called, and that was as good a description as any. They did not read, were not conversant with the essential facts and ideas at the core of Western culture, were not even up on current events, but they had an encyclopedic knowledge of twenty-year-old television shows and bad popular music. Even his best students were smart in the wrong way: media-savvy kids who dealt in trivia, the intellectual currency of their time.
It was a sad state of affairs.
Norton rubbed his tired eyes, looked up at the clock over the bookcase. Midnight. Carole had gone to sleep several hours ago, and he should have too, but there'd been that Civil War show and then these tests to grade, and now it was already Thursday. He stood, stretched.
He could've done what most of his colleagues did and postponed the grading for another day. Or he could have given a scantron test instead of an essay test and let the machine grade them.
But he wasn't about to sacrifice his principles, to change his teaching habits for the sake of expediency, and though he was bone-tired and would only be able to catch a few hours of sleep, at least he could face himself in the morning.
He walked into the kitchen, put his cup in the dishwasher, then walked down the hallway to the bathroom to take out his bridge.
Carole was dead asleep and snoring when he went into the bedroom, and she did not wake up even when he turned on the light. He took off his clothes, carefully folded them, and placed them on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, then once again turned off the light. He felt his way through the darkness over to the bed, lifted the covers, and got in.
Carole moaned, stirred, rolled over.
Her body felt warm next to his, almost hot. She often called him a 'corpse' because of their difference in body temperatures, and he had to smile when she said that because it wasn't too far off the mark. He was getting on in years, and a lifetime of soft self-indulgence had probably made his body even more decrepit than it ordinarily would be. He was old and he knew it, and he wouldn't be surprised when his heart or his liver or one of his other organs started to give out.
Carole was quite a bit younger than he was, forty five to his sixty-two, and there was something comforting about knowing that he would die first. It was selfish, of course, but he'd always been selfish to a certain extent and the charge didn't bother him. He wouldn't have to carry on without her, wouldn't have to make another seismic shift in his life. It would be hard on her, of course, but she was stronger than he was, she could handle it. Hell, she'd probably remarry.
So why was he such a prick to her?
He wasn't a prick all the time. Even she had to admit that. He'd been head over heels for her when they'd first married, and while the passion may have cooled, he did still love her. Only these days, he seemed to be annoyed by her more often than entranced, easily irritated by her behavior, what she said and what she did consistently rubbing him the wrong way. He didn't know why. It was probably his fault. He didn't think she had changed over the years. But he had. Something in his life had shifted, some nascent gene of solitary bachelorhood kicking in as he got older, making him prefer to remain alone rather than in the company of others. There'd been a settling in his ways, a hardening of his attitudes, and though he still loved Carole, still cared about her, still needed her, it had become increasingly hard to like her, to be with her.
He glanced next to him. She remained very attractive, though. Even in sleep, even with her mouth open, her hair wild, face cream clumped on her cheeks, chin and forehead, she was an extremely pretty woman. And he could not imagine going to bed without her stretched out beside him. He still enjoyed being with her when she was awake as well--it was talking to her that was becoming increasingly difficult. When they sat alone in a room, he reading, she sewing, one or both of them watching TV, each performing separate activities, it was nice. Only talk brought out their differences, only conversation brought out his annoyance and hostility, made him feel that perhaps he should have remained a single man.
If they were both mute, they could have a happy life.
He settled into sleep beside her, and she turned onto her side. He stretched one arm over her shoulder, resting his hand on her breast, and she pressed her buttocks against his groin, automatically finding, even in sleep, the position they'd discovered to be most comfortable.
Despite his tiredness and the lateness of the hour, he did not fall asleep instantly but drifted slowly off, his mind focusing on nothing and everything, his thoughts moving from Carole to school to old friends to his
trip to Italy to the president's recent trip to Japan, floating gradually away in ever-widening circles, his brain making connections of logic that were at first tenuous, then not there at all but seemed perfectly natural as sleep overtook him.
He was awakened by violent shaking.
Norton sat up immediately, his panicked heart thumping as though it were about to burst through his chest. He thought at first it was an earthquake but realized almost instantly that only the bed was shaking, that the hanging plant next to the curtained window was still, that the rest of the room was not in motion.
A foot kicked his leg. A hand lashed out at his midsection.
It was Carole.
She was having convulsions.
He had no idea what to do, and even as he kicked off the covers and twisted around, grabbing her shoulders, trying to hold her down and stop her from shaking, he was cursing himself for not attending the CPR seminar the last time they'd had a teacher's in-service day. He hadn't thought there'd ever be a practical use for it.
Carole was in better health than he was, and he couldn't see himself doing anything to help a stranger except dial 911, so he'd chosen to stay in his classroom and rearrange his bulletin boards instead of attend the emergency medical training.
Now he felt lost and frightened and completely out of his depth. Carole's eyes were wide open and jiggling crazily in their sockets as her entire head shook in staccato spasms. Her mouth was open, tongue hanging out, looking twice as long as he knew it to be, and saliva was flying out in all directions, strings of it stretched over her cheeks and chin, independent spray hitting the pillow and the blanket and his arm. Beneath his hands, the muscles of her chest and shoulders were knotted and tight, much stronger than any muscles he'd ever felt before, and they were jerking nonstop in a frighteningly unnatural way.
He didn't know what was happening. He was pretty sure this wasn't a heart attack, but whether it was an epileptic fit or a stroke or the result of some sort of brain tumor, he had no clue. It was like something out of a movie, like a possession, and he had no idea if he was supposed to be holding her still or leaving her alone or giving her some kind of medicine. He'd heard somewhere that if someone was having a fit you were supposed to put a wallet in their mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue, but Carole's tongue was flopping around outside her mouth, and she appeared in no danger of swallowing it.
The fit wasn't letting up.
He didn't know how much time had passed since she'd started convulsing, since the shaking had awakened him, but even adjusting for his skewed perceptions, it had to have been several minutes.
Shouldn't it have stopped by now?
If anything, the muscles beneath his grip were becoming more rigid, their vibrating spasms stronger and more violent. How long could a body continue undergoing something like this without sustaining permanent damage?
Wasn't her brain being smacked around in that jerking head? Weren't her organs being knocked about inside her chest cavity?
There'd been no sound coming out of her mouth, only the unnaturally silent, almost sibilant noises of her convulsing body, overpowered by the loud wood-on-wood sound of the headboard hitting the wall, but now there was a low humming coming from somewhere deep within her throat, a humming broken by vibrato as the sound escaped her wildly shaking head.
He let go, got off her, leaped from the bed. This had gone too far. It wasn't slowing or abating, and it was obvious that his attempt to hold her still, to force her body to stop shaking, to will her convulsions to end, was not working at all.
He ran out of the bedroom, ran for the phone, picked it up from the alcove in the hall, dialing 911 at the same
