Reagan wanted to say, “Maybe that’s why we haven’t had Covid.”
But she wasn’t even sure that 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 family had seen 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 people who 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 . . .”
“I want to do it.”
“That’s a long time for a young person to stay home.”
“I’d be home anyway, Grandpa.” Reagan hadn’t seen friends since March. She hadn’t been on a single date.
“Well, I don’t know . . .”
“I’m coming,” she’d said. “We’re going to have Christmas together.”
Reagan didn’t know how to make mashed potatoes. (Single people didn’t make mashed potatoes.) But she’d looked up directions online, and it didn’t seem hard.
Her grandpa made the gravy.
He’d already set the table with her grandma’s red poinsettia tablecloth and gotten out two of the good plates, the not-quite-china with the purple flowers around the edges.
Reagan had never seen this table so empty.
Normally it was so crowded with food there was no room for your dinner plate. And no room for anyone under forty, anyway. Reagan had spent every Christmas of her life sitting at one of the card tables set up in the living room. The kids’ tables.
This wasn’t how she wanted to move up.
God, even if this were a normal Christmas, the only reason there’d be more room at the big table was because Grandma was gone. Would they even have Christmas here anymore? Or would Reagan’s parents take over? Would their extended family split into smaller units, all the aunts and uncles doing their own thing? They were all grandparents now. All matriarchs and patriarchs. Who would get custody of Grandpa on Christmas—would it rotate? Maybe Reagan wouldn’t see her cousins again until the next funeral. The next Zoom funeral.
Motherfuck, this was a bleak line of thinking. This was a bleak time to be alive. And this was definitely a bleak motherfucking table.
She set out the potatoes, the gravy boat, the lasagna pan full of green Jell-O salad, the dinner rolls Grandpa made from a can . . .
Grandpa brought out the turkey. Reagan laughed when she saw it.
“Why are you laughing at my turkey?”
“Because it’s massive.”
He set it down. “It’s eighteen pounds.”
“That’s huge, Grandpa.”
“I only know how to make an eighteen-pound turkey. I didn’t feel like experimenting.”
“I guess you’ll have leftovers for sandwiches,” she said.
“You can take some of it with you.”
She nodded.
Grandpa sat at the head of the table, and Reagan sat next to him. He started carving the turkey with an electric knife that was probably older than she was. “It’s your lucky day,” he said. “You don’t have to fight anybody for a drumstick.”
She laughed. She was glad for his dumb jokes. They’d already run out of things to talk about in the kitchen. There wasn’t much. He was a retired rancher who watched a lot of television. She was an accountant who worked from home. They talked about Covid news and theories. They’d read all the same newspaper stories. Her grandpa watched cable news but didn’t trust it. Reagan had never really had a conversation with her grandfather before. They’d always been part of a larger group—always with her grandmother, usually with her parents. They didn’t really have an existing dynamic. So they talked about the things that had brought them together today: Their worry. Their caution. Their firm belief that most people were idiots.
That was a nice discovery, that her grandpa seemed to dislike people as much as she did. Had he always been that way? Or was he just getting crotchety in old age and loneliness? Reagan had always been that way, and it was only getting worse.
“Your grandmother would want us to say grace,” he said, after they’d piled up their plates.
“Hmm.” Reagan was noncommittal. She’d already taken a bite of turkey.
“But if she wanted me to keep saying grace,” he went on, “she should have outlived me.”
The turkey caught in Reagan’s throat. She looked up at him, to see if he was being bitter or morose—but he just looked matter-of-fact. He was buttering his roll.
Reagan finished swallowing. “She really should have.”
He set the roll on his plate. “I kept telling her . . . that if she wanted me to get into heaven, she’d have to deliver me herself.”
Reagan laughed. There were tears in her eyes. “That woman had no follow-through.”
Her grandpa looked up at her. His eyes were shining, too. “Exactly.”
“Do you think Grandma would have been as careful as you? Through all this?”
“Heck no, I would have had to nail our windows closed.”