The Nanny (4 page)

“Victor, I told Nanny that Joey must decide when he goes to bed and I told her he can sleep with all those toys and things and I told her about the sleeping pills Dr. Berkover is giving him to bring home because he's scared of bad dreams.”

“The old girl would love all that. Exactly wrong, absolutely wrong.”

“Yes, but she said she'd do just what the School wants. And she will.” Virgie saw how hard his face stayed. “Then
why
, Victor?”

“Because
I
want you to take care of Joey.”

She thought:
I can't. Not yet. I'll do the wrong thing. I'm afraid
. “I will, Victor. I promise.” She didn't dare look at her husband. “Victor, I want Joey home. Don't you think I've missed him? But because … you know … I have to have Nanny there a while. I have to!” Now she lifted her head, but he was shaking his. “It's stupid to listen to that Miss Schwartz!”

Victor took his napkin and wiped his mouth hard. Then he pulled his napkin through his fingers. “Okay, then, it's stupid. Let's leave it I want her out.”

Because she doesn't blame me
, Virgie thought.
Because he blames me
.

He laid his napkin back on his lap, trying to keep his voice easy, aware how terrified she was. “Virgie, this is … this is important to us.”

“I know. I know … that's why …”

“You don't know. Important to
us
. To you and me.
Us.”
He laid his hand on hers and felt it quiver at his touch and pinned it down, hating the quiver. “Virgie, I'm not an ungrateful son of a bitch. I've asked Althea to speak to Mrs. Gore-Green about taking the old lady back. Come on, Virgie, Mrs. Gore-Green only lent her to us out of the goodness of her heart. She was only supposed to be a loan.” He could not tolerate it that the only response in his wife's hand was terror of his touch, and released it. “This has to be done, do you understand?”

“No,” she said, “I don't understand. I don't understand. I'll never understand.”

She was crying. People were looking at her crying. Victor paid the check and got Virgie out of her chair. He had to hold her elbow and lead her out of the big room because her head was clamped down and her eyes were blind with tears. She used to have such a proud walk, a prancy thoroughbred walk. He used to be so proud of her.

When they reached home, Victor said he was going out. Virgie didn't dare ask him to stay, just looked at him from the depths of the big chair into which he had pushed her. “You'll be okay,” he said. “Nanny's still here.” The door was the unslammable kind or it would have slammed. Virgie heard him press the bell for the elevator and then heard another door swoosh closed; Victor had not waited for the elevator. He had run down the eight flights.

She went to the window to watch him come out on Eighty-sixth Street, and in a few minutes he did come out and she saw him turn up towards First Avenue and saw that his steps were as long as he could make them. When he was out of sight, she sat in the big chair again. From the bedroom opposite theirs she could hear Nanny rocking and the steady creak (which irritated Victor) soothed her. She put her head back against the chair and let the rocking soothe her. (Oh, what was wrong with that?) Presently the rocking stopped. (When it had done its work, when her nerves stopped jumping.) Virgie heard the door of Nanny's room open and then there she was, a dark red mountain in her Jaeger robe, moving slowly in her dark red felt slippers asking whether Madam was alone.

She said, “I thought I heard Mr. Fane go out. Madam is not going dancing after all? Is Madam unwell?”

“No, Nanny.” Virgie knew that she must not tell Nanny how unhappy she was. These things must never be said between them. (But did they ever need to be?)

“Does Madam wish me to help her get ready for bed?”

Virgie nodded, and, drawn by invisible arms which lifted her to her feet, came towards the old woman, then was drawn by the invisible support up the three steps from the living room to the short hall where the two bedrooms and baths were.

The old woman turned. Her long thin gray plaits of hair, pulled tight and bristling with broken ends, bobbed as she went into the bedroom, and Virgie stood in the doorway enjoying (why not?) the way Nanny folded down the covers of the right-hand twin bed and the way her hand, with the soft shiny skin covered with big brown spots, made a careful triangle. Now Nanny reached her hand under the pillows and drew out the yellow crepe de Chine nightgown case she had embroidered with Virgie's monogram. She watched the hand, which looked so clumsy but was so deft, removing the nightgown and then laying it across the bed, smoothing, smoothing. Virgie felt the skin around her eyes loosen and moved a step inside the bedroom so she could see Nanny take the gold silk robe from Virgie's closet and lay that next to the nightgown, just so, just so. (Was it wrong in a world so disjointed to want the “just so” of Nanny's world?)

“Would Madam like me to undo her frock now?”

Nanny asked this every time. Virgie stood quietly while Nanny unzipped, then leaned a hand on the thick soft shoulder while she stepped out of the blue dress. (Don't remember the Oak Room!) Then Nanny turned away to hang the blue dress in her closet and give her privacy to take off her girdle and bra and put on her nightgown, then, perfectly timed, Nanny turned back and lifted the gold robe. (It must first be laid down and then lifted.)

Nanny held the wide kimono sleeves for her to slip into and watched while Virgie folded the front over and tied the wide sash and then … Virgie really felt this … under Nanny's eyes the gold silk became gold armor against the night.

“Shall I brush Madam's hair?”

“Please, Nanny.”

Nanny padded to the dressing table for the hairbrush and the Limoges tray on which the hairpins were kept. When Virgie was so sick after Ralphie was born, Nanny had suggested that she let her hair grow. “You're too ill to be bothered with all that salon fussing,” Nanny said. “If Madam lets her pretty hair grow, Nanny can shampoo it for her.”

So she had let her hair grow long and she hadn't been to a beauty parlor for four years. Nanny shampooed, Nanny brushed, Nanny stood behind her holding out the Limoges tray while Virgie drew the mass of her hair to the top of her head and made a loose knot. One by one, from the tray, Nanny handed her the tortoise-shell hairpins she had given her. (They were antiques and had belonged to Miss Penelope's mother, Miss Diana.) “Your hair is even fairer than Miss Diana's,” Nanny said.
(Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?)
Now Nanny was waiting for her in the room across the hall. Virgie found it difficult to call the second bedroom the nursery the way Nanny always did. Even though for two years it had only been Nanny's bedroom, Nanny had not changed anything. “You must have faith that it will be the nursery again, Madam.” So, except that Ralphie's youth bed was gone, everything was still the way it had been. Nanny's cot was still in the right-hand corner of the room with her screen, behind which she had always undressed when she shared a room with a child. On the left, near the window, was Nanny's rocker, and farther down that wall the child-size maple table with the two chairs on which Ralphie had liked to give his “tea” parties. (Joey used to come to them.
Stop that!
) On the far wall, they had had a huge blackboard put up over low cabinets and shelves on which the children's toys and games were still kept. Nanny stored her clothes in the closet which still had two rails, a low one for children's clothes and a grown-up one. Nanny used the white chest on the wall opposite the blackboard which had been first Joey's and then Ralphie's. Even if it weren't Nanny's chest of drawers now, Virgie wouldn't have dared open any of the drawers for fear that she would see, neatly folded, sweet-smelling, Ralphie's minute shirts, his soft white underpants, his tiny socks. The top of the chest was covered with Nanny's photographs of all the children she had taken care of, except Joey. (Cabinet photos she called them.) On Ralphie's birthday, Virgie had taken both children to a professional photographer, but even though it was Eric Bronson, who, they said, never failed with youngsters, Joey had refused to be photographed. So she had had Mr. Bronson take one of her and there it was right in the center, and behind it Ralphie with his blond hair so barber-shop because they had stopped in on the way to the photographer. Ralphie had had his hair cut, but not Joey. Victor had to go to the barber with Joey every time and let Joey sit on his lap while he had his own hair cut first. Joey's hair was dark like Victor's. “Dark, dark, dark is the color of my true love's hair.” I love him, she thought. I love Victor and I love Joey, only I've hurt Joey and I'm so afraid I'll hurt him again.

Virgie believed that Nanny kept her picture, a big one in a silver frame, in front of Ralphie's so she wouldn't see him, but, of course, Nanny could do nothing about not seeing the bathroom. Virgie always had to keep her eyes away from that bathroom door because that was where Ralphie had died. That was where the white step on which he had hit his head still was, neatly pushed under the sink. Nanny had been firm about that. (She knew where to be firm.) “Madam mustn't be fanciful,” Nanny said. “It is just a harmless wooden step.”

Victor had wanted to give all the things in Ralphie's room to the Salvation Army. He said that every time Virgie went into the room she remembered. (As if she ever forgot!) The truth was that Victor wanted to give everything away because he didn't ever want it to be a nursery again. He blamed her. He would never trust her with another baby and he was right. But he should know she couldn't be trusted with Joey, either! Now she followed Nanny, who had seated herself in her rocker, and sat in the small-size maple chair which Nanny had pulled in front of the rocker because it made it easier that way to brush. That was one reason she went into this room to have her hair brushed but also it was because every time Victor saw Nanny brushing her hair he scowled. (Oh, why?)

Virgie closed her eyes and folded her hands in her lap while Nanny's soft fingers searched in her hair for the tortoise-shell pins. One, two, three, four, five, six. They dropped with their own soft soft sound onto the Limoges tray. Six pins, and then the hushed drop of her thick hair onto the gold silk on her shoulders. Then Nanny gathered her hair up in one hand and began to brush out the ends. (Virgie sighed with pleasure.) Then Nanny leaned forward and the brush touched Virgie's scalp near her forehead and was drawn back. As Nanny bent to brush, like a familiar phrase of music, Virgie heard Nanny's corsets creak. (“My stays,” Nanny called them.) Nanny's “stays” … but Nanny wasn't going to stay. Victor wouldn't let her stay. Remembering, Virgie pulled away from the brush, turning round in the child's chair, looking up into Nanny's big face. “He's not going to let you stay when Joey comes home! You're going to have to leave!”

Nanny closed her blue eyes, then opened them. “May I ask why, Madam?”

“He says he wants me to take care of Joey myself.”

“Very good, Madam.” Then Nanny's hands were on her shoulders, turning her round in the chair again so that she couldn't see the big face, only feel the brush. The brush said, “My poor child, my poor child, how can he be so cruel to a child like you?”

Virgie whispered, “Because it was my fault that Ralphie died. It was my fault!”

“Hush, Madam, hush!”

“You would have changed your day off if I had asked you. I knew my mind would be on the Stevenson party that evening! I knew that the green dress was arriving from Bendel's and that I would have to try it on. Ralphie died because of that green dress!”

“Hush, Madam.”

“All I thought about was whether the dress fitted right, whether I could wear it to the party or whether the hem had to be raised first. I
must
have heard the sound of Ralphie falling, I must have
heard
it!”

“Madam … Madam …”

“I must have heard it, and I certainly heard the water running in the little bathroom and I knew I should stop it, but I was so afraid of getting the dress splashed that I had to take it off first, and then the zipper got stuck and I couldn't get out of it and then … when I did … when I did …”

“Madam, this is hindsight. It was perfectly understandable. You must not take on so, Madam.”

“Victor blames me! Victor blames me!”

“Come, let me brush Madam's hair.”

“He will never forgive you,” the brush said. “Men don't understand. He will never love you again,” the brush said, “but I am here.” Victor didn't understand. People didn't understand. Everybody blamed her, was what the brush was saying, saddened. That was why she didn't want to see any of their friends. She could not face that blame; how could she? That was why she wanted to stay at home because only Nanny didn't blame her. Only Nanny had forgiven her, and that was why Victor was sending Nanny away. “He says that school doesn't want you here.”

Nanny said, “I see, Madam. Now keep your head still, do.”

The brush said, swishing, “A child like you? A child cannot take care of a child,” the brush said. It paused. “How will you do without Nanny? Without Nanny you'll do something terrible again.”

Virgie jumped off the child-size maple chair. “I'm frightened,” she said. “I'm frightened. I'm frightened, Nanny!”

Mrs. Gore-Green, thin in her blue tweed coat, glared with practiced hauteur at a tired-looking woman in a dreadful flowered turban who wanted to sit on the bench next to her in the space she was saving for Nanny, who was just approaching. The woman moved off and, suddenly too cold in the thin May sunshine, Mrs. Gore-Green huddled her body with her arms, watching darling old Nanny bearing down on the bench.

How enormous the old thing was, Mrs. Gore-Green thought. Almost, she thought, pulling the lap of her coat over her thin shanks, almost as enormous as her shadow used to be on the green distempered walls of the old night nursery at Kingsfordhouse. Huge, she was, shapeless, ancient of days, but still positively roaring with strength. Almost as powerful as she used to seem when one was a child.