I pulled myself off the table. I was scratched up pretty bad, but no gashes, nothing too serious. I ran over to the children, who were now in the hallway.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have to go.”
They looked at me, confused. “You and me,” I said. “We’re going. We’re going away.”
“Just the three of us?” Bessie asked, and I nodded.
They closed their eyes, took deep breaths. I wanted to hold them, to pull them into my arms, but I stood there, as close as I could get to the heat, and watched as they slowly pulled the fire back inside themselves. There were all these little fires burning in the mansion, and we stared at them, dumbfounded at the mess we had made. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was hard to look away from.
Just then, Carl ran back into the mansion. “Get out of here,” he shouted. I grabbed the kids and we moved to the door, but then he stopped us.
“The back door,” he said. “Go get some clothes, pack a bag. As quick as you can.” He handed me a ring of keys and pointed to one of them. “The Civic is in the garage,” he said. “Just take it. Don’t tell me where you’re going. Just go.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the keys.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s okay,” I told him. He ran into the kitchen for a fire extinguisher, and we were out the back door.
“Get some clothes,” I told the kids the second we were inside the guesthouse. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” It took us five minutes, maybe less, the kids shaking off their burned clothes and putting on their Nomex. I grabbed my wallet, a candy bar, trying to concentrate and not succeeding. When we walked out of the guesthouse, we saw the inside of the mansion lit up, flickering from the flames. We crept around to the garage and piled into the Honda. I started it up, told the kids to put on their seat belts. I looked at Madison, who was still holding Timothy. As I drove off, she turned to look at me. I waved to her. She smiled. She waved back. And then she turned to the house, watching it.
Farther down the long driveway I saw Mary, and slowed to offer her a ride. She said that her boyfriend was coming to get her, and she waved me on. The kids said goodbye to her, and then I sped off, watching the mansion in my rearview the entire time; the children turned around to look, too. A few minutes later, two fire trucks, their sirens blaring, sped in the opposite direction, toward the estate.
In that moment, still nearly hyperventilating, I couldn’t figure out just how bad things were. How illegal was it, what I’d done? Kidnapping? Arson? Physical assault against a secretary of state? I bet there were so many other charges that I wasn’t even considering, that I wouldn’t even know about until the judge read them off to me in court, while I was waving to the kids, telling them everything was real cool, just fine.
I honestly just drove for a while, no real consideration of where I was or where I was going. Part of the problem was that I didn’t really know where to go. I figured we should get a hotel room, but that seemed suspicious. I was cut up from the coffee table.
I finally found the interstate and got on it, speeding up to merge with traffic. The kids had been so quiet, probably traumatized, but there was nothing I could do about that now. Setting your childhood home on fire, that seemed like some symbolically heavy shit. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that both of them were wide awake, staring at me.
“Hey, kiddos,” I said, smiling.
“Are we in trouble?” Bessie asked.
“Some,” I admitted.
“What are we going to do?” Roland asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I said.
“Well, where are we going?” Bessie asked.
And I knew it, the way it clicked into place, the only option I had. The car was already going there. It was unavoidable.
“We’re going home,” I told them.
“Whose home?” they asked. They’d had so many over the last few months.
“My home,” I said, almost crying, so fucking angry with myself.
“Okay,” the kids said.
Twelve
My mother opened the door, saw Bessie and Roland on either side of me, and she just nodded, not saying a word. It was entirely possible that she had ignored pertinent details of my life for so long that she would accept the idea that I was the mother of ten-year-old twins.
“Hi,” Roland said.
“Mm-hmm,” my mother said. Even though she had given up smoking ten years earlier, she always looked like she was just about to take a long drag on a cigarette and blow the smoke right in your face.
“Hey, Mom,” I said.
“You’re bleeding,” she said, gesturing to some blood on the sleeve of my shirt, from one of the cuts I’d received falling onto that glass table.
“I know,” I said. “Can we come in?”
“It’s your house, too,” she said, which made me want to cry, but it wasn’t clear exactly why.
“This is Bessie, and this is Roland,” I said, tapping each kid softly on the head.
“You’re their governess, right?” she replied.
“I don’t know what I am to them, Mom,” I said. “It’s kind of jumbled up at the moment. I’m taking care of them, though. We need a place to stay, to keep them safe.”
“Are you in trouble?” she asked me, still looking at the kids.
“Kind of,” I said. “Kind of yes and kind of no.”
“Well, your room is still there,” she said. “Haven’t been in it since you left.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, but she waved me away with a flick of her wrist.
I hustled the kids upstairs, up to the attic, which was sweltering because none of the fans were on. I cursed and started plugging them in and getting them going. I set the kids in front of the two biggest ones, cranked up to high, which just blew all this dust around the room, little particles hovering in the air. There was an old piece of pizza sitting in an opened box, petrified. It was so embarrassing, to show these kids what my life had been like before them. It must have vaporized any confidence they had that I knew what I was doing. I kind of shuffle-kicked the pizza box under the bed, but they’d both seen it.
“We’re hungry,” Bessie told me. I realized that over the course of this summer they had become used to a lifestyle where someone simply reached into a refrigerator or cabinet and food immediately appeared. The pizza place delivered, but I was paranoid about the cops.
“My stomach,” Roland said. “Listen to it growl.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I get the picture. Just sit tight, and I’ll bring something up.”
“Can’t we come down there?” they asked. “It’s hot up here.”
“We kind of need to give my mom her space,” I told them. “She’s not good with kids.”
I ran down the stairs, huffing. I reached behind me and touched a spot just above the waist of my jeans, and I felt a little piece of glass stuck in there. I tried to pull it out, but it was in there pretty good. It didn’t hurt, but now that I knew it was there, it was all I could think about. It could not be good to have open wounds and hang out in that musty attic. I was losing my focus. I went into the kitchen and my mom was there, reading a magazine, listening to soft rock on the radio.