You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (28 page)

My God, did Mandie’s employers have a heart? How could they happily ski and down hot chocolate knowing that Mandie was sitting in their home with some stranger, instead of with her family on Christmas. $200! Surely they had spent more than that on
lunch
at some point.

I had held on to my faith in people until now, but the rising degree of my anger and bitterness surprised me. I began to think about the practicalities involved in leaving. Obviously such a move had crossed my mind many times, but because of the two-year commitment, I’d never considered it seriously. Now that I saw how resentful I was becoming, I knew I needed to reconsider.

The next morning, I secretly called a placement agency just to test the waters. Apparently someone of “my caliber” could literally pick and choose, news that substantially lifted my spirits. The woman at the agency started rattling them off: “I’ve got an opening with Cybill Shepherd; a nightmare job, I might add. She just fired all of her staff. I also have Zuckerman, he’s a producer.… And we just got a call from Shelley Long. You would qualify for any of these positions.”

When the woman asked me when I could interview, I told her weekends only. When I tried to explain how impossible it would be to get time off during the week, she chuckled and brushed it off.

“Oh for God’s sake, just tell your boss you’ve got female issues and that you have to go to the doctor,” she offered.

“No. You don’t understand,” I said, almost smiling at her naïveté. “That would be out of the question. If she ever found out, I would be drawn and quartered in downtown Brentwood, and if I lived through it,
I certainly wouldn’t get a decent reference. I’m afraid they’ll be so angry when I quit that they won’t give me a good reference, regardless.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” the woman said breezily. “I’ve never even heard of this guy, and if he’s as big as you say he is, then he’s far too busy to spend time giving
you
a bad reference. What’s he going to do to you?” She laughed.

I hadn’t yet figured out how to end my misery when I got a call from my friend Tammy.

“Suzy, you’re not going to believe it,” she squealed. “I’m here. Here in LA!”

“What do you mean?”

“Sally called on Sunday and said the baby nurse she hired instead of me didn’t work out. She said she wanted me to start this Tuesday, as in today! I drove down in my old GTO with my mom, and I started work today.”

“No way!” I tried to imagine kind, sweet Sally Field as my boss.

“Yeah, I’m here now. I was in such a hurry to get here to take the job, I was driving ninety-five miles an hour in the desert.”

“Just like in
Smokey and the Bandit?”
I laughed.

“Well not
exactly
, ’Cause there was no beer transportation involved, and I had my
mother
in the car.”

“Okay, sorry I interrupted, go on.”

“Anyway, who knew my car could go that fast? And then we got pulled over.”

“Well you’re preaching to the choir here. The story of my life. So what happened next?”

“So Mom comes up with the brilliant idea to tell the cop that I’m on my way to be Sally Field’s nanny and see if he’ll let me off. So I take a chance and tell him, and it works! He even tipped his hat and said, ‘Well, say hi to Sally for me,’ and we were on our way.”

“I’ve found out in Southern California that the name-dropping thing with the police works quite well,” I said dryly. “Well, sometimes.”

“That’s not the best part. You will not believe this,” Tammy chattered. “I got here and Sally’s just out of the shower, holding the baby. She says she’s having a big dinner party tonight, and that’s why she needed me to start immediately. People are coming to this party to see the baby for
the first time. Sally says, ‘Go upstairs and get him dressed in something cute, and I’ll come and get you when it’s time to come down.’ Can you believe it?

“She came up to get me about eight, and as we’re walking down the stairs, she says to me casually, ‘I don’t think you’ll know anyone here tonight except Kurt and Goldie.’ I stop walking, grab her arm, and shriek, ‘No way, they’re here? Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn are here?’ ”

“My God, Tammy,” I interrupted. “You said that? You can’t talk like that.”

“Why not? Anyway, Sally says to me, ‘Is that a problem?’ I blurted out, ‘Sally, I don’t think you understand. Two days ago I was living in my hometown with a population of less than eight thousand people, and now I move into
your
house, and
Goldie’s
coming over. I always go see your movies. You guys are so great!’ ”

“I can’t believe you said that stuff!” I exclaimed. “I’ve never been able to be that honest about my celebrity encounters. I’ve been too scared. I was given strict instructions not to act like meeting these people is anything out of the ordinary.”

“Well, there’s more. I went down and there at the table, along with other people, was Kate Capshaw.”

“Oh my God,” I gasped. “So Spielberg was there, too?”

“I don’t even know. After I laid eyes on Kurt, I almost dropped dead.”

“Well, then what happened? Wait. I’ve gotta go. Brandon’s crying. Give me your phone number. Oh, never mind, I have it here somewhere.”

“Okay … wait. There’s more, Suzy!” Her breathless excitement reminded me of myself one short year ago.

“Yes, yes, I know. Welcome to Nanny World.”

By the second week in January, I realized that I would
never
work up the nerve to actually say, “I quit.”

I finally decided I needed to talk about this with somebody. I called Mary, the insightful instructor I had become close to at NNI. She listened intently, as usual, this time for over an hour. “Suzy,” she said, “you didn’t commit to stay at this job under
any
circumstances.” That hit a chord. She was right.

The very next evening around 10
P.M.
, I was sitting on my bed engrossed in my nightly phone call with Mandie. Suddenly someone knocked at my door. I froze. I knew it could only be Judy—Delma and Carmen never ventured out of their rooms at night. But Judy hardly ever came to my room. She thought it was important to give her nannies privacy, something I had always appreciated. Had she heard part of the conversation? I told myself maybe she hadn’t, completely forgetting about the results of my controlled experiment with Delma a few months earlier.

“Come in,” I said softly, pulling the covers up over my pajamas. She opened the door.

“I have to go,” I told Mandie. “Judy’s here.”

“OH MY GOD, WHY?”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said calmly.

“WHAT IS SHE SAYING? ARE YOU IN TROUB—”

“Okay. Bye-bye.” I hung up on her midsentence.

Judy sat on the twin bed next to mine. My heart was racing, my mind a blur.
Why in the hell is she in here? What in the world is she going to say to me?

“Would it be okay if I talked with you?” she began.

“Yes, of course,” I responded awkwardly.

“I’ve noticed lately that you seem to have a chip on your shoulder. What’s wrong with you?”

Well, that was direct. I couldn’t believe she had noticed
anything
about me.
Had
I been acting differently? I didn’t quite know what to say, but it didn’t matter because she didn’t pause.

“You know, I was pretty disappointed in you about the snowsuit, because I asked you if you packed all the kids’ clothes and you said yes. Then when I told you it wasn’t in the suitcase later, you didn’t seem to even care about your mistake. You know snowsuits aren’t cheap.”

In that split second, before I had a chance to organize my thoughts, I just started talking. “I’m not happy here,” I blurted. “I’ve been thinking about quitting, that’s what’s wrong with me. I work nearly twenty-four hours a day. I can’t even leave the house in the evenings, and I don’t want to keep on doing this. I have no life other than work.”

Oh God. What was I doing?

She looked stunned. Awkward silence hung over the room. Then she scowled at me, and her chest heaved with labored breaths. I felt myself cringing. What would she say? I wanted to put my hands over my ears. The lump in my throat must have been the size of a baseball.

“What do you mean?” she asked in disgust, not waiting for me to answer. “What exactly do you think a nanny
does
, Suzy?”

Well, I think some of them work nine to ten hours a day
. But I didn’t have the nerve to say that for fear of what else might come out.

“I’ve been thinking of quitting,” I muttered sheepishly, in case she hadn’t heard me the first time.

“We do a lot for you. I don’t think you understand that,” she said, shaking her head.

“Judy, I am very appreciative of everything you’ve done for me.”

She rolled her eyes, as if to say,
Yeah right, I don’t believe you
.

“I feel very bad, and I’m sorry,” I said pathetically. “But I’m just not happy.”

“So what are you saying? You’re just going to leave tomorrow?” she said, the sarcasm thick and heavy.

My God, I could never do that to the kids
.

“No, of course not. I’ll stay until you can find someone else.”

“This is just like you. I tell you something I don’t like about you, and you just up and quit.”

Wait, what?

This conversation was moving too fast.

Just like me to do what? As if every time I was reprimanded I had threatened to quit? I’d never mentioned
anything
, ever, about leaving.

“I wish I would have known you were going to do this before we gave you that Christmas bonus.”

With that, she let out a deep stage sigh, stood up, swirled around, and left the room.

I curled up under the covers, my stomach in knots. I broke out in a sweat when I heard Michael get home that night. I heard Judy’s angry voice. Apparently she had stayed awake to talk to him, something she didn’t usually do. Not a good sign. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, only a murmur of voices.

But there were no more knocks on my door that night. My anguish lingered, and I hardly slept the next two nights. Certainly Michael was going to have a talk with me, but I didn’t know when the axe would fall. I began rehearsing the scene in my mind, playing both characters. I heaped guilt on myself by the shovelful. I wondered if I should give the Christmas bonus back. But my biggest concern was the kids. I felt love and affection for Amanda, and I sympathized with Joshua’s angry behavior and cared for him more than he could ever let in. But the kind of love I felt for Brandon was the reason I became a nanny in the first place.

I worried about the impact my departure would have on him. After all, I was his primary caregiver. Would he have the same feeling as a child raised by a stay-at-home mom would have if she just suddenly disappeared
one day? I hoped not. I couldn’t bear that thought. I wanted him to keep laughing—he was the only one in the entire family who laughed, a big hearty belly chuckle. But the saddest thought that crossed my mind was that maybe I wouldn’t be missed at all; Leticia, Suzy, and then the next nanny in line. Would Brandon even know I ever existed a month from now? I was going to be a blip on the radar screen of his life.

For the next couple of days, I walked on eggshells waiting for the king to signal the hooded man to release the heavy blade. But nothing. Then Wednesday morning, two days after my conversation with Judy, Michael approached me calmly and asked me to sit down. I was sure he could see my heart pounding through my T-shirt.

“I understand that you want to quit.” There was a long, awkward pause. “Suzy, would you please reconsider?” he asked in a soft, nearly pleading voice I’d never heard from him before. “Can’t you just finish out the year?”

Finish out the year? It’s mid-January!

“You know we have the Aspen vacation scheduled for spring break, so how about just hanging on until after that?” I was too afraid to answer. I put my head down and sat there in silence with my shoulders slumped around my chest. I couldn’t believe I was about to wimp out again, but I couldn’t muster up the courage to quit.

“You could at least stay until after Judy’s week in February at the Golden Door Spa. You know she deserves this vacation.”

I had told Judy that I would stay for four weeks, which would carry me beyond the Golden Door vacation. And I’d said if they found someone
to replace me before that, I’d leave earlier. But it didn’t sound like she had been listening that night. She’d been so angry. I wondered what she had told him about my sudden notice.

I steeled myself for the next question. I knew him well enough to realize that his campaign to have me stay would quickly escalate from two controlled, peaceful questions to a flat demand. And then things would get ugly.

Instead, he said, “You think about it and then let me know in a few days what you decide.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it,” I told him, knowing full well that there was nothing to think about. I wanted to leave. I just didn’t have the nerve to say so.

It wasn’t as if the actual leaving would be easy, either. I knew I would dearly miss the three children for whom I had been pseudomother, nurse, playmate, diaper changer, referee, emotional punching bag, and chauffeur. And then there was Carmen, Delma, Gloria, Rosa, Sarah, and Jay. We had been a family within a family, or rather, a little family attached to a family. As for Michael and Judy, well, I wouldn’t miss devoting my life to them, but I didn’t dislike them. They were the parents of the kids I loved, and I wanted the best for all of them.