by Kevin Wilson
And Jasper talked about gratitude, about infinite wisdom, about families made whole again. He talked about sacrifice and appreciation of those sacrifices. It was hard to tell who he thought was making the sacrifices. Him? Could he be that stupid? He was one in a series of Roberts men who had been given everything they had ever wanted before they even had to ask for it. Was the sacrifice simply not taking the things that other people were entitled to? Were the kids the sacrifices he was making? Maybe I wasn’t giving him the benefit of the doubt. But if he said the word sacrifice one more time, I was going to punch him in the face. He finally moved on, talking about forgiveness and the desire for new beginnings. Bored, Roland grabbed one of the nuggets and ate it in one bite.
“Amen,” Jasper finally said, and when he opened his eyes and looked up, he stared right at me, before I could even pretend that I’d been participating, and so it looked like I had been staring at him the entire time. But he held my gaze and smiled. “Let’s eat,” he said.
And it was fine. It was awkward, but it felt like the size of the mansion, how fancy everything was, would make any normal situation more awkward. It wasn’t bad. The kids weren’t on fire. That was my new measuring stick for what was good and what was bad. Eating a Caesar salad and making boring small talk was not bad, not when the alternative was pulling down a set of thousand-dollar curtains because they were ablaze.
“What is your job like?” Bessie finally asked her father, and you could see how happy it made him that she had tried, and yet it also seemed to confuse him because he wasn’t exactly sure how to respond.
“Well,” he began, genuinely considering how to answer, “everyone in the state of Tennessee entrusts me with looking after their interests. For instance, I work with other senators to make sure that the things our citizens need are taken care of. I make sure that jobs come to this state, so people can work and support their families. And I make sure that the country, the whole country, is moving toward a better future.”
“You take care of people,” Bessie said.
“Sort of,” he replied. “I try to.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Your family,” Jasper said to her, “for generations and generations, have made their home in Tennessee. It’s a wonderful state. And I make sure that it stays that way, or when it needs help, I try to get that help so it can stay great.”
“Pop-Pop said that politics is mostly moving money around and making sure that some of it sticks to you,” Roland said.
“That does sound like Richard,” Jasper replied. “But that’s not the way that I’ve tried to do my job.”
“’Cause you don’t need more money,” Bessie said.
“No,” Jasper said, “I don’t.”
“We’re studying Tennessee with Lillian,” Roland told the table.
“Is that right?” Jasper said, smiling.
“We’re doing biographies on great Tennesseans,” I told him, like I was still interviewing for the job, or maybe like I was hoping for a letter of recommendation later.
“Like who?” Madison asked.
“Sergeant York,” Roland said. “Oh, man, he killed like twenty-five Germans.”
“He was a great man,” Jasper replied. “A good Democrat, a lifelong Democrat. He said, ‘I’m a Democrat first, last, and all the time.’ There’s a statue of him at the state capitol. Wonderful statue. Maybe Lillian can take you there sometime to see it.”
“Okay,” I said.
“What about you, Bessie?” Madison asked.
“Dolly Parton,” she announced.
“Hmm,” Jasper said, considering the name. “She’s an entertainer, though, isn’t she?”
Bessie looked confused and turned to me. “She’s an artist,” I said.
“Well, I suppose,” Jasper said. “I can think of several real Tennessee icons that might make for a better report.”
“It’s not really a report,” I admitted. “We’re just researching our interests.” I reached over to Bessie and touched her arm, feeling for her temperature, but the gel made it hard to accurately gauge.
“And Dolly Parton is a humanitarian, Jasper,” Madison added. “She’s done a lot for the state and for the children of the state.”
“She’s an actress,” he said, like this was evidence of something. He was smiling, maybe playing, but Bessie seemed embarrassed now, like she’d made a mistake, and I got angry.
“She’s the greatest Tennessean in the state’s entire history,” I said flatly, definitively.
“Oh, Lillian,” Jasper said, chuckling.
“She wrote ‘I Will Always Love You,’” I said, dumbfounded that this didn’t end the debate.
“Lillian,” Jasper said, his charm turning serious, so haughty, “do you know that there have been three Tennesseans who have served as the president of the United States?”
“I know,” I told him. As a kid, I had memorized every single U.S. president, and could recite them in chronological or alphabetical order. I could do it right now, if I wanted to. “But none of them were born in Tennessee.”
“Is that right?” Madison said. “Is that right, Jasper?”
Jasper’s face got a little red. “Well, I mean . . . technically that’s correct—” he said, but I cut in, “And Johnson was impeached. And Jackson, c’mon, he was kind of a monster.”
“That’s not entirely—” Jasper sputtered.
“Dolly Parton,” I said, now looking at Bessie, waiting until she looked right at me, “she is way better than Andrew Jackson.” Bessie smiled, her crooked teeth showing, and I smiled back, like we’d played a practical joke on her idiot dad.
Jasper looked like he was dying. He was holding his fork like he wanted to stab me with it. And I knew, right at this moment, that Jasper would find a way to remove me from this house, when it was prudent, when I’d done what he needed me to do. Jasper, like most men I’d ever known, did not like to be gently corrected in public. And I should have been more careful, but I wasn’t savvy. I didn’t see the point.
“Could we go to Dollywood?” Bessie asked, and Jasper was now stone-cold dead. It was beautiful.
As if conjured by a spell, a charm created to intervene whenever the senator had been utterly humiliated, Carl appeared in the dining room.
“Sir?” he said to Jasper. “I’m sorry to interrupt this family dinner, but you have a phone call.”
“Well,” Jasper said, trying to return to his usual nature, “can it wait until after dessert?”
“It’s rather urgent, sir,” Carl replied. “And I believe that perhaps Mrs. Roberts might also want to be privy to the information.”
Madison locked eyes with Jasper, and it was interesting to watch them work, the way they seemed to be two halves of a singular unit, the way they both stood at the same time. Madison kissed Timothy, who acted like maybe his parents were called away for urgent business all the time, and then followed her husband out of the room.
“What’s going on?” I asked Carl, but he shook his head and walked behind the two of them.
“That was weird,” Roland said.
“Do we have to wait for them to eat dessert?” Bessie asked.
I got up and went into the kitchen, where Mary was already plating four slices of chocolate cake. “I’m coming,” she said. “You didn’t need to get up, of course.”
“Looks good,” I said, and she nodded.
“I know,” she replied.
I went back into the dining room with the kids, like I was the most embarrassing guest at a wedding. I tried to think of something to say, but then Mary was putting the cake in front of us, and that seemed to remove the need for conversation. We ate, and then, when we were finished, the four of us just sat there. “Can we go?” Bessie asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said, like I was a child and needed an adult to excuse me from the table. “We can’t just leave Timothy here.”
“We can bring him to the guesthouse,” Roland offered.
“Do yo
u want to see the guesthouse?” I asked Timothy, who merely shrugged, like a puppeteer had a slight tremor and the strings connecting him to Timothy had moved ever so slightly.
And I liked the idea of taking Timothy hostage, of forcing Madison or Jasper to come get him.
“Let’s go,” I said, and I helped Timothy out of his seat and we all walked across the manicured lawn to our house, all lit up and happy and deranged.
“What do you want to look at?” Roland asked Timothy, who again just shrugged. Bessie ignored the boy and pulled a book off the shelf and pretended to read it. I knew she didn’t want the boy in our house, since he already had so much.
Roland showed Timothy an Etch A Sketch, and they each handled one of the knobs, working together to make a mess on the screen.
I sat next to Bessie and watched the boys play fine enough, though they didn’t really talk. Every once in a while Roland would grab the toy and shake the shit out of it, which seemed to both frighten and delight Timothy in equal measure. And then they went back to it, Roland watching Timothy more than the screen.
“So, that wasn’t so bad, right?” I asked Bessie.
“I guess,” she said.
“I like this dress,” I told her.
“You don’t wear dresses,” she said. I just had on my jeans and a nice enough top.
“No,” I said, “not really.”
“Do you think Madison likes us?” she asked. I knew how she was feeling, the need to have Madison look at you, direct that sunlight your way.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “She’s stoked to have you guys here.”
“I liked the food,” she offered.
“Mary is the best.”
“She’s scary,” Bessie said.
“Cool people are scary sometimes,” I told her.
“You’re not scary,” she said, and I didn’t know what to say to that.
And then Timothy and Roland tired of the toy and came over to the sofa. Timothy was looking at Bessie, trying to make sense of her. When Bessie finally couldn’t ignore him any longer, she looked at him, glaring. “What?” she asked.
“You catch on fire?” he asked, curious.
Bessie looked at me, and I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what we were or weren’t supposed to tell Timothy. But I guess he knew. Or had overheard. Or could simply sense it; the kid was that spooky that I’d believe this possibility.
“Yeah,” Bessie said, and Roland nodded.
“Can I see?” Timothy asked.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Bessie said.
Timothy touched Bessie’s hand like he thought it might be hot. Bessie let him.
And then someone was knocking on the door, and Madison and Carl appeared in the doorway. Timothy pulled his hand away from Bessie and immediately started walking toward the door. Madison came in. “Look at this!” she said. “Are you having fun?” she asked Timothy, who actually nodded, or what for him was a nod.
“Well,” she said, “we’d better get back to the house.”
“Where’s Dad?” Roland asked.
“Well, he’s been called away on some important business,” she said, as much to me as to the kids. “Very important. But he’ll see you again soon.”
Madison took Timothy’s hand and they stepped outside, but Carl hovered in the doorway, which I took as a sign for me to come talk to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Is it about the kids?”
“The secretary of state just died,” he whispered to me. “Just dropped dead in his kitchen.”
“Wasn’t he dying?” I asked.
“Well, he was dying, but he was a powerful man. He was going to die very slowly. This was unexpected.”
“So what now?”
“So Senator Roberts has been offered the post.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “Really?”
“There’s a process that starts in earnest now,” Carl replied, “but they’ve already been doing a lot of preparation. It looks promising.”
I thought about Madison, one step closer to what she wanted. I thought about Jasper, but there wasn’t much feeling there.
“And so what does it mean?” I asked. “Like, for the kids?”
“Let’s just see how this plays out,” he said.
“But are the kids being considered?” I asked. “How all this affects them?”
“Honestly, Lillian?” Carl replied. “Not really. Not much. So just keep taking care of them. Do what you need to do to maintain order.”
“You don’t want them to fuck this up?” I asked.
“I do not want them to fuck this up,” he repeated.
“Okay, fine,” I said.
“Good night,” he said to me. “Good night, kids,” he said to the twins, who didn’t respond.
He left, and I went back to the kids.
“Is Dad dying?” Bessie asked.
“What?” I replied. “No. No way.”
“All right,” Bessie said, suspicious. Hopeful? I couldn’t tell.
“He was supposed to give us a hug after dinner,” Roland said.
“I don’t want him to hug me,” Bessie said.
“You guys look really cool,” I said, changing the subject. “I’m going to take a picture of you.”
I found the camera, the one Madison had asked me to use to document their lives, like maybe she needed pictures in order to quickly make a happy photo album for visitors to see. The kids were slumped on the sofa, tired.
“You don’t have to smile,” I said. “Just stay the way that you are.”
Roland’s head was resting on Bessie’s shoulder. Their arms weren’t quite as shimmery as they had been earlier in the night. I took the picture, then took one more.
“We want you to be in the picture,” Roland said.
“I can’t,” I told them. “It’s just you two.”
“Can we go to bed?” Bessie asked. “Can you read us a story?”
“Hell yeah,” I told them. “Hell yeah.”
Nine
The next three weeks felt like the world was spinning slightly faster than usual, all this weird activity swirling around us, no one telling us anything, but my life with Bessie and Roland didn’t really change. Of course, we saw in the newspaper, front page, how Jasper had been nominated, and everyone said this was a savvy decision on the part of the president. Everyone seemed to love Jasper, and perhaps it’s because I didn’t like him, but it seemed like what they loved about him was that he was inoffensive and gentlemanly, that he looked like he knew what he was doing. Good for him, I guess. If you were rich, and you were a dude, it really felt like if you just followed a certain number of steps, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. I thought about Jane, abandoned, dead, and I wondered how any kind of vetting didn’t think that mattered. I thought of Bessie and Roland on the front lawn, on fire. How did that not matter? But maybe it really didn’t matter. Jasper was a good senator; he made rich people and poor people equally happy, which must have been some kind of magic trick.
Madison and Timothy had flown to D.C. with Jasper, to simply be visible. Carl was on the property, but of course he was preoccupied with other stuff, barely seemed to care what I did with the kids. We played basketball, swam in the pool, read books, did our yoga. It was peaceful, honestly, like the end of the world had happened and we’d missed it. So much intensity had been directed toward these kids, and now that everyone was getting what they wanted, it was like we became invisible. They hadn’t caught on fire in a long time; at least it seemed like a long time to me. And when you are weird, when your surroundings become quiet, you think maybe you aren’t quite so fucked up. You think, Why was it so hard before?
One morning, we’d been testing the starch level in potatoes, and Bessie said, “Is anybody in the mansion?”
“No,” I said. “Well, I mean, the staff is there.”
“Can we go over there?” she asked, and I was like, why not? Who the fuck cares? Or, no, who the fuck was going to stop us?
&n
bsp; Just to be safe, they put on their Nomex long underwear, which had finally arrived, this scratchy white material that made them look like they were living in a science fiction movie. They kind of loved it, except for how sweaty it made them. I wasn’t sure if memories of the mansion, long forgotten, might surface and cause them to catch.
So we walked over and of course the doors were locked. And we just banged on the rear entrance until Mary, so pissed to be disturbed, opened the door.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“We want to explore,” Roland said.
“Fine,” she replied, and waved us in like she was letting the plague spread through the house, like she didn’t care if she lived or died.
“Thank you, Miss Mary,” the kids said, and she replied, “Come by later. I have bread pudding. With whiskey sauce.”
“Yay!” the kids shouted.
But once they were inside, free, they grew quieter, more respectful, like they were in some old European cathedral, like the place was lousy with important dead people.
“Do you remember it?” I asked, but they both shook their heads.
“I bet your rooms were upstairs,” I said, and we walked up the staircase. I told them how horses had been hidden in the attic during the Civil War, but they didn’t care any more than I had cared.
We walked down the hallway, peeking our heads into each room. We saw Timothy’s room, all those stuffed animals, and the kids’ eyes got real wide. They walked in carefully, fully expecting it to be booby-trapped, and then they stared at the piles of plush. Bessie punched her fist into one of the piles and retrieved a zebra with Technicolor stripes. “I’m taking this,” she said, a kind of tax, and I was like, A-okay with me, so Roland grabbed an owl with a monocle and bow tie.
We walked around some more, and then they stopped in the doorway of one of the rooms. “This was it,” Bessie said. “This was our room.” I had no idea how she could tell. Now it was an exercise room with a NordicTrack and some weight machines, and all the walls were covered in mirrors. “It was right across from that bathroom,” Bessie said, remembering. “And we had bunk beds, and I slept on top.”