Shoe Addicts Anonymous (18 page)

Joss frowned. “How did you know?”

“She’s asked most of us now.” She looked at the girl who’d been separating Mrs. Parsons’s son from the other boy. “Poor Melissa. I’m Mavis Hicks, by the way.” She held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met yet.”

“Joss Bowen.” Joss shook her hand. “What do you mean poor Melissa? Is she the Parsonses’ nanny?”

Mavis nodded. “And she’s really good, as far as I can tell. Don’t you think, Susan?” She tapped the shoulder of a stout woman in her mid-to upper thirties.

“What?”

“That Melissa’s good with that Parsons kid.”

“Yes.” Susan noticed Joss then. “Oh. Did you get propositioned by Fickle Felicia?”

Joss nodded. “Yes. Just now. I feel just awful about it.” She looked at Melissa, who was clearly trying mightily to deal logically with the dark-haired hellion that was her charge.

“Don’t worry, she knows,” Mavis reassured Joss. “It’s not the first time this has happened to Melissa. She’ll probably take the next offer someone makes
her
.”

“It happens that often?”

Both Susan and Mavis looked at her like she was from outer space.

“Are you joking?” Susan asked.

“Well…no.” There was no sense in pretending she was familiar with this game, because it was
all
new to her. New and disconcerting. These women might be really helpful with that. “But it’s happened to me twice now. Once at a party the Olivers were hosting.”

Susan shrugged. “It goes on all the time. When word gets around about a good nanny, everyone wants her.”

Joss was surprised. “I had no idea Mrs. Oliver was saying anything nice about me at all.”

“She’s not,” Susan said simply. “It doesn’t come from the employers. The word gets around via the Mom Network. They observe whose nanny is doing what; then they decide their nanny isn’t good enough, and they sneak around behind her back to try and hire someone new.”

“But doesn’t everyone have a contract?” Joss asked. “Doesn’t that bind the employer as well as the employee?” She’d gone over hers with her dad, and they were pretty sure she was guaranteed gainful employment plus room and board for a period of one year.

Susan and Mavis both laughed.

Then Susan caught Joss’s eye and said, “Oh my God, are you serious?”

This was nuts. “Yes, I’m serious.”

“Oh, honey. You don’t know?”

Joss was beginning to feel like she was in some bizarre parallel universe, where everyone knew what was going on except her. “Don’t know what?”

Susan and Mavis exchanged looks; then Susan nodded at Mavis.

“Mrs. Oliver asked me at a party last week if I wanted to work for her,” Mavis said. “I thought for sure you knew.”

Joss tried to think where the Olivers had gone last week, and right away three parties came to mind. Three parties for which Joss had covered their parenting duties free of charge.

And they thought they were going to do
better
than her? What other nanny on the planet would work during so much of her time off? What other nanny would pick up food, wine, dry cleaning, other people’s children, and anything else Deena could think of?

What other nanny would take that kind of treatment and still stick with her obligation to the Olivers instead of cutting her losses and running for the hills?

“Are you
sure
?” she asked Mavis. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

Mavis and Susan exchanged looks again, in a motion that was already clearly code for
You take this one
or
Go on, tell her
.

“Joss,” Susan said, reaching over and putting her hands on Joss’s. “She’s sure. And so am I. Three weeks ago, Deena Oliver offered me salary and a half to take over within a week.”

O
h my God, are you sick?”

Sandra was alarmed at the way her sister was looking at her.

“What do you mean? I’m not sick. Why?” She raised a hand to her face. Did she look that awful? Had she lost her color?

Or was it just the green hair?

“You’re so
skinny
!”

“I am not!”

“Well, not
skinny
for a regular person,” Tiffany said, as obnoxiously honest as ever. “But skinny for
you
. How much weight have you lost?”

“I don’t know.” Yes, she did. It was 24.8 pounds. But for some reason, it embarrassed her to talk about the details with Tiffany. Maybe it was because life was always so effortless for Tiffany that Sandra didn’t want to have to admit how much she herself struggled. “I’ve just been trying to eat sensibly.”

“Not me.” Tiffany patted her slightly protruding belly. It was barely noticeable. “I’ve been such a pig.” She ushered Sandra into the huge gleaming white kitchen that overlooked hole number five on the Coronado golf club’s newest course.

Tiffany had been a pig during her first pregnancy, too, seven years ago, but at the end of it she’d gotten both a perfect daughter—Kate—and her figure back. It was maddening.

“Do you want some coffee?” Tiffany asked, then made a face. “It’s decaf.”

“Sure.” Sandra settled into a cushioned barstool. “So how’s it going?”

“Just fine.” Tiffany put a mug in front of Sandra, then went to the fridge and got out a creamer and put it down on the counter as well. “I had my eighteen-week sonogram the other day, and they say the baby’s perfectly healthy. Kate’s over the moon with excitement. Charlie, too.” She hesitated a little longer than Tiffany might have expected. “Me, too, of course.”

“That’s wonderful.” Sandra poured some cream into her coffee and stirred, watching the swirl fade. She looked at Tiffany. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

“The technician could tell, but Charlie wants to be surprised, so I have no idea. I think it’s a boy, though.”

“Wow, a boy! That would be so weird, wouldn’t it? We grew up in such a girly house.”

“I know. I—”

Sandra set her spoon aside, then looked at her sister. To her surprise, Tiffany was crying. “What’s wrong? Tif, what’s the matter?”

Tiffany put her hands up over her face and shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

“Is the baby really okay?” Sandra put an arm around her sister, wishing their mother were there to handle this. Sandra had no experience at all dealing with an insecure Tiffany. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“The baby is fine.” Tiffany sniffed and carefully wiped the tears from under her eyes without messing up her makeup. “It’s just…This is so selfish, I can’t even say it.”

“What
is
it?” Sandra was alarmed. Was Tiffany about to reveal an affair or something? That was it, Charlie had probably had an affair. Sandra had never fully trusted him. He was cold. And a little mean. “Look, maybe we should call Mom and ask her to come over.”

“No,” Tiffany snapped. “The last thing I need is her here telling me how wonderful everything is, and how perfect my life is, and on and on and
on
.”

Come to think of it, Sandra wasn’t really fond of those conversations either. She grasped Tiffany’s narrow shoulders and looked into her eyes. “What’s the matter? Tell me.”

Tiffany closed her eyes for a moment, her mouth quivering some with unspoken horror, then admitted, “I don’t…” She swallowed. “I don’t know what to do with the penis.”

This wasn’t a phrase Sandra had ever heard before, so her first reaction was no reaction. “You don’t know what to do with the penis? What do you mean?”

“The
baby
. I don’t know what to do with a baby boy. It’s not like we had brothers or male cousins or anything like that. When I found out I was pregnant, I was all ready for pink nursery walls and frilly bedsheets, and baby dolls, and Disney princesses….” She dissolved into tears.

“Oh, Tif.” Sandra patted her back, unsure what else to say or do. “It’ll be okay. Really.” She didn’t want to add that she thought Tiffany was a victim of her hormones right now, but she did think that was at least part of the problem.

“I’m sorry,” Tiffany said through shuddering breaths. “I love the baby—I really do. Part of me is disappointed that it’s not a little girl, but mostly I’m just afraid I can’t be a good enough mother to him because I don’t know how to teach him to be a boy.”

“I’m pretty sure that will come naturally.”

“Not necessarily. What about hygiene? When will he start to shave? What about wet dreams? I don’t know how to explain that stuff to him. I can’t even imagine having that conversation.”

Sandra laughed softly. “Well, for one thing, you can’t imagine having the conversation partly because you haven’t even met the little guy yet. All these things will come to you in time. And don’t forget Charlie’s going to be around to take over those tough guy talks.”

“What if he’s not?” Tiffany wailed.

Sandra answered cautiously. “Do you have some reason to think he won’t be?”

“No.” Tiffany took a tissue from the box on the counter and blew. “You must think I’m crazy.”

“No, not at all. I think it’s got to be really hard to be pregnant. You’ve hardly felt
any
of this stuff before.”

Tiffany nodded. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not real.”

“No, it doesn’t. It means it might not need to be so scary, though.”

“God.” Tiffany closed her eyes tight and shook her head. “I just wish I could have a martini.”

“I’ll bring one to you in the hospital in four months. What do you want, Appletini?”

“Cranberry.” Tiffany managed a smile. “But my cravings may be different by then.”

They laughed, and after a moment, Tiffany said, “You know what scares me the most?”

“What?”

“What happens when he wants to know about his family history?”

Sandra laughed. “Are you kidding? Dad will get out that family tree he spent three years building at the Library of Congress, and—”

“I mean his, you know, his
blood
family.”

Sandra frowned. “I’m not following. Whose blood family?”

“The children’s!”

“Right. Okay, so, as I was saying, Dad can—”

“Sandra, I’m not going to lie to him!”

“To who?”

“Kate and the
baby!
”

“What are you
talking
about?” Then something occurred to Sandra. “Wait, is Charlie adopted or something?”

“Not
Charlie,
” Tiffany said impatiently, looking at Sandra with sharp eyes. Then her expression lifted slightly. “Oh my God, are you kidding me?”

This was too weird. “About
what
?”

“Don’t you know?”

“So help me, Tiffany, I don’t care if you are pregnant, if you don’t tell me what the hell you’re talking about, I’m going to shake it out of you.”

“Sandra.” Her eyes, which moments before had been glistening with self-pity now held pity for Sandra. “Charlie’s not adopted.
I
am.”

Obviously Lorna was going to have to stop opening her mail. It was always—
always
—bad news.

Three hundred and forty thousand bucks. Like her debt wasn’t high enough. She went online and looked for a mortgage calculator. With no money down—and that was the
only
way she could even
consider
getting a mortgage of any sort right now—the monthly payment would be over $2,200 a month. That was a thousand dollars more than she was paying now!

They called that “modest”?

To say nothing of the condo fees, whatever they might be. Lorna had heard figures into the hundreds for some local places.

So now what? She was in debt up to her neck, her credit was a mess, and she was about to lose her home. She had to do
something
; it wasn’t as if she had a choice to just sit on this information and hope for a change.

No, no, that was bullshit. She didn’t have to
hope
for a change, she had to
make
a change. She needed a better-paying job, or maybe an additional job.

But first she needed a new place to live.

She took out the newspaper, which she’d already put into the recycling bin unread, and sat down on the sofa to look for other rentals in the area.

Turned out prices had really gone up in the five years since she’d moved into the Commons. To live in a place in this neighborhood, she was going to have to pony up at least three hundred more than she was paying right now. And that was for some of the crummier apartments.

Unless she could get a better job, she was going to have to move farther out in Montgomery County. Maybe even to Frederick County. But the thought of driving fifteen, twenty, even twenty-five miles to work from some generic suburban enclave was just too depressing.

She flipped through the help wanted section and circled a few things that sounded terminally dull but promising in terms of pay and benefits.

She went to her computer and printed out several copies of her résumé to send to the P.O. boxes in the ads.

Then she signed on to eBay to reward herself with a little something
fun
after the depressing task of looking for a job. Maybe she’d find a pair of Pradas for $4.99 because the seller had typed in
Predas
accidentally. She was discovering these tricks as she went along. Unfortunately,
Shoegarpie
was learning them, too, so they still ended up competing over most of the same shoes. But Lorna hadn’t made the mistake of overbidding by so much again.

She’d also discovered Paypal.com, so she could pay for her auctions directly, without having to go in to the bank and put her dignity on the chopping block to beg for a cashier’s check.

She clicked her way through the size 7.5 designer shoes and was thrilled to find a pair of perfect vintage Lemer spectators for just $15.50. The heels were magnificently high, and the arch curved so gracefully that, were it not for the uppers, these could have been sexy strappy sandals.

So far
Shoegarpie
didn’t appear to have seen them, and with less than six hours left until the end of the auction, Lorna’s hopes swelled.

That’s when she had a revelation.

If she looked at this objectively—and it was time she did just that—she truly
was
a shoe addict. She had
no
control over herself or her impulse to buy more shoes. Credit, cash, it didn’t matter, she could rationalize her purchases no matter what, and it was
ruining her life
.

Starting Shoe Addicts Anonymous had been a good first start. It wasn’t like she was addicted to substances, so the shoes themselves weren’t harming her. It was the spending…the overspending. Which made eBay…good. Right?

She wasn’t
sure
about that, but she was sure of one thing: it was time to do what she should have done a long time ago.

She went to the freezer and took out the Neapolitan ice cream she’d bought for a fussy dinner party she’d had six months ago. She set the box in the sink, lifted the lid, and ran hot water over the crystalized ice and ice cream until it melted enough to reveal the secret within:

Her Nordstrom credit card.

Perhaps because it was a department store credit card, it hadn’t shown up on Phil Carson’s list when he’d made her turn over her cards. So she’d kept it, just in case, a sort of emotional retail crutch she could use in case she really needed to.

She’d already used it twice since then, for online purchases, because she’d long ago memorized the number.

Hiding it in the ice cream had only made it messier for her to dig it out and take it to the store.

Well, all of that had to end now. She had to get rid of this final string that tied her, financially, to her addiction.

She went to the phone and slowly dialed the number on the back. Someone in the credit department answered right away, fortunately, so Lorna forced herself to speak before she could talk herself out of it.