Elin Hilderbrand - Winter Storms

“To what do we owe this honor, Mr. Clarence?” she asks.

“I’ve been missing you,” Dougie says. He gives Margaret a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“And I you,” Margaret says. Dougie hasn’t been to see her even once this year. The weather has been virtually perfect.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” Dougie says.

Margaret’s spirits fall. Maybe it’s the weather in the Midwest. Maybe he wants her to report on the drought in California-again. Maybe Mount St. Helens is about to blow. That would be exciting! Margaret has never reported on a good volcano story.

“I’m here because we are about to get pounded,” Dougie says.

“We?” Margaret says. “Pounded?”

“The Northeast Corridor,” Dougie says. “Blizzard.”

“When?” Margaret asks.

“Tomorrow night, Thursday, Friday,” Dougie says. “The good news is it should be mostly over by Christmas Eve. The bad news is it’s I-95 from Washington to Boston.”

“And the airports,” Margaret says.

“I don’t like to use the term hundred-year storm, ” Dougie says. “But in this case…”

“Does it have a name?” Margaret asks.

“Elvira,” Dougie says.

Elvira.

Margaret looks at the briefs her new assistant, Jennifer, left her: ISIS cells suspected in the Netherlands and Denmark; the changing social landscape of Washington with the new administration (internally, Margaret groans; if there’s anything she dislikes more than election news, it’s postelection news); and… the eighteen surviving Marines making their way home.

Marines on their way home. Bart.

“Are we talking a C block?” Margaret asks. “B block?”

Dougie shrugs. “If you’re asking me… an A block.”

“That bad?” Margaret says.

“That bad.”

Margaret understands only the rudimentary basics of the science behind snowstorms. It all starts with the sun. The sun heats the earth unequally… direct sunshine in tropical regions, and low-angle sun at the poles. Heat builds up in the tropics and creates an imbalance in temperature from tropics to poles. The atmosphere doesn’t like this and tries to transport heat toward the poles.

So why do the biggest snowstorms form off the coast of North Carolina, track up to Long Island, and pound the Northeast? Because there is a perfect cocktail of weather ingredients there that’s found nowhere else in America. Cold, dense Canadian air pours southward while warm, moist air carried by the Gulf Stream ocean current tracks northward. Every now and again, the jet stream, a ribbon of strong airflow, takes a dip to the south, and through very complicated thermodynamics (that extend well beyond what was covered in the “rocks for jocks” class Margaret took at the University of Michigan) creates a low-pressure system. This low-pressure system intensifies over the warm Gulf waters, and the warm, moist air rises and flows over the cold Canadian air. The winds flow counterclockwise around the low-pressure center, and this causes the northeasterly winds to push the snow back into New England. This is how we get the term nor’easter -it is the wind’s direction during the most intense part of a storm. In winter, this storm becomes a blizzard.

“It’s expected to bomb out,” Dougie says.

“Translation?” Margaret says.

“The storm will strengthen with extreme rapidity,” Dougie says. “The low-pressure center will drop like a bomb.”

They are predicting a foot of snow in Washington and up to thirty inches in Boston, sustained winds of forty-five to fifty miles per hour, and-Dougie suspects-that rarest of weather phenomena: thundersnow. Minutes after Dougie leaves Margaret’s office, the National Weather Service issues a winter storm warning for the entire Northeast. Amtrak suspends service on December 22 and 23. Delta, Jet Blue, United, and American cancel six hundred flights, leaving over ten thousand passengers scrambling for alternative transportation.

Margaret is sitting at her desk at the studio on Wednesday when the snow starts to fall. She has released Raoul from his driving duties until after the holidays. Drake calls and says he’s rented a Ford Expedition and volunteers to drive himself and Margaret up to Hyannis. For as long as Margaret has known Drake, she has never seen him drive. He takes taxis.

“Are you sure?” Margaret asks.

“I’m sure,” Drake says. “But you have to tell Lee you’re not broadcasting tomorrow. We need to leave tonight, Margaret, as soon as you’re done.”

“Oh,” Margaret says. She already asked to take off the Friday night before her usual weeklong hiatus over Christmas. Can she ask for yet another night off? Margaret is sixty-one years old. She has been the anchor of the CBS Evening News for fourteen years. She’s not worried about job security as much as she’s plagued by a sense of duty. Millions of Americans will, likely, have their Christmas ruined by this storm, and Margaret feels compelled to be the one in the chair reporting on it.

But Kevin is her son and he’s getting married.

She feels torn in two, just as she used to when the kids were young. “What about your surgeries?” Margaret asks Drake. “Surely you can’t leave a day early.”

“Jim and Terry are covering them for me,” Drake says. “They’re both staying in the city.”

No more excuses, Margaret thinks.

She calls Lee. “I need tomorrow night off too, Lee,” she says.

“Margaret,” he says.

“You can’t make me feel any guiltier than I already feel,” Margaret says.

He’s silent. She hates when Lee is silent.

“Kevin is getting married,” she says.

“On Saturday,” Lee says. “I gave you Friday off to accommodate you going to Kevin’s wedding. That was my gift. I can’t let you go Thursday. The viewers want Margaret Quinn. The advertisers want Margaret Quinn. People turn on the TV and see Julian and they change the channel.”

“Find someone who’s more appealing than Julian!” Margaret says.

“That’s a conversation for another day,” Lee says. “This conversation is about you taking off Thursday night and the answer is no.”

Margaret fills with fury, an emotion so foreign to her that she doesn’t quite know how to process it. She is Margaret Quinn, one of the most esteemed television journalists in the nation, if not the world. And yet she still has to answer to a man, Lee Kramer, head of the network, a person she considers a friend.

Margaret takes a breath. Lee is her friend, but this is business. The advertisers pay Margaret’s salary. She has to stay and do her job.

“Okay,” she says, and then she hangs up so she can call and give Drake the bad news.

What we need is a sleigh,” Mitzi says. “And eight reindeer.”

She is standing just outside the back door of the kitchen smoking a cigarette, and Kelley is allowing it. The snow is falling slowly but relentlessly-big, fat, wet, heavy flakes, the kind you get when the temperature is hovering around the thirty-degree mark. An apron of snow is collecting on the floor and all the heat is escaping from the kitchen, which is strewn with hotel pans and dishes set up by the caterers in anticipation of the wedding reception. It’s too chaotic to cook in. Kelley had wanted to get takeout Thai food but it’s snowing so hard he can’t even make it to Siam to Go.

Kelley and Mitzi are on Nantucket, and Kevin and Isabelle are on Nantucket, and the priest, Father Paul, is on Nantucket. He arrived on the noon boat that day and is staying at the church rectory.

The Beaulieus’ plane has taken off; they’re scheduled to land in Boston at midnight. Paddy volunteered to go get them, and in the morning, Jennifer and the boys and the Beaulieus will drive to Hyannis and put their car on the 2:45 slow boat. Paddy will stay in Boston and wait for Bart.