You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (17 page)

But I had a flash of sheer brilliance. I would just leave, and go home with the curlers intact. The prep girl said that would be fine. I could take the rollers out myself in the morning and bring them back the following day. So much for getting my hair cut by Franck, but at least I would still have really cool new curls.

Right.

On the way out, I remembered that Carmen had asked me to pick up yogurt for the kids’ lunches. It wasn’t all that uncommon in Cottage Grove for women to do their grocery shopping in curlers, so it never occurred to me to consider how I looked. Forget my hair; I was worried about having to face Judy two hours late. There I was, running down the aisle of a crowded Ralph’s grocery store, my hair in giant rollers with a long pink drinking straw through each, looking like I had just stepped out of an alien aircraft with all my antennae on high alert. I noticed a few shoppers who had nothing better to do than stare and point me out to their companions. I whirled through the aisles, disgusted with the shallowness of LA. What was the matter with these people, anyway? I suppose they’ve never found themselves in a similar situation. They’ve never had the desperate need to shop for yogurt and ignore their petty focus on their looks.

It wasn’t until I got a look at my reflection in the glass cases of the frozen food section that I saw what they saw.

I wanted to melt away. Burying my head as best as I could in a copy of the
National Enquirer
, I shuffled through the checkout line. Why were other people able to negotiate the ins and outs of self-maintenance with such ease? I knew the reaction at home would be even more humiliating.

And indeed, Carmen and Delma greeted me by doubling over with laughter. Brandon took one look at me and started crying.

“Suzy, I want you to tell me what happened to your head,” Josh said, like a stern, wary dad. He was so earnest and concerned that it made me feel better momentarily. I reassured him and gave him a big hug. I even started laughing along with the others.

But then Judy came into the kitchen. “I didn’t see how you were going to be back by four o’clock if your appointment was at two-thirty,” she said irritably.

Thanks for mentioning that when I made the appointment
.

She glared at the curlers and spikes. “And
what
did you have done to your hair?”

Carmen and Delma had to leave the room because they couldn’t stop laughing, and Judy’s ears were beginning to steam. She sure wasn’t seeing any humor in the situation. I set the grocery sack on the counter and let my heavy, oversized pink head hang. Why didn’t she tell me how long these appointments take? Couldn’t she have given me more time off? Did she
want
me to look foolish?

I decided that the best policy was to keep my mouth shut, given the black thoughts that were parading through my head. And despite all my efforts, I had missed dinner. When Judy left the kitchen, Delma got out a plate of food she saved for me. She heated it in the microwave while I went up and got Brandon ready for bed.

I felt very sad and alone.

“Going on a recon, Sarah!”

A guy from the CAA mailroom popped in and out of Sarah’s office practically before I could blink.

“Gotcha,” Sarah replied.

“What’s a recon?” I asked, watching the gofer dash down the hall.

Sarah leaned across her desk and lowered her voice. “It’s shorthand for reconnoiter, like in the war movies,” she said, glancing around. “You know, they send out a scout to recon the area to make sure there are no enemy soldiers around.”

Huh?
“So what’s that guy doing, checking for other agents who might be hiding downstairs waiting to snag one of CAA’s clients?”

“No. He’s going out to scout the best route for Michael’s next appointment.”

“So he can avoid any land mines that might be in his path?” I laughed, bouncing Brandon on my lap.

“Yeah,” Sarah said, nodding vigorously. “You know Michael can’t stand to waste time or to be late; he’d rather die. So whenever he’s going to an appointment across town or within about a twenty-mile radius, he sends a gofer to check the traffic and figure out which of the
various routes are fastest. Then the gofer phones back and gives Michael the game plan. Sometimes I even draw up a map for Michael to take with him.”

“Wow, that’s crazy,” I said. But it made sense. For heaven’s sake, Michael had his hair cut right in his office every few weeks so he didn’t have to waste time going to a salon.

Making frequent visits to CAA had really opened my eyes to Michael’s world. At first I simply thought it would be good for Brandon to visit his dad, but then I realized the bonus was that I got to interact with someone older than six. In her midthirties, Sarah was plain but pretty. Unlike most LA women, she eschewed makeup and the latest fashions. And she was sweet. I had always appreciated her kindness and weekly phone chats (okay, I vented for most of the conversations).

But her perspective was the real treasure. Sarah knew, perhaps more than anyone, what life with Michael was like, because he spent most of his time at work instead of at home. Quiet and conservative, Sarah handled her many tasks with great calm and efficiency. She was Michael’s right hand—her compact office even sat adjacent to Michael’s huge one.

“Your job is intense,” I proclaimed.

“Suzy, you’re the one whose job is intense,” Sarah said. “I couldn’t imagine living in that house. Do you know that when Judy calls here she refers to you as ‘the nanny’? I always say, ‘You mean Suzy?’ but it never seems to click with her. She acts like I don’t know who you are or like you’re not a real person.”

“At least she admits to
having
a nanny,” I replied. “I’ve met lots of girls in LA whose employers won’t even do that.”

Confidentiality agreements were just coming into vogue, and many girls were having to sign nondisclosures before working for a celebrity. Some employers were even requiring their household help to sign ironclad agreements promising they would never reveal
who
they worked for.

“One girl couldn’t give her own mother her address at a star’s home,” I told Sarah. “She had to rent a post office box to receive any mail!”

Sarah gave me some more background on my boss. He was a master deal-maker, and after cofounding CAA, it had taken him a relatively
short time to build a multimillion-dollar client list by acquiring all the big names in the industry. He did everything, from coddling his superstar clients to courting new talent to supervising his agents, who handled film, television, and book deals for the biggest names in the country. His reach was like that of an octopus with tentacles touching everything. Virtually everyone who interacted with him experienced his self-assured charm, and they were all just as aware of his reputation for ruthlessness toward people who got in his way. (I later learned that his favorite book was
The Art of War.)
He drove himself fiercely, and he drove his staff just as hard.

Despite the stress, the CAA staff was amazingly loyal. They were on a championship team; after all, they were the big guns in town. To outsiders, they were
all
intimidating. But there was a downside to the company’s culture.

“Suzy, did I tell you about the time my childhood friend’s dad died?” Sarah asked. “I got the news on a Thursday and asked Michael immediately if I could go to the funeral on Monday. I told him I would probably be back in the office by noon. I knew he wouldn’t be pleased, though.” She bit her lip. “After all, Monday is traditionally our busiest day.”

“What? You’re kidding. This was for a funeral, right?” Sometimes in Cottage Grove they would close businesses for the afternoon so the owners could attend memorial services.

“I know. But he said, with a look of grave disappointment, ‘Sarah, I can’t believe you’d leave me on a Monday.’ ”

“Really?”

“If you’re surprised by that,” she said, amused at my dismay, “wait until you hear about Karen’s request for time off. She’s one of the most important people in this building—she does the payroll for the entire company every two weeks. Three months ago, she was due to give birth. She asked for my advice on how she should approach Michael about her upcoming maternity leave—could she do payroll from her home? I joked, ‘Leave time? You’ll be lucky to get out of the office on the afternoon you deliver.’ Only problem was, that prophecy turned out to be true.”

“You’re kidding! What happened?” I asked, switching Brandon to the other knee.

“Michael is very big on not wanting anyone to know how much money anyone else in the agency makes. It’s a secret that’s guarded as closely as the envelopes from Price Waterhouse on Oscar night. Karen is probably the only person besides the CFO who does know, and I’m sure Michael had her sign a forty-page nondisclosure agreement in blood.

“At any rate, as it turns out, she was going to be induced on a Saturday night, and with any luck, she hoped to deliver on Sunday. I told Michael that Karen was certainly not going to feel up to coming into the office on Monday, that she’d probably be out for at least three weeks, maybe more.”

“So what did he do?”

“He had me send a computer, printer, and all the accounting ledgers to her house and said she could do the payroll from there.”

I stared at Sarah.

“Oh, Karen was happy,” Sarah assured me. “That way she got to spend more time with her baby.”

It was easy to see why such an arrangement would be natural for Michael. After all, his own kids had a baby nurse and then a nanny—what would a mom need to do, anyway?

It got me thinking about what the children’s lives would be like when they grew up. They’d probably live out their entire existence with people being paid to take care of all their needs. They would never learn how to do much on their own.

Then again, maybe this wouldn’t be a problem.

I pictured Brandon, Amanda, and Joshua all grown up, trying to figure out how to work a broom and dustpan, wondering where you’d find such tools. I could see each of them getting their own set of wheels: a Porsche for Amanda, a Ferrari for Joshua, and a Hummer for Brandon. It would certainly be different from my high school experiences, which included helping my friend Christine shove her old Volkswagen down a hill to get it started. Amy and I would push from behind and Christine would steer. I would be wheezing and gasping from the exhaust, holding on to the bumper of the ancient Bug. Christine would yell out when we were going fast enough, and then Amy and I would both pull on the door handles and swing ourselves up into the passenger seat, landing on top of each other. Christine would simultaneously pop the clutch and
off we would go. She could never afford to get that starter fixed. Sometimes friends are a good substitute for money. But I didn’t believe the reverse was true.

What would the kids do as teenagers if they ever had car problems? I had trouble picturing them doing anything more strenuous than dialing up their personal assistants on their cell phones. One night as Carmen and I were eating dinner, I brought up the subject. “What are these kids going to do when they grow up? They’ve never even been asked to put their own clothes in the laundry basket, and they’ll never empty a dishwasher in their entire childhoods.”

“Soo-zita, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “They will have so much money, they won’t have to.”

I couldn’t help thinking about it for the next few days. How do children like this end up? How do they go to college and take care of themselves, prepare meals, iron a shirt, know how to separate lights and darks for the laundry? For heaven’s sake, Amanda wasn’t aware there were people in the world who didn’t have cars with automatic windows. The first time I took her to the store with me in Delma’s car, she quizzically glanced back and forth between the roll-up window handle and me.

“Where’s the window button?”

“Some cars don’t have automatic windows, Amanda. Sometimes you’ve got to roll them up
yourself,”
I said, putting the emphasis on the last word. “This is how you do it.” I demonstrated the act with the driver’s side door. She looked at me as if I had just given her a detailed description of the theory of relativity.

I didn’t know it then, but many celebrity offspring lived this kind of sheltered life. Years later a fellow nanny told me a story about the four- and six-year-old sons of one of the most famous talk-show hosts in America. As they settled into first-class seats for a flight, the kids asked their nanny, “Who are all these people on our plane?” In their short lives, they had never flown commercial.

On the occasional weekends that Mandie and I were both off duty, we loved to shop. We wouldn’t have dreamed of going to the fancy designer boutiques on Rodeo Drive; instead, we spent many afternoons at the Beverly Center in West Hollywood, a huge mall with a Hard
Rock Cafe on the street level. My work wardrobe still consisted mostly of shorts, jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts; clothes that could withstand barf, dirt, paint, and snot. It wasn’t what most women would call a professional wardrobe, unless you were in my profession. But sometimes I longed for different attire. On one particular excursion, I was accosted by a very convincing saleswoman who brought half of her coworkers over to the three-sided mirror to rally support for the release of my credit card.