Nothing to See Here

“‘How many servants do you have?’ I asked Madison, who stiffened. I couldn’t tell if I was doing this on purpose, trying to make her feel bad about being so filthy rich.

‘More than we probably need,’ she finally said. ‘But they’re not servants. They’re employees. It’s like running a cruise ship or something like that. It’s just that a place this big has a lot of things that have to get done and a lot of people who have specific abilities. But I know all their names. I can keep track of them.’”

This moment touches on one of the ironies of upper-class life. They need their wealth to be known and ostentatiously seen, but to speak directly of details like servants is vulgar. Lillian, who resents Madison’s wealth and privilege, thrills in making Madison uncomfortable in this moment.

“The walls were painted with orange and yellow polka dots on a white background. The floors were made of a kind of spongy material, bright blue. There were lots of beanbag chairs, primary school furniture. The whole place felt like Sesame Street mixed with a mental health facility.”

The guest house is ridiculously decorated. Its overwhelmingly colorful design seems like an attempt to distract the children from their trauma and the fact that they are in effect prisoners in the building. Whether it was done on Jasper or Madison’s instruction, the décor is comically out of touch with the children’s needs or perspective.

“There was a big chest and, with some effort, he lifted the lid. And then, like clowns from a VW Bug, out came so many stuffed animals that I felt like I’d dropped acid. Timothy pulled out a red fox with a bow tie. ‘This is Geoffrey,’ he said, no emotion on his face.”

The sheer volume of Timothy’s toys recalls a circus show attraction and is so disorienting that Lillian feels as though she’s taken a hallucinogen. The cherry on top of this weird encounter is Timothy’s deadpan introduction of a stuffed fox with a human name: The action itself is childlike, but the toy’s name and attire (as well as Timothy’s bland attitude) are comedically mature.

“From that point on, I guess I sort of realized that my imagination, which made life tolerable, needed to be kept a secret from the rest of the world.”

Lillian describes a realization that Madison also came to, albeit separately, in her own childhood. Their mothers rejected their true, offbeat selves. As a result, Lillian and Madison were never able to bond closely with anyone else because all of their interactions lack sincerity. Wilson critiques the falseness of these performances, but here he also takes aim at those who force others into those kinds of masquerades in the name of fitting in.

“And then, like a crack of lightning, she burst fully into flames, her body a kind of firework, the fire white and blue and red all at once. It was beautiful, no lie, to watch a person burn.”

Lillian draws a comparison between Bessie catching on fire and the explosion of a firework—a phenomenon readers are likely to have experienced—to evoke a sense of excitement. Ironically, the fire is “white and blue and red.” These are the colors of the American flag (just as fireworks are emblematic of 4th of July celebrations), although the twins’ father seems to feel there is something un-American about his children.

“‘Okay,’ I said. So this was how it would work, a line demarcating us and them. I wondered if Jasper would ever see the kids again. I wondered if Madison and I would still hang out, and I figured that we still would, but in different ways.”

Although Lillian initially revels in the freedom of life without intrusion, she realizes that an ugly system of stratification is keeping her and the twins apart from the rest of the Roberts family. The motif of “us and them” is one of the minor threads that contributes to the tension between the guesthouse and the mansion.

“While the kids swam, I took a break and sat at a table with a little notebook and wrote down possibilities. My list looked like this:

Asbestos?

Race car clothes?

Damp towels?

Zen meditation?

Spray bottles / garden hoses?

Live in the pool (build a roof over it?)?

Fire extinguishers (safe for kids’ skin?)?

Medication (sleeping pills? anti-anxiety?)?

Therapy (discreet)?

No spicy foods?

Spontaneous human combustion research (Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown)?”

Lillian compiles a ludicrous list to cope with an equally absurd problem. It is a humorous moment, but underneath is a desire to help the children. It is one of the first signs she plans to take her job more seriously than she has approached her own life.

“I wondered what Madison was doing. It was hard not to feel like she had tricked me. I had barely seen her. I remembered those first days, before the kids, when it was just the two of us. She bought me a wardrobe. We played basketball. I thought we’d be together. I mean, I knew I’d be here, with the kids, but in my mind, Madison was sitting next to me, laughing. I thought we’d be eating those dainty, gross tea sandwiches while the kids played hopscotch or some shit.”

Lillian’s relationship with Madison has always been an unequal one, but here she realizes that her “friend” is plainly using her. The early days of summer were a bribe and a lure to manipulate Lillian into taking care of the children. This is not the end of Lillian’s love for Madison—in fact, her wistfulness about life “before the kids” reads like a description of marriage—but there is some recognition of the malicious tactics Madison is using against her. These little moments help Lillian gain the strength to eventually stand up to Madison.

“We just sat there, and I prayed that Carl would not come to the house right at this moment. How would I explain it? I’d have to knock him out with a lamp, drag him to his car, and make him think that he’d dreamed the whole thing.”

Carl becomes an easy target for slapstick comedy because of his forced stiffness and intimidating air. He takes himself too seriously and therefore works well for moments of physical farce like this example, which echoes The Three Stooges.

“‘How much time do we have?’ I asked her.

‘How much time?’ she replied, confused.

‘Until I need to go back to the kids.’

She thought about this, looking at me. ‘How much time do you need?’ she asked, but I didn’t even answer. Nothing that I said would be enough.”

As if anticipating that Lillian would be growing frustrated by their lack of contact, Madison invites her over to visit. The conversation parallels a question Bessie asks Lillian continually over the summer. Her reply to Bessie is always reassuring and offers a promise of more time together. Lillian is searching for a similar answer from Madison but only receives disappointment.

“‘Can you, um, slam…slam-dunk it?’ Roland asked. These kids were like aliens, like they’d been given a really incomplete book about humans and were trying to remember every detail.”

This quote provides one of the clearest descriptions of the children’s strangeness. However, it is an exception to the inhuman language motif because it is not meant to dehumanize. Rather, it highlights how foreign regular activities are to the twins and how desperate they are to learn and catch up.

“‘Holy shit,’ I said. ‘Oops, okay, sorry, but, yeah, that’s perfect. Dolly Parton is perfect.’

‘Mom played some of her records for us,’ Roland admitted. ‘Jolene.’

‘Nine to Five,’ Bessie said.”

Jane playing “Jolene” and “Nine to Five” on loop indicates her deep heartbreak at Jasper’s wandering. “Jolene” is particularly of note because it tells the story of a woman who pleads with a beautiful woman not to take her partner (Dolly Parton admits it was written about her own heartbreak). “Nine to Five” is a working-class, feminist ode to the difficulties women face on the job. All in all, it is not hard to see why Jasper later objects to Bessie’s choice of Dolly Parton as a famous Tennessean.

“‘This is an extra level of security,’ Carl said, and I so badly wanted Carl, that square, to shut up. He wasn’t helping. ‘It’s kind of a plan B, okay?’”

In this instance, the existence of a plan B negates the power of the plan A, which is breathing exercises. Carl means well, but because he is not with the children every day to see their progress firsthand, he has no faith in their restraint. He sends the message that the children cannot be trusted and makes them doubt their own abilities.

“Honestly, Bessie? People don’t care about anyone but themselves. They don’t notice anything. They are never looking at what’s interesting. They’re always looking at themselves.”

Learning this lesson after the trip to the library unlocks Roland’s and (especially) Bessie’s courage and self-confidence. It flips the sensibility of the novel’s title—a desperate attempt to hush something up—on its head. There truly is nothing to see here because no one is even looking.

“For a second, there was that weird flicker in her eyes, that wickedness that I loved, that I wanted to live inside. A wicked child was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Wilson plays on fire imagery with the use of “flicker” to describe the spark of recognition between Lillian and Bessie. It is the first time Lillian admits her love for the children.

“Jasper, like most men I’d ever known, did not like to be gently corrected in public. And I should have been more careful, but I wasn’t savvy. I didn’t see the point.”

Lillian isn’t a manipulator like Madison or even Carl is and therefore isn’t good at playing politics. In this case, she proves ill-equipped to handle the misogyny of men like Mr. Billings and Jasper, who insist on a certain level of respect and control. Lillian never ascribed to that notion and does not even like men, so she struggles to follow the unwritten script for managing Jasper.

“‘Wasn’t he dying?’ I asked.

‘Well, he was dying, but he was a powerful man. He was going to die very slowly. This was unexpected.’”

In this exchange between Carl and Lillian, Carl breaks down the circumstances of the death of the secretary of state. Death comes for all, but the wealthy and powerful can eke out more time than the average person might. There is also the suggestion that there is something improper or unseemly about the secretary of state’s abrupt death, which gives an otherwise serious moment a comedic element: Decorum is so important to the elite that it dictates even the circumstances of one’s death.

“Everyone seemed to love Jasper, and perhaps it’s because I didn’t like him, but it seemed like what they loved about him was that he was inoffensive and gentlemanly, that he looked like he knew what he was doing.”

Jasper embodies the smooth Southern charm that sets people at ease. He sculpted his image into a distilled performance of the Old South, though one that notably overlooks slavery and its atrocities.

“‘It happened so quickly,’ I said.

‘Because the guy died!’ she said, fucking giddy.”

This is one of the rare moments where Madison shows her unrestrained self. This is the cruelty and inhumanity that lurk behind her own performance of civility. She revels in a man’s quick death because it benefits her and her family. It is an ugly moment from a character Lillian describes as the pinnacle of beauty.

“Jasper is a better parent in theory, like if you look at his actions and his values from a distance. They’ll still have access to what he can provide for them, Lillian. That’s what really matters.”

In politics, the public perception of Jasper as a good father is more important than the actual execution of the emotional responsibilities of caring for his family. Madison recognizes Jasper’s inadequacies but also lets slip her own: There is something soulless in her belief that financial support is the only thing that matters, though she is perhaps mirroring the coldness of her own upbringing.

“Madison had on this tight maroon dress, like Jackie O or something. Jasper, who the hell cared, had on a boring-ass gray suit, but he looked handsome enough. They looked like a beautiful family, no denying it. They looked so complete, so compact, so perfect.”

In the moments before Timothy combusts, Wilson gives Jasper the image of the perfect family he wanted. It makes the chaos of the minutes that follow an even more startling juxtaposition.

“And we made it. The kids were happy. They had added another to their numbers. They didn’t want to set the world on fire. They just wanted to be less alone in it.”

This segment captures the feeling at the heart of this story—the longing to belong. It is also notable that in the penultimate chapter, Lillian refers to herself and the twins as “we.” Although she is not yet ready to admit it to herself, in her mind she already sees them as family. The play on the literal and figurative meanings of “setting the world on fire” foreshadows the destruction of the Roberts’ mansion, which the twins ignite not out of malice but out of hurt.

“‘This family,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘No worse than any other family,’ Mary offered. She shrugged.

‘No,’ I admitted, ‘maybe not.’”

Mary, who has perhaps seen more of the Roberts’ secrets than any other, provides useful context for Lillian. She reminds her that all families are imperfect, despite parents’ best efforts. This is something Lillian knows from personal experience.