Esplanade

It was too warm outside to leave the pies on the porch the way Lillian would have back when the kids lived at home. She put them in the spare room instead (the one that used to be Jodie’s before it was Kristin’s), and turned the ceiling fan on hoping that would take the temperature down far enough to keep the apple and blueberry cool until the following afternoon. It was just after midnight, and she was behind on her cooking. This never used to happen, but when Ken passed away, she found herself becoming less and less punctual. Retirement hadn’t helped either. She now had more time than ever, and yet, she was always running out of it.

If you had asked her when the last time it was that someone had knocked on her front door unexpectedly, she wouldn’t have been able to tell you. The correct answer was when the police officer had arrived at around 2pm on a Thursday, because she had left her phone in the car, and when Jodie couldn’t get ahold of her, she panicked and called in a wellness check. Lillian had been mortified, but also touched that her youngest daughter cared so much. She and Kristin barely ever texted or talked over the phone, and Jeremy only sent her photos of the twins although she supposed that was better than nothing. His husband, Ben, makes it a point to send her funny memes once a day, which felt impersonal as well, but attentive nonetheless. She got the impression that she was on a daily checklist somewhere.

Make sure mother-in-law is still alive but don’t be obvious about it.

It was far too late for somebody to be knocking, but it was the night before Christmas, and Lillian imagined a neighbor realizing that they’d forgotten something at the market earlier that day. Potatoes or corn or canned cranberries. She was wearing one of Ken’s old t-shirts and a pair of his gym shorts. When she was younger, she never let herself be one of those women who walked around the house in her husband’s clothes, but now, here she was, closer to seventy than sixty, and she found a kind of comfort in her deceased husband’s belongings in addition to how the clothes felt on her. There was something interesting about the musk that they retained. Maybe she would cut her hair short and let her children think she was coming out later in life. She didn’t want to date anyone--man or woman--but she liked the idea of being talked about again. That didn’t mean she wanted a stranger to see her this way. She threw on a robe Jodie had bought her for Mother’s Day years ago that she had worn maybe twice, if that, and tried her best to make her hair look presentable using only her fingers and a little spit.

She opened the door without checking to see who it was first. If she was murdered the night before Christmas, what a way to go. She’d lived on Esplanade since her and Ken got married, and there hadn’t been so much as a run stop sign in the neighborhood in years, but one could always hope to end up a true crime podcast episode. On the other side of the door was a man holding a cage with a blanket over it.

“Hello,” he said, “Lillian, right?”

“That’s right,” she said, unsure if she should confirm her name, “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” he said, “I was told to deliver this to you. Merry Christmas.”

He hands her the cage. Without thinking, she takes it. The man turns around and walks down her path. Lillian hears a strange sound underneath the blanket. She considers yelling at the man to come back and get whatever it is that he’s given her, but what if he does? She needs to know what’s under the covering, and it would seem that she’d have to claim ownership before looking. She takes the cage inside, closes the door by nudging it shut with her good hip, and goes into the dining room to set the strange item down on the table which will (ideally) be set in just a few short hours.

Clearing her throat, she whisked the blanket off like a magician showcasing a trick. In the cage, there sat a small fox. Lillian would have yelped if anyone would have heard her. She didn’t believe in making noise while alone. Noise was something meant for other people. Silence was a great gift if utilized properly. The fox wasn’t making any noise, and Lillian realized she didn’t know what a fox would sound like. She didn’t know how to interact with it. Should she pet it? Should she coo at it? Was it closer to a dog or a cat? And who had given it to her? Not one of her children. The fox licked its front paw, and then yawned a bit. It was adorable, but she knew better than to remove it from the cage or put her fingers anywhere near it.

While she tried to remember where she’d left her phone so she could Google what a person is meant to do with a fox, she heard a crash from the spare room. The fox should have been her main priority no matter what other calamity might present itself, but with three children, three in-laws, six grandchildren, and her older sister two days post-eye surgery showing up tomorrow, the fox would have to start spewing nuclear waste in order to properly compete. She ran into the spare room to find that the ceiling fan was turning at a much too rapid pace. A piece of it had broken off and apparently hit the wall where it had left a somewhat large dent. She would have to get near the ceiling fan to pull the string to stop it, but she was terrified knowing that pieces could just jettison off like that. Still, there was no way around it. She ran under the center of it and tried to remember how many tugs it takes to turn it all the way off. While she was trying to remember, another piece broke off and landed in her right arm. She screamed (forgetting her rule about making noise while alone), but she managed to tug twice (a guess) and heard the power behind the fan extinguish.

Lillian ran out of the room (the pies be damned, they could be served boiling hot tomorrow for all she cared) and into the bathroom. She knew there wasn’t a traditional first-aid kit in there, but there might be a mostly empty tube of antibacterial cream in one of the drawers. Should she pull the piece out of her arm or leave it in? Where was her phone so she could look that up? Could she sue the ceiling fan company? What was the statute of limitations on something like that?

The pain in her arm made the decision for her. She counted to three and then yanked the (albeit small) piece of fan out of her arm. Blood began to gush all over her Mother’s Day robe. Luckily, her children were always getting hurt, so the sight of red didn’t make her woozy, but she didn’t want to get blood everywhere, because it would be a nightmare to clean up. She grabbed one of the hand towels and pressed it firmly against her arm while looking for bandages and that damn cream. It was only then that she recalled having a wild animal caged in her dining room.

After hastily covering the wood with five Pokemon bandaids (bought the last time the twins were in town and one of them had cut his lip on a shockingly sharp popsicle stick), and forgoing the cream (if an infection killed her, oh well), she went back into the dining room where the fox was fast asleep in its cage. She sat down in one of the high-backed chairs and took a deep breath. Could she keep the fox? She still wasn’t sure where her phone was, but if history was any indication, it was in the car.

Not wanting to leave the fox alone in case it woke up and was startled to be by itself in a strange dining room, she carried the cage to the front door. Maybe the man who had given her the fox was still outside (not likely). If not, she could retrieve her phone and call…someone. Animal control? The fox didn’t seem rabid. Did animal control pick up relaxed animals?

When she opened the door, there was someone standing there for the second time that night. This time, it was a police officer.

“Hello,” the officer said, looking surprised that someone had opened the door before he’d even had a chance to knock, “Your daughter asked if we could do a wellness check, because you weren’t answering your phone.”

“Oh,” said Lillian, while holding a caged fox, dressed in a robe that had come undone, with her dead husband’s clothes on underneath it, and a bandaged arm that was covered in cartoons with blood seeping out from its edges, “Well, that’s just silly.”

Clearly, she was fine.