Nanny Needed

by Georgina Cross

  My eyes dart from side to side, but of course no one is looking; they’re too engrossed in their own conversations. And if they were to notice, how would they understand the significance? It’s only a lock of hair.

  “Patty insisted you have one of your own,” Collette says. “She let me cut off a piece just this morning. What a sweet girl.”

  I can’t seem to keep my fingers folded around it.

  “It’s a gift,” she says when she notes my hesitation. She flashes a quick grin at her daughter. “A gift from Patty and me. She’s so happy to give this to you. You don’t want to upset her.” Another gentle nudge. “Take it.”

  My stomach rolls. Take the damn hair, Sarah.

  “It was always Therese’s idea,” Collette adds. “She says keeping a lock of Patty’s hair is a good luck charm.” She looks at me sweetly. “I want you to have good luck too.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “What happened to Therese?” I ask Pauline.

  We’ve returned from the bakery. After a quick check-in with Stephen to say everything went well, Collette excused herself to take Patty to the playroom. “I’d like some alone time,” she tells me, padding down the hall.

  Pauline is wiping a table in the living room, a blue piece of terry cloth and bottle of cleaner clutched in her hands.

  When I ask, she straightens her back but doesn’t answer.

  “Therese?” I say again. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” I narrow my eyes slightly. “She worked here fifteen years and then she decided to quit? What happened?”

  “It was a long time ago. Therese isn’t here anymore.”

  I dig into my pocket and hold up the lock of hair. “Do you have one too?”

  She startles. “Is that hers?”

  “No, she gave me one for myself.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today. She said it was Therese’s idea for us all to have one, but why? Therese hasn’t been here in years. It…” I dangle the hair again. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Pauline resumes her cleaning. “Collette listened to a lot of what Therese told her. Just put it away and don’t worry about it.”

  “I need to understand why the woman left. Why would she ditch this job and the Birds after so long?”

  Pauline sets down the bottle of cleaner with a thud. “She didn’t ditch the job.”

  “So where did she go?”

  Pauline raises her eyes. “She died.”

  There’s a thud in my chest. “What happened?”

  “Therese was a great person, she really was. But she was getting too clingy with Collette. Too dependent. Like her job here was everything she had in this world.” She gestures at the room and I nod, encouraging her to keep going. “I felt like it was getting to be a bit too much and Collette agreed. She needed some personal space. After all, fifteen years together is a long time.”

  I think about Pauline, how she’s been here longer than that—more than twenty years, she’d told me proudly—and how she lives here too, hasn’t known another home since she was in her twenties. She’s become just like Therese without knowing it.

  “We talked several times about Therese making her own friends and spending time in the city. Collette told her it wasn’t necessary to be by her side all the time, that she could care for Patty sometimes on her own. We tried to be encouraging. We thought it would be good for her to expand her circle. And that’s when it happened.”

  My heart races.

  “She didn’t know her way around without Collette or the driver. She was like a child herself, not knowing which direction was north or south, which way to turn if she wanted to go to Chinatown or Battery Park. God forbid she try figuring out the subway, so she walked everywhere. But then bam—” Pauline punches a fist into her other hand and I flinch. What an odd and impersonal way to describe the death of someone she knows.

  “She was hit by a cab. The driver had been speeding, but Therese wasn’t paying attention. She didn’t look where she was going and she stepped right out in front.”

  The look on Pauline’s face. What she’s just told me troubles me, but the look on her face is more eerie. It’s as if she thinks it was the woman’s fault.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The following morning, a text message arrives from an unknown number.

  Can you come in at 12 pm instead of 10?

  It’s not Stephen, and it’s not Collette. I’ve programmed both their numbers. Alex?

  Who is this?

  Pauline comes the response.

  Is everything ok?

  Yes. She just wants extra time to rest.

  I look at the time, it’s not even 9:00 a.m. I’m thankful to Pauline for giving me an early heads-up, but I’m also worried. What kind of new meds have they put Collette on?

  When I arrive at West Seventy-eighth Street, an umbrella at my side, the clouds blanketing the sky with a heavy foreboding gray, Stephen yanks open the door to greet me.

  “What time is it?”

  Dumbfounded, I look at my watch. “Twelve?”

  “What time are you supposed to be here?”

  “Ten, but Pauline sent me a text saying Collette wanted to rest.”

  He scowls.

  I look for any sign of Pauline to appear and back me up. She can vouch for me. But she’s not around.

  Stephen backs away from the door and lets me in. “No one said anything to me,” he says, folding his arms. “I wasn’t told Collette needed to rest.”

  I dig my phone from my pocket to show him the text messages, but he waves it away, motioning for me to follow.

  “I wish Pauline would have said something. I don’t want Collette to get worried or upset thinking you’re not here.” He lets his voice trail off as he ducks his head from one room to the next, looking for Collette.

  She’s not in the breakfast room or the lounge with the baby grand piano. No sign of her in the family room either. Stephen picks up his pace.

  We find her in the bedroom. And she’s not alone—Pauline is sitting in the middle of the bed with her, the two looking like a pair of giggling schoolgirls. The curtains are open, the lights on, the bed has been made, and Collette is dressed, her hair swept into a loose bun.

  “It was the sweetest thing,” she says, reaching for Pauline’s hand. The women are barefoot, large decorative pillows propped beneath them as Collette turns and watches us come in. “Oh, Sarah. You’re here!” She smiles broadly. “Pauline has been keeping me company.” She pats the woman on the knee. “It was a lovely start to the day.” Pauline is smiling too.

  “No sense in you rushing here early if it wasn’t necessary,” the housekeeper tells me.

  Stephen sighs and then retreats down the hall. Collette holds her arms out to me in welcome.

  “I’m so glad you’re here. Pauline is suggesting we stay in today.” She looks out the window. “You’re right, Pauline. It does look like rain is coming and we should stay in the playroom instead.”

  Pauline nods. “No sense in going out all the time.” She gives me a look and then her eyes drop to the new prescription bottles beside the bed. She leans against the pillows.

  And that’s when I see, in the middle of the bed, the Patty doll.

  It’s propped up, wearing its tiny dress and its still blue eyes staring straight ahead, the doll, dwarfed by the sheer size of the California king and the women sitting on either side.

  Collette picks it up and cups it with one hand. Using her index finger, she strokes the doll’s hair.

  “You know,” she says, “this was given to us by Ms. Fontaine, our first nanny.” She cradles it to her chest. “Do you remember, Patty? She gave you that family of dolls. The teeny-tiny baby in a pram. A mama and a daddy. And then Ms. Fonta
ine brought this one home to look more like you, a girl about your age. We named her Patty too.”

  She hands the doll to Pauline, who handles it like a pro. No grimacing, not like me. How many times over the last twenty years has she been asked to hold that thing?

  “Sarah,” Collette says. “Will you go with Pauline and Patty and help them straighten up the playroom?” She slides off the bed before looking down at the space beside her. “That’s right, sweetheart. They’ll be there to help you.”

  Pauline slides from the mattress and joins me at the door. But Collette calls out, “Wait.” She looks at us expectantly. “Make sure to hold Patty’s hands.”

  I turn to Pauline, who holds out her fingers, the tilt of her chin and steady look in her eyes telling me to do the same.

  So I do. I copy Pauline and reach out, gripping nothing but air.

  As soon as we’re out of sight, Pauline and I drop our hands. She walks ahead, leading me to the playroom.

  “Wait until you see what she’s been up to,” she says, pushing open the door.

  Sometime last night, it appears Collette came in here with a child’s paint set and proceeded to paint, if that’s what you can call it. Large sheets of paper are clipped to a board with blobs of acrylic dripped on the floor, red and yellow smeared into the carpet too. The edge of Collette’s heel tracked through the paint and trailed it to the window. Six oversize sheets of paper are drying. Large swirling lines and what looks like a house with a sun, maybe a tree. She paints like a child.

  While the medication might be tiring her during the day, she’s wired at night.

  Pauline reaches for a can of carpet cleaner and shakes it before spraying each area, telling me to stand back as she tackles each acrylic blob. She says we’ll have to wait ten minutes before rubbing at them with paper towels.

  At the bookshelf, I run my hand along the spines: Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty. A hardback version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

  “How come there aren’t a lot of pictures of Patty?” I ask.

  “They don’t keep them,” Pauline says, shrugging.

  I think of my one and only visual of the girl, the single frame that had been partially covered. I have yet to see another photo, a commissioned oil painting or an album filled with pictures of Patty as a baby—an album I’d expected Collette would have asked me to look through by now. I have found no additional picture frames in the living room or den. No family portraits. Nothing of the smiling daughter.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Well, for starters, Collette swears she sees her daughter night and day. She doesn’t need a portrait of the girl. We only have the one photo in the parlor, which is the one area of the apartment Alex doesn’t go near.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s where they kept her body after she died. Alex doesn’t go in there anymore.”

  I’m stumped. “Why wouldn’t they keep more pictures of their daughter? I know it’s tragic, but wouldn’t he want memories of her at least?”

  “I don’t know,” Pauline says, sighing. “Who knows what goes through that man’s head. I’ve worked for him for years and I still can’t figure him out. Maybe it breaks his heart to see his daughter’s face. Or he thinks that if the photos are hidden away, his wife will eventually snap out of it. She might come to terms with their daughter’s death.”

  She sighs again. “Nothing else seems to be working except having you. Having a nanny. Wouldn’t be my way of doing it, but who am I to say? I’ve never lost a child, never been through what they have.”

  I shake my head.

  “Everyone has their own way of grieving,” she tells me, shooting me a look. “You haven’t been through everything here with us.”

  But not only are there no photos of Patty, I realize, there are no wedding photos of Collette and Alex. No photos from their honeymoon or of Stephen as a child either. They have tapestries and murals, priceless works of art and one-of-a-kind paintings highlighted in gilt frames, but nothing personal.

  “You know,” Pauline says. “It wasn’t all Ms. Fontaine’s idea to give her that doll.”

  I look up.

  “Mr. Bird got her that dollhouse but it was Ms. Fontaine and myself who bought her those dolls. We came up with the idea of the Patty doll together.”

  She looks at me, then glances away, her eyes tracing the space between her and the dollhouse. After a moment, she pulls the Patty doll from her pocket and places it inside, settling it at the dining table.

  “Do you miss Ms. Fontaine?” I ask.

  Pauline’s eyes rocket toward me. “I hate that she left, if that’s what you mean.”

  “The two of you must have been close. The death of Patty must have brought you together in a tragic way.”

  “It was hard on all of us.” Her lips harden. “But I wish she wouldn’t have bailed on us like that.” Her hand wrestles with her sleeve, and there it is again, the elastic band against her wrist. “I think they had a thing going on,” she says, and it’s so quiet, I almost miss it.

  “Who?”

  “Ms. Fontaine and Alex.”

  I almost laugh. And then I cough.

  Mr. Bird? Having an affair with the first nanny? It seems hard to believe, given the love I still see in the man when he looks at his wife.

  But then again, what do I know about Mr. Bird? And I’ve never met Ms. Fontaine.

  “There was something between them,” Pauline insists. “I’ve never been able to confirm it, but it was always a hunch. The air changed in the room when the two of them came together. The mood shifted, enough for me to notice.”

  “But why?” I ask. “Why would he do that to Collette?”

  “I have no idea,” Pauline says. “All I know is, Patty died and the happiness was sucked right out of this place. Alex Bird changed, and shortly after, Ms. Fontaine took off with little explanation.” She snaps her fingers. “A lovers’ quarrel, death of a child, and then poof, she was gone.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The next day, I suggest a walk, but Collette has a bigger idea. She slips her prescription bottle in her purse. “We’re calling for Henry,” she announces. “He can drive us somewhere.”

  But Pauline is hesitant. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

  “Nonsense,” Collette says quickly. “Besides, Patty needs to get out too. She’s excited.”

  The housekeeper’s eyes dart in my direction.

  “FAO Schwarz,” Collette says. “That’s where we’re going. We can collect decoration ideas for her party. Patty can let us know what she thinks.”

  With the phone partially hidden in my hand, I fire off a message to Stephen: Toy store. One hour, tops.

  He responds with Keep your eyes on her.

  FAO Schwarz is the biggest and most iconic toy store in Manhattan. We arrive at its Rockefeller Plaza location within twenty minutes, and already, it’s crammed with hundreds of children playing with games and crafts. Kids are shouting, and impatient shoves jostle us at every turn. Girls and boys scamper from one floor to the next, taking the curved staircase two steps at a time while their parents chase after them.

  Within seconds, Collette’s mood turns from glee to overstimulation. She’s running from one section of the store to another, her eyes whirling at everything surrounding her. Worry gnaws at my insides as I hurry to keep up.

  We’re at the top of the stairs when Collette says, “I’m buying the carousel.”

  My mouth drops.

  “For the party. Bridget sent me the info and I called first thing. It’s in Boston and they’re shipping it here in a few weeks.” Her frenzied smile reaches her ears. “I want it put together in time for Patty’s party. She can have a few turns on it before showing her friends.”

  I halt my steps—what friends? Who would we possibly invite? How
do you bring children to a party for a child who’s been dead twenty years?

  Images flash in my mind: a large table filled with cupcakes and goodies, Collette and myself singing “Happy Birthday” to no one, the carousel spinning but empty behind us.

  “I’m thinking of a carnival theme,” Collette says over the noise. A child runs by squealing. “The kind with toy trains and circus animals, balloons too. We’ll have the carousel and carnival music and cake from the bakery on West Eighty-first.” She ticks off each item on her fingers, a feverish brightness to her eyes. “I’ll want you to get in touch with the caterer. Handle the invitations. There’s a party store we’ll check out next week. We also need toys for the goodie bags.” She’s rattling on and I’m starting to wonder if I should be taking notes. “Patty will have to get a new dress, of course.” She swings a glance at me and takes in my discounted shirt from the Gap, my skinny black jeans, and winks. “We’ll find you something special too.”

  She heads for an area of colorful wooden baskets teeming with plush miniature elephants, toy lions, and bears. She arranges the items and tells me she’s making centerpieces.

  While upstairs, we stumble into the baby section next. It’s much quieter, stocked with blankets and plush bunnies, soft to the touch. Collette strokes most everything she sees. She picks up a teddy bear and holds it close to her chest.

  “Oh, Patty, isn’t this the most incredible, softest thing you’ve ever felt?” She squeezes the bear to her chin before dropping it low, willing her daughter to rub its soft ear.

  A boy walks up to Collette. He’s three or four years old with sandy blond hair and green, inquisitive eyes. He peers at Collette, who’s clutching the teddy bear and singing to herself. He reaches up and shouts, “Teddy!”

  But Collette doesn’t respond.

  The boy repeats, “Teddy! Can I see it?”

  It takes a lifetime for her to look down at the boy.

  “I want teddy!” he says, puckering his lower lip.

  Collette frowns. “This one?”