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Nothing To See Here by Kevin Wilson

Ecco, 272 pp.

By Robert Allen Papinchak

Literary governesses never have it easy. They often get bad press. Whether you’re Henry James’s dealing with possible specters, P. L. Travers’s handling recalcitrant children, Maria von Trapp herding a group over the mountains, Peter Pan teaching a trio of tots to fly, or Anna getting to know all about the king’s cadre of kids, it can be rough on your nerves.

But Kevin Wilson’s twenty eight-year old Lillian Breaker may have it the toughest of all. In his electrifyingly bizarre Nothing To See Here, he knows what Lillian did last summer when she became the accidental nanny to twin wards who spontaneously combust. And that’s not a figure of speech.

The novel is as unnerving as his recent short story collection, Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine (2018).

Lillian’s extraordinary employment offer comes out of the blue in a letter from her childhood friend, Madison Billings Roberts. The two met at the Iron Mountain Girls Preparatory School in the “middle of nowhere Tennessee.” Lillian was a scholarship student; Madison, from a wealthy well-positioned Atlanta family. It seems as though they may never meet again after a false charge of cocaine possession gets Lillian expelled. They do, however, become pen pals and continue their friendship over the years.

Nevertheless, Lillian is surprised when she receives a request for help from Madison who is now the third wife of an up-and-coming senator, Jasper Roberts. They live in Franklin, Tennessee, along with their endearing three year-old son, Timothy.

Madison’s lofty ambitions have always been “’to be powerful . . . to be the person who makes big things happen, where people owe me so many favors that they can never pay me back. I want to be so important that if I fuck up, I’ll never get punished.’”

It looks as though Jasper can make that happen for her. He aspires to be President. But the first stepping stone is to become U.S. Secretary of State. He is being vetted for that position when Madison seeks Lillian’s aid.

Jasper has two children from his deceased second wife, ten year-old twins, Bessie and Roland, whose “unique kind of affliction” may prove problematic to his confirmation. Madison thinks their condition would reflect negatively on him. She wants Lillian to watch the children 24/7 over the summer of 1995. Lillian is to handle “all aspects of their care.”

While Madison’s life has been on a rocket trajectory to success, Lillian’s has not gone the way she had hoped. The expulsion from the private school has not helped. She works two cashier’s jobs at competing grocery stores, smokes weed, and lives in her mother’s attic. Without considering the fine print of her job, she leaps at the opportunity to live a life of luxury where everything is provided and paid for. She quickly relocates to the fully furnished guest house that is attached to the Roberts’s mansion on their estate.

Lillian’s initial concern is that she knows absolutely nothing about raising children. The bulk of the novel is about Lillian figuring things out. How difficult can it be? Even if they’re prone to conflagration, she figures that all you have to do is “build them a house that was impervious to danger and then you [gave] them every single thing that they could ever want, no matter how impossible.”

With that proviso in mind, Lillian sets out to understand what ignites the kids. If it only happens when they get agitated then there must be a solution to the problem.

She comes up with some creative answers -–tamping them down with wet towels when their body heat begins to rise; deep breathing yoga exercises to relax them; playing basketball on the fullsize home court in order to release excess energy. She also takes them on field trips to the local mall where they can shop for free because their stepmother’s family owns the department store. Then, you “’read to them at night. Why couldn’t people figure this out?’”

Things seem to be moving along smoothly until several unexpected events occur demanding changes in the established schedule. Jasper’s confirmation is pushed forward. Family matters become more urgent and need to be sorted out.

Lillian believes that Madison, who betrayed her once before, is likely to do it again.

When she learns Madison’s plans for the children she realizes that she has become attached to them. They have come to trust her; she has come to love them. She must find a way for them to remain together and make everyone’s life different. After all, they are just “normal kids who catch on fire.”

The resolution may seem a bit pat. Regardless, Nothing To See Here proves that money, privilege, and politics don’t always outweigh old-fashioned values. Though there is a certain Wilson trademark of quirkiness and a dark sense of humor, it finally leads to revealing the new normal in contemporary parenting.

Robert Allen Papinchak, a former university English professor, has reviewed fiction for a variety of publications, including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Review of Books, the Seattle Times, USA TODAY, and People. He has been a judge for Publishers Weekly’s BookLife Creative Writing Contest, the Nelson Algren Literary Prize for the Short Story, and the John Leonard Prize for Best Book of 2018 for the National Book Critics Circle. His own fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and received a STORY award. He is the author of Sherwood Anderson: A Study of the Short Fiction.