by Kevin Wilson
“Governess,” she said, delighted.
“Yeah, I’ll be that.”
“I promise you that I will never forget this. Never.”
“I’d better get home,” I said. “Is Carl gone? Can somebody drive me to the bus station?”
“No,” Madison said, shaking her head, standing up. “You aren’t going home tonight. You’re staying here. You’ll spend the night. In fact, you don’t have to go home if you don’t want to. We’re buying you everything you need. All new clothes! The best computer. Whatever you want.”
“Okay,” I said, so tired all of a sudden.
“What do you want for dinner tonight? Our cook can make anything.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe pizza or something like that.”
“We have a pizza oven!” she said. “The best pizza you’ve ever had.”
We stared at each other. It was three in the afternoon. What did we do until dinner?
“Is Timothy still napping?” I asked, trying to break the awkwardness.
“Oh, yeah, I’d better go check on him. Do you want a drink or anything?”
“Maybe I can take a nap?” I asked.
I barely took note of how huge the house was now that I was able to move through it. We went up a spiral staircase, like in some big-budget musical. Madison was telling me some nonsense about how during the Civil War they took horses up these stairs and hid them in the attic from the Union army. It’s possible I imagined this, some kind of fever dream in the aftermath of making a life-altering decision.
She led me to a room that looked like there should be an exiled princess in the bed. Every single piece of furniture seemed like it weighed a thousand pounds. Probably some nineteenth-century carpenter had built the desk right in the room and it had been here ever since. There was a chandelier. I’d lived in apartments that were one-third the size of this single room. I made a mental note that I needed to stop being so awed by Madison’s wealth. I was going to live inside this place. Everything that she owned was now mine. I would need to get used to touching it and not being electrocuted.
“Do you need a nightgown?” she asked.
“I’ll just sleep in this stuff,” I replied.
“Sweet dreams,” she said, kissing me on the forehead. She was so tall; I’d forgotten how she’d kiss me on the forehead in high school, how soft her lips were. And then she was gone; the house had swallowed her up. I couldn’t even hear footsteps.
It was almost too much to get into the bed. I felt like the dirtiest thing this house had ever seen. I felt like an orphan who had broken in to the mansion. I kicked off my shoes and then delicately lined them up next to the bed. I got onto the bed, which took actual effort, it was so high up. I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I thought about those two kids, on fire, beckoning me with open arms. I watched them burn. They were smiling. I wasn’t even asleep. I wasn’t dreaming. This was my waking life now. They stood in front of me. And I pulled them into my arms. And I burst into flames.
Two
I never went back home. I called my mom the next morning to tell her that I was staying in Franklin. I had an elaborate lie cooked up, something about being hired as a paralegal and working on a big class-action lawsuit involving toxic waste, but she didn’t even really care. “What do you want me to do with your stuff?” was all she asked.
I didn’t really have stuff, nothing that I needed. There were some magazines that I’d stolen from the grocery store, this one T-shirt that I really liked, and a pair of basketball shoes that I’d saved up for six months to buy and wore only when I played pickup games at the YMCA. But Madison had said they’d buy me anything I wanted.
“Just keep it there,” I said. “Maybe I’ll come get it later.”
“You’re with Madison?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m staying with her,” I told her.
“She’s always been good to you for some reason,” she said, like she was dumbfounded by unnecessary kindness.
“Well, you know, I did a good thing for her,” I told her, heating up, ready for a fight.
“Ancient history,” she said.
“I’m actually going to be a governess,” I told her suddenly.
“Okay, then,” she said, and she hung up before I could explain what that was.
Madison was downstairs in the breakfast nook, a smooth leather bench that curved all the way around the table. There was a huge bay window and I could see squirrels hopping around the lawn, scavenging nuts. It took me a second to realize that Timothy was there, holding a sterling silver fork that fit perfectly in his little hand. I tried to remember how old he was. Three? Four? No, three. He was beautiful, but it was a different kind of beauty than what Madison possessed. On Timothy it was unnatural, cartoonish. His eyes were so large that they seemed to take up seventy-five percent of his face, like a collectible figurine in some old lady’s house. He was wearing pajamas that were red and patterned with the insignia of the Tennessee state flag.
“Hello,” I said to him, but he kept staring at me. He didn’t seem shy. He just couldn’t figure out whether I was someone he should talk to.
“Say hi to Lillian,” Madison finally said. She was eating cottage cheese topped with blueberries.
“Hello,” Timothy said, but he immediately turned back to his scrambled eggs. He was done with me.
“Do you want coffee?” Madison asked, like I was one of her children, like this wasn’t the first time in years that we’d even seen each other.
I was startled when some lady appeared right behind me, holding a pot of steaming coffee. She was Asian, very small, age indeterminate.
“This is Mary,” Madison said.
“I can make anything you want,” the woman said, her accent possibly British. Or maybe just so elegant that it felt European. It wasn’t Southern, that’s all I knew. She wasn’t smiling, but maybe she wasn’t supposed to smile. I kind of wished she were smiling. It would make it easier to ask her for a giant bacon sandwich.
“Just coffee is fine,” I said, and Mary poured me a cup and then returned to the kitchen. I wondered how many people were employed by Jasper Roberts. Was it ten? Or maybe fifty? Or was it a hundred or more? Any of these seemed believable. Just then, as if conjured by my curiosity, a man wearing suspenders and a big floppy hat walked across the backyard; he was holding a rake like a soldier marching with a rifle.
“How many servants do you have?” I asked Madison, who stiffened. I couldn’t tell if I was doing this on purpose, trying to make her feel bad about being so filthy rich.
“More than we probably need,” she finally said. “But they’re not servants. They’re employees. It’s like running a cruise ship or something like that. It’s just that a place this big has a lot of things that have to get done and a lot of people who have specific abilities. But I know all their names. I can keep track of them.”
“And now you have me,” I said.
“You’re not an employee,” she said cheerfully. “You’re my friend who is helping me out.”
I drank the coffee and it was really good, the taste so complex that it made me realize that I was going to have to get rid of my expectations of how things worked. I was used to break-room coffee so thin that I had to dump a pound of sugar into it just to make it taste like something. The pizza we’d eaten the night before had been so fresh that I could taste the tomatoes in the sauce. The crust had been just slightly charred. I was finally, after twenty-eight years, going to experience things the way they had been intended. No more knockoffs.
“What do you have to do today?” I asked Madison, and then I added, “What do I have to do today?” which was more important to me.
“You can just relax. You can take a walk and get familiar with the grounds. This afternoon we’ll go into Nashville and buy some clothes and necessities. Oh, and Jasper is going to be home this evening; he’s flying back from D.C. I wanted him to meet you.”
“How often is he around here?” I asked.<
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“Less than you’d think,” she said. “He has a lot of work in Washington; he has an apartment there. But I see him enough; he’s big on family, you know.”
I didn’t know that at all. After all, the whole reason that I was here was to take care of his primitive, as-good-as-orphaned kids. Then I realized that this was just Madison going over talking points. She had a faraway look in her eyes. I knew that, over time, she’d forget herself and I’d learn what was wrong with Senator Roberts. I could wait.
“I’m going to take Timothy to day care and then when I come back, we’ll go explore. Sound good?” she offered.
“That’s cool,” I said. I wanted another cup of coffee but didn’t know if it was impolite to go get it myself. Or was it worse to call for Mary just to refill my cup? I knew that whatever I chose would be the wrong thing. I knew that until I truly believed that whatever I did was the exact right thing, I’d keep doing the wrong thing.
“Say goodbye to Lillian,” Madison instructed Timothy.
The boy dabbed at his little mouth with a napkin, the most dainty and infuriating thing I’d seen in my life. Only then did he look at me and say, “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Tim,” I said, hoping that the boy would be annoyed by this abbreviating of his name. And already I was fucking up. I needed to get Timothy to like me. Or I needed to learn how to like him. He was practice. Until the twins arrived, he was my one shot to figure out how to talk to, how to behave around, how to tolerate a child.
I tried to think of the times when I had willingly interacted with children. One time, some little kid had gotten lost in the aisles of the Save-A-Lot. I was changing the price on some cereal boxes, and I suddenly noticed her, like a ghost had materialized just for me. She was doing that thing where her eyes were real wide while she put every bit of effort into trying not to cry. I cautiously held out my hand. She took it easily, without question, and we walked in silence through the store until we reached the last aisle and her dumbass fucking mother was standing in the freezer section, looking at Lean Cuisines, no clue her daughter had almost been abducted. Before I could mutter some real passive-aggressive stuff to the mom, the girl simply squeezed my hand so I’d look down at her. Then she kissed the top of my hand, slipped out of my grasp, and ran to her mother, leaving me there. For a few seconds, I wanted to scoop up the girl and keep her. I opened the freezer door to some Popsicles and held my head in the cold until I felt normal again, until the girl and her mom had moved out of sight. I was so out of it that I ended up stealing an entire country ham at the end of my shift just to take my mind off of that girl. For the next few weeks, I kept hoping she’d return, but I never saw her again. Maybe that’s what children were, a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn’t want it.
I stayed at the table, even after Madison and her son had left the room. I noticed that Madison hadn’t eaten much of the cottage cheese, so I reached over and pulled the bowl to me. Just as I took my first bite, Mary reappeared, teleported probably, and was refilling my coffee cup. “I could have made you some food,” she said. “You only have to ask.”
“Oh, well, I just thought I’d eat this. You know, like, I didn’t want it to go to waste.”
“Scraps,” Mary said. I couldn’t tell if Mary was sympathizing with me or making fun of me. If I wasn’t sure, I generally just assumed that someone was making fun of me. But I couldn’t punch her. Not yet, not until I learned how essential she was to the whole operation. And then I took a sip of that amazing coffee, and I relaxed. This is luxury, I told myself. Don’t fuck it up by punching the help and getting your ass kicked out of paradise.
“Could I have a bacon sandwich?” I asked Mary. She nodded and effortlessly reached around me and removed the bowl of cottage cheese and blueberries.
I took my coffee and walked behind Mary to the kitchen. “I’ll bring it to you,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
“I’ll come with you,” I told her. “I feel weird at the table by myself.”
She opened a refrigerator that was as big as a car and removed a huge package of bacon. She slapped so many strips in a pan; it must have been a pound. Without ever looking at me, she sliced a loaf of fresh bread and put two pieces in a toaster that looked like both the fifties and the future.
“How long have you been working for Madison?” I asked Mary.
She didn’t respond until the toast popped up. “I have worked for Jasper Roberts for eleven years.”
“Do you like it?” I asked.
“Do I like work?” she asked, frowning. There was an edge to her, but I understood why. Every time the supermarket hired some new doofus, all I wanted to know was how much extra work I was going to have to do to make up for what they didn’t know, how many of their fuckups might blow back on me. But I’d win Mary over. My fuckups affected only me. She’d be safe.
“I mean, is it okay here?”
“It’s work. It’s fine. Senator Roberts is a nice enough man.” She placed the bacon on a paper towel to collect the grease. “What do you want on the bread? Anything?”
“Mayonnaise?” I asked.
When the sandwich was prepared, she placed it on a plate that looked like something you’d use at a wedding, like it would break if you breathed on it. “Can I eat it at the counter?” I asked, and Mary shrugged. Of course, of course, it was the best sandwich I’d ever eaten. I first thought it was just because someone had made it for me, but my mom had made some sorry sandwiches for me in my life, so maybe it was the atmosphere. I tried not to overthink it. “This is so good,” I told Mary, who just nodded. I ate it in three bites and then looked at the plate, unsure what to do with it. Mary took it and washed it right in front of me. I let it happen. That’s how easy it was, I guess.
“So you were here when Mr. Roberts was married to his second wife?” I asked Mary.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“What were the kids like?” I asked.
“What are kids like?” she replied. “They are kids. Wild.”
“Like Timothy?” I asked, and I thought I almost made her smile.
“No, not like Timothy,” she said. Her posture relaxed as she tried to explain. “Wild. In a good way. Sweet, wild kids. They would make a mess, but I didn’t mind cleaning it up.”
“I’m going to take care of them,” I said.
“I know,” she said, but I wasn’t entirely sure that she already knew this. She was good. She’d been doing this awhile.
“Madison is my best friend,” I said, so stupid, and Mary knew it was stupid because she didn’t dignify it with a response. “Thank you for the sandwich,” I said, and she turned in the exact direction of work that was waiting for her.
I walked around the house, checking all the rooms, just getting used to the sensation of my body being inside this mansion, this estate. I tried to guess what each room was for, what distinguished it from another one. The floor of the hallway was marble, and I hated the way it felt on my socked feet, but the rooms all had beautiful hardwood floors with giant rugs from, I don’t know, Civil War times. There was a game room, but that wasn’t the right word. I remembered the board game Clue: the Billiards Room. There was a pool table in the middle and a pinball game against one wall, a chessboard with two cushy chairs on either side. There was a bar in the corner with all manner of dusty liquors. I reached into one of the pockets of the pool table, removed a ball, and hid it in an empty ice bucket. I pushed the start button on the pinball game, Monster Bash, and it lit right up, no quarters required. I immediately slammed the side of the machine and the word tilt appeared and the game went dead. I took the white queen from the chessboard and was going to take it with me, but I got sheepish and put it back.
I went back to my own room to get my shoes so I could walk around the grounds. There was a woman in the room, and she was making up the bed. I instantly felt guilty that I hadn’t done it after I woke up. “Hey,” I said, and she startled, but then relaxed.
“Hel
lo, ma’am,” she said.
“Thank you for making up the bed,” I told her, but she looked embarrassed. I grabbed my shoes and hustled out of there. I still hadn’t brushed my hair or my teeth. I hadn’t brought anything with me. I knew that if I asked, a hairbrush would appear, a toothbrush and four different kinds of toothpaste, but I tried to pretend I was self-sufficient. A lot of times when I think I’m being self-sufficient, I’m really just learning to live without the things that I need.
I followed a stone path to the guesthouse, where I’d be living with the kids. It was a two-story wooden house, white with dark red shutters. The door didn’t even have a lock on it; I walked right in. The walls were painted with orange and yellow polka dots on a white background. The floors were made of a kind of spongy material, bright blue. There were lots of beanbag chairs, primary school furniture. The whole place felt like Sesame Street mixed with a mental health facility. But it wasn’t bad. It was clean, like someone had designed a scientific experiment, but inviting enough that I could live in it. There was so much space that I thought I’d have places to hide when I felt like strangling the kids.
When I looked up, I saw an unbelievably complicated sprinkler system and blinking red lights from smoke detectors. I wondered if the house had been stuffed full of asbestos. How did one prepare a house for the possibility of fire children?
“Do you like it?” someone behind me suddenly said.
“Fuck!” I shouted, whirling around, my leg involuntarily doing this little judo kick. Carl was standing there, his arms crossed. He wasn’t even looking at me; he was staring at the sprinkler system.
“I’m sorry,” he said, but he actually didn’t seem all that sorry. It felt like this had been a test, to see how badly I could be scared. I had pegged Carl as a cop, but now I reconsidered. He seemed like one of those faceless suits in sunglasses who tracks down E.T. He was the bad guy in an eighties movie.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I told him.