Time After Time (8 page)

It was just what she
needed to hear. Feeling suddenly calmer and more confident, she
went into the Great Room, which looked, well, great. Liz had
confined the decorating scheme to Mickey's colors — red, white,
black, and yellow — and had made big cutouts of Mickey, Minnie, and
all their friends, which she'd located around the room with sticky
tape. She'd stripped her yard and Victoria's of every red, white,
and yellow peony they had and placed huge bunches of them in big
black vases that Netta had produced from somewhere.

The effect was childlike
and elegant at the same time, guaranteed to please even the most
discriminating client.

Liz's client was in the
room right now, as a matter of fact —probably scanning for
thumbtack holes. He was standing next to the massive fireplace with
its elaborately carved overmantel, one arm leaning on the mantel
edge. He wore the classic Newport uniform: khakis, white shirt,
lemon-yellow print tie, and blue blazer. If there were anyone alive
who looked more like the lord of a manor than Jack Eastman, Liz
hadn't met him yet.

They said hello, and Liz,
hard pressed to keep the triumph out of her voice, asked him
directly how he liked what she'd done.

He smiled — wryly, it
seemed to her — and said, "1 have to admit, you've managed very
well."

Only because I took out an
equity loan, you skinflint,
thought Liz.
But she merely smiled back and said, "It was just the right theme
for your budget."

He laughed out loud at the
quip, and Liz turned pink with pleasure.
Damn,
he had a nice laugh. It
thrilled her to wring one out of him; she'd never made a rich man
laugh before.

"What's all that business
over there, with the folding chairs?" he asked, pointing to her
little hand-painted puppet theater.

Li reached into her
carryall and pulled out a mop-haired puppet. "I have a little Punch
and Judy routine — without the punching, of course. Sometimes small
children can get overexcited at these things. I've found that a
puppet show calms them down and makes them easier to pack up for
shipping home at the end of the party."

"Excellent
idea," he said, with the first real enthusiasm
she'd seen since she met him.

"I'll try to get them out
of your hair as quickly as possible," she said dryly.

He got defensive.
"
I
like kids," he said as Liz walked over to the theater and
tucked her puppets out of sight. "If they're well
managed."

Liz tried to bite back a
retort. No use. She turned to him and cocked her head. "They're not
Fortune 500 companies, you know. They can't be made structured and
efficient. That's not what being a kid is all about." She was
thinking of Susy, a dream of a child who nonetheless had a will of
her own.

"That's ridiculous,"
Eastman said testily. "When
I
was a boy, children were seen but not heard." He
sauntered over to her, hands in his pockets, a cool and appraising
look in his eyes. "And I was a boy, believe it or not, in the
second half of this century."

"Well, I'm afraid time has
passed you by, Mr. Eastman," she said. "Nowadays children are
encouraged to express themselves. What's the point of keeping
everything bottled up inside? God knows kids are under enough
pressure. You have to be willing to allow them to let off some
steam once in a while."

"Fine. Just so long as
they don't let it off here. But that, of course, is why I've hired
you."

He glanced outside at the
thick wet fog pressing against the triple-hung windows of the Great
Room. "It's a shame this couldn't have been an outdoor affair," he
said in a gloomy voice. "Kids belong outdoors."

Liz laughed softly. He was
arrogant, intolerant, and very, very obviously a bachelor.
"You
do
understand," she said, "that the kids aren't actually goats,
don't you?"

His full lips settled
themselves in a neatly compressed line. "I wouldn't push it, Ms.
Coppersmith," he said at last.

But she did push it. "I'm
sorry," she said, though clearly she was not. "But after this last
week, I couldn't be sure. After all, you have no goats or children
of your own," she added blandly.
Ah,
well,
she thought.
There goes my career on Bellevue Avenue.

His reaction was
surprisingly mild. "Just because I don't have kids doesn't mean
I
won't
have
any," he said simply. And then came the unexpected blow to her
stomach. "I'm no different from you or anybody else."

Liz sucked in her breath
the way she always did when she was blindsided that way. She never
knew where it would happen — talking to someone in the supermarket,
the library, the playground. Always the presumption was the same:
that sooner or later she would have more children.

I can't have any more, you
intrusive busybody!
That's what she always
wanted to shout. But the words would never come, and she'd always
had to settle for saying exactly what she told him now.

"I have a daughter I
absolutely adore."

Which was none of his
business either.

"Ah. I didn't realize you
were ma—"

"Divorced," she said
tersely.

Liz was spared the rest of
his speech when Cornelius Eastman rolled a trolley bearing her
masterpiece into the room, followed close behind by Netta and
Victoria.

"Jack, you have got to see
this cake," his father said with a big grin. "Where's
Caroline?"

"I think she's outside
with Snowball," said Netta. "Someone should look at that dog," the
housekeeper said to no one in particular. "Caroline says he's not
feeling well."

"She probably gave him her
ice-cream bar," Cornelius said with a friendly wink at Liz. "She's
the sweetest little kid."

Jack snorted, then stalked
out of the room while Liz decided that he was the worst
father-material she'd ever seen.

****

The guests began trickling
in at three. Despite a bleary sun that had finally dragged itself
out to do halfhearted battle with an equally listless fog, the
weather was chill and damp, and the youngsters were kept indoors.
Besides a couple of very bored teenagers, there were half a dozen
children between the ages of four and six, which was a pretty good
turnout considering that none of them had ever met Caroline or her
little brother Bradley before.

It struck Liz that the
adult guests were unusually curious about Caroline and not overly
involved with their own offspring. She had plenty of opportunity to
study everyone's reactions, since she was constantly in the thick
of things, acting as both game host and drill sergeant to the
energetic, romping, screaming kids.

It was Caroline who romped
and screamed the most. Liz was amazed by the child's relentless
energy.
Hyperkinetic,
she decided, and wondered whether there was any way she could
tactfully suggest that someone have Caroline see a pediatrician.
But who was in charge? Caroline Stonebridge's mother, Netta had
hinted, was being treated somewhere for substance abuse. So where
was the father?

"Is Caroline always so ...
exuberant?" Liz asked Netta after pulling Caroline off a smaller,
shyer child who was whimpering for help. The children had just
finished making their own little party hats, but Caroline had taken
a fancy to the smaller girl's pretty pink version and had
unceremoniously yanked it off her head.

Netta sighed and said, "I
suppose we have to make allowances. Caroline told me she's never
had a birthday party before."

"Ah!" That explained why
Caroline didn't understand that the Mickey and Minnie party favors
were supposed to be for her guests and not part of her permanent
collection.

"Her mother's problems go
way back," Netta murmured in a gossipy aside. "They say it was a
strain on everyone."

"I can imagine. But
where's her fa—? Oh! No, no, no, sweetie, that's not a toy!" Liz
said, chasing after Bradley, who, since he was younger than all the
rest, could've used a full-time prison guard of his own.

"Now,
there's
a boy who needs a good
strong father," Netta told Liz. "Too bad no one knows who or where
he is. Here. Let me take the little bruiser off your hands for a
while," she said, snatching the fireplace poker out of the boy's
grip. She began shepherding him out of the room.

"No, Netta, you're busy
with the caterer —"

Too late. In any case, a
sharp scream sent Liz running to Caroline's latest victim, a chubby
little tyke who was being pinched out of his turn at the beanbag
toss.

It was exhausting. Liz had
a slew of activities planned, from the beanbag toss to a
pin-the-nose-on-Mickey game, because she dreaded having the
children bored and roaming the room. That was her job: to keep the
kids away from the antiques.

Some of the parents did
put in a hand once in a while, but generally speaking Liz was on
her own. As she chased around the room steering the kids away from
one Ming vase or another, her thoughts, perhaps inevitably, harked
back to her ancestors. Four generations of her people had served
four generations of these people; the most recent was her father,
who before his retirement had served as full-time gardener to a
wealthy socialite on her thoroughly landscaped oceanside
estate.

That background of
domestic service was a big part of why Liz had wanted to have her
own business. The sudden loss of her husband's support and the
desire to be with her daughter were other reasons, certainly; but
mostly, Liz wanted to break with tradition and be her own boss. It
wasn't until the food was being served that she had a chance to
take a good, hard look at herself.

Self-employed
businesswoman, my foot,
she
decided.
I'm
a
nanny, and an unpaid one at
that.

As soon as the children
showed signs of being finished with their food, but before they
actually began throwing it, Liz went into the kitchen to light the
candles on the Mickey Mouse cake. She was wheeling it out on a
serving cart when Caroline suddenly appeared ahead of her, arms
akimbo, like Jesse James in front of a train.

"I don't
want
them to have my
cake," she said, her round cheeks flushed with anger. "I
don't
like
them.
Especially Heather. She made fun of my shoes. Because they don't
have Velcro."

"Oh, she didn't mean that,
Caroline," said Liz, nervously eyeing the flaming candles.
Not now, for pity's sake. Have this tantrum some
other time.

"Tell Heather to go home,"
said Caroline, stamping her foot.

Liz glanced down the empty
hall. No help there. "Caroline, go back and join the others,
please, or you'll have candle wax all over the
frosting."

"What about my shoes?" she
demanded. "They only have
buckles."

"I'll see what I can do,"
said Liz in desperation. "Now hurry.
Go."

"All right, but I don't
want Heather to have the ears," Caroline said with one last glance
at her cake. "She can only have Mickey's chin."

She stalked off, and Liz,
convinced by now that her career path had taken a detour into hell,
rolled Mickey Mouse, his candles blazing, into everyone's
midst.

The cake was a big
success. Caroline, who was an incredibly pretty child, was all blue
eyes and dimples as she blew out the candles. Everyone cheered.
Miss Caroline Stonebridge — whoever she was — was now officially
five years old.

Netta, having somehow
hypnotized little Bradley into taking a nap, was on hand to help
serve the cake, which eased things considerably. After that, adults
and children alike gathered around the birthday princess to watch
as she opened her gifts.

Caroline displayed a side
that Liz had not yet seen: an almost grown-up graciousness, coupled
with pretty compliments and artful glances at the adults who'd paid
for the extravagant presents. Later in her life it would no doubt
be diamonds that prompted those looks of pleasure; but for now it
was toys.

One gift particularly
pleased the little girl: a spectacular Madame Alexander doll, done
up in long blond locks and lacy nineteenth-century dress. Liz had
seen the exact doll in one of her most upscale catalogs; it was
worth hundreds of dollars.

Netta picked up the tag
from the wrapping and read it aloud for her. "Oh,
thank
you," the child
said, turning to Jack Eastman with eyes that danced with pleasure.
"I really, really love it!"

Jack Eastman!
Liz turned to him with an astonished look. For
this, she'd worked for free? So that this spoiled brat could have a
doll that Susy could only dream about?

Jack Eastman was standing
in back of the guests, across from Liz, his arms folded across his
chest. "You're welcome," he said grimly. But he was watching his
father as he said it, with a look that Liz couldn't begin to
understand. Some kind of power play was going on; that seemed clear
enough. But why and over what — those questions she couldn't
answer.