She reached out and took the sandwich from my hand, ate half of it herself in two bites, then handed it back to me. “Hurry up,” she said.

“God,” I said. But it was funny, and I softened toward her and slipped on my coat. It was early spring by then, March or April, wet snow in the seams of the sidewalks.

We walked through the neighborhood, looking into people’s windows.

“I used to do this all the time when I was your age,” she said.

“Spy on people?”

“Imagine what my life might be like if I were someone else. Look in there,” she said, grabbing my arm and pointing into the picture window of a white Craftsman. “Boring home, boring soul. Never trust anyone with cottage furniture. Or a sitting room.”

My mother had strong but mutable opinions about furniture. At least once a week, I would come home from school to find a completely different house than the one I’d left. Chairs, artwork, rugs would appear and disappear, or emerge in a different room, in a different form, painted or dyed or cut into new shapes. My mother liked to buy things, especially things we didn’t need, especially when there was no money for it. Her own mother had never wasted a cent in America, had kept cans of Sprite in the cabinet long after their expiration dates, so when you opened them, she told me once, they had nothing but stale, flat water inside, all the sugar and flavor sunk to the bottom, but that was no excuse; if you opened it, you drank it—and so my mother bought things.

“What would you do if you lived there?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The same things I do now, probably.”

“I’d tear down that wall,” she said, moving closer. We were already on their lawn, and the frosted grass complained beneath our boots. “Get an oak dining table. They have nice moldings but terrible taste. Their house could be beautiful, if only they knew it was ugly.”

“Mom,” I hissed. I imagined cops, dogs. The neighbors already hated her. Loud parties, irresponsible lawn management, a shy shadow of an accent, and worst of all, a husband no one had seen for months, maybe longer, and well, you know what that says about a woman.

“Oh, come on,” she said. “I want to imagine myself in there.”