Holly

January 6, 2021

“That’s enough,” Em says to Roddy. “Turn it off.”

“My dear,” Roddy says, “this is history. Don’t you agree, Bonnie?”

Bonnie Rae is standing in the doorway of Em’s downstairs study nook with stacks of last year’s Christmas cards forgotten in her hands. She is staring at the television, transfixed, as a mob storms the Capitol, breaking windows and scaling walls. Some wave the Stars and Bars, some the Gadsden rattlesnake flag, the one that says DON’T TREAD ON ME, many more with Trump banners the size of bedsheets.

“I don’t care, it’s awful, turn it off.”

It is awful, she means that, but it’s also awfully exciting. Emily thinks Donald Trump is a boor, but he’s also a sorcerer; with some abracadabra magic she doesn’t understand (but in her deepest heart envies) he has turned America’s podgy, apathetic middle class into revolutionaries. Intellectually they disgust her. But there is another side to her, usually expressed only in her diary, and the experiences of the last nine years have changed her at an age when personality change is supposed to be next to impossible. She would never say so, but this political sacrilege fascinates her. A part of her hopes they break into offices, haul out elected representatives of both parties, and string them up. Let them feed the birds. What else are they good for?

“Turn it off, Rodney. Watch it upstairs, if you must.”

“As you like, dear.”

Roddy reaches for the controller on the table next to him, but it slips from his hand and thumps to the carpet as a reporter says, “Do you call this a riot or an actual insurrection? At this point it’s impossible to tell.”

He picks the controller up awkwardly, not grasping it but holding it between the edges of his palms. Then, with a grimace, he thumbs the off button, killing the reporter’s voiceover in mid-speculation. He puts the controller back on the table and turns to Bonnie. “What do you think, my dear? Riot or insurrection? Is this the twenty-first century’s version of Fort Sumter?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know what it is. But I bet if Black people were doing that, the police would be shooting them.”

“Pooh,” Emily says. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

Roddy gets up. “Emily, would you work some of your magic on my hands? They don’t care for this cold weather.”

“In a few minutes. I want to get Bonnie started.”

“That’s fine.” He leaves the room and soon they hear him ascending the stairs, which he does without pause. There’s no arthritis in his knees or hips. At least not yet.

“I’ve put a file on your laptop titled CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR’S,” Bonnie says. “The names and addresses of everyone who sent you and Professor Harris a card is in it. There’s a lot of them.”

“Fine,” Emily says. “Now we need some sort of letter… I don’t know what you’d call it…” She knows very well, and she already has a complete contact list on her phone. She could transfer it to her computer in a jiff, but Bonnie doesn’t need to know that. Bonnie needs to see her as the stereotypical elderly academic: head in the clouds, losing a few miles an hour off her mental fastball, and largely helpless outside her own field of expertise. And harmless, of course. Would never dream of insurrectionists hanging elected representatives of the United States government from lampposts. Especially the blacks (a word which in her mind she will never capitalize) and the fanny-fuckers. Of which there are more every day.

“Well, if you were a business,” Bonnie lectures earnestly, “I suppose you’d call it a form letter. I prefer to think of it as a core letter. I can show you how to personalize each response to include not just thank yous—if there was a gift—and Happy New Year wishes, but personal details about families, promotions, awards, whatever.”

“Marvelous!” Em exclaims. “You’re a genius!” Thinking, As if any teenager couldn’t do the same thing, between Call of Duty sessions and posting pictures of his penis to his girlfriend on WhatsApp.

“Not really,” Bonnie says. “It’s pretty basic.” But she flushes with pleasure. “If you dictate the core letter, I’ll keyboard it.”

“Excellent idea. Just let me think how I want to word it while I see what I can do about poor Roddy’s hands.”

“His arthritis is pretty bad, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it comes and goes,” Em says. And smiles.

Roddy is lying on their bed with his gnarled hands clasped on his chest. She doesn’t like seeing him that way; it’s how he’d look in his coffin. But dead men don’t smile the way he’s smiling at her. He is still such a charmer. She closes the bedroom door and goes to her vanity. From it she takes an unlabeled jar.

“I’m thinking we should scratch her from the list,” Roddy says as she returns to the bed and sits beside him.

“Someone has nevertheless been fascinated by firm breasts and a slim waist,” Em says, unscrewing the lid of the jar. “Not to mention those long legs.” Inside the jar is a yellow jelly-like substance. There wasn’t a great deal of fat on the late Peter Steinman, but they harvested what there was.

“Of course she’s good-looking,” Roddy says impatiently, “but it’s not that. We’ve never taken someone we’ve had a close association with. It’s dangerous.”

“I worked in the same department as Jorge Castro,” she points out. “In fact, I was questioned.” She widens her eyes. “Also, you bowled in that league, the Golden Oldies…”

“Not these days.” He lifts his hands. “As for you being questioned about Castro, everyone in your department was. It was routine. This might not be the same. She works in our house.”

This, of course, is true. Emily called the girl on Boxing Day and offered her part-time employment, updating her computer to make her correspondence easier, also to create a spreadsheet containing the names of the current Writer’s Workshop applicants.

Em swipes a finger into the yellow substance which lined Peter Steinman’s abdomen not all that long ago. “Hold ’em out, sweetie.”

Roddy holds out his hands, the fingers slightly twisted, the knuckles more than slightly swollen. “Easy, easy.”

“Just a little pain, then sweet relief,” she says, and begins coating his fingers with the lotion, paying particular attention to the knuckles. Several times he grimaces and sucks in breath, making a snakelike hissing.

“Now flex,” she says.

He closes his hands slowly. “Better.”

“Of course.”

“A bit more, please.”

“There isn’t much left, hon.”

“Just a little.”

She swipes her finger again, creating a clear glass comma at the bottom of the jar. She transfers the lotion to Roddy’s left palm and he begins rubbing it into his fingers, now flexing them almost naturally.

“Her employment is short-term,” Emily says, “and she understands that. She’ll be back at the library full-time as soon as the extended Christmas break ends and the spring semester begins. And of course she’ll be working on her writing, with my encouragement.”

“Is she any good?”

“I haven’t seen any yet, but guessing by the subject matter, I would say not.”

“The subject matter being?”

She leans close and whispers, “Vampires in love.”

Rodney actually giggles.

“But in the course of our conversations, I’ve also learned a great deal about her, and it’s all good. She’s quits with her boyfriend, and even though she instigated the breakup, it’s still painful to her. She wonders if there’s something wrong with her, a character flaw, that makes her unable to participate in a stable relationship.”

Roddy scoffs. “Based on what she’s told me—yes, she does talk to me—the boyfriend, this Tom, was the very definition of a loser. She’s well rid of him, I’d say.”

“I’m sure you’re right, but this is about how she feels and what it means to us. She also has a relationship with her mother that I’d describe as fraught. Not at all uncommon, young women and their mothers often butt heads, but also good for us. Do you know what she said to me? ‘My mother is a controlling bitch, but I love her.’ Also… keep rubbing those hands, dear, work that stuff deep into the joints… also, the head librarian at the Reynolds, name of Conroy, has fixed upon our Bonnie. According to her, he has a bad case of Roman hands and Russian fingers.”

Roddy gives a brief cackle. “Haven’t heard that one in awhile.”

“If we wait until October or November, as we usually do, she will have left our employment—our part-time, seasonal employment—nine or even ten months before. If we’re questioned, and I suppose we might be, we can tell the absolute truth.” Em ticks off the points on her fingers, which are almost as slim as they were when she was a girl wearing shin-length skirts and bobby sox. “Unhappy breakup with boyfriend. A need to escape mother’s influence. Best of all, sexual harassment in the workplace. You see how good all this is? How she might just decide to up stakes and leave?”

“I suppose she might,” he says. “When you put it like that.”

“And we know her routine. She always takes the same route from the library.” She pauses, then continues in a lower voice. “I know you like looking at her breasts. I don’t mind.”

“My father used to say a man on a diet can still read a menu. So yes, I’ve looked. She has what my students—the male ones—would call a fine rack.”

“Aesthetic issues aside, those breasts amount to almost four per cent of her body fat.” She holds up the almost empty jar. “That’s a lot of arthritis relief, honeybun. Not to mention my sciatica.” She screws on the lid. “So. Have I convinced you?”

He flexes his fingers rapidly, and without apparent pain. “Let’s say you’ve given me food for thought.”

“Good. Now give me a kiss. I have to go downstairs and resume pretending to be a computer illiterate. And you have a riot to watch.”