House Under Snow

by Jill Bialosky

  “Come on, I’ll make supper,” Lilly said, stepping over the remains of the wedding party, which adorned our carpet like scattered leaves.

  Lilly’s dinners were simple: tuna fish or grilled cheese sandwiches and bowls of soup she brought into the den on trays. The fancier meals had been boarded up in a past more spirited.

  After supper that night Lilly said, “Girls, things are going to have to change.”

  She walked into the living room and in a manic heat began to pull out her boxes from the hall closet and folders of clippings from underneath the couch. “Here, you take this,” she said to Louise, and piled her up with a stack of bursting folders. I carried three shoe boxes, one on top of the other. “Come on,” Lilly said, and walked out the back door, down the grass, past the trees, to the rocky path that led to the gazebo.

  It was nearly dusk. I could hear the familiar creaks coming from the wind in the rafters. After we put down our load, my mother drew us girls into a circle. We heard the sound of Chagrin Falls crashing in the distance. Lilly closed her eyes and inhaled. In the air I tasted the spray from the white water. She had us all hold hands, and motioned for us to sit down in a circle on the wooden floorboards of the gazebo.

  “Something has happened to us,” Lilly said. “And we’ve got to change. We can’t continue to live like savages. Look,” she continued, holding out her hands. I noticed how pale they were, how lovely my mother’s unpainted nails appeared in the light of approaching dusk. “Look at us,” she went on. “When’s the last time you girls changed your clothes? You’re filthy. We can’t go on like this. Do you understand?”

  Our eyes were planted on her.

  “What I mean is, you have to start learning how to act like other children. Otherwise, we’ll always be alone.” Lilly’s voice was gentle, but it hurt to listen to her.

  “Inside, you can be whoever you want. You can imagine yourself floating on a cloud, or that you’re part of the darkness when you’re sitting in the shade, but on the outside you have to talk like other people, and pretend you belong with them.”

  Not one of us said a word.

  “I don’t want to see those sad eyes,” Lilly said. “We have to learn how to become dignified, all of us.”

  “What’s that?” Louise asked.

  “Being dignified means holding your head up high, no matter how terrible you feel. It means taking care of yourself when all you want to do is play in the fields and lie in bed dreaming. It means having lots of friends, and never letting anyone know how lonely you are.”

  She paused. It was so quiet you could hear the sound of the river in the distance, its lap of endless promise and desire.

  “We have to start acting like Aunt Adrienne, Uncle Ben, and your cousins. We have to pretend we’re like them,” Lilly said. “Even if we’re not.”

  Lilly was referring to my father’s brother, his wife, and their children. They lived in Cleveland, in one of the very newest suburbs, not far from Nonie and Papa. After my father died we saw them only once or twice a year, for Rosh Hashanah or Passover. It wasn’t until I had long left home that I learned from Aunt Rose that, a few years after my father’s death, Lilly had refused a job that Uncle Ben had arranged for her, through a friend of his who was a dentist. Uncle Ben had offered Lilly a position as a receptionist in his friend’s office. Aunt Rose said that Nonie and Papa thought it was ungrateful for Lilly to refuse, but Lilly, she said, was intimidated by them, by their wealth.

  That evening out in the gazebo, Lilly continued. “That’s the only way to grow up, to pretend you’re like other people.” Now I see she was trying to ignite her past into flames and pretend it had never existed, so she could move on. My mother tried to build us up, because inside she felt so small. But then I was simply engaged by the purposefulness with which my mother spoke and the newfound confidence in her voice. She coaxed herself by coaxing us.

  “Do you think your father would have fallen in love with me if I had sat around all day moping and didn’t brush my hair or wear a smile on my face?”

  “Is that why he loved you? Because you were dignified?” Ruthie asked. From the very beginning, when it came to Lilly, she was a skeptic.

  “Ruthie, when you don’t come from money, all you have is yourself. You must focus all your energy on becoming as beautiful as a blossom, as perfect as a piece of fruit. You must smell as fresh and clean as grass after a summer rain. I was raised to believe that for a Jew to fit in you had to make sure not to make your own needs or presence too visible. You’ll see. I’ll teach you how.”

  “But what if we don’t want to?” Louise said.

  “You don’t have any choice.”

  “Who says?” Ruthie questioned.

  “It’s my own fault,” Lilly said. She looked off, her face fine and girlish, in the watery wind. “You’ll see, darling. From now on everything will be different. I’m going to pick myself up and start a new life. After all I’m not yet even thirty.” I had no idea then what my mother meant. I was perfectly content with the life we had. But for the first time it dawned on me that my sisters and I weren’t enough for our mother: She needed a different kind of love to make herself feel alive. To insure she wouldn’t disappear.

  By then the sky was nearly dark. Lilly stood up and turned on the lights around the gazebo. “Now we have to make a fire,” Lilly said, walking toward the woodpile. She came back with an armload of kindling and ordered me to lay it campfire style, with a few logs, in a clearing beside the gazebo. Lilly rolled up some old newspapers from the garage and placed them around the logs. She took a book of matches from her pocket and lit the paper and kindling, and the logs caught fire. Together we fanned the flames with folders full of Lilly’s paper cutouts, then sprinkled their contents into the growing fire before we stepped back. Lilly poked the dying embers with a stick. Then she threw in the rest: boxes and boxes of cutouts, pictures, faces she had obsessed over and saved. I watched them all curl in the heat and slowly smolder into shards. Firelight reflected in my mother’s hair.

  “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down,” Lilly began to sing. She reached for our hands, and we formed a circle around the fire. “Ring around the rosy, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes . . .”

  When it was time for sleep, Lilly opened her bed to us. We all three cuddled around her and tried to fill the empty space where our father had once slept. Lilly turned off the lights, except for the dim flame of the kerosene lamp she kept at her bedside. I awoke in the night to find my mother staring at the ceiling, wide-awake, with a smile on her face. She was far gone then, far from the river that surrounded our town, far from the falls, her garden, and her house. I didn’t realize that night how safe and peaceful it was to be alone with our mother, because once she began to go out with men we lost a part of her forever.

  Once I was in the Coopers’ tiny upstairs bathroom, the party in full gear, I took a packet of Marlboros from the pocket of my jean jacket, held the firm, square box in my hand, took out a cigarette, and lit it. The window had a view to the backyard. It was dark. The only light came from the orange tips of cigarettes, blinking on and off, like fireflies.

  Someone banged on the bathroom door. I dropped my cigarette into the toilet, flushed, and walked out past a girl waiting to get in, down the stairs. The floor vibrated to the sound of the bass coming from the living room speakers. I quickly downed the rest of my beer and moved outside toward the keg. As I filled my cup again, I looked for Austin in the hazy blackness. The beer, the color of urine, was warm and came back up my throat after I pounded back the full glass.

  I watched the moon slip over the tops of the trees. Danny Keller took the empty cup from my hand and filled it once more. In that brief pause, bass throbbing through the open windows, I felt for one moment the courage I had been waiting for.

  I marched confidently through the crowd, looking for Austin. He had invited me to his party, and now I was going to cash in on it. I followed a path of pe
ople, peering through bare legs, hands crossed on hips, a girl’s arm around another boy’s back, groups huddled in twos and threes, laughing and talking loudly, until all I could hear was a rumbling of voices.

  Brian Horrigan cornered me before I had a chance to get to Austin. He was the first boy I had ever let kiss me. Once, during a hockey game, I had gone back behind the bleachers and made out with him, until his hand went down my shirt and cupped around my breast like a claw. But as soon as the lights went on, after the game was over, and I looked at him, the spell was over. Even though I used to think about him sometimes in class, wondering what it would feel like to be kissed by him, in the bright lights of the skating rink that night, all I could focus on was the zit that had appeared on his chin. He was from the other side of town, lived in an old mansion, went to Aruba for winter vacation, drove a BMW. At one time he had gone to private boarding school, where he learned Latin and French. I was completely enthralled with the interpretation of King Lear he presented in a paper in our English class. But in spite of the fine polish and education his money offered, and the look he wore in his eyes that said you just say the word, there was no intersection on our emotional maps. Or if there was I hadn’t discovered it yet.

  After I ditched Brian, I looked for Austin. He was leaning against the rail of the porch with his arm around Rita Fox. He was whispering something in her ear. Rita had long legs and dark brown hair straight as the mane on a horse’s back. She was the first girl we knew about that had let a boy go all the way. The first to get her period, to wear a miniskirt. Over the sound of they Stone you when you don’t come home, I heard Rita’s high-pitched laugh. Austin lifted a strand of hair that had fallen in her eyes and pulled it behind her ear. It looked as if he kissed her.

  I turned around and walked into a crowd, into the lawn littered with empty plastic cups, hoping Austin wouldn’t catch me wandering alone. I had thought, during those weeks leading up to his party—when Austin walked me home from school, flirted with me in the cafeteria, tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear and kissed me on the neck and close to my breastbone up in the attic room, where there were no sounds save the sound of his pounding heart underneath the dampness of his shirt—that I had meant something to him.

  Throughout my mother’s dating career, I often stumbled upon her kissing a man on the couch, or worse. Watching Austin with Rita I felt the same way I had as a child, as if I had wandered into someone else’s dream, a world filled with dim ceilings, dark windows. I remembered my mother with her pumps kicked off. And then she was taken from us, into the arms of a stranger, a man who could do anything to us because she had given up her power.

  I looked back to the porch, where Austin stood with his arm propped over the banister, cornering Rita. They were still laughing. Sharing a cigarette. Only, by then, my eyes were blurry from the beer, my head floating like the fuzzy tip of a dandelion into the air. I told myself that I would be as strong and resilient and self-sufficient as the thick roots dug into the earth belonging to an ancient tree, that I would never let myself need anyone. To me, need was associated with powerlessness, with a woman taken to her bed. But even as I vowed to be strong, I heard a branch breaking above me, like my resolve.

  In the weeks after the night of the bonfire, Lilly began to go out with men. I was then in second grade. My mother went out with a different man almost every night. Soon these dates would dominate the rhythm of our house. One afternoon we heard her on the phone to Aunt Adrienne who had set her up. “Steve Kennedy? Well, what does he look like? Has he been married before?” she drilled.

  I stood in wonderment, watching how excited my mother got before a date. She spent hours in a crazed whirlwind preparing for her evening out, as though her very being depended on this candlelight dinner at the most expensive, most elegant restaurant in town.

  “What are we having for dinner?” Louise asked Lilly. We were used to having our mother with us, if not her undivided attention. It was hard at first for us to believe she was leaving us, even for a night.

  “She doesn’t care if we starve,” Ruthie said, pulling out a few strands of her hair.

  “Ruthie, stop that,” Lilly told her. “You’re going to ruin your gorgeous hair. Come here and help me get ready. I’m going to be late.”

  Lilly twirled her hair in a lazy French twist and pinned it against the back of her head. “Anna, run down the basement and bring up my stockings. They’re hanging on the line. Louise, see if I have any clean panties in my top drawer. Little angels,” Lilly added, impatiently, “I’ll stay home tomorrow night. I promise.”

  “Cross your heart?” said Louise.

  “You said last night that you were staying home tonight,” Ruthie said.

  “Well, that was before Steve Kennedy called,” Lilly said.

  I watched as my mother looked at herself in the mirror, as though she were examining a hidden scar she had not wanted to remember, then motioned for us to sit down on her bed. As she stood over us, her robe opened and revealed the tops of her full breasts.

  “Girls,” she started. “I have to go out. Don’t you understand? Your old mom won’t be able to meet anyone if she stays home every night. Don’t you want me to be happy? Don’t you want a father?”

  “So, are you going to marry Steve Kennedy?” one of us asked.

  “We’ll see,” Lilly said.

  My mother’s nipples, surrounded by dark circles, were erect and so hard it seemed as if they must hurt.

  Louise sat on the bed. She looked like she was going to cry.

  “Let me see my smiles,” Lilly said, drawing a line across our lips with her finger. “Wait till you meet Mr. Kennedy. He’s so handsome. You’re going to like him. I can feel it.”

  “But what will you do?” Louise asked.

  “We’ll have a nice long dinner with wine and candlelight.”

  “What will you talk about?”

  “Oh, all kinds of things,” Lilly said. “Some men like it if you just sit back and listen and smile and tilt your head; and others like it if you’re bubbly and can’t stop talking. You learn to figure out what a man wants.” Lilly stopped herself. “Look at the time. If I don’t hurry we won’t have time for my exercises.”

  Lilly walked to the closet, took out a padded mat, and spread it over the faded olive carpet in her room. She went into the bathroom, slipped off her robe, and put on her bra and panties. My sisters and I sat silent on the bed, watching her through the half-open bathroom door.

  The flowery smell of our mother’s soaps and oils enclosed us. When she was washing the dishes or had her hands gripped around the steering wheel of the car, she stopped what she was doing to lift up her hands and hold out her slender fingers, admiring her polished nails against the light. She wore her dark red hair, the color of autumn leaves, to her shoulders, with the ends curled up in a flip, and on her lips, which dipped in the center like a heart, scarlet lipstick. It left its impression on our cheeks after she kissed us, or on the crumpled Kleenexes that were strewn, like paper flowers, all around the bathroom sink. She had the kind of beauty that people stared at. It was nearly impossible not to feel invisible next to her. My mother had full breasts, a slender waist, round hips, and long curvy legs. Most men, married or not, weakened in my mother’s presence.

  Lilly came out of the bathroom and switched on the radio. She centered herself on the exercise mat and began to do her stretches. She reached down to touch her toes. Then she pressed her calves back by pulling her toes against her buttocks. I had never watched my mother exercise before. It seemed to take so much energy for her to do our supper dishes or wash our clothes, and there she was, waving her arms from side to side, jogging in place, her neck stretched toward the ceiling, her forehead beaded with perspiration. The last of the afternoon light shone in her face. In what would become her getting-ready-for-a-date routine, Lilly could forget herself.

  “Louise, come sit on my feet so I can do my sit-ups,” she said.

  “One, two, three,
four . . .” Louise counted to one hundred.

  Ruthie crept off the bed and kneeled by our mother’s side.

  “Do you have to go out, Mom?”

  “Ruthie, don’t make me feel guilty,” Lilly said, struggling to do another set of sit-ups.

  I hopped off the bed and followed my mother as she began her jumping jacks. “One, two, three, four,” I counted, each time I heard her clap her hands together in the slowly dimming room.

  We circled around our mother, absorbing her light.

  In the chair, by the last rays of sunlight through the window, Lilly polished her nails. Afterward she went into the shower, washed her hair, and splashed body oil on her skin. She came out dripping wet, her sleek hair shining. I sat on the toilet seat watching her every move. On my lap I held a small basket of bobby pins that I handed to her, one by one, while Lilly rolled her hair. The smell of the steam from the shower, the lilac fragrance of her soap, and the scent of her shampoo filled the room. I knew what Steve Kennedy was going to see: I felt intoxicated and giddy, just being next to her.

  After her hair was set, she opened the double doors of her closet and took out dresses, one by one, holding them to her body while she looked in the mirror. Then Lilly still believed the world held all sorts of possibilities and all she had to do was be ready. She was filled with excitement and hope when she was making herself up and fantasizing about the night ahead. It was a rich and complex project, and so it was painful to see my mother deflate when she found herself face-to-face with a man. The men she dated were rarely what she’d dreamed about or hoped for.

  Ruthie went into the closet and took out a trailing white lace dress wrapped in yellowed plastic. “Why don’t you wear this one?” Ruthie said.

  “Ruthie!” Lilly shrieked. “What do you think you’re doing?” She lunged toward Ruthie, knocking over the perfume bottles on her dresser as she shot out her arm. “Put that back this instant. Who said you could go through my things?” Lilly grabbed her wedding dress from Ruthie’s hand. “Are you trying to hurt me?” Lilly said. She shoved the dress back into the closet.