Nanny Returns (23 page)

“Oh God, sorry, I think I kind of jumped ship on our little book club. I can’t remember the last thing I read that wasn’t a decorating magazine. I haven’t even cracked the spine on
What to Expect
. I’m just slammed with all of this.” I watch her feel around at the small of her back, grimacing. I reach my hand out and rub in circles, the way I used to with my sleepless charges.

“I really fucked up,” she murmurs. I don’t reply, letting the quiet sit between us as invitation. After a few moments she shifts her weight and I pull my hand away. “See, Clark and the architect—they have this vision. This shared vision. That I don’t entirely get. I mean, I’ve seen the drawings. I’m not an idiot. I went to art school, for Christ’s sake. I know who Frank Lloyd Wright is. I just don’t get what Mission is mixed with an ‘eighties vibe.’ That makes no sense. I can’t picture it. I can’t picture what I’m agreeing to. Not that he needs me to agree. Because this architect, he’s the best. He did the Dubai Ritz. He’s cutting-edge. What if I just have an opinion about the fucking couch even though I’m not Kelly Fucking Wearstler? Vicente Wolf did his place in the Hamptons, I’m not kidding, and I’m not allowed to buy so much as a coaster for it. I thought this would be different. But he’s not paying any attention to me. He hates my body right now. He can’t even look at me. I don’t know …I’m just . . .” She slips her clip to the floor, her hair tumbling down to the sleeping bag, as she closes her eyes.

“I’m sorry.” I move the empty containers off her side of the air mattress in case she falls asleep. “I’m sure as soon as the baby comes you’ll get all his focus,” I say quietly, despite never having seen any supporting evidence in my years up-close and personal in that hood.

She tucks her hands up under her chin. “I hooked up with the faux paint guy.”

My breath catches. She stares into the darkness.

“Don’t tell anyone, okay? I mean, just once. And I didn’t fuck him. I just …loved the way he looked at me. Pregnant and all. It was so fucking hot. I mean, I feel awful about it, but God, was it hot. So I can’t go home. If I see Clark, I’ll blurt it, I know I will. See, I blurted it to you. I can’t be around anyone I know right now. It’s too dangerous.”

“Sure. Sure. No problem.”

“You’re the best,” she murmurs, amazingly drifting off midrevelation.

Stone-cold awake from this alternate reality embodied in the sleeping, cheating pregnant woman to my left, I sit motionless so as not to arouse Grace from her gig as leg rest—wanting a moment unobserved to take this in. I peer up at the straw fedora Ryan got at that outdoor market in Cuba, hanging in shadow on a nail behind the front door, waiting for summer, waiting for walls, caked in plaster.

And I miss him. And I could never.

In the morning I’m awoken by the crinkling of a paper bag being placed by my head. “Citrine?” I inhale.

She’s hunkering over me in her pink coat, the sun just rising in the open front door behind her.

“Grace?” I startle, before catching her out of the corner of my eye, sitting at attention where her leash dangles off the mantel.

“Sorry. Go back to sleep. I have to leave.” She stands, the May breeze ruffling the detritus of our picnic.

I push up to my elbows. “You okay? Did you tell Clark?”

“What?
No.
”

“Sorry, I just thought since you were in a hurry—”

“There’s a muffin in the bag.” She slaps at the dust on her leggings. “I texted Lennox to buy it for you on his way to get me.”

“Wow, thanks, you have really delivered on the food front.” I sit up, scraping my fingers through my hair.

“Thanks for last night, it was, uh, fun.”

“It was. Thanks for the picnic, really. And for breakfast!”

“Sure. So we’re good?”

“Yes?”

“Great!” She hustles to the door and steps out backward onto the stoop, her hand on the tarnished knob. “You really shouldn’t stay here, Nan. It’s kind of beyond. Go to your parents’ or something. Okay, see you!”

“See you,” I say to the closed door, the space returned to its stuffy dimness. I rest my forehead on my knees and twist to see Grace as I blink awake. She lifts her ears and takes a step to me. “Okay, okay, you’re next.”

There’s a pounding at the door. I climb up and, pulling my sweater down over my underwear, crack it back open. “What’d ya forget?”

“Mrs. Hutchinson?” A heavily cologned man looks me over, a cell phone at his ear. I dart my naked lower half behind the door. Grace runs over with a bark, trying to wedge her snout into the gap.

“Yes?”

“Yeah, I’m here for the remediation.”

“Remediation?”

He holds a finger up and hacks a smoker’s laugh into his cell. “That’s what I told him! He’s a total fucking douche bag.” He looks at me. “You going to let me in or what?”

“Sorry, I don’t know anything about a remediation.”

“Wait, Ronny. Hold up.” He puts his hand over his cell. “Your contractor, Steve, hired me? For the mold? I told him I gotta move it to today. I got another gig out in Queens so I can’t start Monday. I got a truck full of my guys, we gotta get in here now. They’re on the clock.” He jerks a fat thumb at a quartet of Mexican men unloading a truck behind the Dumpster.

“Steve told me he was cleaning the basement himself.” I grip Grace’s straining collar.

“Nah, he’s not qualified. You are talking about something highly dangerous here. I am a certified mold remediation professional.” I look back to the air mattress, where the message light pulses on my phone. “You know they can’t do any drywall on the foundation without remediation. So, you going to let me in? Or am I coming back next month and you’re paying my guys for losing a day of work.”

“No! Just give me a moment to—” But he’s already returned to hilarious Ronny. I close the door, whip on my jeans, shove my feet into yesterday’s heels, and return to the stoop. “Okay.”

“Let’s go!” He calls down to his crew and follows me inside, practically tripping over my campsite. “Jesus fucking Christ, you’re
sleeping
here?”

“For a few days,” I cry defensively as I flip the mattress against the wall, sleeping bag and all, and hustle over to the mantel for Grace’s leash. Holding open my bag, I drop in my cell and wallet. “I have to call Steve. How many hours do you need us out?”

“Hours?” He emits another hearty laugh as the house fills with guys and equipment, Citrine’s muffin crushed to a pancake in the stampede. “Try a week. We have to seal, clean in stages, dry the walls, run tests.”

“A week?”

We all turn as the air mattress lets out a sad hiss. A guy with the assaulting ladder shrugs.

“This is going to take a week?” I call, trailing the boss into the kitchen, where plastic tarps are already being taped up to seal off, not just the basement, but everything leading to the basement.

“Listen, you want insta-cancer for you and your pup here, that’s your death wish. But you’re going to have to sign a release. This shit’s Agent Orange.”

“And then it won’t be?!”

“Seven days, totally safe. You can eat off these walls.”

I stare up at him, incredulous.

“Hey, you gonna brush your teeth before you go?” He leans down in the interest of preserving my dignity. “I would.
Garlic.
”

My cell starts ringing.

I swipe my toothbrush, deodorant, and the bag of Grace’s remaining food from the sink. I hit answer on my phone, maneuvering us toward the door, just as a radio is plugged into the generator and the pounding of early nineties club music waves after me like a tsunami. “Hello?”

“Is this Nan Hutchinson?”

“Yes. Hold a minute, please.” I grab my trench, laptop, and keys and get us down the stoop into the blinding sunlight, where my next priority is gum. Grace squats. “Yes?”

“This is Carter Nelson’s assistant. You need to come collect your friend’s kids, like,
now
.”

17

“Oh, you can’t bring a dog in here.”

“Bite me.”

“Pardon?” The waif-thin man with an asymmetrical hairdo twists his face into a no-you-didn’t.

“Sorry,” I sigh, double wrapping my hand around Grace’s leash as she strains to sniff Carter’s Lucite umbrella stand. “Didn’t mean to say that out loud. Look, I have my dog because you said I needed to come immediately, otherwise I would’ve dropped her at my parents’—which doesn’t concern you. Can I just please see the boys now?”

“Oh, they’re at school.” He clutches his binder to his chest and leans his back against Carter’s closed front door.

“What?”

“I mean, I assume.” He glances at his iPhone. “I really don’t know anything about it. I just got your card from Carter before she left for the airport and she said to call you because you’re the mother’s best friend—”

“I’m not. We’re not. We’re not even friends.”

He stares at me.

“At all.”

“Oo-kay,” he continues. “She said call you to come collect them since we’re shutting this location down.”

“Location? Down? Because I took Stilton to the hospital?”

“Not in my purview.”

“Do the boys know?”

“Carter doesn’t do good-byes.”

I look at him, my breath caught. “So they’re at school right now with no idea that what they think of as their bedroom is currently being ‘
shut down,
’” I repeat, disbelieving.

“I swear.” He points a finger at Grace and her snout follows to sniff it. “If that dog scratches the floors and it affects the resale, my ass is toast.”

I look from Grace to him as he cautiously leans his meager weight farther into the door, opening it a sliver. “What’s your name?”

“JJ.”

“JJ, this morning I peed in a bucket—no, correction—
last night
I peed in a bucket. I have not seen an actual bathroom in over twenty-four hours. And that was in the St. Vincent’s ER, not exactly an image to cradle on lonely nights. I’m hanging by a thin thread, JJ. A thread that will snap if I am now required to carry my sixty-pound dog down that long-ass hallway to the boys’ room.”

“Brain wave!” He twirls his finger into the air. “Wait here.”

We do. He opens the door till it’s flush with the foyer wall, and I lean my head in to watch the conveyor belt of movers circling in and out of the green corridor with heaps of bubble wrap. A second later, JJ emerges at the hallway’s end, wending around the movers to return with two pairs of balled-up tube socks. “For its feet. Gen-ius!” he singsongs, tossing them to me.

“JJ?” I call out as I sweatily stuff the last of Grayer’s clothes into the final suitcase, marveling that we got all this down here without a moving truck in the first place.

“Mm-hm.” He appears in the doorway of what was the boys’ room, a black Sharpie between his teeth, a roll of packing tape braceleting each wrist. Grace attempts to head over to say hello, lifting her paws like she’s walking over chewed gum, socks flapping.

“Can you just give me a breakdown of what happened here?” I ask, wiping my hair out of my eyes with the back of my hand. “The breakdown of the breakdown?”

He drops the pen into his palm. “
Shut
down and it’s private.”

“JJ, nothing you say could possibly compare to the bizarre I’ve witnessed here already, trust me. This is not for public consumption. I’m not even really going to listen. I just need to be prepared when I pick these kids up. So a seven-year-old doesn’t think it’s because he burned his hand.” I tug at the stubborn zipper. “For example, where is the lovely couple moving
to
?”

“Oh, there’s no couple. Hello, she’s leaving him.”

“She
is
?” I sit heavily on the suitcase. “This is unprecedented.”

“He’s sha-dy.”

“He is,” I concur, stretching out my cramped fingers before resuming tugging at the zipper under my calves. “Monogamy’s not his strong suit.”

“No, honey. That wasn’t even it.” He brings his hands to his lips and mimes locking them with a key. “I have to get back to work. You know your way out?”

“Sure,” I answer, trying to surmise what could have done it—she finally noticed that’s not his natural hair/jaw/waistline? “Would you mind asking one of the movers to help me take all this down and into a cab?” I stand and haul the suitcase to the floor with both hands on the handle.

He shakes his head; not a hair moves.

“Otherwise I have to go back and forth with my dog, and her nails, and I really don’t know how long those socks will last.”

He purses his subtly glossed lips at me.

“Thread snapping, JJ.”

“Give me five.”

“Just keep the meter running, I’ll be back in
one
minute to unload.” I reach for the door handle before the cab has even come to a stop at 721.

“With
the dog
?” the driver shrieks, looking back as if I’ve suggested he sit tight with a starving panther.

“There’s an extra five in it for you.” I close the door on a panting Grace and run into the Xes’ lobby. “Hi! Can you please buzz up to Mrs. X and let her know I’m dropping off her sons’ things and the boys’ll be back after school? You have carts, right?” I ask, recalling they do as I scurry past the doorman to the service elevator to retrieve one.

“Miss?” He waves me back.

“Yes?”

“She not home.” He shakes his head.

“Okay, well, then …I’ll leave everything down here till she gets back. I just need a hand to unload the—”

“She at the hospital for her treatment. And I’m not supposed to accept any deliveries.”

“This isn’t a delivery, it’s her sons’ belongings. Stilton and Grayer?”

“Sorry, miss, no deliveries until she back from hospital.”

I reach for my BlackBerry to check my schedule. “And what time will that be?”

“Oh, I don’t know the time. She at the clinic. Hopkins—”

“Johns Hopkins? She’s in
Maryland
?”

He shrugs.

“Mom?” I call as I knock on my parents’ door, inciting a flurry of barking. I step out of my punishing, really-made-to-slip-off-under-your-desk heels and lean back against the brass cart, piled high with the boys’ bags, which aren’t getting any lighter. Grace curls up at my blistering feet, shot from a morning of adventure, happy to crash at the slightest whiff of familiar.

“No! Shush! Shush!”
I hear Mom hiss before I see her through the wedged door. “Nan, hi. What’s with all the stuff?” We both look down as the girls push themselves out into the hall, breaking into a mad chase of each other with pit stops to bark at an uninterested Grace.

“I need to stay here for the week. But first I need to drop this stuff off while I figure out what to do with the X boys. And I need a shower. Not necessarily in that order.”

“No! Girls!”
She reaches out to grasp one squirming pup up under each arm as they pass and drops her cheek to the doorframe. “Nan, we’re on barking probation with the board. The girls will never keep it together with Grace here.”

“Even with her locked in your office?”

“They’re going to evict us!” she says wildly.

“Okay!”

“Go to Grandma’s.”

“But she’s allergic, how can we—”

“Evict, Nan! As in
homeless!
”

“Fine!”

“Darling!” Grandma cheers through a surgical mask as she whips open her door to greet me and my pile and my dog. “Come in!”

I slump into her hug, my arms numb and useless after getting everything
back
in a cab and round-tripping it down to a block south of where I started. “Shower, water, food,” I murmur, spinning around to heave the pile of stuff inside with Grace plodding behind me.

“Of course, I’ve already got the radiant heat fired up.”

As I sit on the warmed stone floor of the shower room with sunlight pouring through the wall of milk glass—drinking in the delicious aromas of verbena and lavender and other such delicacies not possible with a bottle of Joy and a mixing bowl—clarity strikes. “Grandma?” I call out through the steam into the loft. “Gram?”

“Yes?” I hear her on the other side of the glass, hopefully making me a latte and cinnamon toast.

“Could you manage having Grace here for just a few hours while I run an errand?”

“I already have her set up on a blanket under the sink in the powder room. If I keep the door closed, I’m fine for a few. Go handle your business.”

“Step one.” I urge myself to stand. “Get out of this shower.”

The rain that hit the Metro-North train in sheets has calmed to a light drizzle as I make the trek from the station to the Greenwich address of Mr. X’s office. I look at my watch. Almost two. I hasten my step. I have exactly one hour to ascertain where Mr. X intends to take the boys tonight before they head home to find themselves locked out.

But even through my dueling exhaustion and latte-fueled rush, I’m impressed by the thick bloom of spring bursting from every manicured tree box. I inhale the sweet air with each quickening breath, turning the corner where the shops of downtown trickle off, and I catch my first glimpse of the lilac-dotted lawns that stretch into the parceled acres of estates a few roads yonder.

A Lexus SUV splashes by on the curving street and I catch sight of a boxy black glass office building at the corner, the three stories sitting incongruously beside a willow-bordered pond with two circling swans. Perhaps Mr. X and his colleagues stroll out on the footbridge for cigar breaks to chat billions and ash on Odette’s head.

I weave through the dripping black and silver sports cars peppering the small parking lot and up to the glass-doored entrance, where an etched bronze plaque informs me that X Wealth Management can be found in suite 200. I make my way inside the black marble lobby, past the potted ficus and up the open stone staircase, where mahogany doors greet me at the second-floor landing. I take a moment to unbutton my trench and shake out my damp hair before pulling on the handle, stepping from the early nineties into that ubiquitous dark-wood-Persian-carpet-brass-sconce-hunting-painting aesthetic that must have rendered visits to
actual
men’s clubs rife with the unshakable sense that one is either about to have assets moved or a will read.

The formidable octagonal waiting room is quiet. Taking off my coat, I step up to the reception desk, which is empty, its computer screen dark and leather blotter clear.

I fold my coat in on its wet outer shell and, laying it over my bag, pull at Grandma’s chiffon blouse where it has dampened itself to my bra. One of the four doors opens and a shred of filtered daylight wedges across me as an exhausted-looking woman, arms laden with files, murmuring “Fuckfuckfuck,” scurries to the door opposite before I can say a word. Another door opens and a pudgy-faced, twentysomething emerges, tieless, rumpled, coffee-stained, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips—supporting my theory about the footbridge—only to storm past.

“Excuse me?”

He whips around, squinting in the ambient light. “Yes?”

“I’m here to see Mr. X.”

Jerking his thumb to the left of the reception desk at the only set of double doors, he opens one opposite and I see into the quiet bullpen, where only a handful of the cubicles appear occupied. So Mr. X—whether they need it or not some guys just gotta piss all over square footage.

I take a deep breath, and, hearing Mr. X’s grumbles on the other side of the doors, lift my hand and knock.

“Yeah,” he affirms as if expecting me.

I press down on the handle and step into a palatial room, appointed in leathers and gnarled woods right up to a wall of windows that look out over the pond. Standing squarely in the middle of this serene view, head bent down, monogrammed sleeves rolled up, Mr. X flips through a yellow pad, his other hand bearing his weight atop a stack of files on the imposing desk. He waves me in with the other without looking over, continuing to grunt yes and no into his earpiece.

Seizing an opening I clear my throat. “Hi. I’m sorry to surprise you like this, but—”

“What the?” He looks up. “Hold on.” I do. “Not you. What?” he growls, I’m now clear, at me.

“As I said, please disregard the implied drama of my just showing up here, but, given the ticking clock of your children’s—”

“You a reporter?” He clicks a button on his earpiece and flips his pad over before bringing his free hand to rest on his crocodile belt.

“No, I’m—”

“Who let you in here?”

“I was waved in by one of your guys. He was chewing a cigarette?” I add stupidly.

He shakes his head at my attempt to help us sort this out.

“Mr. X, I’m Nan Hutchinson.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I used to take care of Grayer.” Blank. “When he was four. I went to Nantucket with you? It would have been about twelve years ago . . .” You were diddling that darling Chicago girl?

He cracks a half smile of disbelief that I’m taking his time with this. “My wife sent you? I wired her what she wanted. Tell her to go fuck herself.”

“No one sent me. I’m the one who moved the boys down to Tribeca and I was asked by Carter’s assistant to pick them up this morning.”

He sighs heavily, dropping his gaze to the houndstooth chair behind him. “Jesus, you brought my kids here?”