Nanny Returns (21 page)

And with a bellowing of the door she’s gone.

“Now what?” Gene looks to Macmillan.

“Don’t sweat it. As long as there’s a Jarndyce, that girl isn’t teaching.”

I pull my tongue from where it has stuck to the bridge of my mouth, a wave of frigid heat passing through me to the tight welts of the couch as I scream silently at my clasped hands.

“Ms. Warner, Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerman, the point is you can see we’re taking action.” Tim looks to Patricia, not bothering to dote on the Zuckermans. There’s no need, the Zuckermans couldn’t look more reassured. The Zuckermans look, in fact, loathsomely soothed. “We were even thinking of maybe revamping our drug and alcohol education to something more therapeutically focused.”

“Hm.” Patricia mulls this over, sweeping a crumb off her lap as she stands and gathers up her tote. “Just do me a favor, will you?”

Tim nods, prompting her to continue.

“Don’t suck all the fun out of it.”

I watch Gene’s thick hands fumble with the key as we stand outside Shari’s old office, a few doors down from his own, which I heretofore did not even know existed.

I have apparently passed my road test.

The flat smile I have been clinging to while Patricia, the Zuckermans, Sheila, and Macmillan exchanged niceties and said their goodbyes is cracking, and I steal this unobserved moment to squint my eyes shut.

“Dammit.” The key slips through Gene’s grasp and clanks to the planked floor. He bends with a hand on his knee to swipe it up, his eyes fleeting across mine. “These are, uh—these are the tough days. Tough decisions.” He turns back to the door. “But that’s what the students count on us for.” He slides the key in and turns the knob. Ambient light flutters to life around us, illuminating the sky-colored bookshelves that line the walls on either side of the room. Nestled amid the titles that made up the core curriculum of my graduate degree, judiciously placed Asian antiques cause my tightly hunched shoulders to involuntarily drop.

“This was Shari’s office?” I step in behind him.

“Yes, she wanted something Zen. She called it her nest in the jungle.” He chuckles.

“Right.” I hurry across the cream flokati to the round window, pressing my forehead into the glass to peer down at the sidewalk. I see a hand wave down an approaching cab. It stops and a red-clad arm grabs at the handle, opening the door, and in a blur, she crumples inside.

I know that cab ride.

“Gene, I’m not comfortable with what’s just transpired.” I turn to where he stands against the closed door, looking utterly drained, his shoulders flanked by large black-and-white photographs of clouds. He scratches at the base of his head, his face twisting as the gesture turns into a massage of what is clearly a very stiff neck. “Gene?”

“Yeah.” His arm drops slackly.

“Ingrid has, in every instance I have interacted with her, had the students’ absolute best interests at heart.”

“Well . . .”

“Firing her was fulfilling Grant Zuckerman’s agenda, and you and I both know it. His son embarrassed him and he needed someone to punish.”

“Nan,” he says sharply, crossing the rug to open a lower cabinet door and crouching to peer inside. “You’ve been with us for what, a month now?”

“Just about.”

“And I’ve been here twenty-four.” He pulls out a half-emptied bottle of Scotch—Shari’s? Gene’s?—and reaches back in the cabinet to produce a paper cup. “All you know is what you saw, and that was one tiny piece of Ingrid’s career at Jarndyce. Which, by the way, I need you to write up.” He untwists the bottle top and, gripping it between his thumb and forefinger, pours a shot into the cup.

“Write up?”

“For our records.” He knocks the drink back.

“If you’re asking me to libel—”

“I’m asking you to record the facts of the work you did with Ingrid and the facts of how she made decisions during the incidents you witnessed. Not your opinion of them. Look, Nan, today was a bad day. I’m with you. But these are few and far between here. Let Ingrid go teach—”

“
Where,
Gene? You guys made it clear she had eliminated any chances of that.”

“Oh . . .” He drops into a white leather chair, the bottle in his lap. “The Midwest or Seattle, maybe—I always thought Seattle’d be a nice place to live—and she’ll find a more rural school that’s the right fit for her. A public school somewhere that doesn’t need our recommendation.”

“What school’s not going to want to know where she’s been working for the past three years?”

“She could go abroad. Maybe Canada or Norway or somewhere. Look, she’ll be happier not working for us. We’ll be happier without her. It’s just a matter of sorting everyone out and getting our values aligned in this organization. You have to admit it wasn’t a fit.”

“I’d like to think it was the Zuckermans who aren’t.”

“Christ, Nan, you’re not going to pull a Shari on me, are you?” He stands. “I need an answer right now.”

“You mean quit?”

“Yes.”

“Gene, Shari wanted to stay with her baby. I’m just trying to understand—”

“Because we’re going to really be ramping it up here.” He strides to return the liquor to its hiding spot. “So now that we’ve gotten this business out of the way, why don’t you spend the next week getting settled in here and up to speed with Shari’s materials, and then let’s regroup and start tackling our summer staffing plans. Okay?”

“Gene.”

“Nan, tell me where else are you going to get an office like this? A retainer like this? Get yourself organized …make it your own so you can be up and running.” He claps his hands and then, as if he’d almost forgotten, lays the key on the seat of the chair before pulling the door closed behind him.

Finally alone, I sit heavily in the white mesh desk chair and rub my hands over my eyes. I should tell him to go fuck himself. Find the village Gene was talking about on an ice shelf somewhere that won’t care about Ingrid’s tainted record and hook her up. Fuck.

I exhale, seeing, over the neat stacks of files spread about the Lucite desk, a picture of a bride being held by her husband in an orchard at peak bloom. I roll the chair closer and spot a white mug hand-painted with her name, its rim lipstick-smudged, sitting beside a browned flower arrangement. I pluck up its card with a picture of a stork. “Shari, happy shower! From the board.”

Ah, the board. One minute they’re taking you to Park Avenue Spring, the next they’re banishing you to Norway.

Still holding the card, I walk over to the cabinets lining the bottom half of the bookcases and pull open their doors, spotting a jumble of heels and a shopping bag containing makeup. I take the bag back to the desk and look down at the phone; at its base is a little typed list of emergency numbers—an ob, Mt. Sinai, a woman’s name, and then Scott’s cell and Scott home. I pick up the phone and dial the home number. A charismatic man’s voice informs me the Olsens are out and I should leave a message.

“Hello! Hi, this is Nan Hutchinson and I’m calling from Jarndyce, where I am, um, filling your old position. I see that you’ve left your personal belongings here and I’d be happy to send them to you. You can call me at your old office number or on my cell.” I leave the number. “Thanks.” I begin to put the personal things in the bag, pausing to open a file still propped up between the vase and the wall. I stare down at it, the mug still in my hand—it seems to be a spreadsheet …with all the teachers’ names, including a few I don’t recognize, down one side. Along the top are acronyms I’ve never heard of—TASV, ER, IBI, KL, IS-AM. IS-AM???

And I decide to help myself to that unoffered drink.

“So they’re all settled with the dad, then,” Josh affirms from where he kicks the soccer ball to Pepper across the patchy grass of Marcus Garvey Park Wednesday evening.

“What?” I ask, brain fried from trying to make sense of Shari’s staff files for the last three days.

“The X boys?”

“Right. Yes, yes.” I pause to think. “It’s a relative term.” I hurl a muddy tennis ball in the opposite direction and Grace races to catch it, silhouetted against the setting sun slanting through the tree line.

“More settled than the last time you were fired from his care.” Josh jogs past me to catch his daughter’s returned kick, his hands steadying Wyatt in the snuggly against his chest.

“I guess. I keep thinking I need to get them out of there.”

Josh goes to kick, but pauses as we both watch Pepper squat down to have a conversation with something at ground level. “So stealing kids now. You that freaked about pregnancy?”

“No,”
I scoff as Grace returns to drop the ball at my sneakers. “I mean, I am freaked about pregnancy. That and raising a child when
there’s no future
.”

“Sell that juicy nugget to TMZ and renovate your entire block.”

“Renovate. Who paired
that
smooth-sounding word with what we’re doing? I would like to co-opt eviscerate. We are eviscerating. And I will never undertake eviscerating another thing. No, I mean, I’m just starting to have this looping fantasy where I rescue them, rename them Hutchinson, and make all the men in my life happy.”

“So Ryan’s on board with this kidnapping adoption?”

I hold the ball in my hand. “It’s a bit much to propose over the BlackBerry, to which his current location has restricted all our communication. You know, I worked out this morning this is the longest we’ve ever been apart—including when I had to take the bus up to Cambridge senior year to see him. It sucks.” I pull a knot of felt from its muddy surface. “oh, it’s absurd, I know. I just—I still feel like I’m supposed to fix Grayer. And there are moments—
moments
—where it seems possible. The thing is I’m so worried about screwing up my own kids, maybe I could just start out with half screwed and focus my efforts on the unscrewing, which, if I were fully in charge, I’m sure I could at least make some headway on.” Grace looks at me expectantly, eyes sparkling, the corners of her mouth turned up as she pants, poised to tear off at my tiniest muscle twitch. “Besides, look how my dog loves this. I can’t trek a baby out here every night. Grace’ll become one of those forlorn animals in the ads for canine Prozac. I couldn’t take it.” I hurl the ball for her.

“If I can conduct a mini World Cup with a BabyBjörn, you can throw a measly tennis ball.”

“Yeah, what’s up over there?” I nod at Pepper, who is now singing her heart out to the grass.

“Pepper has very important business. You have no idea the amount of inanimate objects in this city that require entertaining.
And
we might be putting her out to work with a tin can, so it does a father good to see her practice with such gusto.” He fidgets with Wyatt’s hat.

“What’s up, Joshy?” I step over to him.

“Jen was let go last week.”

“You’re kidding.” My face goes slack. “Is it the baby—they can’t do that.”

“They eliminated her whole department. Replaced it with Bear Stearns’ people. Hiring’s frozen in her sector and, ugh …we’re not going to get by on my journalistic prowess.”

“Shit, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Taking time for the dust to settle. We haven’t even told our parents yet.”

“So what’re you thinking?”

“Well, we’ll hold out as long as we can, but we’re starting to have the ubiquitous Escape From New York talk for real.”

“I’d totally offer you to have a floor of our place—”

“But it’s under evisceration.”

“But my pail to piss in is yours.” He smiles and I put my hand on his arm. “Oh, man, I’m so sorry! Is there anything I can do?”

“You’re a good friend.” He shrugs me off with a dismissive tone that lets me know, as he has done over the years when discussing girlfriends and family, that he is through sharing.

“Well, can I at least offer you and your lovely children a humble Golden Krust beef patty, local
spécialité
?”

“And Wyatt here will take a Red Stripe, thank you, kind lady.” He bows his head, happy to change topics. “Pepper,” he calls, walking over to her, “how about a little Jamaican?”

“That’s it, babe.” I wriggle the soggy ball from Grace’s muzzle and drop it in the pocket of Ryan’s Carhartt. “Ready for dinner?”

At the d-word, Grace takes off toward the exit and then doubles back to keep pace with me and Josh and a still-crooning Pepper, darting back and forth as if I might renege. As we arrive at the street, I bend to clip on her leash, returning us to owner-pet status from the two lady companions enjoying sporting activity we were mere moments ago.

“You’d come visit us in Buffalo, right?” Josh turns to me, serious once again.

“Say the word and me and my stolen sons are there.”

“And you’re joking?”

“About the sons part, totally. No, they’re fine where they are. I
want
them to be blissfully, finally fine right where they are.” I put my arm around his shoulders, take Pepper’s hand, and we all cross over toward Malcolm X Boulevard.

The next afternoon I find myself sprinting from Jarndyce to hurl myself in a cab, willing the traffic to part faster, move faster. In Carter’s elevator I irrationally pound the buttons to make it close faster, rise faster. Catching my breath, I pull my phone out of my pocket to see if Stilton has called again since his last panicked, sob-strangled message.

The unlocked door opens and I stride into the smoky apartment, an activated detector bleating assaultingly overhead. “Stilton?”

Carter enters the foyer from the living room, a canvas jacket over her jeans, hands over her ears. “We can’t find the circuit breaker!”

“Nan!” An anguished cry comes from the back of the apartment.

“Stilton?” I race toward his voice, Carter on my heels.

“Can’t you help find the breaker first?” she asks. “Any second the sprinklers will go! He won’t leave the bathroom anyway—”

“Because I told him not to,” I call over my shoulder. “If he keeps his hand submerged, it’ll manage the pain till we can get him to the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

I stop in front of the doorway to a Carrara bathroom where Stilton sits on the toilet under a bower of decorative forsythia, his hand in the full sink, his face swollen, red and tear-soaked. At the sight of us he lifts it from the water and immediately cries out. Carter recoils. He doubles over, pulling his burn into his chest.