by Kevin Wilson
I slipped into the mansion undetected and went to the kitchen, where Mary was making pasta, folding the dough into these intricate little purses.
“Mary, have you seen the kids?” I asked her, so casual, like I already knew the answer and was only testing her.
“Not in here,” Mary said, not even looking up at me. “You lose them?”
“Maybe,” I said, unable to lie to Mary. She smiled a little, her hands moving so effortlessly. “Better find them,” she replied.
“I guess so,” I said. “Don’t tell Madison about this?”
“No,” Mary said, the word so certain, so strong, that I wanted to kiss her. I knew we weren’t in this together. But it made me happy to be protected by her, even if just for a few seconds.
And now the world seemed to become large and overwhelming. I’d spent so much time inside this estate, which, yes, was fucking huge, but it had seemed manageable, safe. I looked around, I am not joking, to see if the kids had sprinkled bread crumbs to make their path visible to me. They had not. Goddamn, these children. Not a single crumb of bread. And now some witch was eating them. Or they were burning down the witch’s house. Whatever they were doing, I knew who would get blamed.
I kept walking, not calling out for them, trying to locate them by some kind of ESP, like I would find them just by holding them in my mind until they simply appeared in front of me, definitely not on fire. I kept looking toward the horizon, searching for smoke.
And now that I was a one-woman search party, it finally hit me that I was responsible for these children, me and me alone. This was a big fucking responsibility. Why had Madison and Jasper entrusted me with such a job? The magnitude, the lives of two children, holy shit. It’s strange that this didn’t sink in when the kids were actually on fire. Fire had seemed manageable. Disappearing without a trace, that seemed more problematic, more serious. Or at least, I knew which situation would result in my getting blamed more than the other. One was genetics. One was negligence. I wasn’t prepared for this. If someone stole a package of steaks from the Save-A-Lot, who cared? I didn’t. I most certainly did not. This was different. How had it taken me this long to realize it?
And, then, like a second bolt of lightning, it struck me with dead certainty what would happen if the children disappeared, if they died, if they simply inconvenienced everyone around us. I would be blamed. And I would be sent back home. And just like all those years ago, when I’d been kicked out of Iron Mountain, everyone would sit there blaming me, wondering why I thought I was anything other than what I was. Madison? That would be the end of our relationship. She had asked me to do this one thing for her . . . well, this second thing for her. If I couldn’t do it, if I failed her, why would she need me? I would lose her again. I had never let her down before. I felt my heart stutter in my chest. I couldn’t let this happen.
“Kids!” I shouted now. “Bessie? Roland?” I walked into the woods at the edge of the estate. “Bessie! Roland! Come back! Get back here right now!” I shouted. I didn’t care who heard. Maybe one of the gardeners would come running, help me look for them. But, no, it was just me. It was always going to be just me, walking into the dark woods, looking for these kids.
I kept following the trail that someone had blazed through the forest, though it was slightly overgrown and thorns kept sticking to my bathing suit. I wished I had something other than flip-flops on. “Bessie! I am not joking. Bessie? Come back,” I said, but there was no response. I could be going in the exact wrong direction, but what else could I do? I just kept walking, every once in a while saying their names so they knew that I was coming for them. What I’d do with them when I found them, I tried to keep that out of my voice.
After about twenty minutes, I finally saw the woods open up, and there were the kids, right where the light came in. They were standing there in their swimsuits, and it looked like they were taking and retaking this one tentative step. They were so close to running away. Just beyond the woods was a road. But they were paralyzed, right at the moment when they had to decide. And I caught up to them. I was right on them. My hands were on them, touching their weird little bodies.
“You scared the absolute shit out of me,” I told them, and I realized that I hadn’t been breathing, that I’d been holding the air in my lungs until I had them in my grasp.
“Sorry,” Bessie said, not looking at me.
“What the fuck were you doing?” I asked. “Why did you leave me?”
“You weren’t watching us,” Bessie said, so petulant, just like a child. “So we left. And then we kept walking.”
“We tried to get a car to stop for us,” Roland said, “but there have only been, like, two cars and they didn’t even slow down.”
“Why are you running away?” I asked them.
“It would be easier, right?” Bessie said. “If we just disappeared, everyone would be happy.”
“I wouldn’t be happy,” I told her, meaning it. “I would be so sad.”
“Really?” Roland asked, surprised.
“Yes—Jesus Christ—yes, I would be sad.”
“Okay,” Roland said, satisfied.
“And would you be happy?” I asked them.
“No,” Bessie said. “Not really. I was just standing here, and I couldn’t move because I didn’t know where I could go. Not back to Mom. No way would we go back to Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop’s house. Where else is there? We don’t have anyone, Lillian. We don’t have anyone.”
“You have me, okay?” I said, and I guess I meant it. Regardless, it was a fact. They had me. They had me.
And all this time I’d been worried about what would happen to me if I fucked it up. I’d lose this life. I’d lose Madison. But I hadn’t thought about the kids. If I failed them, where would they go? Somewhere bad, that was for sure. Somewhere worse than this life. Carl was ready to send them there. For all I knew, Jasper and Madison would be ready to send them there if I slipped up just a little bit. I remembered that feeling, driving down to the valley, no longer welcome at Iron Mountain. It had felt like my life was over. And it kind of was. I wouldn’t let that happen to these kids. They were wild, like me. They deserved better, like me. I wouldn’t fuck up. I resolved myself to this future. I would not fuck up. No fucking way.
And just then a car slowed, pulled over, rolled down its window. A dude in a Hawaiian shirt peered over at us.
“You need a ride?” he asked.
“No,” Bessie said suddenly, her face red.
“You sure?” he asked. I had him figured out. He was not a threat. He was a doofus. Still, we were not meant to be seen. We were not for public consumption.
“We’re on a hike,” I told him.
“In your bathing suits?” he asked, curious.
“Hit the road,” I said, making myself bitchy. It felt good.
“Well . . . bye,” he said, driving off. We watched the car head down the road, disappear.
“Can we go back to the house?” Bessie finally asked me.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.” And the two of them took my hands, and we made our way back to the house that was ours but wasn’t quite ours.
“Have you guys heard of yoga?” I asked them, and both kids groaned, because nothing that was called yoga was probably much fun.
“Just read to us?” Bessie asked. They were ten years old, but sometimes they seemed so much younger, undernourished, wild.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s just read. I’ll read you a story.”
We listened to the sounds of the woods, and we noticed how, once we made it back home, those sounds had changed, gotten quieter. Or maybe they had gone inside us. Whatever it was, we were back. And we would not leave again.
The next morning, I awoke to Roland’s fingers in my mouth, Bessie’s feet pressed hard against my stomach. The possible inappropriateness of the situation, of sleeping with these two kids, gave me momentary pause, and then I thought, fuck it, nobody else was going to hold on to them. Their lives, up to this m
oment, could not have been less weird than sleeping with a grown woman who was nearly a stranger to them. I spit out Roland’s fingers, and he twitched a little. I pushed my belly out, and Bessie felt the resistance and stirred. “Wake up, kiddos,” I said, stretching my arms over my head.
“Do we have to go swimming again?” Bessie asked, and she seemed shocked that she had become bored with a swimming pool, glimmering chlorinated water.
“No. We’ve got a new routine,” I said, trying to think of the routine. “We’re doing some exercises.”
“Right now?” Roland whined.
“Yes, right now,” I told him.
“Can’t we have breakfast first?” Bessie asked.
“I think, hm, I think we do exercises first. You don’t want to exercise on a full stomach. That’s bad for you, I think.” I was making this shit up as I went along. I didn’t have the yoga tapes from Carl yet, so I tried to remember my mom’s ex-boyfriend. I couldn’t recall the poses, though I did remember that his butt was often in the air in ways that made me embarrassed for him. He had a ponytail, which was distracting.
“What kind of exercises?” Bessie asked.
“Breathing exercises,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound much like exercising,” Roland conceded, and I said, “Just sit on the floor.”
They sat on the floor, their legs tucked underneath them. “Sit cross-legged, okay?” I said, demonstrating. I was not flexible, lived a life that required me to be tense at all times in case someone tried to fuck me over, and I found the simple act of making my spine erect, making my pelvis and thighs do regular stuff, was a little more difficult than I’d expected. I hoped that the kids didn’t notice, but they were easily making their bodies into pretzels, like I could have twisted them into any shape and they could have held it.
“Now what?” Bessie said.
“Close your eyes,” I said.
“No way,” Bessie replied, and I again felt tenderness for her because I also understood how ridiculous my request was. When I was ten, I wouldn’t have closed my eyes for all the money in the world.
“We’re all going to close our eyes,” I said.
“So you’ll close your eyes, too?” Bessie asked, as if she hadn’t expected it.
“Yes,” I said, trying to maintain calm, to not be irritated.
“So you won’t know if my eyes are closed or not?” she said.
“I guess not,” I said. “I just have to trust you.”
“You can trust me,” Bessie said, and I knew that this was a test. So I just closed my eyes.
“Now,” I said, feeling their hot little bodies, their sour breath, the tremors running all over them, “take a deep breath.”
Roland sucked in air like he was trying to drink the world’s biggest milkshake. He coughed a little.
“Just an easy, slow breath, and then you hold it,” I said. I tried it myself. The air went inside me, more than you’d think, and I just held it. It sat there, mixed with whatever was in my body that made me who I was. And I don’t know if the kids were doing it right or not, but I wasn’t going to open my eyes. I held it, and it felt like the world was spinning just a little less quickly than it had been before.
“Now exhale,” I said, and I could hear the relief in their lungs as they blew the air out of their bodies in one long, ragged exhalation.
“Are we done?” Bessie asked. I opened my eyes and saw that they both had their eyes closed.
“No,” I said. “We’re going to do it again.”
“How many times?” Roland asked.
I had no clue.
“Fifty times?” I said, and Bessie immediately protested.
“No way,” she said. “No way fifty times; come on, Lillian.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Twenty times.”
“Fine,” Bessie replied. And so that’s what we did. We breathed. We held our breath. We breathed again. And I had never thought about it this way, had always assumed that whatever was inside me that made me toxic could not be diluted, but each subsequent breath made me a little more calm. And I lost track of time. I had no idea how many breaths we’d done. But I didn’t care. I just kept breathing, and the temperature of the room stayed the same. And, finally, when it seemed enough, I said, “Okay, then.”
“That’s it?” Roland asked. “We’re done? We can eat breakfast?”
“How did it feel?” I asked them.
“Silly,” Bessie said. “At first. But it’s okay. It wasn’t so bad.”
“So we’ll do that every day,” I said.
“Every day?” they both whined.
“Yes,” I said. “And if you feel yourself getting worked up, you breathe like that. Okay?”
“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Bessie admitted.
“We’ll see,” I said, and we went downstairs to eat Pop-Tarts and drink huge glasses of milk.
After breakfast, I got out these little workbooks from one of the closets, all wrapped in plastic from some educational company for weirdos who believed the end of the world was coming and wouldn’t let their kids go to a normal school. Or maybe that’s harsh. Maybe it was for parents who couldn’t let their kids out of the house or else they’d catch on fire. Or, maybe, just parents who thought they could give their kids something good and true. Who knows? The workbooks were high quality, though, at least that.
I found a math workbook for fourth grade. What grade was ten years old? I had no idea. I tried to think back to my own life. Was it third? Fifth? I truly had no idea. The fourth grade one would be fine, I decided. I ripped out some pages, basic multiplication, and slapped them on the counter. The kids looked at them like they were written in Chinese.
“School?” Roland moaned. “No way.”
“I just want to see what you know,” I told them. “You’ll be going to school in the fall.”
“Mom never made us go to school,” Bessie said. “She says school is for sheep. She says it’s for people without creativity.”
“Well, that’s actually kind of true, but creative kids like you and me find ways to make it work.”
“Why can’t you just teach us?” Roland asked. “Or Madison?”
“We don’t have the proper training,” I told them. “Look, that’s a long time from now. Right now, we’re just going to practice. We’re going to learn and have fun, okay?”
“I hate this,” Bessie said.
“It’s pretty basic stuff. Like, see, what’s four times three?”
“Seven?” Roland offered.
“No,” I said, and then quickly, “close, though.”
“I hate this,” Bessie said again.
“C’mon, Bessie. Four times three?”
“I have no idea,” she replied, her face red with embarrassment.
“Okay, it’s just four three times. So what’s four plus four plus four?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“It’s twelve,” I said. “Four plus four plus four is twelve. Four times three is twelve.”
“I know that,” Bessie said, her voice rising. “I know addition. I know.” I could see her getting angry now, not just embarrassed. I could see her body getting red. She took the pencil and started to write a giant 12 on the page, but the pencil lead snapped off before she could even complete the first number.
“Breathe,” I said, softly, calmly. “Okay, Bessie? Breathe deep.”
“We never do math,” Bessie said. “We don’t do math, so we don’t know math.”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “Just breathe.” I looked over at Roland. His mouth was wide open. He had drawn a frowny face on the worksheet. But he wasn’t red. He wasn’t angry.
“Roland,” I said, so quiet, so calm, like I was euthanizing a cat, “go get me a towel, okay? From the bathroom. Roland?” Roland just stood there, frozen with fear. “A towel? A towel? Roland? In the bathroom? A towel? Roland? Can you get that for me? In the bathroom? A towel?”
“Okay,” Roland finally said,
and he ran off.
Bessie’s face was all scrunched up. “I knew that Mom wasn’t teaching us enough,” she said. “She says math doesn’t matter. But I knew this would happen. I knew this would happen, and everyone would think I was stupid. We tried to figure it out ourselves, but it didn’t make sense. I tried, okay?”
“I can teach you, Bessie,” I said, but she was really red now. I picked her up, felt how hot she was, and I set her on the floor. “Don’t talk, just breathe. Can you breathe?”
Bessie started breathing, deep breaths. “It’s not working!” she yelled.
Roland came back with a towel and I ran to the sink and soaked it, then wrung it out as much as I could. When I turned around, there were little flames starting to form on Bessie’s arms, at her ankles. I took the towel and rubbed it on her arms and legs, and each time, there would be this steam coming off her.
“Bessie, please. Just breathe, okay? See, the towel is helping.”
“Just throw me in the shower,” Bessie said.
“No,” I said. “We can do this.” I rubbed the towel over her, then wrapped it around her body like a cocoon. Roland ran off, but I was too focused on Bessie to do anything about it.
“I’m right here, okay?” I said to her, whispering in her ear. Her body was so fucking warm, like the worst fever. The towel was smoking. “Just breathe. And then it will go away. And then we won’t do the math worksheet. We’ll have ice cream. And in a few days, we’ll go to the mansion for our family dinner, and we’ll eat whatever you want. And pretty soon, we’ll go into town. We’ll buy some toys. We’ll get new books. We’ll buy clothes that you like. We’ll get a real sundae at a real ice cream shop.”
“With sprinkles and a cherry. And hot fudge,” she said. The towel was on fire, it was burning. I took it off Bessie and threw it on the floor, where it smoked. I stomped on it until the fire went out, which didn’t take long. And then, like magic, Bessie wasn’t on fire, like it had transferred from her to the towel.
“Okay,” she said, looking at me. “Okay, then.”
She sat on the floor, exhausted. I cradled her. “Where’s Roland?” she asked.
“Roland?” I shouted. A few seconds later, Roland, fully dressed and absolutely soaking wet, walked into the living room, water pooling around him. “I jumped in the shower,” he said.