A Fireproof Home for the Bride (39 page)

“You’re not very good at headlines,” she said, poking through the shelves and picking up a jar of pickled radishes that bore the label
6-20-57,
the very day of the tornado. Emmy held it out to Jim. “I guess we know how Mrs. Acevedo spent part of her day.”

“Hot weather for canning,” he said, taking the jar and returning it to the shelf, where it would likely sit until the entire contents of the place were unceremoniously loaded and hauled to the dump. “To think that they would have all lived if they’d come down here.”

Emmy passed the makeshift bed and pointed to the picture of the little prince. “Who’s that?” she asked Jim.

“The Infant of Prague,” he replied. “Baby Jesus.”

Emmy studied the innocent picture until she couldn’t bear the idea of a god who would stand idle over so much destruction. “I guess Mrs. Acevedo was Czech.”

Jim swept his hat from his head and rubbed his neck as though trying to conjure a memory. “Let’s get out of here,” he finally said. “You’ve got what you need to write a good piece.”

Emmy’s heart raced, and she grew quiet, contemplating whether Jim had just assigned the story to her. If so, it would be her first article, a chance to prove that she wanted to be a reporter. She climbed rapidly out of the cellar ahead of Jim, and as she placed first one foot and then the other on the crunchy dried grass, she heard a whistle from the street. She jumped, half expecting another surprise appearance from Ambrose, but was relieved to see Bobby. She cocked her head at him and then looked around at Jim closing up the cellar doors.

“I can’t give you a full byline,” Jim said, not noticing Bobby. “But if you do a good job, I can tell Gordon you’re ready for a cub position. I know it’s your day off, but if you come back to the office I can give you some pointers.”

“Can I meet you there?” Emmy asked, and Jim finally saw Bobby. Jim slung his hands into his pockets and smiled, tipping his chin in Bobby’s direction.

“Sure,” Jim said shortly, and headed off to his car. “I’ll see you there.”

“I’ve been looking for you all afternoon,” Bobby said as she got into the truck. He jerked the pickup away from the curb.

“I’m so sorry about Jesse,” Emmy said, surprised by the angry tone in his voice. “I’ve been at the paper trying to write his story.”

“Your car wasn’t downtown,” Bobby said. “Pete finally told me you might be here, that he saw you here this morning with that man.”

“I work with ‘that man,’” Emmy said through closed teeth. “Though I’m sure Pete tells it differently.”

Bobby braked hard at the stop sign and glared at her. “What’s that supposed to mean? Should he tell it
differently
? What are you thinking, Emmy, going around town at that hour with a stranger?”

“Jim’s clearly not a stranger,” Emmy said, looking out the passenger window to view Jim’s car in the side mirror, directly behind theirs, waiting to move beyond the stalled conversation.

Bobby threw the truck into gear and loudly ground the clutch, glancing in the rearview mirror and scowling. “Clearly.”

“There’s nothing to be upset about,” she said, slipping on her gloves. “Please take me back to work.”

“What work, Emmy?” Bobby asked, his voice strained. “You’re a switchboard operator, and it’s your day off.”

“I want to be a reporter,” she said, pushing the words out against the strong wind of his disapproval. “Jim thinks I’ve got what it takes.”

“‘
Jim thinks
’?” Bobby spat. “Just listen to you. ‘I want, I’ve got.’ What about me, and us? What the heck are you doing, Emmy?”

“My job,” she said defiantly, realizing that after all the time they had spent talking about his work over the phone, he had really never seemed very interested in what she did during the day. It was almost as though he wanted her to live one life for now, and then wake up wrapped in the marital sheets of his expectations. She roped in her frustration just enough to try to make him understand. “I’ve never had a boyfriend,” she said, taking Bobby’s hand. “I don’t know very well how to talk to you in a way that helps you see how I feel, but I really do need to take this next step at work. For
us.
”

Bobby pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. “My mother’s preparing for the wake,” he said, his voice cracking. “You’re expected.”

Emmy stilled her temper. “I really do need to get back to the paper,” she said, feeling trapped by the idea that she was being required to make a choice. “I want— I think I can do right by Jesse, by telling his story.”

“Damn it, Emmy, Jesse’s dead,” Bobby said, smacking the steering wheel with an open hand. “Nothing can do right by that.”

Emmy felt the weight of Bobby’s sorrow heavy on her heart, but she couldn’t budge. “I only have a couple of hours before deadline.”

“Fine,” Bobby said, and made a sudden sharp U-turn in the middle of North Terrace. They rode in silence until he pulled the truck over at the curb in front of the employee entrance to
The Fargo Forum
.

“I’m sorry,” Emmy said, keeping her hand from reaching for the door handle too quickly.

“Pete said this would happen,” he muttered.

She touched his hand; he jerked it away.

“Your
boss
is waiting,” he said. “Better hurry along and write your story.”

Emmy began to combust along the rough edge of her dual desires. “Don’t say that,” she asked, pained by the harshness of his words. “I don’t want to leave it like this.”

“Then don’t leave.” Bobby’s voice broke completely and he started to silently cry, fighting the emotion with a stiff jaw. Emmy slid across the wide seat and wrapped her arms around him.

“Don’t make me choose,” she whispered. “You know I love you.” She felt him nod against her shoulder and she held him more tightly. “Tell you what, I’ll get this done as quickly as I can, and then I’ll come straight to your house. I’ve already written the first half, so the rest should be simple enough.”

Bobby placed his hands on either side of her waist and rested his forehead against hers. “I just can’t stop thinking of him, down in that cellar, alone.”

“I think he just wanted his mother,” Emmy said. “He’s with her now.”

Bobby’s eyes glistened in the last light of the day. He kissed her tenderly on the lips and then pressed her across the seat. “I’ll come back for you in an hour.”

Emmy stepped out onto the curb and watched Bobby drive off, her damp eyes alighting on a different, familiar truck stopped at the red light across the street and down a half block. She took one step in that direction as the engine revved, the tires squealed, and Ambrose drove up, parking in front of her.

He rolled down the window. “There you are,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m certainly very popular today,” she replied, glancing past Ambrose’s stern face into the cab. There sat John Hansen, his features as small as a rabbit’s and similarly lacking expression apart from the occasional twitch. Emmy closed her coat more firmly at the neck. On the far side was Frank Halsey, glowering at her as he drew a red ember to the end of his cigarette.

“Have you seen Svenja?” Ambrose asked. His voice sounded more angry than concerned. Emmy took a step closer and met his eye.

“Why? Has something happened?” Emmy said, careful not to betray her friend’s confidence.

Ambrose turned his head to the others and said something that Emmy couldn’t hear. She stamped the cold from the bottom of each foot as she waited for his reply.

“John says you’re the only person she ever talks about, that she must have come to you.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Frank said, leaning in front of John, who remained silent but seemed scared. “She’s halfway to the cities by now.”

Emmy blinked and Frank threw his cigarette through the window, narrowly missing Emmy’s cheek as she sidestepped.

“See,” he said. “Never trust a Catholic. You’re all a bunch of liars.”

“Stop,” Ambrose said to Frank as he pressed the younger man back into his seat with a stiff arm. He turned to Emmy. “Be careful.” A glint of something flashed in his expression, but whether it was shame or pity, Emmy couldn’t tell. He ground the clutch and shifted into gear. “And if you see Svenja, tell her to get on back home.” He rolled up the window and drove off.

Emmy caught at her hat as though the motion of the departing truck had caused it to come loose, and once the taillights had disappeared around the next corner, she turned quickly toward the entrance of the building, feeling justified for having helped Svenja and yet afraid that she’d pointed the men in the right direction. She wished there were a way to track Svenja down to warn her, but knew any questions would only compromise the situation more. Emmy could only hope that the aunt in Saint Paul was hard for Ambrose to find.

Eighteen

The Start of the New

The seasons slipped from the crispness of autumn straight into the snowy chase of winter shortly after Halloween. It was the earliest snowfall anyone could seem to remember, and all the talk was about how miserable the coming months were sure to be. Not even the
Old Farmer’s Almanac
would disagree with this foreboding drop in temperature, this gray sky that would not lift. Emmy barely noticed the weather, so consumed was she with her newly elevated role as cub reporter. The job wasn’t exactly fun, since she was assigned to the obituary editor and spent much of her day phoning bereaved families and fact-checking birth and death dates with local courthouses. Still, her hours had shifted to daytime, her pay had improved by ten cents an hour, and she was able to maintain her copy-routing responsibilities as well as fill in for the new switchboard girl whenever necessary.

Other than church on Sundays, she hadn’t seen Bobby since Jesse’s funeral, as the work on the interstate was now moving around the clock in a feverish pitch to beat the pace of the earth’s freezing in deepening inches. Before long, digging would be impossible. At least she and Bobby had come to an understanding about her work during frequent telephone conversations about everything and nothing—the murmuring sound of Bobby’s voice sparking in Emmy an old-fashioned longing she found comforting on the coldly elongating nights. Still, she had found it useful to diminish her growing ambitions at the newspaper in response to a nagging voice of doubt that whispered in her heart, the sweet nothings of Bobby’s encouragement too flimsy to mute their wistful melody. Emmy understood both her aunt’s and her father’s solitary lives to be wanting of intimacy, and yet she couldn’t help being drawn by the sense of freedom she perceived each of them to embrace, the lack of incorporating the needs of others an accidental boon for their occupations.

Emmy stood at the stove of her father’s house, staring down into the simmering water as it cooked potatoes she had dug that morning out of Josephine’s frost-riddled garden. Her aunt had entered a whorl of novelistic fecundity, and due to Emmy’s shift to daytime hours, their overlap in the house had vanished. A speck of water splattered out of the pot and stung Emmy’s hand. She rubbed it and switched her gaze momentarily to the large black dog tapping the back of her knee with her warm wet nose. Coffee had rapidly grown into a sizable dog, but if her front paws were any indication, she had a bit yet to grow. She reminded Emmy of one of her grandfather’s blue heelers—Babe—who from birth had no use with being treated as a puppy and so acted like a mature dog.

“You are the best girl ever,” she said to Coffee, offering a hand to lick before returning her attention to the vat of boiling, steaming water, as though somehow she would find her future foretold in its starchy depths. Going to college seemed increasingly unappealing, even though she had opened up a savings account to that end. The more time she spent watching the seasoned reporters, the more excited she became about recording the daily dramas of human storytelling. How Josephine could be compelled to spend her time alone in a room making up tales when so many real things were happening struck Emmy as odd. Jim called this being a “natural reporter,” which emboldened Emmy to want to see the world and be charged with bringing what she learned back to those who were wed to the safety of a small town.

“Oh, cook already,” she said into the pot, which set Coffee to whimpering. “Sorry, girl.” Emmy stroked the dog’s head and kissed her on the nose. Coffee swirled in a circle that brushed her warm, muscled flank against Emmy’s skirt and sent sparks of static electricity crackling in the small room as she bolted through the house. Emmy heard the front door open, and she quickly drained the potatoes into a bowl and scraped a large chunk of butter into the middle, placing them on the table—which she had set with a new cheerful cloth of her own making—and swiftly pulled the roast out of the oven as she listened to her father groan lightly as he hung his coat, and the muffled greeting between man and dog.

“Hello, there,” she called out merrily as she began to make gravy out of the pan drippings.

“Hello, Emmy,” her father called back, a familiar weariness in his voice. She’d begun spending Friday nights with Christian, making him a hot meal and bringing Coffee along to cheer him up. Since Lida had died, Christian had grown even slighter in his gray work clothes, and Emmy could no longer deny that he was beginning to waste away. She would arrive at the house, loaded down with food to cook and put up for him to eat the following week. He was grateful, Emmy knew, but each Saturday she’d find much of the food still in the refrigerator, as though he was barely eating anything. She had no idea where he found the strength to keep up the pace at work, what with the end of the sugar beet harvest keeping the plant open all days and hours, requiring seasoned mechanics like Christian to pull countless shifts fixing endless broken belts, slipped gears, truck engines, and whatever else needed tending and tinkering. Emmy could only hope that there was food at work, or that he perhaps frequented Irv’s for more than a glass of ginger ale.

Emmy finished placing the food on the table and stripped off her apron, entering the living room in time to see Christian ease himself into the old armchair, Coffee’s sweet face cupped between his hands, the dog’s long tail thumping manically on the rug and sending up little puffs of dust with each blow. Emmy stopped short, worried by how tired her father seemed.