You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (12 page)

Carmen may have been a great cook, but when it came to the dinner parties, professional caterers ran the show. I had heard so much about Michael’s love of entertaining that I was very curious about my first gala. Carmen showed me the guest list. As I read the names, I made some guesses about who they were.

“Oh God, I hope Michael doesn’t seat me next to Barbara Walters,” Judy had said to me several days before the party. “He can seat her next to Jane. She’s much more well-read than I am.” I was shocked. Judy struck me as both intelligent and beautiful, and she was certainly accustomed to interacting with celebrities. Why would she be insecure?

In the dining room stood two square marble tables placed a few feet apart. Each table sat eight people, and generally anywhere from eight to sixteen people attended the dinner parties. Michael was known for getting up and rearranging everyone and their food about halfway through each meal, regardless of whether they had finished eating. I guessed he didn’t want anyone spending all his or her time with just one person; he enjoyed mixing the personalities and conversations. I figured that was why Judy was nervous. She knew the chances were good that she would eventually sit next to the famous and well-read Ms. Walters. She didn’t seem to have a choice where she sat at her own party. Apparently Michael decided that.

Right before the guests started arriving, Judy asked me if I would take her picture with Michael. He stopped briefly to pose while I struggled
to figure out how to operate the camera. I heard Michael say, “Don’t stand so close to me.”

Judy had on a beautiful white angora sweater that was finding its way onto his black suit.

“What am I supposed to do? Not go near you all night?” she inquired with all sincerity.

He shot her a look that said,
Yes! If that’s what it takes to keep my suit lint free
.

“SMILE!”

Luckily, my role during a dinner party was not to be a photographer. I was supposed to sit in the family room with the children until the guests had been seated for dinner. Joshua ran back and forth from the family room to the dining room to talk to the guests during the cocktail hour—a pint-sized comedian. Throughout the arrival and predinner time, waiters dropped in to the family room to bring us hors d’oeuvres. Intermittently, the celebrities paraded through to see the children. I didn’t know whether I was supposed to dress up or wear my usual nanny attire, a T-shirt and shorts. I thought I would look stupid sitting in the family room with the kids wearing an evening gown (not that I owned an evening gown), so I just stayed in my shorts. Just before the guests sat for dinner, I took the kids in to say a final good night and then swept them all off to bed, just like Maria in
The Sound of Music. I
was slightly embarrassed as I carried Brandon into the dining room. I felt like a mutt entering a stuffy dog show filled with purebreds.

The night of this first party, I practiced my blasé and nonchalant attitude toward celebrities. I talked to Steve Martin briefly, until his wife interrupted him because he was eating cashews. She scolded him for eating something so full of fat. “Oh, are these not healthy?” he asked her, as if he was a child and she was the mother. He kept such a straight face that I couldn’t tell if he was putting her on, and I’m not sure she could, either. She looked at him in disgust and turned around on her skinny heels to leave the room. By the looks of her nearly transparent body, she took a passionate interest in the pursuit of caloric restriction.

It turned out that the Winkler guy hadn’t ever been on
Happy Days
. He was the producer of a whole lot of major hits, starting with the
Rocky
movies. And Barry Diller, the CEO of an entertainment company, wasn’t Phyllis’s husband. This was a good thing, since his date was the fashionable Ms. von Furstenberg. Barbara Walters cancelled the day before the event. The hostess was relieved, but I was very disappointed that I only got to talk to her on the phone. I had been a huge fan of
20/20
since I was a child. In fact, my mother blamed that show for my overzealous interest in other people’s business.

Not long after my first dinner party, I was introduced to the family movie-screening tradition. They had a monthly ritual of showing prereleased movies to the family and a few close friends. One of the living rooms featured a giant screen that could be pulled down from the ceiling, and a CAA employee would come from the office to run the huge projector from a small room in the back wall. It was like a miniature movie theater. They were always kind enough to invite me to join them. It was a nice perk, but I could never really relax. Sitting on a couch halfway between the projector and the wall, I spent the whole time scrunching in my seat, afraid my head would be in someone’s way or would project upon the screen.

One evening, Michael invited Dustin and Lisa Hoffman to join us. Almost immediately after the movie began to roll, Mr. Hoffman began to kibitz, either to himself or to his wife, I wasn’t sure which. “The characters are crying before we are,” he spit out. I gathered this was not good. He rose up and jabbed toward the screen, like he wanted to start a fight with anyone who would disagree.

This went on and on. It was like sitting close to the inconsiderate clod in a movie theater who has either seen the film before and now wants to narrate it for the rest of us or who’s seeing it for the first time and offers a stream of constant criticism. Perhaps he was just in a bad mood? Finally, after commenting extensively on just about every scene, he stood up, said, “Bad movie,” and walked out of the room to get his coat. Michael and Judy exchanged shocked glances.

I had never heard someone talk to Michael like that. It was so far removed from my perspective—worried every second that I wasn’t doing things properly or that he thought I wasn’t measuring up.

But then I got a sudden welcome surprise. Late one evening as I
headed downstairs to get Brandon’s bottles, I heard Judy talking to Michael in the family room. When I heard my name, I leaned over the banister as far as I could. I put my hair behind my ears as if I were the bionic woman, straining to catch any of the words. If I tilted any farther, I’d catapult down the stairs.

“How is Suzy doing?” Michael asked.

“She’s night and day different from that last girl,” Judy said. “She’s great.”

Did I really hear that right? I was thrilled. I had taken the lack of communication and warmth to mean that she just didn’t like me. Maybe I had been misreading her. Maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe she really hadn’t been judging me all this time.

Then the kids started screaming, and I couldn’t hear the rest.

The next day, while the kids and I played Candyland in the family room, Judy came in and said that Michael had offered to pay for my nails to be done. If I wanted nails like hers, she would send me to her “girl.”

She had impeccable acrylics. It was so kind of her to offer. I didn’t give a thought to how I would maintain my own set. I supposed I would eventually need to remove them, but I’d worry about it later. And maybe I could stop my lifelong habit of biting my nails.

“I’d love to,” I eagerly responded. “Thank you, Mrs. Ovitz.”

“We’re not going to the beach house, so you can take my Jeep this weekend,” she volunteered. I was stunned. So I must have overheard that conversation between them correctly. Judy liked me after all. Things were definitely looking up.

The following day, Judy handed me the keys along with the address of the salon. I hadn’t traveled more than four blocks from the house when the short blips of a police siren went off. I turned to see red lights swirling in the rearview mirror.

Oh my God, what had I done?

I couldn’t have been driving more than twenty miles an hour down
the residential streets of Brentwood, but with my infamous record, I couldn’t afford another citation. Shoot! I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t changed my Oregon license with the DMV. There was some sort of a time limit to change it to a California license. Would I be fined? I couldn’t afford a fine. My pulse quickened as I pictured myself in handcuffs, being stuffed into the back of the police cruiser. I next pictured being let out of my cell to make my one phone call. Would I call my mother or Carmen? My heart began to do butterfly kicks in my chest as I pictured the Jeep being pulled onto a tow truck and whisked away to some lot in the bowels of Los Angeles.

“Driver’s license and registration, ma’am?” the officer said, jolting me out of my nightmare.

“Uh, yes, I’ve got it here somewhere, sir. Let me look in the jockey box,” I replied as I began to dig around.

“The
what?”
he said.

“Oh, sorry, the glove compartment.” I made a mental note to ask my father if that was just a family term. Was
everything
here different from Cottage Grove?

My first thought was to tell the officer I’d left my license at home. I could give him the Ovitz address as if I was a California resident and perhaps he’d just give me a ticket using my name and that address. I figured that if I gave him the Oregon license, he’d be able to pull up my citations, and I’d soon be wearing a striped uniform.

But then he said, “Did you know that your plates are expired?”

“Uh, no, Officer, I didn’t. This isn’t my car. It belongs to my boss,” I said. “My boss, Michael Ovitz.” I made sure I stressed the last name. Would it work? I crossed my fingers.

“The
Michael Ovitz?” the officer asked, surprised, as if there were several Michael Ovitzes in town.

“Yes.”

Please, please, please
.

“Okay,” the officer said. “I’m giving you a verbal warning.”

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

“Tell Mr. Ovitz to get his plates renewed. Have a nice day.” He tipped his hat and walked back to his car. My heart began to slow to normal again as I put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. Was this how
the name-dropping thing worked? It was the first time in my entire life that I had been pulled over and
not
received a citation.

On my way to the salon on Hillman Avenue, I drove—mostly in circles—through Brentwood, Santa Monica, and then Pacific Palisades. When I finally located the address, I was in a very seedy section of LA I didn’t yet know. Just as when I’d finally found the nanny institute in a less-than-upscale section of Portland, I was dismayed to see that I’d arrived at the right place. The address I had was an old run-down apartment building with paint chipping off the walls. Did Judy really come here to get her beautiful nails done? I just couldn’t picture it. But there was no mistaking the numbers.

I climbed the two flights of stairs to apartment number 223 and knocked. The door opened with a burst of stale, hot air. A strong odor of heavy perfume and polish remover nearly knocked me over. In the tiny confines of what looked like a one-bedroom apartment, I would be lucky not to choke to death.

“You must be Suzy,” said the woman who answered the door. My prayers that I was in the wrong place vaporized. “Come on, darlin’. Come on in. You’re lettin’ all the hot air in,” she said as I stepped cautiously inside.

I glanced at one of the windows, which was covered with cardboard and taped shut. About five foot six and 250 pounds, the woman was immense. She wore a black tank top from which her meaty arms protruded. Her buttocks and thighs were screaming to be released from their sausagelike encasements—a pair of shiny black spandex pants that had obviously been stretched far beyond their intended limits.

“Come here, sweetie. Sit down. Let’s have a look at your nails,” she said as she wheeled her tray of supplies between us.

Nearly two hours later, when she was all done, I had to admit my new nails looked terrific. But the whole thing hadn’t quite met my lofty dreams of a leisurely day at the salon. I tried to visualize Judy driving into this run-down neighborhood and sitting on the orange and green plaid couch amid the pungent odors of solvents just to save a few bucks on her acrylics.