I looked at Mrs. Cunningham’s muumuu. It was so comfortable. Wearing it, I felt like a gust of wind in the spring, just enough motion to detonate every dandelion puffball in my way. “It’s kind of like a dress—” I began to say, but Carl broke in.
“We had a slight mishap at the Cunninghams’，” he admitted, and I could see how much it pained him to admit the tiniest mistake.
“And what happened to your hand?” she asked. “Goodness, your face.”
I didn’t have the strength to explain. I just let Carl say, “That was part of the mishap as well.”
“I see,” Madison said. Then she smiled. “Well, the dress actually looks kind of nice on you,” she said to me, which I already knew.
“She’s our nanny,” Roland said.
“Or governess,” Madison said, kind of correcting him. Or perhaps correcting me.
“What are we going to do here?” Bessie finally asked, as if she’d been thinking about this the entire time.
“Anything you like,” Madison said. “Rest, relax, get settled. This is your home now. We want you to be happy.”
“Happy?” Bessie said, like she hadn’t quite heard that word, didn’t know what it meant, or had only read it in a book and never heard it spoken aloud.
“Of course, sweetie,” Madison said, but before she could say anything else, there was Jasper Roberts, wearing a linen suit, looking like a preacher about to say the Lord’s Prayer before the start of the Daytona 500.
“Children,” he said, but his voice cracked just a little. “I’ve missed you.”
“Daddy?” Roland asked, but Bessie grabbed his hand to keep him from moving, from saying another word. Maybe they had been faking in the van. Or maybe this single moment, the appearance of their father, brought it all back, but I could see that they knew it now. They knew this place, their life before their life.
“My sweet children,” Jasper said. He was crying a little, and I couldn’t quite place why he was crying, what it meant.
“Sir,” Carl said, but then Bessie and Roland started to catch on fire. I could feel this little twinge in the air, and I committed it to memory. And then their skin rashed and strawberried. And then these blooms of flame started to appear on their arms, on their hands. It wasn’t the explosion of a star, like at the Cunninghams’， but they were definitely on fire.
“Back up!” Carl said, jumping between the children and Jasper and Madison. Smoke started coming off the children, their cheap clothes now singed.
“Ohhhh!” Madison said, and everyone was just standing there, not doing anything, while these children increased the intensity of the fire that was inside them. That’s what it seemed like, like the fire was inside them, children made of fire. And I knew it would get worse if something didn’t happen to stop it. Madison and Jasper seemed stunned, and Carl’s only concern was keeping Jasper from getting burned.
I took off my muumuu, which was so easy to remove, by the way, and then I used it to cover my hands and gently lower the children to a squatting position on the ground. “Hey, Bessie. Bessie? Calm down now, okay?” She was rigid, and so was Roland, but the fire was just rolling across them, yellow and red, like what you’d draw with a limited supply of crayons.
“Can you turn it off?” I asked, almost whispering, but they weren’t listening. So then I started smothering the flames with the muumuu, which caused it to smolder and spark. I patted the children all over their arms, their backs, on top of their little heads. I went pat-pat-pat-pat-pat and kept whispering, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.”
I could feel the heat, but I just kept lightly tapping them, and the fire seemed to finally die out. As if they had been holding their breath the entire time, Bessie and Roland each took in a deep gulp of air and then sighed, suddenly sleepy. I leaned against them and they kind of slumped onto me. And Carl finally ran over and scooped them both up, one in each arm, and put them back in the van, gently closing the doors.
I stood up, confused. I realized that I was in my bra and panties, but either people were being really polite or it didn’t matter because we’d just fucking watched some fire children do their thing. Carl and I had already seen it, knew it was real, so we both snapped out of it quicker than the Robertses.
“My god,” Madison finally said. She hugged Jasper, as if she only now believed him and was sorry for doubting him. I looked down and realized that the teddy bears were lying on the driveway, their fur burned black.