Chapter 7: Is that a siren?

Naomi rose from bed when the phone rang at ten o’clock. She had woken earlier to drop Ben off at the train station; he wearing a suit and rushing, she in pajamas and bleary with sleep, and she returned to bed while she waited for coffee to brew. Now, missing the call, she stumbled down to the kitchen and smelled the burned brew. She turned off the coffee maker and studied the room. The kitchen was large, even filled with packed boxes of their belongings, and it seemed bright and airy on a spring morning. But Naomi knew that May’s breezes would become December drafts in the big, unheated room. With windows on two sides, a stairway that led to the second floor, and a counter bisecting the room, there were obstacles to Naomi’s vision of the perfect kitchen. Considering the refrigerator parked along the only wall with a working outlet, Naomi pulled from a box the binder where she stored “wish pictures,” photos torn from magazines that showed the house she wanted. She posted pictures of a few perfect kitchens on the oven door beside her, using scraps of packing tape torn from a half-opened box.
Naomi’s binder was a secret to most people who knew her, though few would have been surprised to learn of it. Since she was 13 years old, Naomi kept a scrapbook of the life she wished to lead. The scrapbook began as a school project, when Mrs. Rubin asked the class to cut out pictures of household items and describe them using the adjectives of first-year French. Sitting cross-legged on the bed in her side of the bedroom she shared with her sister Eliza, Naomi found another life in the pages of the L. L. Bean catalog and advertisements from The New Yorker. She cut and taped photos of jewelry and appliances into the scrapbook labeled “Mimi Nootbaar” in glitter glue, but what she preferred were pictures of well-dressed adults laughing and talking. Sometimes the adults were pictured on a balcony with a sparkling skyline in the background, but more often they were surrounded by lush greenery and lavish homes. These ads for wine and condo developments – and occasionally for the whole of Dubai – didn’t influence her few purchases, but they gave her an aspiration.
Naomi continued to cut and paste through college, replacing one filled scrapbook with another. When she graduated, she learned – thanks to the “shelter” magazines that she read avidly – that keeping a notebook of decorating ideas was a tip straight from the pros; Martha Stewart had done so for decades. Naomi replaced the scrapbook with a sturdy binder and began collecting photos again, now filling in details of granite prices and appliance suppliers.
“Finally,” she murmured. “The photos come out of the book.” Parking the binder on a counter next to the oven, Naomi opened the double-door refrigerator. Naomi found a loaf of bread behind a bottle of wine. Taking four slices from the loaf, she placed them on the rack in the oven to toast. She rinsed out the coffee pot, and refilled it with fresh water. Carefully measuring coffee into a filter, she turned the machine on.
Satisfied, she pushed her red hair out of her eyes and began to make a list on a blank page in the binder. “Room 1: Kitchen,” she wrote. “To Do:” She walked to the windows and peered out at the back yard. “Area 2,” Naomi wrote. “Back Yard. To Do:” The garage, which even to Naomi’s unpracticed eye seemed to tilt slightly to the left, was “Area 3” on the list.
“It’s not really sagging, though, is it?” she said aloud. “That house inspector was just a pessimist.” In barefeet and carrying her binder, Naomi stepped outside to study the garage. She walked carefully through the long grass, looking for the stone path that the realtor had assured her was there. When she reached the garage, she leaned down, her pajamas gaping in front and reminding her that it was time to shower and get dressed, and studied the foundation.
“But what should I see?” asked Naomi aloud. “God, what an annoying noise. I hope that’s not a regular feature of the neighborhood,” she said, as she became aware of a penetrating squeal behind her.
She turned to see smoke wafting out of the kitchen door. The smoke was still a thin grey curtain through which she could see, so Naomi rushed into the room to find the oven door spewing heavy black clouds of smoke that threatened to choke her. The smoke detector that the house inspector had insisted be replaced was squealing above her head. Grabbing her cell phone from the counter, she called 911.
“It’s a kitchen fire in my new house,” she told the dispatcher. “I forget how to get here. I don’t know the number, Orange Heights Avenue,” she said in confusion. “I just got here and it burned itself up.”
“Is anyone in the house? Are you safe?” asked the voice on the other end of the phone.
“I’m fine, thanks,” said Naomi, instantly calmer. “I’ll go wait for the fire truck in front of my house.”
As she walked around the side of the house, Naomi wondered if she had ever strung those words together before: “I’ll go wait for the fire truck in front of my house.”
The sound of the sirens reached her, drowning the blare of the smoke detectors, and growing louder and closer by the second. By the time the first truck reached Orange Heights Avenue, Naomi’s neighbors were opening their front doors. When the second truck pulled up in front of Naomi’s house, blocking the Atkinsons’ driveway, she saw that a small crowd had gathered in front of the white Colonial with red shutters.
“Is anyone in the house?” asked the first firefighter. When Naomi shook her head, the firefighter gestured to the crew to follow him into the house.
As she stood on the sidewalk, Naomi gave a tiny wave to the small girl dressed in pink with pigtails and a stuffed bunny who was standing in front of her house. The girl smiled and looked up at her nanny, a tall young woman with beads in her hair who was talking to the mailman. An older woman in a sari walked slowly with an older man wearing sandals towards the fire truck, while a tall middle-aged man dressed a tie and jacket emerged from the gray split-level talking into a cell phone.
The first crew of firefighters had entered the house and the Captain now approached Naomi.
“You’re the owner?” she asked. Naomi nodded.
“The house is okay. Looks like the insulation between the wall and the oven failed at the same time the appliance overheated. We’re taking the oven out now,” explained the Captain.
Naomi nodded mutely and watched a pair of masked and gloved firefighters carrying her smoking stove to the street. There it sat and smoldered until the Captain sprayed a white substance on it that covered and cooled it.

“You have a lot of smoke in there, so we set up fans, but no permanent damage,” reported the Captain.

Naomi nodded again, staring at the stove. She felt a familiar sinking feeling in her stomach and a sudden coldness in her hands and feet. She knew what to do and tried hard to move her arms and legs, but the pounding of her heart rooted her to the sidewalk. The roaring in her head sounded like an ocean wave and she wavered.

Before she hit the ground, Naomi felt a pair of arms around her waist. She turned to face the gloved and masked firefighter. Naomi shrieked -- I’m not even dressed, she thought in an instant -- and fainted, her knees collapsing on the way down to the sidewalk.