When I’d finally answered the phone the day before, Carl, who sounded out of breath, said that they were coming home, driving back to Nashville. He said that Madison was handling damage control, that I wasn’t to talk to anyone. He told me to keep the kids inside the house, to cover them in fire gel. “Keep them safe, okay?” he said, and before I could ask about Timothy, he hung up.
Bessie and Roland wanted to see it again, over and over, Timothy on fire, but I unplugged the television, knew that it would only make it worse, that it was already burned onto the insides of our eyelids. Of course, I wondered what was going on outside of our house, what the newspapers would say, but I just pushed it out of my mind. I focused on these two kids.
After they’d finally stopped burning, we’d peeled off the ruined Nomex and put on a fresh set of clothes. I’d made them sit on the sofa, dumped a bunch of apples on the coffee table, and we’d read three Penny Nichols novels, my voice droning and droning, working our way through the mystery to that moment when it all comes into the light. This was how we’d survive, huddled together, words on the page, the ending of one story just a moment of silence before a new story began. And we made it. The kids were happy. They had added another to their numbers. They didn’t want to set the world on fire. They just wanted to be less alone in it.
It took some coaxing, but I got them to do thirty minutes of yoga, and while they ate cereal, I ran over to the mansion to get a copy of the newspaper. I could not imagine the angle, how the narrative would be assembled. I wanted to know if Bessie and Roland would be mentioned, to be prepared. I knocked on the back door until Mary opened it for me. “Do you want something to eat?” she asked, and I did kind of want a bacon sandwich, but I ignored that desire and got on with it.
“I wanted to get a copy of the newspaper,” I told her. She stared at me, unblinking. I had no idea whether she knew about Timothy. I wanted to say something, but it’s a hard thing to introduce into polite conversation.
“Come in,” she finally said.
All the lights in the house were off, no activity.
“Kind of spooky in here,” I said.
“Everyone else has the week off,” she said.
“That’s nice, I guess,” I said.
“Here’s the newspaper,” she said, handing me a copy of the Tennessean. And there it was, the headline: fire mishap mars roberts confirmation.
“Oh shit,” I said, looking at the picture of Jasper, his face both confused and furious, being hustled to the car, Madison right behind him. I looked for Timothy and Carl, but they must have already been inside the car.
“Mmm,” Mary said, noncommittal, almost bored.
“Did you see it on TV?” I asked.
“I don’t watch television,” she replied.
“You saw us yesterday, though,” I said. “In the yard? Bessie and Roland.”
“I saw it, yes,” she replied.
“That’s what happened to Timothy,” I told her.
“I figured as much,” she said. I couldn’t tell if it was because of her position in the household, one of servitude, or if her natural demeanor simply wouldn’t allow the display of emotion for people who didn’t deserve it.
I read the article, which repeated the official statement from Jasper Roberts, which was that a spark had caused Timothy’s shirt, which had been heavily starched in anticipation of the press conference, to momentarily catch on fire. The boy had been treated for minor burns, as had Madison, and released from the hospital that same day. It went on to state that Jasper would return to Tennessee so that Timothy could be seen by the family’s personal physician. And then, that was it. I flipped through the section, looking for more information, but there was nothing else. There was another article about what the implications were for national security, how Jasper would both continue the work of the previous secretary and build upon that work. I couldn’t believe that something so strange could be met with such an easy willingness to disbelieve that it had happened. A starched fucking shirt? Really?
I grabbed the New York Times, but there was even less about Timothy, not even a picture at the press conference, instead an official portrait of Jasper. It was all so formal, all about policy, about governance. Who the fuck cared about that?
“Did you know?” I asked Mary.
She nodded.
“Who told you?” I asked.
“I saw it,” she finally said. “In this kitchen. I saw the little girl catch on fire.”
“When they were still living here?”
“Yes,” she said. “Just before Senator Roberts sent Mrs. Jane and the children away, when they were fighting all the time. The girl, Bessie. She came down and asked for something to eat. And then Senator Roberts came in and said that she couldn’t have anything until dinner. And she yelled that she was hungry. And Senator Roberts grabbed her arm and said that he made the rules, that he decided what was best for everyone in the family. She just burst into flames, and Senator Roberts jumped away. He stared at her. The smoke alarm started going off. I took a pitcher of water and poured it on the girl. Still on fire. I filled it up and poured it again. Still on fire. And then another. And she finally stopped burning, no more fire. And the girl looked completely fine, very red but not crying. Then Mrs. Jane shouted from the living room about the smoke alarm, and Senator Roberts said that I had burned a grilled cheese. Now, that I did not care for.”
“Yeah, that sucks,” I replied.
“He took the girl upstairs. When she came back down, wearing new clothes, her hair still damp, Senator Roberts was nowhere to be found, and she said that she’d like a grilled cheese. So I made her one. I made her two, I think. And that was it. Not long after, they were gone.”
“Did Jasper ever talk to you about it?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I received a generous raise, though,” she said. “So much money.”
“This family,” I said, shaking my head.
“No worse than any other family,” Mary offered. She shrugged.
“No,” I admitted, “maybe not.”
“You want to keep the papers?” she asked. I remembered that the kids were back in the guesthouse, waiting for me.
“Save them for Jasper,” I told her. “Maybe he’ll want them for his scrapbook.”
“Will Timothy come live with us?” Roland asked.
I hadn’t fully considered it. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe.” What would it matter? Another child in the bed, another set of lungs taking in air, holding it, and releasing it. I wondered if Jasper had fathered any children out of wedlock. Should a note be sent to the mothers of those children? A pamphlet? The guesthouse would become a home for wayward children who spontaneously combusted.
It made me happy, after everyone had seemed so convinced that Jane was responsible, that it was Jasper’s fucked-up genes that had made this happen. It made sense to me, these privileged families turning inward, becoming incestuous, like old royalty. It was bound to happen. It was all on him. And yet it worried me a little, that if Jasper knew without a doubt that he made these fire children, what would he do to them? How much of himself did he see in them? Too much or too little seemed dangerous to me.