by Melody Mayer
Of course, if there were nannies that came with the vacation, where were they? They ought to hurry up and arrive. The notion of being responsible for Ham and Miles Silverstein, in addition to the Goldhagen twins, was far too awful even to contemplate.
A black limo picked Kiley up at Jorge's house at eight-thirty in the morning. Before that, she'd profusely thanked her host for his kindness. His response had been bemused—if Kiley ever needed assistance, she should certainly count on him. Then he helped her load her bags, and she was on her way.
It took an hour and a half in the morning rush hour traffic to get to Evelyn Bowers's house on Rockingham in the tony Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Kiley had a tenth-grade teacher who had done a presentation on the O. J. Simpson murder trial of the early nineties, and she vaguely remembered that the former star football player had lived somewhere on this very street.
The Bowers home was exquisite from the outside. Two stories, with a white stucco exterior and brick front patio. There were two verdant orange trees whose leaves drooped over the patio; some of last season's oranges gave the air a pungent but pleasant aroma. Evelyn was not nearly as rich as Platinum, and you could definitely see neighbors' homes from the front of hers, but there was still no doubt from the locale that Evelyn was doing very nicely indeed.
The door swung open before Kiley could even press the doorbell.
“Welcome, Kiley welcome!” Evelyn exclaimed. She was dressed casually, in jeans and a blue UCLA T-shirt, with Dansko Lana leather sandals on her feet. “Welcome to your new home! Let me help you with your things. No, drop everything inside, and I'll give you the tour. I can already tell this is going to be super.”
Within seconds, Evelyn was leading Kiley through the interior of her impeccable home. The front hallway led into a sunken family room that had the biggest plasma television Kiley had ever seen, plus two southwestern-style couches and a Navajo rug on the floor. The artwork was also Native American themed, and ranged from sand paintings to feathered spears to actual Indian headdresses.
“Wow,” Kiley breathed. She'd never seen anything like it. “Are you a collector?”
Evelyn shook her head. “Not really, but my ex-husband was. I got this stuff in the divorce settlement and I won't sell it because I want him to have the pain of seeing it on my goddamn walls when he comes to get the children for his visitation. I'll tell you, it's worth waiting all week for that moment. Come on, I'll show you the rest of the place.”
Kiley followed as Evelyn continued the tour. As unassuming as the front of the house was, the interior was quite innovative. The place was U-shaped, built around an interior open courtyard that had soaring palm trees and a comfortable sitting area with stone benches and a large stone grill. Beyond it in the back were a paddle tennis court and a constant-flow lap pool, which Evelyn told Kiley she was welcome to use whenever she wanted.
The far end of one leg of the U belonged to Kiley. She had a cozy bedroom decorated in a Hawaiian theme, her own bathroom, plus a tiny refrigerator, microwave, and table built for two.
“Be discreet with whom you bring here, Kiley,” Evelyn admonished her. “And keep clear boundaries between your personal life and my time. But our bedrooms are clear around the other side of the place. So … well, you know what I mean.”
Kiley did know what she meant. Honestly, it was a little embarrassing. She couldn't imagine her own mother ever talking to one of her friends like that.
The rest of the tour went quickly. There were four other bedrooms—one for Evelyn, one each for her two children, and one for guests. The kitchen was forest green and opened onto the living room at the far end. Each of the bedrooms had its own bathroom, plus there was a simple half bath off the family room.
“Downstairs is fully finished,” Evelyn reported. “Moon spends a lot of time down there, it's like his fortress of solitude. So, that's it. Would you like to go to your room and get unpacked, or what? We can call your mother later, if you'd like.”
“When do I get to meet the kids?” Kiley asked her.
Evelyn ignored her question. “How about driving? Do you drive a stick?”
“Umm … no.”
“That's good. I hate them. You'll take the Pontiac Vibe.” Evelyn dug into her pocketbook, extracted an envelope, and handed it to Kiley.
“What's that?”
“Your pay,” Evelyn announced. “A check for six fifty as we discussed at the club. Dated for Friday. You can either deposit it or I'll cash it for you.”
“You didn't have to do—”
Her boss smiled. “I wanted us to get off to the best possible start. The kids will be here soon, and then we won't have as much chance to—”
A car beeped three times in the driveway. “Ah!” Evelyn exclaimed. “They're here!”
She went to the front door and opened it; Kiley saw two children burst out of the backseat of a white Mercedes and come running toward them. Meanwhile, an older woman—a carbon copy of Evelyn except with thirty years on her (or it would have been thirty years, except for outstanding plastic surgery)—got out of the driver's side of the car.
“Get ready,” Evelyn advised. “You're going to meet my kids and my mother.”
Kiley got ready. But instead of stopping to say hello to their new nanny, the children ran right by her toward the house. There were a girl and a boy. Lydia had spoken to Kiley by phone and told her what she knew about the kids. They were Kiley's only reservation about taking this gig.
“We're going swimming!” the girl announced. She had curly dark hair and a sturdy figure.
“Swimming,” the boy echoed. He was exceptionally thin, with an exceptionally long neck, and was obviously the younger of the kids. Then the two of them disappeared into their wing of the house.
“It's fine,” Evelyn assured Kiley. “They're both excellent swimmers.” She put her arms out to the older woman, who was now approaching her and Kiley. “Mom, hello. I want you to meet our new nanny, Kiley McClain. Kiley McClain, meet Carole-Ann Wolfenbarger.”
Evelyn and her mother hugged while Kiley quickly decided not to correct her last name in front of Evelyn's mom.
“Please call me Carole-Ann,” Evelyn's mom instructed. “I also answer to C.A. God, what a morning. Up at six for zazen, AA meeting at seven-thirty, pick up the kids at eight-thirty for art class … I'm already exhausted. Do you have any iced tea, Evelyn?”
“In the fridge, Mom,” Evelyn said. “Kiley, will you excuse us for a few minutes?”
“Sure,” Kiley told them. “I'll unpack and then keep an eye on the kids, okay?”
“Okay. Star and Moon will introduce themselves to you. They always do,” Evelyn told her, then headed off with her mother. “If you get hungry, just come on to the kitchen. We've got a lot of everything.”
Well, Kiley thought. Not a bad start.
As she started back to her bedroom, she mentally reviewed what Lydia had told her about Evelyn's children. Star was ten years old, in fifth grade, interested in ballet and singing, and by all reports reasonably normal. Moon, on the other hand, was supposed to be a lot more challenging. He was seven years old and suffered from a litany of alphabet disorders, including ADP (Auditory Processing Disorder), ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder), and ABD (Antisocial Behavior Disorder) … at least according to his mother.
Kiley had mentioned this in her interview at the country club, but Evelyn had been extremely positive, after taking a few more verbal shots at Kiley's “friend-who-shall-go-nameless.” Moon was on a BIP (Behavior Intervention Plan) and was under the care of the best child psychiatrists and neurologists at UCLA. He was monitored twice weekly in the office and once in the home. Kiley would have more support than she'd ever want.
That was good enough for her. She needed this job, big-time. Whatever the Bowers kids threw at her, she'd find a way to deal with it. She had dealt with her mother and father for seventeen years, which meant she had an awful lot of experience to fall back on.
She finishe
d her long walk down the hallway and opened the door to her room. Then she gasped.
The room looked as if a tornado had blown through it. The bed was wrecked, clothes were strewn on the floor, and toilet paper was draped from the top of one window to the dresser and nightstands. The Bose Wave radio was blaring the news in some obscure Asian language, the water in the shower was running at the highest possible heat, and an unpleasant and thoroughly scatological odor emanated from the trash can near the desk.
“Crap,” Kiley said aloud. “Thanks, guys. Nice welcome to the family. Really, really nice.”
After three full days, Esme could have filed a very specific report on what was good about Northern Look: The food was amazing, beyond abundant, and available twenty-four hours a day. The grounds were lushly wild with thick hibiscus bushes and fragrant papaya and banana trees. Esme had taken several long walks along the fine sand on the beach and circumnavigated the premises a couple of times.
There was a walk-in aviary at the southeast corner of the property with several woven hammocks hidden among the palm trees, and that very morning—the kids were out on a glass-bottom boat voyage with their parents—Esme had impetuously borrowed a sketch pad and colored pencils from the arts and crafts center, settled into one of the secluded hammocks, and sketched several of the vivid green black-billed parrots that swooped through the guango tree branches. It was the first time in a long time that she'd been inspired to draw something other than tattoos, and it felt absolutely wonderful.
The Northern Look resort staff was extraordinarily professional, anticipating the needs of the clientele even before their customers thought of it. Guests who ventured into the ocean found not only thick, nine-hundred-thread-count sky blue towels waiting for them on their beach chairs, but also luxuriously fleecy terry cloth robes in the same color.
If they got hungry and didn't feel like venturing up to the restaurants, there were two snack huts at either end of the five hundred yards of private beach. One of them specialized in continental fare that could be grilled on the spot, like lamb chops and sirloin kebabs threaded with sizzling meats and verdant veggies; the other one was a genuine Jamaican jerk chicken pit that served the most succulent and spicy chicken Esme had ever tasted, along with a seemingly endless supply of Red Stripe beer. At both huts, you ate not on plastic beach tables, but on wrought-iron-and-glass tables covered with white tablecloths, and the finest Wedgwood china.
The resort's entertainment was outstanding. A house reggae band played at lunch and dinner, and there was always an after-dinner show. That night, illusionist Criss Angel was to dazzle the crowd by setting himself on fire and then disappearing. The night before, Sting, who was vacationing at Northern Look with his family, had strapped on a guitar and entertained the crowd with an impromptu acoustic set.
The legendary rocker wasn't the only celebrity at the resort. Esme recognized the senior senator from the state of California, the largest shareholder in a company that dominated the software industry (with his wife and children), and the host of a very popular television reality show that involved out-surviving the other contestants on some remote, rat-infested island or another.
There was more. Samuel the butler made sure that all the dirty capri pants, sandy Rosa Chá bikinis, and sweat-stained cargo shorts were washed overnight and delivered in a tissue-paper bundle on the home's front steps the next morning. She didn't have to fight to get the twins to sleep, since they were so tired by the day's activities that they drifted right off. She didn't even have to worry about Jonathan and Junior, because they were 2,500 miles away.
Her time at Northern Look should have been a real vacation— the operative word being “should.” Only two things stood between Esme and semiparadise, and they were named Miles and Ham Silverstein. The boys had been right; their parents had zero interest in availing themselves of the services of the resort nannies, whom they didn't know, didn't trust, and pronounced “foreign.” Esme found that last comment deeply ironic, because in fact, they were the foreigners.
Instead, the Silversteins expected that Esme would take care of their boys while they were off doing whatever they felt like doing. The Goldhagens tacitly acceded to this expectation. After the difficulties that she'd had with Diane just before they'd come to Jamaica, Esme didn't feel as though she was in a position to protest.
Ham and Miles were never still, and they pronounced everything at an ear-pounding volume—Esme couldn't imagine why. What was worse was that the twins had overcome their initial feelings and glommed on to the Silverstein boys as if they were junior role models. Whatever the boys wanted to do, the girls now wanted to do. Ham and Miles turned out to be the worst kind of influence.
Just outside the main breakfast buffet area—a magnificent open-air pavilion that faced the azure sea—the staff of Northern Look would post on a blackboard that day's planned activities, for both the adults and the kids. Listed at 10:30 a.m. was “Kids' Wacked-Up Relay.” Esme had no idea what that meant, but when Ham and Miles got back from the boat ride they decided it would be their morning's prime activity—in the same shouted voices they always seemed to use. Esme was trapped. “Wacked-Up Relay” it would be, come hell or high water.
Now she stood near the shallow children's pool (which featured a mini pirate ship, complete with spraying water cannons) in a knot with seven or eight of the resort nannies, all of them young Jamaican women with accents so melodiously thick Esme could barely understand what they were saying. Meanwhile, the kids' activity director, a tall, chocolate-skinned, dreadlocked guy named Winston, was explaining the rules of the relay to the dozen or so kids between the ages of six and fourteen who were going to participate.
“Yah mon. This is how we do the wacky, wacky, wacked-up relay!” Winston announced, using a megaphone to amplify his words. Esme noticed that his muscles rippled nicely underneath his ensemble of white tennis shorts and creamy polo emblazoned with the navy Northern Look logo. “We have eight events you will have to do, visitors to Northern Look. First, I will throw coins to the bottom of the pool, and all of you must gather at least three. You do this one at a time. Then you run to the soda-bottle filling station and fill a soda bottle with a teaspoon. No Red Stripe bottles here! Then there's the you-and-your-nanny sack race, the you-and-your-nanny three-legged race, the you-and-your-nanny egg toss, and then finally, the last three events, which are a surprise until you begin them.”
The local nannies smiled and nodded at their charges; evidently the relay was routine for them. It made sense—they worked here full-time. But for Esme, the idea of participating in a sack race, egg toss, or anything else with the human hurricanes, Ham and Miles, was not exactly appealing.
“What are the last three events?” Ham bellowed. “I wanna know!”
“Yeah, what?” Miles added.
“Yeah, what?” Weston echoed, her eyes shining in Miles's direction.
Winston smiled, his pearly teeth gleaming in the island sun. “You'll just have to see.”
“I wanna know now!” Ham shouted, jumping up and down. “Esme, tell him to tell me now! Tell him to tell me!”
“Me too! Me too!” Weston and Easton screamed, stamping their magenta D&G sequined sneakers.
“You two need to behave,” she told them in Spanish. “Don't copy these rude boys.”
Suddenly, Ham, a whirl of blue jeans and a Dodgers baseball jersey, was at her side. “What did you say to them?” he demanded.
“I told them they needed to behave and that they shouldn't copy you and your brother when you are rude,” Esme spit, even though she knew that it was an emotional response.
Miles's eyes grew wide. “I'm telling my parents what you said.”
Go ahead, you little brat, Esme thought.
“I don't even want to play this stupid race, I quit!” Ham yelled.
“Yeah, me too!” Miles joined.
The twins immediately began screaming: “Me too! Me too!”
“If you would stop yelling we can continue
with the fun,” Winston explained in his musical lilt, keeping a pleasant smile on his face.
“So, who cares?” Ham yelled. “I think us kids should get to do what we want to do. Who wants to do cannonballs?”
Winston and the rest of the nannies were helpless to stop what happened next. Ham took a running start and did a monster cannonball jump into the children's pool. So did Miles, drenching his Kitson army fatigue shorts. After that, there was a virtual stampede to the children's pool, with each of the kids assembled for the relay doing a variation on a cannonball. Water splashed everywhere. Winston shrilly blew again and again on a silvered whistle that hung around his neck, but to no avail. Children were climbing out of the pool to cannonball again; Esme was glad that the pool was deep enough to handle their jumps, and was especially grateful for the swimming lessons that the twins had taken at the country club. Still, the other nannies and Winston were glaring at her as if she was the reason the planned activity had devolved to chaos.
“Those boys aren't even my kids!” Esme exclaimed. “I take care of the two girls!”
Winston shook his head and looked at the other nannies. “Dey not belongin' to any of us, girl,” he said sourly, allowing his Jamaican patois to color his speech when the kids weren't listening.
Esme couldn't believe that this guy was dumping all the responsibility on her. She hadn't even met Miles and Ham until yesterday. “Don't blame me. Talk to their parents.”
“You wanna get us fired from here, girl?” another nanny asked. “What if the boss man come along?”
“N-no, no, of c-course not,” Esme stammered.
“Den I'm trustin' you ta find a way to control de boys.” Winston shot an evil look at the pool, where Ham and Miles were engaged in an intense water fight aboard the pirate ship. In a fit of inspiration, Ham abandoned his post on the ship's deck, splashed back into the water, and began dunking one of the other boys. This started a dunking contest that the lifeguards had to break up with shrill whistles and threats to close the pool.