You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (18 page)

“Oh, my dear, that is
you,”
one of the salesladies said.

“Do you travel? That would be great for traveling.”

“Gorgeous, absolutely stunning; it makes you look so thin,” said another.

Thin? I never thought I was fat, but anything that made me look skinnier was
fantastic
.

“I’ll take it,” I said. “Wrap it up.” The saleslady lovingly folded the white cotton one-piece jumpsuit into a neat square and placed it in a bag. Mandie had eyed me warily during the fitting but kept her mouth shut. That was very unusual, but I was sailing so high on the compliments, I didn’t even notice. Looking back, the entire store was made up of those clothes you see on infomercials—the kind that can be worn fifty-six different unflattering ways. But all I heard was the salesladies saying it was perfect for traveling, and I would soon be traveling.

That’s right, we were going to Aspen with the Eisners. During my interview, Michael had asked if I skied and whether I could drive in the snow. Maybe I’d be helping the kids out on the bunny slopes? I pictured myself swishing gracefully downhill, a neat row of bundled-up tots in my wake. But as I started packing up the kids, nobody asked if I had ski clothes. I wasn’t going to say anything; I stuck to my policy of trying to figure out what was going on instead of asking questions. So I just threw in a couple of Oregon sweaters for the chill, figuring I could rent skis if I needed to. And besides, I had a new outfit for the private plane.

When Saturday finally arrived, I took one hasty look in the mirror. Since it wasn’t full-length, I could only see my new ensemble from the waist up. Pretty stylish, I thought. When I went downstairs, Joshua and Amanda were standing in the foyer with their suitcases. Their eyes grew large.

“You look like an astronaut,” Joshua blurted out.

Amanda pointed to the magenta sash tied around my waist. “What
is
that?” she asked as disdainfully as a three-year-old in pigtails can.

“An accent,” I explained feebly.

Michael appeared, looked me over from head to toe, and gave me an expression I can’t describe, somewhere between disappointment and embarrassment.

I decided to go upstairs and change.

When I got to my room, I stood on a chair so I could see myself “full-length” in the mirror. Oh no. The kids were right; I looked like either a snowman in a children’s school play or a member of NASA. When I turned around, I could clearly see the little red hearts on my underwear through the white material of the suit. Good God.

Humbled, I changed into my standard nanny uniform, substituting jeans for shorts with my T-shirt. I slunk downstairs and started loading luggage into the limo, trying to hide in the mountain of baggage we were bringing for six days in Colorado.

We met the Eisners at the airport. Their entourage consisted of Michael and Jane; the Eisners’ male nanny, Paul, who was a few years older than me; and the Eisners’ three sons, ages nine, twelve, and eighteen. We were going to meet Mr. Eisner’s mother in Colorado, plus the oldest son’s girlfriend was flying in from somewhere on the East Coast. The Eisners were good family friends, and Michael, Disney’s CEO, had offered use of the Disney corporate jet. Once on the plane, you couldn’t forget where you were. Everything on board had either Mickey Mouse or Goofy printed on it, from pencils to napkins and glasses. I couldn’t help but giggle when a big Mickey smiled at me from each square of toilet paper.

I began to worry that I’d be staring at that toilet paper for the duration of the flight—my stomach was doing loops the whole time we were in the air. I wasn’t feeling well, at all, but I managed to keep it together on the plane. After we landed, despite my nausea, I helped to load the more than twenty pieces of luggage back into the limo and then unload it at the Eisners’ house. But then I started to feel clammy, and queasiness rolled over me like a tidal wave. I chalked it up to the flight and told myself it would go away shortly if I could just make it to
a chair to sit down for a few minutes. But by the time everyone was inside the house, I knew there was something much worse going on. This was not going away. I realized that in addition to starting a menstrual meltdown of nuclear proportions, I must have picked up some sort of flu.

I stumbled into the bedroom that Brandon and I had been assigned, but it was only a minute before I heard my name being called. When I emerged, Mr. Eisner and his mother were standing in the hall, and they both did a double take when they saw me. My face shone white as a sheet, and I was sweating profusely.

“My goodness, Suzy, you look awful. Are you okay?” Mrs. Eisner asked.

“You should lie down,” her son said. I started to answer them when I saw Judy standing in the hallway with a confused expression on her face that said,
What are you talking about? I didn’t notice anything wrong with her
.

I quickly went into the bathroom and locked the door, and I overheard Judy complaining about the less-than-pristine conditions of their quarters. The place was a sprawling, indifferently decorated, semirustic vacation home. It was a relaxed place, for kids and dogs and skiing—the kind of environment that seemed to make this very controlled family ill at ease.

But even that couldn’t distract me very much, and within seconds I was lying on the freezing tile floor in the fetal position. I knew Judy didn’t have time for me to be sick, and I figured her denial autopilot was kicking in. She was just like her husband in that way; sometimes she didn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy for her employees. I could just hear her:
We didn’t come all the way to Aspen to have to adjust our fun to the physical limitations of the help
. I heard Michael in the hall loudly asking, “Where’s Suzy? Where’s Suzy? We’ve got to get going.” I was in so much pain that I couldn’t muster the strength to answer. I knew Brandon was asleep in his crib. If they’d just leave, I could go lie down in bed and I might recover. I was in too much pain to muster up a response. I just kept silently wishing they would go away:
Leave, leave, leave. Please, just let me recover in peace
.

“Where’s Suzy?” I could still hear him shouting on the other side of the door with the kids answering in unison, “I don’t know, Dad. Let’s go!”

Finally, mercifully, I heard the front door open and close. The house grew empty and silent. When I did manage to grab the doorknob and pull myself to my feet, I found that everyone had left—except for Brandon, who was lying in his crib, quietly playing with his feet. Had they really all just left without knowing where I was? Why didn’t they take the baby with them? What if I was seriously sick and couldn’t watch him?

Then it hit me. They really didn’t notice me enough to see that I might have my own needs. I felt very, very alone.

By the next night, whatever disease I had contracted had passed through me like a bad winter storm. The cramps kept me company for the next two days, but I could cope with that. Once I emerged from my room, I discovered that people were scattered all around the enormous house. The Eisners’ oldest son was in the kitchen with his girlfriend. She was an heiress to some famous fortune and was more self-absorbed and aloof than anyone I’d ever met. I don’t think she uttered more than a few words during the entire trip that didn’t have some reference to her family’s wealth. I had to give her credit for coming up with inventive ways to squeeze in references to her financial stature, regardless of the topic: the snowfall outside, her night’s sleep, the way she salted her potatoes. Hers was a most unusual talent, honed to an impressive degree. All right, I couldn’t stand her.

On our third evening in Aspen, the entourage traveled to Goldie Hawn’s house for dinner. Brandon and I stayed home since they would be out late. The Eisners’ nanny stayed home, too. He seemed like a nice enough guy, short and fairly quiet. But I had met very few male nannies—mannies?—and I was more than a little intrigued by him.

After making polite conversation for a short time, I sheepishly asked, “Uh, can I get your opinion on something?”

“What’s that?” He looked curious. Maybe he was warming up.

“Judy suggested that I could date the oldest Eisner,” I said, embarrassed as the words tumbled out.

Paul busted up laughing.

It wasn’t
that
funny.

“Now wait a minute, Paul,” I blurted in self-defense.

“No, no. I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. It’s just that we nannies are at the lowest level in the pecking order. In fact, I don’t know if we’re actually
in
the order. There is no way in the world that an Eisner would date a nanny. Just wouldn’t happen. They don’t mix with the hired help.” Then he stood up and left the room, laughing to himself.

Obviously, I still had more to learn about the social ladder of the wealthy. But maybe Judy did, too. I thought she had actually been sincere in her suggestion, which she had mentioned to me twice. Maybe she meant it as a compliment to me? Or maybe it just seemed like he and I were close in age, and she hadn’t even considered the other dimension. I had always thought Judy had an air of slight awkwardness about social status and wondered how comfortable she really was with her wealth. I’m sure she never thought, growing up, that she would be married to a man worth millions. Maybe she thought it was just a fluke, something that even a nobody like me could blunder into.

The conversation with Paul put voice to some feelings that had already been brewing. Being treated like I was invisible much of the time was beginning to take a toll. I was getting more and more attached to the children, but the way our relationship was structured made things confusing for both them and me. The subtle communication—the one that Joshua was already picking up—was that I cared for them because I was paid to. It didn’t matter that my love and affection for them was authentic. I was beginning to see that the wealthy saw the position of nanny as one that was decidedly low status and easily replaceable.

Michael was the only one who was actually going to ski the next day, but we all traipsed out to the slopes and took the gondola ride to the top. There at the summit stood a man taking family pictures of everyone in their colorful and expensive ski gear. Judy approached him and discussed the price of a group photo. When she returned, she asked if I could wait over on the side while they had their picture taken. She said they wanted “just family” in the picture.

“Yes, of course,” I answered, mentally rolling my eyes.
Yes, I understand that you do not want the nanny in your family photo album
.

Then they all started taking off their ski jackets and caps and piling them on me to hold. “Suzy, I’m glad you’re here,” Judy said as she walked toward the photographer. “You make a good coat rack.”

The whole trip made me feel like the Griswolds’ Aunt Edna in
Vacation
, strapped to the top of the family truckster on the way to Wally World. When we finally got back home, I immediately talked to Mandie, who had just returned from a trip to New York with the Goldbergs. She said some guy named David Geffen and his friend Carrie Fisher had been with them on the plane. She recognized Fisher as Princess Leia from
Star Wars
but didn’t have a clue who the guy was. She had him pegged as some sort of record producer. He spent time chatting with her about the kids and turned out to be quite nice, so we both surmised that he couldn’t possibly have been anyone very important. Bigwigs don’t waste their time visiting with nannies.

Leave it to the girls from the country to be wrong again. We didn’t recognize the name of Geffen, the biggest music mogul of our time.

Mandie’s trips were always more eventful than mine. Her family was friends with Kurt and Goldie, too—she’d flown with them once back from New York. She described them as surprisingly normal. While they were flying, Kurt made sandwiches for the kids, and Goldie led sing-alongs for everyone. I tried to imagine Michael asking everyone on the plane, “Did you want mayonnaise (without hydrogenated oils, of course) on your sandwich?” and then Judy breaking into a round of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Imported Beer on the Wall.”

Somehow, I just couldn’t see it.

I found it pathetic that Mandie and I never had a shortage of tales from the cribs.

“Wait. Before you start, I have a question,” she said one night.

“Shoot. What is it?”

“You had to put in your own phone line in your bedroom, right?”

“Uh-huh; it’s separate from the four lines on their phone,” I reminded her.

“Well, when I moved in, Mrs. Goldberg said I didn’t need to install my own phone, that I could just use hers. So now at the end of every month she goes through and marks all the calls that are mine so I can pay her back. The problem is, she makes these little comments when we settle up, like ‘You talked to someone for an hour and a half.’ ”