Spoiled Page 9

  The injustice ate at me. I kept thinking back to my own salad days in the city, as a starving actress with nothing but a set of head shots and a useless Yale degree, and the vast, incalculably vast difference two grand would have made at different times in my life.

  It ate at me even more when I heard from Marnoria that Marva needed the cash not for any loan or mortgage or purchase of her own—or, as I would have, to buy some new clothes because I simply could not go to one more party in my vintage black crêpe dress—but to bring her sixteen-year-old son, who was in Saint Lucia with his grandparents, to America.

  “But that’s just ridiculous that she won’t give it to her. I mean, forget the raise—flat out! She should just gift it to her.” I found myself reintroducing the topic every couple of days and I was on the brink of suggesting we take up some kind of park collection for Marva except that I was afraid it would embarrass her.

  “Well, it is a lot,” said Marnie one afternoon—mildly, for she didn’t really care either way. I stopped juggling Sally on my knee and looked at her.

  “Hey, maybe she’s worried she’ll blow it all in one chunk,” said Victoria. “It does happen, you know. Or maybe Marva’s making the whole thing up about the kid. Who knows? When we gave Drianna a bonus so she could get some decent clothes and stop wearing, like, a thong to work, the check was in Peru before you could say ‘H&M.’

  I had one of those moments then of which there have been mercifully few in my life: I realized that my moral fiber was being put to the test. I could sit there blabbing with these two or I could fucking stand up and be counted. I think it was Sally that got me to my feet—it was repulsive to me to let this kind of talk pass with my daughter sitting on my lap. “You live in a two-million-dollar apartment and you think two thousand dollars is ‘a lot’?” I said as I stood up. “That disgusts me.” I could feel them watching me as I snapped Sally, openly complaining, into her stroller and pushed it jerkily across the gravel to where Marva and Sophie were sitting. “Two-five,” I could hear Victoria saying behind me. “Jesus, hasn’t she heard of appreciation?” Normally I didn’t join Marva when she wasn’t by herself, but for solidarity’s sake I did now, though I got the feeling I had interrupted a conversation about Sophie’s man troubles, so I didn’t stay long, making some excuse about Sally’s being tired.

  The next day I found Marva in the park and I told her I would lend her the two thousand. I’d been thinking about it all day. I’d had an overwrought discussion—overwrought on my part—with Win the night before, who had okayed the loan without being particularly interested in the story behind it. “It’s fine with me,” he’d said, “as long as you don’t expect to get a penny of it back.” This was so irritating to me I wished I’d never discussed it with him—it seemed like he was always having the last word.

  Marva was certainly happy when I asked her to sit down with me and informed her of our decision, though my announcement didn’t seem to surprise her, particularly, and that took some of the thrill out of it for me, I have to admit. I guess I’d started thinking of myself as some kind of fairy godmother, and I thought she might leap up and hug me and say her problems were solved. Foolishly, I had forgotten to bring a checkbook with me to the park. I couldn’t exactly give her an IOU so I invited her and Annabel to come back to the apartment with us.

  The four of us squeezed into the elevator with an older woman from the building, one of those dowagers who think they own the place. “Mrs. Gregory? This is Marva—” I turned to her. “I’m sorry, Marva. I don’t know your last name.”

  “Phillips.”

  “Marva Phillips, Mrs. Gregory.” Marva said hello, and my neighbor nodded—rather wanly, which was annoying but couldn’t be helped.

  Win and I were totally disorganized about the business end of our personal lives. We’d had our phone turned off twice for nonpayment; we were always sending credit cards to the dry cleaners in pants pockets or finding cash stashes that we’d forgotten about—one time we lost eighteen hundred bucks for an entire summer. Our checks never went in sequence because after writing a few we’d lose the book we were using and have to start a new one. This is what I did now, after a brief, fruitless search through the secretary in the foyer, digging a fresh book out of the top drawer of Win’s bureau—it stuck a bit, because it was some Georgian thing he’d inherited from his grandfather—and writing a check out to Marva Phillips. The introduction to Mrs. Gregory was now proving fortuitous, as I’ve always had a squeamishness about making a check out in front of the payee, and because I’d learned her last name I didn’t have to. When I came back to the living room, it smelled awful. “Sally needs a change,” Annabel said nervously as if it were her fault. Marva stood up from the floor where she’d been playing with her. “I’ll go and change her, Liz. Where you keep everything?”

  “Oh, God, Marva. You don’t have to do that.”

  I took Sally back into my arms and handed Marva the check. Somewhat surprisingly, she stood there studying it, which made me uncomfortable because it was as if she were questioning the amount and I had a sudden fear that she was going to ask me for more. Plus, as even a mother will admit, the smell of a dirty diaper is really intolerable for more than about thirty seconds, and Sally was struggling in my arms and demanding, “Doda! Doda!”—her talking Dora doll.

  “I was afraid this would happen,” Marva said.

  I think I must have looked alarmed and she mistook this as concern because she laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Liz, everything’s fine”—which didn’t seem to me quite the right tone to strike, but anyway—and she explained that although she went by “Phillips,” it was actually her maiden name and since technically she wasn’t divorced, I was to use “Martindale,” her legal last name.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize.” As I headed to our bedroom with Sally in my arms to get another check, she called after me, again volunteering to change her.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” I called back, and now my voice was hoarse in my throat. I had that feverish feeling of exhaustion coming on, which I have ever since associated with new motherhood in New York; that tragic feeling, when one realizes that instead of gossiping in the park or frantically Googling acquaintances or trying on hot outfits during tummy time, one ought to have been playing in a quiet yard with one’s baby, the way one imagines one’s mother used to do thirty years ago. But now it’s too late, the day is spent, the baby needs a change and is overtired, supper will be organic chicken nuggets again, for both of you, and lying down in the dark is hours away. The whole gesture suddenly seemed pathetic and pointless and I wondered—in the morally melodramatic way that seemed to encapsulate my thinking in those days—why I was yet again putting someone else ahead of my child. “This’ll take two seconds!”

  I couldn’t put Sally down while I wrote the check because Win had left a wineglass and open bottle of wine on the floor the night before, which my cleaning woman—I swear to God she was blind in one eye—had evidently missed this morning, so I had to clamp her squirming body to my side and she started to wail as I rewrote the check and I was so fed up I wanted to scream.

  When I came back, Annabel had arranged the toys artfully against the wall like the well-brought-up child she was.

  “I cannot thank you enough for this, Liz,” Marva said steadily, so at least that was something.

  WELL, I NEVER did get any of the money back, but not for the reason you might have expected. About six months later we ended up hiring Marva and for her first Christmas bonus, we forgave the loan. I gave her a little extra on the side as well, but out of some small embarrassment, for being such a bleeding heart, I guess, I didn’t mention the extra amount to Win. That Christmas Marva and I were in the throes of our honeymoon. It lasted nearly a year—those blissful months when you get through the stickiness of hiring someone; the strange small shocks of their presence in your life (the half-eaten YoBabies you find in the fridge with the spoon still in them); when even the first litt
le reproaches about the few, very few, minor disappointments about the person’s MO only serve to bring you closer (“I’m so sorry, but could you not hang the bath towels to dry on the rocking chair? It’s an antique, you see”). I eased myself back into work, volunteering with a downtown theater company that a friend of Win’s from Andover had started. The first play got some good notices and we got a grant and I was taken on as the first paid employee, and before long I was the one showing up at the park at three to pick up Sally. I used to thrill to see Marva before she could see me. She wouldn’t be sitting down—hardly ever, anyway—but walking with Sally, or showing her the squirrels, or rolling a ball to her or feeding her edamame or Cheerios or whatever we had agreed upon that morning. I felt she made my job possible, and that made our life possible, and Win and I got along well and enjoyed Sally more, and it was all, all thanks to Marva.

  I never asked Marva for details about why her old job had ended. The park had told that story: of Annabel’s father discovering the affair, the middle-of-the-night reckoning, the futile weekend away to try to patch things up, and, finally, the post-divorce decision to move uptown, evidenced by the appearance on the Times’ multiple listings website of “EXCLUSIVE KEY TO PARK! Triple-mint, classic six, WBFP …” shortly after which, according to the residents of 48 North, a bright-eyed young couple submitted their plans for a gut renovation of 12B. I never asked if Annabel’s mother had fired Marva or if Marva had quit, but from the way Marva sometimes shook her head in despair at the denouement, I figured she’d simply decided she’d had enough of her old boss.

  I must say, I certainly had! When I dictated the snacks to Marva in the morning I’d think, She probably thinks I’m really tediously micromanagey compared to Annabel’s mother. Or if Win and I went out to dinner and I instructed Marva to go right into the bedroom if Sally cried, I’d think, She probably thinks I’m not enough of a disciplinarian, compared to Annabel’s mother. When I got really paranoid about it, though, I would console myself with the fact that at least I hadn’t had an affair and gotten divorced right under my nanny’s nose; at least I had raised her to a living wage.

  When Marva had a crisis in her personal life I was only too glad that Win and I were there to help. In the new year, her son, Jerome, got into some trouble. He crashed a friend’s car—totaled it, while driving drunk—and shortly after that it came out that he had fathered a child back home whose mother—it just kept getting more and more baroque—was the same age as Marva and was, in fact, a friend of hers. That was the first time I saw Marva break down. One morning she came into the apartment, and instead of going right to Sally in her high chair as she usually did, she sat down at the kitchen table without taking off her coat or hat or scarf and she started to cry. “My boss warn me,” she kept saying. “My boss warn me many time.” Marva had kept the habit of referring to Annabel’s mother as her boss, which in other circumstances might have rankled but obviously today I ignored. “What did she warn you about, Marva?” I asked in what I hoped sounded like a concerned tone, though to be honest, once I found out that no one had died, I didn’t really feel like commiserating with her and being late for work. When she answered she sounded as if she were giving the advice all over again, rather than recounting something someone had told her in the past. “Not to bring that child to the States. I can’t tell you how many times she try to talk me out of it.” Sally was banging her plastic dish on the tray of the high chair and yelling, “Want my cereal, Mommy! Want my cereal!” Marva still hadn’t hung up her coat, despite how hot it was in the apartment, and I found myself wondering if she was planning to work at all that day. She started to shake her head and she said, “That’s one of the things she and I quarrel over!” and when I said, “Let me just call in and say I’ll be late,” half hoping she would stop me, she didn’t.

  Other than that I guess it was just the little things that chipped away at the romance over the next couple of years. The way she was so condescending to Maria, the new cleaning woman, which meant constant negotiating between the two. The discovery that behind my back, she did all sorts of things I wouldn’t necessarily have sanctioned—bringing Sally all the way uptown on the subway to see Sophie, now that Sophie was working up there; taking her to Dunkin’ Donuts, and not to the park as I had thought, when she had time to kill in between music and Tumble Bunnies. I remember the day I discovered that one. I had come home to make some calls and was then going to go out to the park to fetch the two of them. Looking for my credit card, which I sometimes gave to Marva to buy groceries, or books for Sally, I found the orange and pink paper bag crumpled up in the diaper bag that hung from Sally’s stroller. It was the second time I’d found a bag—the second Tuesday—which meant it was a pattern, and it annoyed me enough that I decided to go out right away without making my calls. I suppose it had also occurred to me that it wasn’t a bad idea, even with a Marva, to surprise her in the job every once in a while. People found out some crazy shit on their nanny-cams. As I walked the half block from our apartment to the park gate, though, I thought twice about saying something—maybe that was really being too hysterical. After all, a donut once a week … ? Then again: trans fats. I spotted the two of them right away through the grille of the gate. Marva looked so remarkably happy, sitting there on the bench, with Sally playing with a baby doll at her feet, that I crumpled the donut bag in my hand. I forgave her instantly. I owed the woman for my child’s well-being—for her education, inasmuch as a three-year-old could be educated. Marva had done more of the disciplining than Win or I, and as a result there was a sympathy between her and Sally that, judging from the blissful expression on Marva’s face, even I didn’t fully understand.

  I was fishing for my key when I thought I heard a familiar voice and I peered intently into the park. Two years had gone by, but of course she looked right at home. It was Annabel, sitting, swinging her legs, on the bench next to Marva. Sally picked up her baby and held it up to them, saying something. I turned away. I walked quickly back toward my building, praying they hadn’t seen me. I just couldn’t bear to see them right then—Sally most of all. Victoria happened to brush by me going the other way. “God, are you okay?” she said, seeing me stricken. “Yeah—yeah,” I said, clearing my throat. “Rough day at work.” And I was grateful that she was the kind of person who would accept an explanation like that to my face, no matter what she would say afterward in the park. I never found out if Marva had invited Annabel down or if the reunion was serendipitous. There didn’t seem to be another nanny around but I hadn’t stayed to find out. Curiously, Marva never mentioned seeing Annabel to me, though for several days afterward I expected her to.

  I didn’t have the guts to fire her. You couldn’t fire someone for that, could you? For loving another woman’s child more than she loved yours? The consensus on the mothers’ website was overwhelmingly for performance-based dismissal and against weaseling out with half-assed excuses. In time, the situation took care of itself. At three-and-a-half Sally started nursery school, and all of a sudden, with the pressure of the infant years gone, the thing we all started to discuss was replacing the third-world-nanny model with a younger, more energetic babysitter type, someone who would think up things for them to do. “Someone,” as Marnie, who had boys, put it to me, “who can play ball with them.” I dithered and fretted, and one day Marva came to me and told me that she wanted to go back to cleaning houses so she would have more time for Reggie, Jerome’s child, whom she was raising. It was dispiriting to me, the idea: It seemed such a step backward from nannying, but she seemed determined, resigned, anyway, and of course I didn’t stand in her way. It suited my needs, of course. We gave her a good severance; I told her if she ever needed a recommendation …

  Another year passed and unbelievably, Win and I were looking at kindergartens for Sally. She was still our only child, and she was a handful—bright, yes, but she could barely sit still long enough to look at a book. She was physically bold and so sure of herself that for a long time
now, my role had been relegated to standing on the side—of the playground, we hardly ever went to the park anymore—gawking at her latest feat. One afternoon we were up-town touring one of the more established girls’ schools. The parent tour guide took us into a fourth-grade classroom where the teacher was reading aloud. Sitting there in the semicircle of girls, listening attentively, her hair grown long down her back now, was Annabel. I caught her eye and gave her an excited little wave. “Oh my God!” she mouthed. Win and I followed the tour guide out and were standing at the end of the hall, waiting for the elevator, when the classroom door opened and she came hurrying up to us. “Mrs. Kimball! Mrs. Kimball!” I was flattered she remembered—touched that a nine-year-old was inclined to make such an effort. She had never met Win, so I introduced him. “The famous Annabel,” he said, for she’d never entirely left our conversation but would come up from time to time, when I thought about buying something nice for Sally—“Didn’t Annabel have a coat like that?”—or when I made a comparison to one of Sally’s little peers—“She’s a little like Annabel except …” It was a happy moment of reunion, but poignant, too, because it reminded me so powerfully of the joy and intensity of Sally’s babyhood, when I had been at home with her and spent my days tending to her needs. I felt I ought to say something to Annabel about Marva, but the truth was that my information wasn’t up to date. “You know Marva was thinking about going home,” I said gently. It was all I had and it was at least a year old.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Annabel. “I know.”

  “Oh, good.” I was relieved that I wasn’t breaking sad news.

  “Yeah, we visited her down there last Christmas.”

  “Did you? Wow.” I searched for something more to say. “Gosh. So, you guys actually went—I mean, you went to”—for just a second I blanked on the island.