The Smoke Alarm

I was just starting to fry a porkchop when it went off.
I sprung into action. Calm, direct. Pushed the window open
far as it would go and got to fanning the thing with a dishtowel, as
I’d done before, as I’d seen done.

She was on the sofa watching television. Her white legs
folded over one another. Make
it stop, she said. Just then, the alarm in the bedroom
went off too. Two alarms blaring in discord, rarely
meeting.

I flew in waving the towel, leaving the first. It did not have
the desired effect I’m afraid.
There was an unmarked button on the device which I then pressed
mercilessly with my thumb.
Pushed till it was red. Did the same to the
alarm in the living room. Nothing. Tried pushing
in different sequences. Holding it. Double pushing it. She went
to pee. When she came out said, There’s
still smoke in here, covering her ears. What
Don’t you understand about this?
Get rid of it!

It was the day before she’d brought home her herbs.
Basil. Lavender. Mint. Thyme. Growing in pots
along the windowsill. Delicate green. She said we’d use them fresh
in whatever it was we cooked
from now on. We should start eating fresh things, she explained.
I swung the pan around, still crackling, to get water on it
and sure enough, knocked one pot to the floor.
Basil I think. It broke and spread, dirt and pieces
of the pot. The plant’s tiny roots.
She shook her head but didn’t look at me. Simply rose
up off the couch and approached the first alarm. Started
some waving of her own with a couch cushion. She waved and flapped
the cushion madly, almost with violence.
The alarms seemed to get louder.

I went to the bedroom and unscrewed the alarm from the ceiling.
It came off easily enough, but stayed attached by a few wires. I located
the battery slot. It did not slide open so I broke the plastic and
removed the battery. Still, the alarm persisted. The
battery in one hand, the loose alarm swinging there
out of the hole in the ceiling. How
was it possible? They must be attached, I said, somewhere above us.
Turn it off, she said again.
I then told her
I didn’t know how to turn it off but she said for me to figure it out.
The alarm looked like a human eye extracted from its socket,
still strung to nerve and muscle tissue. I was in a mind
to smash it. I searched for things to do it with. A shoe. The
iron. This somehow seemed less destructive than the two of us
going through this together. Maybe I’d cut the wire. Would it
electrocute me? Then we wouldn’t have a smoke alarm, and that
would not be good. She dropped the pillow on the floor
and said, I can’t take it anymore. She
retreated to the couch and folded up.

This comment stunned me. First
for its absurdity. Can’t take it. Then for its truth. I knew
what she meant. I
couldn’t take it anymore either. The sound. It seemed
possible that the smoke alarms would never stop
for us.
And we’d wait in there while they made us deaf and
crazy. We’d get into our bed with the smoke alarms
beeping like that, and we’d drift off into pained sleep hearing them,
first in wakefulness and then in queer dreams.
And either we wouldn’t wake up, or one of us
would be gone altogether when the other did. The
one waking, waking deranged. This appeared,
in my fresh desperation, an entirely plausible future.
A simple continuation.

I’m sorry, I said from the other room, about the basil.
That was never basil, she replied.
Through her hands, barely over the din.