“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.”