Shoe Addicts Anonymous

by Beth Harbison

  “I think so. But I’m not sure. I can’t really get a good look.”

  Helene was beginning to feel really foolish, although it didn’t diminish her feelings of anxiety any.

  The operator’s response made it clear that was exactly what she was thinking, too. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but we can’t really send a car out to pull someone over for being on the same road with you. If someone physically threatens or harms you, dial 911 .”

  Nice, generic answer. Helene couldn’t blame her, though, so she thanked her and hung up, hoping the police nonemergency operators wouldn’t trace her number and note her as a crazy who shouldn’t be taken seriously if she called again.

  She pulled off on an exit, with the blue car three cars back, and wound her way back to Route 355, which spanned from beyond northern Maryland all the way down to Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.

  She thought at one point she’d lost him, but soon thereafter she noticed the blue car had reappeared and was now directly behind her. She looked at the driver, making mental notes for a police report, while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the winding road in front of her. It was obviously Gerald Parks. He wore Jackie O. big round dark glasses, and his fingers clutched the steering wheel like long thin hot dogs.

  She drove rapidly along the curving contours of Falls Road, half-hoping to get stopped by the police so she could point Gerald out and have them apprehend him. But she knew he’d probably just keep driving and she’d sound like a nut as well as a reckless driver.

  When she got to Potomac Village, she ran through a yellow light to cross over River Road, where she’d normally turn.

  In the rearview mirror, she could see that the blue car was stopped at the light. She turned into the shopping center parking lot and weaved through behind the shops to pick up River Road and head home. After a mile or two of driving without being followed, she began to relax a little, though her heart thumped to beat the band against her rib cage.

  As she crossed over the D.C. line, she took a deep breath, feeling like she was at last home free, when he appeared again. He turned right off Little River Turnpike—a whole different route!—and ended up behind her again.

  As bad as this guy was at staying undetected, he was a master at following his prey, and for the first time Helene felt real anger mingling with her fear. Part of her wanted to pull over and confront him, but she knew that would be extremely foolish.

  As she turned onto Van Ness Street, where her house was, she wondered if she should pass her driveway so he wouldn’t know where she lived, but in the end it didn’t matter, because he turned off right before her block and disappeared into traffic.

  She put her car in park and sat, locked in, for about fifteen minutes, trying to calm her breathing.

  Then she did the thing her desperation drove her to. She called Jim.

  “I think someone’s following me,” she said to him when he picked up the phone.

  “What?”

  She told him what Lorna had said about her being followed a couple of times from the parking lot, and about the fact that he’d been behind her today for forty-five minutes. She left out the part about calling the police, though. No sense in giving Jim an out by quoting the police. “I want private security,” she finished.

  “That’s nuts,” Jim said immediately.

  Hurt niggled at the pit of her stomach. “You think it’s nuts for me to want to be safe from wackos in a city that’s seen more weird abductions and political assasinations than any other?”

  “It’s nuts that you’re worried about this. You said the guy didn’t follow you home, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So this is a crowded city. You can’t blame someone for being on the same road with you.”

  “Even if they’re on the same ten roads, right behind me, for twenty-five miles?”

  “It’s a coincidence. You’re being really egotistical, thinking this is all about you.”

  That was incredibly insulting. “If someone is following me it has to be about me, doesn’t it?”

  “No one’s following you, Helene. Don’t make a fool of yourself.”

  “Make a fool of myself?” she echoed stupidly. “How?”

  “Well, for one thing, don’t even think about calling the police.”

  Good thing she hadn’t told him about that. “Why not?”

  “Because the story will get around, and you’ll waste a bunch of city resources while they dig around into nothing. Reporters would have a field day blaming me for that.”

  “But what about my safety?” she asked, hating how small and childlike and weak she sounded. But she felt really weird. She was obviously being followed; the police couldn’t do anything about it even if they did believe her, which they didn’t; and she couldn’t hire her own security, because Jim had completely cut off her financial access and he didn’t believe her. Or he didn’t care.

  She was at his mercy, yet he was her only hope.

  “If I have to open myself up to public criticism every time you have a bad dream, I’m politically fucked,” Jim said. “Don’t do that to me.”

  “This isn’t about you!” How had the man she married become so cold? “I’m scared, Jim. I really am.”

  He made a noise that was the verbal equivalent of rolling his eyes, then said, “I’ve got to go. Lock the doors and put in a movie. We’ll talk about this later tonight.”

  “Later might be too late,” she said, recent headlines running through her mind like a scrolling marquee.

  But Jim wasn’t listening. He was talking to someone else in the room, probably Pam. She’d probably come in with the whipped cream and G-string, ready for action.

  “I gotta go,” Jim said to Helene. “I’ll be late tonight. Don’t wait up.”

  Jerk. We’ll talk about your concern for your safety tonight—oh, but I won’t be there, so go on to sleep. It was so typical of him that it shouldn’t have hurt her feelings, but Helene hung up the phone feeling like she was going to cry.

  Even more than that, though, she was overwhelmingly tired. Maybe it was the postadrenaline reaction to the chase, or maybe it was the fact that she was deeply unhappy with her life and couldn’t see a way out.

  Or maybe something was seriously wrong with her.

  Whatever it was, she had to go in and lie down for a little while. She didn’t wake up again until the next morning.

  And when she did, she was alone.

  It was easier having just Bart, without Colin there to influence him to do bad things.

  The good news was that Colin had begun a two-week stint at day camp, allowing Joss times like now, to take just Bart to the park alone. The bad news, though, was that Deena interpreted this as being something less than what she was paying Joss for, and she felt all the more free to ask Joss to do little extra things.

  As the grocery list in Joss’s pocket proved. Five items, five different stores.

  At least she got to use the car when she was on official duty. The one time Deena had asked her to “pick up a few things” on her way home from the ski club meeting one Sunday—a bust, by the way, don’t even ask—she’d ended up wrestling with two large, heavy paper bags on the Metro.

  Still, on a glorious sunny summer day like this, it was almost possible to forget the bad stuff. Unlike most of the other nannies and moms, she ran with Bart on the playground and went up and down the sliding boards with him about twenty-five times.

  “This is fun!” Bart squealed as he reached the bottom again. “What should I do next?”

  “Whatever you want.” She looked around. “The swings?”

  Bart looked excited; then doubt crossed his eyes. “Colin says swings are for sissy girls.”

  Oh, that Colin. She could throttle him. He was a bad influence on Bart. She was more and more convinced of it. “Do you see any sissy girls on the swings?” she aked. The only kid on them was a boy who looked to be a couple of years older than Bart.

  “No,” Bart admi
tted.

  “Maybe Colin just says that kind of thing to make himself look cool for not going on the swings,” she suggested. “Not that he has to or anything. But, heck, maybe he’s even afraid of the swings.” It was probably unfair, calling Colin out like that when he wasn’t there to defend himself, but she was sick and tired of how Colin’s dos and dont’s colored everything Bart did.

  Because, frankly, Colin was a jerk.

  “I do like the swings,” Bart said, eyeing them.

  “Me, too—let’s go.” She took him by the hand and led him to the swings, helping him onto one and then getting behind and pushing him as he laughed and laughed and yelled, “Look how high I’m going, Joss!” over and over again.

  So maybe she’d defamed Colin’s meager character. At least she’d made sure Bart had a good time.

  “You keep going,” she told Bart after a while, laughing and catching her breath. “I’ve got to take a little break.”

  “Keep watching me!” Bart called. “My feet are touching the sky!”

  “Cool!” Joss waved, and he swung off into the wild blue yonder again.

  “Jocelyn?”

  Startled, Joss turned to see a tall woman with blue-black hair and startling light blue eyes. “Y-yes?”

  “You’re Jocelyn who works for the Olivers, right?” She gestured at Bart, who was swinging past, calling that he was going up again.

  Joss smiled and waved at him and turned back to the woman. “Yes. Who are you?”

  “Felicia Parsons. That’s my son, Zach, over there.” She pointed to a dark-haired kid, about seven, who appeared to be bullying a smaller boy while a heavyset young woman tried to separate the two. “I need a nanny, and I want to know how much you charge.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parsons. I’ve already got a job.” A job she hated, admittedly. A job she’d do almost anything to shrug off.

  But she couldn’t.

  Felicia Parsons looked at Joss as if she were a moron. “I know that. I just asked if you worked for the Olivers. What I want to know is how much will it cost me to trump their offer.”

  Joss couldn’t believe that this was the second time someone was approaching her for a job even knowing that she was contracted to work for the Olivers. A contract was a contract, and these women should understand that. It wasn’t like Joss could just jump ship at a better offer, even if she wanted to.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said, keeping her eye on Bart, who was climbing on the rope knots now. The woman’s son was, at the same time, being physically held back by the girl who’d been trying to keep him away from the other boy a moment earlier. “I can’t break my contract.” She gestured toward the child. “It looks like your son might need you.”

  The woman glanced in his direction, then waved the scene off. “Oh, she’ll take care of it.”

  Because a nanny is a nanny, even if she isn’t your nanny? Joss wanted to ask. But she didn’t.

  “Please keep me in mind if you change your mind,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Do you have something I can write on?”

  “No, sorry.”

  The woman sighed dramatically and dug through her own purse to come up with a pen and a torn piece of an envelope, the back of which bore the return address of an attorney. “This is my cell phone number. Only call this number. Do not look up my home phone number and call me there under any circumstances.”

  No danger of that. Joss didn’t reach for the paper. “Mrs. Parsons, I really don’t want you to think there’s any chance of hearing from me, because I honestly am occupied with the Oliver family through next June.”

  “You say that now.” Mrs. Parson’s physically grabbed her hand and pressed the paper into it. “But you may change your mind.” She went off in the direction of her son, bellowing something either to him or to the girl who was trying to help with him.

  Joss shuddered at the thought of working for a person like that.

  She returned to Bart, but at this point he was playing with a little red-haired girl named Kate, and he didn’t seem to want anything to do with Joss on this date, so she told him she’d be sitting on the bench waiting for him. She went and joined the other nannies, keeping a keen eye on the youthful boy–girl drama between Bart and Kate.

  “Did Felicia Parsons ask you to work for her?” a young African-American girl asked.

  Joss frowned. “How did you know?”

  “She’s asked most of us now.” She looked at the girl who’d been separating Mrs. Parsons’s son from the other boy. “Poor Melissa. I’m Mavis Hicks, by the way.” She held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met yet.”

  “Joss Bowen.” Joss shook her hand. “What do you mean poor Melissa? Is she the Parsonses’ nanny?”

  Mavis nodded. “And she’s really good, as far as I can tell. Don’t you think, Susan?” She tapped the shoulder of a stout woman in her mid-to upper thirties.

  “What?”

  “That Melissa’s good with that Parsons kid.”

  “Yes.” Susan noticed Joss then. “Oh. Did you get propositioned by Fickle Felicia?”

  Joss nodded. “Yes. Just now. I feel just awful about it.” She looked at Melissa, who was clearly trying mightily to deal logically with the dark-haired hellion that was her charge.

  “Don’t worry, she knows,” Mavis reassured Joss. “It’s not the first time this has happened to Melissa. She’ll probably take the next offer someone makes her.”

  “It happens that often?”

  Both Susan and Mavis looked at her like she was from outer space.

  “Are you joking?” Susan asked.

  “Well…no.” There was no sense in pretending she was familiar with this game, because it was all new to her. New and disconcerting. These women might be really helpful with that. “But it’s happened to me twice now. Once at a party the Olivers were hosting.”

  Susan shrugged. “It goes on all the time. When word gets around about a good nanny, everyone wants her.”

  Joss was surprised. “I had no idea Mrs. Oliver was saying anything nice about me at all.”

  “She’s not,” Susan said simply. “It doesn’t come from the employers. The word gets around via the Mom Network. They observe whose nanny is doing what; then they decide their nanny isn’t good enough, and they sneak around behind her back to try and hire someone new.”

  “But doesn’t everyone have a contract?” Joss asked. “Doesn’t that bind the employer as well as the employee?” She’d gone over hers with her dad, and they were pretty sure she was guaranteed gainful employment plus room and board for a period of one year.

  Susan and Mavis both laughed.

  Then Susan caught Joss’s eye and said, “Oh my God, are you serious?”

  This was nuts. “Yes, I’m serious.”

  “Oh, honey. You don’t know?”

  Joss was beginning to feel like she was in some bizarre parallel universe, where everyone knew what was going on except her. “Don’t know what?”

  Susan and Mavis exchanged looks; then Susan nodded at Mavis.

  “Mrs. Oliver asked me at a party last week if I wanted to work for her,” Mavis said. “I thought for sure you knew.”

  Joss tried to think where the Olivers had gone last week, and right away three parties came to mind. Three parties for which Joss had covered their parenting duties free of charge.

  And they thought they were going to do better than her? What other nanny on the planet would work during so much of her time off? What other nanny would pick up food, wine, dry cleaning, other people’s children, and anything else Deena could think of?

  What other nanny would take that kind of treatment and still stick with her obligation to the Olivers instead of cutting her losses and running for the hills?

  “Are you sure?” she asked Mavis. “Maybe you misunderstood.”

  Mavis and Susan exchanged looks again, in a motion that was already clearly code for You take this one or Go on, tell her.

  “Joss,” Susan said, reaching over and putt
ing her hands on Joss’s. “She’s sure. And so am I. Three weeks ago, Deena Oliver offered me salary and a half to take over within a week.”

  Chapter

  16

  Oh my God, are you sick?”

  Sandra was alarmed at the way her sister was looking at her.

  “What do you mean? I’m not sick. Why?” She raised a hand to her face. Did she look that awful? Had she lost her color?

  Or was it just the green hair?

  “You’re so skinny!”

  “I am not!”

  “Well, not skinny for a regular person,” Tiffany said, as obnoxiously honest as ever. “But skinny for you. How much weight have you lost?”

  “I don’t know.” Yes, she did. It was 24.8 pounds. But for some reason, it embarrassed her to talk about the details with Tiffany. Maybe it was because life was always so effortless for Tiffany that Sandra didn’t want to have to admit how much she herself struggled. “I’ve just been trying to eat sensibly.”

  “Not me.” Tiffany patted her slightly protruding belly. It was barely noticeable. “I’ve been such a pig.” She ushered Sandra into the huge gleaming white kitchen that overlooked hole number five on the Coronado golf club’s newest course.

  Tiffany had been a pig during her first pregnancy, too, seven years ago, but at the end of it she’d gotten both a perfect daughter—Kate—and her figure back. It was maddening.

  “Do you want some coffee?” Tiffany asked, then made a face. “It’s decaf.”

  “Sure.” Sandra settled into a cushioned barstool. “So how’s it going?”

  “Just fine.” Tiffany put a mug in front of Sandra, then went to the fridge and got out a creamer and put it down on the counter as well. “I had my eighteen-week sonogram the other day, and they say the baby’s perfectly healthy. Kate’s over the moon with excitement. Charlie, too.” She hesitated a little longer than Tiffany might have expected. “Me, too, of course.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Sandra poured some cream into her coffee and stirred, watching the swirl fade. She looked at Tiffany. “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

  “The technician could tell, but Charlie wants to be surprised, so I have no idea. I think it’s a boy, though.”