“I’ll find you a Santa,” she told the committee. “So long as you promise me his sleigh won’t be one of those electric cars. If he runs somebody over, you’ll have a public relations catastrophe on your hands.”

The final week of November—voila!—the deodars of Santa Claus Lane were completely trimmed with colored bulbs and the street itself lined with inflatable snowmen, those cheery apparitions best savored with mulled wine and an SUV. The ordinary became sublime. Everybody dimmed their headlights, and cruised the street like U-boats in the ocean deep.

The Santa deadline loomed.

Raymond felt as though he’d been on the phone with Dartmoor since the summer ended.

“Your dad has SAD,” said the nurse. “Your father has been diagnosed with SAD, seasonal affective disorder. The doctor’s put him on paroxetine and we need your approval for the light therapy. We’d like to install full spectrum bulbs and a dawn simulator in his room, which brightens his existing lamps to simulate the sun about an hour before he wakes up.”

“Sounds reasonable. Bill me.”

Then the doorbell rang. Out his picture window, he spied an aged bird in a lumpy sweater standing stiffly on his porch like one of those Salvation Army grifters outside the supermarket—except for her crutches. Those crutches dignified her. He combed his hair.

“Raymond?”

“Yes?” He saw now that it was Kate Ireland’s mother, the one he assumed had died when he stopped seeing her poking around years ago. “Oh, hello, it’s you!”

“Listen, would you like to be this year’s Santa Claus?” She didn’t beat around the bush, this one. “Every year, as you know, we have a Santa on the street. And I’m thinking you’d be a great candidate.”

She was met with Raymond’s stunned silence.

“I was going to ask Silas Brown at 1041 but that’s a huge way to hobble for Tiny Tim here,” she lifted up her crutches. “Silas was actually my top choice because those nazis on the committee told me it would be upsetting for young children to see a Santa of color. Can you believe it? Those fuckers actually said that out loud!”

“And I’m your second choice, why? Because I’m a member of another oppressed minority?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, it ain’t brain surgery!” She thumped her right crutch impatiently. “Look, you want to do something good for the goddamn world, don’t you?”

The twitch in her lip as she said goddamn warmed his heart. “So, just fat suit and ho, ho, ho?”

He was actually entertaining the idea. Mary-Sue smiled. “There’s a booth where you’d sit and have those rug rats come up to you. They no longer have them sit on your lap. That’s now considered unhygienic, etcetera.”

The phone started to ring. He left her at the door to get it. It was the nurse at Dartmoor again.