Nanny Returns (6 page)

“I have a mixed media machine in my classroom you can use, if you want.”

“That would be awesome,” I say as, with a resurging jumble of curiosity and ambivalence, I pull out the tape.

Not fifteen minutes later I lean back against the desk, remote in hand in the darkened classroom, watching the grainy video of my tear-streaked twenty-one-year-old self ranting into a teddy bear on the night of my dismissal from the Xes’. I’m immediately struck that I look too young, too unworldly, to be speaking with so much conviction.

What must it have been for Grayer to see this girl, not five years older than he is now, messily pleading on his behalf?

Squinting at the complicated remote, I locate the volume and increase the scratchy voice from the flat-screen speakers. There in Grayer’s bedroom, his toys squarely shelved as always, I pace on sunburned legs while they are miles away in Nantucket. As the video cuts from my desperate, pointless entreaty for them to know and love him to three seconds of loud snow and then to my rant against Mr. X and his failings as a father—“Raising your child is hard work! Which you would know if you ever did it for more than five minutes at a time!”—I realize why his wife kept it—in case custody was ever at stake.

I stare into my own cried-out eyes, shocked by my certainty. God, was I certain. And righteous. Tilting forward, I shakily press pause as my twenty-one-year-old self glares out at me and unflinchingly brands me afresh with the stakes of parenting—the damage you can wreak when you willingly disregard the sacrifices required, resent the chaos that ensues, and shirk the responsibility for the heart with which you are entrusted.

Here’s what I know: there’s only one way to do this—running straight into it at a hundred miles an hour, arms and eyes wide open.

And I’m
not
there.

More alarmingly, I might never be.

3

As the first town cars pull into the fountained redbrick courtyard of Grayer’s school, I glance at my cell. Seven fifty. Last night when I sat in the wingback chair, staring at the tape in my lap, I could hear Ryan’s ringtone in my bag. Afraid to chance that my revelation would come pouring out, raw and ruinous, I hit ignore and soon found myself Googling Grayer right back, tracking down his Face-book affiliation to Haverhill Prep and jumping on the downtown train to Carnegie Hill before the sun was even up.

Chilled in my quilted jacket, despite the sun rising in the side street, I wrap my arms tighter around myself. A trio of girls passes close, surreptitiously flicking lit cigarettes from their hips to the butt-strewn gutter. Getting worried I’ve missed him, I stand on my toes, craning to see through the arriving throngs—their hair alternately wet or professionally blown out—knocking back a colorful assortment of energy drinks. And there . . .

“Grayer!” I call, and he turns, steadying his face against registering any expression.

He tugs out an earbud, holding it poised to return. “Yeah?”

“Hi.” I step closer.

“Did I forget something?”

“No, no. I just wanted to talk to you. I feel really crappy about how we left things. Yesterday—” Two girls lope past, leaning into each other to giggle, presumably at me, the middle-aged stalker. “And a long time ago,” I add. “Is it possible we could talk? Maybe go get a coffee?”

“I’ve got class.” He lifts his hand back to his ear.

“Maybe I could walk you?” I catch him by the elbow.

He steps back from my grasp. “Look, just say whatever and I’ll go, okay?”

“Okay.” I tuck my hair behind my shoulder, piecing together twelve-year and twelve-hour-old thoughts. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I left. That I let myself—let myself get so scared off. That me being scared was bigger than saying good-bye, helping you understand, fighting for you. I didn’t know how. I still don’t know, but I should’ve done something—in person. It’s not like they were going to kill me, right?”

He takes me in from behind his long blond bangs and clears his throat. “Okay.”

“Okay, so I want to do something. Tell me how I can fix this, how I can help you.”

He cracks a smile. “Okay, easy, Drama, it’s not like I’m dying or anything.”

“No, no, I’m not suggesting that. But you said things were shitty at home and if there’s anything I can do. Anything at all . . .”

He nods in deep thrusts, one hand tucking into his blazer sleeves as he grips the strap of his inked-up messenger bag with the other. “I’m cool.”

“Okay.” I find I’m leaning forward on my sneakers. And that I don’t feel even an inch better.

“So you’re not going to, like, follow me now, are you?” He starts to walk, one loafer lining up behind the other, into the thinning flow of students, winding his headphone wire around his black iPod.

“No!” I force a laugh. “Not unless you want me to.”

He shakes his head no and ducks into the courtyard.

I lean back against a parking meter and stare at a Red Bull can, half crushed beneath a Lincoln’s idling wheel, not knowing what to do, or even how to walk away.

“Nanny?”

I raise my chin to see him jogging back to the iron gates.

“Yes?” I walk quickly toward him.

“There is …something.”

“I’m on it!”

He leans away. “It’s not for me. It’s for my brother—”

“Brother?!”

“Stilton. He’s seven and trying to get into this boarding school—the only one that’ll take him at eight—and then I’ll apply to colleges nearby to keep an eye on him.” His face takes on a seriousness that makes my heart tighten. “My dad’s moved out and my mom’s tranqued out of her mind, but I was able to pull some family strings and get an interview this week. There’s supposed to be an adult there—”

“You got it.”

He smiles, unmistakable relief in his eyes. “What’s your number? I’ll text you the details.”

“Great!” I wait while he tugs out his phone and then punches it in.

“Cool.” He puts out his hand. “Thanks, this is cool of you.” And I don’t throw my arms around him, I don’t break down crying from the relief at this chance to right things, I just take his hand and shake it for the second time in as many days.

That evening, as soon as the two little arrows on my BlackBerry shoot off in opposite directions like exuberant dance partners, I wait to see if I got a message from Grayer or Ryan while I was on the train. Nothing. Hoping Ryan is still in meetings, I exhale when my call thankfully goes straight to voice mail again, because I know if we connect it’ll be impossible not to download my turmoil on the baby crisis—and I don’t want to add to the actual global crisis he’s already triaging. Following Citrine’s texted instructions, I veer off from the boutique-strewn main drag of Williamsburg and head west toward the East River and the industrial area that lines it.

“Hey, babe, it’s me,” I begin after the beep, being the wife he needs right now. “I know you’re up to your neck in this grain shortage—can I say that? Can you be up to your neck in the lack of something? Anyway, you sounded exhausted. I’m sorry we keep missing each other. I’m on my way to dinner with Citrine, but hopefully we’ll catch each other tomorrow.” I pause for a second, debating telling him about Grayer in a voice mail. “And I feel really crappy about how we left things. Sorry. Love you, bye.”

I make another left, and down a poorly paved, unlit street I find the graffiti-sprayed door Citrine described and ring her buzzer. A swaying huddle of the extravagantly tattooed and heavily pierced pass, heading to and possibly from a bar. Somebody’s babies. Between Jarndyce’s
Elle Decor
spread for sixth graders and waiting in Haverhill Prep’s fog of Axe and apathy, I’m thinking if I even ever got to ready, I’d totally raise kids in the suburbs. In the fifties. The 1850s.

After a few moments the buzzer sounds, letting me into an equally graffitied stairwell. I climb the three flights of stairs and open the fire door to her floor.

“Down here,” she chimes, holding out a candle at the far end of the dark corridor. “One by one the hall lights have burnt out and my landlord’s a dick.” She snuffs it and pulls me into a tight embrace—and again, honeysuckle.

“Hey! Thanks so much for having me out.”

“Of course, come in!” I follow the trajectory of her extended arm into her studio. As she bolts the door I turn around to see her entry-way is created by a raw wood structure that houses her kitchenette on one side, a bathroom on the other, and above it all, a sleeping loft. The rest of the room is open, ringed with windows and reeking of turpentine.

“Sorry about the smell—I was stretching canvases. I was supposed to help Clark oversee the move this morning, but he got so type A about the whole thing I had to get out of there. Want some wine?” she says over her shoulder as she turns into the kitchenette.

“Sure!” I walk around to take in the space, which is lined with layers of finished paintings resting against the walls and stacks of boxes filling with the contents of her half-emptied bookcases. A ping emits from my bag and I take out my BlackBerry to see a text. FRIDAY 4PM 721 PARK 9B THNX GRAYER.

The interview’s at their apartment? She’ll
be
there? He said she’s tranqued.
How
tranqued?

“Here.” A drink in each hand, Citrine crosses to me in brown suede high-heel over-the-knee boots atop brown leggings, a chunky brown sweater on top.

“You weren’t stretching canvas in
that
?” I ask, turning off my BlackBerry and fears, past and present, for the evening. I rest my bag on the windowsill.

She laughs. “No, no, I always clean up for dinner.” She hands me a delicate glass on a slender stem. “Cheers.” She touches our rims, making a beautiful ping, and I’m surprised mine didn’t shatter it’s so fine. “It’s a Château Lafite, just so you savor. Clark sent over a case when he realized I was offering prospective buyers Australian Shiraz. He’s so supportive.” She beams as I take a welcome sip. “Isn’t that a great name, Clark? Clark,” she repeats with exaggerated tongue movements. “Every time I say it I feel like Margot Kidder. Come, sit down.” She plunks herself onto a kilim floor pillow, curling her long legs under her. “Sorry, I already sold my couch to some dude off craigslist.”

I lower myself onto the one across from her in turn.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Totally.” I try to mirror her graceful perch. “After we left Africa I swore I wouldn’t sit on the floor again for at least five years, but this is on a pillow, so, all good! Oh, and no couscous. No floors or couscous.”

“So Moroccan for dinner is out?” She smiles. “My God, you guys really have been everywhere.”

“Not
everywhere.
And, at most, two years at a time. But it gets old. Making friends you know you’ll be leaving. Never really fixing anything up. Always sleeping on rented mattresses. The most exciting thing we’ve done since we moved back was go and buy our own.” My shoulders rise at the memory. “No one else has ever slept on it. Or made a baby or delivered a baby.”

“Really?”

“In our third apartment—judging by the stains.”

“Okay, killing my vision of foreign affairs.”

“No, no, it was great. Really.” I imbibe a large mouthful of the full-bodied wine. “Until one day it just wasn’t. I woke up and said, ‘I want to go home.’”

“Home—that’s what
I’m
grappling with!” Her face animated, she sets her glass down on the floor and passes me a bowl of Marcona almonds from a wooden crate serving as a side table. “I’ve been here since I graduated from RISD. Even after the wedding last June I still come here to work every day.”

“It’s a fabulous space and no one has studios like this in Manhattan anymore.”

“Thank you. Clark doesn’t get it. When I graduated this was all I could afford. And over the years my work started to sell, but the neighborhood’s gotten trendy and the rents have risen and it’s still all I can afford.”

“I know. Ryan and I were just gobsmacked by what’s happened to New York City real estate since we left.”

“Clark said you bought a house. A real house? With a basement and a roof and everything?”

I lean forward to scoop up some almonds and the hard pillows slips out, dropping me to the floor. “Yes, such as it is. We’re on day three of an arbitrary work stoppage, but I’ll bore you about that at dinner. You guys really bought a
great
apartment. It’s a layout I have decorated and redecorated many times in my mind.”

“The second bedroom’s going to be my on-premise studio and I’m giving up my lease. Happy ending, right? It’s so weird. Many fights.” She peers into her wineglass. “Many, many fights.”

“Why?” I ask softly.

“I mean, I moved in with him on the Upper East Side in his high-rise apartment with the forty-nine-inch TV and the black leather sofa, the whole standard-issue bachelor blech. But I come here every day and”—she catches herself—“I
love
him. I love him. Me prenup is
insane
. Nobody has a prenup like mine. He said, ‘Babe, I want you to be protected.’ Isn’t that amazing? So I put up with the couch and the neighborhood and the people—who wouldn’t know provocative art from dogs playing poker. I mean, when you think of our childhoods, don’t you want to run to the ends of the earth?”

“Well, not so much my childhood as other people’s.”

“Oh, right, you were a West Sider.”

“Yes, we had
perfect
parenting on the West Side. Nope.” I shake my head. “I just meant I was a nanny in college. That literally put me on the first plane out of here.”

“You were a nanny?” she asks, eyes widening.

“It beat waitressing.” I shrug.

“Oh, gosh, sorry, no.” She puts her hand to her sternum. “I know I’m crazy lucky that I had an annuity in college. Truly. I’ve just never met a nanny. I mean since we were kids.”

“At Brown I cleaned houses.”

“You are hard-core.” She makes a bowing gesture with her forearms. “It’s a shame we didn’t hang out more in Providence.”

“I pretty much hid in a slice of chocolate cheesecake and then I transferred,” I admit wryly.

“Funny. Anyway, we’re agreed the Upper East Side is a little inbred. Clark’s from Trenton, but you’d
never
know it.” She pokes the air with her rainbow hand, two fingers pressed to her thumb as if holding a cigarette. “He put himself through college, got a job at Morgan Stanley, and worked his fucking ass off. Now he runs his own hedge fund. He amazes me.”

“That’s awesome. How’d you guys meet?” I ask, taking another sip.

“I was having a solo show on Bond Street—I was dating this bass guitar player at the time—and Clark walks in, he’s a
serious
collector, buys two of my paintings off the bat, tells me I’m a great investment, and asks me out.” She stretches up, her long fingers intertwining. “So, he wants to live on Park Avenue. I get it. I noodle around with paint all day—this is his dream? I’m happy to give it to him. More wine?”

“Please.” I hold out my unbelievably light glass. Probably made by elves.

“So what were you doing while Ryan was working?” she asks.

“Business consulting—organizational development. Originally I majored in Child Development. But the first few programs I worked at out of school were epically dysfunctional. I mean, staff meetings like a page from
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
It didn’t matter the country or the level of funding, the grown-ups consistently needed more help playing well with others. I became really interested in how to get organizations to run effectively—so the people
they’re
trying to aid actually receive it.”