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There’s a knock at the door. Oh yeah, I’m supposed to be in the shower. “Give me two minutes, please!” I shout, shucking off my clothes and laying them on the bench. I grab my phone and duck into the bathroom and close the door.
Holy crap.
So, this bathroom–in tasteful shades of grey, of course–is as big as my living room. Probably bigger. There is both a toilet and a bidet, in case you don’t like toilet paper, I guess. There is a clawfoot tub big enough for two and a huge, tile shower with glass doors. It has one of those enormous shower heads that hang from the ceiling, so you can imagine you’re getting clean in a strong rain, but it also has smaller heads in the walls, to hit from all sides. Like the rest of the room, it’s immaculate, no water spots, no soap scum.
I turn on the water and step in. I’m spoiled for showers forever, now. The water pressure is perfect. How can I go back to one, sad, low-flow shower head? I’m going to have to turn up dirty every day, just so I can come back to this…this temple to cleanliness. Seriously, this is like getting fine steak and having to go back to eating Slim Jims.
When my fingertips start to prune up, I reluctantly step out, drying off with the soft, fluffy towel. There’s heavy terrycloth bathrobe hanging on the door, so I pull it on before stepping back into the bedroom. My dirty clothes are gone, replaced by a pair of yoga pants and a tshirt. No bra or panties, which I guess is good. I mean, it’d be weird to put on underwear of unknown origin. On the other hand, that means I don’t put on underwear at all. I am not used to going braless in public. Lack of grace wasn’t all that kept me from becoming a ballet dancer–these curves would have kept me on the sidelines even if I could do an arabesque without falling over.
The tshirt is fairly loose, except across the chest. And the yoga pants are straining across my rear. Whoever owned these was of a narrower build that I…
I freeze. Are these Maeve’s mother’s clothes? Does Corbin know that’s what I’ll be wearing? Will it be weird for him to see another woman in his wife’s clothes? They’re pretty generic–black pants and a red top–hopefully he won’t even notice. I text him that I’m out of the shower and ready to work.
When Corbin comes into the room, I can’t help but notice that his eyes are drawn to the fabric pulled tightly across my breasts. I know that my nipples are poking out, leaving little to the imagination. Looks like he might be imagining a little, anyway. His gaze flicks back to my face–quickly, it wasn’t like a creepy, lingering ogle, but I still feel my cheeks get hot– and he smiles. “I’ll take you to the nursery. Maeve is still napping.”
As I follow him up the hallway, I wonder what this all is, really. Wife has been dead eight months. And clearly he’s sad–her sudden death explains that anguish in his eyes–but he’s also absolutely flirting, checking me out. I don’t care what Gran says, I know it when I see it. And you don’t just invite a stranger over to watch your kid without some extra motive, do you?
I mean, I don’t mind, not at all. Trotting along behind his long stride, I can admire how broad his shoulders are, how nicely his waist tapers, the way those linen pants just hang off his hips. Nice butt for a white boy, too. Has a little meat on it. I’ve just thought of how that rounded muscle would feel under my hand when he stops and turns to me, his hand on a doorknob.
“She’s been out about an hour, so let’s go quietly. If she wakes now, she won’t nap again today and an hour isn’t enough to get her through until bedtime.” His voice is low and he opens the door very slowly, as if afraid the knob will make noise. I can’t imagine anything in this house squeaks. Even the mice probably have cultured accents.
We step into a room that looks like an FAO Schwartz showroom. There’s a train set, a huge Victorian dollhouse, musical instruments, a giant teddy bear…all of it looks well beyond the needs of a baby, like it was set up by someone that knows even less about babies than I do. Corbin strides through it on silent feet, slowly opening another door in the far wall. He leans back so that I can peer in and see the crib, Maeve sleeping peacefully. He quietly shuts the door again and steps to the center of the playroom.
I’m sure that door was heavy and solid, but still his voice is low. “The monitor on the windowsill will tell you when she awakes. There’s a camera trained on the crib, too, so that if you need to be elsewhere in the house, you can check on her. I’ll text you the app you can download that makes it really easy.” He glances at his watch. “Crap. Look, I have to be on a call in about a minute, I’d hoped to have more time to show you around. But I’ll be back when I can. There’s a buzzer by the door,” he points out what looks like a doorbell button, “if you push it, Connie or Marta will turn up pretty quickly. Um…good luck!” He flashes me a smile that looks a bit worried around the edges and closes the door behind him.
So. Here I am, a nanny. I set my bag down on the window seat and walk around the playroom on quiet, bare feet. Like the guest room, this room looks like a stage set. It’s hard to imagine a child actually playing with any of this stuff, moving a thing out of place. The monitor broadcasts the soft sounds of breathing, so I settle in on the window seat and get out my book. The view is out the front of the house, I can see the long drive I’d come down, the little gatehouse, the vineyard rolling away to the horizon.
I’ve managed to read most of a chapter before I hear the first snuffles on the monitor. There’s one inquisitive “Da?” before Maeve launches into a full-throated wail. Zero to sixty. I toss my book down and rush to the door. Maeve has pulled herself to standing and is holding the crib rail while she cries. When I come in, she pauses just long enough to look at me and goes right back to it, full throttle.
I lift her out of the crib and hold her close. She’s all warm from sleep, but in no mood to cuddle. She pushes away from me, wailing. I bounce her up and down, nothing. There’s a bottle next to the crib, with a bit of milk in it. I offer it to her, she pushes it away.
“Let’s go out into this great playroom, Maeve!” I say, chipper as a preschool teacher. “Look at Mr. Bear! He’s so big!” With my other hand, I make his giant paw wave at her. “Hello, there, Maeve!” I say in a growly bear voice. Nothing. Mr. Bear’s paw touches her nose gently, “boop!” She turns away and keeps screaming.
“Oh hey, Maeve, look at this dolly! Look at her long blonde hair, so pretty! I bet it’s a weave. She’s got scraggly hair and she pays a lot of money for that weave. You wanna pull it? See, it doesn’t even feel real.” Maeve has no interest in tugging on the weave. She continues to cry, actual tears now running down her cheeks.
“Train?” Nope. “Ooo, look in this dollhouse! Daddy’s in the office watching porn and Mommy’s drinking in the kitchen!” She cries louder still. “Oh, sorry. Touchy subject. Sorry.” I feel myself blushing, like I’d actually just reminded this baby that she doesn’t have a mother. Or a nanny that has any idea what to do with a crying kid.
Where the hell is the ice cube maker when you need one?
Desperate, I set her down on a rug covered in road designs and get my phone from my bag. Maeve just sits there, arms tensed, crying. I call Gran.
“Gran, I need advice!”
“What on earth is that racket, is that a baby?”
“Yes, I can’t get her to stop crying, what do I do?”
“Well, pick her up for starters!” says Gran.
“I was carrying her and bouncing her, I just set her down so I could hear. She’s not crying any more or less than when I was holding her.” Her squalls are making me feel panicked.
“Is she hungry?”
“She wouldn’t take the bottle.”
“Is she wet?”
“Uh, no? She was just napping.”
“Her diaper, girl. Is her diaper wet?”
Ohhhhh. “I don’t know. I didn’t think of that. Hang on.” I go to Maeve and set my phone down as I try to figure out how to tell if her diaper is wet. I lift her dress and feel her backside. The diaper feels fat, but not wet. I slide my finger into the back of the
diaper, saying “Sorry, Maeve, gotta do this.” Her skin is damp. I pick up the phone. “Yeah, she’s wet. Now what?”
“Good lord, change her diaper.”
“I’ve never done that before! I don’t even know where new ones are!” What the hell am I even doing here?
“Where are you?”
I realize Gran doesn’t even know I’ve taken this job. “Remember the rich guy with the baby? I’m a nanny now.”
Gran cracks up, laughing so hard she starts to cough. It’s loud enough that Maeve even quiets a little, curious about that sound in my phone. She starts up again, though.
“Girl, you don’t know anything about babies!” She takes another breath and says, “If you’re at his house, there’s diapers somewhere. Look in the changing table.”
I tuck the phone under my ear and carry Maeve back into her bedroom. When I flick on the light, I see that there’s a padded table across from the crib, with a stack of diapers on it. “Found ‘em!” I say.
“Now, lay her down and take the old diaper off,” says Gran, as if I couldn’t get that step on my own.
Just laying Maeve on the table quiets her a bit, her wails switching to something more like sobs. Maybe she knows she’s finally gotten her point across. Maybe she just got tired of screaming. I pull the polka dotted bloomers from her chunky legs. I pull the tapes on the diaper and the front flops down with a heavy thud. I pull it out from under her, but have no idea what to do with it now. I just push it aside.
“Clean her off, don’t just put a fresh diaper on over that pee-covered skin.”
I pull a wipe from a dispenser. It’s warm, the dispenser is heated. I wipe her rear and gently open her legs. “Sorry Maeve, gotta touch your bathing suit area here. It’s cool, I’m a professional.” Her sobs turn to sniffles and she looks at me. I pick up a new diaper.
