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At least something was easy.
“Do you have homework due tomorrow?” I asked, because that seemed like a nanny question.
“No. I did mine already. But Willow probably didn’t. She does her homework on the way to school.”
I could relate. That had been my standard procedure too. Though I had grown up in a walkable community with no busing and parents who thought driving us to school was bullshit since God gave us two legs, so usually I had rushed through my homework in the morning while I crammed a bagel in my mouth.
“How do you get to school?” I asked, fishing around in the cabinet for a coffee mug.
“It depends on who is our nanny. Mary took us on the subway. Lena used her own money to get us an Uber, then dad found out and was mad because she sent us alone so she could sleep in, so he fired her. Sadie made us walk with her because she said walking was good for our hearts and our chakras.”
“I see.” I didn’t see a damn thing. Other than apparently Lena was lazy as shit. “And where is the school?”
&nb
sp; “West eighty-third Street.”
“Do you have a bike?” I wasn’t sure I could stomach the train at seven in the morning, nor did a brisk walk in the September heat wave appeal to me.
“No. I don’t know how to ride a bike.”
“Then it’s either walking or the train. We can vote.” Then maybe Brandon could invest in some bikes. We’d be there in less than ten minutes if we had them. I hadn’t ridden a bike in recent years because I had nowhere to store it at my current—well, former—apartment, but for the first few years I had been in New York I went everywhere on my bike.
“Do you want to learn how to ride a bike?” I put my mug under the spigot and pushed a button at random.
“I don’t know.” Poppy finished her donut and went to the refrigerator. She pulled out a jug of milk.
I thought about my very standard and traditional suburban childhood. I grew up in a 1920s white Dutch colonial with black shutters and my parents still lived in that same house. The neighborhood kids all played in the street and at the parks, and we walked or biked everywhere. At Poppy’s age I was allowed to bike to the playground as long as we were in a group of at least four kids, and at least one being over the age of ten. I wasn’t sure why ten was better than nine, but we were all really damn excited to reach double digits. We would stop at the ice cream shop, the comic book store, and run in to pet the black cat who hung out at the wiccan store and sniff the scented candles there.
We had controlled independence and a sense of community. Poppy and Willow were living a much different childhood. Sheltered by their father, yet oddly left to their own devices by a rotating door of nannies. “How many cities have you lived in?” I asked.
Poppy was pouring herself milk but she stopped and moved her lips as if she were counting. “Four.”
Not as many as I had thought but still a lot considering she was eight. “What was your favorite?”
“I don’t know.”
She was either still half-asleep or she genuinely didn’t have a preference. Or she didn’t want to talk about it. I dropped the subject and sipped my coffee.
I don’t know what I thought it would be like, being a nanny. But I was already starting to care for Poppy and Willow and it was day two. It was a complication I had never considered. It also meant that Brandon was right. We couldn’t date. We couldn’t disrupt these kids’ lives any more than they already had been.
Poppy wandered away with her milk and I took my coffee to my disaster of a room and attempted to make sense of the mess.
Willow didn’t wake up until noon and then at one they both wanted to watch the football game on TV. We settled onto the sectional together and Willow told the TV what to do. The screen lit up with the Superdome in New Orleans.
“There’s Dad,” Poppy said, pointing to the screen.
As if I hadn’t already spotted him, pacing back and forth, talking into his headset, looking sexy. He wasn’t wearing a golf shirt like a lot of coaches did. He was wearing a team T-shirt. The same logo of the one he’d given me, actually. Not that it meant anything. I didn’t think. Did it? No. Of course it didn’t.
I was being ludicrous, to borrow Poppy’s word.
“The quarterback is so hot,” Willow said.
The quarterback had a lot of hair. Long, flowing blond locks. Not really my type, but I could see the appeal. He was very Prince Charming. If Prince Charming was six-five and had muscles on muscles. “He has good hair,” I said.
“Offsides,” Willow said, leaning forward suddenly. “Left tackle. That’s a five-yard penalty. Bad way to start a game.”
“Which team?”
