Кевин Уилсон - Nothing to See Here

“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.

“That’s fine,” I said.

“She’s not on fire,” Roland said, pointing at Bessie.

“Not right now,” I replied.

Roland came and sat down next to us.

“I’m going to take care of you guys,” I said.

“Are you a good person?” Bessie asked, which was such a strange question, the kind of question a kid asks because they haven’t lived long enough to know how easy that question is to answer.

I paused, giving it mock thought. “Not really,” I said. “I’m not a bad person, but I could be a lot better. Sorry. But here I am. And here you guys are.”

“You’ll leave, though,” Bessie said.

“Someday,” I said. “When you don’t need me.”

“I knew it,” Bessie said.

“Not for a long time,” I said. Was three months a long time to a kid? It was a long time to me.

Bessie and Roland looked at each other. They were doing that twin thing where they talked without talking.

“I’ll stay as long as you want me to, okay?” I finally said. “I’ll stay.”

They didn’t seem to hear me. We just sat there, and I prayed that Carl would not come to the house right at this moment. How would I explain it? I’d have to knock him out with a lamp, drag him to his car, and make him think that he’d dreamed the whole thing.

“Our mom—” Bessie said.

“I know,” I said. “I know I’m not your mom. Nobody will be as good as your mom was—”

“She killed herself,” she said. “Because of us.”

I tried to remember if Madison had ever told me that their mother had killed herself. Why hadn’t she told me? Did she know? Was it a secret? If I ever saw Madison again, I’d ask her.

“Not because of you guys,” I said. “C’mon now, Bessie.”

“She said it was too hard. She said that things were going to change, that we’d have to start going to regular school, that she couldn’t do it anymore. She said that our dad wanted us to be normal. She said that it would never happen.”

“I’m sorry, Bessie,” I said. Roland curled up, and I put my arm around him.

“She took all these pills,” she said. “We watched her take all these pills. And then she died.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Bessie looked like she was entirely empty of emotion, like there was nothing inside her. She looked over at Roland, who nodded.

“She told us to take the pills, too,” she finally said.

“What?” I said, though I understood perfectly fine. What else could you do but pretend that you didn’t know that was possible in this world?

“She had these two little plates with pills on them for me and Roland. And she said to take them. And she had these huge glasses of orange juice. She was crying and said that this would make all of us feel better.”

“But we didn’t take them,” Roland said, his voice scratchy.

“I told Roland not to take them. We just put them in our pockets and pretended, and Mom didn’t even notice. We drank all this orange juice, and it was so much that we had to pee. But then Mom made us go into the bedroom and we all got into the bed. And she said we had to go to sleep, even though it was daytime. And Roland was on one side of her and I was on the other. And I couldn’t see him. Mom was between us. And I put my hand on Mom’s chest, and I felt her heartbeat, and it was fine.”

“I’m sorry, Bessie,” I said, because I wanted to have just a little bit of time, a moment before I had to hear the rest, because I wasn’t ready to hear it.

“And it took forever, but then Mom fell asleep. And I had my hand on her chest. And it took forever. It took so long. And I had to pee so bad, so I just peed in the bed.”

“And I peed the bed, too,” Roland offered.

“And then she was really asleep. And I told Roland that we needed to get up. So we got up, and Mom was still asleep. And I knew that she was dead, because I felt her heartbeat. And then we changed our clothes because they were wet. I made us peanut butter and crackers, and we ate them. We took all the pills out of our pockets, and we flushed them down the toilet. And then we went outside. We went into the front yard. And then we both caught on fire. It was really big, the fire. It was more fire than we’ve ever made, our whole bodies. And the grass around us caught on fire. And then a tree caught on fire next to us. And somebody, people who lived, like, a mile away, saw the smoke, and they called 911. And that’s how they found us. And that’s how they found Mom.”

And then she was quiet. And Roland was quiet. We were all breathing, in and out, deep breaths. Our hearts were so steady, so strong. If there were a button that would end the world, and that button were right in front of me, I would have smashed it so hard at that moment. I often thought about a button like that, and when I did, I always knew that I’d push it.

“That’s awful,” I said. “And that wasn’t your fault. Your mom was going through something, and she didn’t mean to hurt you guys. She just couldn’t think clearly.”