Unsuitable

by Ainslie Paton

  “I was thinking Joe and I would bring Thai around tonight.”

  Merrill was a genius. “I would be your bestest ever friend if you did.”

  “You’re such a crawler. How’s it going?”

  “I want my Cameron.”

  “Those days are over, Aud. Get with the program.”

  “Easy for you to say, when you finally pop a sprog you have duelling grandmas on hand.”

  “Yes, and someone could get killed in the rush. Have you seen how sharp the elbows on Joe’s mum are? Could take an eye out. Seriously, how’s it going?”

  “They’re all wonderful.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Audrey let a cartoon-like sigh rip.

  “Oh. I see. I’ll bring wine.”

  They rang off and there was just time to negotiate with Mia about washing her face and hands—dealing with union reps was easier—before the doorbell went.

  It wasn’t the next interviewee though. Audrey stood back from the open door, wanting to get away from the man outside and whatever he was selling without a fuss. “No, thank you.”

  “Audrey Bates?”

  That voice, a kind of rumbly resonance, made her stop. She stepped closer to the door. He was a good-looking young man in a watermelon coloured polo shirt. There were four steps between them that made her taller, but not by much, he crowded the doorway in a block out the light way. It wasn’t fair of those companies that sold house to house to hire someone like him. If she was older, alone and unused to issuing instructions that other adults habitually obeyed, she might be intimidated. “Whatever you’re selling, we don’t need it.”

  “But you are Audrey Bates?”

  His voice was like a chocolate coloured Labrador, richly coated and waggy happy. He was probably an excellent salesman. “Goodbye,” she said, hand to the knob of the door. She’d close him out. She needed to think about getting a security screen door.

  “I’m Reece McGovern.”

  She stopped, peered at him. He couldn’t be Reece. Reece was a girl’s name, like Lee and Jessie, like Reece Witherspoon for goodness sake. Women applied for nanny positions, not men. Certainly not men who looked like The Hulk with a suntan. In winter.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

  “I’m Reece McGovern. I have an interview for the nanny job at 3pm with Audrey Bates.”

  She’d read all five résumés backwards, sidewards and often, how could Reece be a man? “You’re Reece McGovern?”

  He smiled and he could be the number one salesman, straight to the top of the pack, billion dollar roundtable, win a trip to the Bahamas. She wanted to be a cocker spaniel and wag her tail at him. “She spells it with an s.”

  “Sorry?” Very sorry she’d been that transparent. Audrey adjusted the expression on her face, hopefully exchanging vaguely horrified for the look Mia got when she suspected hidden carrots in the mincemeat—considered, with a leaning towards grave.

  He cocked his head and smiled again. “Reese Witherspoon spells it with an s.”

  3: Witherspoon

  There probably wasn’t much point going in the house. Audrey Bates had already decided he wasn’t Reese Witherspoon so he couldn’t be Mia’s nanny, manny, au pair, minder, whatever you wanted to call it.

  Audrey Bates held the door open, smiling to hide her initial embarrassment. He could call this whole thing quits now and make it to the beach in time to watch Sky play her match. That’d earn him points. But then she’d be so big on I told you so, and the appeal of that was about as attractive as Flip’s morning breath.

  He hedged his bets, one foot resting on the step above. “I’m not what you expected.”

  “You have a terrific résumé.” She pulled it together fast.

  “But you expected—”

  “To interview Reece McGovern.”

  Okaaay then. He was going to miss Sky’s game, but she’d probably still get to say I told you so. There was no way he was getting the job. This was lose/lose. He gave a nod and came up the few steps and into the house. In the hallway, he offered his hand. “Hi. What would you like me to call you?”

  The way she looked at his hand it might’ve been a banana, or a grenade, he almost turned the gesture into straightening his collar—on a polo, total dick move, but she saved him, and he couldn’t help smiling. She had a good firm handshake and she looked him dead in the eye, though she was a shortie, and she had to crank her neck.

  “You weren’t really going to call me Ms Bates, were you?”

  That’s exactly what he’d have called her. Her kid, her house, her job. No Mr Bates. She wasn’t Audrey until she told him it was okay to call her that, and even then it felt like he should be calling her Ms Audrey like they were in Play School. They didn’t even do that in Play School any more. But she had that kind of name, old-fashioned, formal. She didn’t look old-fashioned, or formal, or old enough to be the mother of a three year old. She was pretty, glossy caramel hair and very dark blue eyes. But then he didn’t look old enough to have raised four kids already either.

  “I was actually,” he said. She laughed awkwardly and he rolled his shoulders, this was still worth doing for the interview practice. “That’s lame, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged, “Oh, I don’t know. Ms Bates, I could probably get used to that. Come through.” She stepped in front of him and he caught the scent of peanut butter. “But then I’d have to call you Mr McGovern.”

  If it meant he got the job she could call him ‘hey you’. “I could probably get used to that.”

  And he could get used to this house too. No scuff marks on the walls, no random shoes, or frilly knickers lying around. Gin was a slob and Flip never put anything she used away. No wet towel smell, which was a novelty. It was light and warm and the rooms were big and generous, the ceilings high. The house had the kind of scale that didn’t make him feel like a giant. Like he might be able to walk around in here without knocking things over or feel like an ogre in a doll’s house like he did in Sky’s tiny flat.

  “You should call me Audrey, and this is Mia.”

  They were in a lounge room. The TV was on, Little Mermaid. Under the Sea. Flip loved that movie. There was a line she’d sing over and over about it being better down where it’s wetter. Made him laugh every time. Like yo, Disney, one for the grown-ups. He kept humour off his face though, because dirty smirking at a singing crab wasn’t going to improve his chances.

  Mia was colouring. She was a miniature version of Audrey and wore the same open-mouthed expression her mum had done at the front door during the not Reese Witherspoon moment.

  He had that effect on kids. He had it on most people. You couldn’t be this big and not make people think twice about whether you were safe. Or dumb. “Hello, Mia.” He went straight to the floor, sat cross-legged a little way from her and slumped to make himself smaller. She stared, her mouth a perfect circle, her eyes shiny platters of blue.

  “I’m Reece.”

  Mia closed her mouth, put pressed her lips together. She tilted her head to the side. She was checking him out big time. He sat still and let her run the show.

  “Reece, you don’t have to—”

  Mia came a little closer, but looked over his head to her mum. “New Cameron?”

  “Cameron is the name of our current nanny.”

  “Reece,” he repeated, keeping his eyes on Mia, smiling at her, but not too much, that could be scary too.

  Mia took a step forward, and when he remained still, she took another.

  “Hello Mia.”

  She made a shocked hmmm sound when he said her name and he thought he might get tears. If there were tears this was a bust. No one hired a dude who made their kid cry first up.

  No one wanted to hire a dude to do this full stop.

  He watched Mia’s lips and chin for any sign of a wobble. She wavered on her feet, then bent forward and touched his shin with her hand. He kept very still. She patted the laces on his shoes. Then she poked his hand, pulled the
hair his forearm. She moved closer, humming to herself, then she put both hands to his face and stared into his eyes. He stifled a shiver. She probably knew exactly how he planned to play suckerfish to Sky’s little mermaid tonight.

  “Oh, Mia,” said Audrey, in that fond parent tone, the one Charlie had never used.

  Reece didn’t move. Neither did Mia, but she hummed and fluttered her oversize eyelashes and held his face. She was making up her mind. He didn’t think she was going to start wailing now, the time for that had passed.

  “Mia, honey, don’t do that to Reece.”

  Her eyes flicked up to Audrey, then to Reece’s. She let his face go then pushed on his arm with a grunt. “Move dis.”

  He lifted his arm and she perched on his knee and leant back on his side. “Read me.” Hah. He’d won the kid, but her mother was another story.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake.” Audrey walked around and stood in front of them, hands to her hips. “Reece doesn’t want to read to you,” she said to Mia, and to him, “Sorry about this.”

  “Why?” said Mia.

  She gave a little bounce, which he felt in his hip joint. “I’m happy to read a story.”

  “I’m being snowed.” Audrey went to the coffee table and pulled out Hairy Maclary. She handed him the book. “By both of you.”

  He read Hairy Maclary with Mia turning the pages. When he got to the end she bounced. “Again.”

  “No, Mia. I need to talk to Reece now. You can have The Little Mermaid from the beginning.”

  Mia clung onto his arm. “No.”

  “Mia, will you draw me a picture of Hairy Maclary?”

  She looked him in the eye. “Okay.” She scrambled off his knee and went to the colouring book.

  Reece stood, doing it slowly so not to alarm anyone.

  “Neat trick.” Audrey sounded pissed off.

  “Sorry, sometimes I scare little kids without meaning to.” Not just little kids, little kid’s mothers. “You need to get that first impression right.” Not something he could fix with Audrey.

  “Yes, well.” Audrey patted the couch. “You can sit here.”

  He sat beside her and Audrey grilled him like a t-bone. No medium rare about it. She got stuck in, going over his quals and experience.

  “Why do you want to be a nanny?”

  A reasonable question. But he had to answer it and not sound like a creep. A chick could say, because I love kids. A guy like him says it and it’s suspect.

  “Little people are fascinating. They’re learning so much at this age, every day something new.” That’s what he felt, and he said it without cringing.

  Audrey angled her head to the side. “Everyday Mia wants to do the same things, sometimes in a precise order. Child care isn’t exactly a job with built in excitement, it’s more about routine at this age.”

  Okaay. He smiled. Audrey was going to make him pay for charming Mia. He could tell her he’d spent years thinking he’d be a builder, constructing homes with cement and glass and steel, but what he’d missed when he was laying bricks and rendering cement was the human contact, the sense he was contributing to something more important than a home beautiful experience. But that made him sound creepy too.

  “I appreciate the need for routine, but there’s also so much learning going on in a kid’s head. So much to absorb and understand. I like being a part of that process.”

  “That doesn’t tell me why you’d choose to be a nanny. You could be a school teacher.”

  He’d thought about that. Primary school. But it was kids before they even got as far as the schoolyard who interested him most. Again, hard not to sound like he was wearing an overcoat about to flash his privates and dangle a boiled lolly. Working with kids was historically women’s work and yeah, he knew he was bucking the trend, but he’d never figured on the inbuilt bias against a man wanting to work with kids.

  “I considered regular teaching and I still might go down that track in the future.” It was easier with older kids. There was a demand for more male teachers to counter the number of single parent families where mum was in charge. “For now I want a nanny position because little kids fascinate me.”

  “They’re loud, sulky, erratic egomaniacs, who haven’t got a clue they don’t run the world.”

  “Yeah,” he laughed. “I love that. Look, I know this is the most basic question, but if I tell you I love kids from two to five years old, I sound like a dirty pervert. Particularly because I look like this.” He kept his eyes on Audrey, waiting to see dismissal. “But I do love kids this age. They’re like aliens learning everything for the first time and I find that exciting.”

  “How often do you work-out?”

  The abrupt change in tack surprised him. “I, ah. I worked my way though my degree as a builder’s labourer. That’s what I thought I wanted to do with my life, build homes. My size is genetic and I keep fit, but if you’re worried I’ll want time off to work-out, don’t be. The job comes first.”

  Audrey gave a solemn nod. And fair enough. His physicality was always the elephant in the room, courtesy of a father he’d only seen pictures of and a whole past life she didn’t need to know about.

  “Tell me about your child care roles.”

  Mia bought him a page of scribble to look at while he told Audrey about the Flannery boys and then Jayden Ramsey. But neither of those jobs would help her feel comfortable about him caring for Mia. She listened politely but she was somewhere else while he talked about Jayden’s hyperactivity and Liam Flannery’s diabetes. Mia bought her colouring and sat closer to him. What he really needed to do was to tell Audrey about the girls, but that meant telling her about his family and it didn’t seem professional.

  “You’ve got excellent experience caring for boys.”

  He wanted to ask what she thought the difference was. Every kid was different. Callum Flannery loved to play dress-ups, the more it glittered the better. Some mornings he wouldn’t leave the house without lip gloss. He was five and he had firm opinions about his haircuts. This was going to happen to Reece in other interviews unless he only ever applied to care for boys.

  “I also cared for my four sisters.”

  Audrey smiled one of those polite grins that looked more like pity for a try-hard. Family didn’t count. Except that for him it did.

  “When I was ten, Charlie—that’s Mum, remarried. She had four kids in six years, one set of twins. My stepdad was a long distance truck driver, he wasn’t around much and when he was, he was sick. He died of cancer the year my mum was pregnant with my baby sis, Pippa.

  “When I was sixteen Charlie got sick. With all that I did a lot of child care. It was me who looked after the twins and Pippa. If I wasn’t at school, I had family responsibilities.”

  He’d been too busy to be frustrated and angry about that at the time, but later, what a blow-out, but not something Audrey needed to know about.

  “Charlie had to work and she went to hospitality college so she could get a better job. I changed nappies, I made up bottles. I washed, cooked, cleaned, and supervised homework. Mum worked shifts, doubles whenever she could.”

  And those hard times when he’d had to choose family over friends made him who he was. He’d rebelled, as soon as he was out of school, three years of being bad tempered, resenting the girls, and Charlie especially, until he realised he was only hurting himself. He loved his family more than anything else in his life.

  “I helped to bring my sisters up.” He stood. He’d hacked this up, there was no point sitting through further questions. “I know you probably think family doesn’t count in a résumé. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  “Sit down Reece, you’re not wasting my time.” Audrey patted the couch cushion.

  “You don’t want me.” Shit, that sounded pathetic.

  “Why wouldn’t I employ you? You have all the right qualifications. Plus you’re catnip to Mia.”

  No point not being honest now. “You want a woman.”

  “I wan
t the best person for the job.”

  “You’re saying that because you know that’s what you’re supposed to say. It’s politically correct.”

  “Sit down, Reece. You’re blocking out the sun.”

  He scrubbed at his head and looked from Audrey to Mia. Mia was making an O face again, then she said, “Mum, apple.”

  Audrey focused on Mia. “We don’t have any apples. But you can have a mandarin. You like mandarins.”

  “No. Apple.”

  “Draw another picture and I’ll get something to eat in a minute.”

  “No. Apple.”

  “Mia, honey.”

  “No.”

  This was a useful distraction. “I’ll go. Really, I understand you’d be more comfortable with someone else. I don’t want to waste your time any longer.”

  “Apple, Mum. Apple now.”

  “You’re not wasting my time. Mia, in a minute.”

  “No.”

  “What do you like least about being a nanny, Reece? Do you prefer manny?”

  Like a mermaid, he was trapped in the undersea world of this interview. He sat, but on the floor beside Mia, cross-legged like before. “I hate manny. Male nurses are still nurses, not murses. The words have the same etymology. It’s the function, not the gender.”

  “Oh.” He’d spoken sharply. Audrey sat on the floor as well. She put out her arms to Mia, but Mia shied away, opting to stand on Reece’s shins, holding onto his shoulders.

  “What I like least is when I can’t work out what a kid is going through. If they’re upset and I can’t soothe them.” Mia hummed and walked up his leg, holding on to his hair. “If they’re sick and I can’t make them feel better on my own.” Mia stood on his thigh and he moved his arm so she could lean over his shoulder. She poked her finger in his ear. “That’s what I hate. The not being able to find the answer.”

  “Sometimes the answer is they’re going to scream.”

  “Yeah,” he ducked his head to dodge another ear poke, “but if you know they’re screaming because you’re out of apples or they’ve been bitten by a mosquito, or they only want something that’s purple, you can try to distract them with a—”