Frost

by Wendy Delsol

  Sunday morning, I got my first look at my dad’s new digs in Walden.

  “I like it,” I said, trailing my hand across the sleek gray kitchen countertop.

  “It’s temporary,” he said, “but at least it’s recently remodeled.”

  As a college town with more in the way of shops and restaurants, Walden was a better fit for my dad than Norse Falls.

  “So where are we having brunch?” I asked.

  “Wherever you and Brigid want to go.”

  “Brigid?”

  “I invited her. She’ll be here any minute.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “Ask you what?”

  “If I wanted her to join us.”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “What are you guys — like dating?”

  “Hon, you’re overreacting. It’s just breakfast.”

  Uh-huh. And once upon a time my parents had sat me down just to chat.

  The doorbell rang. My dad ran for it like a birthday boy for a tower of gifts. Just breakfast — my foot.

  Brigid walked in looking even more fetching than she had six days ago. She wore welded-on jeans, heeled boots, and a short fur: brown and spotted this time and still incredibly real-looking. Wouldn’t environmental types be into the whole PC gamut: Save the Whales, Go Vegan, PETA Forever?

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, handing her coat to my dad like he was some kind of manservant. “We worked into the wee hours last night.” She turned to me. “How’s Jack feeling this morning?”

  Something about her having last contact had me breathing through my nose and had my right foot itching to do a bull-like scrape at the ground. “Fine,” I replied, knowing it would take more than hard work to get the better of him.

  “Who’s hungry?” my dad asked. “And where should we go?”

  “I hear the Pantree is very good,” Brigid said.

  “Green Eggs is better,” I chimed in.

  We stared each other down.

  “I’m getting the C.A.T. in the Hat omelet,” I said, folding my menu.

  “It’s not really cat, is it?” my dad said with a grimace.

  “Cheddar, avocado, and tomato,” I replied.

  “Sounds delicious,” Brigid said.

  I glanced down quickly at her coat, wondering Which one?

  The restaurant was packed, and the waitress took her time getting to us. I don’t like bad service any more than the next guy, or gal, or giant Greenlander, but I felt a little sorry for the frazzled girl. Brigid, obviously, did not. She clapped her hands like some sort of boarding-school tyrant and called out, “Waitress!”

  The harried server appeared, and we ordered. While waiting for our meals, we managed to speak, but talk about nothing. Our food was delivered. I noticed, swallowing a smile, that Brigid was served last, her plate dumped down with a clatter.

  “Bon appétit,” my dad said, shaking a big glug of ketchup onto his scrambled eggs.

  Brigid scrunched her nose and turned away, her shoulders betraying her disgust with a small tremor. “Ketchup on eggs?”

  “Absolutely,” my dad said. “Why? You got something against ketchup?”

  “It’s just so very . . .”

  “So very what?” my dad asked.

  “Red . . .”

  I looked up at her over my forkful of omelet.

  “. . . looks awful against yellow,” she continued.

  Weird, but I got a strange vibe and couldn’t help feeling that last bit was an afterthought.

  I asked my dad to pass the ketchup. I’d have asked for the mustard, too, had there been any.

  “So how did you and Penny do yesterday? Ready for those tryouts?”

  I wished I hadn’t told him, and not because he said it with a little bit of a mocking tone.

  “What tryouts?” Brigid asked.

  That was why.

  “Kat and her friend Penny are auditioning for the school musical.”

  “How wonderful,” Brigid said, stumbling over the w and giving it a pronounced v quality. “Which musical?”

  Vot do you care?, I wanted to say. I didn’t. I played nice. “The Snow Queen.”

  “As a musical?”

  Lord forgive me, but I almost laughed out loud. Moosical. It was funny — in my current mood it was, anyway.

  “I don’t know where they got the script or the score,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it hasn’t made it to Broadway yet.”

  “Sounds very interesting. I have stage experience, you know.”

  “Really?” my dad said. “Where?”

  “All over,” Brigid said. “London, Stockholm, Copenhagen.”

  Just my luck. Brunch with the singing scientist. I scooped a big forkful of omelet into my mouth. At least I had Jack to look forward to later.

  Sunday afternoon; finally, time with Jack. A study date. Not exactly my idea of rip-roaring fun, but it was at least something I knew he’d agree to.

  I placed a glass of milk on the table in front of him and draped my arms over his shoulders. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

  Besides the scratch of his pencil, the house was as quiet as a morgue. My mom, who’d spent all yesterday and all morning in bed with back pain, was finally up and out shopping with Stanley for baby things.

  Jack pointed to a chart with ascending red peaks. “Shrubs and forests encroaching on the once-barren tundra.”

  “And that’s bad because . . . ?”

  “Because it means more heat is absorbed by the vegetation.”

  “You’re really into this stuff, aren’t you?”

  He reached up, looping his arms behind my neck. “I am. And I’m sorry to be so distracted lately. It’s just . . .” He pushed his chair back and turned to face me, holding my hands in his. “I think it’s important, for me — more than anyone — to understand climate change and its effect.”

  “But if your resolution is to —”

  “I would. I’d get rid of it in an instant, but until then . . .” He pulled me onto his lap. “I feel somehow that this is important — for us.”

  Us. One of my favorite words. I slipped my hands around his waist, cuddling into him. “I miss you.”

  “Nothing to miss. I’m right here,” he whispered into my ear.

  True. In a way. Still, something about his preoccupation with the research project was a pebble in my shoe.

  He pulled his head back. “I may as well tell you now.”

  Uh-oh. “What?”

  “I’m stepping down as editor of the paper.”

  “You’re what?” I asked, jumping off his lap.

  “It’s more hours than I’m willing to spend right now. I’ll stay on the staff. I’m even thinking of my own little weather-study column, but editor in chief — it’s just too time-consuming. We’ve all been told to clear our calendars for the next few months.”

  “Months? Isn’t Stanley asking a bit much?”

  “Actually, that came from Brigid.”

  The pebble got bigger.

  “She’s just a visitor. She can’t tell you what to do.”

  “She’s not telling me what to do. I’m asking her what I can do,” Jack said, his eyes shining with the kind of glaze that dripped off donuts. “And her temporary status is exactly why it’s so important. I need to make the most out of my time with her. She’s smart, has been everywhere, and has tons of connections. This is a huge opportunity for me. Plus, she’s exciting.”

  He almost had me, right up until exciting, anyway. Not a good word choice, as far as I was concerned.

  “Exciting?”

  “Well, yeah. It’s really exciting.”

  “But, before, you said, ‘She’s exciting.’”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I think I know what I said. Besides, what’s the difference?”

  “Night and day. North and south — poles, if that helps?”

  “Jeez, Kat, you’re putting words in my mouth. I’m excited
about the work; that’s all.”

  I wasn’t putting words in his mouth; I knew it.

  “Fine, let’s just drop it and —” I was interrupted by the sound of voices.

  My mom and Stanley came into the kitchen. He had his arm around her waist. At first I thought it was just his normal chivalric code of honor, but then I noticed she was eggshell white.

  “Are you OK?” I asked.

  “Just overdid it a little today,” my mom said.

  “Maybe you should call your doctor,” I said. She really did look ghostly.

  I followed behind as Stanley helped my mom into the family room and eased her onto the couch. “Trust me — that was my suggestion an hour ago,” he said. “I almost did it myself.”

  “I have an appointment first thing in the morning,” my mom said. “If anything changes before then, I’ll call. I really just think I’m tired.” She fluffed a pillow behind her and turned to me. “Don’t take it personally, but you weren’t any easier on me than this one,” she said, patting her small melonlike bulge. She even wore the color of a ripe honeydew. It amused me that my pregnant mom still unwittingly favored chartreuse: the aura color Fru Birta saw haloing potential vessels.

  The thing I’d take “personally” is a big fat double-wide of blame if anything happened to my mom or the baby during this pregnancy — the pregnancy I’d “personally” brokered for both of them. As if I needed more to worry about.

  Back in the kitchen, I found Jack jamming notebooks into his backpack.

  “Are you going already?” I asked.

  “Sounds like your mom could do with some peace and quiet.”

  True, but it wasn’t like our page turning and pencil tapping would be much of a bother.

  “Besides,” he said, “last night was such a late one, I’m kind of out of it.”

  I walked him to the door and said as nice a good-bye as I could muster, but it was my turn to feel out of it.

  Even without Jack’s heads-up from the day before, I’d have known something was stewing the moment Mr. Parks stepped into the room for our lunchtime session. To say he had a hands-off style of managing us was one big whomp of an understatement.

  “If I could have everyone’s attention.”

  He got it, all right.

  Mr. Parks sat on top of a desk with his feet propped up on the attached seat. “Given a recent opportunity to earn university credit, Jack has decided to step down as editor in chief.”

  Murmurs of surprise whistled through the room.

  “We’re not losing him,” Mr. Parks said with a fanning of his palms-down hands. “He just won’t be in charge anymore.”

  “Who will?” Pedro asked.

  “I imagine —” Mr. Parks began.

  “I’d like to apply,” Pedro interrupted.

  “What?” Penny said, jumping up from her seat. “I’m the assistant editor.”

  “But I’m a senior,” Pedro said. “The editor in chief has always been a senior.”

  Mr. Parks scratched his stubbly chin, obviously not pleased to miss his lunch or be embroiled in a tug-of-war. “Tell you what,” he said. “You two write me up your first Letter from the Editor, and I’ll decide based on merit.” Mr. Parks slid off the desk. “Sound fair to everyone?”

  Penny and Pedro exchanged looks, and both shrugged. The room got library-quiet. Jack stuck his nose back into the stack of articles he had in front of him. I didn’t know where to look or what to say; I got busy on idyllic set designs for The Snow Queen. Though idyllic was hardly the way I’d have described the scene before me.

  After the bell, Penny followed me to my locker.

  “Can you believe that?” she asked.

  “Crazy,” I said.

  “Is it just me, or has the guy changed lately?”

  I honestly didn’t know which “guy” she was talking about.

  “Why would he burn me like that?” she asked.

  The fact that she took the burn personally tipped the scales toward Pedro.

  “And he can forget about me lending him my chem notes for the test tomorrow.”

  Phew. Definitely Pedro. Penny looked at me as if expecting a reply. I’d only known him a few months, so I didn’t have many back issues to reference. Besides, the only safe place in a boy-girl spat was Switzerland: clean air, mountaintop views, and neutral.

  “Is that test tomorrow?”

  “I’m home,” I called, hanging my coat on a hook.

  No answer.

  I walked through to the kitchen. “Mom?” She wasn’t there or in the family room.

  Stanley appeared on the steps. “She’s upstairs.”

  “What did the doctor say?”

  Stanley leaned his forearms against the kitchen island. “Her blood pressure is up. Her potassium counts are dangerously low. The doctor recommends bed rest for the time being.”

  “Bed rest?”

  “Just for a while.”

  “Is she awake?” I asked.

  “She’s awake. I warn you, though. She’s working on a to-do list . . . for both of us.”

  If Stanley could joke about my mom’s neat-freakin’ ways, it couldn’t be all bad — nevertheless, I trudged up the staircase with a bad feeling.

  “You’re home,” my mom said, popping a pretzel Goldfish into her mouth with one hand while jotting notes with the other.

  “Bad news, huh?” My mom was not the lounge-around type.

  “Nothing we can’t handle,” she said, ripping a page from a notebook.

  “We” had a long list of chores, the first of which was to make her a tuna melt.

  Three days later, clutching another of my mom’s lists, I stood in front of the Walden Inn, a small boutique hotel with banquet facilities. It had a charming curb appeal: snowdrifts nestled against the red brick, leaded-glass bay windows, and a green canopy over the entryway. From the icy sidewalk and the gloom of a wintry dusk, the building seemed a beacon of warmth.

  The clerk at the front desk smiled and directed me through glass doors to the sales and catering office. Past the empty reception desk, I could see a woman with her back to me working on a computer.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  She turned. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Are you Julia? The catering director, by any chance?”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m Kat Leblanc. You’ve been helping my mom, Lilja, with her wedding plans.”

  “Yes. Of course. The Olafsdottir/MacLary wedding.”

  “My mom’s pregnant and on bed rest for a while. She asked me to come by and pick up some samples you have for her.”

  How tawdry it must sound — wedding plans for my knocked-up-but-ready-for-round-two mother.

  “Your mom and I spoke earlier. Come on back.” Her smile was so genuine I knew instantly she wasn’t the kind to judge.

  She led me to her desk. It was an L-shaped cubby with a visitor’s chair pushed up against one of the wings of the cubicle.

  “Sit down,” she said, removing a stack of index folders from the padded seat.

  She fiddled her mouse into position and then double-clicked on a file. As I waited for her to pull up my mom’s file, my eyes roamed over her desk. A photo of a toothy young boy was front and center. He looked vaguely familiar. She turned and found my eyes upon the image. She lifted the frame and held it to her chest.

  “My son, Jacob.”

  “It’s funny, but I feel like I’ve seen him . . .”

  “In the paper probably.” Her eyes blinked in rapid succession. “He’s the boy who died during the blizzard.”

  I sat there, my entire body Gorilla-Glued in place. How could —? Of all people?

  “You don’t have to feel awkward,” she said. “I want people to ask me about him. To remember him. Even to know him posthumously — as crazy as that sounds.”

  I didn’t think anything was crazy anymore. “He looks happy.”

  Julia laughed out loud. “The day this picture w
as taken, he’d been in such a foul mood. I loved him dearly, but he did have a stubborn streak. For a half hour I’d bribed him with toys and candy, but nothing would get him to smile. Finally, I employed the oldest trick in the book. I looked at him and said, ‘Whatever you do, Jacob, do not smile for the camera.’ That little bugger lifted his chin with the biggest, cheesiest grin ever.” Julia pulled the photo back and looked at it, nodding her head softly. “I just loved that little contrary side to him.”

  “What kind of things did he like?” I asked, sensing her pleasure in remembering him.

  “Trains. He was just crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine. Ever heard of it?”

  “I think so.”

  She returned the photo back to its position of honor. “Well, he could have told you every one of the engines’ names and something about their personality. Thomas was his favorite, but he also got a kick out of S. C. Ruffey, the troublemaker.”

  “That’s really sweet,” I said.

  “He was,” she said without the slightest hint of resentment.

  I was moved by her love for Jacob, which was so tangible I could practically see it coil like smoke between us.

  A paper rolled off the printer, jogging me from that image.

  “Here we go,” she said, lifting it from the fold-down tray. She placed it on top of a cardboard box. “This should give your mom a few options: napkin samples, menus, place cards, and some photos of table arrangements that have worked.” She held the box out to me. “I hope your mom feels better. Have her call me with any questions.”

  A few moments later, I found myself, once again, staring up at the radiant building now set against an even darker backdrop. I had very good vibes about the place — even better vibes about Julia. I left with a fizz of hope in my chest and an idea. It was the best I had felt in a long time.

  By the time The Snow Queen auditions took place, the number of interested students had grown to around forty. The cast required thirty. Twenty-five percent of the kids currently standing in the wings of the stage wouldn’t make it. Now that I’d invested practice time into the auditions, I was hoping to make the cut.