“I’ll check. There’s no reason for you to be answering the door right now. Nobody needs you.”
She looked out the window. She didn’t see anyone. Who was making deliveries on Christmas Day? Fucking Amazon Prime.
Reagan opened the door. The Jell-O salad was sitting on the welcome mat.
She picked it up, then went inside and wiped the glass down with a Clorox wipe.
Her mom texted while Reagan was peeling potatoes.
I’ve been thinking and I just think it would be okay if you brought Grandpa over for dinner.
You always think it would be okay,Reagan texted back.
Well it has been so far!
Her older sister, Caitlin, was on the thread, too.
I mean,Caitlin texted,Mom’s right. We haven’t seen each other in nine months, and none of us have had Covid. So that’s nine months we could have seen each other.
Reagan wanted to say,“Maybe that’s why we haven’t had Covid.”
But she wasn’t evensurethat no one in her family had had Covid. They wouldn’t tell her if they had. Half of them didn’t wear masks—half of Nebraska wouldn’t wear a mask. Her brother kept posting conspiracy theories on Facebook, and Reagan was the only one arguing with him.
Also, Reagan’s familyhadseen each other. The rest of them had. They’d all gotten together for Thanksgiving.“We’re socially distanced over here,”her mom had called to tell her.
“You put the leaf in the dining room table,”Reagan replied.“That’s not social distancing.”
Only Reagan and her grandpa were taking this seriously. They each spent Thanksgiving alone—Grandpa here in Arnold, the little town where most of her family still lived, and Reagan a few hours away, in Lincoln.
“We’re all so worried about you,”her mom kept saying to her.“You’re becoming a recluse.”
“I’m simply following the recommendations of the CDC,”Reagan would say.
“Oh, the CDC ...”
Reagan didn’t need to get Covid. She was fat and prone to bronchitis. She was exactly the sort of person who showed up in those “Who we’ve lost” retrospectives in the local newspaper.
If you asked Reagan, every single person in her family looked like someone in a Covid obituary. They were all fat. Her dad was diabetic. Her mom was a cancer survivor. Her sister still smoked. What were they playing at? They weren’t lucky people. They were the sort of peoplewho got laid off right before Christmas and got pregnant in the back seat of cars. Why were they willing to roll these dice?
Her grandpa had locked down right away.
“I’m worried about your grandpa,”her mom said back in April.“He won’t let me come over.”
Good,Reagan had thought.
“He’s still grieving,”her mom said.“He shouldn’t be alone.”
Reagan couldn’t really argue with that. There was no good argument. There was no answer. No good way to deal with any of this.
She’d called Grandpa on Thanksgiving Day and cooked up a plan for Christmas. She’d had to convince him it would be safe.
“I’ll stay home for two weeks, Grandpa. I’ll be totally quarantined.”
“Well, I don’t know that I want you to do that for me, Reagan ...”
“Iwantto do it.”
“That’s a long time for a young person to stay home.”
