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.
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.
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.
July 23, 2021
Holly crosses Red Bank Avenue to the defunct auto repair shop, slips into the driver’s seat of her Prius, and slams the door. It’s been sitting in the sun and is hotter than a sauna, but even though sweat pops on her forehead and the back of her neck almost at once, Holly doesn’t start the car to get the AC working. She only stares out through the windshield, trying to get her mind around what she’s just found out. I’d put your inheritance at just over six million dollars, Emerson said. Plus another three when Uncle Henry dies.
She tries to think of herself as a millionaire, but it doesn’t work. Doesn’t come close to working. All she can see is Uncle Pennybags, the mustachioed and top-hatted avatar of the Monopoly game. She tries to think of what she might do with her new-found riches. Buy clothes? She has enough. Buy a new car? Her Prius is very reliable, and besides, it’s still under warranty. There’s no need to help with Jerome’s education, he’s all set, although she supposes she might help with Barbara’s. Travel? She’s sometimes daydreamed about going on a cruise, but with Covid running rampant…