The Housekeeper

by Natalie Barelli

  “Oh,” she says, her pretty mouth shaping like a perfect circle, like she’s about to blow a ring of smoke. She gives me a quick smile and leaves. At dusk, the lights come on in Hannah’s house. The French doors upstairs are open onto the stone terrace, and I see a glimpse of an enormous glass chandelier.

  The next day, I take my place again at the window and notice the staff exchange glances. It’s a different waiter, a young man with a cowlick and very thin fingers.

  “Will someone be joining you?” he asks.

  I smile. “No.” But I’m ready for this question. “You don’t mind, do you? I’m writing a screenplay—” I brandish a notepad and a pen.

  One side of his mouth rises in the beginning of a smile. “Really? For a movie?”

  “Not quite.”

  I catch a sliver of condescension in the way he raises his chin. I’ve just confirmed to him that I am a nobody, one of a million in this city who thinks she’s going to send her screenplay to Martin Scorsese and win an Oscar.

  “It’s for Netflix,” I say. “A series. We’ve only sold the first season at this stage, but we’re hopeful.” I smile.

  Now he’s interested, and we are back on track, me with my pen and a friendly waiter.

  “Really? Can I ask what it’s about?”

  It’s about a horrible person who gets her comeuppance.

  “It’s a true crime story,” I reply sweetly. “About a woman who cons married men and kills them. But it’s impossible to work at home, you know, with all the noise. We’re doing renovations, all five bathrooms. Nightmare. Anyway, the network has given me a strict deadline, and since I’m also scouting for filming locations… this place is nice, by the way. I’ll bring it up at the next production meeting—you never know.”

  “Wow, that’d be awesome.” He hurries back to the bar, where his colleagues are drying glasses, and the three of them huddle in whispers, throwing the occasional side glance in my direction. They leave me alone after that because, you know, I have to work. But then Hannah’s door opens and she comes out with a stroller, and I’m so shocked that I knock the coffee cup over. I throw some coins on the table and follow her to the park, where she sits on a bench and pulls out a book. Then she changes her mind, taking a swaddled baby out and into her arms, but I can’t bear to watch and go home early.

  I spend the next few days in the bar, at my window, as I’ve come to think of it, on high alert, my neck stretched, my eyes trained on the street, which is completely unlike me. I’m usually more sloth than meerkat. I never eat lunch there because, well, prices, but I still have consumed endless cups of tea or coffee, and I don’t have any money to spare. Which means I’m going to be late on my rent this month and April won’t be pleased, considering I’ve turned down the job. And yet, I feel energized. Elated. I have a purpose. At Dr. Lowe’s office, people comment on how much happier I look. Dr. Lowe says my hand jobs are even more enthusiastic than usual, and he adds fifty bucks onto my usual fee because of it. And Mrs. Usher, who comes every other day for her allergies—and other imaginary ailments, because Dr. Lowe always tells her she’s perfectly healthy and yet she returns, undeterred—comments on it.

  “There’s something different about you,” she says, frowning.

  “There is? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You have a boyfriend, that’s what it is.”

  I laugh, and I swear Dr. Lowe’s head snaps so fast I think it might do a full rotation.

  And so, over the next ten days, whenever I am not manning the phones for Dr. Lowe, I am at the bar. I don’t even take off my coat in case she leaves her house and I have to run outside. It kind of helps in a way; the staff think I must be an artist because I’m eccentric.

  One time I followed her to Bergdorf Goodman, where I pretended to browse while watching her try on a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes. Then she took a Valentino dress that the saleswoman had pushed on to her into the changing rooms, and I considered trying on a Donna Karan silk shirt, just so I could join her—Excuse me, can I get your opinion? Does it make me look fat?

  In the end, she bought a very ordinary black lacy number off the rack. Not even from the designer section. I was understandably confused, but then I understood. It’s her husband’s money—she’s pretending to be reluctant, like she didn’t marry him because of it. Like she really loves him. He’ll think that’s so sweet, and when he trusts her completely with his money, she’ll pounce and take him to the cleaners.

  Slow clap, Mrs. Carter. Well played.

  Then some days I don’t see her at all. I only saw her husband once because he usually takes the car, a Bentley no less—they have a single-car garage on the lower level—and I recognized his face.

  Other than obvious deliveries and couriers, there’s only one other person who comes and goes. A woman, older than Hannah, in her forties, maybe. She’s very thin, very straight-backed like she trained in the Army. I suspect she’s part of the staff—something about the way she moves, the way she hurries whenever she walks in or out. Especially out.

  Sometimes Hannah takes a cab. She has a habit of walking to Park Avenue to catch one, so I’d follow her for nothing and then come back to the bar. I told the waiter once it’s because we’re shooting around here and it’s important to have a photo; it helps me complete the scene. It all sounds so farfetched I keep waiting for one of them to call the authorities or the psych ward. You guys missing anyone? But this is Manhattan, so anything goes, I guess.

  So far, she’s gone back to her shrink twice. I wonder why, so I call to make an appointment for myself.

  “Dr. Malone has an opening on the fifth of December at ten thirty.”

  “December? But that’s months away.”

  “We’re very busy, yes.”

  She says this smugly, the receptionist. Like it’s a good thing. I want to point out that being busy, for a psychiatrist, means she’s not very good. I almost ask if they are repeat customers, those people hogging the calendar for months on end. Do you have a ten-visit discount pack? What does that say about your success rate, then? Asking for myself; I’m pretty fucked up too.

  “Would you like to take the appointment?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “The first session is two hundred and seventy dollars,” the smug receptionist says. I let out a snort, then pretend to cough. “Is that all right with you?” she adds.

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  “There’s a fifty percent fee if you cancel less than seven days before your appointment.”

  I have no intention of keeping it. Not at that price. I swap two digits in my Visa card number and give a fake cell number.

  Chapter Four

  It was Olivia Cortez who first brought up with my mother the possibility of Hannah working for us. Our regular nanny, whose name I can’t remember, was leaving to get married and my mother hadn’t as of yet found a replacement.

  In some kind of twisted irony, that summer was one of the best of my life. My best friend, Philippa, and I spent that month at a horseback-riding camp together. My horse was called Button, a gorgeous creature, almost white, with a brown diamond shape above her nose. I can still remember the feel of her damp, cold nose against my cheek, how she would lift her head up when she’d see me and nuzzle me when I’d get close.

  I’d only been there for a few days when someone called out to me. Your mother’s on the phone, they said. After ten minutes of catching up on news, she said, “And we found a nanny for John, did I tell you?”

  “You did? That’s nice,” I said, biting into a red apple, turning to gaze out the window, my mind already disconnecting from the conversation. My mother, who could talk incessantly in those days, proceeded to tell me a convoluted story whereby her friend Olivia Cortez had a cousin in Canada who was married to someone or other, and at the end of that human chain was “a young Canadian woman who wants to come to New York for the summer. She’s looking for a position as a nanny. I’m told she’s charming and great
with children. Olivia said she wants to study art and that’s why she wants to come to New York.”

  I think of this conversation sometimes, about how innocuous it was on the surface. And yet this was the moment that began the sequence of events that would end with the death of both my parents. It still eats me up at night that I didn’t recognize it. I imagine myself back there, that day on the phone—“But what do you know about this girl, Mom? Has she done this work before? Does she have references? Can you even trust her?”

  My mother was the brightest light of my life. She was beautiful, caring, smart. She wanted me to become anything I set my mind to. She said I could be the first female president of the United States if I wanted to. Not because of my grades, which were okay, but because girls can do anything. Anything you want! she’d say. I was sent to Groton School in Massachusetts, and I loved every minute of it. I’d just finished my freshman year by the time Hannah came into our lives.

  In the end, my mother said yes to Olivia Cortez because if my mother could help someone, she did. She was generous like that, and it’s what killed her. But she was looking for a nanny, and this young woman who wanted to come and spend a summer in New York was finding it difficult to find a position. In her mind she was confident that Hannah Wilson would do a fine job. But more than that. You said something to my mother like wants to better herself, would love to spend time at MoMA or whatever, and my mother was all over it. So she welcomed Hannah Wilson into our home and into our lives, and we all lived bitterly ever after.

  I saw Olivia Cortez once, years later, in a shopping mall of all places. I spat in her face. She had no idea who I was.

  * * *

  It’s now in the middle of the second week, and the novelty is starting to wear off. It’s all very well following her around the place, watching her push a stroller or eat a Greek salad at Bel Ami, but it’s not like I’m achieving anything. I have a bunch of photos, but the best I got was her picking her nose, so I only uploaded that one. #gross. I’m drinking so much tea and coffee, I’m beginning to vibrate. And I’m peeing all day. On top of that, I canceled work once because I was afraid she might go somewhere significant, and I’d miss out on finding out something about her. I suffer from Hannah Carter FOMO.

  “I’m sick,” I told Dr. Lowe, without a hint of irony. “I’ve got the flu, I think.” I coughed a few times.

  He sighed into the phone. “You’ll come in on Monday?”

  “Yes,” I replied. Because I have superpowers and I know exactly when I’ll be well again.

  In the end, I didn’t find anything out on that day. And now, finally, something happens. That same woman, the straight-backed one, walks out of Hannah’s building, but this time she stops and rummages through a large black handbag hanging on her arm. She pulls out … what is it? A tissue, I think. It takes me a moment to realize that … she’s crying?

  I sprint to the top step outside the bar, but I’m not fast enough and there’s a man talking to her. He has one hand on her shoulder, like he’s consoling her. I squint at them from my side of the street and wrap my coat tighter around me.

  “Ms. Petersen?”

  I turn around. “Yes?”

  Bill, the bartender, holds out a takeout paper cup. “Your espresso. You only just ordered it, I thought…”

  “Oh, thank you, that’s great.”

  I take it from him and turn back. The man is still talking to her, one hand on her elbow. I want to run across the street and insert myself between them, but instead I act cool, distracted, as I pull out my cell and pretend to read something on my screen, my head down, like everyone else in this town. By the time I get to the other side, I am so involved in what I’m reading that I quote, accidentally, end quote, bump into the back of her, spilling some of my coffee onto the sleeve of her coat.

  “Oh God. I’m sorry! I didn’t see you—”

  The guy glares at me, which is fine. I’m good at glaring. I glare back.

  “Here, let me,” I say, taking a tissue from her and dabbing it gently at the sleeve. “I’m really sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” she says with a slight lisp on the s. “No harm done.”

  I pat her on the part of her arm that doesn’t have any coffee dripping from it. “I’ll pay for the cleaning, of course,” I say.

  The man wants to leave, I can sense it, but he’s also concerned about her. I narrow my eyes at him. “Do we know you?” I ask, my tone dripping with suspicion. I make it sound like he’s the interloper.

  He recoils in surprise and shakes his head. “No. Sorry.”

  “Well, then, I’ll take it from here,” I say, and I’m pleased that he doesn’t need to be told twice.

  I turn back to the woman and put my hand on her arm. “You’re sure you’re okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” She starts to say something, but then her face collapses and she bursts into tears.

  “What happened?” I ask softly. “What’s made you so upset?”

  She opens her mouth, distorting her face, but still doesn’t reply.

  “Which way are you going?” I ask gently.

  She shakes her head. “I—I don’t know.” I feel my shoulders drop. I’m beginning to think that she’s not the staff, she’s an elderly relative with a memory problem.

  She reminds me of a woman I met once, waiting for my parents outside the Lincoln Center. She must have been at least seventy, beautifully dressed, her fingers nervously clutching at large pearls on her neck. She came up to me because she needed my help. Or so she said.

  “Of course,” I replied. I was normal then. Kind, even. She held out a page torn out of those old desk calendars. On it, scribbled in pencil, was a date and a time.

  “Do you know what this is?” she asked.

  “Hum, no, sorry.”

  She looked on the verge of tears. “It’s just that … I don’t remember,” she said.

  I figured she had some kind of memory lapse, and I pointed to the phone number scribbled under the date and time. “Maybe you should call this number. They might be able to tell you something.”

  That seemed to confuse her again, so I handed over my cell—a black flip phone that back then was the coolest thing ever. “Try it, call them now. See what they say.” I even punched the numbers in for her. She grabbed it and took off across the Plaza with my cell phone still in her dried-up, bony fingers.

  I stood there frozen, then shook myself awake and took off after her. “Excuse me? You’ve got my phone!” But she’d already turned the corner onto Amsterdam Avenue, and next thing I knew she was getting onto the M11. When the bus drove past me, I raised my arms to get her attention, but she looked straight ahead. I couldn’t work out whether she was crazy, or whether this was some elaborate scam to steal my phone. But I saw her again once, months later. I guess she had a thing for the performing arts, because my mother and I were standing outside the Belasco Theatre on Broadway when she approached us, still with her scribbled torn-off piece of paper. She asked my mother for help, and I tugged at my mother’s sleeve. “Don’t,” I said. Then I positioned myself in front of the woman and extended my hand. “Can I have my phone back?”

  I could tell from the angry look in her eyes that she knew she’d been caught out. But my mother said my name, in a shocked voice.

  “Claire! What’s gotten into you?”

  I told her I’d explain later, but when I turned back the woman had disappeared through the crowd. Then my mother scolded me for being rude and scaring that poor woman away.

  “No, Mom. She was about to steal your Blackberry. Remember how I told you an old woman stole my phone?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Claire. That had nothing to do with this.”

  In my mother’s mind, the old woman who had taken my phone was poor and homeless and desperate, and probably suffering from dementia. She certainly didn’t wear a string of pearls and a nice tailored jacket.

  I take another look now at the woman in front of me, but it’s definitely not the same wo
man, not even remotely. And the other one would have to be eighty or ninety years old by now, surely, whereas this woman is in her fifties. Still, this is New York. You can’t be too careful.

  “She fired me,” she says at last, an astonished look on her face, like she can’t quite believe it herself.

  That makes my pulse bounce with the possibilities. “Can I take you somewhere?” I ask, which makes no sense since I don’t have a car and I sure can’t afford cab fare anywhere.

  Her chin wobbles. “I have nowhere to go,” she says. “Nowhere at all.”

  “Okay, well, let me think.” And for a crazy moment I consider bringing her home with me; then I run through the various scenarios that would entail. Would she end up sleeping on the couch? Would she turn into that dreaded New York curse: the guest that wouldn’t leave? Would I have to pay extra rent for her?

  “Let me take you for a drink. My treat. Then you can decide what to do.”

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t want to take her to my stake-out establishment, so we walk together quickly to the bar at the Plaza Hotel two blocks away, me holding her firmly by the elbow, just in case she changes her mind.

  “They make the best martinis,” I say, as if I went there all the time. Inside, I maneuver her toward the big red velvet armchairs and press a menu into her hands. She selects a Taittinger Champagne & Domaine de Canton Liqueur, while I desperately scan the page for the cheapest drink, then throw caution to the wind and get a martini.

  “This is so nice,” she says, taking her phone out and setting it down on the table.

  “Isn’t it? I love this place,” I reply and wave at a complete stranger sitting at a distant table, muttering, “Oh look, it’s Joanna Dubois,” under my breath. I wait until the waiter has returned with our drinks and a complimentary bowl of green olives, then turn to her earnestly.

  “So tell me, Diane. It’s Diane, isn’t it? Okay, good. So tell me, who fired you?”

  “I work for the Carters. Mrs. Carter fired me.”