Nanny Returns (29 page)

Taking a breath, I call information for Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center. At this point she has to appoint a legal guardian, authorize me to go upstairs,
something.
I’m put through to the hospital switchboard. “I’m sorry,” the woman’s kind voice comes down the line. “But there’s no one by that name currently admitted here.”

“Are you
sure
? Can you please check again?”

And she does. And nada.

?!?!?!?!

Brow scrunched, I call the Waldorf and speak to the events coordinator, pretending to be an unpaid rep for Cirque du Soleil, and get Saz’s contact number.

“Oh, yes, Dorothy Hutchinson’s daughter-in-law, of course I remember you. So sweet, yes, I want to send flowers, too, but had no idea how to do it in Baltimore. I read they have a lot of gang violence.” Okay, I’m not crazy. That’s where she’s supposed to be. Maybe they changed her course of treatment? But when I call the other five hospitals Sarah suggests that specialize in treating breast cancer, it’s the same story.

And then, with a glance at the time, I call Gene.

“Gene, hi. It’s Nan.” I aim for solid reassurance. “I just wanted to let you know that, unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it to the convocation this morning because I’m just, um …just working on getting in touch with Mr. X for you, actually. He …lost his cell, so the number’s been disconnected, but he’s going to get the new number to me tonight. Okay, so, great. And good luck today, and thanks. Bye.” I click off and drop my head between my bent knees.

“Nan?” I leap up. “What are you doing here?” Citrine asks, rounding from the shadows of the elevator banks and being tailed by a diminutive Filipino couple carrying a full set of T. Anthony.

“I’m waiting for . . .” I trail off, registering what “divine intervention” would sound like.

“Uch, don’t look at me! I’m so fat.” She holds up her hands, palms out, in front of her face. “I’ve been meaning to call you.” She adjusts the camel cashmere shawl over the shoulders of her man-tailored cobalt blue blouse. “What’re you up to for the holiday?”

“Holiday?” I say, the word making me slaver as if it smelled like popcorn.

“Memorial Day.”

“Oh, wow.” I nod vacantly. “This has been an
insane
week, with Ryan gone and my freelance schedule, it fell out of my brain.”

“Listen, we’re having a bunch of families out—you two should come! It’s my first time hosting and I could use some support.” I’m stunned. I thought between my noncashmere breast pump and domestic employee defense, I’d been erased from her phone.

“That’s so sweet of you. But Ryan’s still in Africa and I’m taking care of the X boys while their mom’s in the hospital—and Grace.”

“Well, Clark’s allergic, but definitely bring the boys! We have seven bedrooms.” She puts a hand on my arm, dropping her voice. “Listen, don’t give up on me because I’m pregnant. We can hang out and really catch up. Shit, I have to go, the chopper’s waiting.”

“Chopper?” I glance out the window where Grace is being loved by a trio of toddlers.

“From the helipad on the East River. How great is that? Forty-minute flight and we touch down in East Hampton. Please please please come. We have a pool—it’ll be awesome.” She gives me a hug over her tummy, which I swear has grown since Tuesday. “And thank you for the booby thingy. It was crazy thoughtful. If I breast-feed I will
totally
use it.” She wafts out the door, trailed by honeysuckle and the couple shuttling more luggage and a crate of wine to the waiting limo. Suddenly a sweaty guy with cargo shorts and Rasta dreads pushes in against their flow. “Manhattan Minute package pickup.” He looks down at his electronic tablet. “Mrs. X?”

I grab my purse as the doorman hands the envelope over and follow the messenger outside. In one fluid motion he slips it in his bag, slings the bag over his back, rights his bike, and takes off into traffic.

“Yeah?” The dispatcher holds the phone to his chest and looks up at me through the scratched plastic partition.

“Hello. My name is Nan Hutchinson. I—God help me—work for Mrs. X.” I run my nervous hands down the front of my skirt. “And I sent out a package to her this morning using your service, from her home, at 721 Park, but I think I had the address wrong. And I need to confirm the address.”

“Why didn’t you just call?” he asks gruffly, picking at a patch of flaky skin by his ear.

“I did, but I thought I might have better luck in person.”

“They negged you, huh? Lady, you wasted your time.” He pulls off a piece and flicks it away. “I’m sorry if that woman is fucking your what—boyfriend, husband—but if I gave up that information I’d be out of business.”

I stumble back down the three narrow flights of stairs onto Thirty-eighth Street, dodging the smoke pouring from the Szechwan barbecue, playing through if the messengers come here on Fridays for their checks, maybe I could just wait for Rasta dude and beg and plead and bribe and—Catching my breath and brain, I dial. “Josh, hey, it’s Nan,” I launch in after the beep. “I am
so sorry
to be bothering you right now and
believe
me I exhausted every avenue before calling, but I need information and I pray that with your journalistic contacts, you might know how to get it.” I squint as the sun tips over the top of the opposing building. “I’ve been totally left with the kids. Both parents are just …gone. She had a package picked up by Manhattan Minute today. And I need to know where that package went. It must be in the city. Somewhere bikable, obviously. It’s only, I don’t know what to do and I just need to find out …where the fuck is Mrs. X?”

20

Hours later, Stilton kneels on his seat and swivels his head around into the Jitney aisle to interrupt my racing thoughts. “How much
farther,
Nan-eh?”

I peer across the lap of my snoring seat companion and out the bus window at the row of buildings abutting the dark highway, Bridge-hampton Plumbing and Heating, Bridgehampton Pool, Bridgehampton Hardware. I can also see Grayer’s face in the reflection, sitting beside Stilton, staring into the night, ghostly. Taking a breath, I smile to his brother. “About twenty more minutes if the traffic picks up.” He slumps back down with an exaggerated sigh and the woman across the aisle shoots me an admonishing look, as she does every time Stilton calls me “Nan-eh” in an exasperated tone. Which, with our pressed sandwiches providing the only brief entertainment on the holiday weekend traffic-choked journey, has been a lot. She’s probably already logged onto ratemynanny.com on her iPhone to report me.

As the bus crawls I text Citrine that the last ETA I predicted was also ambitious, and another text comes in: GRACIE AND I HAVE PUT ON OUR PAJAMAS, BRUSHED TEETH, AND NOW SHE’S READING ME A STORY XO SARAH. Smiling, I add “Buy S thank-you gift” to my ever-growing BlackBerry to-do list.

I lean back in my chair and watch the leafy profile of lush trees inch by. Abandoned, these kids have essentially been abandoned. I shake my head. What the hell would Mr. and Mrs. X be doing if I
wasn’t
here? Or—dear God—is my being here what’s enabled this? I let my head rest against the back of the seat, unable, sickeningly, to explore the answer.

We eventually pull abreast of the Palms Hotel and everyone stretches up to disembark, folding pashmina blankets and pulling speaker buds from ears. Empty Starbucks cups in hands and limp
Financial Times
and
InStyles
under arms, they bend to look out the windows for waiting friends and family.

“Who’s picking us up?” Grayer steps into the aisle, his finger looped in the back of Stilton’s jacket to keep him close.

“clark, citrine’s husband. How are you feeling?”

He shrugs and we shuffle down the steps before Grayer elbows in to wrestle our bags from the overcrowded hold. George carlin’s treatise on winnowing your possessions comes to mind as I look down at our three small duffels, which are now
just
the stuff we really need, the excess left piled in a corner of my parents’ dining room.

I crane my head over the waiting cars till I spot clark sitting in khaki shorts and an oxford on a vintage Jeep without its canvas top. I wave to him and he waves back, but doesn’t move from his spot under the wrought-iron streetlamp. I signal to the boys and we drag our bags down the block.

“Hi, hi,” he says, still tapping on his iPhone as he slides off the hood, his Docksiders hitting the pavement. “Apologies.” He slips the device in the pocket of his fleece vest. “My first Chagall is arriving Sunday and I’m so pumped.” He opens the passenger door and tilts the chair forward.

“Oh, wow, that’s amazing. Clark, these are my friends, Grayer and Stilton.”

“Hey.” Grayer nods.

“Hi.” Stilton waves as the boys hop up and wedge in the backseat.

“S’up?” Clark gives them a cursory glance as he passes them the bags to squeeze at their feet. Stilton looks to his left hip, then his right. “Yeah, sorry, no seat belts. Just hold on!”

“For you.” I hand off the champagne I grabbed from the liquor store before we boarded. “Thank you so much for having us.”

“Thank you,” Stilton echoes.

Clark pops the passenger seat back into place so I can get in. “No problem.” He comes around the hood of the car, patting it twice like a horse, before sliding in and starting the ignition. “Chagall! I’m so pumped.” He screeches out of the spot and Stilton grabs the metal frame as Grayer clamps a tamping arm over him. I grip my seat.

“Congratulations on the baby,” I say. “You must be so excited!”

“What? I like Bob Marley! You like Bob Marley?”

I can barely hear him over the air whipping around us as we speed off Main Street and onto a dark side road. “Sure!”

He leans forward to swipe a remote by his feet and then, steering with one hand, tries to aim it down between his legs. “FULL STEREO!” he shouts. His phone lights up the breast pocket of his fleece and he anchors the wheel with his elbows, tugs it out with his left hand, and keeps punching the remote with his right. We swerve into the oncoming lane. “WASSUP?” he asks his caller as Shirley Manson’s voice floods the space. He punches the remote again as we clip a hedge. I glance back to see Stilton gripping the jeep, his eyes squeezed shut. Grayer has the impassive face of someone who’s given over to a roller coaster. “CHAGALL, MAN! I KNOW, HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT? NO, YOU HAVE TO COME OVER AND SEE IT SUNDAY NIGHT. BIG PARTY—” We hit a pothole and go flying. “GOTTA FIND BOB, GOTTA GO.”

“CLARK, I THINK STILTON IS CARSICK, CAN YOU SLOW DOWN?”

“WE’RE HERE!” He floors it onto a circular gravel driveway, swerving to a stop, a wave of pebbles spraying to the lawn. “Awesome!” He kills the engine, opens the door, and hops out, walking away to a massive, three-story modern beach house, all gray washed wood and oversized single-pane windows. He jogs up the steps and disappears inside while the three of us catch our breath. Through the open front door I can hear REM sending this one out to the one they love, and under that, the nearby ocean.

Stilton unwraps his knuckles and tries to stand. I open my door and step out. Forgoing figuring out how to flip my chair, I take Stilton’s hand and help him climb down to the gravel. Grayer hops over the side and reaches back in for the bags.

“Sorry, guys.”

“I think I’m dizzy,” Stilton announces, letting out a long burp.

“Excuse you,” I say, lifting my bag onto my shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

“Well, let’s get you a bedtime snack. I bet there is someone in there whose job it is just to bake cookies. I believe where there are men in Bermuda shorts there is sugar.”

“Nan!” Citrine comes out through the glass door onto the portico and down the three gray plank steps.

“Hi!” I call as she crosses the driveway, arms extended to give me a hug.

“You made it! The ribs are finished, but there’s still some chocolate cake.”

“That sounds great! Thank you so much for having us. Citrine, this is Grayer and you remember his brother, Stilton. Guys, this is Citrine Cilbourne.”

“Welcome.” She waves at them, readjusting her dislodged wrap. “We had a little snafu. Clark went overboard saying children included, and I went overboard saying children included, so the boys are on the couches in the upstairs breezeway.”

“I’m sure that’ll be fine.” I take my bag from the floor of the passenger seat. “I can’t tell you how happy we are to be here. Stilton, you want to go in and Citrine will give you some cake?”

“Um, sure,” Citrine says, her eyes widening before catching herself and touching her stomach. “I can do that. I can totally give cake.” Nodding, she follows Stilton across the drive and up the steps.

Left alone with the surf and Grayer, I turn to see him tapping a cigarette out of a pack of American Spirits and sticking it in his mouth to light. He takes a deep drag and leans back against the side of the Jeep, duffel resting between his legs. I watch him in the sloping rectangles of yellow light that spill from the windows, waiting for a few drags to do whatever he needs them to.

“You’re not going to say anything?” he finally asks, exhaling smoke.

I back away from the dispersing cloud, feeling the cold grass on the tops of my feet as I step off the drive. “It’ll kill you.” He squints at me. “But it is the number one activity for angst and if I said your parents never drove me to smoke I’d be lying to your face.” He lets out a tired laugh, tilting his face to me, his hair flopping in his eyes. “Grayer, what did your dad say last night? What happened?”

“Nan.” His face darkens. “I need to sleep. I have a headache like a fucking mosh pit in my brain, I’ve been awake for forty-eight hours and took a fucking history test today to boot. So can we please just let me pass out on my breezeway couch and talk tomorrow?”

“Of course. I just . . .”

“Need to know where the fuck to dump us Monday? I get that.” He stubs his cigarette in the gravel and picks up our bags. “Believe me, I get that.”

The next morning, I button my cardigan over my sundress as I shuffle through the canvas-upholstered, coral-accessorized, driftwood-adorned, double-height living room toward the smell of breakfast. Hungover from a night of exodus-induced coma-sleep, I try not to get diverted by the long white couches singing their siren song. Coffee. Coffee will help.

“Morning,” I call as I scroll through a mess of spam on my Black-Berry in hopes of an update from Josh. I round the doorway into the kitchen, which is the size of most Manhattan restaurants, and look up to see the Filipino couple manning the professional cooktop, where bacon and pancakes are sizzling. “Good morning,” I repeat, exchanging smiles with them as I take a thin porcelain cup from the counter and fill it with steaming coffee from the sterling urn.

“Morning,” Alex says tightly from the glass-encased breakfast nook facing the ocean. “You’ve missed the golfers—they’ve already headed out.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m not really a . . .” I glance at her linen sailor pants and cable-knit cashmere sweater as I take a sip, still catching up to the fact that I seem to have unwittingly signed up for a high school reunion weekend. “Do you golf?”

“Well, not today, but I’ve been for a run.” She smiles, closing the
Times
and refolding it.

“I’m so impressed. I woke up at seven, shut my eyes for a second, and it was nine thirty. The sound of the ocean totally knocks me out.”

“Please, help yourself,” the Filipino man says, gesturing to the tureens of three kinds of eggs sitting atop kerosene warmers.

“Wow, this smells delicious. Thank you.” The coffee bean fumes jump-starting my hunger, I load my plate up and slide in opposite Alex, repositioning a double-C monogrammed throw pillow. “Have you seen the boys?”

“My nanny took Astin and the other kids to the farmers’ market. Then I think they’re going riding.”

“Riding? Stilton has a burned hand.”

“Oh,
that’s
what that was.” You thought it was a married-to-me bandage? “He’ll be fine.” She returns to her paper.

I bite my lip and look down at my plate. “Could I call your nanny? What’s her name?”

“Gloria.”

“It’s just I’m not authorized to give permission for something like that.” Alex looks at me askance, since she was already in bed with a headache when introductions were made last night. “They’ve been staying with me while their parents—”

“Well, I know who their parents are. Did you meet Carter Nelson? I didn’t get a chance to talk to her at the benefit. What’s she like?”

“Oh, she’s really—I think she’s very committed to her art.”

“And you used to be these boys’ nanny?”

“Grayer’s, yes.”

“Why?”

“I needed the money,” I answer flatly.

She mulls this over as she rolls her ring so that the diamond is squarely facing out. “Well, I suppose it’s nice for them that you all have stayed in touch.”

Yes, it’s just like that. “It’s great. So if you could give me the number—I really need them in one piece come Monday.”

She stands from the table, leaving behind her picked-over plate, patting my arm as she passes. “Then we have lots of time to break them and put them back together.”

After inhaling a second helping of eggs Benedict, refilling my coffee, and getting Alex to reluctantly give me her nanny’s number—WTF, like I’m unionizing?—I climbed back to my room on the third floor to resume my call station from my bed and fret in their Frette. Having been reassured that Stilton is contented feeding carrots at the stables, I stare down at the phone and try to figure out just who else I can reach on Memorial Day weekend to escalate the “Monday dump,” as Grayer termed it.

Suddenly the little red light goes off and I press the button to see a text from Josh. CHINATOWN HOLIDAY INN.

Holiday Inn?

Chinatown?!

Mrs. X?!

I quickly type THNX!, dial information, and within moments the line is ringing.

“Chinatown Holiday Inn, how may I direct your call?”

“Hi, yes, I’m trying to reach a guest. A Mrs. X?”

“One moment, please, I’ll connect you.”

“Thank you!”

“Chinatown Holiday Inn, this is the operator.”

“Hello, I’m trying to reach a Mrs. X, she’s a guest at your hotel?” Or Josh is taking his life in his hands having the fun with me.

“One moment, please.”

“Thanks so much.” And suddenly I’m sweaty and shaking and totally blank. Just tell her to come get them—come get your kids, please! Comegetyourkidspleasecomegetyourkidspleasecomegetyourkidsplease—

“Hello?”

“Mrs. X?” I ask, though I would know that voice under anesthesia. Silence. “Mrs. X? This is Nan Hutchinson, I’m so sorry to interrupt your treatment, but Carter Nelson had to—” The line goes dead. “Hello? Hello?!” I check the signal bars—all five there.

“Chinatown Holiday Inn, how may I direct your call?”