raf’s a bad husband,” I said. “I deserve a good husband. Why do I still want Raf?”

“He’s an awfully good time,” Dottie said.

Fredo stirred and peered about as if looking for something.

“Your jingle ball’s in the kitchen,” my mother told him.

The dog disappeared, whimpering as he hunted his toy.

“Let me ask something,” I said. “Did it ever bother you, Mario’s being known as an artist and that his statues and sculptures will endure long beyond us?”

“Bother me? No. Oh, no. I couldn’t live with it, though; I had to make my own way.”

The lights went, and as the blowers on the furnace died I heard a sagging noise. I was traveling a dim hall. I set down my lamp, removed its glass chimney, adjusted the frayed wick, fired it with a stick match.

In the lamp’s light, moving toward the kitchen, I fitted storm candles into the inkwell-like holders along the way.

“I knew it,” Dottie said in the kitchen. “Fourth down, seventy-five yards from their own end zone, fourth quarter, power out.”

Her face in the lamp shadow seemed one-dimensional.

She twisted a stove knob and a burner’s blue ring of flame rose with a poof. “Gas is O.K. I’ll go see about the pilot.”

Her mules bonked on the stairs down to the dirt-floored cellar. She called back, “The furnace has an electric pilot but you can relight the ignition by hand!”

The rectangular window over the sink was vaguely green and smeared with the reflection of my lamp.

I heard Dottie swear. I heard a whimpered curse. From far down on the Point Road I heard sirens, but their shrieks got no closer and intermixed with the yowling wind.

Raymond appeared. In the light wash, his suntan deepened, his teeth looked more even and white. “What’s happening? I heard a snowplow.”

I said, “I think it’s the Mass. troopers, trying to clear the Point Road. Then the salt and sand crews’ll try to keep it clear.”