Caroline held her mother’s white gloves to her nose and breathed deeply, the scent of the cream her mother used to wear so familiar it brought tears to her eyes. She laid the gloves gently on top of the folded dresses, skirts, and blouses in the cardboard box. There were only two indulgences her mother had ever allowed herself at the end of a long, hard day: the brushing of her thick white hair with a silver-handled brush and the application of Noxzema cream to the cracked skin on her knuckles. Caroline’s tears welled over as she recalled catching a glimpse of her mother sitting on the edge of the bed in a white nightdress, lost in thought, kneading the medicinal cream into her hands. It was the night before Caroline had left to start her new life in Winnipeg. She’d walked right past to her own room, thinking about what she had left to pack, not pausing to say good night to her mother. Oh, how she wished she could have that moment back. If only she had one more chance to hug her, to bury her head in her mother’s shoulder, to take that work-calloused hand in hers and feel its warmth.
She folded the flaps on the box and piled it on top of the other box she’d already packed. That morning, her father had instructed her to go through her mother’s things. They were destined for the church rummage sale where her mother’s few good dresses might be sold and cut up for swatches in someone’s patchwork quilt.
The task had taken less time than Caroline expected. She’d thought she would find old letters or a journal but there was nothing of the sort in the chest of drawers with her mother’s clothes, just a few bits of jewellery and some hair clips. It was in the kitchen where she found her mother’s life. Caroline had come across a stack of old calendars, piled on a high shelf in the pantry. They were filled with notations — the first day of seeding, an early autumn frost, estimated wheat yields, reminders to herself to order chicks or bake pies for the fall supper — each one an accounting of her mother’s busy days.
After she was finished, Caroline went downstairs and out to the yard where her father was lying on the ground under the belly of the Farmall, a steady clang ringing out every few seconds. There was a chill in the midday air, although the sun was making a valiant attempt in a clear sky brushed with thin, wispy clouds.
“I got all of Mum’s things sorted through. Is there anything else you need me to do?” Her father kept coming up with new jobs for her whenever she mentioned she needed to get back to the city. She’d already cleaned out the hen house, scrubbing it down with Pine-Sol, painted the outhouse with a half gallon of leftover paint, and finished making the preserves.
He shimmied out from under the tractor, squinting into the sun. “You’ve got through it all already?”
Caroline shrugged. “There wasn’t much to go through. There are only two small boxes and one box of old, worn-out things for the burn barrel.”
He stood up, putting both hands on his hips and stretching backward. “Arthritis is acting up. Must be rain coming.”
“Everything’s done in the house. I’ve even mended your shirts Mum hadn’t had time to get to during harvest. There’s really nothing else I can think of doing before I go back.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” he said, stretching his neck from side to side. “There hasn’t been a good time and I’ve been putting it off, I admit.” He reached down and picked up a wrench that was lying at his feet. “There’s no easy way to tell you this, I’m afraid.” He tapped the wrench nervously against the palm of his other gloved hand.
Caroline felt her heart skip a beat just as it did in Mrs. Miner’s office when she heard his voice on the phone. “What is it?”
“Listen,” he said, looking away. He tugged off one glove and scratched furiously at the back of his neck. “The money’s gone,” he finally said.
She took a quick, deep breath. “What do you mean?”
“I thought about it long and hard before I spent it, I really did.” He looked at her then, a pleading sort of look. “It was Old Smoky. This last harvest really did him in. I talked to Joe Coyle; he says there’s no more patching and fixing that will keep that old truck on the road. The motor’s shot. There’s nothing to be done but replace it.”
“You’ve bought a new truck?” Caroline managed to ask, her voice cracking with disbelief.
“It’s sitting at the dealership in town. I’ve been waiting to bring it home until I told you.”
Caroline let the news sink in. There was no money for her to start school after Christmas after all. It felt as if a heavy window blind had been drawn on the possibilities she’d envisioned for herself this year. But it was just a temporary setback, wasn’t it? “I suppose I can work a whole year and start class next fall like I originally planned.”
Her father tossed the wrench back on the ground. “I need to talk to you about that, too.” He climbed up on the tractor seat and stared at the steering wheel, not meeting Caroline’s eye. “It’s your place to stay home, now that your mother’s gone. Take care of the house and such.”
Caroline couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What are you saying?” He wasn’t talking about a one-year delay. He was telling her she couldn’t go to college. Not ever. “I have to go back!”
Her father stomped on the clutch and started up the motor.
“You can’t do this!” Caroline cried. “Mum wanted me to go to college!”
“Your mother’s gone, Caroline. And it’s up to you to take her place here on the farm and in the house. Leastways till I get you married off. It’s a hard pill for you to swallow, I know, but your mother would agree with me.” He pulled his cap lower on his forehead and backed away from the shop.
“But, Daddy, please,” Caroline cried, trotting alongside him as the tractor puttered down the lane. “What will I tell Susan?”
“You’ll tell her to find herself another roommate. Before winter sets in, I’ll give you some money to travel to the city and pick up your things.”
“She’s expecting me back,” Caroline shouted. “You can’t just decide this on your own without even talking to me about it!”
Her father frowned and cupped his hand up to his ear. “No use carrying on ’cause I can’t hear you anyways. Back to the house with you, now. This is the end of it.” He throttled up and shifted to high gear, and, with a puff of black smoke, the tractor sped down the lane.
“Dad. Wait!” Caroline yelled, running after him. The tractor hit a deep pothole too fast and her father nearly bounced out of the seat. “Daddy!” she screamed again, stomping her foot as he turned at the end of the lane and headed down the road.
She couldn’t believe it. Her mother was likely to roll over in her grave. It wasn’t enough that her mother had abided by every questionable decision he’d ever made, now Caroline was being made to give up on her dream, too, just because her father had declared it so.
Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might pulverize to bits inside her chest. She was an adult now, and couldn’t be told what to do. How dare her father break his promise to her and her mother! Well, she just wouldn’t take this lying down. An idea was already taking shape in her mind. She would take care of the yard and the house chores until her father gave her the money to return to the city to collect her things. When the time came, she would say goodbye and board the train. She would reunite with Susan, go back to her job, save every penny she could, and take night classes if she had to; she didn’t care if it took her ten years. She had no desire to ever come back home. There was no way her father, or any man, for that matter, was going to tell her what she could or couldn’t do.
Caroline had ignored the spindly tree for nearly a week after her father brought it home in much the same way she had avoided him the last two months. She couldn’t care less about Christmas and decorating the tree; her heart just wasn’t in it. She planned to attend Christmas service, but, other than that, she hoped the holiday would pass without any fuss.
Every year for as long as she could remember, she and her mother had bundled up and climbed up next to her father on the sleigh, bells ringing on Molly’s harness as she plodded through the snow. Some years they spent hours searching the woodland surrounding the pasture for the right Christmas tree, while other years, when the frigid air was so cold their scarves stiffened like cardboard under their noses, they returned quickly with a less-than-perfect tree. Her father had no business bringing home a tree this year without asking her if she wanted one, although since when did he care about her opinion?
This morning, with only two days until Christmas and Eldon sure to ask why there wasn’t a tree, Caroline had finally hauled the box of Christmas decorations down from the attic. She strung garland loosely in swoops to fill in some obvious gaps and attached all the familiar coloured glass ornaments. Stepping back, she tossed a handful of icicles into an empty space near the top.
Her father was in the kitchen, listening to Christmas carols on the radio and reading the paper. Caroline checked the gravy she’d left bubbling on the stove. The potatoes were mashed; the pie she’d made with the last of the pumpkins was cooling on the table. She glanced at the clock. Eldon was expected any minute. “It’s already dark. Surprised Eldon’s not here yet,” her father said, looking up from his paper.
Eldon, like the weather, was one topic safe enough to talk about. He’d made things bearable the last few months, visiting often and acting as a buffer between them. He tried to make peace, telling Caroline how hard it was for her father — a man from his generation — to be left alone without a woman to care for him. He tried to explain how much her father needed her. And she’d overheard Eldon tell her father that he should allow Caroline a little more freedom, more time to go out and enjoy herself. He told him he couldn’t understand Caroline’s desire to go off to the city any more than her father did but that she needed time to get over the disappointment of it. He often played a few hands of rummy with her father when he came, sharing his attention between them, before he’d ask to take Caroline for a short drive or to a movie in town.
“He’ll be here shortly, I’m sure,” Caroline said. She took three plates out of the cupboard and set them around her father’s newspaper. “I think I hear his truck just now.”
A minute later, Eldon came through the door, his eyes unusually bright, his face flushed from the cold. He took off his boots, hung his coat on a hook by the door, and then took Caroline’s hands in his own. They were surprisingly warm. He wanted to kiss her, she could tell by the way he looked at her, but he could not, not with her father sitting right there. She sensed the passion rising out of him like July heat from a stone, and she felt herself blush as she always did when she realized how much he desired her.
“Come in and sit down. Supper’s ready.”
Eldon and her father started in on a lively conversation about the unexpectedly cold temperatures. Her father liked Eldon and perked up into a more buoyant mood whenever he dropped by.
Caroline would never forgive her father completely. Not only had he spent the money, he’d also tricked her into believing he would allow her one last visit to pick up her things. She’d waited and waited, still holding on to a small bit of hope, asking each week for the money to go. Finally, in late October, he brought her large suitcase and a cardboard box home from the train station. He’d had Susan pack up her things and send them home on the train.
Caroline had unpacked the suitcase, hanging the dress she’d bought with Mum’s silver dollars in the back of her closet. She would never wear it on a date with Michael Wickstrom; she’d very likely never see him or Patsy or Monique again. The memories she’d made in Winnipeg in that one short month were starting to fade and all of it — the bank, the picnic, the tiny apartment — seemed like something she might have dreamed or seen in a movie.
At about that time, Eldon had started dropping in two, sometimes three times a week. He brought her small gifts to cheer her up: fine stationery for her to write letters to Susan, clips and bows for her hair, a box of Swiss chocolate. He’d kissed her for the first time on the night of the first big snowfall in November. He’d just driven her home from a pie auction at the Legion, a fun-filled night where he bid ten dollars for her lemon meringue pie and the right to share it with her and spin her around the floor for the first dance of the evening. Thick, lazy flakes of snow had swirled down, piling up on the windshield as they sat in his truck out in the yard. The heater fan squealed away, working hard to pump warm air into the cab.
“My toes are freezing,” Caroline said.
“Take off your boots,” Eldon said, and she did. She swung her legs up on the seat and he massaged her feet between warm palms then lifted one of his legs and tucked both her feet high between his thighs. Her breath caught in her throat when she felt him grow hard. “Oh!” The word escaped her and Eldon moaned, taking it as an invitation, and pulled her toward him.
His lips pressed against hers, desperate and demanding, and she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. She was rather disappointed, expecting something more from his first kiss. Heroines in novels grew weak with desire after a passionate kiss, but she had no one to ask if her lukewarm reaction was normal. She liked him well enough, though. Maybe the swooning would come in time.
She’d continued to see Eldon, liking the way she was treated when she stepped out with him. Businessmen and farmers as old as her father tipped their hats when she walked by on his arm. Being courted by Eldon Webb brought with it a sort of prestige, and she no longer felt like a teenage girl when she went in to Bud’s Mercantile for groceries or picked up a parcel at the post office. Caroline had to admit she enjoyed her new status and all the attention Eldon lavished on her.
“Mother asked if you and Caroline would join us for Christmas dinner,” Eldon said now. “Vera’s cooking a turkey, and it’s really too much for the two of us.”
“I can’t see why not. What do you think?” said Caroline’s father.
Caroline was dreading that long, empty day. Her mother had never tired of making a spectacle of Christmas morning, filling three stockings with Japanese oranges and nuts and sticky, striped candy and then pinning the socks with safety pins to the arm of the chesterfield. They’d all play along, acting as though Saint Nick had left them there during the night. There was always one special present for Caroline with a tag marked From Santa — a baby doll or a miniature set of porcelain dishes when she was younger, skates or a sweater or skirt she’d been pining for from the catalogue as she got older, even when she was too old to believe. Caroline had found a ball of yarn in her mother’s closet and knit a pair of mittens for both her father and Eldon. It wasn’t much, and she felt a little ashamed of her gift for Eldon but what could she possibly give a man who seemed to have everything?
The distraction of company would be welcome on Christmas Day, and she wouldn’t have to cook, even if it meant spending time with his dour-faced mother. “Of course, we’d love to come.”
Eldon reached for her hand and squeezed it under the table. “I’ll clear the snow off the river. Build a bonfire. We can go skating. Maybe you can invite Alice. And Susan, if she’s home.”
Later, when the dishes were cleared away, Caroline’s father went out to the barn to tend to the evening chores and Eldon and Caroline retired to the living room. Caroline plugged in the string of lights on the Christmas tree, switched off the glaring overhead light, and settled next to Eldon on the sofa. A rainbow of light shimmered off the glass ornaments and dangling silver icicles. The tree, while not perfect, looked fine in the dim light.
“I saw Clarice Hubley in the Farmer’s Store yesterday and she’s invited us to a party at their house on New Year’s Eve. I said we would come,” Eldon said, stretching out his legs and propping one up on the coffee table.
“A party? I’m not sure I’m up to it,” Caroline said, annoyed that he hadn’t asked her first. “Who would I know at a party the Hubleys would throw? Everyone is sure to be so much older than me. Married women with children, all chatting to one another. What would I possibly talk to them about?”
Eldon frowned. “You need to make friends with other women beyond the girls you knew in high school. It will be good for you to meet new people.”
“I suppose. I just don’t know if I’ll be in a very festive mood, considering the turn my life has taken in the past few months.”
“All the more reason to celebrate the start of a new year. You have to keep your chin up, look forward to better and brighter things in 1955,” Eldon said, stroking her knee. “Your future could be more than you’d ever hoped for.”
It bothered Caroline when Eldon said things like that — dismissing her feelings, as though attending a cheery gathering and flipping the page on a calendar would diminish the gaping hole her mother’s death had left in her life. “I don’t know, Eldon. My life’s on hold, really. What is there to expect or look forward to?”
“You’re young and more beautiful than you know,” Eldon said, brushing one finger gently up and down her cheek. “Your whole life’s ahead of you.” He slipped one hand in his pocket and just as quickly pulled it out. “But you have one glaring fault that I’ve noticed, if you don’t mind me saying.” He sat up straighter.
“And what is that?” Caroline said sharply. She didn’t need another lesson from Eldon, telling her to buck up, as though he, like her father, knew what was best for her.
“You focus on what you don’t have and forget to notice the good things right in front of you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She disliked when Eldon spoke in riddles, making her try to figure out what he was trying to say, as though she was being tested in some way.
“Oh, hell,” Eldon said. He stood up and reached into his pocket again. “I was going to do this on Christmas Day, but now seems as good a time as any.” He dropped down on one knee and pulled something from his pocket. On the palm of his hand was a small, black velvet box.
“Caroline McPhee,” he said, flipping open the lid, “I can’t give you a life in the city like you wanted, but I can offer you a life where you’ll have everything you need right here in Ross Prairie. I want you to be mine forever. I promise to love you and keep you always, if you’ll have me.”
A droplet of radiant light, the size of a seed pea, was nestled in the box and Caroline gasped at the sight of it. Eldon removed the diamond ring and took her hand. “Will you, Caroline?” he asked, gazing up at her. “Will you be my wife?”