Aurora(39)

There was a long pause, Perry added “over,” and Norman finally answered.

“The only thing humanity has ever done. Wait and hope.”

Perry smiled. Norman had been saying that for as long as he’d known him. It still helped.

“The house is freezing,” Norman said. “I gotta go hit the generator for an hour. Stay safe, kiddo. Over and out.”

“Over and out.”





14.





Aurora

After she’d seen the porch lights on at Norman’s house, Aubrey had sat quietly for a moment, listening. There was a low humming sound coming from Norman’s driveway.

She got up and headed toward it, walking at first, then picking it up to a jog as her concern mounted. She knew the house; she’d been there several times over the years. The professor was a gregarious and capable host, inviting former students, old colleagues, and an occasional neighbor for long, boozy dinners that had left Aubrey feeling awkward. She honestly didn’t know why he included her. She tried to decline the invitations, preferring to see Norman one on one in a more neighborly way, but he’d kept at her, insisting she belonged, as long as she didn’t bring that shit-for-brains husband of hers. He’d actually said that, while she and Rusty were still married, which had simultaneously enraged and delighted her. Who had that kind of nerve?

Norman was always there for her. When she was debating starting her conference business, it was Norman who told her to do it. When she agonized over kicking Rusty out of the house, Norman was the one who told her she must.

“I can’t believe I ever got involved with him,” she’d said.

“Low self-esteem,” Norman had replied, then shrugged. “You see these things. You gotta get over it, though.”

The moment she reached his driveway, she could tell there was something wrong. It wasn’t just the porch light that was on; the kitchen and living room were lit up too, even though sunlight was streaming through the windows. Aubrey called out.

“Norman?”

No answer. She walked up the driveway, and the faint humming sound grew louder. It was coming from around the side of the house. She called Norman’s name again, got no answer, and reached the garage.

The door was wide open, and Aubrey laid eyes on the trouble right away. It was a small, red Honda generator, the kind you could wheel around from place to place, that had been set up just a few feet back from the open garage door. It was running, and when Aubrey put a hand on the side, she could tell it was hot enough to have been on for quite a while. Her eyes widened, she realized at that same moment that her lungs were constricting, and she looked up, to the air vent that was at the top of the nearby wall, almost directly over the top of the generator.

“Norman!” she shouted, and in three quick movements she snapped the generator off, shoved it out of the garage so it could vent in the driveway, and threw open the door that led into the house.

She came inside, coughing from the accumulated CO2 that had shot through the place, and ran down the short back hallway that led to the kitchen.

“Norman!” she yelled, and tore around the corner from the kitchen and into the living room. The old man was sprawled on the couch in flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. His head was back, his mouth open in a gasp, arms and legs splayed. Aubrey could tell in a second what had happened. Norman had gotten out of bed before sunup, felt a chill in the house, and turned on the generator for what he thought would be a quick burst of heat. Having parked it in the wide-open garage door, he probably figured the CO2 would just blow outside, but then the wind must have shifted, trapping the gas in the garage, and therefore letting it seep into the house, following a swirling draft inside through the vent. And there the invisible poison set upon the professor, settling into his lungs, clouding his mind, and putting him to sleep.

The only question was how long ago he’d succumbed. Aubrey raced across the floor, grabbed him under the armpits, and dragged his body off the couch. He was still warm. She pulled him down the kitchen hallway, inadvertently banging his head off a door frame. He moaned. He was alive.

Aubrey dragged him down the garage steps, across the cement floor, and laid him out over the wood bark, fifty feet from the house. There, she moved the old man’s arms and legs up and down, like she’d seen in an old movie where somebody had almost drowned, until Norman finally gasped, choked, and gulped fresh air.



A few hours later, after the house had been aired out and Norman had good-naturedly listened to a ten-minute lecture from Aubrey that could have gone by the title “Carbon Monoxide: The Silent Killer,” he smiled at her.

“Aubrey. Of course it’s Aubrey who saves me.”

“Why of course?”

“Because Aubrey takes care of everybody. But who takes care of Aubrey?”

“Aubrey takes care of Aubrey.”

“Well, she does a lousy job.”

She waved off that tedious line of conversation and looked around the place. “You rearranged the furniture.”

“Every six months. Keeps things fresh. You’d know that if you still came to dinner.”

“I don’t belong at those dinners, Norman.”

“Horseshit. You’re smarter than ninety percent of the people I ever taught. Why didn’t you go to college?”

“No school would have taken me.”