Have to Have It (4 page)

Lydia was met with a huge surprise when she let herself in the back door of the moms' house: her aunt Kat—who was supposed to be on the East Coast, prepping for her latest ESPN tennis reporting assignment—was sitting at the kitchen table with Anya.

Neither of them looked at all happy.

Not good. Anya had probably filled Kat in on the “borrowing” issue, as well as the “she sucks as a nanny” issue. Still, Lydia pasted a welcoming smile on her face—she'd learned from the Amas how to maneuver a power play: never let 'em see you sweat—and stepped into the state-of-the-art kitchen with its flowery, southwestern-style mosaic floor and stainless steel everything else.

Alfre, the moms' nutritionist, a radiantly healthy ex-hippie chick in suede Birkenstocks, was hard at work chopping raw scallions and red bell peppers on the counter. Lydia reasoned
that this was a positive sign. If Alfre was on site for a talking-to, then the talking-to couldn't turn out to be too severe.

“Hey, Alfre,” Lydia offered. “Whatever you're slicing sure smells delish.”

“Raw veggies,” Anya snapped with her thick Russian accent. “You have not eaten single raw veggie since you arrive from Amazon.”

Well, okay, that was true, Lydia allowed mentally. But there was no need to make her into a criminal because she turned down the odd crudité.

Lydia suddenly flashed to a time in the rain forest when she'd been fishing alone. She'd been just about to climb back up the riverbank when she'd seen an angry tapir—a sort of anteater mutant—confronting her. This had been no joke, since the tapir had weighed about four hundred pounds. In that situation, the best defense can be a good offense. Lydia had flung her cane fishing pole at the beast, then had screamed and charged like a wild woman, figuring that if she stayed where she was on the log, she was a goner. The tapir had frozen in its spot for a split second, then turned its snouty face and bolted back into the jungle.

Two angry tapirs, minus the snouts
, Lydia told herself as she took in the moms' scowls.

The best defense can be a good offense.

“Aunt Kat!” Lydia cried, as if just now noticing her in the room. She was also careful to emphasis the “aunt” part, as if unexpectedly seeing her aunt was perhaps the single most exciting thing that could happen to a girl. After all, blood was thicker than whatever it was Anya and Kat did under the sheets. At least, Lydia hoped it was.

“Alfre, would you excuse us?” Kat asked pointedly, without even so much as a look at Lydia.

Uh-oh. More not good. Alfre dismissed. Really,
really
not good.

“It's no problem, I've got to go to Whole Foods anyway,” Alfre responded cheerfully. “We're out of organic sprouts.”

Suck-up
, Lydia thought. Alfre worked for these people. What was she going to say? No?

Lydia pulled down her cutoff Houston Oilers football jersey so that it covered every inch of midriff, and hitched up her cutoff shorts with the same goal in mind. These were the clothes in which she'd arrived, and she'd put them on just to be on the safe side. Never underestimate the power of nostalgia. “So, Aunt Kat. We didn't expect you home for a few days!”

Anya literally grabbed her partner's arm. “You see?” she cried. “She has responsibility of hamster! She acts like all is normal. All is not normal!”

Jeez
, Lydia thought.
She probably has “Drama Queen” tattooed on both cheeks of her butt.

Kat motioned for Lydia to take a seat at the far end of the table. Lydia did, noticing how tired her aunt looked; the disheveled expensive white silk Armani suit, the noticeable bags under her blue eyes. Since she'd gotten her new job as ESPN's chief women's tennis commentator, she'd been working very hard.

“Anya filled me in on the goings-on around here, Lydia.”

Lydia played dumb. “Really?”

Her aunt's partner leaped to her feet and pointed a finger at Lydia. “You know, you know. You take daughter Martina for
dessert. You make children eat bugs. Martina go belly dancing, I see her practice in room. You take clothes from Kat and my closet with no asking.” She grabbed Kat's forearm again, this time in a death grip. “She give children
milk!”

“Only to prove that they're not allergic,” Lydia defended herself. “I mean, they might have been, but they're not anymore.” She looked over at Kat. “Isn't it great that I found that out?”

No agreement was forthcoming. Instead, Lydia got an upbraiding from her aunt that went on for five minutes and covered everything from how Kat and Anya had done a favor for Lydia by bringing her out of the rain forest, to how Lydia was interfering with Kat and Anya's parental authority, to how Lydia was besmirching the Chandler family name with her unprofessional and downright dangerous behavior.

Lydia shook her choppy blond hair off her face and waited for the tirade to end. As she did, she made some quick calculations. Obviously, she was not going to be fired, probably because Kat still took pity on her for all those years in the rain forest with only air-dropped copies of
Cosmo
for company. She would have to bide her time on the reformation project for Martina, wherein she planned to help the plump, self-conscious, generally miserable ten-year-old to actually get a life. She'd have to figure out a way to get some decent clothes of her own instead of raiding the moms' closet. What about those upscale used clothing places she'd heard about? Maybe she could troll there and—

“… nanny cam,” Kat concluded.

Oops. Lydia had missed most of that, but anything that ended in “nanny cam” could not possibly be a positive development.

“Sorry?” Lydia asked, as pleasantly as possible.

“You heard,” Anya accused. “You just don't like what you hear. Nanny cams. We need eyes in the back of head for you!”

Nanny cams. That had to be those closed-circuit television systems by which parents could keep an eye on their nannies' doings. Some parents hid the minuscule cameras in their children's Steiff animals. Her own aunt would do that to her?

“Gee, Aunt Kat, that's a little drastic,” Lydia began.

“Not drastic enough!” Anya insisted, eyes blazing. “There must be confidences for what Lydia has done,” she declared, after some further assassination of Lydia's character.

“Consequences, you mean,” Kat corrected.

“Yes, yes,” Anya agreed. “Consequences. In old Soviet Union when I was girl, we would go before committee.”

“There are no committees here, but I can think of one thing in addition to the nanny cams that will show you how serious we are, Lydia,” Kat mused. “It should also help you focus on your responsibilities.” Kat rested her head on her hands and looked at Lydia. “How often does X drive you around?”

X was the moms' driver. A gay guy in his early twenties with exquisite taste in both clothes and friends (in fact, Lydia was in a hot relationship with his very hetero best friend, Billy Martin), he had gotten to be great buds with Lydia. She had taken advantage of his services not just to bring the children to various activities, but also as a way to get from point A to point B herself. It wasn't as if a girl could ride a bus to Los Feliz, nor could she have taken driver's ed in the Amazon.

“Some,” Lydia ventured.

“Ha!” Anya barked. “I check mileage on BMW!”

Anya was keeping track of the mileage on the BMW to see when Lydia was taking unauthorized trips? Jeez, Joseph Stalin had nothing on her.

Kat stood up. “Until the end of the summer, no unauthorized trips with our driver. If you're in the car with X, it's because we said you should be there.”

Okay, this was definitely going to cramp her style. Without X, she was pretty much in a very well-heeled jail.

Anya took a list out of the pocket of her green velour pants dotted in artistically placed anchor appliqués. They were the sort of pants Lydia would have liberated from the moms' closet until recently. “Right now, you and children have appointment with local public library. I will drive you myself there to be sure children do not select comic books. Go get ready. Be at BMW in four minutes.”

Kat nodded and Lydia realized that was that. Class dismissed.

Well, at least she still had her job.

Kiley shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and forced herself to tell Esme and Lydia the horrible words she'd been thinking ever since she'd arrived at the Brentwood Hills Country Club: “This is probably the last time we'll be together.”

They wound their way out of the kids' indoor play area that included a trampoline, a miniature golf course (complete with a giant windmill), a rock-climbing wall, a big-screen TV (high-def, of course), and a lifetime supply of LEGOs, video games, and Power Wheels. Ten feet ahead of them, Weston and Easton, wearing identical pleated Lilly Pulitzer skirts and bubble-gum pink polos, chugged along. They were mixed in with a gaggle of other kids, all part of the country club's “Nanny and Me” afternoon programming. Every kid carried a plastic golf putter.

Anya and Kat's children had wanted to be in the equivalent older kids' group, but Anya had been absolutely inflexible.
Instead, they had a private swimming lesson scheduled, and the private swimming lesson was what they'd attend. It gave Lydia some free time—she would meet them at the family pool in two hours.

“Hey, you never know,” Esme tried to reassure her while still keeping a watchful eye on the twins.

“This time, I know,” Kiley muttered. “My mom has me on a ten o'clock flight tomorrow morning back to La Crosse. Nonrefundable.”

Lydia offered a sympathetic smile. “Too bad that thing didn't work out at the coffeehouse with Esme's friend.”

Kiley shrugged. “It wouldn't have mattered. My mom said I couldn't live in Echo Park.” She shot Esme a guilty look. “No offense, Esme.”

“No offense taken,” Esme assured her.

“I don't see why we're just giving up, y'all,” Lydia insisted. “We just need another good brainstorm session. Maybe I can find you another nanny job.”

“I appreciate the offer,” Kiley said, “but there isn't enough time. My mom wouldn't allow it, anyway. I think she's ruined for life on the idea of me being a nanny. God, it's so ironic. Here I am at the first day of Nanny and Me—a nanny with no kids to nanny for, because they're under state protection.”

Nanny and Me was one of the country club's most popular programs. Many of the members were parents of kids under the age of nine, and many of those parents worked full-time and/or did charity work full-time and/or were simply too busy with paraffin pedis, shopping sprees, or cheating on a spouse in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. So the country club offered Nanny and Me, where special counselors organized activities for
the children and their nannies. It seemed as though all the country club kids had nannies—many had more than one, with the second nanny to fill in on weekends and days off. Sometimes a third nanny covered nights.

Today was the first day of this season's Nanny and Me; Kiley was impressed by the turnout. There were upwards of three dozen nannies—she heard accents from France, England, the American South, Jamaica, and the Far East—shepherding twice that many young children.

In a way, being there was painful. The whole day had been painful, in fact, and not just because her mother had ordered her to come home. Even the skimpy helping hand that Jorge had offered, the possibility of her waitressing at La Verdad coffeehouse, had been ripped asunder by reality. Kiley had hoped against hope that if she had a job, her mother would relent. But it turned out that La Verdad had no job openings. Jorge tried to cajole Geraldo, but it was no use. In the end, he was as disappointed as she was.

They'd just been leaving La Verdad when Kiley had gotten the call from Esme—did she want to come to the country club? At first Kiley had demurred; then she'd decided that they'd probably not even let her through the iron gate. But Esme had insisted, and asked Jorge to drop Kiley at the country club. He'd agreed, since he'd ordered some books from Dutton's bookstore in Brentwood, which wasn't all that far away from the club. Kiley realized she had nothing better to do, so she took Esme up on her offer.

To her surprise, she had no problem getting into the club— the skinny security guard with the bleached blond hair recognized her and waved her through. She met Esme and Lydia in
the activity center with the kids. The first thing she noticed was that Lydia wasn't decked out in her aunt's “borrowed” couture duds. Instead, she was in her old ratty Houston Oilers jersey and cutoffs that she'd brought back from the Amazon. Lydia quickly explained how she'd been busted by the moms and how her closet-raiding days were a thing of the past. As for Esme, this would be her first and last day at Nanny and Me for a while, since she was going with the Goldhagens on a snap vacation to Jamaica the next morning.

Kiley bumped a hip softly into Esme's as they walked past the grass tennis courts, one of the few such facilities in Los Angeles. “You didn't say exactly who else was going to Jamaica, you know.”

“In other words, is Jonathan going?” Lydia translated. “She didn't tell me, either.”

“The answer is no,” Esme said. “Just Steven, Diane, the twins, and me. They're meeting another family down there. The Silversteins or something like that. It's just as well because this morning Jonathan and I—”

She stopped midsentence, because the twins were gleefully launching themselves into mud puddles that had been left by the tennis court watering system. “Weston!
¡Por favor, no más d'eso!”

“¿Por qué no?”
Weston asked, hands on nonexistent hips.
“¡Es más diversión que esta actividad estúpida!”

Esme cracked up.

“What did she say?” Kiley asked.

“Why should I stop?” Esme translated. “It's more fun than this stupid thing we're going to do.”

Kiley laughed. “They're so cute.”

Esme rolled her eyes. “Not all the time, believe me. Look at Easton.” She pointed—Easton was giving chase to a big lizard, swinging her mini putter at it with malice aforethought. She gave up when the lizard scurried up one of the massive palm trees lining the walkway, but only after whacking the tree a few times for good measure.

“We used to eat those things in the rain forest,” Lydia recalled. “They're really good if they're fried in fresh lard.”

Kiley made a face. “Is there anything alive that you didn't eat down there?”

“People,” Lydia mused. “But I can't speak for the Amas. Most of them have given up cannibalism, of course. But you'll always have your traditionalists.” She looked over at Esme. “So what did you start to say about you and Jonathan?”

As they headed for the golf course, Esme brought them up to date on her new double-secret-probation status, which included no contact with the Goldhagens' son.

“They might as well put me in a burka so that nothing shows except my eyes,” Esme complained. “Wouldn't want to tempt the royal prince.”

Kiley was confused. “Wait, are you mad at Jonathan or something?”

“No,” Esme mumbled.

“You say no but there's a yes in your voice,” Kiley insisted.

Esme sighed and raked her long hair back with her fingers. “He says we can come out in the open and have a ‘real relationship.’”

“So, that's what you wanted, girl,” Lydia reminded her.

“How do we do that and at the same time pretend that we're nearly strangers when we're at home?” Esme queried.

Lydia shook her head. “See, now, I don't believe that's really what's holding you back.”

Esme dead-eyed Lydia. “Oh, you know me better than I know me, is that it?”

Lydia stopped and pivoted toward Esme. “Maybe I do at the moment. You want this boy more than I want a no-limit Visa card, but you're afraid to admit how much you want him because it makes you feel all scared and vulnerable. How close to on the money would you call
that
?”

“Not to mention that you'd have to tell Junior everything,” Kiley added, since she felt certain that Lydia was right.

Esme held up her palm. “Can we table this conversation? I'm supposed to be working.”

The look on Esme's face made Kiley hold her tongue. It made her sad, too. It wasn't as if they could discuss it tomorrow, or the next day, or next week sometime, because Kiley would be back in La Crosse, filling out an application to serve deep-dish pepperoni pies at Pizza-Neatsa.

God, she was going to miss these two girls so much.

The grounds of the club golf course were normally off-limits to anyone who wasn't playing. On this exceptional Nanny and Me day, though, the welcome mat had been put out. There was literally a red carpet leading down the cobblestone path to the golf clubhouse, and a banner hoisted across the path announced:
NANNY AND ME MINI-GOLF TOURNAMENT. TODAY! PUTTING GREEN CLOSED FROM 1:00 P.M. TO 3:00 P.M. NANNIES AND KIDS ONLY
.

The moment they hit the red carpet, Easton and Weston charged ahead. The second they started to run, the pack of kids ran after them, laughing and shouting. A couple of little ones
even dropped to the ground and rolled on their sides all the way to the bottom, nannies screaming and chasing after them, not wanting to be blamed for the damage done to clothes recently purchased at Fred Segal.

When they reached the putting green itself, Kiley saw that it had been decorated specially for the competition. A leaderboard had been erected, on which each of the kids' names had been painted, along with blank spots for their scores on eighteen holes. There was even a spectators' gallery, with bleachers and an overhang to protect it from the sun. Once all the nannies had taken charge of their kids, the head golf pro—forty years old with a hawkish nose and chiseled features; dark hair that was just beginning to gray at the temples; and tanned, muscled biceps straining his short-sleeved white golf shirt with the country club's logo embroidered in blue on the left-hand breast pocket—spoke into a wireless microphone attached to the collar of his shirt.

“Welcome, kids, nannies. I'm Oliver Sturman, head pro at the club and MC for today's event. Would the nannies please take seats in the bleachers? I'm sure you won't mind the break in the least. Golf staff members, please join up with two or three of the children. Thank you.”

Lydia poked Kiley as they moved into bleacher seats with the other nannies. Meanwhile, eight attractive young men and women, all wearing the club's official white golf shirt, trotted out of the clubhouse. Each of them held a putter.

“Sturman,” Lydia guffawed as she found a seat. “Sounds like Studman.”

Esme, who sat on the other side of Kiley, peered around to Lydia. “Don't you ever stop thinking about sex?”

“In all honesty, rarely,” Lydia confessed. “Well, of course, I do. When I think about shopping.”

Kiley laughed. Even from where she sat, she could see a handsome young man—spiky, short dark hair, luscious caramel skin—speaking to Easton and Weston. They were obviously speaking Spanish, because the girls jabbered back as if this guy was their long-lost uncle. Then they turned to the bleachers with huge happy smiles, looking for Esme.

“Excuse me,” Esme told Kiley and Lydia. “I think I'm being summoned. Save my seat.”

“Nannies,” Oliver Sturman intoned into his microphone, “we're pleased to present you with a welcome basket to this event, compliments of the club. You'll find those baskets directly under your seats.”

Kiley reached under her seat. Sure enough, her hands touched a white wicker basket. It held everything that the nannies might need to be comfortable during what would evidently be a kids' putting competition: oversized J. Lo sunglasses, a butter yellow Lacoste sun hat, and a liter bottle of Badoit water from the Loire Valley in France, nestled in a special icy container—which also featured the club's logo—to keep it cold. There was also 40 SPF Kiehl's sunblock, Rosebud Salve, a jet black iPod Nano already filled with three hundred summer-centric songs (à la the Beach Boys), a copy of the latest editions of
People, Glamour
, and
Los Angeles
magazines, and a soft foam cushion to go between butt and seat.

Lydia pawed through her basket. “Screw this stuff, I need clothes. They couldn't throw in a designer T-shirt or two?” She held up the iPod. “Hmmm. Maybe I could sell this on eBay.
There's a notion. Maybe you could start an eBay business out of Jorge's house. I hear some people make serious money that way. You could stay in L.A.—”

“Not gonna happen,” Kiley interrupted. “You don't know my mother.” She smiled wanly. “Thanks for trying, though.”

A few moments later, Esme rejoined them, and gave them the report on the assistant pro who had so captivated the twins. His name was Luis, he hailed from Costa Rica, and he was in America on a golf scholarship to Pepperdine University.

Lydia turned to check Luis out. He was attempting to teach Easton and Weston how to hold their putters properly, which was incredible, since a few minutes before, they had been more interested in swinging them at each other's heads.

“Marry him,” she decreed. “No, wait, marriage is the last step before divorce. Have a torrid fling.”

Esme shot Lydia one of her “if looks could kill” specials, which made Kiley's throat ache. No one in La Crosse was remotely like these girls. It hurt to be with them now, even, but in the best possible way.

As the golf pros were leading their junior charges out onto the putting green, Lydia watched Luis give some quick last-minute instructions to the twins. They appeared to hang on his every word as he dropped two golf balls to the manicured green, then pointed to a hole about ten feet away. He steadied Weston's hands on the putter, then helped her line up her shot.