House Under Snow Read Online Free PDF Page A

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