by Kevin Wilson
While the kids swam, I took a break and sat at a table with a little notebook and wrote down possibilities. My list looked like this:
Asbestos?
Race car clothes?
Damp towels?
Zen meditation?
Spray bottles / garden hoses?
Live in the pool (build a roof over it?)?
Fire extinguishers (safe for kids’ skin?)?
Medication (sleeping pills? anti-anxiety?)?
Therapy (discreet)?
No spicy foods?
Spontaneous human combustion research (Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown)?
And on and on and on. If someone found this notebook, they’d have to assume that I was insane, that I was planning to set someone on fire and then, just as quickly, extinguish them. But it felt scientific, the way I was proceeding. I had the children. They caught on fire. I had to keep them from catching on fire. And, also, people did not catch on fire for no reason. Or at least they didn’t catch on fire without dying or having horrible burns. So I was imagining a solution to a problem that, technically, didn’t exist. All I could think to do was give them more soggy bologna sandwiches and just keep doing that until they turned eighteen, until we all just dried up and faded away.
“Look,” Bessie called out, and I looked at her, only to see her pointing toward the mansion. I turned. “Up there,” she said. In one of the windows on the second floor, Timothy was watching us. He was, for crying out loud, looking at us through his own little pair of opera glasses, like he was in a grand theater house in London. He was motionless, watching the children, and it unnerved me to such a degree that I finally looked away, just in time to see Bessie flipping Timothy the bird, her face twisted into meanness.
“Hey, don’t get agitated!” I shouted, and then immediately felt like a nag, like my anxiety was going to ruin them. I had to be cool. I was the cool one, or at least I’d promised them that I was.
When I looked back, Timothy had disappeared from the window. “Maybe don’t flip him off, okay?” I said to Bessie. “That’s your brother.”
“Half brother, right?” Bessie said, like this was the same as a great-great-great-great-grand-uncle.
“You have to be nice to him,” I said.
“No way he knows what the middle finger means,” she said, and Roland said, “It means fuck you!”
“No,” Bessie said, annoyed, “it means up yours.”
“Come on, guys,” I said. “Do you want a juice box?”
“We’re bored,” Roland said.
“How can you be bored in this giant pool?” I asked. “It’s, like, three times the size of your grandparents’ pool.”
“We want to do something fun,” Bessie said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Hide-and-seek?” Roland offered.
“I don’t know if that’s such a hot idea,” I said, thinking of the children tucking themselves away in the most flammable parts of the house, all bunched up, waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen.
“Can we go get ice cream?” Bessie asked.
“We have ice cream in the freezer,” I told her.
“No, I want ice cream at a store. I want to watch them scoop it out and serve it to me.”
“We’re still getting settled,” I said. “We should stay on the estate.”
“Can we go inside the mansion?” Roland asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
“This sucks,” Bessie said. “It sucks.”
She was right. It sucked so bad. It fucking sucked. I wanted to gather them in my arms and say, “Children, this fucking sucks. I hate it. I think I’d better be heading back home. Good luck.” I imagined stealing Carl’s Miata and hitting the road. I imagined Madison trying to raise these kids, and I enjoyed the slight twinge I felt at her discomfort. If anyone else had tried to hurt Madison, I would have murdered them, but I felt like I’d earned the right to imagine little aggressions against her.
I couldn’t help feeling like I was failing everyone. But then other times I thought maybe this was what everyone wanted from me, to simply keep the children occupied until something else could be worked out. But that would be a failure to me, to these kids. I had to find a way to integrate them into this new life, to make them just the slightest bit less feral, have them walk through a crowded mall and try on clothes without burning the whole thing down. And maybe, selfishly, I thought that if I could do these things, I’d become an expert. If some rich family in Argentina discovered that they had fire children, I’d hop on a plane and sort it out for them. I’d give lectures. Maybe write a book about the whole experience. And, Jesus, right now the book that I would write was so goddamn boring. Once upon a time, I babysat fire children and made them stay in a pool for three months. The end. I had to write a better story for them, for me, for everyone.
“What are you writing?” Carl asked from behind me, and I jumped. “Oh fuck,” I said, and the kids giggled loudly, even though they hated Carl. How had he appeared without my knowing it? I felt like maybe Carl was the kind of guy who put a lot of effort into being invisible until just the right moment. I bet he practiced walking without making noise.
“What is this?” he said, gesturing to the notebook. He looked at one of the entries, squinting as if he couldn’t believe I’d taken the time to write it down. “Zen meditation? Are you serious?”
“This is private,” I said, closing the notebook before he could read anything else, though he’d probably read it all.
“If it’s about those kids, it’s my business,” he said, and when he saw that I did not like people telling me what to do, how to behave, he softened and said, “I’ve actually made my own list.”
“I bet it’s just things like, send kids to boarding school, send kids to military school, send kids to sanitarium in Switzerland, freeze kids in carbonite,” I replied.
“Those are definitely on the list,” he said. “But let’s talk.”
“We can hear you,” Bessie shouted.
“It’s not a secret,” he said, his voice rising just a little.
“Then let me come sit with you guys,” she said.
“No,” Carl replied, so effortless. It was easy for him to do this, to deny any and every little thing that a person wanted. I used to be good at that. I used to refuse people even when it didn’t benefit me, when it actively inconvenienced me. I didn’t know if this was progress or not.
“We have to come up with a plan,” I told him.
“I agree,” he said. “Something that will help the children and allow Senator Roberts and Mrs. Roberts a measure of security.”
“Well, first, what about therapy? Discreetly done, of course, ’cause I know you’re big on keeping it all a big secret.”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said flatly.
“Discreet? Did you hear me say discreet? Carl, their mom died. They’ve been living with crazy people for two months. They need to talk to someone.”
“They can talk to you,” he replied.
“I have no training,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “it’s nice to hear you admit it.”
I just stared at him, angry.
“Senator Roberts does not believe in therapy,” he continued, “and he will not allow his children to see a psychiatrist. He is uneasy with the entire concept of psychoanalysis.”
“I wonder why that might be, Carl.”
“It’s not going to happen. So move on.”
“So, okay,” I began, starting over. The tone of my voice was unnatural to me, like I was trying to get a bank loan. “The way I figure it, this is being generated inside of them, right? The fire? They combust when they get agitated.”
“That seems to be the case,” he replied, listening to me, hearing me out.
“So we have to find ways to address the problem both within and without . . . is that the right way to say it? Inside of their bodies and outside of their bodies.”
“Just s
ay what you want to do, Lillian,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“So the outside stuff is just, like, putting out the fire when they catch on fire.”
“Fire extinguishers,” Carl said, nodding.
“You ever used a fire extinguisher? They’re a fucking mess. The chemicals can’t be safe to breathe in. I think if we can get attuned to how they behave, how their bodies work, we don’t need fire extinguishers. We just need, like, damp towels.”
“Lillian, dear lord, is this what you’ve been working on for three days? Damp towels?”
“Okay, yes, when you say it like that, it sounds really shitty and stupid. But, yeah, we have these damp towels or cloths. We keep them cold. We can carry them around in a little cooler or something.”
“Oh my god,” Carl said.
“And when the kids start to get weird, catch on fire, we just pat them down, keep them cool. It keeps the fire from breaking out.”
“Do you have any other ideas? Please say you have other ideas.”
“Well, Jesus, Mr. Ph.D. in fire management, I do have other ideas. So, like, when race car drivers are in their cars, you know, like, during races, they wear these clothes that keep them from catching on fire, right? Even if it’s just for a few seconds or a minute. It lets them get help.”
“It’s called Nomex,” Carl said, a know-it-all. “Firefighters use it, too.”
“Okay, then we get that stuff. We make them wear socks and shirts and underwear made out of that stuff.”
“But those fibers are to keep the fire away from people,” Carl said. “The kids are the fire. We’re not keeping the fire away from the kids. We’re trying to keep the fire away from everyone else. From other things that might catch on fire.”
“Wouldn’t it work the same way? If it’s flame . . . what do you call it?”
“Flame resistant,” Carl replied.
“Right, if it’s flame resistant, then it still does the same job. The kids catch on fire, and the material keeps it contained to them.”
“I guess that’s right,” Carl said, like I’d solved a very simple math problem but it was still kind of impressive.
“It buys us time. It protects us. It protects the house. Right?”
“I guess so,” he said. And then, like it had just occurred to him, he continued, “I have a buddy. He’s a stuntman in Hollywood. They have this kind of gel, a water-based gel, that they use for fire stunts. You rub it on your skin and the fire won’t hurt you. It would do the same thing. The kids catch on fire, and this gel would contain it just long enough for us to put them out.”
“Okay, cool. Buy, like, a hundred gallons of that gel. Buy firefighter clothes. But that’s only half of the problem.”
“What else?” he asked.
“We have to keep them from catching on fire in the first place. We have to make it so that when they find themselves in situations where they usually catch on fire, they don’t catch on fire.”
“Zen meditation,” he said, actually snapping his fingers, like it all made sense now, like maybe I wasn’t as insane as he’d thought.
“Something like that,” I said. “One of my mom’s boyfriends did yoga, and, god, it was so stupid-looking and irritating because we all had to be quiet while he did it, but he was the calmest motherfucker I’ve ever met in my life. Nothing my mom did would even faze him for a second. She ended up leaving him because he was too calm. She said—”
“That’s fine, Lillian,” Carl said, cutting me off.
“Anyway, we do yoga every morning. We teach them, I don’t know, like a mantra or something so they can calm themselves down.”
“Why not just give them a ton of medication, lithium or something? Keep them at an enforced level?”
“Do you think Jasper wants us drugging his kids?”
“I don’t think we have to tell Jasper that we’re drugging his kids,” Carl replied.
“We’re not drugging children, okay?” I said. “We do deep breathing exercises. We stay calm.”
“Cognitive behavioral therapy,” he said.
“Well, get me some books on that,” I told him. “Get me that weird fire gel from Hollywood and get me books on cognitive behavioral therapy. Yoga tapes.”
“Okay,” he said, and he sounded actually kind of satisfied. “Okay, this is what we’ll do.”
“What is?” Bessie said. She and Roland were standing right beside us. Even Carl jumped when he heard her.
“You’re supposed to be in the pool,” I told them.
“Tell me about that stuntman gel,” Roland asked Carl.
“No pills,” Bessie said. “No pills. If you tried to make us take something, it would make me so angry. I would catch the couch on fire.”
“No pills,” I said, nodding.
“Okay,” Bessie said, and her gaze was so far off, staring into a deep cave, like she still wasn’t sure that she could trust me, which kind of hurt my feelings. Then I realized that my brainstorming notebook had listed sleeping pills as an option.
“The real reason that I came to see you,” Carl said, “is that Mrs. Roberts wants to have a family dinner. Senator Roberts will be home this weekend. She wants the children to come to the house. She wants to try to make this work.”
“Can we have pizza?” Roland asked. “Or chicken nuggets?”
“That’s not up to me, Roland,” Carl said.
“So we get to go over there?” I asked, not quite believing it.
“In four days,” he said. “As long as there aren’t any incidents in the meantime.”
“It’s not our fault, okay?” Bessie said, indignant.
“We were born this way!” Roland shouted.
“I’d better get going,” Carl said, standing up. “Good luck, Lillian.”
“Bye, Carl,” I said, and, then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Roland peeing directly into the pool.
“Roland!” I shouted.
“The chemicals,” he said, flustered. “The pool stays clean.”
“Look at that jerk,” Bessie said, and I thought she meant her brother, but then I saw that she was looking back at the house, and there was Timothy again, holding a stuffed animal, looking at us through those opera glasses. And behind him was Madison, beautiful even from this distance. I waved, and Madison waved back. I gave her a thumbs-up. I wanted to tell her about Nomex, about yoga, but she was so far away, all the way in that giant mansion. I missed her.
“Okay, kiddos,” I told them. “Back in the pool.” They groaned, but then cannonballed into the water, splashing my legs.
“Come in with us,” Bessie said, but I shook my head. I got up and walked to a lounge chair, reclined. In my sunglasses, I felt like a movie star. I couldn’t see myself, which helped the fantasy. “I’m going to lounge for a bit,” I said.
“Aw,” Roland said. “That’s no fun.”
“Watch us,” Bessie said, her hand slapping the surface of the water, like she was punishing some stupid baby.
“I am watching,” I said. With my sunglasses, they couldn’t really tell where I was looking. I just needed a second, this little space where they were not my entire world. I needed the smallest break. Who would deny me this? I mean, besides these two kids. I looked up at the clouds. They all looked like things, but I was too tired to give them names.
I wondered what Madison was doing. It was hard not to feel like she had tricked me. I had barely seen her. I remembered those first days, before the kids, when it was just the two of us. She bought me a wardrobe. We played basketball. I thought we’d be together. I mean, I knew I’d be here, with the kids, but in my mind, Madison was sitting next to me, laughing. I thought we’d be eating those dainty, gross tea sandwiches while the kids played hopscotch or some shit.
“Watch us,” Bessie said again, louder.
“I am watching you,” I said. “You look beautiful.”
“Aww,” Roland said, knowing that I was lying.
I felt the sun on my face, listened to the sound
of the kids in the pool. It was peaceful. It was boring as shit, but it was peaceful. I closed my eyes for a second. The summer seemed to stretch out for miles, forever.
When I woke up, my whole body startling into consciousness, I looked in the pool and the kids were gone. How long had I been asleep? A minute? Eight years? Anything between these two periods of time seemed possible. My neck was killing me. “Bessie?” I said, quiet, so no one would hear me. It defeated the purpose, but I was trying to be cool, so cool. “Roland?” I said. Nothing. The pool was calm, empty. I looked around. The kids were gone. I instinctively looked toward the windows in the mansion. There was no sign of Timothy, no witness to my irresponsibility. And then I thought, What if the kids are in the mansion? What if they sneaked into it? What if they’ve got Timothy in a headlock? I felt sick to my stomach.
I stood up and started walking around the pool, checking behind the lounge chairs, making sure they weren’t hiding from me to teach me a lesson. I looked into the pool, all the way to the bottom, but it was empty. I ran back to the guesthouse, opened the door, and shouted for them, but there was no response. I checked every room: no sign of them. I looked at the phone, thought for a split second about calling Carl, but I could not imagine the judgment inherent in that interaction. I’d never live it down. It would be noted in the permanent record on me that Carl kept inside his brain.