You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (37 page)

My mom was coming to Hollywood. Ever since she found out how well Danny and Rhea were treating her daughter, she became their biggest fan. She combed her
People
magazine for any mention of them, clipping out the articles. I teased her that her real motivation for the visit was to see them, not me. But in my heart I knew that if I was a nanny in North Platte, Nebraska, she’d be out to see me just the same. That’s just how my mom is. But she was probably a lot more excited by the prospect of meeting my famous employers than she would have been to visit farmers in the heartland.

When we walked up to the DeVito door together, I felt an unfamiliar urge to protect the poor star-struck dear. I wanted to give her a hug. Instead, as daughters will, I hissed instructions for her not to embarrass me.

Rhea welcomed my mother as if she was an old friend. No fuss, just an easy warmth and instant familiarity. Within a minute or so, my mother was loosened up, completely in her element, just talking about kids with another mom. Rhea told us that Danny and the girls were watching TV in the office and suggested that we check in on them. We peeked in the room to find Danny lying on his belly on the rug, one
elbow propping up his chin while he swatted his free arm at the kids climbing up on his back. I said, “Danny, this is my mother.”

The kids looked up and greeted her, and Danny called out, “Yeah, hi!”

Rhea frowned in the doorway. “Danny, it’s Suzy’s mother.”

He jumped up and flashed that big, sheepish, “Whaddayagonnado?” smile. “Sorry, sorry,” he apologized as he extended his hand to Mom. “I thought you said ‘This is Mariah.’ ”

My mom was charmed down to her toes.

The morning after my mom arrived, Max woke up at 5
A.M
. on the dot, and as he made disgruntled noises, I ran downstairs to get a bottle ready. He was sweet but a fitful sleeper, and when he wrestled his pajamas into a knot during the night, I’d always drag myself out of bed to untie him. I slept five feet away, and every time he shifted, I’d jolt awake, wondering if he was about to wake up and if I should get a bottle warmed up before he really started crying. When I returned this time, he was already letting out little cries of distress, and I lifted him out and held him in the rocking chair until he finished drinking. He fell into a fragile doze as I laid him back down in the crib.

I relished the thought of crawling back into my warm bed for another hour, but just as I had snuggled down, he started fussing again. I knew that sometimes he’d just fuss a bit and then fall asleep, so I didn’t move immediately. Instead I did something I’d never done before. I put my pillow over my head and ignored Max for several minutes, hoping he would settle down. The light flipping on startled me, and I looked up to see Rhea standing in the bedroom doorway.

“Why is Max crying?” she asked. It sounded like an accusation.

“I just gave him a bottle,” I said sheepishly. “I think he’s going to go back to sleep.”

“I don’t think he’s tired,” Rhea said, taking Max into her arms and making some cooing noises at him.

She didn’t say anything more to me as she left with Max, but I felt horrible. Not only did Rhea think that I didn’t care about her son, but for a minute there she had been right. I had cared about my sleep more than him. I was wracked with guilt. What kind of nanny ignores a crying child just five feet away from her? Well, British ones, I consoled myself.

But I was no Mary Poppins. I tried to analyze the situation. I had been awake most of the night, making sure that Max was okay and that he didn’t cry too much and wake the rest of the house. But no matter how many times I had gotten up and comforted him, he still seemed restless. Of course this was part of my job description. I couldn’t ignore the crying and go back to sleep like an exhausted mother could. I was his nanny, and I didn’t get to make those kinds of calls. I could see that I was simply becoming resentful of taking care of others. It was very clear to me at that moment that I just didn’t want to be a nanny anymore.

I felt so crappy about what I had done that I wanted to make it up to Rhea. Instead of taking advantage of the extra hour of sleep, I got up, straightened out Max’s crib, and went down to the kitchen to unload the dishwasher. My mind was jumbled, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I just didn’t want to be a caregiver anymore. I didn’t want to be in LA.

All day I wondered how I could possibly tell Danny and Rhea that I wanted to leave. They had been completely accommodating and sweet. I could still hear my mother going on about what down-to-earth people they were and how lucky I was to be working for them. I
was
lucky, I knew that, but I was also lucky to have figured out that I had to move on. I think I finally realized that, up to now, I had been operating from a kid’s mentality, waiting for someone else to ask me what I needed. But I was ready to make a major switch: I wanted to be an adult, to take care of myself and make my own life choices.

I wanted to go for a drive, but Mom and Ryan had taken my car so that they could go sightseeing while I worked. I wouldn’t have been able to leave the kids, anyway. But I was still frustrated about being stuck there, miserable, with no way of getting out to clear my head. It was another sun-drenched day in California, and I took the girls out to the backyard to play in the pool while Lisa ran an errand and Max took a nap. After spending twenty minutes searching for their swimsuits—which they had worn the day before but had wrapped in towels and left under their beds—and then locating alternate suits, beach balls, floating frogs, towels, and all the other pool necessities, I was ready to collapse in the sun and relax.

I was just settling down in the lounge chair when the girls decided that I needed to be the referee for their water fight. They soaked me to the bone as an invitation. Then I heard the front gate buzz. Mom and Ryan sauntered into the courtyard. They were joking about how Ryan had panned for gold at Knott’s Berry Farm but hadn’t found so much as a flake.

“I don’t think they have any gold in that tub at all.” Mom laughed as I stood there dripping. Then she started to tell me about visiting Tammy at Sally’s, commenting about how she had such a wonderful job—“Almost better than yours.” She smiled. “And she’s so appreciative that you got her that job interview.”

Mom got to hold Sally’s baby and take pictures of all of them together. To top it off, Sally had made lunch for them. Mom was on cloud nine. She said that Tammy had wanted to go to Knott’s Berry Farm with them, but she was packing to go on another trip, this time to New York.

“Sally and Tammy get along so well. Tammy seems to just love her job,” Mom gushed. “And why not, with such a gorgeous little baby and such a beautiful home?”

That did it! I was already mad that I had never been to Knott’s Berry Farm, or to most tourist spots in LA for that matter. But here was Mom, telling me about how much fun she’d had at Sally’s without me; how she had wished Tammy could have come with them to the amusement park.
What about me?

I couldn’t help myself. I started yelling at Mom and Ryan, accusing them of trying to make me feel bad and leaving me stuck behind these black gates with no way of getting anywhere.

“To top it off,” I said quietly so that the girls wouldn’t hear, “I don’t even like being a nanny anymore, but neither of you know me well enough to even notice.”

Mom was appalled by my outburst at first, but when I dissolved into tears, she realized how serious I was. She said that if I wasn’t happy then maybe I should just quit and come back home. She was so calm, even after I had yelled at her, that it made me calm down, too, and I started to think reasonably about the whole situation. It wasn’t Danny and Rhea
who were making me miserable; it was my own desire to do something that was closer to my dreams.

Simply by deciding to leave I felt a jolt of excitement about what lay ahead for me. College? Probably. I had been doing a little research about a college in Oregon with a well-respected nursing program. Since the time I was small, I had a fascination with the medical field, even if it was just to diagnose my own self-concocted potentially life-threatening medical conditions. I thought I would make a good nurse. But how was I going to tell this to Danny and Rhea? This was my chance to practice the assertiveness I knew I’d need in my life as a grown-up.

The opportunity presented itself sooner than I expected. A few mornings later, Rhea asked me to accompany her and the kids to the park. When we got there, we took a stroll on the manicured green grass as the kids played close by on the jungle gym. Rhea turned to me, saying, “We’re so happy with you, and I know Max loves you.” Just a few short months ago, I would have given anything for that kind of appreciation, but now it made me instantly uncomfortable. I knew that if I didn’t have the nerve to tell her then, I would get in deeper, and it would be even harder to break my commitment.

I took a deep breath, and everything I’d been thinking came pouring out in one long speech. I explained that they were the best employers I’d ever had. I said that if I’d worked for them first I’d probably be there forever, but I had come to them already burned out. A twenty-four-hour-a-day job didn’t give me time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, but I thought I wanted to go to nursing school. So I wanted to leave California. But I promised her that I would absolutely stay until they found someone else, and I offered to contact the nanny school to see if there was anyone there to fill the spot.

Rhea said she was so disappointed, but she understood my need to move on and encouraged me to follow my heart.

In the days and weeks that followed, Rhea and Danny still treated me well, although they seemed a little more businesslike. I understood. It was as if they had already started to cut me out of their hearts, just as I had learned to do with the Ovitz children. I kept calling the nanny school, but for two weeks I got no response. It seemed like the pool of nannies had dried up just when I needed a replacement. Finally, after biting my nails to the quick, I heard back from the school about a possible candidate. I told Rhea that there was someone who might work out for her and Danny. She called right away to get a reference, talking to my instructor-friend Mary.

After that, she came back to me and said that Mary had recommended the new girl but had cautioned, “This girl is no Suzy.” She smiled and patted me on the shoulder, as if she was truly going to miss me.

That’s when I realized that I had actually made an impact on someone besides Max. And even though Danny had listened patiently to Michael, he had never treated me any differently after hearing that I had left the most powerful man in town “high and dry.” Even now that I was leaving them, the subject was never brought up. The biggest compliment they gave me was when Danny said to me one day, in a contemplative moment, “I guess ole Michael was wrong after all.” I said, “Thanks,” and smiled. I have never forgotten those words.

When the new girl came for her interview, Rhea asked if I would help evaluate her. We sat down in the sunny breakfast area, where not long ago I had eaten all of Rhea’s special cookies. I wracked my brain for the
right questions to ask, ones that would bring the girl out of her shell and force her to reveal everything.

I chided myself for not writing something down, but I saw that Rhea was doing the interview off-the-cuff as well. We talked to her a little about her background and history, which seemed solid enough. She didn’t have a ton of experience being a nanny, but she had gone through the program without any problems. I wanted to warn her about getting too attached to the children you cared for, the one topic they had not covered in nanny school, but I couldn’t say anything with Rhea next to me. During one of Rhea’s questions, the girl said she didn’t think she could make a blanket statement that she “loved children” because she had to meet the child first to know.

Later, when Rhea asked me how I thought the interview went, I said I wasn’t sure. I figured that someone who wanted to be a full-time caregiver of kids of all ages should be able to say she
loved
children. “It just sounds odd, coming from someone looking to be a nanny,” I said.

Rhea told me to go ahead and keep looking. I had contacted the local placement agencies also, but none of them had any promising applicants, either. I wished that I hadn’t already gotten Tammy a job. But of course she wouldn’t leave Sally. Finally Rhea said that she was going to hire the girl we had interviewed since there didn’t seem to be anyone else.

I was frustrated by my inability to find a great replacement and sad that I couldn’t convince Cindy to move back to Oregon, too. She also had had just about enough of LA life, but she was a stickler for the rules and wasn’t willing to break the lease on her apartment or leave her roommates
high and dry
. Ryan’s dad, bless his heart, had spent a lot of time on the phone, trying to convince his directionless son to join the armed services. Fortunately, he had been successful. Go Navy! It looked like we were headed home together (but not together).