by Kevin Wilson
“I guess so,” I said. I just kept drinking.
“I mean, they definitely wanted to make sure that Jasper hadn’t killed Jane or anything like that. And they have some secondhand reports about the kids, about the fire, but it’s so unbelievable that they can’t really do much with it.”
“Oh, good,” I said. Being rich, of course, meant it was easier to just keep getting what you wanted. It took less and less effort to keep it.
“And they really just wanted to make sure that Jasper wasn’t crooked, that he didn’t have financial ties to anything that would look bad. That he hadn’t pissed off the wrong people. It was all a lot easier than we thought.”
“It happened so quickly,” I said.
“Because the guy died!” she said, fucking giddy. “How could we have known? We thought this was going to be drawn out, and, you know, the longer it went on, the more other people would want to butt in. But Jasper’s steady. He’s really good.”
“So what’ll happen now?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a confirmation hearing. It’s mostly a formality. I’ve coached Jasper anyway. He just has to be so noncommittal that it actually seems like he doesn’t know anything. He’ll keep saying how much he looks forward to exploring these issues and finding the best way to proceed. It’s pretty much a done deal.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “So then what?”
“Then he’s the secretary of state,” she replied.
“I don’t even know what that is,” I admitted.
“Foreign affairs. Big-time stuff. He’s, like, right next to the president, advising him. Fourth in line to the presidency, actually.”
“Oh, wow, I guess I didn’t realize that.”
“And, honestly, it’s huge for me. It’s the kind of visibility that means I can start to advocate for things I want to do. The party is already talking about how to utilize me moving forward.”
“Well, cool,” I said, and I felt like the biggest nerd in the world, pretending I knew what kissing felt like, what boys wanted.
“We’ll have to move to D.C., of course,” Madison continued.
“Really?” I asked.
“For sure. There’s already people who are looking at real estate for us.”
“What about the kids?” I asked. “Do you think they’ll be okay with that?”
“Timothy can handle anything,” she said, not even really looking at me, her mind racing, like, four or eight years into the future. “The schools in D.C. are a hundred times better than the ones here anyway.”
“What about Roland and Bessie?” I asked.
“Well—” she said. “I don’t know about them. I just don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?” I asked.
“I don’t know if they’ll be able to handle the city. It’s much more public, a lot more stressful.”
“They’re never going to see Jasper, are they?” I said, like, of course they wouldn’t, and, like, how did I not already know this?
“Not much,” she admitted. “Who knows? Maybe that’s for the best. Jasper is a better parent in theory, like if you look at his actions and his values from a distance. They’ll still have access to what he can provide for them, Lillian. That’s what really matters.”
“So you’ll be taking care of them?” I asked.
“I won’t even really be able to take care of Timothy,” she said. “This is a huge responsibility.”
“So do you want me to stay with them?” I asked, my heart beating because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted the answer to be.
“No,” she said, so chipper, so happy, “you’ve done so much for them. You’ve done so much for us. I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Oh, okay,” I replied. “So then, what? You get them, like, a real governess?”
“Well, I haven’t had much time to think about this, you understand? Like, there are huge things going on. But I think maybe boarding school would be good for them.”
“They’re ten years old,” I said.
“In Europe,” Madison said, “kids go to boarding school when they’re eight. That might be really good for them, to go abroad, to experience the world after being cooped up in that house with Jane all this time.”
“I think that’s a terrible idea,” I countered. “I mean, what happens if they catch on fire, right? Don’t you think sending them away is going to make that worse?”
“Honestly, it’s better if they catch on fire in Europe than in D.C.,” she replied. “It’s less visible, less verifiable.”
“They’ve just been through a lot,” I said.
“We went to Iron Mountain,” she replied, “and that wasn’t so bad, was it?” And before I could even reply, her face fell, and she stuttered, “Well, I mean, it was a good school, right?”
“You’re going to ship them off somewhere?” I said. “That fucking sucks, Madison.”
“What else can we do?” Madison replied.
“You can take care of them!” I said.
“Okay, Lillian,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I appreciate the fact that you helped me when I needed it. But, truthfully, you have been watching them for, like, hardly any time at all. You think it’s just so easy. But you don’t have the kind of pressures that Jasper and I have. You can focus entirely on these kids because that’s all you have to do. We have to plan for our long-term future.”
“This isn’t right,” I said.
“This is the thing about you sometimes, Lillian,” Madison said, and I knew that this was going to be soul-crushing. I knew it was going to hurt. “You act like you’re above it all, and you act like the whole world owes you something because you had it rough. And you judge people like crazy. Like, I know you hate Jasper. I know you think he’s not nice. But you haven’t given him a chance. You just saw that he was rich, and that makes you feel weird, and so you think he’s a bad guy. You never really tried at anything. You had this bad thing happen, you got kicked out of school, and you let that sit there forever like it was the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone in the world.”
I honestly couldn’t tell if Madison remembered the past at all. All those years that I wondered why she never once thanked me for taking the fall for her, I had just assumed that it was because she was so embarrassed. But now it felt like maybe she just didn’t remember it, like her version of the past was that I’d gotten caught with some coke and gotten kicked out. And that she had stayed friends with me because she was a good person. And that I had fucked up because I was bound to fuck up.
“Your father paid my mom so that I would get kicked out of Iron Mountain instead of you,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, like she was humoring me, like she would let me spin this conspiracy theory for as long as I needed to.
“And you let them. You let your dad do that, because you didn’t want to get kicked out. And because you thought it didn’t matter if I got kicked out, because I didn’t really belong there.”
“That’s really unfair,” she said. “I was your friend. I cared about you. And you never thought about what I was going through, what I was dealing with. And, Lillian, even if you’d graduated from Iron Mountain, what would you have done? Do you think you’d have my life? Do you think that would be possible?”
“I don’t want your life,” I told her. “Your life seems fucked up. It seems sad.”
She stood up suddenly, and I thought we were going to fight. I clenched my hands into fists, my face already so messed up that it didn’t matter what else happened to it. But Madison just started jogging away from me. She started running. She ran to the basketball court and she flicked on the floodlights, the whole court now illuminated. She started dribbling, running drills, and hitting layups. She set up at the free-throw line and hit turnaround jumpers. And that sound, the ball bouncing on the court, the way the net swished, it just opened me up, made me feel like there wasn’t a single emotion in my body. It made me not want to kill her. I was so grateful for that half-
second reprieve from wanting everyone to be dead. And I walked over to the court.
For a while, I just watched her shoot. And she ignored me. And if I was in her head, her game didn’t show it. She was hitting almost everything, so easily.
“You really are my best friend,” she finally said, not looking at me. “And, yes, I know that’s pathetic because I haven’t seen you since freshman year of high school. But you were. For that little while, you were the best friend I ever had, and I just never met another person like you. But I was so embarrassed by what my dad did—or what I did, whatever—that I kind of thought of you as my friend, but frozen there, in that dorm room. I wrote to you and it made me happy to share my life with someone who fucking cared about me. And I liked hearing from you, knowing that you still thought about me. I wish I’d been a better friend to you. I wish I’d done the right thing and taken the blame. Honestly, I’d still be right here. Nothing was going to keep me from this. But, okay, maybe your life would have been better.”
“I was in love with you,” I told her.
“I know you were,” she admitted. She took a shot and it clanged off the rim and that gave me this tiny measure of hope.
“It was so easy to be in love with you back then. And I liked it, because as long as I was in love with you, I didn’t have to love anyone else,” I said. “And I’ve always kind of been in love with you. And I’m still kind of in love with you.”
She nodded, and then she looked over at me. She was so beautiful, and I remembered those nights in our dorm when she looked at me and accepted my weirdness. She held on to me like nothing mattered. She was kind to me. Even if it had only been a few months, it was longer than anyone else had.
I waited for her to say something, and she just stared at me, figuring me out. I don’t know what I thought would be there, in her eyes. She just shrugged, like what could she do about it? I knew she was sorry. It broke my heart, and I knew that a good part of my life had been spent waiting for it to break so I could get it over with.
I didn’t think she was going to say anything, but then she started speaking, not really at me, to the darkness, to the universe, which of course wouldn’t be able to hear her. “I know, Lil. I know. I know. I know. But what? What did you think I’d do with that? What kind of life could I have? Us? I think about it, okay? I think about you. But it can’t be anything else. The minute it became something else, what would happen? We’d be so unhappy.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said, staring right at her. “I would not be unhappy.”
“You have no idea,” Madison said.
“Could you just say it?” I asked her. If I heard her admit it, if I heard the words in her own voice, I could remember them, could replay them in my head. Maybe it would be enough.
“I can’t,” she admitted. “Lillian, I can’t.”
And that was it. What else could I do?
“Please don’t send the kids away,” I told her.
“Do you want them? Is that it?” she asked. “Do you think that would make you happy?”
“I just want someone to take care of them,” I said.
“Why does it have to be me, though?” she asked. “Why does it have to be Jasper?”
“Because you’re their parents now,” I told her, and I thought maybe this was a trick question.
“I hate my dad,” she said. “I was glad to get away from him. Your mom, holy shit, Lillian.”
I knew that nothing I said would change anything.
“I want you to stay with them through the end of the summer,” she said. “Here at the estate. And then they’ll go abroad. And Jasper will see them, okay? He’ll see them on breaks and holidays. They’ll have their trust funds. They’ll be a part of the family.”
I was crying so hard, but I didn’t know when it had started, what had been the exact thing. I couldn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry, Lillian,” Madison said, but I didn’t know what she was sorry for. She took another shot, made it easily, and the ball bounced right back into her waiting arms.
Back at the house, Bessie and Roland were still asleep, and I crawled into bed. Even though I tried to be as quiet as possible, Bessie woke up. “You’re crying,” she said, her voice so soft and dreamy.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Are you mad at us?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “God, no, never.”
Roland turned, reaching for us, and then propped himself up, waking to the room around him. “Is it morning?” he asked.
“Lillian is sad,” Bessie told him.
“Why?” he asked. I wanted to shoot into the sky like a comet. I was a grown woman, crying, surrounded by fire children who were not mine. No one looking at this would feel good about it.
“Life is hard,” I said. “That’s it. C’mon, kiddos. Bed. Let’s go to bed.”
I settled into the bed, and the kids repositioned themselves around me. I closed my eyes, but I could tell that Bessie was still staring at me, wanted to know what was inside me. And I knew a secret to caring for someone, had learned it just this moment. You took care of people by not letting them know how badly you wanted your life to be different.
“Lillian?” she whispered once Roland started snoring again.
“What?” I asked.
“I wish you’d never leave us,” she said.
“I do, too,” I told her.
“But I know you will,” she said, and, holy shit, this cracked me open. It made me want to die.
“Not yet,” I told her, and it sounded so wimpy, and I hated myself.
“Can I tell you something?” she asked.
“Let’s talk in the morning,” I told her.
“No,” she said, “right now. You know the fire?”
“Inside you?” I asked.
“Yeah. It just comes, you know? It just happens.”
“I know, kiddo,” I said.
“But sometimes it doesn’t just come,” she said. I could tell this meant something to her. And so I let her say it. “Sometimes I can make it come.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “It’s not your fault.”
“Watch,” she said. She slipped out of the bed. She rolled up her sleeves. “It usually happens when I’m angry. Or when I’m scared. Or when I just don’t know what’s happening. Or someone hurts me. And that’s scary, because I can’t stop it. But sometimes, if I think about it really hard and I hold myself together just right, if I want it, it will come.”
“Come back to bed, Bessie,” I told her.
“Watch,” she said. She closed her eyes like she was making a wish for the entire world. It was so dark, I couldn’t see her skin, but I could feel the heat, the slight change in temperature, the way it moved in waves. And then, after about fifteen seconds of complete stillness, utter silence, there were these little blue flames on her arms. I wanted to put her out, to reach for her, but I couldn’t move. And the flames rolled back and forth across her arms but they never went beyond those parameters, never flared up more than that. And the light from the fire made her face glow. And she was smiling. She was smiling at me.
Then, slowly, the fire rolled down to her hands, and there was this jittery flame and she was holding it. She was holding it in her hands, cupped together. It looked like what love must look like, just barely there, so easy to extinguish.
“You can see it, right?” she asked me, and I said that I could.
And then it was gone. She was breathing so steadily, a perfect machine.
“I don’t ever want it to go away,” she told me. “I don’t know what I’d do if it never came back.”
“I understand,” I said, and I did understand.
“How else would we protect ourselves?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. How did people protect themselves? How did anyone keep this world from ruining them? I wanted to know. I wanted to know so bad.
Ten
Jasper was on C-SPAN, smiling, listening thoughtfully, nodding, so much nodding, like he understood every fucking thing that had ever happened in the entire world. They would cut to different senators who were on the committee and it was like a practical joke because they all looked exactly the same. I had it on mute, so I didn’t actually know what was going on, but it wasn’t hard to imagine. It wasn’t hard to know what would come next. This was just a rerun of the confirmation hearing anyway, the channel filling time until the official Senate vote came in today.
The kids were on the sofa, reading books. They reeked of chlorine from the pool, a smell that I loved. I was pacing through the house, brushing my hair, rubbing moisturizer on my face, clipping my toenails, all these little things to make myself presentable, and, each time, I’d look at myself again in the mirror and feel like not a single thing had changed.
On the coffee table there were these index cards that listed all the former secretaries of state, like, sixty little cards all over the place. I was getting the kids to memorize them, or some of them, because Madison had said that it might be nice if they knew something about the position, as if the kids needed conversational openers to talk to their own father. So we studied the names. I’d never heard of most of them. It was interesting to look at the six secretaries of state who had gone on to be president. I knew this was something Madison and Jasper thought about a lot. But it was more fun for me to look at the three who had unsuccessfully run for president. I made Bessie and Roland memorize these names first, before anyone else.
Madison thought it was better if Roland and Bessie stayed behind, that the craziness of the proceedings, being shuttled from place to place, would be overwhelming for them. And she wasn’t wrong. I mean, yeah, they probably shouldn’t have gone to one of the biggest cities in America in support of their father, a guy they kind of hated. But I thought of the Smithsonian, a place I had always wanted to see and knew I never would. The Washington Monument. The Lincoln Memorial. I thought about, holy shit, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, that eternal flame. I wanted them to see these things. I even showed Madison the wardrobe for the kids: a layer of flame gel, the Nomex long underwear, clothes like you’d wear at Catholic school, so much coverage.