Word Count: 518
It’s Day #4 of the Great October Snowstorm over New England and our state’s still only halfway through restoring electricity for nearly a million customers in the cold dark. My neighbor’s been over twice for my one-pan version of an egg McMuffin and a spaghetti dinner. I’m melting snow for water to flush toilets and wash dishes and one-bowl whore-baths we’re taking. It takes about an hour to gather and melt enough snow on our propane kitchen stove to flush the tank. She’s wanting more coffee. She’s used to Kuerig; I serve blue enameled campfire perk.
She’s complaining of the cold though she has a propane fireplace she can warm herself by. Then I notice, as she tells me our unheated house is warmer than hers, that she’s layered like an artichoke and yet wears a dress and no socks. She’s hinted, we’ve offered, to let her stay overnight here with us. No heat, but company and hot meals and campfire style coffee. She complains of two flattened by the snowstorm bushes. She hasn’t noticed our huge maple tree in the front yard split in half.
There’s a generator at her house that she wonders if we could start up. She’s assured us her paid handyman got it ready and running a month ago prior to a hurricane. We shovel a path to the generator. My husband pulls it out and checks all the connections and dials and notes one thing that shouldn’t have been left as it was. He pulls and pulls and pulls but it won’t start. He sprays under the filter with starting fluid. It won’t run. He says it won’t run while she’s subtly telling me how the hired man “persevered, wouldn’t give up.” We finally give up and call her handyman who says yeah, he’ll come by, but he’d gotten it started with a battery pack. He comes by. He can’t start it.
Her daughter hasn’t called to check up on her at all. She lives 45 minutes away. The neighbor doesn’t call her either and I’m wondering why. Eventually they do come down and pick up the food the neighbor was making for a party. They pack up the food, leaving my neighbor behind.
She calls to tell me she’s staying at a friend’s house, a lady who also lives alone but has an operating generator. She calls the next day to tell me she’s stopped by her house and the phone works and she’s going back to her friend’s house to stay. Funny, she never asked about us.
In the dark dawn of Day #5 I stand outside looking up at the stars. There’s a sharp beeping sound that cuts into the silence. My neighbor’s carbon monoxide detector she put outside on her porch because she couldn’t stand listening to it inside and didn’t take out the battery. She’s gone and can’t hear it from her friend’s house, warm and snuggly and asleep. The rest of us listen to the constant beep and I’ll have to remember to go over and shut the one working damn thing off.
