House Under Snow (12 page)

“Are you
really
getting married?” I said.

Lilly nodded.

“To who?”

“Max McCarthy,” Lilly said, without hesitation. “Only he hasn’t asked me yet.”

“Who’s Max?” I asked.

“Be patient, Anna. I want it to be a surprise.”

By the Fourth of July, our neighborhood was in full blossom. The maples and oaks canopied the lawns of our community, gardens bloomed with lavender, hydrangeas, and verbena. Lawn sprinklers went on and off to keep the grass from browning, nearly shutting down our water supply. And yet, though I was looking forward to seeing Austin, I didn’t feel like celebrating our country’s independence. There had been a heat wave the last two weeks in June. The interior of our house was so hot that it was hard to breathe.

“I’ve always wanted to do something grand,” my mother was saying. She took the rubber plant and brought it to the kitchen sink to let the water drain from the pot. She seemed restless and preoccupied. I was trying to think of a way to get past her to go change into a pair of shorts, but she kept talking. “Study art in Italy, maybe the theater. But all of that is for you. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

“What are talking about, Mom? You’re living in a dream world. Art? The theater? Italy? I barely have enough money to buy next year’s schoolbooks.”

I was spending as much time as I could at work that summer, to avoid spending time with my mother. I tried to take whatever shifts I could manage, sometimes doubling up lunch and dinner. Clara, the head waitress at Dink’s, had a soft spot for me; she made out the schedule each week. I usually made
it to work a half hour early to have a cup of coffee with her before my shift started. She talked about her son, Randall, who was in dental school. She gave part of her tips to him every week.

“What’s wrong with fantasizing?” Lilly continued.

“I can’t afford to fantasize.”

“Look at you, Anna,” Lilly said, changing the subject. “Where did you get that lovely dress? It fits you like a glove.” She was referring to a black sleeveless cotton shift I had just bought at the mall. “I can see what that boy, Austin, sees when he looks at you.

“I know you’re in love,” Lilly said. She eyed me provocatively. The crickets went at it in the backyard. The cicadas clacked. The awning over the back porch knocked and tapped in the breeze. I jumped to answer the phone as soon as it rang, made sure Austin would meet me at Dink’s, rather than at home. I cherished my secret life with him, like the single rose he had given me one night, which I’d pressed between the covers of a book. I tried to ignore my mother’s comment and flew up the stairs to change. Even though I was eager to have Austin see me in the new dress, I wanted to protect it from getting ruined.

Before I left that night, I looked in on my mother. She was washing dishes in the sink. She was quiet then. Subdued. In the glass I saw my own reflection. We shared the same broad forehead and widow’s peak. Her nose was longer than my own, but I saw the similar arc in our cheeks, and when she went to brush a wisp of hair away that had fallen in her face, I noticed her hand, her fingers delicate and long like my own. I hadn’t realized how much we looked alike and how much it scared me. Her eyes in the reflection looked swollen. Now I wasn’t so sure about leaving her home alone.

“Do you want me to stay home with you tonight, Mom?” I asked.

“No, darling. You go out and have a good time.”

By the lake
we planted ourselves on a blanket under the umbrella of stars. Nearly every family from the sprinkle of suburbs around the center of Cleveland were squatted in their yards, next to their barbecues, or in a football field, or on the edge of the lake observing the same ritual.

The tangled smells of lake water, dried algae, and summer rain were in the air, the promise that the heat would break. As the crowds drifted to find a place on the beach, I followed the curve of Austin’s back with my eyes, intuited the texture of his skin without touching it.

While we sat on the itchy blanket drinking a cool beer, I held in my mind the momentary feeling of something everlasting, like the eternal pines in the distance. The fireworks exploded overhead.

Austin got up, said he’d be right back. He was always doing that, running off in secret. I kept looking at my watch as the water lapped against the rocky beach.

As the fireworks burst into flower and rained down from the sky with their falling light, I created a picture in my mind of Austin with another girl, someone he’d bumped into at the concession stand or outside the portable bathroom stalls. He’d been gone a long time. It made me crazy, to imagine Austin with another girl. But I also knew Austin couldn’t stop himself. There was a part of him that needed the jolt of attention a girl’s desire could inflict.

Before the grand finale began, Austin showed up. He sat down next to me on the army blanket without explanation
or apology, and we watched the end of the finale without talking or touching. I listened to the chatter of conversation coming from a nearby group sitting in lawn chairs. A couple sitting next to us were kissing.

“Where were you?” I finally asked. I realized I was furious.

“I saw some people I knew.” In the distance Steely Dan sang “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” on a boom box.

Austin attempted to put his arm around my shoulder as we made our way in between the mazelike path of blankets back to the car, but I disengaged and lagged behind, watching on the ground as my shadow commingled with his, and moved out again. I didn’t say a word the rest of the way home. As we pulled up my driveway, he put his hand on my thigh.

“Listen, Anna.” I smelled the beer on his breath. I looked past him to regard the stars, the incandescent blinks of light wrapped in a sheet of darkness.

“Anna,” he said again.

Just hearing the way he said my name reduced me to a place where I could forgive him. I thought of the coolness of autumn.

“I was testing you,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“To see whether you’d wait it out.”

“That’s a sick thing to do. Where did you think I was going to go?”

“That’s not important. Don’t talk, Anna. Don’t say another word.”

The first boy I had a crush on was Brucie Johnson. He was the head lifeguard at one of the country clubs, and lived three doors down from us.

The summer before I was ten, we were getting in the car to go grocery shopping when Brucie Johnson walked by.

“Good morning, Mrs. Crane,” he said. “You ought to take the girls swimming today. It’s a scorcher.”

“My girls don’t know how to swim,” Lilly said soulfully. “I wish I could afford to give them lessons.”

“That’s a shame,” Brucie said. “Hey, why don’t you and the girls meet me at the reservoir tomorrow morning?”

When we showed up at the reservoir the next day, Brucie was doing a jackknife off the cliffs. His hair was in a ponytail and a rawhide choker circled his neck. He wore a black bathing suit.

Brucie saw Louise’s talent in the water instantly. Over the summer he taught her how to do the breaststroke, butterfly, and back crawl. I watched his perfect, smooth strokes as he explained how to move our arms for the breaststroke—chicken, airplane, soldier—and kick our legs like a frog. When he finished our lessons, he dried off in the sun and came over to chat with Lilly.

Our swimming lessons with Brucie continued throughout the duration of that summer. From time to time, during the swimming lessons, Lilly glanced up, raised her sunglasses to the top of her head, and called out to us. Lilly sunned herself to the sound of soft rock on the transistor radio. You could smell the cocoa butter seeping into her darkening skin.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it, Mrs. Crane?” Brucie called to her. His eyes sparkled, the color of a minty sky.

“Bruce, you make me feel ancient. Call me Lilly,” she said.

Whenever my mother was out in the world, away from our house, she acted cheerful, as though not to disappoint people. She had a generous, open smile that accentuated the birthmark over the right side of her upper lip. Certain people, like Brucie,
drew pleasure simply from Lilly’s company. I noticed that Brucie looked, after a morning with my mother, as if he had caught some of her vitality, and walked away from Lilly as though his battery was now recharged.

But, after the swimming lessons, once we were driving back home, my mother’s cheerful countenance dissipated. She grew dark and irritated. “Would you girls be quiet!” Lilly said. “I have a splitting headache.”

Ruthie reached for the knob on the radio and turned up the volume, and Lilly switched it off.

“My head’s throbbing,” she repeated.

“Why do you always get your way?” Ruthie said.

“Because I’m your mother,” Lilly said. She paused. “Do you think I would have
had
children, if it wasn’t for your father?”

The car went silent.

Lilly backpedaled. “That didn’t come out right. I meant, if I knew I was going to end up a single mother. See what I mean? With all that noise, I can’t even think straight.”

The rest of the day we were on good behavior. We tried to pick up the clothes scattered all over our rooms, and take our dirty dishes to the sink. As our mother began to droop like a neglected flower if she spent too much time at home, we felt as if we were responsible.

The lessons continued, and after we had mastered how to float and tread water, Brucie taught us the crawl. One day, when he was correcting a flutter kick, I caught his eyes wandering from my sisters to rest upon my mother’s bare stomach and full bosom, well displayed in her fashionable two-piece. By some sort of telepathy, Lilly’s head tilted to the side and caught Brucie’s eyes, and she waved back at him, her smile still unchanging. My mother was perfectly aware of the spell she had over men, and had perfected a certain look, as if she were
sometimes apologizing for it, peering down and then shyly raising her eyes. But in an instant, realizing that she couldn’t possibly play down her effect, she smiled with a grand, open smile. Brucie sized her up the way I noticed some teenage boys looked at older women, testing their sexual power.

From time to time I ran into Brucie around the neighborhood, but I was embarrassed, quickly said hi, and walked ahead. At night, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, thoughts of Brucie rose to the surface from the underbrush of my mind.

Toward the end of August, Brucie sometimes stretched out on a towel next to my mother while we continued to play in the water. He was the most beautiful boy I had ever met.

“Girls,” Lilly called from the water one day. “Make sure you take a rest. I don’t want you getting a cramp.”

I resented when Lilly tried to treat us like children, and play the concerned mother, when at home she expected the reverse:
We
were supposed to take care of
her
I knew what was going on. Brucie was hot for my mother, and she was milking it for all it was worth.

“Mrs. Crane, I’ve been thinking. I know you’re alone, and, if you ever need anything, let me know. I’m just down the street. I can be over in a jiffy.” By then I noticed that men offered favors to my mother that I suspected married women would have refused.

“What a dear,” Lilly said. She sucked in her stomach when she saw Brucie admiring her figure. Lilly had an uncanny way of making a man divine her thoughts simply by the way she smiled. When a man, even a boy, gave Lilly some attention, she became transformed from the sunken, withdrawn self I saw when she did her crossword puzzles in front of the TV.

“Oh, I wouldn’t think of bothering you. I’m sure a boy your age has plenty to keep him occupied.”

When I got out of the water, Brucie patted me on the head. “You did good today, Anna Banana,” Brucie said. Sitting on the blanket surrounded by rocks and cliffs, I hoped that in a few years he would flirt with
me
.

The next week
, after swimming lessons, I went to Maria’s house for lunch, but she had come down with a fever and her mother, who spent all afternoon chain-smoking Virginia Slims in the family room, her brain fried from so many rounds of shock treatments that her hands shook, sent me home.

I walked home counting the slate squares on the sidewalk. A jet flew overhead, leaving a white slash across the heavens. Goose bumps covered my arms. My eyes filled with tears, and a peculiar feeling came over me, like the time I had stared at the back of David Oppenheimer’s head in school, willing him to turn around, and he did, asking if he could borrow a piece of notebook paper. But this time I didn’t know what it was telling me. I climbed the front stoop of our house, opened the door, and walked in.

I picked up the newspapers and magazines strewn all over the floor and put them away. I smoothed out the sunken cushions on the couch and removed the empty glasses and breakfast bowls from the coffee table and placed them in the sink. I opened the refrigerator, took out the jars of peanut butter and jelly, and clanked them on the counter.

From upstairs, I heard my mother’s bed creaking. I walked up the stairs to tell her I was home, but loud breathing and laughter coming from her room stopped me on the landing. I sat at the top of the stairs and listened to my mother’s high, silly laugh and then long, deep moans. I stared at the white walls around me, smudged with fingerprints. The
bedsprings creaked and rocked. My heart went crazy. I had to take long breaths to calm myself, and to block the sounds from behind my mother’s door. I focused on the white walls until finally I lifted my mind from the throbbing that seemed to have penetrated to the floors of the house and was vibrating inside me.

I ran down the stairs and slammed the front door behind me.

I collapsed on the front stoop. A cool late August wind seeped underneath my shirt, sending a shiver through my body.

Once, my mother had taken us downtown to the tenth floor of a department store in the Terminal Tower to see Mr. Jingaling and his Magic Keys during Christmas vacation. We had ridden past the dilapidated parts of Cleveland, beyond houses without plates in the windows, where paint peeled off completely, leaving only the faint remains of its pink or green color, past the Show Palace Theater, XXXstasy, Cameo, Capri. The billboards plastered over boarded windows were of naked women dancing. One marquee read
BIGGEST ADULT SHOW IN CLEVELAND
, and showed dancing girls in black and red bikinis with pompoms over their nipples. I studied the curves on the women’s bodies as Lilly concentrated on the road. What did men like so much about the naked bodies of strange women? I had the urge to dress my mother up in baggy clothes. It frightened me, this fascination men had with stripping a woman bare.