Nanny Returns (24 page)

“No, no, they’re in school for”—I check my cell—“another hour. I tried calling Gillian’s number, but there’s no answer.”

“Gillian’s gone.”

“Oh.” I’m momentarily paused. “So, where do you want to take them?”

“To their mother, Jesus. Take them to the apartment.”

“She’s at Johns Hopkins, so that’s not really—”

“Then drop them off. Grayer can handle it.” He waves his hand dismissively and flips his pad back over, finger moving up to his earpiece, situation dispatched.

“No.” My turn to shake my head. “I don’t think he can.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m here because I’ve become friends with your sons over the last few weeks. Grayer reached out to me when you left, actually. And these boys have been shuttled around, physically and metaphorically.” I try to slow down, knowing this has to come out in order. “They’re confronting a potentially dying mother and have nowhere
to be,
somewhere to exhale where one parent isn’t constantly one foot out the door or scheming to keep the other’s foot in. They don’t need or care about anything fancy. Four walls and a television will do so long as
you’re
taking care of them.”

“Can’t do it. I’m crashing here.” He tosses his hand behind me at the crumpled throw on one of the Chesterfield sofas, the mohair pillow at the far end still imprinted from his head.

“Okay, I’ll bring them up. You’ll have to get them on the train for school and—”

“No, absolutely not,” he says forcefully.

I stare him down.

“Got it.” He slaps his desk. “Take ’em to the corporate hotel in Murray Hill. The business has a suite.”

“Great.” I exhale. “And what time will you be there?”

“
I’m
not leaving this building for the foreseeable future—major deal in play. Bring them to the hotel. The keys are in my secretary’s desk. Come, I’ll grab ’em for you.” He pulls both hands away from the desktop and winces, his hands instinctively flying to his lower back.

“I”
—I find myself crossing my hands over my heart, pleading—“am not taking them.
You
”—I point at him—“need to do this. Because
you
are their
father.
It’s what a father
does.
He
takes care
of his
children.
He
doesn’t
assign them to strangers to live in a
corporate hotel.
”

He reaches across his desk and grabs a small amber-colored prescription bottle, taps two white pills into his palm, and knocks them back, chasing them with a swig from his coffee cup. “But you’re not a stranger.”

“But I’m not a parent.”

“FUCK! JAN!” he bellows, throwing his hands out violently, his body abruptly seizing in pain.
“Fuck.”

And I remember who I am trying to take on and shift a step back. “Nan,” I correct, crossing my clammy arms over my clammy chest. He takes an angry step out from around his desk and I use the framed snapshot atop it of toddler Grayer to keep me from kicking off my heels and running back to Metro-North.

“Nan,” he repeats, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial timbre as I feel him place both hands on my shoulders with an undue amount of weight. “Nannannan,” he murmurs, walking me backward and turning me to the sofa in front of the fireplace. He sits me down atop the throw, lowers himself gingerly beside me, and turns to give me a conspiratorial smile. Dear God, is the man attempting to seduce me? I go to stand, but he holds me back with an entreating expression I didn’t know his face capable of.

“Nan.” He rests his elbows on his knees. “I am asking you to just give me a week. One week. It sounds like my boys trust you. They feel safe with you. If you could just take them until next Friday, let me get this deal closed. I will
personally
come and relieve you. I’ve got …an agent, a broker, someone looking into places for the three of us. Somewhere near their schools so we can spend more time together. I want them with me—
of course
I want them with me. I’m not a monster. I couldn’t stay with their mother anymore. It just wasn’t good. Sorry, I know you’re her friend—”

“Not. Not her friend.”

“But I’m thinking you’re the only person I want my children with in this crisis. And next Friday I will pick them up and get us settled and you will be relieved. Can you do that for me? I’ll give you a grand in cash for incidentals. It’s a huge suite—Jacuzzi baths, the whole nine. Can you do this, for Grayer and Stilton?”

And in that moment, I know what I’m worth. Because I care for these kids, I do, right down to my toes. But I’ve just learned, apparently, for plumbing I’m a whore.

18

Four nights later I use the time it takes for Grace to inspect every piss-soaked asphalt crack and cigarette butt of her charming new block to scroll my BlackBerry’s to-do list for this week of mold-induced babysitting: (1) Get shower gift for Citrine. Who may or may not still be married, as there’s no word from her. (2) Write up report of Ingrid “incidents,” trying to straddle the task of writing an impartial indictment, and get it to Gene. (3) Nail down Mr. X’s Friday plans and psych boys up accordingly. (4) Nail down Steve re: plumbing, electricity, stairs, doors, walls, floors, ceilings, and air. Psych self up accordingly. (5) Nail down Ryan to confirm we are, in fact, still psyched to be, to quote his proposal, “sharing this life adventure together.” (6) Nail down definition of together.

I stare at the six-point font, wishing for certainty around navigating even one item. Why can’t everything be as easy as walking into H&M and putting a week’s worth of clothes on a credit card? As we come around the poorly lit redbrick corner of Thirty-eighth Street, Grace immediately starts to drool at the lingering aroma of falafel and the BlackBerry rings, perhaps calling with suggestions. “Hey,” I say.

“
You’re going to Citrine’s shower tomorrow?
Shut. Up,” Sarah greets me, picking right up from my two-days-old voice mail. “Who the hell has a baby shower in the middle of a Tuesday?”

“Maybe it’s a cultural thing? Is she …anything?” I query as a man with closely cropped graying hair approaches from Fifth Avenue, lifting the lapels of his pin-striped blazer against the breeze.

“Take pictures, take notes, take souvenirs, I want to feel like I was there, high in the colon of 10021.” As she talks I watch, waiting to see if the guy’ll go into the building next door, which Grayer astutely ascertained, from the twenty-four-hour traffic of sheepish-looking men, is a “convenient East Side location.”

“I’m thinking she has her artist friends—it should be a groovy crowd,” I conjecture. “They’ll probably give press-on baby bottle tattoos and handmade onesies from recycled drop cloths.” Sure enough, the guy ducks in just as Grace strains to vacuum the shuttered gate of the shawarma establishment. “Grace, no.” I tug her leash. “What’re you doing tomorrow night? Want to join us for tacos? Come experience me in all my foster-parent glory?”

“Aw, can’t. I’m babysitting for Josh so they can pack.”

“You’re kidding.” I halt, hand to heart.

“Nope. Sucks.”

“God, I feel so bad—I’ve been so up my own ass with the production of
Annie
I’m staging over here.”

“Don’t worry, he understands. Amazingly, they found someone to sublet their place while it’s on the market. They’re going to live with his parents in Poughkeepsie.”

“Oh my God,
how?
It’s tiny and overrun with dachshunds.”

“I don’t think he has a choice. Oh shit, hospital’s paging me. Dinner Friday? You feel like schlepping up here?”

“You’re on. You can help me through my postpartum depression.”

“Remember, I want evidence of this so-called groovy crowd.”

Hanging up, I tug Grace into the corporate hotel’s lobby and, from under the gold-toned Buena Vida Corporate Residences sign, the night doorman gives me a welcoming nod. It is kind of delightful. How much more could it put us in the hole to hire him to sit on our front stoop at night and say “Evening”? I press twelve in the beige-tinted mirrored elevator and get out on the immaculate, if charmless, hallway to walk down to our temporary home.

“Stilton.” Clearly having not budged an inch from the impossibly stiff maroon couch, he swings his head around as I open the suite door. “Come on, man,” I moan as I step into the cramped popcorn-ceilinged living room and drop my keys on the counter of the open kitchenette lining the wall. “I said brush teeth, like, twenty minutes ago.” I unhook the leash.

“But I think I know which briefcase has the million!”

“And how can I argue with that?” I glance at the clock on the microwave as Grace vaults up beside him. “Okay, I’ll bring you your toothbrush and then we’ll change bandages, cool?”

Eyes riveted to the screen, he nods. I drop my trench on the round glass dining table and walk over to knock on their bedroom door.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come through?”

“Yup.”

I push the knob to find Grayer lounging on the queen-sized bed reading
East of Eden
with a highlighter in hand, as he did for most of the weekend. “Enjoying it?” I ask, crossing to their bathroom.

“It’s okay.” He grabs a pen from the paisley spread to scribble a note in the margin.

“You work hard,” I say as I open the chipped medicine cabinet.

“Yeah, well, grades are important to Dad.” He leans forward, shifting the lumpy pillows behind him and scooching back to straighten up.

“It’s still commendable.” I pick up Stilton’s Spider-Man toothbrush from the swirled faux marble vanity and squirt it with paste.

“Deal!”
Stilton cries in the other room.

Grayer drops the book between his raised knees as I cross back, pausing to swipe the Duane Reade bag serving as Stilton’s burn kit from the dresser. “Thanks.”

“Sure. You have enough light over there?” I reach my hand toward the wall switch.

“It’s fine.” He gestures to the room, which, even in the yellow pool of the bedside lamp, has all the charm of a roadside motel. “Just till Friday, right?”

“Right,” I affirm as I pass through the doorway.

“Did Dad say
where
we’re going to live?” he calls after me. “Because a friend at school said Julian Schnabel did a building downtown and that’d be pretty badass. I should call Gillian tomorrow and tell her to look into it.” I exhale, turning back with a forced smile, unable to tell him yet another fixture in his life has disappeared.

WHOOF!

“Crap, hold on.” I jog to where Grace has leapt from the couch to the floor. “Grace!”

WHOOF!

“Stil.” I hand him his toothbrush and, dropping the bag on the coffee table, clasp her muzzle closed.

“Mwov.” Mouth full of toothbrush Stilton flaps me out of the way and strains his neck to see the screen around us.

Whf!
She barks into my hand.

“No.”
I try my deep, commanding voice as our lovely neighbor pounds on the thin wall, the McOil painting of horses shaking over our heads. Grace stares up at me, her eyes at high alert. “Gracie, it’s the el-e-va-tor.” I roll out the syllables phonetically for the hundredth time since we got here, as if her issue is being ESL.

“Gracie, come!” Grayer calls from his bed. I release her and watch as she bounds eagerly into their room and onto the spread beside him. He ruffles her head and it sinks down between her paws, her eyes closing. He nods at me and returns to Steinbeck.

“Thank you,” I sigh, going over to shut his door as the intercom starts buzzing. I stride to the counter to pick it up. “Hello? …Yes, I’m so sorry. She’s never been around an elevator before. I promise I will find a bark collar for her first thing …Thank you. Good night.”

The doorbell rings. Jesus. “Sorry!” I call as I unlock the door. “She’s never lived with elevators.” But I’m guessing the woman wearing a patent leather trench, over seemingly nothing, doesn’t care.

“I’m looking for Bob Smith,” she says, eyeing me through four layers of shadow. “But a three-way’ll cost extra.”

“Who is it?” Stilton yells.

She backs up. “Hey, what is this?”

“That Dad?” Grayer calls eagerly from his room, the collective commotion eliciting more barks.

“No! No, it’s just someone who’s at the
wrong
apartment,” I call for everyone’s benefit, shutting the door to a crack. “Sorry, can I—”

“Citibank?” she asks, tugging her cell from her trench pocket, revealing the black lace of a garter belt.

“Sorry?”

“Isn’t this the Citibank floor?”

“I really don’t know. This is X Wealth Management’s apartment.”

“I gotta make a call.” She hits a number and brings it to her ear, suddenly pointing above my head. “Oh, hey, the pony apartment!” I follow her finger to the framed galloping horses on the walls behind me. “I’ve been in this one before. Big tippers. Okay, good night.” She waves as she turns her attention to her phone. “Yeah, give me the room number again?”

I shut the door. And lock it.

Stilton expectorates his toothpaste into his water glass and looks over at me from the couch, intrigued. “No elevators?”

“Nope.” Resisting the urge to blue-light the entire apartment, I try to refocus on the good, picking up one of the plates Grayer left in the working sink, building to the euphoria of putting it in the working dishwasher. “We always lived in walk-ups. Even in Sweden our building only had four floors. And now we live in a house. Apparently she thinks elevators just want to break down the door and dominate our pack.”

His attention split between the television and me, Stilton shrugs to acknowledge the possibility.

“And the next time you’d like me to move out of the way a ‘please’ gets me going.”

“Sorry.”

“No prob.”

I start the washer, taking comfort in its diligent whir, and sit down next to him on the hard foam, glancing at the stampeding stallions, and hoping that the Buena Vida steam-cleans. I lift the Duane Reade bag from the coffee table onto my lap and pull out the supplies. Mesmerized by the show, Stilton holds out his hand and I carefully snip through the layers of gauze, peeling the bandage back, along with flakes of dead skin. Thankfully, Howie continues to commandeer his attention, because it’s a queasy operation.

That done, I squeeze a little Silvadene on the thin membrane of new pink skin and buff it in with a sterile Q-tip, blowing to quell any sting before wrapping him back up. “You are officially mummified,” I pronounce as the lady contestant agonizes between departing with hundreds of thousands of dollars or going for the big payday. She gambles.

“Thanks,” he breathes, slumping back against me. I lift my arm onto the couch back and he rests his head on my chest, his frame warm, the connection natural. Easy. And I can’t help thinking …what’s so wrong with this—me and these two kids. I seem to sort of, kind of be doing a decent job at this. Why
can’t
I find myself wanting to maybe pick up here, where I can wrap a hand and make a joke, offer to switch on a light, and we all get through another night in one piece? Glancing through the open door to my room across from theirs, I see Ingrid’s report resting on the bedspread, not writing itself. But for these few minutes I will just sit, gently holding Stilton’s healing hand, and watch someone risk what they never had.

The following morning I glance at Citrine’s shower gift, glance at the roll of wrapping paper, glance at my closing paragraph to Ingrid’s report, and then glance up at the microwave clock, the same sweaty orbit my eyeballs have been making for the last half hour. The intercom buzzes—shit—and I lift to reach across the Formica for it. “Hello?”

“Messenger,” the doorman unceremoniously announces.

“Thanks, send him up.”

As I throw myself back on the chair for a last speedy once-over, my elbow topples the tall stack of Shari’s files still awaiting my review. I bend to gather them from where they’ve sprawled on the flecked carpet and swipe up what looks to be a memo from the office of Cliff Ashburn dated this time last year. The subject line reads, “How to Build a Case, Phase II: New additions to the grounds for dismissal of recalcitrant faculty.
Teaching Against School Values
: political insensitivity to climate in the classroom—needs only to be brought up by one student.
Identified Boundary Issues
: any mention of personal life—again needs only to be brought up by one student.” My eyes dart down the page—
“Academic Error, Failure to Meet Community Standards”
—and then the memo concludes, “And lastly,
Inappropriate
Self-assigned Mentoring:
defined as a teacher extending any extra support to a student.” TASV, IBI, IS-AM …the acronyms. I dig through my papers for the first chart I found in Shari’s office and scroll my finger down, catching Mr. Calvin’s name as the one with the most boxes checked.

Hearing a ping my attention is pulled to my IM box. Hey sexy. I love you–Ry436.

The doorbell rings—I toss the mess of files on the table and dart the three steps to open it. “Hi. I’m sorry, I just need a minute.”

The guy sighs exasperatedly and shifts his bag to his other shoulder. “I have to charge you for waiting.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” I flip the dead bolt to hold the door open and stare at the blinking print icon, unsure now, with this new information, what to do.

“Nan?”

I love you, too! Where are you?

Only have few minutes—iChat?

Yes, yes, iChat! Yes! I shift the settings as I hear the messenger’s dispatcher on speaker from the hallway.

“Lady?” he calls through the door.

“One more sec, sorry!”

I smooth my hair and readjust my laptop. “Hello?” I say into the static on the screen.

“Hello?” the messenger calls back.

“Sorry, not you!”

“Not me?”

I whip my head over and there he is, the image wavering but discernible. I reach out and touch the screen, his face is unshaven and sweat stains mar his shirt. “Babe,” I say.