Be still my beeping heart
Awhile back we installed five smoke alarms in the house along with two carbon monoxide sensors. We wanted to be prepared for whatever natural or man-made disasters lurked, lurking as they are wont to be.
Given that the smoke alarms were installed at the same time, are close to one another and have batteries with approximately the same shelf life, it is not uncommon for one to start beeping — an indication that a battery replacement is in order — and then for another to join in, almost, it seems, out of a sense of camaraderie.
Their synchrony reminded me of a beauty shop on which I once did a column. One hairdresser became pregnant and pretty soon three-quarters of the staff was pregnant and this included a couple of the manicurists.
A couple of days ago, one of the smoke alarms began beeping. Unattended, a smoke alarm with a failing battery can drive a person to distraction. Remember “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe? The narrator kills an old man because of his blue eye (and who hasn’t wanted to do that before), dismembers him and buries him under the floorboards, but still hears his beating heart. The beating heart of somebody you thought you offed and a beeping smoke alarm is not a precise analogy but you can understand how it could be mildly upsetting.
Which smoke alarm was it? Every time it beeped, and there was no discernible pattern in which it did, it seemed as if I was in bed and if not in bed, in a room other than the one the smoke alarm was in so I could only guess which one it might be.
I stationed myself in the landing — in the middle of the five smoke alarms — in order to solve this household mystery. Time was on my side or was it?
After a few minutes, I realized this was akin to waiting for a response to a text message or watching the spout on a kettle in order to anticipate when the water might boil.
The room was quiet. The only sound was the wind blowing outside and the crepe myrtle branches scraping against the upstairs window. It was as quiet as snow on an open field.
The dying battery was like a patient for whom hospice has been called. Almost magically, with the help of regular meals and an attentive nurse, the hospice patient often experiences a burst of health. The battery in the smoke alarm had gotten a second wind because somebody was coming to remove it and throw it in the trash.
Later that day, when I had forgotten all about batteries, smoke alarms and hospice, I heard a beeping and followed it to Katie’s old room, the one with the 10-foot ceiling. I pushed the five-foot ladder in place, climbed to the step below the top ledge and reached as high as I could, tensing my muscular calves in the process. After removing the white plastic cover, I dislodged the battery and replaced it with a new one, which may or may not have had any life in it.
One explosive movement forward or back and I would be launched as if I were shot backward out of a cannon. I could spend the rest of my days in a home hospital bed barking orders at people, while they began to wonder if they might do to me what the narrator did with the old man with the blue eye in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
I snapped the plastic lid on, missing the first few times because I couldn’t remember which slots went to which hole but the lid stayed on or least didn’t hang there like a flag at half-mast as with some of my previous efforts.
A few days later, the smoke alarm started beeping again. I was in bed. I wasn’t getting up.