He’d gone to work specifically to escape our mother, and between the weather and her mood it could be hours, or even days, before he returned home. My sister Gretchen suggested that we call our father, but none of us knew his number, and he probably wouldn’t have done anything anyway. Selfish mothers wanted the house to themselves and their children were discovered years later, frozen like mastodons in blocks of ice. Dusk approached, and as it grew colder it occurred to us that we could possibly die. “You are going to be in so much trouble when Dad gets home!” we shouted, and in response my mother pulled the drapes. We pounded again and again, and when our mother failed to answer we went around back and threw snowballs at her bedroom window. It’s us.” We knocked on the pane and, without looking in our direction, she refilled her goblet and left the room. Drinking didn’t count if you followed a glass of wine with a cup of coffee, and so she had a goblet and a mug positioned before her on the countertop. Normally she waited until five o’clock to have a drink, but for the past few days she’d been making an exception. I rang the bell, and when no one answered we went to the window and saw our mother in the kitchen, watching television. A few hours later, we returned home, surprised to find that the door was locked. My sisters and I went down the hill and sledded with other children from the neighborhood. We reminded her that it was our house, too, and she opened the front door and shoved us into the carport. “Get the hell out of my house,” she said. It wasn’t a gentle request but something closer to an eviction. Our presence had disrupted the secret life she led while we were at school, and when she could no longer take it she threw us out. On the fifth day of our vacation, my mother had a little breakdown. There were eight inches on the ground, and, rather than melting, it froze. School was cancelled, and two days later we got lucky again. Snow fell, and, for the first time in years, it accumulated. Winters were frustratingly mild in North Carolina, but the year I was in the fifth grade we got lucky.
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