A few weeks later, Judy and Michael called from the Mediterranean, where they had gone on a week-long private cruise with a group of friends.
“Hello, the Ovitz residence. This is Suzanne.”
“Hello, this is the overseas operator. Mr. and Mrs. Ovitz are calling.”
“Okay.”
“Go ahead, sir. The charges will be $3.52 a minute,” the operator said.
Michael came on the line first, and the connection was awful. “Suzy, we’re calling you from somewhere in the Mediterranean. Is my art okay?” he asked.
Did he really just say what I think he said?
“Yes, Mr. Ovitz. Everything is fine. Brandon’s taking his nap, and Amanda and Joshua are outside,” I told him as the connection broke up again.
“I couldn’t hear you, Suzy, bad connection. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, sir, everything is fine.”
“Can we talk to Joshua?” he asked.
“Yes, of course. He’s outside. Hold on a minute.” I put the phone down, ran outside, and called to Joshua. It took two or three minutes to get him to the phone.
“Hello. Are you there, Mr. Ovitz?”
“No, Suzy. This is Judy,” she snapped. “For God’s sake, where is Joshua? This call is costing us a fortune.”
She said a quick hello to Joshua, and then he handed the phone back to me.
“Hello, Mrs. Ovitz. Amanda …” Buzzzzzzzzzz. The line was dead. She’d hung up.
I tried to analyze what had just happened.
$20,000 private cruise. Parents don’t give it a second thought.
$15.00 phone call to check on the kids. Parents think this is way too spendy.
It baffled me.
I just could not understand the household’s money rationale. On one hand, Judy made Delma scrub stains out of a cheap T-shirt of Brandon’s instead of buying him new clothes. At other times they would spend money on oddball things as if they minted it in the attic. Catering for a dinner party could run more than $12,000 and no one would bat an eye. How did they decide what was important and what wasn’t?
A few days later, while they were still on the cruise, I walked into the laundry room and spotted Rosa using an iron with a frayed cord. It was so old that I could see a flash of the copper wire through the cloth insulation, a definite health hazard, not to mention a fire just waiting to destroy the house. Never mind the inhabitants—think of the risk to the art collection!
“For God’s sake, Rosa, we need a new iron,” I said. “They must not know that this one is in such bad shape.”
“You know how Miss Judy is ’bout money,” called Carmen from the other side of the kitchen.
“I know, but I am sure they don’t know how bad the iron is. I’m going to the store where they have an account and charge a new one. I’m sure it will be fine,” I said with great authority.
The next time I was out, I bought a new iron with a coated electrical cord. Then I wrapped the frayed cord around the old one and put it in the garbage.
Two days later, when they’d returned, I overheard Judy talking to her friend Jane in the foyer.
“They sure love to spend all my money,” she complained.
“Mrs. Ovitz, I was the one who bought the new iron,” I interrupted, rushing in.
No answer.
“I insisted that we needed a new one,” I continued. So my friends don’t get electrocuted and the artwork doesn’t go up in smoke.
“We could have put a new cord on the old iron,” she explained. “Do you have the receipt, Suzy?”
Fortunately, Carmen had retrieved the old iron before the trash went out.
She knew Judy far better than I did.
Luckily, I was only a few days away from a much-needed reality check. My best friend, Kristi, called me from Eugene, where she was in her freshman year at the University of Oregon. She asked whether she could come visit me during her spring break. Finally, some company! I was ecstatic. Judy even agreed to let Kristi stay at the house. When Kristi arrived, she was wowed by her first up-close-and-personal look inside a Hollywood home. She thumbed through a book by Danielle Steel, her favorite author at the time. She was pretty surprised that it had a long personal message to my employers.
I gave her a tour of the house, the art gallery, and the grounds, where the gardeners were pruning the shrubs. We waved to them, and they smiled and waved back. I brought Kristi into the four-car garage to show off the car collection: the black Jaguar, the black Mercedes, and my own personal favorite, the Porsche. I waved my arm over it like Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. I was trying to be smooth.
Then I set off the car alarm.
WAAAAA! WAAAA! WAAAA! WOOOP! WOOOP! WOOOP! WOOOP! WAAAA!
“Damn it! I can’t believe I set off the alarm!” I wailed.
“Are the police gonna come?” she asked.
“I hope not! Ohhh! I can’t believe I just did that!”
The gardeners came rushing up, pruning shears in hand. Then Carmen and Delma dashed out from the house.
“Soo-zita, was that you again?” Delma asked. (Okay, okay. I had set off alarms a couple of times before.)
“Yes! Michael and Judy are going to kill me.”
The alarm was still ripping through the air—WAAAA! WAAAA! WAAAA! WOOOP! WOOOP! WOOOP! And it seemed to be getting louder. Or was that my imagination? What was I thinking when I went near that car?
“I feel like such a dork!” I yelled over the noise.
“You’re not a dork,” Carmen said. “I’ve done it, too. There are a lot of alarms ‘round here. But don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it.”
“I know the routine!” Delma shouted. “Come on out of the garage. I’ll call Sarah and ask how to shut it off and reset it. Michael does not have to know you did it.”
Everybody left the garage, and we shut the door behind us. Thank God it muffled the horrible wailing.
She put her arm around my shoulder. “Anyway, Soo-zita, we’re like a family here. A familia within la familia, you know? We look out for one another.”
But even my friends couldn’t bail me out every time. On the third day of Kristi’s visit, we took the kids on a walk. Little Brandon was sprawled out in his giant, fuddy-duddy English pram—a baby accessory that was all the rage with movie-star moms—and Joshua and Amanda were walking alongside it. At one point, Joshua insisted on pushing the pram. I hesitated, but he was being so bratty and demanding that I finally gave in to avoid a scene.
“Only for a minute,” I said. “This baby carriage is very big and heavy. It’s not really meant to be pushed by little boys.”
“I’m not a little boy!”
Great. I had just committed the cardinal sin of all sins in nannyhood. Always call a little boy a big boy, or don’t say anything at all. “I know you’re not, honey; I forgot. You’re a big boy,” I said, praying that groveling would work.
“I’m not a little boy!”
“Okay, Joshua, I said I’m sorry. Now here you go.” I stepped out of the way and let him get in front of me. Then he started to push the pram a bit too fast. I picked up my pace to keep up. “Joshua, not so fast; be careful.”
“I don’t have to be careful,” he whined. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Yes, I can, honey. And you do have to be careful.”
“I know how to do it!” he yelled. The next thing I knew, he was popping a wheelie. It all happened in one frightening flash: the top-heavy pram started to tip over and the baby slipped forward, feetfirst, heading straight for the pavement. My heart jumped in my throat. I rushed in and scooped up Brandon before he fell. Then the pram went crashing over sideways, its wheels spinning in the air. I was so scared that I didn’t even reprimand Joshua. As we walked back to the house, stunned, my arms shook so much that Kristi offered to carry Brandon for me. I didn’t dare put him back in that pretentious—and dangerous—pram. When we reached the gate to the house, my heart was kicking against my chest like in Alien before the creature
popped out. My God, I can’t control these kids, I thought. I can’t take them anywhere and keep them safe because they won’t listen to me.
Inside the house I told Judy about the incident. Furious, she immediately shouted, “Go to your room, mister!”
“I won’t go to my room!” Joshua yelled back. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
“You don’t tell me what to do! I’ve had enough of this disrespect from you,” Judy shouted.
“You don’t know anything,” Josh spit out.
“How can you say that to me? You’re so incredibly condescending!”
“No, Mommy, you’re credibly sending!”
“Oh God, I can’t believe you act like this. Forget it!” Judy stormed off and slammed the side front door.
Joshua just stood there grinning, knowing he’d won the battle.
The scene felt familiar. Day after day, Joshua would do something that just begged for discipline, his mother would give him a time-out, he’d refuse to go, and then she wouldn’t follow through. I don’t think she knew what to do, so his behavior just got worse. How was I supposed to get anywhere with a child whose own mother didn’t know how to claim her authority over him? She fought with Joshua the same way he fought with his sister. Amanda often witnessed these scenes, and she was climbing on board the bratty train, too. I could see that sweet little Brandon would probably model his older brother’s behavior once he got old enough to understand how things worked in the household.
Having inadvertently shown Kristi some of the trickier aspects of my job, I wanted to also show her the bright side of living in Hollywood. We decided to splurge on a fancy dinner, so I called Sarah and asked her where we should go. She offered to make a reservation at Spago, a trendy place where we were sure to have some star spottings. Fantastic. We were both excited since neither of us had ever been to a place like Spago. Kristi had been wearing nothing but jeans and sweatshirts most of the time at college, and I spent most of my days in shorts and T-shirts, so we dolled ourselves up as if we had been invited to the Oscars. I didn’t think much of it until we got to the restaurant. Almost everyone in there wore jeans, T-shirts, and khakis. And there we were, me in my fits-all-occasions black cocktail dress and Kristi in a similar dark blue number with a strand of pearls around her neck.
At least we weren’t wearing pantyhose.
Sarah had listed the reservation under Hansen/Ovitz so that they would give us special attention. As for star sightings, we picked a dismal night; lesser luminaries, such as Sally Struthers and Ricardo Montalban, were the only ones on view. The meal, however, was excellent. I had free-range rosemary chicken; Kristi tried one of Wolfgang’s famous goat-cheese pizzas. Then they brought us a great dessert and made a point of telling us that Michael had paid for it. How nice. I took out my checkbook and paid the rest of the bill. I had planned on thanking him the next day, but I didn’t see him until the day after that, and then only briefly. By the time I did express my gratitude for the desserts, he seemed a little confused.
“They were supposed to put the entire meal on my tab. So you paid for it with your own money?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Hmm. I told them to pick up the whole thing. Here …” And with that, he pulled out his checkbook, asked me how much it had been, and wrote me a check. I thanked him profusely. Maybe this was Michael’s way of showing his appreciation for all the care and love I gave the children.
I can’t believe that Michael got us reservations at Spago and paid for our dinner. Not just anyone can get reservations. Sarah said if a “no name” calls, it can take over a month to get in. Wolfgang Puck himself made a point of asking if everything was all right with our meal. It’s so weird. It’s getting routine to see the likes of Martin Scorsese dropping by, and no one in the house acknowledges how surreal it is. I’ve already gotten used to living in a place where answering the phone might mean talking to Cher or Chevy Chase or discussing diaper rash with Cristina Ferrare. The other day I took a message from John Travolta, and he seemed really nice, like an average kind of guy.
Maybe it’s like Oprah always says: you’re still the same person you were before you became famous; it’s just that millions of people know you.
I don’t like children being spoiled materially, and he won’t be—I’m not megarich. I’ve got plenty of money, but I can’t afford private planes. Gucci shoes … never happen in a million years. If he gets them as a present, fabulous. But it won’t be from me.
—Elizabeth Hurley
chapter 8
doc hollywood
I let a few more weeks fly by before I worked up the courage to ask Judy if I could use the Jeep again. Even though I knew they weren’t going to the beach house that weekend, I still didn’t know if I could pull it off. But she said yes. Freedom! But what to do? Since I had no off-duty friends to spend time with, I decided to cheer myself up a different way. I’d spotted a nice little spa when I was buying shoes for the kids at the local Brentwood shopping mall. The nail salon experience had been disappointing, to say the least, but I hadn’t given up on my spa fantasy. All I could think of that morning was my noon facial appointment and how I would luxuriate in all the little attentions they would provide. Soothing music, herbal teas, and a zen atmosphere. The package even included a neck and foot massage, which sounded heavenly. I had earned some relaxation time in Eden. I was going to live it up, LA-style; I even thought I’d treat myself to lunch at a bistro after.
The sign in the window read SALON FLEUR DE LIS. HAIRSTYLING, FACIALS, AND PEDICURES. The girl at the desk immediately whisked me to a back room and told me to change into the white bathrobe that hung on the back of the door. Then I was to have a seat in a large Naugahyde chair.
Within minutes, a small woman wearing a starched white lab coat began circling me. She was stroking her chin, poking at my face, and saying, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” under her breath, as if I were an antique piece she was appraising. I didn’t know her ethnicity, but her heavy accent and very dark eyes intrigued me. You don’t get a lot of cultural diversity where I’m from, and it sounded exotic to my ears. She introduced herself as “Sa-meen-a.”
“Hi, young lady,” she said. “Weee must give you a peeeel.”
I blanched. Did I really look so bad that she had to comment on my need for improvement? I was so embarrassed. I had no appeal. I knew I should have put on makeup before I went to the appointment.
“No, no, my deeear. A peel,” she shot back after seeing my shocked expression. “You need an acid facial peeeel. The sun has caused your skeeeen great damage. And you have had act-nee in your life.”
No kidding. I was still a teenager.
“Weee must go far beyond a simple facial. Something that penetrates much deeper. You must be from the country,” she added.
“Uh, yes. I guess I’m from the country.” This woman must think I’m in the blazing hot sun out on the prairie each day, with no sunscreen. Just like Laura Ingalls. Now I know why Nellie Olsen always had such pale skin. She was from “the city” of Walnut Grove. “You can actually tell where I lived from looking at my skin?” I asked.
“Oh yes, most definitely. Wait, you will see. When I am done your skin will look and feel like silk. Like a little bambino’s behind. I suggest our most powerful peel. It is exactly one hundred and ninety dollars,” she said.
So much for my lunch at a bistro; it looked like it was going to be Carl’s Jr. instead.
Simina began to dance around like she was possessed, draping me in a large plastic apron from my neck to my ankles. Next she worked a healthy lather of cleansing cream over my face and then wiped that off with a scalding hot towel. I felt as if I’d been instantly sunburned. With my face still glowing, she slipped on a pair of twelve-gauge rubber gloves that ran past her elbows. The kind firemen wear. Then she draped a heavy flame-retardant apron over her neck. She opened a large jar and began to dip a small paintbrush into it. Taking great care not to spill the toxin onto herself, she spread th
e chemical jelly over my entire face, skipping only my eyelids and lips. I tried not to think about why she was treating the stuff like Ebola.
Almost immediately I could feel a pleasant tingling sensation. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.
“Do not move, Miss Sue-zah-na. It will take seven minutes to activate. I will come back to check on you,” she said, backing out of the room.
But the tingling changed to a stinging sensation, and my worry flared up full force. Agonizing over the unknown is part of my DNA. Had she said it would take seven minutes to activate? What if my body made it kick in early for some reason? A full seven minutes would land me in a burn unit. As the minutes ticked away ever so slowly, the stinging intensified. Could my face actually be disintegrating? Impossible. This was a spa in LA, for Pete’s sake. On the right side of the tracks.
I leaned up, squinting, trying to read the ingredients label on the jar of gel. I saw a long word and then “acid” afterward, followed by “propylene glycol.”
Oh God! I was in trouble. I may not have known any foreign languages, but I did get an A in auto shop, and I knew those words. She’d put antifreeze on my face! I tried to yell but remembered Simina’s orders to remain motionless. Would my face crack in two if I moved my mouth? I had to try something. There was antifreeze on my face.
“Suh-meen-hah, Suh-meen-hah,” I managed to mumble feebly.
No answer.
Suddenly an oven timer beeped, startling me. The seven minutes were up, and at that precise moment, Simina reappeared, checked her watch quickly, and then began applying scalding hot towels once again, this time to rinse off the nuclear residue.
I was afraid to touch my skin.
“It will be a little tender for a day or two, and then you shall see. You will have de skin of a baby. That will be one hundred ninety dollars, please,” she said, and with that I was left to my own devices.
You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny Page 10