The Dark Side

by Danielle Steel

  Jamala followed all of Zoe’s rules during the two weeks that Zoe observed her closely. And she was confident that Jamala knew what she was doing, but she still looked bereft the first day she had to go back to work. She had left a freezer full of breast milk and had been pumping for weeks before. There was enough in the freezer for her to leave the baby for a month, which she would never do. She had the smaller pump boxed to take to work with her, so her nursing wouldn’t get disrupted and her milk wouldn’t diminish. She had left dozens of additional instructions she wrote up the night before, and every possible emergency number.

  Austin thought he’d never get her out the door on her first day back at work at the non-profit that had been so important to her, but not as important as their baby, who was her all-consuming passion now. Zoe cried as she got dressed, couldn’t eat breakfast she was so upset, and gazed at Jaime as she nursed her as though she might never see her again.

  “She’s gonna be happy to see you tonight, Miz Roberts,” Jamala said as Zoe handed the baby over to her with tears streaming down her cheeks, and Austin shepherded her out of the apartment. He had offered to drop her off, and Zoe looked beautiful. She had her figure back six months after she’d given birth, and she looked better than ever and had lost a few extra pounds from the exercise classes she went to in the Village where she could take Jaime in her stroller. She was wearing black jeans and a red sweater, her eyes looked vibrant and alive, her dark hair shone, and she’d had it trimmed to shoulder length. As he looked at her, Austin felt he had his wife back. She was no longer hanging around the apartment in worn-out exercise clothes or a nightgown with breast-milk stains on it. She looked as vital and crisp as she always did when she went to work. She was the consummate professional, with a new facet added. She was a devoted mother too, and they both suspected it was going to give her new depth when dealing with the children who required her attention.

  Austin was currently handling two pro bono child abuse and custody cases for them, with appropriate grandparents who were anxious to have custody of their grandchildren and deserved to, in opposition to convicted felon fathers and negligent mothers who were in jail. Zoe had fresh passion to bring to the situations they dealt with. He rode all the way uptown with her to keep her company in the cab, so she wouldn’t be crying alone, and then went to midtown to his office. And he kissed her lovingly when she got out.

  “Have fun…see you tonight.” He smiled at her, prouder of her than ever, and he loved having her back in her old life. It gave him hope that their married life would return to a semblance of their old life too, which hadn’t happened yet, since they’d had no help when they were home alone together. Every time he tried to make love to her, the dreaded apnea monitor went off with another false alarm, or Jaime woke up on her own timing and cried, and Zoe went to pick her up, and that was the end of their lovemaking until the next attempt, which would be interrupted again.

  They had only made love a few times in the last six months, and he missed it dreadfully. Zoe kept promising that things would calm down again, but they hadn’t yet, and at times he wondered if they ever would. He’d asked his brothers about it, and they said the au pairs they hired had saved their marriages, and gave them time alone with their wives. His oldest brother had sheepishly admitted that he’d had an affair after the twins were born, when he felt that there was no longer time or room for him. But they had gotten past it, and he said that their marriage was back on track again, the affair had been a big mistake, and he regretted it. Austin had no intention of making the same mistake, but he appreciated his brother’s honesty. They had a warm relationship and Austin had confessed that things were up and down with Zoe, she was obsessed with the baby, and had turned into an uber mother overnight. He missed the woman he could make love to whenever he wanted, but he was confident they’d get back to their old rhythms soon.

  “Yeah, like maybe when Jaime goes to college,” his brother teased him, and Austin hoped that wouldn’t be true for them, or even close to it. Austin had high hopes of getting their marriage back to where it had been before Jaime, until lunchtime, when Zoe called him in a fury.

  She had gone home for lunch unannounced, to nurse the baby instead of pumping. And she had found Jaime, just fed and looking milk drunk, sound asleep in Jamala’s arms, and the Jamaican woman crooning to her.

  “What’s wrong with that?” Austin interrupted her. It sounded just right to him, and exactly the kind of person they wanted. She wasn’t some teenybopper wearing headphones and dancing to music, or on the phone with her boyfriend. “Did she give her your milk from the freezer?” Maybe she had given the baby formula, which would have been a felony to Zoe.

  “She had her lying flat in her arms, not propped up as I showed her because of the apnea, and she wasn’t wearing the monitor.” Zoe was almost in tears as she said it, but it sounded reasonable to him. If Jamala was holding her, she would see if she stopped breathing, which had never happened again anyway, and he was sick of the malfunctioning monitor too, which constantly woke the baby, and all of them, out of a sound sleep. “She didn’t follow my rules. It could have killed Jaime.”

  “She was holding her, Zoe. She could see what was going on with her. She didn’t leave her alone in the room in her crib.” Jaime had outgrown the Moses basket by then, and slept in a crib. They had an additional crib in their now cramped bedroom, so she could sleep in the same room with them, which Zoe wanted most of the time, so she could watch her. She didn’t trust their video monitors, which they had in every room, in addition to the six hidden nanny cams, which Austin felt was overkill, to say the least.

  “I don’t care. She didn’t do what I told her. I can’t trust her. I want to fire her. I canceled my afternoon and sent her home. I told the office I had a childcare emergency at home and my nanny got sick.”

  “Don’t fire her, Zoe. The Johnsons raved about her, and they’re careful with their kids.” He had recently learned that many people they knew weren’t, especially by Zoe’s standards. “You know how hard it was to find her. How many people did you interview? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Give her another chance. You’ll never get back to work if you keep firing nannies.” He was discouraged at the thought and how rigid Zoe had become.

  “I’m questioning if I even should go back. I’m not sure there are decent nannies out there.” She was appalled by the level of incompetence of the au pairs her sisters-in-law hired and had told Austin she wouldn’t leave a dog with them, if they had one, which they didn’t. She thought it would be unsanitary for Jaime, and cats were known to carry diseases that could be lethal to kids, so pets were out for the moment. Austin wanted Jaime to grow up with a dog, as he had. His brothers had a chocolate Lab and a golden retriever for their kids, but they were older than Jaime. Austin thought it was a great way to teach kids responsibility. But Zoe hadn’t had a dog as a child or as an adult, so she wasn’t sympathetic to the idea. He was planning to work on that in the future.

  “Why don’t you give her another chance?” he said gently about Jamala. He could only imagine the commotion if Zoe had to take more time off to find another nanny, and he liked Jamala, and thought she was perfect with Jaime, loving, kind, and competent.

  “I’ll think about it,” she growled at him, her voice shaking with anger. She was still livid when he got home that night, and was holding Jaime after a feeding, so she couldn’t put her down for another hour, and then put her in her crib. She sat in the kitchen with Austin to have the dinner he had brought home. He had worked late and was too tired to cook. She was too upset to eat, but she listened to his arguments in favor of Jamala, skeptically, and finally agreed to keep her and give her another chance. She called the woman at home, who cried when she answered and apologized again. Zoe told her to come to work in the morning and they’d start over, but she had to respect the rules Zoe set for her, and Jamala assured her she would.

  Jaime squealed with d
elight when she saw her the next morning, and Jamala looked happy and relieved as she took her from Zoe, and apologized again. The atmosphere between the two women was chilly, on Zoe’s side, and as they left for work together, Austin could see that the handwriting was on the wall. Zoe had made her mind up, and at the first slip Jamala would be out the door, for good next time. It seemed inevitable.

  She lasted a month, until Zoe came home and found evidence that she had given Jaime applesauce from a baby food jar instead of making it herself. She gave Jamala a lecture on the chemicals in commercial baby food and the kind of damage it could do, both physically and mentally, to Jaime in the future. In Zoe’s mind, prepared foods, for an infant Jaime’s age, were akin to poison. At the end of the speech, she gave Jamala three weeks’ notice until she could find someone to replace her. Jamala left that night looking dejected, but she could see that it was a battle she couldn’t win. She loved Jaime, but Zoe was impossible to please and sooner or later there would be some new unforgivable offense that would cost her the job. She didn’t argue to keep it this time. She thought Zoe was too hard to work for, and she and Austin exchanged a despairing look when she left that night. He didn’t say anything to Zoe except that he thought she was making a mistake. Jamala was a loving, reliable, experienced, honest, trustworthy woman and Jaime adored her. He thought Zoe would be hard-pressed to find someone as good. She had reviewed their nanny cam videos and all she’d seen were hours of Jamala being loving and responsible with her daughter, but Zoe thought her offenses were serious enough to warrant terminating her, whether Austin agreed or not. He wasn’t going to add stress to their marriage by fighting for the help.

  Miraculously, two weeks later, they found a thirty-six-year-old Irish hospital nurse, recently arrived from Dublin with a legal green card. She hadn’t found hospital work yet, and she wanted the more stress-free life of a nanny. She listened to all of Zoe’s theories about feeding, the apnea monitor, baby food, no schedule, and agreed to follow all of it. She wasn’t as warm and kind as Jamala, who’d cried when she kissed Jaime goodbye, but she was reliable and efficient, showed up for work on time, and followed Zoe’s rules to the letter. She didn’t talk to Jaime much, which Austin thought was disappointing, but Zoe thought the rules and Jaime’s safety and health were more important, so she hired Fiona.

  Jaime was leery of her at first, and seemed to sense her lack of warmth, but other than that, there was nothing wrong with her, and she did as Zoe told her. So there was peace in the house, which was at least something. Austin had noticed that instead of softening her, or maintaining the gentleness Austin had loved about his wife when he’d met her, motherhood had somehow made her rigid, less flexible, and tougher with him and everyone else. She was unforgiving and merciless about any mistake. Her theories meant everything to her, in order to protect Jaime. She was obsessive about them, and everything that concerned their baby, to the point of being harsh at times, and he noticed how possessive she was of Jaime. Zoe was always tense when her mother-in-law came to visit now, didn’t like any of Constance’s more relaxed ideas and didn’t welcome her suggestions. It was Zoe’s way or no way, and Constance felt the chill between them, and tried not to interfere. Zoe invited her over less and less often, and Constance didn’t complain to Austin. She didn’t want a hostile relationship with her daughter-in-law, for fear of losing her son. She could see that Zoe didn’t want anyone too close to the baby or too loving with her. She wanted Jaime to herself, and the only person she was willing to share her with was Austin, and even with him, under close supervision.

  After the visit, Constance mentioned it to George, her husband, who always told her to relax. He reminded her that Zoe was a very bright young woman. She had come to motherhood later than their other daughters-in-law, and had a different personality, and ran a complicated non-profit perfectly. He felt sure she’d relax and get the hang of motherhood eventually. He thought Constance was being oversensitive about it. He always gave Zoe the benefit of the doubt, he liked her. Constance liked her too, but there was something so rigid and intense about her, ever since she’d had the baby. Austin had seen it too, but he and his mother never discussed it. It would have seemed disloyal to him to do that. He loved Zoe, she was a wonderful mother, and if she was a little too zealous about their baby, how could he fault her for that? She was super-mom to the letter.

  Chapter 5

  Fiona worked out well for them as a nanny. She wasn’t an exciting person, didn’t have interesting ideas, and wasn’t creative with Jaime. She was used to being a hospital nurse, not entertaining a baby or toddler. The baby was always clean and well cared for, combed and brushed in clean pajamas when they got home. She took her out for walks in the fresh air, and followed Zoe’s orders to a T. She never asked questions unless she had to, and wasn’t chatty. When Jaime was eleven months old, Fiona asked Zoe how long she was planning to nurse her or if they were going to start to wean her.

  “It’s working well,” Zoe answered her. “I originally planned to nurse her for a year, but I think it might go longer. She’s happy with it, and so am I. Maybe a few more months.” Fiona nodded. She didn’t care one way or another. She had no opinions about babies. She’d been a post-surgical recovery nurse for adults in Ireland, so she wasn’t invested in any theories, unlike Zoe, who had many. And at this point, the nursing was a comfort for Jaime, but no longer a necessity. And they were still following the precautions for apnea, although it had never happened again, and Zoe had her still wearing the annoying monitor. They had told her she could give it up at a year, and she planned to.

  When Jaime took her first steps, Fiona sent a cellphone video to both parents at work, and Zoe cried when she saw it, and was crushed she hadn’t been there to witness the moment herself. But she was loving her job, the complex meetings she attended daily, both internally and with foundations for grants, the judicial system, and city government for funds. And she loved going home to Jaime at night. Her life felt complete with a baby and husband she loved, and work she knew was meaningful. And her contact with the children at the shelter was a bonus. The long-term ones were dear to her heart.

  Austin’s reaction to Jaime walking was different, although he was sorry he had missed the first steps too. He knew it was time to think of safety, which was usually Zoe’s province, but he got involved this time.

  “I want to get gates this weekend,” he said that night over dinner, after Jaime had gone to sleep. She had drunkenly demonstrated her new skill to her parents, and they applauded when she walked across the room to them at Fiona’s urging. But when Austin saw Jaime staggering toward them on unsteady legs it reminded him that the short staircase to their bedroom would be dangerous for her now, and they needed to close it off with a gate at the bottom of the stairs, so she wouldn’t climb them, fall, and get hurt. Gates were easy to get in any hardware store, or store with furnishings for children. Most people used them to confine their toddlers in a safe space.

  “She’ll crawl up the steps for a while, she won’t try to walk them,” Zoe said confidently. While she’d only been crawling, she’d been easier to distract from the stairs, but Austin could see an accident waiting to happen. “I think we can wait awhile, and I don’t like them anyway. Gates are for dogs, not children, like leashes. I hate them, when you see a kid on a leash at an airport or the zoo. Besides, if they’re the stretchy accordion kind, she’ll pinch her fingers in a gate.”

  “Better that than landing on her head. Let’s not do that again.” He was referring to her fall off the changing table, eight months before.

  “She’s not going to fall down the stairs, she’ll stay away from them, she won’t know how to negotiate them. Toddlers are smarter than that,” Zoe said confidently. Austin looked annoyed but didn’t comment. They still had a solid marriage, but their sometimes different opinions about Jaime gave them things to argue about, which they’d never done before. Now there were little squabbles and diff
erences of opinion about their child, which weren’t serious, but annoying and frequent.

  As promised, he came home with three gates, of the scissor-accordion kind, which stretched out to fit the doorway. There was one for the flight of stairs to their bedroom, and two extras in case they needed them, now that Jaime was walking.

  “Those are exactly the ones I told you I didn’t want. She’s a lot more likely to hurt her finger in them, or cut it really badly, than she is to fall down the stairs. And why three of them? Are you planning to lock her in her room?” Zoe looked disapprovingly and instantly critical of him.

  “No, but now that you mention it, if she wakes up before we do, and ever gets out of her crib, she could wander all over the apartment and hurt herself. A gate on her room would be a good idea.” In the larger apartment they’d moved to when Zoe was pregnant, there was lots of room for her to move around, and get into trouble if unsupervised.

  “I won’t allow a gate. We have to respect her as a person, we can’t treat her like a prisoner,” Zoe said angrily.

  “We need to treat her like a one-year-old with more mobility than sense,” he said firmly, irritated by Zoe’s take on everything, that schedules were abusive and gates were for dogs. For someone so obsessed with safety and Jaime’s well-being, she was ridiculous sometimes, but he didn’t say that to her. Instead he installed the gate on the stairs that night, after telling Zoe that he couldn’t get the flat kind, which wouldn’t have been the right size for their doorways anyway, as they were unusually wide. He put the two extras in a storage closet in case they needed them later.