Baby It's Cold Outside (2 page)

She closed the barn door and hiked up to the house, her stomach already relishing the beef soup she’d left in the ice box. Tomorrow, perhaps, she’d purchase one of those game hens, stuff it, and roast it for Christmas day.

Maybe even set the grand table in the dining room for one.

For Nelson, she might try to acknowledge the day of God’s grace for the world, even if His grace hadn’t been extended anymore to her.

Or, perhaps, and more likely, she’d stay home, under her mother’s wedding ring quilt, and listen to the silences collect her memories.

If she could summon the courage.

The rain turned her skin to ice, dribbling down her back by the time she reached the mudroom door. Stamping her frozen feet on the mat, she hung her coat on the peg, noticed the woodpile needed stocking, then opened the kitchen door and entered the heat of the house.

Or, rather, no heat. An icy breath clasped the grand house with its too many rooms—fifteen total—in a crisp silence. No clanging of the old coal stoker, no heat blasting from the giant grate heater in the middle of the family room floor. The chilly floorboards protested, however, as she walked across the kitchen, plunking her purse onto the oak table.

She listened to her heartbeat, closed her eyes. If she wanted—she didn’t even have to try hard—she could hear Nelson’s voice, feel his presence entering the kitchen after her.
I’ll check on the stoker. The auger might be clogged. I’ll go break it free.

The rain battered the window and she saw Nelson in her memory, his shoulders broad now, hardened by playing football, or chopping wood, or even loading flour at the mill. He grabbed paper and matches to restart the stoker, tugged on her father’s work jacket—now his—tucked on a derby, and headed outside, around the house to the cellar door.

He had a song on his lips, something from
Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy.

Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys, Show them where we stand.

Ever shall our team be champions.

Known throughout the land. Rah, Rah. Boola boola, boola boola, boola boola, boola boo…

She sighed as the song faded into the deathly still of the house. How she longed to hear him breaking apart the coal, the hammering pinging through the catacombs of their house until finally the auger began to turn again. The fire would rest in the coal furnace, heat whisking out of the giant floor grate and into the house.

If she looked up, she might catch him carrying the heavy clinker out to the debris pile behind the barn.

No. See, too easily Nelson crept into her hollow places, entering without permission. She ran the palm of her hand against her wet cheeks then retreated to the back room. Stepping into her father’s high-topped galoshes, she grabbed paper and pulled on the work jacket. Nelson’s scent clung to it, woodchips and teenager sweat, the smell of coal and oil and grease, and way too much charm.

That charm got Nelson out of trouble too many times. Probably what cajoled Dottie into agreeing in that brief, wretched moment to allow him to march off to war.

She stepped outside into the rain, hunching her shoulders against the pellets of ice now sleeting from the sky as she splashed through the slick yard to the cellar. The hasp lay unlocked, and she wrenched open the door, hesitating before she closed it behind her to keep out the rain. Once, when Nelson was about fourteen, the latch had flipped over, locking him inside for two hours. She’d found him sitting in the cold, pounding on the floorboards, after she returned from work.

Dottie tugged on the overhead electric light and checked the coal stoker. Unlit, indeed.

The coal man had dumped her allotment into the bin in early November. It remained half full of dark chunks, too many of them the size of anvils. Putting on her gloves, she climbed into the bin. Sure enough, a chunk wedged between the auger and the stoker hole. Grabbing the sledgehammer, she picked it up—not without a groan, and dropped it onto the coal. It broke in half. She dropped it again, and the piece tumbled free.

She climbed out of the bin, listening to the wind whine outside. It shook the cellar door.

Taking the paper from her pocket, she shoved it into the middle of the clinker inside the stove, added a piece of coal, and lit it.

The furnace flickered to life, flames gnawing at the paper. The auger began to churn coal into the stoker. Until the house heated, she’d curl up in a quilt and build a fire in the family room.

She removed her gloves, laid them on the steps, and pushed on the cellar door.

It didn’t move.

Again.

She heard the hasp rattle against its mount, but it didn’t give. She closed her eyes. Then, with a cry, she banged her hand against the door, hard, sharp. The action was probably too violent, for pain spiked through her, up her arm, into her shoulder.

The door only shuddered.

She turned on the steps, sat down, and lowered her head to her hands, listening to the memory of Nelson’s song fade into the howling wind.

They’d probably find her frozen, emaciated body sometime in May.

* * * * *

“Come down from that ladder, Violet Hart, before you get killed.”

Violet ignored Otis and finished screwing in the lightbulb before climbing down. She turned to the janitor, dusting off her hands before tucking them into her cardigan pockets. “It’s dark in this hallway, and I thought you’d gone home for the day. Sorry.”

“I know you had some sort of man’s job in the army, Violet, but you’re back in civilization now. Let a man do his job.” He folded up the tall ladder, hiking it onto its side. “I’ll take care of the maintenance of the city buildings, thank you.”

He had a waddle that went with his belly and sixty years on the job. Violet shook her head. She couldn’t even change a lightbulb without offending mankind?

She caught her reflection in the display case—the one filled with the Oglala Sioux artifacts found around the area—arrowheads, pottery, a donated blanket from one of the locals.

Violet had turned into Donna Reed’s dour librarian before her very eyes. No, wait, Donna Reed had been much too beautiful to end up as a librarian, even if George Bailey hadn’t asked to marry her. Some handsome suitor would have certainly come knocking at her door. But four years after the war, Violet had begun to admit there would be no
It’s a Wonderful Life
happy ending for her.

No, instead of shopping for groceries or planning a holiday meal for a husband and family three days before Christmas, Violet found herself returning to the children’s reading corner and picking up the scattering of children’s books—
Make Way for Ducklings
and
Curious George,
the Beatrix Potter series.

The rain knocked on the leaded glass windows of the Frost Library, the late afternoon shadows draping over the shelves and long study tables like dust coverings. The building imprisoned a chill, the behemoth coal furnace in the basement still not enough to heat both the library and the city hall.

The chill contributed even more to Violet’s appearance as a spinster librarian, with her long, knitted brown cardigan buttoned over the white blouse. And, to keep her legs warm, she wore pants, something Mrs. Morgan raised a thin eyebrow to two years ago when she showed up for her new position. But she’d remembered the younger, unconventional Dottie Morgan of her childhood and taken a chance.

Violet shelved the books back in their places in the graded reader nook, nearly sitting down with
The Little Engine that Could
as she heard in her head Mrs. Morgan’s storytelling voice, the one she’d grown up on.

That
Mrs. Morgan inspired a world beyond the prairie hamlet of Frost, bordered on all sides by boring farmland, a dirty creek, a pond turned marshland. In Mrs. Morgan’s voice, the children of the town waged battle with evil Mr. MacGregor and wandered the Hundred Acre Wood with Piglet and Christopher Robin. They uncovered mysteries with the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, the Five Little Peppers, and sometimes, Mrs. Morgan even displayed a fresh copy of a Big Little Book—Dick Tracy or Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, or even Jack Armstrong, wonder athlete.

Nelson usually commandeered the Jack Armstrong books. Violet could still see him climbing on the wooden chairs or hiding behind the shelves as he waited for his mother to close up the library. Or, in his later years, stopping by to drive her home, his shoulders wide in his Frost High letterman’s sweater.

Violet might have even harbored a crush on Nelson, despite his being a couple years younger than her, with his unruly tawny brown hair, shorn short on the sides and curly on top, those deep prairie sky-blue eyes, filled with a charming mischief. He had a way of turning a girl’s insides to soft caramel, inspiring the men with athletic memories of their childhood as he sank baskets and ran for touchdowns. In fact, who, really, in Frost hadn’t loved Nelson T. Morgan?

The town’s love for Nelson didn’t help Violet’s cause any either. Because if it weren’t for Violet’s service in the WAACs, she wouldn’t have been among those women who “stole a man’s job and freed Nelson to be shipped off to war.”

So many of their young men might have been spared if Violet hadn’t usurped their behind-the-frontlines jobs.

She had a feeling that Nelson wouldn’t have been one of those filing clerks left behind on American soil or changing the tires on the army colonel’s jeeps or even running one of the chow lines. Still, the town hardly embraced her when she arrived home at the depot two years ago, and with their stares she’d felt the specter of his death on the back of her neck.

No wonder Dottie abandoned storytelling hour, spending long hours locked in her office, turning over most of her duties to Violet. And yet, no one wanted to take her place in the story nook. Even Violet, thank you very much. Taking Dottie’s place felt like a prophecy. Or an epitaph.

Even, surrender.

Violet would not end up like widowed, lonely, dowdy, and pinched librarian Dottie Morgan.

Violet arranged the children’s chairs into the traditional circle, turned off a study light at one of the long pine tables, then gathered up her handbag and camel wool coat. This morning, ice crusted the puddles in the dirt driveway, and with the grim pallor of the sky, she’d also grabbed an umbrella, along with a plastic accordion rain hat and her boots.

In fact, Violet might be even more of a librarian than Dottie, who’d worn a pair of stylish black dress boots today, as if she hadn’t quite forgotten the woman she’d wanted to be.

As she locked up, balancing the umbrella above her, Violet heard the train whistle moan over the blanket of dark weather suffocating the town. She calculated roughly ten minutes before the post office closed at 6 p.m.

Maybe today she’d find a letter waiting. She could almost imagine Alex’s Christmas greeting in her box, in that tight, precise handwriting. If she could, she’d will it there, along with his agreement to visit her this holiday season.

Five years ago he’d made the promise. It seemed time to fulfill it, and she’d gently—without sounding desperate or angry or even melancholy—suggested it. Minneapolis wasn’t far, on the train at least. A half-day’s ride at most.

The rain pelted the sidewalk, and when the wind splattered it into her face, Violet realized it had turned to sleet. She hunkered down against it as she strode past Berman’s Hardware, the grocery lot, now full of cars, then the bank and the florist. Her stomach growled as she passed Miller’s Cafe. She’d managed a cold mincemeat sandwich today, and dinner seemed nowhere in sight, what with her mother pressing her into duty for tonight’s Christmas social.

Violet shook out her umbrella, holding the door open for Ardis Weiss at the post office. Inside, the gates had already closed at the desk, but the area to the post office boxes remained accessible. She found her wooden box, unlocked it, and held her breath.

Yes. A small white envelope lay crossways in the box, the size of a Christmas card. She pulled it out, her breath catching.

No, wait—she recognized her
own
handwriting scrawled on the front of the envelope. A stamp across the top—Return to Sender—in blood red screamed out to her.

Return to Sender?

She ran her thumb over the directive. How—but only three months ago he’d sent her a postcard from Chicago, and before that, St. Louis. And…well, yes, their correspondence seemed rudely one-sided, but
Return to Sender
?

Movement beside her made her glance over—she spied Esther Jamison in her periphery and tucked the envelope into her pocket, swallowing hard to find a smile, in case the organist from the Lutheran church greeted her.

Mercifully, Esther shuffled past without acknowledgment, sorting through her mail. Violet made it out into the street without choking on the ball of heat in her throat.

Return to Sender.

It took a moment before she realized rain wetted her face as it plinked upon her rain hat, sifting into the collar of her coat, warming, then dribbling down the nape of her neck. She opened the umbrella and ran a gloved hand over her cheek. So that was that. She probably should have expected it, really. After all, with all the other younger, beautiful women available—women who hadn’t sacrificed their marrying years to the service of their country—she didn’t truly expect him to take the train all the way from Minneapolis on an icy winter night, Christmas weekend, no less, and find a woman he’d only met once, during the early years of war at Fort Meade, Maryland.

The lights from the community center at the end of St. Olaf Street glowed, but Violet stood in the rush of the wind for a moment, a cold hollowness pressing through her.

It should be easier to be alone. She had so much to be grateful for. She and all of her brothers survived the war, she had nieces and nephews, a job, and a family.

So Alex had moved on, let go of their friendship. Violet would take it as a sign that she should too.

Enough of these shiny dreams of a home, a family, a life that might be waiting for her after the war.

Perhaps she should take over story hour at the library and resign herself to weaving stories with happy endings rather than living one.