Indie Girl (5 page)

It sounded pathetic, the way he put it. Suddenly, I was embarrassed.

“Is she around? And the baby?” I asked, dying to change the subject.

“Don’t tell me you can’t hear them,” he laughed. “Kyle’s been acting up today. Terrible twos. And trust me, they’re
really
terrible. And Aaralyn’s stressing out about it, so it’s been high drama since six this morning. But listen,” he said, turning his ear toward an upstairs room. “It’s quiet now. Come on, let’s go upstairs so you can meet the little guy.”

I still couldn’t believe I was in Aaralyn Taylor’s house, stepping on her carpet, looking at the family pictures that lined the wall as we walked upstairs. It was absolutely thrilling.

A door was left slightly ajar, the sound of a hair dryer coming from the other side. Juno knocked gently, but obviously Aaralyn couldn’t hear anything. We walked in and I almost fainted in shock at what I saw. Aaralyn was sitting at a dressing table, a round brush in one hand and a hair dryer in another. Across her lay a red-haired boy whose face I couldn’t see because it was buried in his mother’s chest. Sophisticated, remote, inaccessible, worldly Aaralyn Taylor was breastfeeding a toddler, like they did in Africa or Thailand. Would wonders never cease?

“Best way to shut them up,” she said as if reading my thoughts. She was still fussing with her hair although she had now turned the hair dryer off. She was looking
straight into the mirror instead of at me and talking in a low, modulated voice. It sounded like it could have been her professional voice, the one she reserved for assistants and secretaries and drivers; it was cold and almost unfriendly. Juno was leaning against the frame of the door, listening to her, his face relaxed and open compared to her tense one.

“Our weekday nanny is great, even if she’s”—at this point Juno lowered his voice—“illegal,” he said. “But for the occasional weekend, I swear we’ve gone through every babysitter in the greater Los Angeles area. Hey, honey, remember that woman Patti?” he asked his wife, who nodded silently. “We thought she was a godsend,” he said to me. “Until she mentioned that she had just seen her
parole officer.
” He began chuckling. “Oh, and what about that girl Yvette?” Juno continued. “Remember how she wanted to feed Kyle black beans out of a can while watching Spanish soap operas?”

“And my favorite mistake would have to be Flora,” Aaralyn added. I appreciated the fact that they were trying to make me comfortable by telling me all this, although it oddly made me more nervous. I had barely begun, and they were already comparing me to all the other babysitters that had let them down. “She lived in. A lady from the Philippines. She couldn’t drive and was always asking us to run her errands for us.
“Ma’am, can you buy me pork so I can make adobo? Ma’am, can you take
this to the post office? Ma’am, can you get me Ruffles potato chips, unsalted.”
Aaralyn had lapsed into some weird hybrid accent, which made Juno laugh. It was obviously an unguarded moment, something to be shared just with her husband, because as soon as she realized that I was there and listening, she straightened up and her tone changed. It was almost as if she didn’t want me to see that side of her.

“So, as you can see, we’ve had our share of bad luck with babysitters,” she said to me now, composing herself. “And, of course, the second we find somebody decent, Kyle doesn’t like them. I’ve used several agencies, put ads in papers, asked friends of friends. I’ve even attempted poaching other peoples’ nannies—parks are great places for that. I see someone who looks wonderful and immediately get a case of nanny envy. But nothing has ever worked out longer than a day or two. That’s why we’re always looking for somebody new.”

She picked up a canister of hair spray, one of at least a dozen that sat on the counter in front of her.

“But truth be told, I didn’t think you would show up. It’s always the young girls who bail, especially on a Saturday. Something more interesting always turns up.”

“I’m not like that,” I said, looking down on the ground. Kyle had broken away from his mother’s chest, leaving her exposed. I suddenly felt like I was invading a special mother-son moment, although the fact that
Aaralyn Taylor was doing her hair at the same time somehow made it less momentous. “When I say I will do something, I do it.”

“Good attitude,” she said, actually looking away from her hair and at me.

She finally put down her hairdressing tools, grabbed her sleeping son, and carried him to the bed. Juno turned around and left the room. She put Kyle down, covered him with a blanket, and kissed him softly on the forehead. Maybe she was a good mother after all.

“This is about the only time I can handle this motherhood thing,” she said. “When he’s sleeping. The rest of the time it’s just one annoyance after another.”

I looked down at him. His hair was soft and curly and framed an angelic face. He had healthy pink cheeks, fair skin, full lips, and a slightly upturned nose that was definitely inherited from his mother. At first sight, he reminded me of a cherub in a Renaissance painting.

“He’s lovely,” I said.

“Thank you,” Aaralyn answered, looking at her son. “We’re lucky, I guess. With babies, you never know what you’re going to get. Anyway, back to business,” she continued, her voice taking on that officious tone again. “Juno and I will be leaving shortly. We’ll be gone most of the day. But Blanca, my housekeeper, will show you where everything is.”

“Wait!” I shouted. The horror of it all had finally hit
home. I had never been alone with a two-year-old that belonged to someone outside of my family. What if something happened? These people had lawyers. They could sue. My dad was right. What was I thinking?

“I thought I would just be hanging out here with him, but that you would be here too,” I said, realizing I was sounding stupid.

“Then what would I need you for?” Aaralyn asked icily. “Look, I’ve checked you out. I’m not that naive that I would let a total stranger into my house. After I got home the evening of the talk at your school, I called my niece, Brooke. She said you were nice and reliable.”

Nice and reliable. The most popular and cosmopolitan girl in school had barely even noticed me, and now the only thing she could describe me as was nice and reliable. Like a German shepherd.

“You’ll be fine,” Aaralyn said, standing up and throwing on a Marni coat before dabbing on some perfume. She patted me on the shoulder and walked out the door. “Kyle can be a dream. Really.”

I prayed that he would sleep for hours, leaving me to roam around Aaralyn’s house. I switched on the baby monitor and went back downstairs, where Blanca, the maid, was in the kitchen preparing a pot roast.

“You drink something?” she asked, motioning to a cooler with a see-through door, filled with diet soda and bottles of Naked juice. I helped myself to a bottle of
tangerine juice and went back into the living room. Blanca took it upon herself to show me around.

“All this, not for baby,” she said, motioning to the immaculate living room and attached dining area, which featured a chandelier that hung almost to the table, and high-backed chairs covered in beige satin. “Baby only here,” she continued, pointing to the kitchen.

It was probably normal in these circles to have “baby-free” zones. I thought back to my own upbringing, where the entire house was one big playpen, as far as Dinesh and I were concerned. To this day, my father would remind me of how many times he had stepped on tiny Matchbox cars and heads of dolls that I’d pulled off. My mother would cover the couch with an old bedsheet, and the carpets with a tarp, and we would be allowed to paint and sketch and roll and giggle wherever we wanted. My father had a small office at home, converted from a bedroom off the den, and even when he was in there, going over reports or researching some obscure medical condition, his door was always open to us. As a consequence, we learned to respect where we were and knew instinctively what we could touch. Our home was never zoned for attention and love.

“And baby never go there,” said Blanca, pointing to a room off the foyer. I peered inside: It was a home office, an L-shaped desk against one wall holding an Apple G5 computer. Above it was a degree made out to Juno Taylor
from a college of naturopathy, and next to it a host of other diplomas and certificates in things I’d never heard of like Native American ethnobotany and iridology. No wonder Aaralyn seemed so high-strung; her husband probably never allowed her to take any Prozac.

“Sir, he some kinda doctor,” she said, noticing me reading Juno’s certificates. “Has clinic behind house.” She pointed through the window toward what looked like a guesthouse or artist’s studio in the back, beside a large oak tree.

Despite the wall mountings, it was clear that this was Aaralyn’s space. The surface of the desk was covered with previous issues of
Celebrity Style.
A mound of press kits was stacked in one corner, and Post-it notes were everywhere. There were framed photographs of Aaralyn with people I had long admired from afar: Oscar de la Renta on one side and Jennifer Aniston on the other, Selma Blair and Miuccia Prada, Charlize Theron and Michael Kors: the best people in fashion and the biggest stars in Hollywood.

On a notepad were what looked like story ideas for the next several issues: “The Style Evolution of Rosario Dawson,” “Jessica (Simpson) vs Jessica (Alba): The Fashion Face-off,” “Is Black Back?” Just staring at those words got me excited: I had never even stepped into a magazine office before, but I could already see how those stories would unfold, what pictures they would use, how
they could be done with savvy. For a second, I forgot what I was really doing here in this house, so immersed was I in the world inside this office.

And then I heard the wailing through the monitor.

When I went back upstairs to get him, Kyle took one look at me, realized I wasn’t his mother, and started screeching. No matter what I did, I couldn’t calm him. I shushed in his ear, rocked him on my shoulder, tried to distract him with some crystal earrings I found dangling from an earring tree on Aaralyn’s dressing table. But still he wailed. I reached for the monitor and turned it off, not wanting Blanca to hear the baby’s distress. He squirmed out of my arms and tumbled back on the bed again, which caused him to cry even louder.

“Mama!” he screamed. “M
aaaaammmmaaaa!
”

I scooped him up and turned him to face outward so he couldn’t push against me. I decided to head toward his room, which was down the corridor and across the hallway and seemed as good a place to go as any. Then Blanca showed up with a sippy cup and a plate of sliced bananas. I was relieved to see her, until I realized that she was only there to deliver the food, and was going back down to resume her cooking.

“What do I do with him?” I asked, his face turning red as he continued to scream.

“You give him food, change diaper. Maybe then he be better,” she said loudly, trying to make herself heard above the din.

I found a bib folded on a table, and wrapped it around Kyle’s neck. I handed him the sippy cup and he threw it across the room where it hit a wall, cracking the lid open and leaving a streak of orange juice on the pale blue carpet.

“Great,” I said under my breath as I reached for a box of wet wipes nearby to try and clean up the mess. In the meantime, Kyle had shoved his tiny pudgy fingers into the bananas and began smearing them down his shirt and in his hair. He stopped crying when he realized how much fun he was having, giggling instead.

“Blanca!” I called out. “Help!”

She came back upstairs, saw Kyle with a face full of banana and the stain of juice on the floor, and began laughing.

“You no do this before, yes?” she asked. “You no babysitter?”

I realized that I was in over my head. There had to be an easier way to get close to Aaralyn Taylor.

“Come. Your first day, I help you,” said Blanca,
scooping up the child while I followed them meekly, feeling like a child myself. We headed into his bathroom, which was decorated with yellow duckling decals all over the walls, took off his clothes, and immersed him in a lavender-scented bubble bath. He frolicked in the tub, squirting water out of a red plastic dolphin, while I played peekaboo with the duckling-emblazoned shower curtain. Finally, he was happy.

Cleaned and bathed, the bits of banana shampooed out of his hair, Kyle’s mood was drastically improved. Blanca served us lunch—mashed potatoes, a boiled egg, and sliced steamed carrots for him, all oddly drowning in ketchup, and a turkey sandwich for me. When he refused to eat, I did the old airplane trick, the one I had seen my mom do on Dinesh, where I pretended the spoon of food was an airplane swooping down, needing a place to touch down.

“It’s going to land in your mouth!” I said as Kyle opened up wide, swallowed his food, and then squealed in delight. His plate finally clean, we went back upstairs to play. Both of us crouching on the floor, we rolled a small rubber ball around, his face brightening in delight every time he caught it between his pudgy hands. I pulled funny faces, causing him to shriek with laughter, which ended up making
me
laugh. This babysitting thing was a cinch after all.

I pulled out several tubs of paint and a few brushes from a box, Kyle clapping his hands when he saw what we
were going to do next. Outside the room on the carpeted hallway was a small stack of newspapers stretching back a few days, so I brought some in and laid them down. I couldn’t find any plain paper, so I helped Kyle paint on the printed words of the
Los Angeles Times,
his little brush sweeping over headlines and photographs.

Then I heard my cell phone ring in my purse and raced downstairs to get it, figuring it was probably my dad wondering what time to come and fetch me.

It was Kim, calling to find out how my day was going.

“Not bad so far,” I said, leaning up against a wall. “This house is beautiful, and oh my God, I even saw Aaralyn’s office where she had all these photographs of her with celebrities and fashion designers. She’s even more glamorous than I thought! It really put it all in pers—”