The Summer Nanny

by Holly Chamberlin

  Poor Hayley. Amy hoped she would seriously consider the idea of working as a nanny. They could have so much fun hanging out together with all the kids. In fact, it might just be like summer camp. Amy had never gone to summer camp, but she knew that the counselors and the kids had a great time together, doing crafts and going swimming and making s’mores over a roaring fire. And on the Fourth of July they might have a bonfire and set off fireworks, or if that was too dangerous at least they could all wave around sparklers. How different was a nanny from a camp counselor? Probably not all that different. It was probably oodles and oodles of fun.

  Amy finished her tea and went to the kitchen to put her cup in the sink. She had a very strong feeling that this summer was going to be the absolute best summer of her life.

  Chapter 9

  Leda sat at one of the two looms in her bright and airy studio. The cats were sprawled at her feet, relaxing after a brutally challenging morning of eating and chasing each other up and down the stairs. The house was quiet; Amy had gone off to class just after breakfast. It was the perfect atmosphere in which to work on the latest project for one of her longtime clients, but Leda’s mind simply would not focus on her craft. Instead, it insisted on returning to a pivotal moment in the long-distant past.

  Leda knew her fears were irrational. There was no logical reason why Amy’s working as a nanny this summer should carry with it any greater risk of danger than her working as a waitress or a checkout person. When you thought about it, walking dogs was probably far riskier than looking after someone else’s children in the security of their own home. Dogs could turn on you and bite. Leda frowned. Just like people.

  The thing was, Leda was scared that the past was poised to repeat itself. She had never told this to Amy, but at the age of seventeen she had taken a job as a summer nanny for a family from upstate New York. Lance Stirling was a fairly well-known painter, and his wife, Regan, looked after the home and their one-year-old daughter, Rebecca. That summer, Regan had explained, the family needed to hire a nanny so that Regan could spend her time pursuing an online degree in Egyptology. The Stirlings treated Leda politely, and Rebecca was an easygoing child. The money was adequate, and Regan even provided a homemade meal each day. Everything seemed just fine, if, in fact, a little boring. But it didn’t remain boring for long.

  Looking at the loom before her, Leda saw not strands of cotton of varying color, width, and texture but her teenaged self, intensely drawn to the man who was her employer. In her infatuation, she had thought that Lance’s artfully wild hair made him look like one of the Romantic poets or, better yet, a rock star. His hand-rolled cigarettes had made him seem exotically European. His black moods had made him seem deep and soulful. His eyes, a penetrating green, had seemed to divine her most secret thoughts. Leda had done her best to hide her attraction, but when she noticed that Lance was spending a fair amount of time following her with those penetrating eyes, she allowed her own gaze to linger.

  Abruptly, Leda got up from the loom and crossed to the window that faced the small backyard with its stone birdbath, its ancient lilac bush, its recently mowed grass. Sadly, the lovely scene had no power to quiet her troubled emotions. Even after all these years the memories of what happened that summer still had the power to anger and embarrass her. But once the memories had come to the forefront of her mind, Leda had no choice but to let them play out.

  Staring unseeingly at a small yellow bird perched on the edge of the birdbath, she remembered how it wasn’t long before Lance Stirling began to request her company in his studio while his daughter napped and his wife studied at her computer. He told Leda that her presence soothed him. He told her that because she was an artist with an artist’s soul she understood him in ways his wife could not. When Leda protested that her fiber work was simply a hobby, he scolded her for her lack of self-worth and told her that she was wonderful. Special. Beautiful. He made sketches for her and signed them with a flourish. He picked wild flowers and wove them through her hair. He wrote her poems. He told her that he loved her, that she was his muse, that they were fated to be together. He began to speak in husky whispers when they met, to touch her arm surreptitiously when they passed in the hall, to kiss her urgently behind the half-closed door of his studio. He told her that he loved her.

  One of the cats rumbled in his sleep, and Leda jumped. Once again, she had slid so deeply into her foolish youth.... Leda put her hands to her temples as she remembered what had come next. She had felt guilty about what was now undoubtedly an affair. But at the same time, she had also felt elated, powerful, and sure. How could being in love ever be wrong? The world would forgive any transgression made in the name of love. It had to forgive. And so, one day when Lance’s wife was away visiting a friend, Leda had gone to bed with him.

  Leda turned away from the window and its view of her serene backyard and wandered over to the comfy love seat. She sank onto it and pulled an embroidered pillow onto her lap. What had happened then was the very worst part of the whole mess. The day after she had been with Lance, she had gone to the Stirling home literally tingling with excitement, anticipating more protestations of love and passionate embraces behind half-closed doors. But instead of greeting Leda with his provocative smile, Lance had told her that he was too busy to waste time chatting with the nanny and had retreated to his studio, closing the door behind him. Leda was devastated by this sudden coldness, which only grew icier by the day. One afternoon, less than a week after Leda had lost her virginity to Lance Stirling, she confronted him, begging to know what she had done to cause him to reject her.

  “It’s run its course,” Lance had told her harshly, stabbing at a canvas with his brush, hand-rolled cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Let it go.”

  “I can’t let it go,” Leda remembered crying out. “I won’t!”

  Lance had turned from his canvas. Even from the depths of her misery Leda had been able to recognize the look of disgust on his face. “That’s enough,” he snapped. “Get ahold of yourself.”

  But Leda could not get ahold of herself. She threatened to tell his wife what had happened between them.

  “Go ahead,” Lance said with a laugh, turning back to his work. “It won’t make any difference.”

  Leda had run from the studio then, fighting nausea. She knew she didn’t really have the nerve to approach Regan Stirling with the truth. She had no idea how she would finish out the summer working in such close quarters with Lance and his wife. Before she could give the immediate future any further thought, Regan and little Rebecca returned from their daily walk.

  “I need to talk to you,” Regan said to Leda.

  Leda had gone numb with fear. She had no idea what to expect from Lance’s wronged wife.

  “Look,” Regan had gone on. If not exactly sympathetic, her tone betrayed no anger. “You’re not the first kid Lance has seduced and you won’t be the last. He’s an artist. He has no time for the restricting social conventions of the middle class. The fact is you mean nothing to him, just as all the others in the past meant nothing and just as all the ones to come will mean nothing. It’s me he loves and me he’ll never leave. Me and Rebecca. His family.”

  It was then that Leda heard a noise in the hall behind her and turning caught sight of Lance, paintbrush stuck behind his ear, the ubiquitous cigarette in hand. He glanced at her as he passed, shrugged, and continued on. It was at that moment that Leda Latimer finally understood that she had been merely a notch on Lance Stirling’s bedpost.

  Leda ran from the house and never went back. She didn’t call to tender her resignation. She didn’t write a note demanding what salary she was owed. She put her head down and waited for repercussions, but none came. Lance and Regan Stirling left Yorktide at the end of the summer and she never saw or heard from them again.

  The weeks immediately after the debacle had been the worst in Leda’s life. She told her parents that she had been let go because the Stirlings had changed their mind about needing
a nanny. If her mother or father suspected the truth or something like it, they chose not to question her, and for that Leda was thankful. She could never have admitted to her parents that she had been so foolish as to fall for a married man, or so cruel as to interfere in someone else’s marriage, but even if she had been able to confess, what good would telling them have accomplished? The deed could not be undone.

  Full of self-loathing, Leda abandoned her plans to attend Yorktide Community College that fall and took a menial job in a small, local factory. Before the end of the year she had begun to date a nice local boy named Charlie Latimer. They married the following spring. And she still thought of Lance Stirling with longing. She knew that something was deeply wrong with her for not being able to let go of feelings for a man who had treated her so badly, but she just couldn’t seem to help herself. The longing was stronger than the anger.

  By summer Leda was pregnant; Amy was born when Leda was nineteen years old. And before Amy had celebrated her first birthday, Charlie was gone. He broke his neck in a fall from scaffolding while working a construction site. Leda mourned his death, but not for very long. She hadn’t really known the man she had married. The one and only good thing that resulted from Charlie’s sudden death was that it served to completely kill all feelings for Lance Stirling that still lingered disturbingly in Leda’s heart. Charlie’s untimely end had catapulted Leda into adulthood.

  Leda rose from the love seat and went to her loom, determined to return to the responsibilities of the present. Of course the past wasn’t necessarily doomed to repeat itself. That was superstitious thinking. Still, it was hard to shake off the feeling of deep anxiety that had burrowed its way into her chest since Amy had announced her intention of taking a position as a nanny this summer. At twenty-one Amy was even more naïve than Leda had been at seventeen. It was entirely likely that Amy might fall prey to an unscrupulous employer as had her mother. But there was nothing Leda could do to stop her daughter from pursuing the path she had chosen. She was, after all, an adult. Leda could only hope that whoever hired Amy was not a predator like Lance Stirling had been. That wasn’t too much to hope for, was it?

  Chapter 10

  Hayley was on her way to the Goodwill shop in Wells. She had considered asking Amy to come along but had then thought better of it. Amy’s enthusiasm for shopping could wear on Hayley’s nerves. She had never seen anyone get so excited by such trivial things as sequins on socks and blouses with cut-out shoulders.

  She was on her way to Goodwill because, through the employment agency Amy’s friend had suggested, Hayley had almost immediately been offered interviews with three families. Interviews meant clothing that wasn’t worn through in spots and faded in others.

  The first interview was with a Jon and Marisa Whitby. They were already renting a house in Ogunquit, though they didn’t require the services of a nanny until mid-June. They had two-year-old twin girls, Lily and Leyla. Jon Whitby was the founder and CEO of Whitby Wealth Management, a firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut. Marisa Whitby, currently a full-time mother, had worked as a translator for a Paris-based publishing house before the birth of her children. On paper, they were a formidable couple. Who knew how disconcerting they would be in person?

  Hayley hadn’t told her mother that her job at Squeaky Clean would be ending shortly. Nora had enough to deal with without worrying about her daughter’s lost income. When Hayley landed another job, she would break the news. And if she was lucky, that might be soon.

  Once inside the store, Hayley resisted the temptation of the book section. She was here to buy clothes suitable for work. For a moment, facing what seemed like acres of options, she regretted not having asked Amy to come along. She had always been in awe of how Amy knew how to accessorize. It was a creative flair she had probably inherited from her mother. She could take any old T-shirt and jeans and transform the two basic pieces into an “outfit” by tossing on a long scarf and wearing high-heeled sandals instead of sneakers.

  But Hayley hadn’t invited Amy, and so here she was, on her own. She began to flip through the racks of clothing. She figured that a nanny needed clothes that were practical and befitted her position in the household of a wealthy family. It was almost forty minutes before she had selected what she thought might be appropriate items and brought them to the dressing room.

  She tried on the taupe A-line dress first; the neutral color seemed a smart choice. And as Hayley looked at herself in the full-length mirror she felt a very alien spark of specialness. She looked good. Very good. And then she frowned. These new clothes were not to make her look pretty. They were in service of a specific goal. And if she didn’t achieve that goal the clothes would go to a resale shop and she would hope to make back a portion of the money she had spent.

  Still, Hayley wondered what her father would say when he saw her in the new clothes, assuming of course he would even bother to notice. If he did notice, no doubt he would rant about her spending his hard-earned money, which was of course ridiculous. She was spending her own hard-earned money. But her father’s feelings were beside the point. What had to matter most was that she was taking what might turn out to be a big step toward improving her life and her mother’s life as well.

  In the end, Hayley bought the taupe dress, a pair of chinos, three T-shirts, and a lightweight cotton jacket for a grand total of sixty dollars. If that wasn’t smart shopping, Hayley didn’t know what was.

  Chapter 11

  Amy yawned, this time so widely she heard her jaw crack. Something in her head, anyway. The semester was nearing its end. Exams and final papers were killing her, but she thought she was doing okay. If only she could stop yawning and pay attention to her work and not focus so much on the summer ahead. But that was seriously difficult.

  The thing was, Amy and Hayley had signed on with a reputable employment agency that specialized in placing nannies with appropriate families. So far, Amy hadn’t gotten even one interview and always for the same reason. A lack of experience. Amy knew she was a good person. If only someone would give her a chance to prove herself!

  Amy returned to the employment agency’s home page and read for what seemed like the millionth time the official description of the job. A nanny is responsible for following a parent’s instructions regarding the care of his/her child. A nanny is responsible for meeting the child/children’s needs be they emotional, physical, intellectual, or social. A nanny . . .

  Maybe applying for a job as a nanny had been a silly idea in the first place, Amy thought dejectedly. Hayley was faring way better. She already had three families interested in her. Well, that was to be expected. She was so smart and had so much more work experience.

  Amy exited the site and checked her e-mail account. She didn’t use it much and sometimes forgot to look at it for weeks on end. But now she was very glad that she had, because there in her in-box was an offer of an interview from a family seeking a nanny for the summer.

  The e-mail had come from someone named Cressida Prior. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Amy didn’t waste time trying to figure out where she might have heard it. She read the brief e-mail several times with interest. Cressida Prior had found Amy’s name and contact information via the employment agency and in the interest of “preserving her valuable time” had decided to contact Amy directly. Ms. Prior was seeking a nanny to look after her two children, a boy age eight and a girl age ten. Amy felt her spirits rise. She wouldn’t have to change diapers or give the children baths, and she would definitely have fun taking them to the beach and building sand castles and going for ice cream after. Children that age were cool. There was no mention of a father or of any household staff. There was no mention of the children’s names.

  Cressida Prior told her to be at The Atlantic promptly at 12:15 on Thursday. It struck Amy as a bit odd that Ms. Prior assumed she would want to apply for the job, but the fact was that she did want to apply. She would have to reschedule an appointment she had made for a pedicure, but that was no
problem.

  The Atlantic! It was a seriously high-end restaurant. There was no way Amy and her mother could afford to eat there. Well, maybe they could share an appetizer without breaking the bank, but that was about all. Now the question was, What should she wear to an interview in such a fancy setting? Amy ran to her closet and began the search. Homework could wait.

  Chapter 12

  “Coffee’s ready,” Leda announced. She brought the French press to the table, where Amy was devouring a cinnamon Danish. Leda was only sorry that Amy hadn’t thought to buy a Danish for her mother as well.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Amy said when Leda placed the pot on the table and took a seat across from her daughter.

  Leda took a sip of the hot coffee. After having been turned down by three prospective employers, Amy had finally been granted an interview with a family in search of a summer nanny. Leda did not feel great about this.

  “Are you absolutely sure you want to work as a nanny this summer?” Leda said with a poor attempt at sounding casual. “There are plenty of other jobs around town. Maybe Vera could hire you. You know waitstaff are always coming and going.”

  “Mom,” Amy wailed, wiping her hands on her napkin, “we’ve been over this like a million times! I want to be a nanny. And I told you I have an interview.”

  “You could get a job at the Starfish,” Leda said somewhat desperately. “I hear they pay well.”

  Amy smiled. “Doing what? Being a chambermaid? I have enough trouble making my own bed. Who came up with the idea of fitted sheets? Do you know how many nails I’ve broken trying to make my bed?”

  “I could see if Phil needs help at Wainscoting and Windowseats,” Leda offered.

  Amy rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand why you’re so down on the idea of my being a nanny,” she said. “It’s a great way to make money, and there can be all sorts of perks. I read that sometimes employers give their nannies use of their own cars to run errands. I might even get to drive a car made after 2010.”