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She heads back to the kitchen, posture still perfect, but now there’s an appreciable hip-sway in her walk. Jerome looks at the skateboard a little longer, then puts it back in the corner. He’s no longer sure there’s no connection between Steinman and Dahl. The similarities of location and artifacts left behind may be coincidental, but they certainly exist.
He goes back to the living room. Vera Steinman comes out of the kitchen with a fresh drink.
“Thanks very much for—”
Jerome gets that far before Vera’s knees buckle. The glass falls from her hand and rolls across the rug, spilling what smells like straight gin. Jerome ran track and played football in high school, and his reflexes are still good. He catches her under the arms before she can go all the way down in what might have been a nose- and tooth-breaking faceplant. She feels completely boneless in his grip. Her hair has come loose and hangs around her face. She makes a growling noise that might or might not be her son’s name. Then the seizures begin, taking her and shaking her like a rat in a dog’s mouth.
January 6, 2021
1
“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.
2
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.
