Nanny Returns (12 page)

“It’s going to be
fine,
” Mrs. X says definitively. “But they found a lump.” She drops her gaze to her lap and suddenly this ghost of a woman makes awful sense. My face goes hot, then numb, because I have wanted her to suffer …but not like this, not physically, not literally. In a vacuum, in a way that couldn’t affect Grayer. Which, of course, is ridiculous.

The Tweedles leap into a cacophony of Appropriate Responses. Mrs. X holds her palm up. “I’m just waiting on a plan of action. They haven’t determined the protocol yet …I’m just tired, that’s all.” She gives a weary smile and, whatever may or may not have passed between us, I feel horrible. For Grayer. For Stilton. For her—sick, scared, and so obviously alone.

“Oh,
honey,
” Susan says with gravitas before pulling a small crocodile diary out of her bag. “Now let me make some calls. Leaf Burman went through this last year and she knows some fantastic people. She had this man who would come over and just hold her feet for an hour a day. She said he could see the tumors in his mind.”

Mrs. X’s eyes widen at the thought. “I just want to rest. And maybe a few people to cheer me up.”

“Done.”

“And, of course, while I’m obviously not up to holding my previous position as committee chair, I would still like to help in any way I can.”

“Of course,
of course
—”

“Yes—”

“Absolutely—”

“Only—”

“It’s just—”

“Small thing—”

“Silly, really—”

“But …Carter Nelson went to Spence.” That can’t be good.

“Yes?” Mrs. X asks, head tilting.

“So they already approached her about being the honorary chairperson this year. Because of the writers’ strike and the pending SAG strike, she had time,” Barbara rushes to add. “You know we haven’t had any star power in recent years and we thought it would help sell more tables. Tables have been selling a little …slowly.” She releases the last word seemingly against her will. “Perhaps fifty thousand a table was ambitious.”

Devastation passes over Mrs. X’s face like a fast-moving cloud and then a smile breaks as she sits back into the trio of throw pillows. “Of course. Whatever is best for the benefit. I have loved steering it all these years, but obviously, my
health
prevents me this year,” she says, staring levelly at the two women who have misplaced her number for almost a month. “Well, no matter. Just tell me where it would be most helpful for me to sit. I’m obviously not up to hosting a table of my own this year.”

The Tweedles look at each other, momentarily aghast before Barbara bara recovers. “Of
course.
Of
course
you’ll want to be there. And you can sit at my table, honey.”

“And,”
Susan adds, “Stilton should perform in the show.”

“We already have a lower-school student from Haverhill Prep,” Barbara protests.

“Ye-es.”
Susan shoots Barbara a look. “But we can make an exception.”

“Well, that is so kind.” Mrs. X smoothes her lap.

“Isn’t it!” Barbara smiles broadly, angrily. “Now you
really
have a reason to be there,” she can’t help adding in her ire. “Saz, let’s go.”

I show the Tweedles out with promises to call my mother-in-law and pass on their love. Upon returning to the living room, I look down to where Mrs. X sits dwarfed by her own furniture, the spoils of a war fought within these walls, and I feel sadder for her than I ever imagined possible. “I’m
so
sorry. Is there anything I can do for you before I go?” I ask. “Or at all? Any errands you need run?” Any movie stars you want shot?

She rearranges the panels of her jacket over her legs. “Thank you. That is so kind. But I’m really fine.”

“Are you sure? Why don’t I run over to Food Emporium and just stock up on some basics?”

“Grayer does the shopping. We’re fine. Truly.”

“Can I ask?” I rest my hands on the back of the facing couch. “Does Grayer know?”

She startles. “No …no, he doesn’t.” She stares across the room and out the window.

“Because I think he thinks, they think, you have been, uh, under the weather for other reasons.”

She turns back to me. “Yes, he has been completely withdrawn since his father left. Cold, really. So hurtful.” She nods to herself. “Yes, I should tell him.” She stands. “He should appreciate what I’m going through.” She strides to the front door.

“Right, yes, I meant . . .” Regretting I brought it up, I swipe my bag and hurry after her. “Could I be of any help with that? Perhaps we could get him a doctor to talk to in case he has questions, or a therapist? Someone to support—”

“Oh, he should hear it from me. He should know his mother is sick. Potentially terminally sick.” She takes the knob and opens it. “But maybe you could help . . .”

“Yes, I’d really like to be there for him.” While he’s appreciating this.

“How nice. I was thinking ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’” She ushers me out to the vestibule.

“Sorry?”

“For Stilton’s performance at the benefit. It’s Bunny’s favorite poem. Could you help him memorize it? Since you’re helping your in-laws with the renovation of their place.”

“Oh, it’s not—it’s sold—that’s the new—”

“I thought Grayer ran into you in the elevator.”

“Right! Yes. Well, they sold it,” I scramble. “To a friend of mine. From Chapin. That’s why I was here. Visiting her. And Grayer and I ran into each other in the elevator. And he recognized me. And yes.”

“Lovely. Well, Stilton thinks you’re ‘perfect,’ whatever that means. So perhaps you’ll pass that perfection off onto his recitation? I don’t have the strength at the moment.”

“I’d be delighted. When do you think you’ll talk to Grayer and Stilton?”

“Oh, not Stilton, oh no. He adores me.”

“Right.”

“Maybe I can even get you a spot to stand backstage. All ten Manhattan private schools uniting for one evening every year to raise funds and bring our community together across academic divides. It’s our Palio.”

“But the Sienese aren’t coming together,” I surprise her by getting her reference. “They’re competing, sometimes to the death.”

“Exactly.” She reaches past me to hit the button for the elevator. “It will be marvelous. Good-bye.” I open my mouth to return the phrase, but, as seems to be the new family custom, she’s already closing the door.

9

“So she did
not
thank you.”

“Affirmative,” I answer into my cell before biting off a piece of pizza crust.

“That sucks,” Ryan summarizes through a yawn.

“Are you falling asleep on me?”

“I’ve been in a windowless room for two days. This is my half-hour break to shower, shave, nap, and, this is a direct instruction from the colonel, have a brain wave. I don’t think I’m even going to get dinner.”

“You just had pizza. It’s midnight in December and we are about to kiss for the very first time,” I remind him.

“Right, sorry.” He inhales and I know he’s pulling himself up against his pillows in an effort to wake up for our attempt at a long-distance date. After playing through a “quick trip” to Africa or a rendezvous in between, we decided the best, and comparably priced, gift we could give each other was a roof membrane. “So we’re on the steps of the Met,” he repeats from a billion miles away.

“Yes.” Sitting on a metal chair beside a burbling copper water installation, I look straight up in the sliver between the midtown high-rises and see a stamp of cloudless sky. Not wanting to return from my lunch break with my software client with pizza grease spotting my skirt, I readjust the paper bag shielding my lap. “In their proximity.”

“And I believe we were discussing this exact same woman and how much she sucks.”

“You are correct.”

“And then …you planted one on me.”

“Ry, that is so not what happened!” I pop the last piece of crust in my mouth. “You kissed
me
! You know you kissed me. When are you going to admit it?”

“Come on, you were sweating me. It was all you,” he says his familiar line. “I was the Hottie.”

“I never should have told you.”

“You didn’t, your grandmother did. Ugh. This is ridiculous. Come get in bed with me, woman.”

“And leave all the mad passionate nothing that is my construction-filled, perpetually dog-walking life in your absence?”
Beep.
“Shit.” I pull the phone away. “That’s Jarndyce. Can you hold on a sec?”

“Babe, I have to be up in seventeen minutes and rested enough to find a solution for the starving families leaving their—”
Beep
—“by the side of the road.”

“Leaving their what?”

Beep.

“Dead children. It’s fucking brutal.”

“Oh my God, Ryan, that’s—”
Beep.

“Are you going to get it or are we ignoring—”
Beep.

“No. Yes. Shit—it went to voice mail. Sorry, I’m back. But you should really go to sleep. Thanks for the date.”

“My pleasure.” His warmth tinges with concern. “I know you’re managing a lot, Nan.”

“Yeah.” I take a long swig of Poland Spring. “But nothing that comes within a million miles of what you’re dealing with.”

“If only it were a competition. You going to be okay till I can get back?”

“Totally. Just please focus on your own stuff. Seriously, don’t worry about me.”

“I fucking love you.”

“And I love you. Sweet dreams, Hottie.” I hang up and hold the phone, staring through my sunglasses at a pair of tourists stopping to unfold a subway map. They are thin with a lot of hair and colorful sneakers—round-eyed and young. He tugs her arm and she drops against him, head back for a deep kiss. Grinning, they come up for air and I feel a sharp pang.

Then my attention is pulled to a sobbing child being speedily strolled by a woman who looks to be on her last nerve as she steers with her elbows while trying to get a straw in a soy-milk box.

Right.

I look down at the message light pulsing on my BlackBerry.

“Nan, Gene DeSanto, Friday—lunch period. Need you here a-sap. DEFCON four. Call my secretary, Janelle, back or just, uh—get here.”

As soon as I can wrap up the software client’s training I splurge on another cab ride to find out if Chassie’s “sext” has finally shown up on YouTube. I stride into Gene’s parlor just as he’s ushering Sheila and Cliff into his office, his face ashen at whatever has necessitated the president and vice president of the board to drop work in the middle of the day. “You really didn’t need to—”

“Please, Gene,” Cliff scoffs as Gene guides Sheila by the elbow around the brass andirons.

“And with the benefit next Saturday,” she adds. “We need this resolved and buried.”

“Can I help you?” Janelle asks, not looking up from the newspaper splayed across her leather blotter as I pass.

Gene spins to catch sight of me, one hand on the doorknob. “Oh, Nan, apologies. Can you sit tight?”

I stop short—“Of course”—and take a seat in a wing chair, deciding the transportation expense meter has officially started. I reach into my bag and pull out my new copy of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Staring at the tight paragraphs of prose, I’m grateful, given his mother’s situation, for the opportunity to support Grayer, if only as dramatic coach to the family.

Coleridge is just freething his speech from the bonds of thirst—which should come trippingly off Stilton’s tongue—when Gene’s door reopens. “See, Gene,” Cliff says as he helps Sheila on with a white knit coat that matches her underlying dress. “This is not a crisis. It’s just one individual reacting to information they shouldn’t have had in the first place.” The three share a nod of agreement before Sheila and Cliff walk out together.

Gene, the color having returned to his face, takes a deep breath and turns to me. “Can you hold one more sec?”

“Sure.” I pause, my pencil skirt now hovering an inch above the chair. He leans his torso into his office and has a whispered conference with someone.

“Yes, yes, okay, excellent,” he ends audibly before straightening. “Okay, then. Nan, come in.” I stand and follow into his office. “You know my second in command?”

“I don’t believe I do.”

“Nan, this is Tim Hess, he’s just gotten back from an educational conference in Beijing.”

I turn to the tired-looking man seated on the couch by the door and grasp his hand as he half rises. “Nice to meet you.”

“Espresso?”

“Thank you.” I take a seat on the center sofa as Tim gets up to pour me a cup and refresh his own from a tiny steaming carafe on the sideboard.

“Thanks for coming down, Nan. And for your patience with us. We’ve had to do a little regrouping.” The two share a smile. “But we now have a solution that the board feels great about. And we feel great about. And that is just—great,” Gene informs me as he takes his seat behind the desk.

I nod, waiting to hear what the “this” is as I sip from the delicate demitasse, eager finally to pass my “road test” and start submitting sizable invoices against that retainer, so I can hire a new contractor who can show up and actually work, so I can sit on/eat off/soak in something not covered in volcanic volumes of toxic dust. Tim takes a seat, resting an argyle-socked ankle on his knee, fingers in a splayed prayer position.

“Thing is, there’s a player on the team who, well, who . . .” Suddenly Gene’s mouth twists, his boyish cheer dissipating.

“Might not be on message,” Tim intones, dropping his head to pinch the top of his nose.

I slide the cup and its saucer onto the leather top of the tortoise table somewhere near its rump, take my yellow pad from my bag, and twist open my pen.

“Someone . . .” Gene waves his hands over a model Parthenon decorating the corner of his desk. “In need of some guidance.”

“Green around the ears,” Tim adds, pushing his bifocals into his thick blond hair.

“And the board feels that were this situation to come to the parents’ attention, they’d be reassured that we already brought you in to address it. We’re addressing it. So Tim here just had the brain wave that you could …professionally develop Ingrid. The way Shari did with Calvin and some of the others.”

I try not to seem stunned. “Your voice mail indicated this was a crisis. Has Ingrid been an issue for some time,” I fish, “or is this a recent problem?”

“Ingrid’s incendiary, plain and simple,” Tim directs the comment to Gene as he stretches his fingers to their full extent in front of him.

“I’m striving to practice what I preach here, Nan. Jarndyce is about taking potential to its fullest. You can appreciate that,” Gene reasons. “The students gave Ingrid rave reviews on her three-sixties. We’d like to make this work. We’d want you on this full-time. So, what do you think?”

“Well,” Full-time? How could Ingrid possibly require full-time development? “I should mention that I have another client I’m working with at the moment, so I would need to—”

“The board’s prepared to double your rate if you can put that project off.”

“That’s a generous offer, Gene.” Screw Steve. Hello, Ty Pennington.

“Excellent!” He rounds his desk with an arm extended to me as Tim stands. “Positivity, Nan.
Can do,
as my dad used to say.” He pats me on the back, simultaneously steering me toward the door. “It’s in the Jarndyce DNA.”

Moments later I spot Ingrid’s office door just as she emerges, arms laden with books. “So they called in the cavalry, huh?”

“If by cavalry you mean me.” I smile. “Do you have a few minutes to talk before the next bell?”

She glances up at the Nelson Ball Clock in the hallway. “If we can talk while I set up. I’m glad they called you. When Gene shunted me out of his office this morning I didn’t exactly get the impression action was about to be taken.”

I follow her across the corridor into her classroom, where she slides her texts on the long Danish midcentury table in front of the desk clusters. “So you know why I’m here?”

“I was the one who brought it to their attention.”

“You were?” I rest my bag on the end of the table.

“Yeah, I told them
this
they can’t ignore.” She opens her notebook.

“Well, I have to say, Ingrid, I’m really impressed that you asked for support—that you identified this as an opportunity for growth.”

“I can’t do it myself. The school has to step in.” She looks up from her neatly written notes.

“Effective escalation training is one of my—”

“Escalation? Why would we want to escalate their behavior?”

What? “Not the students. You. Wait.” I squint, confused.

“Me?” Students pour through the door, volleying loud conversation as they slump into their chairs.
“Me?!”
she repeats.

“You thought this was about working with the kids? I’m so sorry, no, I’m supposed to be providing professional development for you.”

She stares at me, struggling for words. “Is that how Gene described it?”

“It is actually. He—”

“Wow,” she says quietly.

I twist my head, following her shifted gaze to Darwin, who strides in with his fingers pounding into his Sidekick. Actual human sidekicks wrestle around him, their testosterone scrum breaking apart over a cluster of seats in the rear. “I’m sorry for the confusion. I know you have to get started. I’ll just sit in on this class and we’ll get this all straightened out afterwards, okay?” I say, turning back to see she’s gone the color of milk. “Ingrid?”

She drops her eyes to her fingertips, resting on her notes.

“This has nothing to do with your teaching, it’s strictly school politics, I promise you.”

“Class is starting,” she calls out through me. “Everyone sit, now.”

Great start, Nan. Really, you got a master’s in this? Totally paying off. I sweep up my bag and get out of her way, sitting on the low bookshelves near the door. Chassie slips in right before the gong and slides into the desk beside me, cloying perfume invading my nostrils. I find myself dropping my eyes, the way one does when passing a celebrity or ranting schizophrenic. She’s wearing lipstick now, in addition to the potent scent, and her stringy hair is aggressively flipped to one side.

Ingrid clears her throat and takes in the restless collection of students, ease evaporating. As she begins addressing the class she is stilted, tentative.

Scared.

Oh, God, I broke her.

Darwin snickers pointedly from behind his open laptop.

“Darwin, what are you writing?” Ingrid narrows her eyes at him.

“Same as everyone else.” He flicks his wrist at the rest of the students’ laptops—his jaw locked, his eyes flaring.
“Notes.”

“Notes about this lesson?” She steps out from behind the long table, her arms folding protectively in front of her.

“No-o,” he says slowly.

“Then what? Why aren’t you working on this lesson?”

Everyone looks from her to him and he seems to savor his time in responding, his voice taut. “I’m not working on the lesson …’cause …you haven’t started teaching it,
Miss
Wells.”

A scattering of smirks break out, with varying degrees of sheepishness. But a handful of students roll their eyes at him and turn to their teacher, awaiting, along with me, for her to serve him a triumphant blow. Instead, she seems to shrink into herself as she shakingly takes up the electric stylus from the table and approaches the flat-screen board. As she starts writing, Darwin purses his lips, his nostrils flaring. “Well,” he spits. “I guess that’s that.”

Ingrid clanks her stylus down and walks directly over—to me. “Can I see you outside?”

“Of course!” I quickly follow into the empty hall and wait for her to close the door. “Ingrid, I’m so sorry for the confusion. I’ll leave you to teach and we can totally talk about this after school.”