“Well, he’s cute,” I said.
“These kids are cute, too, Lillian,” Madison replied.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked again.
Madison hadn’t touched her tea during the entire conversation, since we sat down, and now, to buy some time, she drank a whole glass. Finally, she looked at me with great seriousness.
“Here is the thing,” she said. “Jasper is up for secretary of state. It’s all very hush-hush right now, okay? The other guy is sick and he’s going to step down. And some of the president’s people have reached out to Jasper to see about him and to start the process of vetting him. It’s all happening this summer.”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“This could lead to big things. Like, vice-president stuff. Or president even, if everything went just right.”
“Well, that’s cool,” I said. I imagined Madison as the first lady of the United States of America. I remembered the time during a basketball game when she elbowed this girl in the throat in order to get a rebound and got kicked out of the game. I smiled.
“So, you see what’s going on, right? Jane’s dead and these kids are coming to stay with us, right when this is all going down. It’s crazy. It’s very stressful. Vetting. That’s serious shit, Lillian. They look at everything. They already know about the adultery stuff, which they’re obviously not thrilled about. But they like Jasper. People like Jasper. I think this might all work out. But these kids. Who knows what their lives have been like? I don’t want them to mess this up for Jasper. He would be so angry. God, like super angry.”
“You just want me to watch over them and keep them safe?” I asked.
“Make sure they’re safe and they don’t do anything crazy,” she replied, her eyes so bright, so hopeful.
I knew how to keep order. I knew all the ways to make bad things happen and how to avoid them. I was wise to how people tried to ruin you. These kids, they would not beat me. And I realized that I was already thinking like I had taken the job. I didn’t know the first thing about kids, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t know how to take care of them. What did kids like? What did they eat? What dances were popular with them? I didn’t have the slightest idea how to teach children. If I failed spectacularly at this task, that would be the end of things with Madison. I’d never get to visit her in the White House. It’d be like we’d never even met.
“I guess I can do it,” I offered, so lame. I made my voice harden. I made my body turn into steel. “I’ll do it, Madison. I can do it.”
She reached across the sandwiches and hugged me, hard. “I can’t tell you how much I need you,” she said. “I don’t have anyone. I need you.”
“Okay,” I said. My whole life, maybe I was just biding time until Madison needed me again, until I was called into service and I made everything good. It honestly wasn’t a bad life, if that’s all it was.
Madison’s body, which had been tense and vibrating, relaxed. I finally felt calm, knew the depth of the situation, saw the bottom and knew I could climb into and out of it without incident. I leaned back into the comfort of this sofa, which held me in just the right position. Then I quickly leaned forward and ate two more sandwiches.
“Lillian?” Madison said.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s more, actually,” she said, grimacing.
“What?” I asked.
“The kids. Bessie and Roland. There’s something I have to tell you about them.”
I had a quick flash of what might come. It was sexual, some kind of abuse that had left them hollowed-out shells. That notion transformed into some kind of disability: missing limbs, horrific facial scars. A sensitivity to sunlight, a mouth without any teeth at all. And then it moved to homicidal impulses, kittens drowned in the bathtub, knives at the ready. Of course Madison would wait until I had given myself to her.
“They have a unique—I don’t know what to call it—kind of affliction,” she began, but I couldn’t keep quiet.
“Do they not have any teeth?” I asked, not frightened but merely wanting to get it over with. “Did they kill a kitten?”
“What? No, just . . . just listen to me, okay? They have this affliction where they get really overheated.”
“Oh, okay,” I said. They were delicate little kids. Didn’t like exercise. Fine.
“Their bodies, for some reason that doctors haven’t quite nailed down, can quickly rise in temperature. Alarming increases in temperature.”
“Okay,” I said. There was more. I just spoke to make Madison keep talking.
“They catch on fire,” she finally said. “They can—rarely, of course—burst into flames.”
“Are you joking?” I asked.
“No! God, of course not, Lillian. Why would I joke about something like this?” she said.
“Well, ’cause I’ve never heard of anything like this. ’Cause it just seems like a joke.”
“Well, it’s not a joke. It’s a serious condition.”
“Jesus, Madison, that’s wild,” I said.
“I haven’t seen it, okay?” she replied. “But Jasper has. I guess the kids get really hot when they’re agitated and they can just catch fire.”
I was in shock, but the images felt easy in my brain, honestly. Children made of fire. That seemed like something I wanted to see.
“How are they still alive?” I asked.
“It doesn’t hurt them at all,” she said, shrugging to highlight how dumbfounded she was. “They just get really red, like a bad sunburn, but they’re not hurt.”
“What about their clothes?” I asked.
“I’m still figuring this out, Lillian,” she said. “I guess their clothes burn off.”
“So they’re just these naked kids on fire?”
“I think so. So you can understand why we’re worried. I mean, Jasper is their father, though I’m fairly certain that this comes from Jane’s family. It only started once she was raising them on her own. She was a real handful; I wouldn’t be surprised if she was some weird pyromaniac. But Jasper is stepping up. He’s going to take care of these kids, but we have to be smart about this. We’ve got a guesthouse on the property. Well, it used to be something else, but whatever. Jasper spent a fortune to have it renovated and properly safeguarded for the children. That’s where you and the kids will live. It’s really nice, Lillian. It’s beautiful. I’d rather live there than in this huge house, if I’m being honest.”
“I’d live with the kids?” I asked.
“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” she said, and she could see on my face that this sucked. “We can arrange for a few days off, to have someone else watch them if you need a break one day. And it’s just for the summer, until we can figure out a more permanent solution, okay? Once the vetting is done and the nomination comes through, it’ll all be easier.”
“This is weird, Madison. You want me to raise your husband’s fire children.”
“Don’t call them ‘fire children.’ Don’t even joke about it. We can’t really talk about it. The doctors have been very discreet, thanks to Jasper’s connections, and they’re not going to say anything, but we have to get a handle on the situation so that we can figure out how to solve this problem.”