This Christmas

by Jane Green

  At exactly two minutes till eleven, I pulled my car up in front of the house and got out. Home! I practically skipped up to the doorway. I wasn’t going to consider the possibility of not getting the job. This was my job, my house, my golf-course lawn.

  At least until I moved to London or New York.

  A stout Latina woman answered the door, gave me a disapproving shake of her head, and showed me to the living room. The house was silent as only large old houses can be, the kind of silence in which you can hear your own watch ticking. You couldn’t detect the whir of the air-conditioning, though the cool, tomblike temp let you know it was on.

  Even though I was used to places like this from my greener years, I couldn’t help gawking. The house was laden with treasures—eighteenth-century tables and Tiffany lamps and modern art-glass vases. It was all jumbled together with studied carelessness, including a framed original Buster Keaton one-sheet print for Sherlock, Jr. that I coveted immediately. A sprawling Persian rug on the floor took up as much square footage as my entire apartment.

  If a kid lived here, she was probably only allowed in this room on Christmas mornings, for a photo op. I wondered if I myself would be spending much time here. Probably not. But I could handle that. I was so prepared to be a mere appendage to all this wealth.

  The purposeful clickety sound of size-six heels on the marble of the front hall came toward me, and I turned toward the door, shoulders straight, smile in place, ready to grovel, in a dignified way, in order to secure this job.

  When Mrs. Smith wheeled into the room, however, my shock was such that I’m sure the smile melted right off my face. My stomach flipped wildly as recognition struck, and my armpits started to flood. For a moment I actually felt faint.

  I knew this person. Had known her practically all my life, but not as Mrs. Smith. She was Pepper McClintock.

  I hadn’t seen Pepper since I was eighteen, on graduation night 1993 at the Bramford Preparatory Academy for Girls. Pepper had delivered a short speech that night, which was expected of her as secretary-treasurer of our senior class. It was her duty to inform the school that the class of 1993 was leaving the school a perpetually bubbling art nouveau–style water fountain.

  I remembered the speech because I was one of a smaller faction of my class who had voted to give the school a line of magnolia trees. That proposal had gone down in defeat to the powerful water-fountain faction, headed by Pepper, and it seemed to me on graduation night that she was practically gloating as they wheeled that damned water fountain in on a dolly to be presented to the headmistress.

  It wasn’t just about the water fountain. During our senior year, Pepper had become my nemesis. First she had won the role of Madge in the senior production of Picnic, relegating me to a much lesser role. Then she had the nerve to steal my boyfriend of six months, leaving me to go stag to my own senior prom. Unforgivable.

  In fairness I should probably mention that during that prom, and on the night of graduation, Pepper had been wearing a neck brace, and that it was sort of my fault that she had had her little accident. It was an accident, although naturally there was a lot of speculation at the time whether I had actually engineered the whole mess. Especially since I came out of it with a relatively minor sprain.

  As I stared at her slack-jawed face now, I thought about seeing her at that prom, neck stiff in its white foam casing, dancing with Spence…

  Spence Smith.

  And now she was…Mrs. Smith?

  Blood started to drain out of my head, leaving me woozy. Her last name couldn’t just be a coincidence, could it?

  At that point, I really didn’t think it was possible to be any more mortified than I already was. To be caught interviewing for a nanny job with a woman you went to high school with—whom you outscored on the SAT by two hundred and fifteen points—was bad. Very bad. BP girls just didn’t become domestics.

  But to realize that this airhead from high school who had snagged your boyfriend still had him—and was doing spectacularly well—was beyond embarrassing. I wanted the earth to swallow me up, but the sumptuous Persian rug beneath my feet refused to cooperate.

  Why had I ever thought I could do this? Especially in Highland Park, where I knew people. I should have sensed danger…

  Pepper’s face contorted into a series of expressions ranging from shock to disbelief to glee. She settled on glee—who wouldn’t?—and then threw out her arms. Her body bounced, causing a jangle of silver and jade jewelry, and she ran toward me with childlike enthusiasm. “Al! Al! Al!” She gave me one of those sorority hugs that required minimal body contact and continued to squeal. “Little Al from BP! I wrote your name down but it didn’t click! I can’t believe it!”

  “I can’t either,” I mumbled, willing my pulse to come under control. It was racing now, in the way that a deer’s would race when finally kicking in to flee a predator. I needed to get out of there, but I couldn’t think of a way to escape gracefully.

  “Sit down, for heaven’s sake!” she gushed, as if I had just dropped by for a social call. I had a hard time adjusting to her volume, which seemed higher than anyone I had spoken to in years. And her enthusiasm, which was too over-the-top to be sincere, yet somehow struck a chord with me.

  And then I remembered. This was the sort of geeked up excitement we all used to use with each other at school. The tonal equivalent of air kissing.

  “I’m so glad to see you!”

  I’ll bet she was. I had gained twenty pounds. She, on the other hand, seemed to have diminished by even more than that. When last seen, Pepper had possessed a layer of baby fat that had melted away in the intervening years, leaving nothing but a sinewy husk, a perfect couture hanger.

  I gazed desperately toward the door. “Oh, I—”

  “No, you have to sit down and have a drink with me. A real drink.” She dashed over to the door, still clickety-clicking excitedly in her Jimmy Choos. “Marta! Could you bring us some Bloody Marys, please? ¡Gracias!” She hurried back to me. “Sit, sit, sit!” she commanded, practically pushing me onto a sofa before perching onto a chair opposite. “I haven’t seen you in forever. Nobody has. You should have been at the tenth reunion! Everybody was all, ‘What’s happened to Al?’ Everybody said they hadn’t been able to find you—and now here you are!”

  “Here I am,” I repeated.

  She leaned forward. “Al, I was so sorry to hear about your dad.”

  “Oh, well…”

  She cut me off with a dismissive wave. “There’s no need to be embarrassed. Believe me, with Spencer working in investment, lately it seems everyone’s had it rough.”

  Spencer. It wasn’t a coincidence. I felt like I had swallowed lead.

  “Sometimes it’s like half the people we know are in Club Fed,” she said.

  I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about. “My dad didn’t go to jail.”

  She drew back, surprised. “He didn’t? But I heard he went bankrupt.”

  “No, he went broke the old-fashioned way. He paid off all his creditors and then shut down the business.”

  “Oh!”

  My father had run Bell Office Machines, a business he had inherited from his father. The company had raked in the dough after World War II, but my father was not a good businessman and had stubbornly resisted the computer era. By 1994, the company could have changed its name to Bell Office Dinosaurs. He shut it down and sold off all his business property and the old family house in Highland Park. Now Dad lived on the small ranch he bought in East Texas during the good times. He didn’t ranch anything except weeds, but he was able to live on a little interest and fancied himself a country gentleman.

  “I see.” Pepper’s tone suggested that she had just lost all respect for my father. No doubt it was better to go to jail than actually repay people you owed money to. At least when you came out of jail you wouldn’t be poor. “That must have been really difficult for you.”

  “Not too bad. I switched colleges, of course.”


  “Oh no!” she commiserated. “And you were so psyched about going to Stanford!”

  “Reed.”

  “Right! I knew it was one of those left coast places.”

  “I got a great education at North Texas.”

  “Of course you did.” She patted me on the knee even though she sounded unconvinced. “You were always such a brain.”

  The woman named Marta huffed into the room with the Bloody Marys. “I made them weak. It’s only eleven o’clock.”

  Pepper shot her a look then smiled sweetly. “I’ll take another one, then. You can get right on that.”

  Marta squinted at her resentfully, turned, and walked out.

  Pepper bent toward me as she handed me my drink and whispered, “She thinks she’s my nanny.”

  I sipped politely. It was a disappointingly weak drink. I could have used something stronger. Actually, I could have used a cyanide caplet.

  Pepper downed half of hers in a sip. “I can’t wait to tell Spencer I saw you!” She was bouncing in her chair; jangling again. “You remember Spence, don’t you?”

  I almost fell off the sofa. Did I remember Spence? Was she some kind of a nut? Could she have forgotten…?

  She laughed. “Of course you remember Spence. You guys went out for a while, didn’t you?”

  “A little while.” I fumed.

  Six months! I wanted to scream at her. He’d been mine.

  I forced my lips to produce a reasonable facsimile of a smile. “Where is Spence?”

  “Taiwan. He’s always traveling. Leaves me here to do everything.”

  Yeah, like dealing with all the domestic support staff. Must be rough.

  She chuckled. “It’s a good thing I know how things were back then, or I might be jealous.”

  “How things were?” I asked. “How were they?”

  She waved a hand. “Oh, you know. Kids hooking up right and left—total hormonal madness. It’s not like anything back then actually meant anything.”

  I felt myself gasping, but I couldn’t actually form any words. For one thing, it probably wasn’t kosher to blurt out to someone that, actually, you had been in love with her husband. And for another, I had thought along similar lines at the time.

  “Anyway,” she said, leapfrogging this uncomfortable topic, “I’m so glad to see you, you can’t believe. Ugh! I’ve just been interviewing so many people for this job. Teenagers, mostly. I think you’re the first adult who’s walked through that door in days. Like, duh, do I really want to give my daughter over to some gum-chewing adolescent to raise?”

  I blinked at her. Was she implying that I was too old?

  “Oh—and one really ancient lady came by. The sweetest old thing, bless her heart, but she was just a mess. I think she was already in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. She kept talking about how she would teach August to knit.” Pepper doubled over, hooting with laughter. “August is three!”

  Tomorrow she’ll be hooting over my interview, I thought, paranoia ramping up to full throttle. I darted another longing glance at the door.

  “At least I know I can trust you,” she said. “And you’re so smart. And bilingual.” She tilted her head. “You are, aren’t you?”

  Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Not that it mattered.

  She squinted. “French, right?”

  I nodded.

  She sagged with relief. “That’s good. Spencer and I really wanted a person who could speak French, but we didn’t really want to have an actual French person living in the house. You know what I mean?”

  I nodded again.

  “A couple of people who answered the ad have been Spanish speakers, but that’s not exactly what I meant by bilingual. I mean, sure, Spanish can be useful, but we wanted something more European.”

  Spain no longer counted as Europe, apparently.

  “Without having to have an actual European in the house?” I guessed.

  “Exactly!” Any sarcasm that might have just happened to seep into my tone sailed cleanly over her head. “We wanted to find someone with values,” she explained. “That’s why we wanted to find a nanny here, who could move with us. Can you imagine trying to find someone to look after a child in London?”

  “I don’t know…I’ve heard of English nannies before. Didn’t they sort of invent them?”

  She eyed me sagely. “Believe me—the days of Mary Poppins are long gone. To get somebody like that now, you’d have to unload your child’s trust fund. Can you imagine? Or—oh, Lord!—New York City! I wouldn’t like to have to hire someone there. You hear all sorts of stories just about people trying to get reliable dog walkers there.”

  “I’m sure it’s difficult everywhere.”

  “Oh, sure—but New York City! No telling what kind of freaks I’d have to interview to find somebody halfway decent.”

  My skin was beginning to break out in the crawlies.

  “But we know you’re a BP girl, so now our worries are over!”

  I was starting to feel sick. The moment I had recognized Pepper, I had known that there was no way I could take the job, even if it was offered to me. I had enough hang-ups without having to live in a situation that reminded me just how short of my goals I had managed to fall in life. And the longer Pepper yammered on, the more cemented became my decision. A nanny? Had I been insane? No way did I want to deal with this crazy woman who was convinced that I was one of her. A Dallas Brahmin.

  Married to my ex-boyfriend.

  She had to be nuts to think that I would even consider it. Surely she knew I was just sitting here talking to her out of politeness.

  “Of course I can’t commit to anything just now,” I said.

  “Of course not! You’ll want to—Oh!” she cried, startling me. “I’m seeing Phaedra this afternoon. Remember Phaedra?”

  As in an old science-fiction movie, I felt as if I were flailing against the spiraling background, trying not to be sucked back in time. Phaedra had been Pepper’s best friend through school.

  They were still friends?

  “Phaedra married Skip. Skip Honeywell? I’m sure you remember him.” I didn’t. “Anyway, they got divorced. It was very sad, because they had three little ones. All boys, too—what most guys dream about! But Skip cheated on Phaedra with about six different women, so she’d have to be a real doormat to put up with that.”

  I mumbled an agreement.

  “And anyway, he left her.” Pepper sighed. “Phaedra really went berserk for a while.”

  I shook my head. One hated to think of someone named Phaedra going berserk. Especially when there were children involved.

  She leaned closer, relishing every word. “Joined AA and flirted with becoming a Christian Scientist, if you can imagine. I worried she was going to turn into a real wacko. But then she met this really nice man named Flint Avery who’s, I dunno, some sort of genius at marketing or something, and now she’s almost back to normal. Except that she doesn’t do drinks before dinner or take Advil.”

  “My goodness.” I hadn’t realized AA let you opt for an after-dinner-only option now. That certainly would make the whole program more appealing.

  I considered whether it would be too soon to make my escape.

  “I know!” Pepper exclaimed, as if I’d just agreed with her about something. “Personally, trying to get by in this world without Paxil and a little Vicadin seems too brutal for words, but you can’t argue with success. Phaedra’s been living this spar-tan existence for almost a year and a half and she looks great. We went to a spa in New Mexico together last month and just had a blast.”

  I looked at my watch and expelled a sigh of regret. “Shoot! I have this appointment at noon…”

  Pepper’s eyes flashed open. “But you can’t go yet. You have to meet August!” She jumped up, clearly expecting me to follow suit.

  “Oh, but…”

  “You have to,” she said. “I already told her we were having a visitor, though of course I didn’t know then who you were going to be. She
’ll be so excited when I tell her you’re an old school friend.”

  I had my doubts, but I couldn’t think of a polite way to refuse to meet Pepper’s kid. So I followed her crisply bustling figure up through the hall and up a flight of stairs, down another series of hallways, until we reached, at last, August’s suite. She was in her playroom, which was amazing. The walls were a pale mint green, and an artist of some skill had been brought in to copy the original Pooh illustrations. The furniture was all modern and painted in Necco wafer colors, with a few Pooh motifs scattered here and there. Tigger hopped dizzily across the front of a little wardrobe. A honey jar with bees buzzing around it was painted on the door of the television cabinet.

  The television was on, and loud, and right now some commercial for processed cheese sticks was blaring at us.

  Pepper swept into the room. “August?”

  A small blond head peeped over the top of a miniature sofa. “Mommy!” she yelled, as if she hadn’t seen her mom in weeks.

  The kid was unbelievably cute. She could have been in a Jell-O commercial. White-blond hair that frizzed into a sort of punk Shirley Temple look. Big blue eyes. Black lashes. She was dressed in little Gap clothes, denim overalls and a pink T-shirt underneath. When she saw her mom, she hopped off her sofa, ran crashing into Pepper’s knees, and peeked up at me with shy hostility.

  “This is Alison,” Pepper said. “Can you say hello? Your mommy and Alison went to school together.”

  August’s small fist went straight to her mouth.

  “She’s shy!” Pepper mouthed at me.

  I bent down, remembering suddenly that I had come prepared to win over my small potential employer as well as her parent. That seemed so long ago now, before I was ambushed by Pepper. “Hi, August. I have something for you.” I reached into my pocket and brought out a small lime sucker. I glanced up at Pepper. “Is it okay?”

  “Just this once, sure. Say thank you, August.” August’s fist wrapped around the sucker, which went back directly into her mouth, plastic wrapper and all. As I stood up, a finger puppet accidentally on purpose fell out of my pocket. It was a happy frog with dangling legs.