Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  I kept trying to get to the third section of the manuscript, but I was constantly interrupted. Take the time I had just settled onto the V-berth with the book when Cullie’s phone rang. It was my fourth week aboard the Marlowe—a sunny Saturday morning. I thought about letting his answering machine pick it up, since he was out on a shoot, but decided to take the call myself.

  “Is Alison there?” said the woman on the phone.

  “This is she,” I said.

  “You called about our ad in the Community Times? For an au pair?”

  “Oh, yes, I did. Last week.” The ad was for an au pair who would take care of a working couple’s two kids three days a week. I didn’t have any experience but being a babysitter was a babysitter, I figured, and called the number in the ad. So I’d be babysitting a couple of kids while their yuppie parents were at work. It wasn’t brain surgery, but it had to be more challenging than scrubbing Melanie’s toilets, right?

  “Would you like to come and meet the children?” the woman asked.

  “Oh, yes,” I said, thrilled that the woman neither asked about my previous experience with children, nor expressed concern that I was Alison Koff, the murderous maid. Maybe she was too busy to watch tabloid television shows, what with a job, a husband, and two kids to worry about.

  “Good,” she said. “Our address is 102 Harborview Terrace. The name is on the mailbox: Silverberg.”

  Harborview Terrace was one of Layton’s premier addresses. Obviously, the Silverbergs weren’t poor. I had no idea what kind of money au pairs got away with charging, but I assumed that if I landed the job, I’d have no trouble keeping Cullie and me in chicken cacciatore. “What time would you like me to stop by?” I asked.

  “Could you come now?” she said rather plaintively. “I’m in a bit of a bind today. My husband’s out of town, I’ve got a meeting with a client in an hour and there’s nobody to stay with the children. If they like you and vice versa, perhaps you could start right away.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” I said. What a break. All I had to do was make nice to the little kiddies and I was hired!

  102 Harborview Terrace was an antique saltbox with a “winter view” of the Long Island Sound—i.e., you could see the water from the house only when there were no leaves on the trees. Often referred to as the John Hoggins Homestead, it was built in 1767 by the first minister of the Christ Episcopal Church in Layton, who had inherited the land from his father, a staunch Loyalist and supporter of the King of England during the Revolution. Despite the fact that the British burned much of Layton in 1779, the house was spared the Redcoats’ torch and remained in the Hoggins family until 1850. Subsequent owners took great care to preserve its period flavor, which brings us to the Silverbergs, who, I was dismayed to find, had given the John Hoggins Homestead a spin all their own. Oh, the wideboard flooring, chair rail moldings, exposed beams, and beehive ovens were still in place. But the Silverbergs’ idea of preserving authentic period detail was to throw every cutesy thing they’d ever seen in Country Living magazine at the place—quilts, decoys, straw baskets, corner cabinets, rocking chairs, American flags, you get the picture. But here’s where the decor got really nauseating. The Silverbergs’ idea of updating the house was to install the trendiest amenities of the nineties right alongside the authentic period detail: track lights sitting atop rough-hewn beams, a Jenn-aire oven inside the beehive oven, wall-to-wall carpeting over the wideboard floors, and so on. But hey, it was the Silverbergs’ house. Taste or no taste, they had a right to trash the place if they wanted to.

  “Please come in,” said Mrs. Silverberg as she opened the (what else) paneled antique front door with American flag hanging overhead.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m Alison Koff. Nice to meet you.” I braced myself for a reaction, expecting her to recoil at the sound of my name, but she didn’t. Maybe she was new in town.

  “Let me get the children,” she said quickly, appearing somewhat frazzled. She was thirty-something, with bushy, shoulder-length auburn hair held in place by a pink velvet headband. She wore wire-rimmed glasses of the type that Gloria Steinem used to wear before she realized it was okay for America’s most famous feminist to wear contact lenses. Her outfit was pure Laura Ashley—from her ruffled pink-and-green-flowered blouse to the matching pink-and-green, mid-calf-length flowered skirt, under which she wore brown leather riding boots. Oh, and let’s not forget the pearls—a thin strand around her neck, tiny studs in her earlobes. It struck me that Mrs. Silverberg wanted very much to appear authentic, but authentic what I couldn’t figure out.

  “What are the children’s names?” I asked before she could hurry out of the foyer, which was so crammed with wood-painted ducks I could practically hear their quacking.

  “Tiffany and Amber,” she said proudly. “Our two little angels.”

  Tiffany and Amber Silverberg. And I thought putting wall-to-wall carpeting over wideboard floors was a mixed metaphor.

  Mrs. Silverberg ushered me into the living room and suggested I wait there while she fetched Tiffany and Amber, who, she explained, were playing upstairs with their brand-new Barbie doll, a gift from their doting father who was nowhere to be seen. Tiffany, she also explained, was six; Amber, five.

  Playing upstairs with their Barbie doll? This job’s gonna be a snap, I thought, imagining the two little girls taking turns combing Barbie’s long, blonde, Dynel hair, dressing her anatomically correct body in tacky, gold-sequined evening gowns, and leaving me mercifully alone while their mother went off to her meeting.

  As I waited for them to come down and meet Auntie Alison, I spotted yet another Revolutionary War artifact resting next to the stone fireplace: an honest-to-goodness musket. I hoped it wasn’t loaded.

  “Girls, this is Alison. Say hello,” said Mrs. Silverberg as she led Tiffany and Amber into the living room to meet me.

  They said hello and curtsied. No kidding. Not only that, they were dressed in the same identical outfits as their mother—right down to the pink velvet headbands that adorned their long, bushy auburn hair. They weren’t wearing their mother’s riding boots, however. Their feet were in black patent leather Mary Janes. But they looked enough like miniature Mrs. Silverbergs to make the whole thing a tad bizarre. Why they were so dressed up to sit around the house on a Saturday morning was beyond me. Maybe the Silverbergs were just a very formal, very civilized, very perfectionist family, I thought. And maybe their children were better behaved than most. I congratulated myself on finding this job, which I was now more certain than ever would be a piece of cake.

  “Nice to meet you girls,” I said, kneeling so I’d be closer to them in height. “I hear you’ve got a new Barbie doll. Want to take me upstairs and show me?”

  “Can we, Mommy?” Tiffany said eagerly.

  “Oh, please, Mommy,” Amber added.

  Mrs. Silverberg nodded. “I’ll hang around for another ten minutes or so,” she whispered to me. “Just to make sure everything’s all right.”

  “Great,” I said. Tiffany took one of my hands, Amber the other, and both sisters led me up the stairs to Tiffany’s room, a large pink affair filled with enough “children’s product” to rival Toys R Us. “My, what a pretty room,” I said.

  “Thank you,” Tiffany said politely. “Amber’s room is pretty too.”

  “I bet it is.” I couldn’t get over how well mannered these girls were.

  The three of us sat on the floor and bonded for several minutes. Tiffany showed me some of Barbie’s clothes, while Amber let her stuffed Mutant Ninja Turtle sit on my lap. After a while, Mrs. Silverberg came upstairs and asked her daughters how they liked their new friend Alison.

  “She’s neat,” Tiffany exulted.

  “Yeah, neat,” Amber echoed.

  I was touched.

  “Why don’t we talk for a few moments, then I’ll go,” said Mrs. Silverberg, motioning for me to follow her downstairs.

  When we got to the first floor, Mrs. Silverberg took me i
nto the kitchen and explained that she and her family had indeed just moved to town and hadn’t been in their new house long enough to find an au pair for the girls. Then she asked me for a reference. I stalled. I hedged. I tried to change the subject by asking her who sold her house to her. “Janet Claiborne of Prestige Properties,” she said. I was in luck. “I have a reference for you to call,” I said with relief. “Janet Claiborne is my realtor too.” “Oh,” she said. “If you know Janet, then everything’s fine. We found her to be a fine person and an excellent realtor.” Maybe Mrs. Silverberg was a better mother than she was a judge of realtors.

  The question of my references behind us, she showed me around the kitchen and pointed out the egg salad she had prepared for the girls’ luncheon sandwiches. Then she wrote down the phone number where she could be reached for the next three hours or so.

  “We’ll consider today a trial run,” she said. “If it works, we’ll discuss a more permanent arrangement, all right?”

  “Sure.” I finally had a job.

  At around eleven o’clock Mrs. Silverberg, who said she was an interior decorator and her absent husband was a gastroenterologist, departed for her meeting and left me to care for her little angels. I checked my watch. Three hours with a couple of well-mannered kids. Easy money.

  I went back upstairs to Tiffany’s room to resume our fun and games. The girls weren’t there.

  “Tiffany? Amber? Where are you, sweetie pies?”

  No answer.

  “Are we playing a little hide and seek?” I called out as I roamed the hall, sticking my head into all four bedrooms on the second floor.

  No answer.

  “Alison has a surprise for Tiffany and Amber,” I lied, thinking I could lure the kids out of their hiding place by promising them something. I’d decide what the something was when the time came.

  No answer.

  “Okay then. If you girls don’t want my surprise, I guess I’ll just go downstairs and have a soda or something.”

  I started to walk down the stairs when both girls jumped out from behind me and screamed “Boo!” in my ears. I almost fell down the stairs. I almost went deaf. I almost killed them. Instead, I smiled. “Well, well. There you are,” I said sweetly. “How about going back into Tiffany’s room and playing with Barbie some more?”

  “We want the surprise,” Tiffany, the ringleader, demanded.

  “Yeah, the surprise,” Amber said.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “The surprise is…uh…uh…that I’ll tell you all about the dolls I used to play with when I was your age.”

  “Boring,” said Tiffany.

  “Yeah, bor-ing,” Amber copied her sister.

  “I bet she never had any surprise,” Tiffany scowled. “She’s nothing but a big, fat liar.”

  “Yeah, and a big, fat turd,” added Amber.

  So much for their impeccable manners. “That’s not very nice,” I said gently, reaching out to pat Amber on the head and reestablish our previous good feelings toward each other. Bad move: Amber tried to bite my hand.

  “Hey,” I snapped. “Cut that out, okay?”

  “You can’t tell my sister what to do,” Tiffany sniffed as she tried to push me down the stairs.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled. “Do you want me to call your mother?” Yeah, I know. The old Do You Want Me to Call Your Mother threat was pretty tired, but in this case it worked—temporarily. The girls agreed to go back to Tiffany’s room if I promised to go with them. I did.

  “How about a game of Chutes and Ladders,” I suggested, spotting the board game on Tiffany’s shelf.

  “That’s for babies,” Amber whined. “Let’s play doody bombs.” Obviously, Amber had a waste-product fixation. Perhaps she’d been reading her father’s medical texts.

  “Yeah, doody bombs!” Tiffany cheered, then proceeded to pick her nose and wipe the result on her Laura Ashley skirt.

  “Ooh, look what Tiffany did,” Amber sneered. “Tiffany is a big fat booger snot. Nah-nah na-nah-nah.”

  “Come on, girls. Enough with that talk,” I said impatiently. “Tiffany, please go into the bathroom and wash your hands.”

  “Tiffany, please go into the bathroom and wash your hands,” Tiffany mimicked me.

  “I mean it. Good hygiene is very important,” I said.

  “I mean it. Good hygiene is very important,” she mimicked me again.

  “I’m going downstairs,” I said.

  “I’m going downstairs,” Tiffany said.

  “Make us our egg salad sandwiches now,” Amber commanded.

  I was so grateful for the break in the mimicking that I agreed to make them lunch. It was only eleven-fifteen, but I hoped that stuffing the mouths of these brats would somehow shut them up.

  Tiffany and Amber spun around the kitchen in circles, trying to make themselves dizzy, as I attempted to spread the egg salad their mother had made for them on the Wonder Bread she’d left out on the counter.

  “Okay, girls. Here are your sandwiches. Come sit down,” I said, motioning for them to sit at the authentic Shaker breakfast table that occupied a corner of the kitchen.

  Tiffany and Amber scrambled to the table, each fighting for a place on the same chair.

  “It’s my seat,” Tiffany screamed.

  “No, mine!” her sister whined.

  Before I could intercede, Tiffany had punched Amber in the arm and made her cry.

  “She socked me,” Amber wailed, rubbing her arm.

  “Come on, you two. Eat your sandwiches,” I said, ignoring Amber’s tears.

  They each took a seat at the table, as did I.

  “Look-y look-y, Alison,” Amber said after biting into her sandwich.

  “Oh, gross,” Tiffany snorted. Amber, it seemed, had opened her mouth and exposed her half-eaten egg salad sandwich in all its mushy yellow glory.

  “That’s not polite,” I said to Amber.

  “That’s not polite,” Tiffany mimicked me. We were back to square one.

  I checked my watch. It was only eleven-forty. I wanted to go back to the boat. I wasn’t the au pair type.

  “Give me some soda,” Tiffany ordered.

  “How about saying please?” I suggested.

  “Pleeeese,” Tiffany said, then stuck her fingers up her nose.

  I got up and walked toward the refrigerator. When I started to pull out a Pepsi, Tiffany yelled, “No. I want a Sprite.”

  I put the Pepsi back and fished deeper into the refrigerator for a Sprite.

  “Nooo,” she wailed. “I want a Pepsi.”

  I put the Sprite back and took out the Pepsi.

  “I said I wanted a Sprite,” she screamed.

  That was it. I snapped, I admit it. Maybe it was my lack of experience in dealing with children or maybe it was my recent and frustrating brush with the law that had put me on a short fuse, but I opened both the Pepsi and the Sprite bottles and dumped their contents on the pink-velvet head-banded heads of Tiffany and Amber Silverberg. “You wanted some soda? You got it,” I said, and began to make myself an egg salad sandwich.

  “You got our clothes all dirty,” Tiffany wailed after several seconds of silence. My unexpected act of retaliation seemed to have sent both girls into shock.

  “Yeah, and our hair’s dirty too,” said Amber.

  “Yeah, and the kitchen table’s all sticky,” Tiffany added.

  “I’ll make you both a deal,” I said. “You promise to behave yourselves from now on and I’ll let you go upstairs and change your clothes. You didn’t really want to wear those fancy outfits on a Saturday, did you?”

  “Noooo. Mommy made us,” Tiffany said.

  “She said we had to look nice for the new babysitter,” Amber added.

  “Well, the new babysitter says you can wear whatever you like.”

  “We can?” they squealed.

  “Sure.”

  “Anything we want?” Tiffany asked.

  “Yup. Now go upstairs and change your clothes whi
le I clean up the kitchen, okay?”

  “Yeah! Let’s go,” said Tiffany.

  “I’m coming,” said Amber.

  And off they went. Alone at last. I finished my sandwich and wiped the soda off the table. Then I listened. The monsters were quiet. I commended myself for my handling of the situation. No, Dr. Spock wouldn’t have approved, but I had found a way to shut the brats up and keep them busy for at least another hour or so.

  At one o’clock I went upstairs to check on the girls. They weren’t in either of their rooms. From the wet towels strewn across the floor of their bathroom, I guessed that they had attempted to wash their hair. But what they had done with themselves after that, I couldn’t guess.

  “Tiffany? Amber? Where are you?” I called out.

  “In here! In Mommy’s closet!” one of them yelled back.

  I followed the voice and walked to the end of the hallway, into the master bedroom.

  “In here, Alison!” Tiffany said. “Look at us!”

  I found the girls. They had indeed changed their clothes. They were now decked out in their mother’s evening gowns, complete with long, white gloves, high-heeled shoes, and glittery purses. They had painted themselves with their mother’s makeup too—red lipstick, blue eye shadow, black eyebrow pencil. I was sure Mrs. Silverberg would have a fit if she saw them, but I laughed so hard I could barely breathe. They looked adorable.

  “Dahlings,” I said, batting my eyelashes and playing the grand society lady. “How mahvelous to see you both again. You do look ravishing.”

  The girls grinned and played along.

  “Have you seen Barbie yet?” Tiffany asked.

  “No, but I heard she was at the pahty,” I said. “Shall we check the other rooms?”

  “Yeah, let’s find Barbie,” Amber said.

  I led the way to Tiffany’s bedroom, where I had last seen the new Barbie doll. “Here she is, ladies. Barbie? Is that you, dahling?”

  Tiffany and Amber chatted with Barbie and me. Then I started singing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider”—the only children’s song I could think of—and invited both girls to dance with me. They accepted with delight. We took turns on the dance floor. I’d waltz Tiffany around the room, while Amber danced with Barbie. Then we’d switch partners. We were having so much fun that none of us heard Mrs. Silverberg come home. As I guessed, she didn’t find her daughters’ attire as amusing as I did. Apparently, her closets were off limits.