“We can read,” Bessie said, her face reddening at the idea that I might have thought that she couldn’t. “We read all the time.”
“That’s all we do is read,” Roland said. “But Pop-Pop and Gran-Gran didn’t have any books for kids. It was so boring.”
“What did they have?” I asked.
“Books about World War Two,” Bessie answered. “Two different books about Hitler. Wait, four books about Hitler. And other books about Nazis. And books about Stalin. Patton. People like that.”
“That sounds awful,” I told her.
“It sucked,” Bessie said.
“Well, you can read all these books now,” I told her.
“I read a lot of these already,” Bessie said, inspecting the spines, “but some look pretty good.”
“That’s great. And we can get more. We can go to the library and get whatever you want.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding her approval. She looked at me. “And you can read us a book at night. If you want to, we’ll let you read us a book before we go to bed.”
“That’s great,” I said, and I could feel our lives normalizing, a kind of routine forming.
“Do you want to put on some clothes?” she asked me, and I realized that I was still in my underwear.
“Shit—I mean, shoot—yes, I do want to put on some clothes,” I told her, but I was afraid to leave them alone. As if she read my mind, Bessie said, “You can go change. We’re okay. We’re really okay right now.” I nodded, and then I was running up to the second floor, counting the seconds, afraid that if I was gone longer than a few minutes, I’d come back to find them digging a tunnel to freedom. I pulled on some jeans, slipped into a T-shirt, and then ran back downstairs in less than forty-five seconds, and they were still there, Bessie making a stack of books that she wanted to read and Roland sitting on the counter, wrist-deep in a little box of Apple Jacks. Bessie opened up one of the new books and smelled the pages. Roland smiled at me and his mouth looked unspeakable, all these little bits of cereal like glitter in his teeth.
This was how you did it, how you raised children. You built them a house that was impervious to danger and then you gave them every single thing that they could ever want, no matter how impossible. You read to them at night. Why couldn’t people figure this out?
And then I realized they were still in their smoky clothes from the fire in the driveway, and I felt like a slob and an idiot, and I had no idea how I’d keep them alive. This was the wave of childcare, I supposed, real highs and lows. My mom had once told me that being a mother was made up of “regret and then forgetting about that regret sometimes.” But I wouldn’t be my mother. How many times had I told myself that, and how unnecessary had it always been? There was no regret for me and these fire kids. Not yet.
I whistled to get their attention, and both kids slowly turned in my direction. “Let’s get you dressed,” I said, “and then we need to talk about some stuff.”
“Sad stuff?” Roland said. They were the same age, but Roland seemed younger, having the benefit of growing up with a sister who would bite the shit out of people’s hands in order to protect him.
“No,” I said, slightly confused. “Not sad stuff. Just normal everyday stuff. We’re going to be together all the time. We just need to talk about stuff.”
“Okay,” Roland said. I realized that the cereal box he was wearing as a glove was no longer Apple Jacks and was now Cocoa Krispies.
“Go easy on the cereal, okay, Roland?” I kind of asked and kind of demanded. I’d need to get better about that, be more sure of myself.
Roland shoved one last handful of cereal into his mouth, the pieces scattering across the counter and onto the floor. Then he stopped, chewed what he had in his mouth, and hopped off the counter and ran over to me. Bessie stood and we all went into their room, which was, I guess, balloon themed. There were framed posters of hot air balloons, crazy colors like flags to countries that existed in made-up worlds. The knobs on the posters of their beds were designed to look like red balloons.
“This is a lot of color,” Bessie said. “It’s kind of too much.”
“It is a bit too much,” I said. “But you’ll get used to it.” Bessie looked at me like, Duh. They were children who caught on fire. Their mother had died. They understood how to adjust to weird stuff.
There were a lot of choices as far as clothing went, and they both picked these black-and-gold Vanderbilt T-shirts and black cotton shorts. I wrapped up their old clothes and tossed them in the trash. How many clothes would these kids go through? Was it better to just let them run around the house naked?
“Okay, so let’s talk,” I said, and the kids sat on their beds. I sat on the floor and pulled my knees up to my chin, unsure how to proceed. I’d had so much time to prepare for this moment, but I’d spent it playing basketball and eating bacon sandwiches in bed. There had been a folder from some private doctor who’d examined the children, but it was so boring and nothing was actually resolved, so I’d just kind of skimmed it. I wished Carl were here, because he always had a plan, and then I hated myself for it.
“So the fire stuff,” I said, and both kids had that look on their faces like, This shit again, ho-hum.
“You guys catch on fire,” I said. “And so, you know, that’s a problem. I know it’s not your fault, but it’s something we have to deal with. So maybe we can try to figure it out.”
“There’s no cure for it,” Bessie said, and I asked, “Who told you that?”
“We just know,” Roland said. “Our mom said we’ll always be like this.”
“Well, okay,” I continued, a little annoyed with their dead mom for being so negative about it, “but what do you know about it? How does it work?”
“It just happens sometimes,” Bessie said. “It’s like sneezing. You know? It’s just this tingly feeling that comes and goes.”
“But is it when you’re upset? Or does it ever happen when you’re just bored?” I wished I had a notebook, a lab coat, something to make this more official. Like I was doing intake, or a school project.
“If we get upset, or if we get freaked out, or if something bad happens,” Roland said, “then we catch on fire.”
“Or if we have a bad dream,” Bessie offered. “Like, a really bad dream.”
“Wait, it happens when you’re sleeping, even?” I asked, and felt the floor beneath me give way a little, the realization that this might be worse than I thought. Both kids nodded. “But only, like, really bad dreams,” Roland said, as if this would comfort me.
“But mostly when you get upset?” I asked, and they nodded again. I didn’t know if this was progress, but they were listening to me. They weren’t on fire. We were together, in this house, and everyone outside of this house was waiting for us to figure this out.
“So we just stay calm,” I told them. “We read books and we swim in the pool and we go for walks and we just stay calm.”
“We’ll still catch on fire,” Bessie said, and she looked so sad.
“But not as much, right? Not like today? You’re not always catching on fire?” I asked.