Weakened at Burnee's

Novelist Thaddeus Rutkowski, at the NYT "Anxiety" blog, just knows he forgot to turn off the toaster oven before leaving his apartment, and so prepares daily to return to an inevitable Everest of smoldering ash:

Maybe [a just-recalled impending problem at work] 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.

... 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.

... 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.