Nanny Returns (3 page)

“
You
wore flammable pajamas,” Grandma says, touching me on the nose. “And lived. Cheers!” We all raise our glasses. Pepper lifts her sippy cup. “To adventures and reunions!”

“To adventures and reunions,” we echo, clinking rims.

“Speaking of reunions,” I say, setting down my glass. “Guess who I ran into at the closing?”

“Hmm, does the firm also do divorces? That widens the field . . .” Josh muses, dabbing a globule of jelly from Pepper’s chin.

“No.
At
the Hutchinsons’ closing. As in the buyer.”

“No idea,” Sarah says, savoringly slurping her stew.

“Citrine.”

“SHUT. UP.” Sarah drops her spoon on her plate and shoves me.

I turn to Josh to explain. “High school queen-honey-buzz-buzz.” I twirl my spoon from my forehead like antennae.

“
She
bought the Hutchinsons’ apartment?” Sarah gapes. “That’s
insane
. I mean, I heard her stuff was selling, but is she, like, Damien Hirst and I missed it?”

“She married some dude in finance.”

“Goddammit!” Sarah slaps the table, the silverware rattling. “Why can’t I marry some dude in finance? Night after night, I’m like, dear God, please let me sew up some dude in finance. But no, I get Harry with the perforated ulcer and bed sores.”

“Honey, you are trying to marry out of the
wrong
hospital,” Josh says as he sips his wine.

“So, what was she like?” Sarah asks, ripping the end off the baguette. “Did she steal anything from you? Or punch you?”

“She wasn’t the puncher. That was Pippa. She invited me to dinner.”

“Shut up!” Sarah squeals. Her shut-ups are varied and tonal like an Asian language.

“I think I’m going to go. Maybe she’s grown and changed. We’ve changed.”

“No. There’s no way one of those bitches has grown a soul.”

“Bitch,” Pepper repeats.

Sarah is aghast. “Sorry.”

“She has a linguistic honing device,” Josh says, shrugging. “As long as she doesn’t tell her kindergarten interviewer to go
fuck
”—he mouths—“themselves, we’re fine.”

“Look,” I continue, “you’re working crazy hours. Josh here is parenting up a storm. I need to scare up some new friends.”

“ ‘Scare’ being the operative word.” Sarah arches an eyebrow.

“Well, I for one, am thrilled you’re making new friends on this side of the Atlantic. Anyone want more potatoes?” Grandma dabs at the corners of her mouth, careful not to disturb her rose lipstick. “They’re on the stove.”

“I’ll get them.” Sarah pushes her chair back. “So, Fran,” she begins as she retreats behind the screen, “speaking of adventures—this place is
amazing,
but I bet a little shocking in your circles. Nan tried to take me through it, but I need to hear it from the horse’s mouth.” She returns with the skillet and slides a few new potatoes onto each of our plates.

“Neeeh,” Grandma says, pawing the table with her knuckled hoof and snorting.

“Neeeh,” Pepper repeats, and giggles.

“Well, darling, you reach a point where you realize all the charming things you’ve accumulated are just going to be someone’s headache in the not-so-distant future. And you have that
someone
over for dinner and they stare at all your charming things like the headache is already building, so I decided to be preemptive. Instead of the usual
après moi le déluge
, I asked myself if there was anything I’d never done that I really wanted. And I realized I went from my parents’ town house to Vassar to my husband’s apartment. And I wanted to have my bohemian twenties. In my eighties! So I got the fantastic privilege of being able to give my things to people while I can still hear them say thank you. And here we are.” She lifts out her arms and we look across the fifty-foot room—past the couches floating in the middle, her four-poster bed adrift ten feet beyond that, all the way back to her pottery wheel and easel set up by the far wall of windows. “I did a little work—a friend had the genius idea of sealing the concrete floors in high-gloss polyurethane—isn’t it fabulous? But I didn’t finish the powder room until yesterday. It took me over a year to track down the original wallpaper, but, Nan, you must check it out.”

“Yes, ma’am!” I put down my hunk of bread and scurry over to slide the steel door aside, stunned to find I’ve let myself into a replica of the bathroom she had on Fifth Avenue, the same peach chintz wallpaper backdrop to the same framed French paper dolls, and above, the same chandelier. Bamboozled twice in one day, I swallow over a sparkling lump forming in my throat. Eyes wetting, I sit down on the toilet seat.

“Nan?” I hear her knock and roll back the door a crack as I reach for a wad of toilet paper. “You all right?”

“Ugh, just being silly. You kept the bathroom,” I try to exclaim through the disintegrating tissue.

“Re-created.” She steps in and slides the door shut behind her.

“Why?”

“Well,” she begins tentatively, reaching to the mother-of-pearl box of peach Kleenex on the glass shelf behind my head. “When I tried on selling the old place, the only thing that held me back, the only unfulfilled vision—I mean, I’d hosted parties for you on the terrace, I’d let out every room to every conceivable type of artist—the only thing I hadn’t yet seen was your daughter playing salon in her mother’s favorite hideout.” She points to where the peach fabric stiffly balloons beneath the porcelain sink.

At that, I drop my forehead into my palms and watch big tears splash onto my skirt.

“And . . .” She lifts my chin, brushing my dampening hair off my face with a gentle finger. “Whenever I feel lost I can come in here and reconnect with my roots.”

“You feel lost?” I wipe my nose, glancing at where the marble meets the glazed concrete beneath the door. “Liar.”

“That’s where the exciting stuff happens, Nan! I’m scared of people who always know where they’re going.” She steps past me to check her lipstick. “They’re not thinking enough.”

“What if that little girl doesn’t—”

“Honey, no pressure.” She pulls a linen hand towel from the ring and hands it to me.

“No pressure? You spent a year building a room for my unborn child to play in—unborn
female
child.”

“I’m not discriminating. Now come have some cake.”

I nod, standing to give her a hug before she lets herself out. I toss some water onto my face, trying to dodge the red-eyed grown-up reflected back in a mirror I used to have to reach up on tiptoes to see into. Letting out a long breath, I reshape the towel and return to the party.

“Oh!” Sarah’s expression softens in concern as I rejoin the table. “You okay?”

“Yes, totally. Just a lot going on.”

“God, it’s been so long since one of us bawled.” Sarah rubs my shoulder. “I’m a little bummed you left for that.”

“I didn’t want to kick off a chain reaction,” I say, taking a slice of plum cake and pouring myself some more wine.

“Appreciated.” Josh caresses the little downy pate sleeping against his chest.

“Nan, I’m sorry my hours are so absurd I haven’t been able to see you more.” Sarah pats my hand. “Sorry to be driving you into the arms of Citrine Kittridge.”

“Oh my God, no worries, it’s totally not that.” I shake my head, passing a smaller slice of cake along to Pepper. “It’s just, we got back, like, a minute ago. We’re living out of boxes, everything’s chaotic and covered in asbestos dust, I’ve only drummed up one client, Grace just finally stopped peeing every time anyone turns on a power tool, and today Ryan springs some major paternal urge on me.”

“Great,” Josh cheers as Pepper digs in. “Go for it. Jen wanted to make VP before she’d even consider it, but the Almighty had other plans. Her equities career is great and it’s the most fun I’ve ever had.”

“Really? The stretch marks and the nipple chafing not killing you?” I tilt my head.

“Your episiotomy heal well?” Sarah chimes in.

“Dude.” I shake my fork at him. “Ryan’s logging crazy hours; I don’t
have
a you and we can’t afford for me to
be
a you, so I don’t know exactly how this is supposed to work.”

Grandma passes around the whipped cream. “Oh, dear, then I sprung a powder room on you—you’re getting it from all sides.”

Sarah leans in to pour herself some wine. “Well, I haven’t had s-e-x this calendar year, so at this point, even knowing who the father of your children is going to be seems like a huge privilege.”

“No, no, it is,” I backtrack. “I just . . .”

“Just what?” Grandma nods encouragingly for me to continue.

“We’ve been moving around so much that we haven’t really talked about this seriously, as in, ‘Okay, we’ll start in blank months.’ I mean, I assumed with moving home, buying the house—in the back of my head I
knew
this was the next conversation. But to start it at 721 Park? It’s just really strange to all of a sudden be so far apart on anything, especially something so huge, and what’s even weirder is I don’t really know why we’re so far apart.”

“Maybe the nipple chafing?” Sarah says.

“I’m not going to lie to you . . .” Grandma says wryly, picking up the skillet to take it to the sink.

After Sarah and I get Josh, Wyatt, and a passed-out Pepper situated in a cab, I check my voice mail as we walk toward the Franklin Street station. “Hey, babe, I was really hoping to reach you. I have to catch the last shuttle to D.C.—grain riots. I’m so sorry. But I walked Grace and I’ll call you when I get a break tomorrow, okay? Miss you already. Sweet dreams.” Bummed that I forgot to turn my ringer back on after the training, I text Ryan that all is well, I am full of lamb Provençale, and he should have himself some sweet dreams, too. I arrive home to a box of Mallomars and a bale of deli flowers in a plaster bucket full of water. And I swoon.

Hours later Grace barks sharply, jerking me awake from a dead sleep as she flip-twists onto all fours.

“Grace,” I grumblingly reprimand, squinting through the darkness to where she peers out the bedroom doorway, like our night is about to go Lifetime. I stretch to the microwave-serving-as-night-table—1:23 a.m.—fumbling for my cell. She resumes barking with a ferocity that lifts her front paws in little jumps. Ears ringing, I grab the phone and it glows to life, illuminating a text informing me that my husband is currently tucked in at the D.C. Radisson. I put my finger over the nine, primed to dial for help, when I hear—

ZZZZZZZ …ZZZ …ZZZZZZ.

“Grace!” I scream with exasperation, and momentarily stunned, she turns to me. “It’s the doorbell,” I explain, as if this should reassure us. I pull on yoga pants, tug Ryan’s sweater over my slip, and feel my feet around for my Adidas.

Grace is squared protectively in the doorframe and, seeing me dressed and in motion, she scrambles for her throw rope and barrels to the stairs. “This is not a walk. We are not walking.” She wags her tail with blind optimism. Holding my cell, I feel for the light switch. The bare bulb comes to life, illuminating the hall, the second-story landing, and the vestibule below.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

“Crap,” I mutter, nearly felled by my flopping laces as I descend the final two steps into the once grand, now puke green and linoleumed foyer. I pull back the crispy, yellowed lace covering the one of two narrow side windows framing the door. A glimpse of a long-ashed cigarette smoking in a man’s fingers jerks me back to the wall. Grace pants around her frayed rope as she stares intently at the bottom of the door, waiting for it to be opened. Not a chance. I glance at the dead bolt to confirm it’s bolted and, with a dully clattering heart, back up to the railing.

ZZZZZZZZZZ—
fitz!
The light two stories above goes out. Bringing us to a last pair of working fuses. Fabulous.

“Fuck,” I hear from the front stoop. I stare at the door’s peeling paint with an intensity rivaling Grace’s. “Look, just open up,” he speaks in a plaintive slur. “I left my wallet in the cab …and I just …I heard you …I know you’re—fuck.” I hear a thump and then something sliding heavily down the other side of the door.

Grace drops her head to sniff the jamb. I take a tentative step and ever so slightly lift the curtain. The streetlamp illuminates splayed khaki pants ending in shiny loafers. I make out slender fingers drifting open, releasing their grip on a black iPhone. My well-attired assailant is now slipping into unconsciousness? Death?

“Hey.” My voice surprises me and sets Grace barking. “
Stop.
” I put my hands around her muzzle to listen …Nothing. “Hey!” I slap the door.

“Yeah?” he coughs. “You’re home.”

“Who are you looking for?” I step around where Grace sits, ears squarely perked.

“Um . . .” I hear a scuffle; he’s attempting to stand up. “I’m looking for a …Nanny?”

My throat goes dry. I peer back out through the frayed lace covering the pane between us. “What?”

“Yeah, Nanny. Are you—”

“Stand in front of the glass. On your right.” …Nothing. “Hey!”

“Yeah.”

“Your other right.”

Suddenly my view of the stoop is filled with a swerving face—a man—boy—somewhere in between. Beneath the mussed blond hair, atop the faintly freckled nose are two bloodshot blue eyes. They look out at me from the striking bone structure that unmistakably conjures his mother. I push my forehead into the cold glass, feeling at once a hundred years old and twenty-one. “Grayer?”

2

“You know me,” he states flatly, taking a half step back from the window.

“Grayer,” I repeat to the teenage incarnation of my last charge.

He swerves out of view, sending me fumbling for the locks. Grabbing a restraining hold of Grace’s collar, I dart outside just in time to hook his belt loops as he tips over the stoop wall and retches onto the garbage cans. Bending my knees to counter his heaving weight in the frigid night air, I note that the heat is the one thing that fully functions in the house looming above us.

“Okay …done,” he croaks, and I pull him upright, his body loose like a harlequin, emitting a thick aroma of liquor and nicotine. He rakes the sleeve of his peacoat across his face and stumbles back to lean against the closed door, his eyes focusing as Grace growls through the wood.

“You’re taller than me,” is all I can say, realizing this is actually happening.

“You have, like, a pit bull in there?”

“A golden retriever.”

“I had one …I was allergic …as a kid …had to get rid of it.” His eyes roll back.

“I think you should come inside.” I gesture to the knob. He nods, momentarily righting himself, and I awkwardly maneuver around him to open the door. Grace grabs her rope and jumps up to greet us.

“Woo. Hey.” Grayer pats her down, reaching a hand to the banister and swinging himself in a large arc to sit on the bottom step. I relock the door and turn to stare at him in the streetlight spilling through the transom’s stained glass.

“Grayer,” I falter, reaching far into my brain for the speech I’d once prepared for this very moment. “I’m so,
so
—”

“You a witch?” he asks, resting his head against the wall.

“What? No, I—”

“Cooking meth?”

“Okay,
I
didn’t just show up at your house puking.”

“It’s just . . .” He waves his hand around the decrepit foyer, which Grace takes as an invitation to wag over and lick the remnants of his upheaval off his coat.

“I’m—we’re, my husband and I are renovating.” I cross my arms over Ryan’s sweater. “How did you find me?”

“My mom’s files. Some notes about the Hutchinsons and then, you know, Google.”

I feel an unexpected burst of pride in this demonstration of his smarts—immediately extinguished as he fishes through his pockets to draw out a pack of American Spirits. “No.” Grace backs up, head down. “Sorry, but no, you can’t smoke inside.”

“This is inside?” He cradles the pack between his hands. “This isn’t, like, the confound-the-mutants antechamber and those doors open to a fat pad?”

“No, this is …it has a lot of potential.”

“Right.” His eyes drift close and the cigarettes slip to the step below.

“Grayer.”

“Yup.”

“Why are you here?”

“To tell you to go fuck yourself.” He inhales in two quick sniffs, eyes still closed.

My stomach twists. “Okay.”

His eyes flutter open, seeking mine in the dim light. “Okay?”

“Yes. I mean, yes, I understand. I—”

“Okay?”
He throws his hands out and jerks forward, his elbows landing on his knees. “Great! That’s great! Because, you know, you talked a lot of shit to be someone I have to fucking
Google
. You wanted to give them
the desire to know me
, huh? But you walked out like the rest of them. So fuck. You.” He drops his head and splays his fingers across the back of his neck.

“Grayer.” I reach out to him, but he jerks away.

“What.” His voice thickens. Oh my God, he’s crying. I crouch to try to meet his gaze, but his long bangs hang thickly between us. “Fuck, I’m such a pussy.” He burrows his palms into his eyes. “We got back from the country last night and he’s moved out—for real, gone—and she dug it up for evidence and I just watched it and the thing is, the thing is …I don’t even know who you are.” He reaches for his coat pocket and wrestles something out, the force of its release slapping my cheek. I reel from the sting. “Christ—sorry. I didn’t mean to—” He drops the VHS tape and it clatters to the chipped tile between us. Holding my face with one hand, I pick it up and tilt it in the shaft of colored light to make out the faded “Nanny” written on its label in her controlled script.

The nanny-cam video. She saw it—kept it . . .

“The things you said …and I don’t know . . .” he murmurs, and I kneel down to reach my arms around his grown-up frame, pulling him against me. “I don’t know you.”

“I’m Nanny, Grove, I’m Nanny.” And he slumps into me, passing out.

“Shit.”

I inhale awake the next morning, my eyes opening to see Grayer Addison X standing in the middle of my living room—what will be my living room—what is now partial subflooring, partial parquet, dotted sparsely with inherited furniture recently liberated from storage. “Hey.” I run my hand through my hair and unfold myself from Grandfather Hutchinson’s wing chair. “How you feelin’?”

One hand resting on his hip, the other holding the loop of his peacoat tag, he pivots, eyeing me warily, and I realize that he was aiming to slip out. “I can’t find my phone.”

“Yes, your phone!” I stand, pain shooting through my stiff neck. “I, um . . .” I rub at the base of my skull and step over to the mantel. Grace jumps up and starts to figure eight between us. “I know. You need to pee.” I pat her shimmying rear as I swipe the cell off the soot-stained marble. “It’s here.” I reach out to give it to him and he stretches to take it without moving a step closer. I stand awkwardly as he folds his coat over his arm to check his e-mail.

“Grayer, I’m really glad you found me,” I begin my speech, acutely wrong in the light of day currently filtering through the
New York Times
–covered windows.

He nods with a vacant smile—the one he must use to dismiss his mother, his eyes at half-mast as he scrolls the phone.

“So, what I’m trying to say is that, well . . .” I trail off, feeling suddenly like I’m trying to get him to walk me to cafeteria brunch after a keg-fueled hookup.

“I should go.” He lifts the arm holding his coat and the air passes over it, simultaneously reaching both of us with the aroma of his vomit.

“Let me get you a bag! To put that in. You don’t want to carry it like that out on the street.” I lilt past him, transforming into a Febreze commercial.

“Sure.” He walks behind me, through the tool-laden workstation that will one day be my dining room, to the gutted kitchen, where I fumble in the remaining cabinet until I find the plastic bags.

“We’ve been moving everything around for the contractor to start. I guess technically they’ve started, but, man, are they taking forever to really get going. So …here we go!” I shake one out with a loud snap and he drops the coat in and takes a step back from me. “Do you want some coffee? Crap, the fuse is out. I could do it in the upstairs bathroom. Maybe some water?” I swipe Grace’s bowl off the floor and pour in her breakfast.

“I’m good.”

I put the bowl down and Grace descends upon it like this is any other day. “Okay, well …I feel like I should make you something or …something.”

“I gotta go. Thanks.” He turns, and I have to rush to catch up as he navigates to the front door. I study his broad back, searching for courage, struck that I don’t know if what I want to say is, at this point, really for him or for me. He stops in the foyer and looks down at his loafers. “I was kinda …drunk last night, so whatever I said—”

“Don’t give it another thought.” I slice the air emphatically.

“Thanks for, uh, getting me onto the couch.”

“Of course. You’re a lot heavier than you used to be.” I smile, but his face tightens.

“So, okay then . . .”

“Grayer, look, I’ve got to say this, so please, just—”

“I can’t.” He clenches his hand around the plastic straps of the bag and lifts his gaze right past me to the cracked ceiling. “My family’s going through some shit right now and I lost it, that’s all. I’ll be fine. It’s all …fine. Sorry I bothered you.”

“But you didn’t! You didn’t bother me at all—”

“’Cause you’re preparing your Fight Club recruits?”

Surprised, I laugh and he grins for a moment. That boy, I know. “You’re really funny. You were always really funny.”

“Can you—” He gestures his bag at the locks.

“Yes.” I undo them and pull open the door. “You’re free.”

Grace traipses in from the kitchen, licking off her blond chops.

“Bye.” He nestles his palm, the size of her whole head, between her ears. “Bye.” He turns and offers his hand for me to shake as they have taught him to do. I shake it. This is wrong. I am doing this wrong, again.

“Don’t be a stranger,” I hear myself say.

“Okay.” He steps out into the bright sun and tromps down the steps.

“Wait!”

He turns back, squinting up at me. “You said you lost your wallet; let me give you money for a cab.”

“I’ll walk.” His shoulders lift as the sharp spring breeze whips across his oxford, pressing it against his frame.

“Please, Grayer, let me at least give you one of my husband’s coats—”

But he continues down the street, bag twisted on a wrist, hands plunged into pockets, shoulders hunched in the cold, as I race for something—anything—to say that will get him to stay, buy me a few more minutes to fix this, knowing with sickening certainty that there’s nothing that would make him turn around.

Staring at the quarter-sized patch of Pepto-Bismol–hued paint on day two of no Steve, I tilt my head and wait for the paint to bubble from the bathroom wall. As the heat gun box has promised it would. F’ing power-tool boxes with their confident primary colors and photos of fresh-faced folks with one hand on their denim-clad hips and the other lifting said tool like it’s light as a toothbrush. No sweat, no blisters, no balloon of profanity attached to their pleasantly smiling mouths. As if the photographer stumbled upon them as they were deciding between eating an apple or just picking up this tool here and installing a shower. No hint of the aching arms, stiff back, fried fingers, or God knows how many layers of sickeningly pink paint laughing at the tepid tan I am currently giving it.

At the slightest sweating hint of chemical separation, I lay the gun on the nearby edge of the sink and set to scraping and sanding and scraping and sanding. I may not be able to find out where in that cesspool of a basement the backup circuit breaker is. I may not be able to get a single electrician to come north of Ninety-sixth Street for another damn week. I may not be able to get in touch with my goddamn contractor, whose opening act of gutting two bathrooms and one kitchen has been followed by resounding silence. And I may never be able to get Grayer to listen to an excruciatingly long overdue apology. But I’m …getting the …hideous pink paint …off this …@#%ˆ* molding. “Fuck!”

I drop the sanding block and stuff my bleeding knuckle into my mouth. Grace waddles over, head down in her assumption that all expletives issued from me are hers to amend. “Okay,” I mutter around my curled fingers. “I’m okay.” I reach over her attempted licking and turn on the sink. The water shoots out in three spastic brown blasts before eking into a steady trickle, under which I stick my stinging wound.

I take a deep breath and sit on the edge of the tub as the coolness dribbles over my fingers. “See that?” I nod at the six-inch stretch of bare wood on the window frame that the last five hours of labor has uncovered. “All me.” Grace flops her head on my knees. “Thanks for being here.” I drop down to kiss her furry snout, catching sight of my cell as it lights up by the toolbox.

Trailing red droplets in the paint curlings, I grab it, hoping it’s Ryan returning my calls so I can tell him about Grayer, but instead I’m surprised to see a Swedish area code. “Hello?”

“Nan?” an older gentleman croaks on the other end of the line. “Nan Hutchinson?”

“Yes, this is Nan Hutchinson,” I drop into a professional octave. “How can I help you?”

“Philip Traphagen, here.”

“Yes?”

“My secretary got your name from the university. You were a consultant here at my firm’s office in Stockholm …last fall, I believe.”

“Yes! Yes. The Tipton Fund.” A rapid succession of slides from my final graduate internship fly through my mind’s eye: white man, white man, white man—distinguished only by the monogram colors on the cuffs of their custom shirts. Not a clue. “Of course. How can I help you, Mr. Traphagen?”