Lydia Millet - Sweet Lamb of Heaven

The yarn was blue-gray.

WE HAD a car accident today.

Or almost had an accident, I should say. We avoided an accident, but it was close.

We were maybe half an hour northeast of Boston on the freeway. It was my turn to drive and I was fiddling a bit with the radio when abruptly the car started weaving back and forth across the lanes, fishtailing. My right hand flew back to the wheel as I felt the loss of control in the pit of my stomach and tried to keep the car straight. I almost hit someone on my left but veered away just in time, and then the car almost crashed into a guardrail on our right.

In the end we veered away from that too, luckily, and somehow I steered us onto the first off-ramp, pulling over onto a wide shoulder without any more near-collisions.

It happened too fast for Lena — startled out of a nap by the car’s fishtailing motion — even to get frightened. When I’d pulled up the emergency brake I turned to look at her; she smiled at me uncertainly and rubbed her eyes.

Will and I got out and walked around the car: all four of the tires were flat.

The three of us rode in the tow truck to the car-repair place, where we hung around in a brown-tiled lounge area that smelled of disinfectant while they sprayed foam on the tires, performed some other tests. We were sure I’d driven over a spilled cargo of nails or other sharp objects — what else could have caused four same-time flats? — but finally they seemed to have exhausted their diagnostic tools.

Never seen anything like it, they said. There were no holes or slits, no punctures at all: the tires were perfectly good except for the fact that the treads on the rear ones were a bit too worn for comfort.

They wanted to sell us two new tires.

“Maybe these mechanics are in league with Ned too,” I said nervously. Lena was feeding coins into a vending machine, out of earshot, and I watched her as I spoke.

“I thought I was the paranoid one,” said Will. “Still. Maybe we should replace all four tires, huh?”

“I don’t want to be chickenshit,” I said. “But OK.”

Will drove after that while I tried to play a word game with Lena, thinking of animals whose names started with the last letter of the animal before. But she soon tired of it and asked to use my tablet for a game, making hairstyles on cartoon people whose faces looked like square potatoes.

When we got to his house I was relieved. I’d sat in the passenger seat with the muscles in my stomach clenched — sat forward the whole way, strained, unable to relax enough to lean back in the seat. The guy who’d installed the alarm system was waiting for us, his van idling in the driveway behind Will’s truck, now covered in drifts of hardened snow. Will warned me as we were driving into town, so I wouldn’t take fright, I guess — that’s what I’ve come to, apparently. I have to be warned about the presence of men in vans.

We all went up to the door, rubbing our gloved hands together in the cold, the installer chugging along beside us, a drunk-nosed man with a beard. He let us in and walked us through the system, whose electronic display looked out of place amid the weathered wood trim and old furniture. Lena was puzzled by the setup, asking why we needed to touch a display to come in. We hadn’t needed to before.

“It’s like Doug,” said Will. “Solly’s apartment building has a doorman to watch over it, right? But we don’t have Doug in my house so we’re using this little guy right here.” He rested his hand on the console.

She’d loved Doorman Doug, of course, who brought her puzzle books that featured the Mario Brothers, with a few of their yellowing pages scrawled over long ago by his now-teenage sons. Lena did not prefer the Mario Brothers. They were strangers to her.

But she liked Will’s explanation and named the alarm console New Doug.

ON OUR FOURTH afternoon back in Maine, while Will was off at the library, Lena wanted a nap; I was tired too so I lay down beside her on the double bed in Will’s guest room, which he’d given her for our time here. The walls, covered in antique wallpaper of faded but regal-looking lions, were festooned with her taped-up decorations, drawings she’d done of fairies and princesses, photos of Kay, Faneesha, Solly, herself standing with both Lindas beside her snow effigy, its head already half-melted.

I dozed off not long after she did and was only woken by a wrong smell. It was familiar, but still I took a minute to put a name to it: smoke. And it was too warm in the room, I realized — sweat had beaded on my forehead and under my arms.

Had I left something on the stove, maybe a kettle? I left Lena sleeping and started down the stairs.

But there was smoke at the bottom, enough of it to hide the view below, and a block of hot air hit me. I turned around again to get Lena — and where was my phone? Downstairs, damn it, somewhere past the smoke, I’d left it charging down there. Will’s landline was on the first floor too.

I shook her awake and bundled her into a thick sweater and we ran to the bedroom where Will and I slept, which had French doors that opened onto a balcony. I wrenched the doors open and stepped out onto the rickety wooden platform, which hung over the back of the house. The view was of the large and unkempt yard, brown grass mostly covered in thin patches of ice and crusts of snow. At the back of it were trees, over which rooftops were faintly visible, but not close enough to yell at.

Most of the neighbors were probably at work, I thought, since it was the middle of a weekday.

“Honey, I think we have to climb down,” I said.

“It’s too slippery!” cried Lena, her voice squeaking. She touched the ice along the wooden rail.

But Lena’s a much better climber than I am, a climber who shimmies up to the canopy of trees and freely climbs rock faces I’d never try, and we got out safely, she first, me after, though I fell the last couple of feet. I twisted my ankle, scraped my elbows a bit. We went around to the front yard and still saw no fire, just smoke leaking out the crack at the bottom of the front door. We ran next door, knocking and waiting, and just as the neighbor’s door opened we watched the roof cave in.

THE HOUSE ISN’T a total loss. A fire engine pulled up not long after the neighbor called 911, siren shrieking, and we stood by shivering as the firemen plied the hoses, stood with our eyes smarting as smoke billowed out of a broken front window.

I picked up Lena and held her on my hip the whole time — she’s old for holding like that, but still light at forty-some pounds. She didn’t cry. She was openmouthed but not outwardly frightened.

Other than the section of roof that collapsed, only the kitchen and living room are badly damaged. Mostly they’re waterlogged. Will’s homeowner’s insurance will cover the repairs, but those repairs will take a while. It was an electrical fire, the cops told us when we met with them at the station. There’s no evidence of arson, they said.

I assumed it was Ned, somehow this too was Ned’s doing. But the firemen shrugged and said the house is old, its wiring is pre-code. One of them brought me an informational brochure, nodding helpfully as though the handout would fully explain everything.

On the front it has a picture of a fifties-style couple in their kitchen — she beside the stove, he sitting straight-backed at the table, wearing a suit and tie, with a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs in front of him. The man and woman are both slim and attractive, and smile at each other in a satisfied fashion. But sticking through the open door behind their backs, as though to peer in and wave, are plump, decorative tongues of flame, apparently unseen.

Each year, household wiring and lighting cause an estimated average of 32,000 home fires in the United States. On average, these fires result in 950 injuries and 220 deaths. They cause more than $670 million in property damage.