"Mrs. Carey!" the clerk called to her, and when she kept walking, he hurried around the desk and across the lobby to her. "I have a message for you from Carmelita. She wanted me to tell you midnight mass at the cathedral has been cancelled," he said. "The bishop was worried about people driving home on the icy roads. But Carmelita said to tell you they’re having mass at eight o’clock, if you’d like to come to that. The cathedral’s right up the street at the end of the plaza. If you go out the north door," he pointed, "it’s only two blocks. It’s a very pretty service, with the luminarias and all."
And it’s somewhere to go, Bev thought, letting him lead her to the north door. It’s something to do. "Tell Carmelita thank you for me," she said at the door. "And Feliz Navidad."
"Merry Christmas." He opened the door. "You go down this street, turn left, and it’s right there," he said and ducked back inside, out of the snow.
It was inches deep on the sidewalk as she hurried along the narrow street, head down, and snowing hard. By morning it would look just like back home. It’s not fair, she thought. She turned the corner and looked up at the sound of an organ.
The cathedral stood at the head of the Plaza, its windows glowing like flames, and she had been wrong about the luminarias being ruined–they stood in rows leading up the walk, up the steps to the wide doors, lining the adobe walls and the roofs and the towers, burning steadily in the descending snow.
It fell silently, in great, spangled flakes, glittering in the light of the street lamps, covering the wooden-posted porches, the pots of cactus, the pink adobe buildings. The sky above the cathedral was pink, too, and the whole scene had an unreal quality, like a movie set.
"Oh, Howard," Bev said, as if she had just opened a present, and then flinched away from the thought of him, waiting for the thrust of the knife, but it didn’t come. She felt only regret that he couldn’t be here to see this and amusement that the sequined snowflakes sifting down on her hair, on her coat sleeve, looked just like the fake snow at the end of White Christmas. And, arching over it all, like the pink sky, she felt affection–for the snow, for the moment, for Howard.
"You did this," she said, and started to cry.
The tears didn’t trickle down her cheeks, they poured out, drenching her face, her coat, melting the snowflakes instantly where they fell. Healing tears, she thought, and realized suddenly that when she had asked Howard how the movie ended, he hadn’t said, "They lived happily ever after." He had said, "They got a white Christmas."
"Oh, Howard."
The bells for the service began to ring. I need to stop crying and go in, she thought, fumbling for a tissue, but she couldn’t. The tears kept coming, as if someone had opened a spigot.
A black-shawled woman carrying a prayer book put her hand on Bev’s shoulder and said, "Are you all right, seńora?"
"Yes," Bev said, "I’ll be fine," and something in her voice must have reassured the woman because she patted Bev’s arm and went on into the cathedral.
The bells stopped ringing and the organ began again, but Bev continued to stand there until long after the mass had started, looking up at the falling snow.
"I don’t know how you did this, Howard," she said, "but I know you’re responsible."
At eight p.m., after anxiously checking the news to make sure the roads were still closed, Pilar put Miguel to bed. "Now go to sleep," she said, kissing him good-night. "Santa’s coming soon."
"Hunh-unh," he said, looking like he was going to cry. "It’s snowing too hard."
He’s worried about the roads being closed, she thought. "Santa doesn’t need roads," she said. "Remember, he has a magic sleigh that flies through the air even if it’s snowing."
"Hunh-unh," he said, getting out of bed to get his Rudolph book. He showed her the illustration of the whirling blizzard and Santa shaking his head, and then stood up on his bed, pulled back the curtain, and pointed through the window. She had to admit it did look just like the picture.
"But he had Rudolph to show the way," she said. "See?" and turned the page, but Miguel continued to look skeptical until she had read the book all the way through twice.
At 10:15 p.m. Warren Nesvick went down the hotel’s bar. He had tried to explain to Shara that Marjean was his five-year-old niece, but she had gotten completely unreasonable. "So I’m a cancelled flight out of Cincinnati, am I?" she’d shouted. "Well, I’m canceling you, you bastard!" and slammed out, leaving him high and dry. On Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake.
He’d spent the next hour and a half on the phone. He’d called some women he knew from previous trips but none of them had answered. He’d then tried to call Marjean to tell her the snow was letting up and United thought they could get him on standby early tomorrow morning and to try to patch things up–she’d seemed kind of upset–but she hadn’t answered either. She’d probably gone to bed.
He’d hung up and gone down to the bar. There wasn’t a soul in the place except the bartender. "How come the place is so dead?" Warren asked him.
"Where the hell have you been?" the bartender said and turned on the TV above the bar.
". . . most widespread snowstorm in recorded history," Dan Abrams was saying. "Although there are signs of the snow beginning to let up here in Baltimore, in other parts of the country they weren’t so lucky. We take you now to Cincinnati, where emergency crews are still digging victims out of the rubble." It cut to a reporter standing in front of a sign that read Cincinnati International Airport. "A record forty-six inches of snow caused the roof of the main terminal to collapse this afternoon. Over two hundred passengers were injured, and forty are still missing."
The goose was a huge hit, crispy and tender and done to a turn, and everyone raved about the gravy. "Luke made it," Aunt Lulla said, but Madge and his mom were talking about people not knowing how to drive in snow and didn’t hear her.
It stopped snowing midway through dessert, and Luke began to worry about the snowman but didn’t have a chance to duck out and check on it till nearly eleven, when everyone was putting on their coats.
It had melted (sort of), leaving a round greasy smear in the snow. "Getting rid of the evidence?" Aunt Lulla asked, coming up behind him in her old-lady coat, scarf, gloves, and plastic boots. She poked at the smear with the toe of her boot. "I hope it doesn’t kill the grass."
"I hope it doesn’t affect the environment," Luke said.
Luke’s mother appeared in the back door. "What are you two doing out there in the dark?" she called to them. "Come in. We’re trying to decide who’s going to have the dinner next Christmas. Madge and Shorty think it’s Uncle Don’s turn, but–"
"I’ll have it," Luke said and winked at Lulla.
"Oh," his mother said, surprised, and went back inside to tell Madge and Shorty and the others.
"But not goose," Luke said to Lulla. "Something easy. And nonfat."
"Michael had a wonderful recipe for duck a l’orange Alsacienne, as I remember," Lulla mused.
"Michael Caine?"
"No, of course not, Michael Redgrave. Michael Caine’s a terrible cook," she said. "Or–I’ve got an idea. How about Japanese blowfish?"
By 11:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the snow had stopped in New England, the Middle East, the Texas panhandle, most of Canada, and Nooseneck, Rhode Island.