The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

by Connie Willis

  “It’s for the gravy,” he said, rummaging in the cupboard under the sink for the big pot his mother had given him to cook spaghetti in.

  “Oh, of course,” she said, and then thoughtfully, “I do know how to make gravy. Alec Guinness taught me.”

  Luke stuck his head out of the cupboard. “Alec Guinness taught you to make gravy?”

  “It’s not really all that difficult,” she said, opening the oven door and looking speculatively at the goose. “You wouldn’t happen to have any wine on hand, would you?”

  “Yes.” He emerged with the pot. “Why? Will wine counteract the grease?”

  “I have no idea,” she said. “But one of the things I learned when I was playing off-Broadway was that when you’re facing a flop or an opening night curtain, it helps to be a little sloshed.”

  “You played off-Broadway?” Luke said. “Mom never told me you were an actress.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said, opening cupboard doors. She pulled out two wine glasses. “You should have seen my reviews.”

  By 4:00 P.M., all the networks and cable newschannels had changed their logos to reflect the worsening situation. ABC had Mega-Blizzard, NBC had MacroBlizzard, and CNN had Perfect Storm, with a graphic of a boat being swamped by a gigantic wave. CBS and MSNBC had both gone with Ice Age, CBS’s with a question mark, MSNBC’s with an exclamation point and a drawing of the Abominable Snowman. And Fox, ever the responsible news network, was proclaiming, End of the World!

  “Now can I freak out?” Chin asked.

  “No,” Nathan said, feeding in snowfall rates. “In the first place, it’s Fox. In the second place, a discontinuity does not necessarily mean the end of the wo—”

  The lights flickered. They both stopped and stared at the overhead fluorescents. They flickered again.

  “Backup!” Nathan shouted, and they both dived for their terminals, shoved in zip drives, and began frantically typing, looking anxiously up at the lights now and then.

  Chin popped the zip disk out of the drive. “You were saying that a discontinuity isn’t necessarily the end of the world?”

  “Yes, but losing this data would be. From now on we back up every fifteen minutes.”

  The lights flickered again, went out for an endless ten seconds, and came back on again to Peter Jennings saying, “—Huntsville, Alabama, where thousands are without power. I’m here at Byrd Middle School, which is serving as a temporary shelter.” He stuck the microphone under the nose of a woman holding a candle. “When did the power go off?” he asked.

  “About noon,” she said. “The lights flickered a couple of times before that, but both times the lights came back on, and I thought we were okay, and then I went to fix lunch, and they went off, like that—” she snapped her fingers. “Without any warning.”

  “We back up every five minutes,” Nathan said, and to Chin, who was pulling on his parka, “Where are you going?”

  “Out to my car to get a flashlight.”

  He came back in ten minutes later, caked in snow, his ears and cheeks bright red. “It’s four feet deep out there. Tell me again why I shouldn’t freak out,” he said, handing the flashlight to Nathan.

  “Because I don’t think this is a discontinuity,” Nathan said. “I think it’s just a snowstorm.”

  “Just a snowstorm?” Chin said, pointing at the TVs, where red-eared, red-cheeked reporters were standing in front of, respectively, a phalanx of snowplows on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, a derailed train in Casper, and a collapsed Wal-Mart in Biloxi, “—from the weight of a record fifty-eight inches of snow,” Brit Hume was saying. “Luckily, there were no injuries here. In Cincinnati, however—”

  “Fifty-eight inches,” Chin said. “In Mississippi. What if it keeps on snowing and snowing forever till the whole world…?”

  “It can’t,” Nathan said. “There isn’t enough moisture in the atmosphere, and no low pressure system over the Gulf to keep pumping moisture up across the lower United States. There’s no low pressure system at all, and no ridge of high pressure to push against it, no colliding air masses, nothing. Look at this. It started in four different places hundreds of miles from each other, in different latitudes, different altitudes, none of them along a ridge of high pressure. This storm isn’t following any of the rules.”

  “But doesn’t that prove it’s a discontinuity?” Chin asked nervously. “Isn’t that one of the signs, that it’s completely different from what came before?”

  “The climate would be completely different, the weather would be completely different, not the laws of physics.” He pointed to the world map on the mid-right-hand screen. “If this were a discontinuity, you’d see a change in ocean current temps, a shift in the jet stream, changes in wind patterns. There’s none of that. The jet stream hasn’t moved, the rate of melting in the Antarctic is unchanged, the Gulf Stream’s still there. El Niño’s still there. Venice is still there.”

  “Yeah, but it’s snowing on the Grand Canal,” Chin said. “So what’s causing the mega-storm?”

  “That’s just it. It’s not a mega-storm. If it were, there’d be accompanying ice-storms, hurricane-force winds, microbursts, tornadoes, none of which has shown up on the data. As near as I can tell, all it’s doing is snowing.” He shook his head. “No, something else is going on.”

  “What?”

  “I have no idea.” He stared glumly at the screens. “Weather’s a remarkably complex system. Hundreds, thousands of factors we haven’t figured in could be having an effect: cloud dynamics, localized temperature variations, pollution, solar activity. Or it could be something we haven’t even considered: the effects of de-icers on highway albedo, beach erosion, the migratory patterns of geese. Or the effect on electromagnetic fields of playing ‘White Christmas’ hundreds of times on the radio this week.”

  “Four thousand nine hundred and thirty-three,” Chin said.

  “What?”

  “That’s how many times Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ is played the two weeks before Christmas, with an additional nine thousand and sixty-two times by other artists. Including Otis Redding, U2, Peggy Lee, the Three Tenors, and the Flaming Lips. I read it on the internet.”

  “Nine thousand and sixty-two,” Nathan said. “That’s certainly enough to affect something, all right.”

  “I know what you mean,” Chin said. “Have you heard Eminem’s new rap version?”

  By 4:15 P.M., the spaghetti pot was two-thirds full of goose grease, Luke’s mother and Madge and Shorty still weren’t there, and the goose was nearly done. Luke and Lulla had decided after their third glass of wine apiece to make the gravy.

  “And put the tent back on,” Lulla said, sifting flour into a bowl. “One of the things I learned when I was playing the West End is that uncovered is not necessarily better.” She added a cup of water. “Particularly when you’re doing Shakespeare.”

  She shook in some salt and pepper. “I remember a particularly ill-conceived nude Macbeth I did with Larry Olivier.” She thrust her hand out dramatically. “‘Is that a dagger that I see before me?’ should not be a laugh line. Richard taught me how to do this,” she said, stirring the mixture briskly with a fork, “It gets the lumps out.”

  “Richard? Richard Burton?”

  “Yes. Adorable man. Of course he drank like a fish when he was depressed—this was after Liz left him for the second time—but it never seemed to affect his performance in bed or in the kitchen. Not like Peter.”

  “Peter? Peter Ustinov?”

  “O’Toole. Here we go.” Lulla poured the flour mixture into the hot drippings. It disappeared. “It takes a moment to thicken up,” she said hopefully, but after several minutes of combined staring into the pot, it was no thicker.

  “I think we need more flour,” she said, “and a larger bowl. A much larger bowl. And another glass of wine.”

  Luke fetched them, and after a good deal of stirring, she added the mixture to the drippings, which immediately began to thicken up. �
��Oh, good,” she said, stirring. “As John Gielgud used to say, ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’ Oh, dear.”

  “What did he say that for?—oh, dear,” Luke said, peering into the pot where the drippings had abruptly thickened into a solid, globular mass.

  “That’s not what gravy’s supposed to look like,” Aunt Lulla said.

  “No,” Luke said. “We seem to have made a lard ball.”

  They both looked at it awhile.

  “I don’t suppose we could pass it off as a very large dumpling,” Aunt Lulla suggested.

  “No,” Luke said, trying to chop at it with the fork.

  “And I don’t suppose it’ll go down the garbage disposal. Could we stick sesame seeds on it and hang it on a tree and pretend it was a suet ball for the birds?”

  “Not unless we want PETA and the Humane Society after us. Besides, wouldn’t that be cannibalism?”

  “You’re right,” Aunt Lulla said. “But we’ve got to do something with it before your mother gets here. I suppose Yucca Mountain’s too far away,” she said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t have any acid on hand, would you?”

  At 4:23 P.M., Slim Rushmore, on KFLG out of Flagstaff, Arizona, made a valiant effort to change the subject on his talk radio show to school vouchers, usually a sure-fire issue, but his callers weren’t having any of it. “This snow is a clear sign the Apocalypse is near,” a woman from Colorado Springs informed him. “In the Book of Daniel, it says that God will send snow ‘to purge and to make them white, even to the time of the end,’ and the Book of Psalms promises us ‘snow and vapours, stormy wind fulfilling his word,’ and in the Book of Isaiah…”

  After the fourth Scripture (from Job: “For God saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth”) Slim cut her off and took a call from Dwayne in Poplar Bluffs.

  “You know what started all this, don’t you?” Dwayne said belligerently. “When the commies put fluoride in the water back in the fifties.”

  At 4:25 P.M., the country club called the church to say they were closing, none of the food and only two of the staff could get there, and anybody who was still trying to have a wedding in this weather was crazy. “I’ll tell her,” Paula said and went to find Stacey.

  “She’s in putting on her wedding dress,” the viola player said.

  Paula moaned.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I tried to explain to her that the rest of the quartet was not coming, but I didn’t get anywhere.” He looked at her quizzically. “I’m not getting anywhere with you either, am I?” he asked, and Jim walked in.

  He was covered in snow. “The car got stuck,” he said.

  “Where are Kindra and David?”

  “They closed Houston,” he said, pulling Paula aside, “and Newark. And I just talked to Stacey’s mom. She’s stuck in Lavoy. They just closed the highway. There’s no way she can get here. What are we going to do?”

  “You have to tell her the wedding has to be called off,” Paula said. “You don’t have any other option. And you have to do it now, before the guests try to come to the church.”

  “You obviously haven’t been out there lately,” he said. “Trust me, nobody’s going to come out in that.”

  “Then you obviously have to cancel.”

  “I know,” he said worriedly. “It’s just…she’ll be so disappointed.”

  Disappointed is not the word that springs to mind, Paula thought, and realized she had no idea how Stacey would react. She’d never seen her not get her way. I wonder what she’ll do, she thought curiously, and started back into the vestry to change out of her bridesmaid dress.

  “Wait,” Jim said, grabbing her hand. “You have to help me tell her.”

  This is asking way too much, Paula thought. I want you to marry me, not her. “I—” she said.

  “I can’t do this without you,” he said. “Please?”

  She extricated her hand. “Okay,” she said, and they went into the changing room, where Stacey was in her wedding dress, looking at herself in the mirror.

  “Stacey, we have to talk,” Jim said, after a glance at Paula. “I just heard from your mother. She’s not going to be able to get here. She’s stuck at a truck stop outside Lavoy.”

  “She can’t be,” Stacey said to her reflection. “She’s bringing my veil.” She turned to smile at Paula. “It was my great-grandmother’s. It’s lace, with this snowflake pattern.”

  “Kindra and David can’t get here either,” Jim said. He glanced at Paula and then plunged ahead. “We’re going to have to reschedule the wedding.”

  “Reschedule?” Stacey said as if she’d never heard the word before. Which she probably hasn’t, Paula thought. “We can’t reschedule. A Christmas Eve wedding has to be on Christmas Eve.”

  “I know, honey, but—”

  “Nobody’s going to be able to get here,” Paula said. “They’ve closed the roads.”

  The minister came in. “The governor’s declared a snow emergency and a ban on unnecessary travel. You’ve decided to cancel?” she said hopefully.

  “Cancel?” Stacey said, adjusting her train. “What are you talking about? Everything will be fine.”

  And for one mad moment, Paula could almost see Stacey pulling it off, the weather magically clearing, the rest of the string quartet showing up, the flowers and Kindra and David and the veil all arriving in the next thirty-five minutes. She looked over at the windows. The snow, reflected softly in the candlelight, was coming down harder than ever.

  “We don’t have any other choice than to reschedule,” Jim said. “Your mother can’t get here, your maid of honor and my best man can’t get here—”

  “Tell them to take a different flight,” Stacey said.

  Paula tried. “Stacey, I don’t think you realize, this is a major snowstorm. Airports all over the country are closed—”

  “Including here,” the viola player said, poking his head in. “It was just on the news.”

  “Well, then, go get them,” Stacey said, adjusting the drape of her skirt.

  Paula’d lost the thread of this conversation. “Who?”

  “Kindra and David.” She adjusted the neckline of her gown.

  “To Houston?” Jim said, looking helplessly at Paula.

  “Listen, Stacey,” Paula said, taking her firmly by the shoulders. “I know how much you wanted a Christmas Eve wedding, but it’s just not going to work. The roads are impassable. Your flowers are in a ditch, your mother’s trapped at a truck stop—”

  “The cello player’s in the hospital with frostbite,” the viola player put in.

  Paula nodded. “And you don’t want anyone else to end up there. You have to face facts. You can’t have a Christmas Eve wedding.”

  “You could reschedule for Valentine’s Day,” the minister said brightly. “Valentine weddings are very nice. I’ve got two weddings that day, but I could move one up. It could still be in the evening,” but Paula could tell Stacey had stopped listening at “you can’t have—”

  “You did this,” Stacey snapped at Paula. “You’ve always been jealous of me, and now you’re taking it out on me by ruining my wedding.”

  “Nobody’s ruining anything, Stacey,” Jim said, stepping between them. “It’s a snowstorm.”

  “Oh, so I suppose it’s my fault!” Stacey said. “Just because I wanted a winter wedding with snow—”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” Jim said sternly. “Listen, I don’t want to wait either, and we don’t have to. We can get married right here, right now.”

  “Yeah,” the viola player said. “You’ve got a minister.” He grinned at Paula. “You’ve got two witnesses.”

  “He’s right,” Jim said. “We’ve got everything we need right here. You’re here, I’m here, and that’s all that really matters, isn’t it, not some fancy wedding?” He took her hands in his. “Will you marry me?”

  And what woman could resist an offer like that? Paula thought. Oh, well, you knew when you got on the plane that he was going to marr
y her.

  “Marry you,” Stacey repeated blankly, and the minister hurried out, saying, “I’ll get my book. And my robe.”

  “Marry you?” Stacey said. “Marry you?” She wrenched free of his grasp. “Why on earth would I marry a loser who won’t even do one simple thing for me? I want Kindra and David here. I want my flowers. I want my veil. What is the point of marrying you if I can’t have what I want?”

  “I thought you wanted me,” Jim said dangerously.

  “You?” Stacey said in a tone that made both Paula and the viola player wince. “I wanted to walk down the aisle at twilight on Christmas Eve,” she waved her arm in the direction of the windows, “with candlelight reflecting off the windowpanes and snow falling outside.” She turned, snatching up her train, and looked at him. “Will I marry you? Are you kidding?”

  There was a short silence. Jim turned and looked seriously at Paula. “How about you?” he said.

  At six o’clock on the dot, Madge and Shorty, Uncle Don, Cousin Denny, and Luke’s mom all arrived. “You poor darling,” she whispered to Luke, handing him the green bean casserole and the sweet potatoes, “stuck all afternoon with Aunt Lulla. Did she talk your ear off?”

  “No,” he said. “We made a snowman. Why didn’t you tell me Aunt Lulla had been an actress?”

  “An actress?” she said, handing him the cranberry sauce. “Is that what she told you? Don’t tip it, it’ll spill. Did you have any trouble with the goose?” She opened the oven and looked at it, sitting in its pan, brown and crispy and done to a turn. “They tend to be a little juicy.”

  “Not a bit,” he said, looking past her out the window at the snowman in the backyard. The snow he and Aunt Lulla had packed around it and on top of it was melting. He’d have to sneak out during dinner and pile more snow on.

  “Here,” his mom said, handing him the mashed potatoes. “Heat these up in the microwave while I make the gravy.”

  “It’s made,” he said, lifting the lid off the saucepan to show her the gently bubbling gravy. It had taken them four tries, but as Aunt Lulla had pointed out, they had more than enough drippings to experiment with, and, as she had also pointed out, three lardballs made a more realistic snowman.