9. December 2–14, 2018

December 2–14, 2018

1

It’s the Christmas season, and along Ridge Road, residents are marking the season in suitably tasteful and subdued fashion. There are no lighted Santas, rooftop reindeer, or lawn tableaux of the Wise Men looking reverently down at the Baby Jesus. There are certainly no houses tricked out in enough flashing lights to make them look like casinos. Such gaucheries may do for other neighborhoods in the city, but not for the genteel houses on Victorian Row between the college and Deerfield Park. Here there are electric candles in the windows, doorposts dressed in spirals of fir and holly, and a few lawns with small Christmas trees studded with tiny white bulbs. These are on timers that click off at nine o’clock, as mandated by the Neighborhood Association.

There are no decorations on the lawn or the front of the brown and white Victorian at 93 Ridge Road; this year neither Roddy nor Em Harris have felt spry enough to put them up, not even the wreath on the door or the big red bow that usually perches atop their mailbox. Roddy is in better shape than Em, but his arthritis is always worse once cold weather arrives, and now that the temperature slides below freezing by most afternoons, he’s terrified of slipping on a patch of ice. Old bones are brittle.

Emily Harris isn’t well at all. She now actually needs the wheelchair that is usually part of their capture strategy. Her sciatica is unrelenting. Yet there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Relief is now close.

Their house has a dining room (all of the Victorians on Ridge Road have dining rooms), but they only use it on the occasions when they have guests, and as they move deeper into their eighties, those occasions are more occasional. When it’s just the two of them, they take their meals in the kitchen. She supposes the dining room will be pressed into service if they have their traditional Christmas gathering for Roddy’s seminar students and the writing workshop kids, but that will only happen if they feel better.

We will, she thinks. Surely by next week and perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

She’s had no appetite, the constant pain has taken that, but the aroma coming from the oven causes the smallest pang of hunger in her stomach. It’s wonderful to feel that. Hunger is a sign of health. A shame the Craslow girl was too stupid to know that. The Steinman boy certainly had no such problem. Once he got past his initial distaste, he ate like… well, like the growing boy he was.

The kitchen nook is humble, but Roddy has dressed the drum table overlooking the backyard with the good linen tablecloth and set two places with the Wedgwood china, the Luxion wine glasses, and their good silver. Everything sparkles. Em only wishes she felt well enough to enjoy it.

She is in her best day dress. She struggled to put it on, but managed. When Roddy comes in with the carafe, he’s wearing his best suit. She notes rather sadly that it bags on him a little. They have both lost weight. Which is, she reminds herself, better than gaining it. You don’t have to be a doctor to know that fat people rarely get old; you only had to look at the few colleagues of similar ages they still have. Some will be at their Christmas party on the 23rd, supposing they are well enough to have it.

Roddy bends and gives her a kiss on the temple. “How are you, my love?”

“Well enough,” she says, and presses his hand… but lightly, because of his arthritis.

“Dinner in a jiff,” he says. “In the meantime, let’s have some of this.”

He pours into their wine glasses from the carafe, being careful not to spill. Half a glass for him; half a glass for her. They raise them in gnarled hands that were once, back when Richard Nixon was president, young and supple. They touch the rims, producing a charming little chime.

“To health,” he says.

“To health,” she agrees.

Their eyes meet over the glasses—his blue, hers bluer—and then drink. The first sip makes her shudder, as it always does. It’s the salty taste underlying the clarity of the Mondavi 2012. Then she drinks down the rest, welcoming the heat in her cheeks and fingers. Even in her toes! The surge of vitality—faint, like her hunger pangs, but undeniable—is even more welcome.

“A spot more?”

“Is there enough?”

“More than enough.”

“Then I will. Just a little.”

He pours again. They drink. This time Em barely notices the salty undertaste.

“Are you hungry, dear one?”

“I actually am,” she says. “Just a little bit.”

“Then let Chef Rodney finish up and serve out. Save room for dessert.” He drops her a wink and she can’t help but laugh. The old rogue!

The broccoli and carrot mix is steaming. The potatoes (mashed, easier on old teeth) are in the warmer. Roddy melts butter in a skillet (he always uses far too much, but neither of them is going to die young), then tilts in the plate of chopped onions and gets them frying. The smell is heavenly, and this time her pang of hunger is stronger. As he stirs the onions, turning them so they are first transparent and then just slightly browned, he sings “Pretty Little Angel Eyes,” a song from the way-back-when.

She remembers record hops when she was in high school, the boys in sportcoats and the girls in dresses. She remembers doing the Shake to Dee Dee Sharp, the Bristol Stomp to the Dovells, the Watusi to Cannibal & the Headhunters. A name that would be considered very politically incorrect today, she thinks.

Roddy takes their plates to the counter and serves out: veg, potatoes, and from the oven, the pièce de résistance: a three-pound roast, done to a turn. He shows it to her, simmering in its juices (and a few herbs which are special to Roddy), and she applauds.

He carves the liver into slices, dresses them with fried onions, and brings the plates to the table. Now Em finds herself not just hungry but ravenous. They eat at first without talking much, but as their bellies fill and they slow down, they speak—as they often do—of the old days and those who have either died or moved on. The list grows longer each year.

“More?” he asks. They have eaten a good portion of the roast, but there’s still plenty left.

“I couldn’t,” she says. “Oh my goodness, Rodney, you’ve outdone yourself this time.”

“Have a little more wine,” he says, and pours. “We’ll save dessert for later. That show you like is on at nine.”

“Haunted Case Files,” she says.

“That’s the one. How bad is your sciatica, dear one?”

“I think a little better, but I’ll let you clean up and do the dishes, if you don’t mind. I’d like to go through the rest of those writing samples.”

“I don’t mind at all. The one who cooks must be the one who cleans, my grandmother used to say. Are you finding anything worthwhile?”

Em wrinkles her nose. “Two or three prosaists who aren’t downright terrible, but that’s damning with faint praise, wouldn’t you say?”

Roddy laughs. “Very faint.”

She blows him a kiss and rolls away in the wheelchair.

2

Later—the timers along Ridge Road have turned off all the subdued Christmas lighting—Em is engrossed in Haunted Case Files, where tonight’s psychic investigator is mapping cold spots in a New England mansion that looks like a decrepit version of their own house. She feels a bit better. It’s too early to feel real relief from the liver and the wine… or is it? That loosening in her back is definitely there, and the shooting pains down her left leg don’t seem quite so vicious.

The blender has been going in the kitchen, but now it stops. Roddy enters a minute later, bearing two chilled sorbet glasses on a tray. He’s changed to his pajamas, slippers, and the blue velour robe she gave him for Christmas last year.

“Here we are,” he says, handing her one of the glasses and a long spoon. “Dessert, as promised!”

He sits down beside her in his easy chair, completing the picture of a couple who has often been pointed out on campus as a good—nay, perfect—example of romantic love’s ability to endure.

She raises her glass. “Thank you, my love.”

“Very welcome. What’s going on?”

“Cold spots.”

“Drafty spots.”

She gives him a glance. “Once a scientist, always a scientist.”

“Very true.”

They watch TV and have their dessert, spooning up a mixture of raspberry sorbet and Peter Steinman’s brains.

3

Eleven days before Christmas, Emily Harris walks slowly but steadily up from the mailbox at 93 Ridge Road. She climbs the porch steps with a fist planted in the small of her back on the left side, but this is more out of habit than necessity. The sciatica will return, she knows that from sad experience, but for now it’s almost totally gone. She turns and looks approvingly at the red bow on the mailbox.

“I’ll put the wreath up later,” Roddy says.

She startles and looks around. “Creep up on a girl, why don’t you?”

He smiles and points downward. He’s in his socks. “Silent but deadly, that’s me. How’s your back, dear one?”

“Quite good. Fine, even. And your arthritis?”

He holds out his hands and flexes his fingers.

“Good on ya, mate,” she says in a passable Aussie drawl. They took a trip to Oz shortly after their double retirement, rented a camper and crossed the continent from Sydney to Perth. That was a trip to remember.

“He was a good one,” Roddy says. “Wasn’t he?”

She doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about. “He was.”

Although how long the effects will last, neither of them know. He is the youngest they’ve ever taken, barely into puberty. There’s a great deal about what they’ve been doing that they don’t know, but Roddy says he’s learning more each time. Also—and to state the obvious—survival is the prime directive.

Em agrees. There will be no more trips to Australia, probably not even to New York for their once-every-two-years Broadway binge, but life is still worth living, especially when every step isn’t an exercise in agony. “Anything in the paper, dear?”

He slips an arm around her thin shoulders. “Nothing since the first item, and that was barely more than a squib. Just another runaway or a stranger who came upon a target of opportunity. What do you think about the Christmas party, dear one? Keep or cancel?”

She stretches on her toes to kiss him. No pain.

“Keep,” she says.