by Melody Mayer
“What would you prefer to do?”
“During the day? Make money. During the night?” She shrugged. “Use your imagination.”
“I don't need to,” Luis told her. “You're a beautiful girl. All I have to do is look at you. Who needs imagination?”
“A girl who chewed roasted bugs as snacks,” she replied, quite honestly.
He made a face. “You chew—?”
“In a previous incarnation,” she told him, not wanting to delve into her past. She glanced over at the pool again. Happy, playing kiddies. If only her job could be like this all the time. “So, Luis. Where were we?”
He cocked his head at her, a bemused look on his face. “So, besides ingesting cockroaches, what else do you like to do?”
Lydia stretched lazily, the Ralph Lauren bikini showcasing all the right places. “Lots of things. Clubbing, driving fast.”
Luis grinned. “A girl after my own heart. What do you drive?”
Why did the boy want details?
“A cherry red Lamborghini,” she replied.
Luis's eyes lit up. “You have a—”
“No,” she confessed. “That would be in my dreams. Stuck here in the real world, the truth is … I don't actually have a car. I'm looking for one, though.”
“Really,” Luis said. “What are you in the market for? What's your price range?”
Lydia shifted uncomfortably on the chaise. “Um … that would be between free and … free?”
He laughed, and she swatted at his bicep. “I'm a nanny, for God's sake. I don't make any money. I'll settle for anything that runs.”
Luis folded his arms. Lydia couldn't help noticing how nicely his biceps bulged. “I think you might be in luck.”
“How so?”
“I just won a tournament in Las Vegas—satellite tour, not the real PGA, but the first-place prize was a car plus some money. So I've got this brand-new Toyota MR2 Spyder.”
“And you're giving it to me?” Lydia squealed, even though she had zero idea what a Toyota MR2 Spyder looked like.
He put his hands over his heart. “Ouch. Sorry, no, I can't. But—”
“But what?” Lydia demanded. “I'm very happy for your new driving experience, but it doesn't help mine any.”
He ran a hand across his cleft chin. “Tell you what. I'll give you a ride. And we can talk about your ‘driving experience.’”
“If you let me drive it too, it's a deal,” she said.
Luis stuck out his hand for Lydia to shake. “Deal.”
“Great.” Lydia didn't mention that she'd only been driving for approximately two hours, and that those two hours had taken place that very morning. She also didn't mention that she had a boyfriend. It wasn't as if she and Luis were going out on a date. “When?”
“What are you doing this evening?” Luis asked. “Say … around eight?”
Lydia thought for a moment. Work ended for her that day at 7:30 p.m. Billy had to work overtime. Again. Which meant her schedule was wide open.
“Around eight, I'd say you're picking me up in your hot new wheels,” Lydia told him.
“Excellent,” he agreed. “We'll drive by my place—”
She made a time-out T with her hands. “Hold on, buddy. How did we get from my place to your place so fast?”
“I meant behind my place,” Luis explained. “There's something I want to show you. I promise to keep both hands on the wheel at all times.”
All righty, then. He'd pick her up at eight.
The ride across the island of Jamaica had been hellacious, because there hadn't been a helicopter available on short notice that could carry five adults and four children. Instead, Steven and Diane had chartered a minivan with a Jamaican driver for the day; the concierge at Northern Look had assured them that the trek to the south coast of the island, to a place called St. Catherine, would take only a couple of hours.
This trip had been completely unplanned. However, when Steven and Diane had awakened that morning, they'd turned on a local radio station on their Bang & Olufsen clock radio. Between reggae songs, the deejay had done an on-air promotion for something called the Jamaican Sugarcane Cutting Championships, to take place that afternoon in this place called St. Catherine, at a cricket field (cricket was the most popular sport in Jamaica after soccer) converted into a festival grounds.
Steven and Diane immediately decided that this would be a fun way to spend the day; the Silversteins had agreed without hesitation … which was why Esme had to endure a nausea-inducing, bumpy ride from the north coast up through the hills, past the crowded, poor town of Moneague and the teeming Linstead market, and then down into Spanish Town and the sprawling St. Catherine Parish. The one saving grace to the ride was that the minivan had a DVD player. Esme had thought to borrow The Karate Kid and Brother Bear from the Northern Look collection before they departed. Though Ham and his brother clamored for Mortal Kombat, the DVDs kept the noise in the back of the van down to a manageable level.
It wasn't hard to find the sugarcane cutting competition: there were dozens of hand-drawn signs on the main road that led to the cricket pitch. The driver parked their van in a crowded, muddy parking lot, and the whole group of nine trooped to the stadium gate. This was nothing like Dodger Stadium, Esme saw as she approached. It was more like a high school football field, with two sets of bleachers and a high fence that circled the field. As they neared the gate, city buses from the capital city of Kingston were disgorging hundreds of passengers who'd decided to make a day trip of it.
“Be careful with the children,” Diane cautioned Esme, who was grasping Weston with one hand and Easton with the other. Esme was trying to work up the nerve to ask Diane if she really had to watch the Silverstein kids all the time. She'd been thinking about it ever since she'd met the little brats, but she'd been too afraid to say anything. Well, she was still afraid. But she was beginning to deeply resent the patently unfair situation. No one had asked her; it had just been expected. The Silverstein kids were much more than double her workload.
Esme cleared her throat. “Diane, I was wondering if we could talk.”
“Sure,” Diane said easily.
Esme's heart pounded. She took a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. “Well, I was wondering if I have to be responsible for watching Ham and Miles too? I mean, I will if I have—”
Diane cut her off with a wave of her hand. “Of course not. Actually, I was thinking about broaching this myself and it just slipped my mind. Now that I have a chance to think about it, it was very unfair what we did to you, saddling you with Erin and Peter's children.”
Esme was shocked that Diane had already come to the same conclusion. On the other hand, it struck her as ironic that talking about it had “slipped Diane's mind.” While it meant a lot to Esme, it wasn't much more than an afterthought to Diane.
“I've seen how Miles and Ham act,” Diane continued. “They're brats. They don't respect you, they don't respect us, and they don't respect themselves. To tell you the truth, I'm ashamed that Erin and Peter would drink mojitos on the beach while their children are such an embarrassment. Most of all, I don't like the way they influence the girls' behavior.”
Esme nodded, but didn't chime in with her heartfelt agreement. It was one thing for Diane to insult the children of her friends, and quite another for the nanny to do so.
Diane put her hand atop Esme's. “In fact, you'd be doing me a favor if you'd keep my girls away from those boys.”
Excellent.
“Will do,” Esme agreed.
They reached the turnstiles to the cricket field. Steven bought tickets for everyone; then they were inside.
What a scene. On a stage by the scoreboard, a reggae band pounded out an infectious beat. In a circle around the field, there were dozens of booths set up, selling everything from colorful pastel paintings and hand-whittled masks to bottles of Red Stripe and fresh vegetable patties filled with well-seasoned callaloo. There were hordes of children gathered around games of
chance and a face-painting booth; the minute Weston and Easton spotted the face painting, they clamored to have their faces decorated by the young Jamaican woman who was deftly stroking her brush on the children's cheeks.
“Go ahead,” Steven told her. “We'll be …”
He looked around and saw a fenced-in area not far from where they'd come into the cricket grounds. It separated some tables with tablecloths from the rest of the festival. The people inside the fence were of mixed ethnicities—brown, white, black—as opposed to the crowd out here in the festival area itself, which was 99.9 percent black.
“Over there,” he continued, and checked his watch. “How about in an hour?”
“Sounds good,” Esme told him. Now that she had to look after only Easton and Weston, she felt positively giddy.
“Have fun,” Steven said, and took out his wallet. “Here's some money. Keep a close eye on the girls; this is a madhouse. Bye, girls!”
He kissed his daughters, pressed some bills into Esme's hand, and waved goodbye. As soon as he was gone, the girls again begged to have their faces painted. Esme grinned. She couldn't wait to see how the girls' faces would turn out. Not only that, she was free of Ham and Miles. Not just for the rest of the stay in Jamaica, but forever.
While Weston and Easton sat happily on two low stools in the face-painting booth, attended to by the Jamaican girl who'd agreed to do them both at the same time and sworn to keep them chained to their chairs for the duration of their art project, Esme wandered over to a small exhibit directly next to her booth that explained the history of the sugar crop in Jamaica and the process by which it was harvested. She'd had no idea it was such strenuous work. Though machines did some of it, much of the Jamaican cane harvest was still done by hand, by incredibly strong men wielding machetes that were as thick as their forearms. Evidently, the night before the cane was cut, the fields were set on fire—the idea was to burn off the leaves and the outer coating of the cane plants, which grew eight to ten feet high. The fires burned hot and quick, leaving the cane behind.
The next day, the men moved through the fields, followed by flatbed pickup trucks, to gather the cut cane. Each man, if he was skilled enough and strong enough, could cut upwards of fifteen tons of cane a day. The work was backbreaking and dirty, all the more so because the night's fire left a sooty coating on the remaining cane. Yet the men would compete fiercely to cut the most cane, and they were paid by the weight of the cane they did cut. Today, the best cutter of the year would be honored; the award came with a five-thousand-dollar bonus prize.
At the far end of the exhibit were some sugarcane stalks and an actual machete, so that festival-goers could get a sense of what it was like to actually wield the blade and slash through some cane.
“You want to try?” A smiling man wearing jeans and nothing else—no shoes, no hat, no nothing—offered the machete to Esme. From the soot on his skin, Esme realized that he was one of the cane cutters. “It's good exercise,” he told her in a lilting Jamaican accent, a huge grin splitting his dark face.
Esme snuck a glance back at the girls. Their faces were nearly done. “No, sorry, I've got to check on my kids,” she confessed.
“Root for me, pretty girl,” the man told her. “I'm Michael. I could really, really use the money.”
“I will,” Esme promised, then hurried back to the girls. They were grinning wildly as the artist held up a mirror for them to see her handiwork. Weston's face had been painted green, yellow, and black (the colors of the Jamaican flag), while Easton had a rising sun coming up from her chin, with rays of the sun radiating toward her eyes and ears. The work was, frankly, stunning. A tattoo artist herself, Esme knew how hard it was to work with living canvases.
“Great,” Esme told the artist. “What do I owe you?”
“You are American,” she said. “I can tell from your accent. Do you have American dollars?”
Steven had given Esme the local Jamaican currency. But she saw the hungrily hopeful look on the artist's face; evidently American money was worth more to her. Well, she had some of her own money in her back pocket. So she nodded, hoping she could cover the cost. As long as it was under forty dollars, she was okay. And she was certain that Steven would reimburse her.
“How about… seven dollars for the both of them?” the artist ventured. “Unless you think that is too much.”
On the Santa Monica Pier, it would cost three times that much, Esme realized.
“How about seven dollars for each of them?” Esme countered. “You did a wonderful job.”
“That is very, very generous of you,” the artist said. “You are lucky to live in America. I want to go to art school there. But I cannot get a visa. They will not give a visa to a poor Jamaican girl. I know it is a crazy dream, but why should a girl not have dreams?”
Esme's heart went out to the girl; she handed her a twenty-dollar bill. “Please, keep it all,” she said. “Isn't there a place for you to study art here?”
The girl laughed sadly. “You do not know much about our island, do you?”
“Not really,” Esme admitted.
“We have no real art school in Jamaica. There is the University of the West Indies, but I cannot afford the tuition.”
“Well, couldn't you get some kind of… student visa to study in America?” Esme wondered aloud. Obviously the girl was very talented. There had to be a solution.
“Don't you understand me?” The artist's dark eyes bore into Esme's. “Don't you understand how lucky you are to be in America, to be an American citizen?”
“I do,” Esme agreed. “But please understand, things aren't perfect in America, either.”
The artist shook her head, the beads in her heavily braided hair swishing gracefully across her face. “Not perfect, maybe. That will happen only in heaven. Cuba is sixty miles from here. Do you see people in boats trying to go to Cuba? Or to Mexico? No! Everyone wants to go to America.”
Esme gulped. The desire in this girl's voice was palpable. It was also coupled with a sort of resignation, a knowledge that no matter how much she wanted to go to America, to get the art training she craved, it was never going to happen.
I want to go to art school too, Esme thought. I never even considered that I wouldn't be able to go if I wanted to.
On their way across the island, she'd seen the ramshackle shacks so many poor Jamaicans lived in. Compared to that, the Echo was paradise. Esme was hit with a pang of guilt. It was all so relative, wasn't it: opportunity, prosperity, poverty….
“It is too bad you are not a man,” the artist joked. “Then you could marry me. That is sort of my last hope.” She cleared her throat. “Not like I'm going to meet a rich American guy here, though.”
“Well…”
Esme didn't know what to say. This was a very uncomfortable conversation, mostly because there was absolutely nothing she could do to help this nice girl. She prided herself on being competent—so much more competent than the rich girls of Beverly Hills and Bel Air, who ran to the manicurist when they chipped a nail and thought nothing of spending eight bucks on a caffe latte when they could just as easily brew a cup of Folgers at home. Yet here she was, with a situation over which she had no control and about which she could do nothing. She didn't know this girl. In fact, she didn't even know her name … but she felt a kinship with her.
“What's your name?” Esme asked.
“Tarshea,” the girl said. “Tarshea Manley”
“I'm glad to meet you, Tarshea,” Esme told her, shaking the girl's hand. “I hope that…”
Esme froze—it was as if time froze too. She was looking over Tarshea's shoulder at the stools where the twins had been sitting.
The kid-sized stools were empty.
Esme wheeled around, looking in every direction. Hordes of people were milling about, laughing, cheering, and chomping on sugarcane. But none of them was Easton or Weston.
The girls were gone.
Kiley had quickly gone with the Paulsons down
to arts and crafts and had met their daughter, Grace. She was, as described, lovely, with long copper hair, a smattering of freckles across her upturned nose, and her dad's almond-shaped eyes. She showed Kiley two sculptures she was working on, one of a pony and another an abstract mass of semicircles and oblong blobs; Grace charmed her by saying she was trying to sculpt “laughter.” She decided on the spot to accept the Paulsons' job offer.
She hurried back to Star and Moon at the pool, figuring out her plan. By the time she'd brought them home, she pretty much knew how she was going to proceed. She was not going to be an ass about it. She would resign that evening, but she'd give Evelyn a week's notice. Since she'd been there for less than five days, this seemed more than fair.
Unfortunately, the Hollywood grapevine extended to the nanny network. By the time Kiley parked Evelyn's Vibe in the driveway, Evelyn had already heard the news. Kiley didn't know how. That she had been informed was obvious: Evelyn stood in the doorway her bony arms folded against her tangerine cashmere T-shirt, her mouth an angry slash across her face.
“How dare you!” she bellowed at Kiley even before her children got inside. “You little two-timing user!”
Kiley's jaw fell open. She had no idea what to say. Star and Moon stared up at her; Moon picked his nose and smeared the booger on his sister. Kiley had anticipated that Evelyn might be upset when she told her; she had even anticipated an upbraiding. But she hadn't expected to be labeled a two-timing user.
“I'm sorry, Evelyn.” Kiley tried to calm her boss.
“What did she do, Mom?” Moon asked eagerly.
“You should take her upstate, like they did to that girl on The Sopranos,” Star added.
“You should be sorry,” Evelyn shot back. “I saved your ass, and this is how you thank me? By quitting?”
Moon figured out what was going on. “You mean Kiley quit?” He started jumping up and down. “Hurray! Hurray! Kiley is a big fat bitch, she's the biggest bitch in the whole wide world!” he sang. “She's a super bitch, she's the biggest bi—”