The Nanny (17 page)

But Virgie was buttoning the smock carefully. She left off the belt because she wanted to be as shapeless as possible.

“Put these on.”

The girl gave her a pair of white nurse-looking oxfords which fitted perfectly, and this, because it was a measure of the intensity of the girl's stare, was disconcerting. As Virgie laced the oxfords, the girl explained that the difficult part came now. The hospital staff was accustomed to seeing the volunteer uniform around. It was part of the scenery, but they might do a double-take seeing it this late at night, so they had to act as if they belonged. If, the girl said, they were spoken to, Virgie was to let her carry the ball, but they ought to keep talking.

They walked up to the ground floor and made their way towards the door to the street, the girl talking steadily, about the weather, about Virgie's hair, was it dyed? No kidding, not even a rinse? But then three internes came by. When the girl saw them her eyes rounded, her lips rounded, and from those rounded pink lips, softly, so that only Virgie could hear, came a steady drop of foul words, disgusting, frightening, because they seemed to have no connection with the doll face from which they emerged. It was very difficult for Virgie to go on nodding. “Oh, yes? Oh, really?” so that the internes would believe this was ordinary conversation, so as not to call their attention to them. Why did she do that? The flow of filth shut off as soon as the internes passed. The girl smiled demurely and abruptly asked whether Virgie had nursed her kid. Virgie managed to nod.

“It didn't spoil your figure any. I thought nursing a kid always spoiled your figure.” Her face did show appropriate expression for the first time as she indicated drooping breasts. “You know.”

Had she a baby then? But she wasn't married, was she? Don't be silly, Virgie told herself. She had had a baby and had refused to nurse it. But now they reached the door to the street and the girl boldly asked the attendant whether it was locked.

She said to Virgie, “We thought we'd have to go all the way around, didn't we?” Then, by stepping back, she indicated that she expected the attendant to open the door for her, that it was his job to do this, that she was as he could plainly see from the word embroidered on the sleeve of the pink smock, not a paid employee like him, but a volunteer.

It worked. They were outside. Virgie shivered as the night air dried the perspiration of fear.

The girl began to study the cars parked in front of the hospital, and again the gobbets of filthy language dropped from the rounded lips, only this time they were to explain what she intended to do to someone called Leo. Then she said, “There he is. Come on.”

Virgie saw the door of a gray Studebaker open as they approached, but as the girl was about to step in, an arm barred her way. The man in the front seat leaned toward Virgie and asked who she was.

“Hell with who's that, Leo! Get going.”

The girl thrust the arm away and pushed Virgie into the back seat, then got in herself and slammed the door. (She was very strong.)

“Go, go, go, Lee-o,” she chanted, suddenly giggling.

They went up York Avenue until they reached Seventy-ninth Street, then turned up towards First Avenue. The car stopped in front of one of the few oases of slum buildings left in the desert of new housing. The idea of Joey being in a place like that made Virgie hurry after the man, the girl following her, and they went up three flights of evil-smelling metal stairs. The man opened a door and they all went inside. He had three chain locks on the door and fastened them all while Virgie said, “Where's Joey? Where's Joey?”

“Shut up. Wait. First show him, show him!” She tugged at Virgie's hand in an odd way, as if it were an object, turning it to catch the light from the overhead bulb. “See the green light, Leo? So, go, go go!”

But after he looked at her ring, the man backed off.

“This here your ring, lady?”

“Sure it's her ring, Leo. Don't be dumb. She's giving it to me.”

“You want to give her this here ring, lady?”

“When I get my child. Where is he? Where is he?”

Leo said, “What child? Who?”

“He's not here, dopo! I just told you here so Leo could take care of the ring. Give Leo the ring, then I'll take you to the kid.”

“No. When I see Joey.”

“Now,” the girl said.

“I can't give it to you now.” Virgie tugged at the ring to show the girl it wouldn't come off.

“The hell it can't!” The girl shoved the man aside. “Come on, give!”

“Tomorrow. It won't come off. I was afraid to tell her,” she explained to the man, “because then she wouldn't take me to Joey.”

The girl set her teeth and pulled at the ring and Virgie screamed and the man knocked the girl away.

“You want the cops in here, Bobby? Leave her be.” He said to Virgie, “Shut up, shut up!” And he had a gun in his hand. “Let me get this straight,” he said to Virgie. “What for you giving her the ring?”

“She helped my little boy.”

“Bobby never helped nobody in her life.”

“She got me out of the hospital.”

“Hospital!” he shouted, nodding, as if suddenly enlightened, as if he had not picked them up there. “Now I get it, now I get it!” Holding the gun on the girl, he struck his forehead with his palm, punishing it, and said to the girl, “Nothing doing, Bobby. You take her and you take her ring and you get your ass the hell out of here and forget you ever saw me.”

The girl said, “Dopo! Leo!”

He shoved Virgie towards the door so roughly that she stumbled and then he could see that she had nothing on under the pink smock and his eyes rolled, but like a frightened horse's, as if a naked female body panicked him. Keeping the gun on the girl, he fumbled the three chain locks open with his left hand, swearing at himself for his clumsiness. “If you two whacks don't forget you ever saw me, you're going to be sorry is all I can say.” He opened the door and with the gun, herded them into the hall.

Virgie ran down the steps but the girl, of course, was right after her.

“Where you going? What you going to do? Like Leo said, you want the cops? I'm not trying to stop you. Come on, we'll both get the cops. Come on, you tell them. The first thing they'll figure—just like Leo—a nut. Leo figured you for a nut, you know that, don't you? That's why he wouldn't take the ring. And that's just what the cops are going to think. Put yourself in their place. Go on. And the first thing they'll do is get you back to the hospital. Put yourself in their place.” She trotted alongside of Virgie.

That is what they would do, Virgie decided. They would check with the hospital first to make sure that she wasn't—running around naked under the pink smock and with a wild story—insane.

“That's it,” the girl said, wheedling. “Now put yourself in my place. I was scared you'd change your mind about the ring once you got your kid. Once Leo had it, you couldn't change your mind, see? You know where the kid is? Right in my pa's office. Right under Pa's nose, only he doesn't know. Use your head. How could I take Cupid out into the streets without even the bow and arrow on? Listen to me.”

She wouldn't listen. Would go home. Go to Nanny. Nanny would know. She began to call, “Taxi! Taxi!”

The girl stood at the edge of the curb and, using two fingers, whistled shrilly. When the taxi came, Virgie said, “430 East Eighty-sixth Street.” The girl slithered into the taxi before the words were out, but that didn't matter since they were going home. Let her ride along with her, better than making a scene. (The taxi driver might take her to a hospital himself if there was a scene, or he might stop the cab when a police car cruised by. Better let the girl ride with her.) But Virgie would not sit next to the girl, squeezing as far away as possible, looking away from her, out of the window. “When we get there, I'm going up to my apartment,” she said, and could feel the girl behind her, stirring like an animal. The hackles rose on her neck because her undefended back was to the girl, but she forced herself not to turn. “I'll give you my ring tomorrow. I'll keep my promise, but I don't want any more to do with you.”

“Okay,” the girl said languidly.

Just before they reached the house, Virgie realized that she couldn't pay the taxi. She was relieved when the new doorman, Patrick, came out. His Irish red hair was tousled and his uniform was unbuttoned and showed that he had no shirt underneath. The white skin of his chest shone in the house light and Virgie noticed Roberta blink at it as if it dazzled her; Virgie said, “I'm Mrs. Fane, Patrick.” (She felt that no one could recognize her.) “I have no money. Will you please pay the taxi, Patrick.”

“Yes, ma'am, sure.” He fumbled in his trousers pocket for his wallet. “You feeling better now?”

“I'm fine,” Virgie said, grateful because his inquiry connected her with reality, even if it was only the tenuous reality of the ambulance, of being carried to it on a stretcher, of Patrick knowing that she had been sick. Patrick was taking a bill from his wallet. He gave it to the driver.

“You'll have come home because of the little boy, isn't it?” Patrick said. “Gave a lot of trouble, running off like that, mother-naked. It was good Miss Meducca took him in the office.”

Actually Patrick was speaking his thoughts aloud, trying to make the connection between that one and Mrs. Fane, them coming back in the taxi together like that. He looked at that one then, and oh, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, that little boy had been trouble tonight, surely, but, ach, that one was trouble all the time! He had been warned to stay away from that one. Not that he needed warning. She had a bad eye on her, a bad article, entirely. And, oh, Jesus, look at her now, would you?

The cabby, counting out the change, didn't see, and Mrs. Fane, she didn't see, but, until that one pulled the dress across again,
he
did.
What did she do that for?
Patrick blushed and his hand reaching out for the change shook because he could feel her all warm and soft and firm as if he'd touched what he saw, and the coins fell on the sidewalk and he had to get down to find them. When he did—two dimes, one nickel, one quarter—he gave the quarter to the cabby, and a hard look, too, but that wouldn't stop these New York cabbies. No, for the crack of it, there had to be an argument! Ten percent of the fare was nothing to the cabbies in New York!

When he finally could get back to the house, only that one was there, standing at the door of the doctor's office. She called to him that he would be paid back tomorrow, that Mrs. Fane had to go up to her boy. “Unless,” she said, doing it again, pulling her dress open shameless again, “you want to take it out in trade now?”

Patrick knew better than to answer and didn't stir from the spot until she closed the office door behind her. He then gave his hair a tug, to order, and returned to the marble bench where he had been writing a letter home to his da. His shoulders humped over the pad of lined paper, and before he began to write, he touched the point of the pencil to his tongue.
This job I have, Da, the pay isn't so good.…

Once inside the office, the girl immediately walked through the waiting room and Virgie followed, since Patrick himself had confirmed the girl's story. Joey, she imagined, had fallen asleep. Oh, they should never have sent him home from that school, she thought, lashing out, for Joey's hurt, for the fear he must have suffered. They were in the consultation room now.

“Pa keeps some good bourbon in his desk. What do you say we have a drink?”

Virgie said sharply, “Of course not. Where is Joey?”

“Well, I need one.”

She fumbled in a desk drawer and then she had a gun, too. Virgie called, “Joey! Joey!”

“Shut your trap, dumbo! He was here just like the mick said but Pa took him up before he took me to the hospital. Come on, move. When I get the ring you can go up and then the Marines can land.
Move!”

Her own silent scream awoke her and she found she had ripped off the covers Nanny had so carefully tucked in and was sitting upright, gasping with her nightmare. No wonder a nightmare with the evening I've had! To compose herself, she put on the light and faked a yawn, yawned again and picked up Jane and found her place in
Persuasion
.

But tonight Jane Austen's “two inches of ivory” was too small, Jane's “fine brush” too fine. I've become accustomed to stronger meat, Mrs. Gore-Green decided, and started the careful process of getting out of bed because, from the shelves she had noticed in the living room, she must choose another book. Perhaps, she considered, pushing her feet into her soft slippers, pulling up the heels, tonight I need something morbid, twisted, something Russian … Dostoevskyish. “Nightmares did that,” she told herself. “Nightmares
clung.”
She felt an impulse to brush at her face, as if she had walked through cobwebs, and remembered the boy brushing at
his
face as if her words had been a swarm of gnats. Had she been a nightmare to the boy, she wondered, staying bent over, dumbstruck by the notion, her index finger curled inside the back of her slipper.

At the head of the steps which led down to the big room, she heard—there was nothing wrong with her
ears
—the faintest sound from the kitchen. That bloody child again! she thought. Would there be no end to him tonight?

Since she was up, she would go to him and not disturb Nanny, asleep at last, poor darling. She crossed the living room softly, tiptoed up the steps, whispered across the gallery … and there was Nanny come to the door of the kitchen. “Darling! I was sure you were asleep! I thought it was the boy again.”

“No, he's off,” Nanny said, “and so should you be with those two sleeping tablets, Miss Pen. I was in the kitchen just making myself a nice cup of tea.”

Mrs. Gore-Green pointed. “In the dark, Nanny?”