The Hugging Radius

The kitchen smelled like sage and hot fat and, underneath it, the inside of a dryer. Gravy simmering on two burners. Cranberry sauce in a saucepan. Rolls proofing on top of the dryer because that was the only warm surface left in the house. 4:40 on the microwave.

Then, under all of it: sandalwood and mint.

“No,” Brenda said, to nobody.

Chloe came through the pantry door sideways, gourd in hand, words already spilling ahead of her. “Okay so the coat rack’s down, he skipped the entryway table completely, he just went straight for Aunt Susan, full three-second squeeze, she tried the purse and he went under it, she’s redoing her face in the powder room right now.”

“Breathe.”

“There’s no time to breathe.”

They had tried asking him not to hug people the previous Christmas. He had hugged them all individually to show there were no hard feelings.

Uncle Greg’s voice came up through the floor. Then the loafers. Then the door swung open and there he was, arms already out, mustache primed for business.

“There she is! The hardest working woman in the county!”

Brenda grabbed the green bean casserole off the trivet, both hands wrapped in kitchen towels and thrust it out between them.

“Uncle Greg. Don’t come any closer. This glass is about four hundred degrees.”

His arms hovered. Twitching a little at the elbows, doing the math.

“Just a quick squeeze for the chef?”

“If I drop this, Thanksgiving dies. You want to be the one explaining to Aunt Linda why we’re eating cereal at six?”

He looked at the casserole. He looked at her. The arms came down, slowly, like he was setting something fragile back on a shelf.

“Fine.” He pointed at her with both index fingers, backing toward the door. “But I’m putting a pin in it. Smells incredible here, by the way.”

Door swung shut.

“Nice, Phase one worked. It bought us forty seconds” Chloe said.

“He’s going to loop through the dining room.”

“Obviously.”

He did.

Leo, who’d arrived without anyone hearing the door, got sent in holding a gravy boat and instructions to ask about spark plugs, and it worked for exactly as long as it took Uncle Greg to get through iridium versus standard, no longer.

Just long enough for Chloe to wrestle the crystal bowl down and Brenda to get the rolls out.

Leo limped back into the kitchen having dropped a lid on his own foot to end the conversation. “Never again,” he said, and nobody asked him to elaborate.