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rolled aside a snow boulder you could crawl into a snow tunnel and come out into a snow room you could stand in. We carved benches into the walls and punched a hole through the ceiling for the smoke when we made a fire.
    By now we had a friend who lived in one of the cottages on the other side of the pond. His name was Dean Matheson. He was long-limbed and yellow-toothed and at eleven years old said shit and fuck . He’d stolen a bone-handled switchblade, and we took turns in our igloo throwing it down at each other’s feet, trying to stick it into the packed snow as close as possible to our toes, the first to pull away a chicken shit.
    One day in the fall, when all the summer cottages next to ours were boarded up for the season, we found a box of shotgun shells in the attic. Our parents and sisters were off somewhere, and Jeb and Dean and I laid the shells at the base of a pine tree, poured gasoline over them, and lit them up just to watch them explode. But there was a breeze coming in off the pond and the flames grew and leapt and in no time one of the cottages was on fire. We ran into the woods. Some adult must’ve seen the smoke and soon a huge pumper truck came rattling over the gravel road and there were hoses and men yelling and sparks and steam, the house saved, but its front porch gone.
    Our family got home to see two police cars. As Pop talked to one of the cops, he kept glancing down at me and Jeb crouching and waiting near the pond. And he didn’t look mad; he looked scared and relieved; he looked guilty.
     
    ONE SUNLIT afternoon in the early fall our parents sat us down in the living room and told us they were getting separated. My father stood in the kitchen doorway. My mother leaned against the wall on the other side of the room. Separated. It was a word I’d never thought much about before, but now I pictured them being cut one from the other with a big, sharp knife. I sat in my father’s chair, and I couldn’t stop crying.
    Then Pop was gone for weeks. One night, after Suzanne and Jeb and Nicole were asleep, I lay in bed listening to my mother crying in her room. It sounded like she was doing it into her pillow, but I could still hear it, and I got up and walked down the creaking floorboards of the hallway and knocked on her door. Her bedside lamp was on. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and smiled at me. I asked her if she was all right. She sat up and looked me up and down. She said, “I’m going to tell you because you’re old enough to hear it. Your father left me for Betsy Armstrong. That’s where he is right now, staying with her.”
    Betsy was one of the rich girls from the college. She had long straight hair and a pretty face. I remembered her laughing once in the kitchen with my mother. Now my mother got out of bed and leaned down and hugged me. I hugged her back.
    Then Pop was home again. I woke one morning and heard his voice downstairs. I ran down there, and he hugged me. Later that day he was in the bathroom shaving. I went in there just to watch. I was ten years old, he was thirty-three. He turned from the mirror and said, “So you know about Betsy then?”
    The air in the room felt thicker somehow. “Yeah.”
    He reached into his wallet and pulled out a small photograph. He handed it to me. “That’s her.”
    It was of a girl I barely remembered seeing before, not the one I’d thought she was. “She’s pretty.”
    “Yes, she is.” Pop took the photo and slid it back into his wallet. I left the bathroom and walked straight to the kitchen where Mom stood at the sink washing dishes. I looked up at her face. She smiled down at me.
    “Dad’s girlfriend is prettier than you are, Mom.” Her smile faded and she looked into the dishwater and kept scrubbing. I walked back to the bathroom and told my father what I’d said.
    He was wiping shaving cream from his face with a towel. He stopped, the towel still pressed to his cheek. “No, go apologize to her. Go tell her you’re