Holly

December 4–19, 2020

On December 4th, Bell College President Hubert Crumley announces that he is sending all students home early because of rampant Covid infections on campus. On the 7th—Pearl Harbor Day—he decrees that the spring semester will consist of remote classes only.

Roddy Harris is horrified.

“That’s all right for you literary types,” he says to Emily. “Most writing has been done in a lockdown environment since time immemorial, but aren’t we supposed to follow the science, according to the great Dr. Fauci? What about lab time, for God’s sake? Bio labs? Chemistry and physics labs? What about them? Labs are science!”

“This too shall pass, my dear,” Em says.

“Yes, but when? And in the meantime, what to do? I need to talk to Hamish about this.”

Hamish Anders is the head of the Life Sciences Department, and Em doubts if Roddy’s fulminations—which is what they are—will move him much. She and Roddy still take active roles in the doings of their respective colleges, but their status is largely honorary. She understands that, and is happy with her little job of reading applications to the Writer’s Workshop, especially without Jorge Castro to get in her way. It keeps her busy, it keeps her sharp, and there is the occasional gem in those piles of slush. But something else is troubling her.

“No Christmas party this year,” she says. “We haven’t missed since 1992—almost thirty years! It’s a shame.”

Roddy hasn’t even considered that. “Well… it’s not an official lockdown, dear. So people might come…” He sees her eye-roll. “At least a few?”

“I don’t think so. Even if they did, how would they eat canapes and drink champagne indoors with their masks on?” Something else occurs to her then. “And The BellRinger! Those anti-establishment dodos who think they’re reporters would have a ball with that!”

The BellRinger is the campus newspaper.

Em frames a headline with her hands. “Old Profs Party While America Burns with Fever! How does that sound to you?”

He has to laugh, and Emily joins in. Winter is hard on old joints and bones, and they are having the usual aches and pains, but overall they’re doing very well. The real pain will return, they know this from experience, but in the meantime, Peter Steinman has been good to them.

Of course planning ahead is important, and they have already started making a list of possibles. Roddy likes to say that God wouldn’t have given us brains unless he wanted us to use them. Not that either of them believes in God, or a happily-ever-afterlife, which is an excellent reason to extend this one as long as possible.

“No Christmas party, on top of everything else!” Roddy exclaims. “Damn this plague!”

She gives him a hug.

A week later Emily comes out to the garage, where Roddy is affixing the 2021 state ID stickers on the license plates of their Subaru wagon. Next to it is the van with the blue and white license plates from the next state over. Roddy starts it up every once in awhile to freshen the battery, but the van is only used on special occasions. The Wisconsin disability plates weren’t stolen, because stolen plates have a tendency to be reported. He created them in his basement workshop and would defy anyone to tell the difference between them and the real thing.

“What are you doing out here without a coat?” Roddy asks.

“I’ve had an idea,” she says, “and couldn’t wait to tell you. I think it’s a good one, but you be the judge.”

He listens and declares it not just a good idea but an excellent idea. Genius, in fact. He gives her a hug that’s maybe a bit too strong.

“Easy, big boy,” Em says. “The sciatica is sleeping. Don’t wake it up.”

The Harrises’ annual Christmas party happens after all. It’s held on the Saturday before Christmas. The attendance is the best in years, and no one has to wear a mask. Some of the partygoers arrive from other states (one actually orbits in from Bangladesh), but most are from nearby. President Crumley comes and so does this year’s writer-in-residence, Henry Stratton (Emily would never say it, but thinks it’s nice to have a straight white male holding down the job again).

It’s a Zoom party, of course, but with a special touch that caused Roddy to raise his estimation of Em’s idea from excellent to genius. They can’t serve food and drink to the party attendees in Maine or Colorado or Bangladesh, but here in this city they absolutely can—especially to those living along Victorian Row between the school and the park.

They use the websites of the English and Life Sciences Departments to advertise for one-night-only help, explaining what the job would entail. The stipend offered is small (the Harrises are financially comfortable but not rich), but they still have plenty of takers. It’s the novelty of the thing, Emily says. Plenty of campus employees—even a few instructors!—sign up for duty as Santa’s elves. They spread out on the night of the party dressed in Santa hats and Santa beards. Some even add black boots and tip-of-the-nose Santa glasses. Santa’s elves are reverse trick-or-treaters, each bearing a small tray of canapes to local partygoers. And sixpacks of Iron City beer in lieu of champagne.

The party is a roaring success.

A Santa’s elf also comes to 93 Ridge Road, home of the Harrises—Emily insisted. Roddy lets her in. It’s a darned pretty elf with lots of blond hair and lively brown eyes above her white beard. Her red Santa pants accentuate long legs which Roddy admires surreptitiously (but not too surreptitiously for Em). Emily shows the elf into the living room, where both Harrises have set up their laptops—the better to Zoom with, my dear. Em takes the plate of canapes. Roddy takes the sixpack of IC.

On their laptops, Henry Stratton and his girlfriend are tipsily harmonizing on “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” from their own Victorian (once the residence of Jorge Castro and his “friend”).

“Aren’t you just the cutest elf ever?” Roddy says.

“Watch him, he’s a shark,” Emily says. The elf laughs and says she will. Emily shows her back to the door. “Do you have more stops to make?”

“A couple,” says the elf, and points to her bike at the end of the walk. A cooler, presumably holding two more cellophane-wrapped plates of canapes and two more sixpacks, has been bungee-corded to the package carrier. “I’m glad it’s warm enough to bicycle. Professor, this was such a fantastic idea!”

“Thank you, dear. Very kind of you to say.”

The elf gives Emily a shy side-glance. “I took your Early American Writers the year before you retired. That was an awesome class.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“And this year I finally decided to apply for the workshop. You know, the Writer’s Workshop? You’ll probably come across my submission, if you’re reading them for Mr. Stratton—”

“I am, but if you’re applying for the fall semester next year, I think we’ll have somebody new.” She lowers her voice. “We’ve asked Jim Shepard, although I doubt if he’ll agree to come.”

“That would be amazing, but I probably won’t make the cut, anyway. I’m not very good.”

Em pretends to cover her ears. “I pay no attention to what writers say about their work. It’s what the work says about the writer that matters.”

“Oh. I suppose that’s very true. Well, I better get going. Enjoy your party!”

“We will,” Em says. “What’s your name, dear?”

“Bonnie,” the elf says. “Bonnie Dahl.”

“Do you ride your bike everywhere?”

“Except in bad weather. I have a car, but I love my bike.”

“Very aerobic. Do you live close by?”

“I have a little condo apartment by the lake. I work at the Reynolds and pick up other work—odd jobs, like—when I can.”

“Should you be looking for another odd job in the near future, I might have something you could help me with.” She wonders if Bonnie’s response will be awesome or amazing.

“Really? That would be awesome!”

“Are you computer-friendly? Working in the library, you must be. I can hardly turn mine on without Roddy to help me.” Emily speaks this lie with a disarming smile.

“I can’t fix them, but work with them, sure!”

“May I have your number, just in case? No promises, mind.”

Bonnie complies happily. Em could put it in her iPhone contacts as quick as winking, but in her current persona as a computer illiterate, she scratches it on a napkin featuring a dancing and obviously inebriated St. Nick and the words HAPPY HOLIDAZE!

“Merry Christmas, Bonnie. Perhaps I’ll see you again.”

“Cool! Merry Christmas!”

She goes down the walk. Emily closes the door and looks at Roddy.

“Nice legs,” he says.

“Dream on, Lothario,” she replies, and they both laugh.

“Not only an elf, an aspiring writer,” Roddy says.

Em snorts. “Awesome. Cool. Amayyyzing. I doubt if she could write an original sentence if someone put a gun to her head. But it’s not her brains we’d be interested in. Would we?”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Roddy says, and they both laugh some more.

They have a little list of possibles for next fall, and this Santa’s elf would make a good addition.

“As long as she’s not vegan,” Roddy says. “We don’t need another one of those.”

Emily kisses his cheek. She loves Roddy’s dry sense of humor.