Кевин Уилсон - Nothing to See Here

That morning, when I looked in the mirror, it was gruesome, radiating nearly to my hairline. During our breathing exercises I would occasionally steal a glance at the kids, and they were openly staring at the injury, the whole time taking cleansing breaths of air into their lungs.

We were doing Tennessee history, since I wanted their learning to be connected to their lives, to feel like we weren’t rigidly adhering to whatever “the man” said we needed to learn. But now, I kind of missed “the man.” He was always so confident, even when—especially when—he was fucking things up left and right.

“So,” I said, tapping the cool little chalkboard, like something from a one-room schoolhouse on the prairie, “let’s think of famous Tennesseans and then we can go to the library and find out more about them.” I want to say that, yes, the Internet existed. Madison had it in the mansion. But I didn’t really know anything about it. The one time I’d been on it, at the house of a guy who sometimes invited me over to smoke weed, I’d waited for, like, thirty minutes to print off Wu-Tang Clan lyrics. I honestly had no idea what else the Internet might be used for.

So what we had was the library, and I used that, a trip out in public, as a way to get them to focus. “Who are famous people from Tennessee?” I asked them. They just shrugged.

“You don’t know anyone famous who was born in Tennessee?” I asked again, then I tried to think if I knew anyone famous from Tennessee. I knew the professional wrestler Jimmy Valiant was from a town near my own, because some guy at the Save-A-Lot talked about it all the time. But he didn’t seem famous enough.

“Our dad, I guess,” Roland offered.

I blanched, visibly. “Somebody else,” I said.

“We don’t know,” Bessie said, again frustrated to have to admit what she didn’t know. I watched her stop, take deep breaths. I was proud of her. She looked at her notebook, thinking. “Ooh,” she suddenly exclaimed. “I know!”

“Who?” Roland asked, genuinely curious.

“Dolly Parton!” she said.

“Holy shit,” I said. “Oops, okay, sorry, but, yeah, that’s perfect. Dolly Parton is perfect.”

“Mom played some of her records for us,” Roland admitted. “ Jolene .”

“ Nine to Five, ” Bessie said.

I thought it over. Dollywood. “Islands in the Stream.” That body. She was the best thing that had ever come out of Tennessee. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t even close. Bessie had got it on the first try.

“She’s the greatest,” I said. “So let’s write that down. We’ll see if we can find a biography of her at the library.”

“Who else?” Roland said, now excited, like it was a game.

“Well,” I said, “Daniel Boone, maybe? No, wait, Davy Crockett.”

“With the coonskin cap?” Bessie asked. “Our mom had a record about him, too.”

“That’s him. I think he’s from Tennessee. We’ll look it up.” There was a row of encyclopedias, so I grabbed the third volume ( Ceara through Deluc) and looked it up. “Okay, yes, he was born in Greene County, Tennessee,” I told them. “Add that to the list.”

“Who else?” Roland asked, a black hole, wanting everything. But I was confident now. I was rolling.

“Oh, I think, um, Alvin York?” I offered. I knew he had a hospital or something named after him near Nashville. There was a movie one of my mom’s boyfriends made us watch that starred Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper, someone handsome like a dad should be. “He was in one of the world wars, maybe World War Two. He killed, like, a lot of Germans. I think that’s right. He killed a ridiculous amount all by himself.”

“Ooh, I’ll do my report on him,” Roland said.

“Okay, that’s perfect,” I told them. “Bessie, you’ll write a report on Dolly Parton, I’ll do some research on Davy Crockett, and, Roland, you’ll do Sergeant York. Is that cool?”

“Super cool,” Bessie said. It was weird to realize that, for all the ways that they’d been neglected, they were intelligent, so quick to figure things out. You only had to tell them once, and then they knew what to do.

“So can we go to the library?” Roland asked.

“And get ice cream?” Bessie asked.

“Well, let me check with Carl,” I said, and both kids groaned, fell dramatically across the sofa.

I went over to the phone and dialed his number. He answered before the first ring had ended.

“Yes?” he said.

“It’s Lillian,” I said.

“Yes, I know. What’s going on?”

“Oh, not much. Just wanted to hear the sound of your voice,” I said, just to fuck with him.

“Lillian, what do you need?”

“Are you busy?” I asked.

“Obviously this isn’t an emergency, so I’m going to hang—”

“We need to go into town,” I finally told him. “To the library.”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” he replied.

“So we’ll never leave the estate?” I asked. “We can’t live like this, okay?”

“Jesus,” he said, his voice rising and then, with crazy self-control, lowering before he finished the sentence, “they haven’t even been there a week. You act like it’s the Iran hostage crisis or something.”

“Well, to them it is,” I replied, keeping my voice low so the kids wouldn’t hear. “The more we keep them cooped up in here, the more they feel like freaks, like we’re hiding them.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said.

“I’ll be with them the whole time,” I told him.

“If they go,” he said, “ if they go, then we’ll both be with them.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

“Let me talk to Senator Roberts,” he finally said.

“Isn’t he busy?” I asked.

“He is,” he said. “He’s incredibly busy, and he’s not going to be happy to be disturbed.”

“Then just ask Madison,” I told him, and he paused for a long time. “You know I’m right,” I continued. “You know it, Carl.”

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll call you back.”

I turned to the kids. “Maybe!” I said, but I said it in this really hyperpositive way, like the power of my good cheer would make it happen.

“Yes!” they shouted. “We’re going to the library!”

“Maybe!” I said, this time with my teeth showing too much, like I was being held at gunpoint but couldn’t let anyone know.

Ten minutes later, while the kids were kind of shimmying around the room, like maybe moonwalking poorly, the phone rang and it was Carl.

“Okay,” he said. “We can go. I’m coming over there. I have something that I want to try.”

“Come on over,” I said, so excited. With the chance to leave the place, I finally realized how long I’d been at the estate, how stir-crazy I’d become. I’d still have the kids with me, and they still might catch on fire, but if they did, there’d be so much open space for me to run away and hide from the consequences.

“We’re going to the library!” I said, and the kids did their weird shimmy dance, and I wondered if that’s what they’d been taught was dancing.

When Carl showed up, we were all dressed and ready, the kids’ awful hair slicked down and styled like they were in a Duran Duran cover band. I had tried to put makeup on the bruise, but it made it look worse somehow, almost like I was faking an injury, so I rubbed it off, which hurt like hell.

“Dear lord,” Carl said when he looked at me. “What happened to you?” He immediately looked at the kids. “What happened to her?” He suspected them entirely.

“Madison hit her!” Roland said.

“Basketball,” I told him. “It’s fine.”

“Mrs. Roberts plays to win,” Carl admitted, as if my face getting smashed made perfect sense to him now.