I tightened my grip on her elbow and walked her inside. There’s always somebody falling, isn’t there? And you catch them. Her skin was leathery around the elbow, furrowed into dusty wrinkles, and mottled with white sunspots that reminded me of dandruff. The smell was like waking up to the aftermath of parties in college—arms flung over the edge of a couch, strange boy curled behind my back, looking onto a sticky floor littered with crushed cups and reeking of vodka, tequila, rum.

She pulled her arm away. “Who are you?”

“We’re here because we’re—” I paused. “We’re—”

“Just let me go,” she interrupted. “I’ll get myself to bed.”

It was barely seven. I turned her around to face the living room: two pink love seats, a television set whose crooked antenna looked like spread legs. There was a pair of jeans dangling between the rabbit ears.

“I’m sorry,” Matilda mumbled. “It’s not a good night, is all.” I glanced back at the doorway. Tom was standing there. I beckoned him inside. Matilda twisted around. “Are you a friend of Abe’s?” she asked. Her voice was lighter, almost hopeful.

“No,” said Tom. He looked nervous, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. I motioned again. He stepped inside.

“I don’t know what you came for,” she said, flat-voiced again. “But you should go.”

Her face was shiny. She needed some water and maybe a cold rag. I turned to Tom and made a twisting gesture that was supposed to suggest faucets. He shook his head and said to me, quite loudly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I helped Matilda sit. She crossed her legs and then recrossed them. When she moved, her motion had the quality of a drowning woman flailing, as if she were struggling for purchase against surfaces that refused her grip.

I glanced into the kitchen and saw a garbage can piled high with paper towels. A plastic bottle stuck out like a broken limb. I walked closer. The kitchen counter was nearly empty, just a row of plastic tumblers and a couple of limes. I picked up a lime and saw a dark patch near its tip, like a sore. It felt pulpy.

The plastic bottle in the garbage wasn’t liquor. It was tonic. I noticed a row of small porcelain cats perched above the toaster. Each one was engaged in some kind of winter play: building a snow-kitty, drinking cocoa with impossibly mittened paws, unpacking stockings by a tiny fire. I walked back to the couch, where Matilda faced me, staring.

“We’re Dora’s kids,” I said. “Your sister, Dora.”