Toasted
By THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI
When I leave our apartment, I can’t remember if I’ve turned off the toaster oven. The appliance doesn’t go off automatically. If it is on, you have to turn the knob to the left or unplug the whole gadget. I have a picture in my mind of the heating elements glowing red and the food crumbs catching fire inside. I know this can happen because I’ve seen it. I’ll be toasting something, and I’ll see a flickering yellow light through the oven’s small window. If I do nothing, the fire will continue unabated. If I open the oven door, the inflow of air will feed the flames.
The fire inside the appliance could spread to the plasterboard wall. The cardboard layer is flammable; a high temperature will set it off. A painting of mine hangs near the toaster. It’s a harmless still life on canvas stretched over wood. Are there any better materials than canvas, wood and Sheetrock to fuel a fire? Maybe the painting deserves to be burned. But even if it does, I don’t want the entire apartment turned to ash.
I smell smoke, either from my burning apartment or from a vehicle’s exhaust pipe. I can’t tell. In any case, the sensation puts me on alert. I know what can happen. The smoke will turn into flame.
What should I do? Return and check the toaster-oven knobs, or continue on my way? If I keep going, maybe something else will grab my attention and I’ll forget about the toaster. Maybe I’ll arrive at my workplace and discover that an e-mail I was supposed to send hasn’t been sent. When I realize what has happened, it will be too late. Someone else was supposed to take the e-mail and reformat it. That person needed me to send the raw material. I remember making some revisions. I remember seeing the file name on my computer screen. I remember attaching a document, something about a proposal, a proposed law, new coverage. But I don’t remember highlighting the recipient’s name and clicking the send button.
What should I do? Return and check the toaster-oven knobs, or continue on my way? If I keep going, maybe something else will grab my attention and I’ll forget about the toaster. Maybe I’ll arrive at my workplace and discover that an e-mail I was supposed to send hasn’t been sent. When I realize what has happened, it will be too late. Someone else was supposed to take the e-mail and reformat it. That person needed me to send the raw material. I remember making some revisions. I remember seeing the file name on my computer screen. I remember attaching a document, something about a proposal, a proposed law, new coverage. But I don’t remember highlighting the recipient’s name and clicking the send button.
Maybe the work problem will take my mind off of my burning apartment. Maybe I’ll realize what’s done is done — there’s nothing else I can do. Either I’ve set fire to my building or I haven’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because if I don’t start the fire, someone else will. Many of my neighbors have appliances with electric heating elements, and as I see it, they don’t care as much about safety as I do.
One time, when I was living alone, I was awakened by the smell of smoke. The source was somewhere outside my apartment. I opened my entrance door and saw that the hallway was filled with smoke. I went back in and looked out my window. On the street, a firefighter shouted through a bullhorn: “Don’t leave your apartments! Stay inside and keep your doors shut!”
I opened my door again and saw a woman run out of the apartment next to mine. She had nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her cat, in a carrier. She ran down the stairs, through the spray of the sprinklers, and onto the street. I looked out my window and saw her on the sidewalk. She and her cat were soaked, but they were safe. I followed instructions and stayed inside.
From where I was, I could hear firefighters walking on the stairs. As they arrived at each apartment door, they pounded. If no one answered, they struck the doors with their axes. I could hear the sound of metal against metal. When they got to my place, I opened the door before they struck. “Good,” one of them said. “We won’t have to pop your lock.”
The next day, I learned that my first-floor neighbor had turned on an electric heater and let some bath towels fall over it. Then she went to sleep, and the towels started to smolder. Her place became a bath-towel furnace, and the building turned into a smoky sauna. No one was harmed, but I coughed up smoke particles for the next few days. I imagined that my neighbors and their pets were similarly afflicted.
Bottom line: If my neighbors don’t set a fire, our child will. Our daughter doesn’t know how to work the “Toast” and “Heat” buttons on the toaster oven. She thinks that once the timer stops ticking, the oven is off. But if the control knob is still turned to high heat, the oven is on. I picture the toaster switched off while the oven is set to 450 degrees. That’s hot enough to ignite anything burnable.
A solution, of course, would be to clean the toaster oven and move it away from the wall. That way, there would be nothing to burn. But these steps are beyond me, mainly because I never think of them while I’m in the apartment. I think of them only as I walk away from the building that will shortly become a cinder.
Now, as I walk away from home, I could call someone who is still inside to see if the appliance is off. I could use my cellphone — my question is urgent. But I don’t think anyone is home. Even if anyone were there, all they would tell me is that the place is engulfed in flames.
I make the call. Someone answers, but I don’t know who it is. “This is Daddy,” I say.
“Daddy?”
“No, not Daddy,” I say.
“This is not your daughter,” my spouse says.
“Can you do me a favor?” I ask. “Can you check to see if the toaster oven is off?”
“Hold on.”
I hold, and as I hold, I imagine my spouse batting at the flames that are licking the walls.
(Anxiety welcomes submissions at anxiety@nytimes.com.)
Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of the novels “Haywire,” “Tetched” and “Roughhouse.” He works as a copy editor, adjunct lecturer and fiction-writing instructor. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.
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