Кевин Уилсон - Nothing to See Here

“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 Bessie 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.

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?

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.