Nanny Returns (31 page)

Stuart pours another shot for himself and Clark and the two clink glasses. “WAY BETTER ACOUSTICS THAN MARQUEE.”

“WHEN DID YOU GO TO MARQUEE?” Pippa whips her head around.

“WITH CLIENTS.” He shrugs, giving himself over to a house-base head-swivel as he goes for a refill.

“SO AWHILE AGO, THEN,” she retorts, taking Tatiana’s outstretched hand and following her up alongside the dancing girls on the banquet. Didier, jostled from the melee, types on his iPhone.

Stuart looks at me for a moment and I look back in the awkward opposite-of-silence. He leans into my ear. “PIPPA DOESN’T KNOW I STILL GO OUT EVERY WEEK. SHE WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND THAT SOMETIMES THAT’S WHAT WORKING LATE LOOKS LIKE.”

I nod, wondering what he could have read in my expression that says please confide in me.

“LET’S DANCE,” Clark suddenly says to me as he downs his shot and shakes his head hard.

So not drunk enough to be here. “THANKS, BUT I’M GOING TO HAVE A DRINK FIRST! YOU GO AHEAD!” I wave him toward the packed dance floor.

He reaches down and pours two shots. “TO CITRINE! LONG MAY SHE REST!” Cracking himself up, he hands me one. I down it, grimacing as it burns, and he takes the glass from me. “DANCE!” He puts both hands on my shoulders and turns me into the crowd, propelling me forward into unmoving people. I make a defensive breaker with Citrine’s clutch and arrive into the nucleus of the sleepy-eyed flailing.

“YOU KNOW, IT’S A LITTLE TOO CROWD—” I pivot to Clark, but his elbows are already bent, fists already jutting, white man’s overbite already bitten. Sigh. I bop my head back and forth. One dance. Then I’m pushing Didier off our couch and hunkering down. How long can this crew last? They’re already sauced.

He drink-shakers his arms closer until there is one fist shaking on either side of my head. I smile as neutrally as possible, like we’re passing in the grocery store. To no avail. His hips seek mine out, determined to grind. “YOU LOOK HOT IN THAT. C SHOULD GIVE IT TO YOU,” he bellows into my ear in a smattering of vodka spittle.

I smile blankly back, willing the ceaseless beat to show signs of wrapping up. It doesn’t. Instead, his grinding gets more pronounced. His eyes flash at my breasts, up to the girls dancing on the banquettes, back to me, to the girls, to my breasts, and more hard, and that’s a—Okay! “I NEED SOME AIR.” I point toward the main entrance and, hoping I’ve fulfilled my friend duty, swing my elbows like machetes clearing brush all the way to the door. “I JUST NEED TO . . .” I indicate to the tan guy. He holds it open for me and I’m expectorated into the ringing silence of the scowling line. I click down the brick steps and take a deep breath of fresh air.
Yuck.

“Good call.”

I spin around. Clark jogs down the steps, sliding a cigarette out of a pack and sticking it in his mouth. He tilts the pack at me and I wave a demurring hand. “Insane in there.” He lights his smoke and then slicks back his sweaty hair. “So you and Citrine were high school buds? Sleepovers and secrets?”

“No …not so much.” I look past him, weighing my options. Go back inside to angry drunks. Stand out here with sleazy drunk. Start walking down road, possibly get abducted by crazy drunk. Tough call.

“She said something about you having your own company?” He eyes me over the streams of smoke coming out his nose.

“I do.”

“Nice,” he murmurs, as if I had admitted to being pantyless.

“I’m just going to . . .” What?

“Why don’t we go sit in one of the cars?” He sidles another inch closer. “Get some air without all this noise?”

“Oh, I’m fine here, thanks.”

“You should know.” He leans in. “I still have my old place in the city.”

Citrine’s clutch blessedly rings. “Oh, someone’s calling me!” I raise it theatrically to my ear. I pull out my cell while Clark’s eyes wander to the line of giggling girls. Ryan! I flip it open, pressing the clutch to my other ear. “Ry?”

“Nan?”

“Yes! Yes! Hold on.” I clasp the phone to my chest. “It’s my husband,” I inform Clark, but he’s already wandering back inside. I teeter over to the hedge lining the lot. “Hi! Oh wow, it’s so good to hear your voice!”

“Where are you?”

“The Hamptons. Stuck in the alternate version of the alumnae bulletin.” I raise my voice to a perky register. “This year Citrine Kittridge Cilbourne’s husband has decided to keep a spare apartment for extramarital affairs.” I step one foot out of a heel and rest it on the cold gravel. “Where are you?”

“Standing on our front stoop.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Yeah, in that flew-four-thousand-miles-with-only-three-days-off-and-counting-to-spend-with-your-wife kind of way.”

I freeze. “You’re standing in front of our house? Seriously?”

“Sitting, actually, now.” He sighs. “What are you doing out there? Where’s Grace?”

“Citrine invited me. She’s with Sarah. You’re in the city?” I repeat.

“To a party?”

“No, no, to a ‘relaxing’ weekend that has turned into a tension-off between my high school classmates and their husbands. God, I miss you.”

“What’s with the music?”

I glance back at the house, where, now that my ears are no longer ringing, I realize the bass audibly thumps from inside. “Oh my God, I’m in the parking lot of some nightclub. Tatiana was going out and suddenly Citrine had this meltdown because Clark got so excited and she’s five months pregnant so it’s not really what she’s up for and—”

“So can you get back here?” he asks so simply that all I want is to pour myself straight through the phone.

“Is the house even open? Does it look like anything’s been done? I saw Steve on Thursday and he—”

“Let’s not talk Steve, please. Do you need the house to be open to come home? I just flew all the way from fuck nowhere, Nan.”

“No, babe, I know, and that’s so awesome. Hey! Come out here! They have a pool and if you can squint past the exploited-nanny and sticky-rage veneer, it could be relaxingish.” I can introduce you to your new kids . . .

“Nan . . .” And I know he’s rumpling his hands through his hair. “Look, I’m shot and I just want to curl up next to my girl. Not really in the headspace for a house party. Can you please just come home? I only have three days—two and a half now.”

“I can’t.” I bite my lip, preferring to navigate a horny Clark.

“I’ll get a hotel! Just grab the first Jitney in the morning. We’ll have breakfast in bed, take a bath—”

“Ryan,
I can’t.
” I stick my foot back into the heel.

“I don’t understand. You said there are other guests there. Citrine will forgive—”

“I have the boys with me.”

“What boys?”

I squint at the dark hedge. “The X boys.”

“You have the X boys with you.” I hear a long exhale. “Okay …so drop them off at
their
home on the way to meet me at the hotel,” he says slowly.

“It’s not that simple. Their parents are”—my voice rises—“I don’t know
where
the fuck their father is. Their mother is holed up at the Chinatown Holiday Inn, I’m pretty sure faking cancer to save face, and the house was toxic and you were unreachable—”

“Text me Citrine’s address,” he says firmly. “I’m renting a car.”

The sound of the slamming screen door startles me awake from where I passed out under my trench and a blanket on the portico’s chaise, lulled by the rhythm of the Atlantic.

“Nan?” Citrine crosses her arms over the wrap sweater twisted around her nightgown. “You scared me.”

“Sorry.” I roll my neck and unstick my spine from the canvas. “What time is it?”

“It’s after two. Waiting for Grayer?”

“He texted me his designated driver would be dropping him off by four.” And if anyone thinks I’m going to start negotiating curfew in the middle of this
meshugas
they are mistaken. “I’m actually waiting for Ryan. He’s driving out.”

“Now?” She tilts her head at the darkness.

“He flew in for the weekend to surprise me and I ended up surprising him.” I stand, enfolding the blanket around my shoulders.

“Romantic.” Smoothing the thin cotton under her, she sits on the steps, patting the wood beside her, and I billow down.

“Can’t sleep?” I ask.

“Clark stinks and he’s snoring. He gets so congested when he drinks. Normally I’d sleep in one of the guest rooms, but . . .”

“Gotcha. Do you want to take my room? We can totally crash in the den …if he gets here.”

“No. No, it’s fine. Did you guys have fun?” She spreads her legs a little bit and rests her elbows on her knees.

“I took a cab back, actually. But, um, everyone seemed to be having fun, yeah.”

She nods. “Did Clark seem happy?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know how Tat does it. I was so exhausted right away. And now I’m exhausted
and
fat.”

“But her husband is disgusting,” I say through a yawn. “Right?”

The statement hangs between us, gaining a dense harshness in the sudden silence. “Why are you so judgmental?” she asks.

“I’m sorry—”

“They’re my friends,” she says tightly.

“O-kay. But they weren’t your friends.”

“No. We went through a rough patch. But they were always my friends.”

A ten-year rough patch. Gotcha. I inhale through my nose. “Which is totally fine,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

She pulls her hair to one side of her neck and stares out at the black outline of the hedge at the end of the drive. “What do you think of
my
husband?”

“Oh, I think—I think …you two seem to be, to make, a good couple.”

“Bullshit.” She turns to study me.

“I barely know him, Citrine.”

“You look at me like you think I’m an asshole.”

“I
don’t
think you’re an asshole.”

“Right.”

“But I just . . .” I trail off as she pushes the sleeves of her sweater up and for the first time it registers that her once tempera-stained hands are spotless. “I just have to ask, why are you—”

“What? Enjoying my husband’s beach house? Having his baby?”

“
Your
beach house.
Your
baby.”

She blinks at me. “Fuck you. Not all of us find someone who comes back to surprise us from Africa—who ‘works through’ having a baby like some peace-summit love-in. I couldn’t marry some skinny-jeans-wearing bass player from Bedford Street. That’s not a grown-up life. You’re a guest here. How dare you judge me?”

“Judge
you
?” I grip the edges of the blanket. “Because I didn’t even care that you hooked up with that guy. You took one look at my house and never called me again. Not all of us get servants, Citrine. Some of us have to do the work ourselves.”

Her face breaks in shock. “I don’t care about
your house
! Is that what you think?”

“Yes?” I admit, feeling fourteen.

Her mouth hangs open. “God, you really do think I’m an asshole.”

“Then why didn’t you want to be my friend after you found out you were pregnant?”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been pregnant this whole time.”

“You know what I mean.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “This is what I’m doing now, Nan.” Letting out a short, dry laugh, she rubs her palm over her brow and takes a deep breath. “And unless you want to hurry up and get pregnant tonight to do it
with
me, these are the women I have to do it with. Your husband’s here.”

I turn from her to see the headlights pull into the drive, two blinding beams arcing across us. “Citrine—”

“I’m tired.” She reaches to the railing to pull herself up and, without a look back, disappears into the house.

22

“Nan-eh.”

“Yup,” I answer from the deep pull of slumber.

“Nan-eh, Grayer threw up and it smells really bad.”

“Okay …Can you flush the toilet, Stil?” Lifting up on one elbow, I crack an eye to see him standing at the edge of the mattress backlit by the sun streaming in from the hallway skylights.

“He did it in bed and I don’t want Citrine to get angry and make us leave.”

“Okay.” I inhale.

“Okay.” He nods like he can check this one off his list and proceeds to tuck in his shirt. “I’m going down to breakfast. Hi.”

I look over my shoulder to where Ryan is stretching awake. “Hey.” He waves at Stilton before his hand drops back to the sheet.

“Stilton, this is my husband, Ryan. He drove in last night.”

Stilton eyes him. “So how much longer can we stay here?”

My fight with Citrine lands with blunt force. “Um, not sure. You go have some breakfast. I’ll take care of the mess. Then we’ll regroup and make a plan. Cool?”

“Okay. It really stinks.”

“Yeah.” I extend an arm at the door in the direction of said puke. “I’m getting right on that.”

With one more look at Ryan, Stilton leaves. I fall back on the pillow. “What time is it?”

“In Khartoum?” He lifts his watch. “Four in the afternoon.”

“East Hampton, Sudan, same difference.” I sit up and scratch my hair, looking back at him as he wipes the sleep from his eyes. “So how are we?”

“Fucking tired.” He pulls my pillow over his head.

“I mean, in the married sense.”

He whips the pillow off. “I don’t understand why you keep asking about our marriage. We’re married. That’s not changing. And we are exactly where we were when we passed out last night, or this morning, or whatever. Which is, you were going to explain this all after we got some sleep. So, hit me.”

“First I have to clean up the puke.” I swing my legs to the side.

“Right.”

I walk across the pickled floor to slide my jeans off the chair and tug them on. I pull off my slip and feel in my bag for a fresh bra.

“Hey,” he says. I look over to where Ryan has rolled onto his stomach, his face flat with the edge of the bed. He reaches out his arm for me to return.

Somewhat refueled just to have slept beside him, I wag a finger and grin. “I have puke to clean up.” Feeling a vague sense of my footing from the grounding that only he can provide, I pull on my bra. “See, this is parenting! Hold that thought, honey, have to clean up the puke!” I reach for a tank top and slide it over my head, slipping my feet into flip-flops before I register he hasn’t responded.

I turn back to see him sitting up, staring intently at me. “What are you really thinking here, Nan?”

I rub my lips together, adrenaline revving in a hot burst under my ribs. “Well, you met Stilton.”

He nods.

“He is adorable and crazy smart and funny. And
so
aware of his surroundings it’s heartbreaking. You saw how he came in concerned about being a respectful guest. So, I was thinking, and it’s been impossible
not
to think this, given the circumstances of the last two weeks—I’ve been thinking maybe we could, because we have all this space,
will
have all this space—you really want to do this
right now,
and here they are, and Grayer will be going to school in eighteen months so he’s in the home stretch, I’m not saying he’ll be no trouble, he definitely needs real help, but with love and consistent support—”

“Nan.”

“We could adopt them.” I am breathless, feeling like I’ve been shooting toward this moment one way or another since I was twenty-one. “I mean, their parents don’t seem to want them.”

“What?!”

He jumps out of bed as I blanch, instantly enraged and relieved to have the decision out of my hands.

“Adopt them,” I repeat, pivoting to the bathroom, where I twist on the water and grab my toothbrush, face beating. “You know, or maybe just be their foster parents, I’m not sure about the legal stuff. I was thinking I could go and speak to their mother tomorrow night when we get back.”

He appears in the doorway as I jerk the brush over my teeth. “What happened here? Is it the fungicide? Do you think you’re having some kind of breakdown? I never should have taken you back to that building—”

“Fugh ooo.”

“What?”

I spit and rinse. “Fuck you!”

“Nan.”

“I have been”—I jerk up my Mason Pearson and swipe it through my hair—“I have been—I have
followed
—your work has
totally
dictated our lives, my life,
for years
! You want a house and I am left to build it out of my bare fucking hands. You want children and I have to hurry up and get them for you.” I clank my brush down on the porcelain. “Well, I got them!”

“Whoa. You followed me because
you
wanted out of New York and time to figure out what your life was going to be that wasn’t working with kids.
We
bought a house because
you
wanted roots! And I want children that are
ours.
Ours, Nan. I want the honor of screwing them up ourselves!”

“See?! How can you possibly say this isn’t about our marriage? It so fucking is!”

“Fine! We’re fucked. Is that what you want to hear? Our marriage is totally fucked!”

“Nan?”

We both spin to the sound of Citrine calling cheerfully from the bedroom. Glaring, I step around him to peer at where she stands, smiling smugly in the doorway in a yellow eyelet sundress.

“Hi! Yes, good morning!”

“Sorry to interrupt,” she says meaningfully, “but I thought you should know one of the boys got sick last night in the breezeway and there are crushed beer cans in the hydrangea beds.”

“Yes, Grayer, sorry, I was just on my way to clean it up.”

“I’ve had Lailai take care of it. Will Ryan join the guys for a round of golf this morning?”

“Um.” I step into the room and continue to her, “Actually, I wasn’t sure after last night. Should I—we—leave?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” She laughs brightly. But with dull eyes, she is nowhere I can get to her. “You have to stay for the unveiling party or Clark’ll be devastated. Ryan,” she calls past me. “They’re leaving in twenty. If you hurry you can catch a ride in Clark’s Jag.”

“Oh, well, we’re kind of in the middle—”

“Great.” Ryan appears at the bathroom door. “Count me in.”

“Not the two-pound hook, the four-pound!” Clark shouts to Citrine, who scrambles to find the right picture-hanging hardware in the Ziploc bag brought by the delivery men. Awkward and embarrassed, the female half of my fellow houseguests stare down their sorbet-hued laps on opposing freshly plumped canvas couches. I fidget with the beading on the YSL tunic Citrine insisted I recycle.

His dress shirtsleeves rolled up, Clark wallops another set of nails into the pristine wall and steps back to evaluate. “See, now if we move the furniture clockwise—I just don’t want the Chagall competing with the ocean—I want it to have its own breathing space.”

“Clark, the guests will be here any second.” Clutching his cufflinks Citrine looks nervously past the white-jacketed servers lining the hall from the entryway to the kitchen, all holding trays of champagne. “You’ve been at this for hours.” Four. Four hours. Since they returned from their postgolf boozy lunch and all the other husbands went directly to nap. Mine included. Clark, on the other hand, seems to have tapped into some repressed domestic well.

“It’s not right! It needs space!” He points down at the draped painting awaiting its pending unveiling against the baseboard. Touching my finger to my forearm, I watch it turn momentarily white, then back to the burned color I acquired while hiding out with the kids and Gloria during their peewee croquet marathon. What I wouldn’t trade to be downstairs for the movie viewing and pizzafest that has followed.

Alex purses her lips and twists her cocktail ring on her brown finger, while Tatiana stares longingly at the tray of caviar-festooned blinis symmetrically arranged to discourage early sneaking.

“Clark,” Citrine tries again, stepping away in four-inch platform mules to the window overlooking the driveway. “You have a set of nails in every wall and the couch has completely scraped up the floor.”

“Maybe not this room. Maybe it should be in my study. Maybe we need something else for in here—a Picasso or something.”

“So where you buy that sing?” Didier asks as he descends the stairs, crosses to the coffee table, takes three blinis at once, and shoves them in his tobacco-drenched mouth. “Because, you know, I sink ze climate out here is shit for art,” Didier adds his deux centimes.

“I know a guy. He helps people.”

“What kind of people?”

“People who need to turn art into fast cash—quick and dirty.” He smirks.

“Clark,” Citrine entreats, clicking over to him. “I’ll stand up there with you, we’ll unveil the picture, everyone will love it.”

“No, you stand with your girls,” he says, reaffixing it to the wall again with his manservant, Aquino. “The pregnancy is too distracting.”

“Oh my God, you won’t believe what I just heard!” Pippa, wearing a pink lace shift, cell phone in hand, gallivants down the stairs with a freshly showered Stuart at her pink heels. “Oh, God, Clark, you’re not moving that damn thing again, are you? It’s a Chagall—it’d look great over a toilet.” Tatiana and Alex have swiveled to her.

“Okay, so the first Jarndyce parents are choppering back now, early—”

“Early?” Alex asks in disbelief. “Why would anyone go back in the middle of a holiday?”

“Because,” Roger says, coming in from the dining room, “some people are stressed out of their fucking minds right now and have to get back to work tomorrow.”

“Anyway, get this.” Pippa pauses dramatically. “They can’t land.”

“What?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

“The first copter was Julia Reid’s from Morgan Stanley. She lands, but she couldn’t get off the roof. She’s got her staff and her kids and her yellow lab and the key-card door to the elevator wouldn’t work. So she’s freaking out and calling the board. So then another helicopter shows up. But it can’t put down. Because Julia’s pilot isn’t going to leave her stranded. Then another shows up. My friend’s at the Soho House pool and she said everyone’s watching.”

“That’s mortifying. The alumni must be committing ritual suicide up and down the shoreline. Let’s see if it’s making the news.” Alex claps.

We all leap up and follow Pippa to Clark’s 1930s ocean-liner study, complete with porthole windows and curved zebra veneers. Pippa skibbles around to the Mac’s front and opens Firefox.

“Holy shit,” Stuart says as NY1’s home page loads up. There it is. A massive aerial clusterfuck stretching all the way to Penn Station.

Roger takes the mouse from Pippa and scrolls down into the story. “‘The building is locked up and the board can’t be reached for comment,’” Roger reads aloud.

“What do you mean, locked up?” Alex asks, and I jostle to get a better view. Roger points to the photograph of the padlocked front door. My mind reels at the implications. Padlocked?

“So who’s accountable?” Stuart asks.

“I’ll call my friend at the mayor’s office.” Roger tugs out his phone.

“The guests are arriving,” Citrine frets from the doorway.

I shimmy past her, wanting to call Ingrid, Gene, Josh, my mother. I jog up the staircase and arrive at the third floor just as Ryan steps from the bedroom. “Oh my God, Ry, Jarndyce is padlocked.”

“What does that mean?” His brow drops.

“I don’t know,” I acknowledge, hearing how crazy it sounds. “But it can’t be good.”

“More not good. Terrific.” We stare at each other uncertainly as he straightens the knot on his tie, his face sunburned from the morning on the green. “And these people,” he pronounces, “are ass-holes.”

“I know,” I say as he walks toward me. “Now you see why I want to rescue the boys.”

“Nan, yesterday I was in
the Sudan.
” He starts down the stairs and pauses. “And Grayer is about my height with blond hair?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah.” He looks up to me. “I think I heard him being ‘no trouble’ on the floor under ours. I saw him head in there on my way up to change. Just an FYI to his new mother.” He continues down and I run into our room, grabbing my cell off the bureau. I dial Gene’s office number. “The mailbox you are trying to reach is full.” I hang up and take off down the stairs, cornering onto the second-floor landing. I peek in the open bedrooms, which are empty, except for the back guest room, where I spot Calliope, Wendy, and Itsy Bitsy playing Barbies with Gloria.

“Gloria?” She raises her head and I see she’s been heavily made up by two-year-old fingers. “Have you seen Grayer?”

She shrugs apologetically. Downstairs I can hear Citrine greeting the first arrivals. “Thank you.”

Not seeing any more vomit or, say, drug paraphernalia or firearms, I’m about to take the last flight down so I can find Roger when the bathroom door clicks at the far end—the one just below ours. Grayer and Bitsy emerge, her face radiant, his impassive but flushed. She giggles, pulling him into her for a sloppy kiss. They startle when they see me and Bitsy straightens her skirt and smoothes her shag-tousled hair.