ANSWER by Cheryl Corson

On Christmas Eve, the Capitol Hill pot luck group I’ve been part of for twelve years had Secret Santa after dinner. The wrapped gifts were as usual, gender neutral, food-related, and cost no more than twenty dollars. We all picked numbers from a basket and did the gifts with dessert.

This year, you could take someone else’s opened gift from them instead of opening a wrapped one. But a popular gift could only be stolen three times. I think the limit came about after a pair of triple bladed herb scissors kept getting stolen the year before.

This year, Laurie Siegel and I swapped the gifts we got. Mine was a copy of a political humor book that was recycled from the previous year’s Secret Santa. I recognized it as being the one my husband had contributed at the time. Laurie had a gift bag from South Carolina that included a stainless steel wine opener, a set of round cork coasters with black line drawings of old fashioned bicycles on them, and a jar of pineapple and hot pepper jelly made in South Carolina. Laurie said her husband Alan would like the book, and I thought my husband would like the corkscrew. So we traded and no one stole our stuff during the rest of the game.

I do like the corkscrew and the jelly is still half-full in the fridge. The coasters might be okay for the Maine house. But answer this: how can the jelly still be in the refrigerator but Laurie is dead? How can you not outlive your edible Secret Santa gift?

Surely there’s some mistake, like that jelly is ten years, not seven months old, or Death will wait politely, sitting with legs crossed in the hallway, hat in hand, maybe flipping through a back issue of People Magazine while his intended visitor goes about finishing all that is left undone.

All the yarn in the cabinet that has not already been eaten by moths is woven into scarves and rugs and knitted into sweaters. All the handwritten notebook pages are digitized and patched into one or more complete memoirs. The tear in the green flannel sheet is neatly stitched back together. Old family photographs are labeled. 

The brother and sister finally talk about what it was like growing up with that mother and that father, and how it came to be that their paths diverged while still bearing the indelible thumbprint of their street address and apartment number. The husband and wife let go of their hurt feelings and weep for each other’s early and great pain. Then kiss. 

Death starts tapping his foot on the hallway floor.

The wife sends out one last Facebook post to 250 people near and far: I loved being in the sixth grade with you; in high school with you; in bed with you; in business with you. I loved the sound of your voice. I loved laughing until our stomachs hurt.

Death stands, impatient, “Leave the fucking jelly, it’s time to go,” he says.