by Kevin Wilson
“We just know,” Roland said. “Our mom said we’ll always be like this.”
“Well, okay,” I continued, a little annoyed with their dead mom for being so negative about it, “but what do you know about it? How does it work?”
“It just happens sometimes,” Bessie said. “It’s like sneezing. You know? It’s just this tingly feeling that comes and goes.”
“But is it when you’re upset? Or does it ever happen when you’re just bored?” I wished I had a notebook, a lab coat, something to make this more official. Like I was doing intake, or a school project.
“If we get upset, or if we get freaked out, or if something bad happens,” Roland said, “then we catch on fire.”
“Or if we have a bad dream,” Bessie offered. “Like, a really bad dream.”
“Wait, it happens when you’re sleeping, even?” I asked, and felt the floor beneath me give way a little, the realization that this might be worse than I thought. Both kids nodded. “But only, like, really bad dreams,” Roland said, as if this would comfort me.
“But mostly when you get upset?” I asked, and they nodded again. I didn’t know if this was progress, but they were listening to me. They weren’t on fire. We were together, in this house, and everyone outside of this house was waiting for us to figure this out.
“So we just stay calm,” I told them. “We read books and we swim in the pool and we go for walks and we just stay calm.”
“We’ll still catch on fire,” Bessie said, and she looked so sad.
“But not as much, right? Not like today? You’re not always catching on fire?” I asked.
“No, not much. Not all that much. More since Mom died,” Bessie offered.
“What would your mom do to keep you guys from catching on fire?” I asked.
“Push us into the shower,” Bessie said, seeming to think of this as an injustice, squeaky shoes and damp underwear.
“She made us get up real early, every morning, no matter what,” Roland said. “She said it was better when we were a little tired. And she made us do tons of chores. And lessons. All these lessons with pencil and paper. And she would fill up the tub with ice cubes and cold water and we’d have to get in it.”
“She kept the house real cold,” Bessie said, “even in the winter. But—” She looked away, embarrassed.
“But what?” I asked.
“But I don’t think that it really helped,” she finally said, the whole time looking at Roland like they held a secret. “It doesn’t matter if we’re hot or cold when things are okay. It doesn’t matter if we’re around a fire, like on the stove, but Mom thought it would make us think about fire and then it would happen. But it’s not like that. Not really. It doesn’t matter except when we start to catch on fire.”
“And can you stop yourself?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Bessie admitted. “If Mom was around, she’d see it happening and get so freaked out and try to make us stop, but that would make it worse. But if Roland and I are by ourselves, and we feel it happening, sometimes we just make our minds go blank, and it stops. Sometimes.”
“Okay,” I said, like I’d cracked some spy code and was going to win a million dollars. “So we’ll watch for it and then try to help you calm down.”
“What’s all that?” Roland asked, pointing to the sprinkler system, which brought me back to reality.
“That’s in case of a fire,” I told him. “For emergencies.”
“Mom got rid of smoke alarms,” Roland said. “They went off too much.”
“Well,” I said, thinking, “the sprinklers are there to keep us safe.”
“The fire doesn’t hurt us,” Bessie said.
Well, I realized, it was to keep me safe. It was to keep the house safe. It was to keep the house where Madison and Jasper and Timothy lived safe. I thought of a little smoke, the sprinklers going off, everything soaking wet, all the electronics and books ruined. I thought about that happening once or twice a day.
“Maybe I can get Carl to turn them off,” I offered, and the kids seemed happy with this possibility.
And then, as if by magic or perhaps the possibility of constant, invasive surveillance, Carl’s voice echoed through the house. “Hello?” he asked. He was downstairs, and I imagined him holding a fire extinguisher like the hero in a bad movie.
“That’s Carl,” I said, and the kids nodded.
“He’s a real square,” Bessie said, and I wanted to hug her so tightly.
“Who is he?” Roland asked. “Is he your boyfriend?”
“God, no,” I said, almost laughing. “He’s like my manager. Or, no, maybe we’re like coworkers with way different responsibilities. Or—”
“Lillian?” Carl now shouted. I had kind of forgotten that he was there.
“Yeah?” I shouted back.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Everything is fine,” I said.
“Could you come downstairs?” he asked.
“Us too?” Roland shouted.
“No!” Carl shouted, but then he corrected himself. “You guys just stay up there for a second while I talk to Lillian.”
“Do you want us to come with you?” Bessie asked. I had a hard time looking at her and not seeing waves of flame erupting from her skin. I simply shook my head. “I’m okay,” I said. As I walked out of the room, I peeked my head back in and said, “If you feel it coming, run to the shower and turn it on, okay?” The kids nodded, and I felt like this was a kind of test, to let them out of my sight, to feel them above me, to hear them breathing.
Downstairs, Carl was on his knees, sweeping up cereal crumbs with a dainty little broom and dustpan. He looked up at me. “Seems like they’re settling in,” he said, and I felt a little judged.
“They haven’t caught on fire again,” I told him, a little proud of myself.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” he replied.
“You heard Jasper, right?” I asked him. “This is happening. You’re not getting rid of them.”
“So?” Carl asked.
“So help me, okay?”
“I will help you, Lillian,” he said. “I’ll help you make the right decisions.”
“For instance,” I said, ignoring the little ways he dug into me, “we have to turn off the sprinkler system.”
“It was two grand to install that system,” Carl replied, like it was his fucking money, like Timothy’s stuffed animal budget wasn’t four times that amount.
“How much did all these electronics cost?” I asked. “How about the books, the clothes, the bedsheets? Those kids caught on fire twice in a single day, right? This house will be like a constant rainstorm if you keep the sprinkler system on.”
“So I turn off the system,” he said, “and then what happens when they catch on fire again?”
“Carl, please. Carl? Please. I will put them out.”
“Twenty-four hours a day? What about when you’re asleep?”
“Twenty-four/seven. I’m a light sleeper. I have a plan, okay?”
“All right,” Carl said. I think maybe he now had a sense of how powerful I was. The children were mine, and that gave me something that he didn’t have. “All right, I’ll shut it off. But that’s our secret. Senator Roberts needs to think that there are true safety measures in place.”
“I’m not going to tell Jasper. Holy shit, do you think I would tell Jasper?”
Carl looked at me with some measure of sincerity. His posture changed, just the slightest slackening. “Lillian, honestly? I don’t know what you will or won’t do. But my livelihood is now connected to yours. So we work together. Agreed?”
“That’s great, Carl,” I said, kind of meaning it and kind of making fun of him. “I’d like that.”
“Now, the reason I came over here was to say that Mrs. Roberts thinks that perhaps having a family dinner might be too overwhelming for the children, not only Roland and Bessie but also Timothy.”
“Okay,” I said. So this was how i
t would work, a line demarcating us and them. I wondered if Jasper would ever see the kids again. I wondered if Madison and I would still hang out, and I figured that we still would, but in different ways.
“You’ll be okay making them dinner here?” Carl asked.
“Sure. No problem,” but I wasn’t quite sure of the mechanics of it. I was used to microwaving something and eating it over the trash can. And, over the last week or so, I’d gotten used to Mary making the most amazing meals that I couldn’t stop eating. I would miss Mary so much, now that I was fully banished to this guesthouse. I wanted the children to meet her.
“All right, then,” he said. He turned but then suddenly turned back. “Do you see that phone?” he asked, pointing to the wall-mounted handset next to the refrigerator. I nodded. “If you ever need me, no matter what time it is or what it’s about, pick up that phone and push one-one-one-one. Okay?”
“One-one-one-one,” I repeated. “And you’ll come to me?”
“I will,” he said. This seemed to pain him to admit.
“Good night, Carl,” I said.
“Good night, Lillian,” he replied, and then he turned into a shadow and was gone.
When I went to the stairs, I saw Bessie and Roland sitting on the top step, not one bit ashamed of eavesdropping, which I loved.
“How did I do?” I asked them.
“You got him to turn off the sprinklers,” Roland said. “That’s awesome.”
“I did it,” I said. “I told you I would, and then I did.”
“Okay,” Bessie said, as if she’d made a decision that she’d been considering ever since she first saw me.
“Do you want pizza?” I asked, and they both nodded enthusiastically, so we went down to the kitchen and I got the oven on and a frozen pizza shoved in there. I cut up some apples, their skin red and waxy like in a fairy tale, and the kids just destroyed the slices, so I cut up two more. I ate a banana. I looked again in the fridge and realized there was no beer, and I almost picked up the phone and dialed 1111, but decided to be responsible. I’d steal some from the mansion tomorrow, or maybe some of Jasper’s fancy bourbon, which I believed I’d earned with my work here today. My hand was kind of throbbing, which made me feel a little less proud of myself, and so I took some aspirin, and then the pizza was ready.
Before I let them eat, I said, “I’m happy to be with you.”
They just looked at me, dumbfounded. “Can we eat?” Bessie asked.
“I said,” I repeated, “that I am happy to be with you.”
“That’s real nice,” Roland said, and he picked up the pizza slice and ate it in three bites, even though it was still pretty damn hot.
After dinner, I washed the plates while the kids picked out a book for me to read to them.
“Can we skip bath time?” Roland asked.
“And do we need to brush our teeth?” Bessie asked.
“You kids were in that chlorinated water this afternoon,” I told them. “And, you know, you caught on fire, so it’s probably good to get a shower. And you have to brush your teeth.”
“Aw, man,” Roland said, but I stood firm and the kids seemed to respect me for this, or else they were biding their time before they ran me over.
I stood outside the bathroom while they took turns hopping in the shower. They were ten. I didn’t know what the boundaries were at ten, but they seemed too old for me to be dealing with their naked bodies, unless, of course, it was fire related. That was my plan, to let them control themselves until they couldn’t control themselves. It’s how I would have wanted to be treated if I were a demon child.
I sat on the floor in between the kids’ two beds, Bessie and Roland all fresh in their pajamas, their hair, what a horror show, wet and slicked down into something tame.
Bessie handed me the book, Penny Nichols and the Black Imp. “What is this?” I asked. The cover was red and faded, just a hardback book with the silhouette of a girl’s profile. I looked at the title again. What in the hell was a black imp? I checked the copyright, which was from the thirties. Was it racist?
“Maybe a different book, guys? There’s, like, a million down there. Maybe, like, Superfudge or something?”
“This is kind of like Nancy Drew, but weirder,” Bessie informed me.
“Have you read this already?” I asked.
Bessie nodded, but Roland said, “I haven’t.”
“What’s the black imp?” I asked.
“It’s part of the mystery,” she told me.
I scanned the opening page and the first line had a “slightly decrepit roadster” pulling up to a house. One of the characters used the word shan’t.
“It’s just this statue,” she finally said, seeing my hesitation. “It’s this clay statue. It’s not about Satan or anything.”
“Fine,” I said. “Whatever you want.” So I read to them about a girl detective named Penelope Nichols, who was weird enough that it was interesting. It was fun. I liked reading out loud, I realized. I did voices even, though the kids didn’t make any sign of appreciation. I read and read, and my voice got soft, and the kids got sleepy, and after a while it was time for bed.
“Good night, kiddos,” I said, talking like Penny Nichols.
“Where are you going?” Roland asked.
“To my room,” I said, confused. “To my private room. For privacy.”
“Can you sleep with us tonight?” Roland asked.
“No,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” Bessie asked, suddenly invested.
“There’s no room,” I said.
“We can push the beds together,” Bessie said, but I told her that the beds didn’t really work like that. I thought of sleeping in the crack between the beds, sinking down, and it frightened me, honestly.
“We’ll all sleep in your room,” Bessie said. “We looked in there. It’s a huge bed.”
“No,” I said.
“Just for tonight?” Roland said.
I thought of them being shoved into this Bozo house with me, their kind-of nanny, their mom dead, their dad in that linen suit, Madison like the good witch in every fairy tale. I thought of them catching on fire in this room, all alone.
“Fine,” I said. “Until we get settled. Come on.”
The kids shouted and then ran into my bedroom, where they dove under the covers. I turned on the fan. It was nine o’clock. I usually stayed up well past midnight, reading magazines and eating whatever Mary had left over in the fridge. But this, I guess, was what Madison was paying me to do.
“C’mon,” I said, like Moses parting the sea, “move aside so I can get in there.” They did, and I crawled into bed. They didn’t cuddle against me, but they kind of bunched up so they were almost touching me.
“Good night,” I said, thinking maybe I could slide out of bed after they had fallen asleep, and then I could do whatever I wanted downstairs.
And then I thought of the entire day, Bessie biting my hand, falling into the pool, watching them catch on fire, watching them catch on fire again, waiting for them to maybe catch on fire again. I was tired, I realized. I touched the places on my face where Bessie had scratched me. I felt like I couldn’t breathe; the children were so close, burning up all the available air. I kind of gasped a little, and Bessie asked, “Are you okay?” and I said, “Go to sleep,” and then I just closed my eyes and tried to imagine a world where everything worked out.
And then I really was asleep, dead asleep, for maybe ten minutes, and then I heard them talking.
“Is she asleep?” Roland asked.
“I think so,” Bessie said. I kept my breathing steady, my eyes closed.
“What do you think?” Roland asked.
“She’s okay,” Bessie said, “I guess.”
“What about Dad?” Roland asked.
“What a jerk,” Bessie said, “just like Mom said.”
“I kind of like it here,” Roland said.
There was a moment of silence and then Bess
ie replied, “It might be okay. For a little while.”
“She’s nice,” Roland said.
“Maybe,” Bessie said. “She’s weird.”
“So what do we do?” he asked.
“We just wait and see,” Bessie said.
“And if it’s bad?” Roland said. “Like at Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop’s?”
“We’ll just burn it all down,” Bessie said. “Everything. Everyone. We’ll set it on fire.”
“Okay,” Roland said.
“Good night, Roland,” Bessie said.
“Good night, Bessie,” Roland said.
They settled into positions of sleep, their bodies relaxing. It was so dark in the room. I could hear them breathing. And then, maybe a minute later, Bessie said, “Good night, Lillian.”
I lay there in the dark, the kids next to me. “Good night, Bessie,” I finally said.
And then we were all asleep, inside that house, our new home.
Six
We spent the next three days in the pool while I worked out what to do with the kids. This is not an exaggeration. Right when they woke up, their bodies pleasantly warm as they huddled against me in the bed, I would pick them up, cover them with sunscreen, just a shockingly ridiculous amount even though I couldn’t imagine that the sun would hurt them, and we would run to the pool and cannonball into the water. We played Marco Polo for hours, our fingertips so wrinkled that it seemed like permanent damage had been done. I’d take a break around lunchtime and make bologna sandwiches and the kids would eat them at the edge of the pool, the bread soggy, their hands smeared with mustard until they simply dunked them into the water. When they got tired of swimming, we lounged around under umbrellas and napped. Our eyes burned from the chlorine, but what else could we do?
And everyone left us alone. No Madison. No Jasper. Not even Carl hovering at the edges. I didn’t see any gardeners or maids in our area. We were a world unto ourselves, even though I knew it was temporary. Eventually we would have to figure something out, a way to integrate the children into the real world. I imagined a time when they sat at that huge dining room table in the mansion, eating eggs Benedict or whatever the fuck while their father read the paper and told them scores from the Braves game the day before. I imagined them walking the aisles of the library in town, picking out books, books that we could confidently check out without worrying about them catching on fire, dear lord, the rescinding of our library card. I imagined them inside the mansion, then leaving for school, then coming back home. I imagined them sleeping in a bed that wasn’t mine. Where was I during all this? Far away, right? Like, if I got the kids to this level of normalcy, they wouldn’t need me anymore. And I wasn’t sure if I was happy or sad about it. And then I felt stupid, getting worried about my eventual success as a nanny, because I was dealing with children who burst into flames, so it would probably never actually happen. I was already imagining a world where I hadn’t fucked up, where I’d saved the day. How would I make it to that world?