House Under Snow Page 4

  But then Lilly softened. “Girls, I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Who do I think I am? Just what do I think I’m doing?”

  “Don’t cry, Mom. Ruthie didn’t mean it,” I told her.

  “Of course she didn’t.” Lilly patted the bed, motioning for Ruthie to sit next to her. “I sometimes forget you girls are only children.”

  “There’s an old fable that goes like this,” Lilly said later, before she left that night. “When a baby is born, an angel comes down from heaven and kisses it on one part of its body. If the angel kisses him on his hand, he becomes a handyman—a gardener or a mechanic or a plumber. If he kisses him on his forehead, he becomes bright and clever—a lawyer or a doctor.” Lilly paused for a moment before finishing. “I’ve been trying to figure out where the angel kissed me, so that I can take care of you.”

  I tried to see how this story applied to my mother. “You take care of us, Mom,” I told her. “We don’t need anyone else.” But while my mother was fixing herself up, I momentarily entertained the idea of having a new father. I wondered, if she married, would our mother get out of bed to get us ready for school? Would I be able to get a pair of new shoes, instead of having to wear Ruthie’s old pair?

  “Oh my stars, look at the time, he’ll be here any minute,” Lilly said. But her eyes still looked worried. She stood up, detached from us, and straightened her robe. She sucked in her cheeks and pursed her lips together when she looked in the mirror, as if to convince herself of her own seductive power. My mother was confronted with two choices, to stay home and live in her grief, or to bury it in a semblance of pleasure.

  “I think that old angel kissed me right here,” Lilly said, fatalistically pointing to her heart. We all laughed along with her, in spite of the eerie feeling the image left us with.

  As my mother put on her lace slip and garter belt, and fastened her ivory stockings, I looked on in admiration. I couldn’t wait to catch up to her. It all seemed like some kind of dress-up game, like the games we girls played down in the basement.

  “Darling, you look ravishing,” I would say to Louise as she tromped around in my mother’s high heels and a fake fur stole.

  “Oh, you’re just being kind,” Louise flirted back.

  “Why do you have to put on so much makeup?” Louise said, as Lilly sat at her vanity.

  “Well, it’s not easy being a woman,” Lilly replied, in a knowing tone. “But men know if you let your hair grow and use makeup and dress to please them. Ruthie, you choose my lipstick,” she went on, as if awarding her firstborn a grand prize.

  Once Lilly had put on her makeup, the natural shine to my mother’s face dissolved underneath the powders and creams. She became someone else entirely; she was no longer our mother then, her familiar face concealed in the glamorous, distant, utterly confident face she displayed to the men in her life.

  She applied shade upon shade of lipstick until her lips became a deep red, pulsing over the dark secret heart of her mouth. When she was finished she looked as beautiful and unattainable as the models on the covers of the women’s magazines she had strewn all over her bedroom floor.

  When the doorbell rang, the room went silent. I braced myself.

  “March,” Lilly said, shoving us out the door. “I need a minute to myself.”

  We ran downstairs and opened the front door. Mr. Kennedy was tall, handsome, and wore an expensive suit with a starched white collar and striped tie. His aftershave hung in the air around him. He handed a box of candy to Ruthie.

  I eyeballed Mr. Kennedy from top to bottom. It would become a game with us. Each time Lilly dated a new man, we would try to guess whether he would be the one Lilly would choose as our new father. I liked Colin Harris, the dentist. He had pearly white teeth and a British accent. Louise was partial to Tom McVeigh, who promised her he would get us tickets to an Indians game. Of course, Lilly dumped him before the season began. Ruthie preferred Tony O’Brian, who claimed to once have been a lead in the Cleveland Playhouse performance of Macbeth. Sometimes Louise liked one that Ruthie and I disapproved of. And then we would fight about it, about which of my mother’s men would be awarded the honor of becoming our new father. The truth was that Lilly liked the least fatherly types the best: men with slick cars, money, flashy clothes, and no patience for children. The handsomer they were, the crueler the spell they cast over her.

  From upstairs we could hear our mother’s high heels walking back and forth in her room, which made Mr. Kennedy more and more restless. He took out a handkerchief to wipe his brow, crossed and uncrossed his leg, straightened his tie. Lilly kept him waiting a good half hour.

  Finally I ran upstairs to get my mother. Steve Kennedy made me nervous.

  Lilly was sitting perfectly still on her bed, staring at the clock.

  “One day you’ll do the same thing,” Lilly said.

  “But, Mom, he’s waiting.”

  “Anna, you don’t want a man to think you’re too eager,” Lilly said. “Just tell him I’ll be right down.” So I ran back to the living room.

  Finally we heard our mothers bedroom door open and the sound of her heels on the stairs. She carried herself as if she were royalty. Mr. Kennedy rose from his corner of the couch while the three of us sat side by side at the other end. He walked into the hallway to greet her. A gasp came from his lips, as if to acknowledge that it had been worth the wait. Lilly elegantly held out her hand, turned her face to the side, and allowed Mr. Kennedy to kiss her cheek. She was composed and in control.

  I listened as my mother put on the new voice that was reserved exclusively for her dates.

  “Now, you girls be good. I’ll call you with the phone number. Come give me a kiss.” I watched as Mr. Kennedy looked on, nearly salivating as Lilly bent down to kiss us.

  “Don’t they need a baby-sitter?” he asked.

  “My angels? Why, they’re nearly more grown up than me. Be good,” she called to us, blowing a last kiss. Then she turned her head to her date and looked into his eyes, and he escorted her out.

  I could feel the room’s emptiness when she had closed the door and left, clutched against Mr. Kennedy’s arm. All the energy and verve went out of the house with her.

  The three of us went upstairs to watch television on Lilly’s bed.

  “When do you think she’ll be home?” Louise asked. Usually I let her sleep with me on the nights Lilly went out.

  “Who cares?” Ruthie said.

  “Why did she let him kiss her?” Louise said.

  “She’s allowed,” Ruthie said. Then, “I don’t want to talk about her anymore.”

  “We always talk about her.” Louise looked at Ruthie searchingly.

  “I liked the way he smiled,” I said, searching for something positive to say.

  “I liked his dimples,” Louise continued.

  “Be quiet,” Ruthie ordered us. Ruthie seemed not to have any hope or belief in anything, except in the cold wind she had turned toward our mother. But after we had all gotten under the covers, I saw a smile spread across her face, and imagined she was also fantasizing about the many possibilities we could invent for our new father, the shapes we could cast him in, as if we were building him out of clay.

  We fell asleep on our mother’s bed. When I heard the creak of the front door and the whispers of our mother and Steve Kennedy, I elbowed my sisters awake and we flew into our separate beds.

  I always felt safe when my mother came home. When she was gone I worried about her. When I was older, I tried to imagine what my mother must have appeared like to her dates. Her face was sad and lovely, with bright things in it. She had dark, pain-filled eyes and a full smile and a vulnerability in her voice that men seemed to gravitate toward. The way she moved and laughed promised she had done careless, reckless things, I imagined. But all the gaiety had been taken from her when our father died. I wondered if men felt her weakness, and moved toward her in what seemed to me, as a child, a powerful an
d frightening way. I felt I had to protect my mother, only then I wasn’t sure what I was protecting her from, exactly.

  I tried to stay awake until I heard my mother say good night, until the door shut, the key turned in the lock; until my world closed in the safe and private darkness of the house. But Mr. Kennedy stayed for hours.

  I trailed downstairs and stopped at the landing to see what was going on. On the stereo Lilly had on a sultry blues song. Through the windows dawn was beginning to break.

  “Steve, you have to leave now,” I heard Lilly say.

  Eventually I heard Lilly get up, and Mr. Kennedy followed. The door closed behind him. I quietly crept up to bed.

  We had hope for Steve Kennedy. He and Lilly dated for more than a month, and every time he came to pick her up, he brought us paper dolls, bags of M&M’s, or coloring books.

  The last night Steve Kennedy took my mother out, I again sneaked down from my room to the landing of the stairs to watch them say good night. But this time Lilly didn’t send him home.

  “You can’t cut me off now,” Mr. Kennedy said.

  “Come on,” Lilly persisted. “There’s always tomorrow.”

  “I know you want it,” Mr. Kennedy said.

  I quietly tiptoed into the hall. Lilly and Mr. Kennedy were sitting at the very end of the couch, so close together, it seemed as if Lilly couldn’t breathe. I watched Mr. Kennedy’s large shape engulfing my mother. I could hear the sound of the furnace kick on. It was the dead of winter. I saw Mr. Kennedy’s hands slip underneath Lilly’s dress and heard the sound of my mother’s breath, like a reluctant yet powerful wind, as she slowly succumbed.

  The next morning Lilly showed up with a new strand of pearls dangling from her neck.

  “He’s no gentleman,” my mother said. “But at least I got this out of him.”

  We never saw Steve Kennedy again.

  The party at Austin’s house grew louder as the night wore on. Everyone was getting buzzed. The keg of beer had run out, and Danny was collecting money to make a beer run. It was a warm, humid night. My shirt was sticking to my skin. I walked back into the house, through the hallway, into the vestibule, stepping over empty Styrofoam cups. A net of smoke hovered over the dimmed lights. I hoped I’d catch someone heading out to his car who might give me a lift.

  “Have you seen Austin?” I asked Robbie Reinhert. He shook his head and held up a bottle of tequila. “Want to do a shot?” he slurred, his T-shirt sticking to his sweaty chest.

  I nodded.

  After clinking glasses we threw the tequila back. The liquor warmed my throat and shot up my veins.

  At the top of the stairs, some senior girls were whispering and, I thought, pointing at me.

  “That’s the one,” said Jocelyn Foster, her eyes made up dark as Cleopatra.

  I lifted my head, returned a fake smile, and pushed open the screen door. I’d walk home.

  In the bushes Dickie Livingston was getting sick.

  “Anna,” I heard Austin call.

  I walked quickly down the driveway, pebbles kicking up into my sandals and nipping at my ankles. My body a rush of adrenaline.

  “Hey, wait,” he called after me. “Where are you going?”

  “Home.”

  “This is my fucking party,” Austin said. “You can’t go yet.”

  I looked down the block. A row of cars: Corvettes, beat-up sedans, and a VW Bug were parked along the street. For almost two hours Austin hadn’t said a word to me, and now he was pissed off that I wanted to leave? I kept walking, knowing that this was my only chance, that if I ignored Austin just at the moment he was finally paying attention, I would have him in the palm of my hand.

  “Stop,” Austin said. He wrapped his arms around me from the back. I tried to shimmy away. He hooked one arm around my neck and pulled me smack up against him, in a judo hold.

  “Tell me why you’re leaving,” he whispered in my ear. I felt my body relax.

  “It’s late,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on,” he pleaded, thinking I was half kidding. He turned me around, lifted my chin so I’d meet his eyes. “You’re not rejecting me, are you?” He smelled like beer and cigarettes.

  “Don’t,” I said.

  “Jesus, Anna. What the fuck’s the matter?”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Okay,” he said. “You want to go home?” He pulled the keys out of his pants pocket. “I’ll drive you.”

  Once in the car everything was quiet. Under the street lamps, the summer lawns were the color of limes; green, calm, and stretched out like sheets of plastic. Austin chewed the inside of his jaw. He wasn’t speaking.

  When Austin pulled up my driveway, I turned to him. But he looked straight ahead and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Thanks,” I said. I had no idea whether I’d ever see him again. I studied the throbbing of his pulse in the curve of the hollow of his cheek and almost weakened before I slammed the door and walked up the driveway. Before I got inside the house, he revved the engine. His tires screeched around the bend of the driveway, leaving a skid mark on the lawn.

  Inside the house was dark. My mother and Louise were asleep. I was still buzzed from the party, and whipped up from being in Austin’s presence. Downstairs I walked from one room to the next to still myself. I touched the vase of flowers on the mantel, picked up the newspapers on the couch, fingered the waxed apples sitting in a bowl on the dining room table. I couldn’t sit still.

  Two weeks before, on the night we’d first made out, Austin took me to his house on the pretense of showing me his secret passion: He was into impressing girls with card tricks and other sleights-of-hand. He drove his beat-up black Mustang along the sidewalk as I was walking home, cranked down his window, and offered me a ride. I remember the exact hue of the late spring sky slowly giving in to evening. He insisted I come over. He had something to show me. In his bedroom he had a deck of cards and a drawer full of coins. I sat on his bed, leaned against the wall, barely saying a word, watching him make coins vanish from one hand to the other. He slapped cards down in rows and turned up the jack of hearts, the ace. He pulled a colored handkerchief out of the sleeve of my shirt. Later, I learned this was his trademark. He slipped handkerchiefs out of the shirtsleeves of the girls he wanted to impress at school. It had become a kind of joke. But while it was happening to me, I was totally transfixed. The handkerchief, like a colored flag, spiraled in the air. I grew so tired my eyes almost closed, waiting for him to finish and begin on me; touching my eyes, nose, mouth, with his lips, pulling me onto his bed; making my body disappear.

  At last he got up, put on a Jefferson Starship album, and with the touch of his lips against my own, I forgot who I was, where I came from. All the tension between us from flirting in the halls for months now had built to this crescendo.

  I had imagined love was a cure for the parts of myself I found fault with. The attention of a man always, at least for a brief time, restored my mother, gave her the sustenance she needed to get out of bed. But in Austin’s bedroom I welcomed the oblivion, where all I had to do was lie back and let him roll on me into blackness. Right away I knew I’d go to any length, do anything, to keep him. His magic was light and airy, like a wizard’s; mine was dark and gloomy.

  I pictured Austin reading in his bed late at night, putting the marker in the book, going to sleep. I saw him awaken, his eyes slowly accepting the morning light, saw him stretch as he pulled the covers away. I had not known that a person could consume one’s entire imagination. I wondered if he thought about me, as I did, before he fell asleep at night, if he pictured me when I got out of bed, when I pulled off my nightgown, when I made the endless long walk to school and home again. If my face was the one he returned to after he completed a history test, when he was stopped at a traffic light, as he tried to focus on conversation.

  Roaming the house after Austin’s party, I kept playing that first night we’
d made out over in my mind, wondering if I had invented it all.

  The living room was dark and I stumbled over a pan of dried paint my mother had left in the middle of the floor. That year, which marked Ruthie’s going to live with Aunt Rose, I had turned sixteen. My mother had sworn off men. For years men had come in and out of our house as if it were some kind of salon. But by the time I turned sixteen, there hadn’t been a single man around. Lilly couldn’t balance how much she required from a man with the disappointment she felt once she had one. When Austin happened into my life, Lilly had had her fill.

  “I’m turning over a new leaf,” she said to Louise and me on that snowy, arctic day, after the car that came to take Ruthie to the airport had vanished into the winter storm. “I want no more men in this house.” I was just beginning to appreciate how the presence of the opposite sex could light up a life, give it purpose and meaning. My mother couldn’t see that maybe she had picked the wrong men for her, or that her expectations were out of whack. Maybe she was afraid that Louise and I were going to leave, too, if she didn’t shape up and get her act together. But when I stopped to think about what she said, it made absolutely no sense. It was another one of my mother’s private conversations with herself that sometimes filtered out, unconsciously from her mouth. There hadn’t been a man around in three years.

  Instead of finding some constructive way to prepare for her future, now that she’d sworn off men, she found a new obsession: painting our house. She used Ruthie’s old room for a place to store paint cans and brushes. She hounded me for days with color swatches. In the living room her brushes and rollers were soaking in a bucket of turpentine on top of newspapers. I switched on a lamp and looked at the walls. The far wall was still faded white, contrasting the right wall, which Lilly had painted a disturbing shade of green. And bunched in a ball was an old cobalt blue shirt she had used as a rag. I moved to the couch, laid my head back, and closed my eyes. They burned from the paint fumes.