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I spied out our living room picture window—true to my Gladys Kravitz, the nosy neighbor on Bewitched, nature—to check whether the town’s water meter man in a pickup was still parked outside. He had been sitting there in his truck, motor idling, for 20 minutes. But he was gone. Instead, just beyond the yellow marigolds and hanging basket of dark blue lobelia on our front lawn, I saw a fireman. He pointed to my left, toward our driveway at the side of the house. I took a look. Nothing but our cars. He gestured again, only this time his hand made a curved line. Around what? I opened the front door.

“I need to talk to you, but at your back door,” he said. “Are you expecting a package?” We weren’t. “There’s a small box on your lawn. Have you noticed it?” I hadn’t. “Ma’am, you have to leave your house. The box has ‘tick, tick, bomb inside’ written on it and procedures dictate that you have to evacuate.” The meter reader had spotted the package and called the fire department. I ran into the house, told my husband in a string of nouns—bomb, package, tick, kaboom, lawn, exit—and shoved my cat, Tasha, into her carrier.

When I got outside, the fireman said, “I don’t mean to pry, but I have to ask this: You got any enemies, anyone mad at you?” “Uh, no,” I said, wondering whether to tell him my husband is a professor. He’s occasionally been the target of a student’s meltdown—usually in the form of a nasty e-mail or tears, although years ago an ex-con, who had done time for murder in San Quentin and who was in my husband’s course, spat at him—because of a low grade. But what teacher hasn’t pissed off a student?

The fireman suggested that my husband and I go somewhere, say, the town center, because this mishegoss—my word, not his—would last a few hours. The bomb squad, he said, needs to x-ray the package, but would take awhile to arrive. (Stopping on the way for triple espressos, just the thing for steady hands, I thought.) Three hundred feet on either side of our house had to be kept clear. Our neighbors to the left, right and front of us had to evacuate, too. That’s procedure, he said.

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