You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (32 page)

We wandered down Rodeo Drive, weaving in and out of places like Chanel, Armani, and Giorgio. Debra peered in the window of one of the haughtiest boutiques, the kind you have to ask permission to enter. The saleslady looked away. “She has no idea who I am,” Debra giggled. “She isn’t going to give me the time of day.” I shook my head. I had never gone shopping with Judy, but I was sure that
giggling
would not have occurred. The relief of a relaxed attitude felt like heaven.

Only once during our shopping day did I watch Nolan alone, staying on the sidewalk with baby and stroller while she dashed inside a shop. “My, ma’am, you sure have an adorable child,” she drawled when she came back outside.

“Oh, thank you, ma’am!” I said, playing along. “Many people say he looks just like that actor Timothy Hutton.” She hooted and we strolled on.

*   *   *

“Suzy, would you like to join Mark from MGM and me?” Debra asked one day. “We’re going to have a Debra Winger slide show.”

“Sure. What are we going to watch, your vacation pictures?”

“No. These are the studio stills they’ve sent over. You can help me weed out the worst ones.”

This was a task all actors with a big role faced each time they did a film; generally it was in their contract that they got to approve which pictures the studio could use for posters and promotion. Like many actors, Debra didn’t much like to watch her own movies or even look at the slides. She never felt she had done as good a job as she could have. I could relate to that.

“Go ahead, Mark, crank it up.” Mark had set up a projector in the family room, very informal, and he closed the blinds and started clicking through the slides. “Hate it. I’m not in character,” she said to the very first one.

I smiled.

“Ohhhh, look, too fat. Out.”

God, she was a rail.

“Too tired. Look at the luggage under those eyes.”

I squinted. I couldn’t see anything.

“Ah. That’s a keeper,” she said. “What do you think, Suzy?”

“Uh, I like it.” I thought she was a doll. “You look happy and full of energy.”

“Right. Good one, Mark. Keep it.”

And so it went until we’d gone through a hundred slides and vetoed what seemed like half. I hadn’t seen much difference in most of them, but then, they weren’t mine. If they had been, I probably would have burned them all. I was every bit as self-critical as she.

“You know, Suzy, those pictures remind me of Richard Gere.”

“Why is that?”

“When I went through the stills for
An Officer and a Gentleman
, I noticed that a lot of them were missing,” she said. “I found out that when they showed Richard the slides, he chose the ones he liked and threw out all the good ones of me before I had a chance to see them. When I drove down Sunset Boulevard and saw the billboards, I had to
laugh because the shot they used was a great one of him. I, of course, looked dreadful. I never did get along with Gere,” she mused. “He seemed arrogant to me. The love scenes were just an expression of the tension between us.” Her voice trailed off as she walked to the other side of the room.

When it came time for the Academy Awards, Debra showed me the fat, official-looking nomination packet she got in the mail. She cast her vote for Timothy’s latest movie, saying she was probably one of very few. She told me that Jack Nicholson had given her a piece of advice when she’d been nominated for
Terms of Endearment:
if you don’t vote for yourself (or your hubby, presumably), how can you expect anyone else to vote for you? That’s good, I thought. I should be voting for myself more often.

Nolan was inquisitive and loved exploring, and he reveled in digging through the Tupperware drawer, banging wooden blocks, and ripping up magazines. Debra said it was great that his name started with the word
no
, because she didn’t like the thought of saying no to him. She wanted him to have a “yes” attitude toward life. So she said his name worked well because if we accidentally started to correct him, we could say, “No-No-No-lan.”

I had been hired primarily to give Debra time off at night so she could rest and spend nearly the entire day with Nolan. But we soon found that when I tried to take care of him at night, he only wanted his mom. We gave in, not wanting to upset him. So Debra took the night shift. And the day shift. On the rare occasions that I did take Nolan for walks, Debra wanted to come as well. I spent my days mostly talking to the cook in the kitchen, folding Nolan’s tiny clothes in his dresser, and generally trying to help Debra around the house.

But I was beginning to feel like a third wheel on a bicycle.

One afternoon, the three of us went to a park in Malibu. I put Nolan in one of the swings and pushed him gently, and he began to giggle. Debra giggled, too, and climbed into one of the “adult” swings. She kicked off her shoes and began thrusting her legs into the air to gain momentum. Just then an older man walked up to us and said, “Hello, Debra.”

I glanced over. Jack Lemmon! Wearing shorts, a golf shirt, and tennis shoes. Though he was getting up there in years, I recognized him right away because I had seen
The Odd Couple
, one of my dad’s favorite movies, about twenty times. When Debra introduced us, I gulped before shaking his hand and smiling. I thought I was over my celebrity shock, but apparently not.

“Can I buy you two a falafel?” he asked.

I was too embarrassed to say I didn’t know what a falafel was, so in unison, Debra and I said, “Yes. Thank you.” I just hoped and prayed that whatever the thing was, it didn’t have mushrooms on it.

As I munched my odd concoction, which appeared to be the Arabian equivalent of a taco, I glanced around at the hordes of mommies and nannies. Parks were a popular place for moms to go “steal” other people’s nannies. You could find someone by the merry-go-round and avoid paying a hefty commission to a placement agency, and there were plenty of women living in five-million-dollar homes who thought nothing of heading out to the swings for a day of stalking. I mean, who wouldn’t want to save a thousand dollars on something as unimportant as the person who would be spending more time with your child than you would?

It would be years before the real stalkers came along, before the paparazzi peered out from behind the jungle gym with any sort of regularity. The day would come, though, when media-savvy celebrities would station themselves and their adorable offspring by the sandbox, angling toward the lenses as if to reassure the public that they were regular parents. They, too, got their knees dirty! Photos of the stars and their adorable offspring playing in the park or shopping for organic produce would run almost weekly in
People
. Undeniable proof that they were just average working moms—except that they had two assistants, an accountant to pay their bills, a housekeeper at each home, a chef to cook Zone-perfect meals, and a personal yoga instructor.

Yep, just a typical family.

Suddenly I spotted someone I recognized. “Oh my God,” I leaned over to Debra and whispered. “That’s Michael’s brother’s wife. What do I do?”

“Just act like you’re having the time of your life.” She laughed. Of course Debra would find this amusing.

The woman walked toward the swings with her son. Closer to us. I gulped.

“Hello, Linda,” I said as casually as I could.

“Oh, uh, hi, Suzy,” she said awkwardly. “What are
you
doing here?”

“Oh, I work for Debra now.” I pointed and smiled. “You know her, don’t you?”

What else could I say—
How ’bout those Lakers?
I knew she’d heard plenty about my resignation. What would she tell her sister-in-law?

“Umm, of course,” Linda mumbled, nodding at Debra, and then she left as fast as she could. She was probably going to break her ankle running to her car to relay the news that I was now working for the original mutineer from the CAA ship.

I voiced my fears to Debra, and I could anticipate her response even as I was telling her. For the second time that day, we spoke in unison: “So what?”

So what! So what! So what!
A new mantra. As long as I could remember it, Michael and Judy had no control over me. I was voting for myself,
starting now
.

Just weeks ago it had been far too painful to hear Delma describe how Brandon wandered hopefully in and out of my old bedroom, but I finally thought I was ready for another update.

“Oh, Suzy, it’s you!” Delma exclaimed when I called. “You should hear how they’re talking about you around here.”

“What are they saying?” Why was my stomach suddenly churning?

“Judy and Grandma Ovitz are saying bad things because you are working for Miss Winger,” she whispered. “I can’t tell you the horrible things they said.”

I didn’t really want to know, anyway. I could just imagine.
She left us high and dry to work for a traitor!

“Amanda has had me try and call you many times at your sister’s, but there’s no answer.”

That figured; Amanda could only call during the day, when Michael and Judy were out, and everyone was at work then. My heart sank. On
the one hand, I was happy that Amanda wanted to talk to me, but on the other, that meant she did in fact miss me. It hurt to know that I was another loss in her short lifetime. I gave Delma the number of the new phone I had installed in my bedroom at Debra’s.

“Delma, how’s Joshua?” I asked, switching topics.

“You know, Josh is Josh. He will always be the same.” Neither Delma nor Carmen understood the reason he was so difficult, and I hadn’t helped matters. In a way, I had confirmed his belief that if you start to love someone, they leave. And now that I was banned from ever seeing the children, there was no way to show him that I did still care about him and that I saw more in him than a defiant little boy. As far as he knew, I never loved him enough to ever call or visit.

Then the conversation took a turn for the better.

“Would you like to see Brandon?” Delma blurted out of nowhere.

“Oh God, I’d love to!”

“They just left for Aspen last night. I could sneak him out and meet you at the park. Carmen will stay with Joshua and Amanda, so they won’t know,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. I couldn’t imagine what Michael would do if he ever found out that Delma sneaked his son out to see me.

“He hasn’t been himself since you left,” Delma continued. “He’s walking now, but he still seems so sad. It would do him good to see you.”

“Don’t tell me any more, Delma. Please,” I managed to get out. I missed him so much that my throat constricted as I tried to hold back tears. As much as I wanted to see him, I didn’t know if I could do it. No matter how long the visit, I’d just have to leave him again. I paused and caught my breath.

“Let’s do it,” I said emphatically.

I met them the next afternoon in the park where I had often taken Brandon. I gently glided in a swing, waiting, anticipating. Then I spotted Delma’s car, parking in a far lot.

I could see that she was telling Brandon I was here by the way she whispered to him and pointed to me. Sweet little guy. So cute. So innocent. He craned his head up, looked around, and finally saw me. I stood up. He toddled off across the grassy field straight for me. He
threw his little arms around me and squeezed me with all his strength, not uttering a sound.

My heart felt like it would collapse in on itself, aching, yet joyful. How could it be possible to feel all these things so strongly at once? I had guessed it would be hard, but I had never had an inkling of the reality. I squatted there, holding him for a long time. When I pulled away slightly to look at his beaming face, I had to quickly wipe my eyes so I could see clearly.

Delma and I embraced silently.

“Suzy, I didn’t tell you, but I’m the nanny now,” she confessed. “When you left, Judy asked me if I wanted to quit doing the housework and start taking care of the kids. I jumped at the chance. I knew it would make you happy.

“Plus I get to wear regular clothes now!” she beamed. “I don’t think she likes it, but I told her that the
other
nannies didn’t have to wear a uniform.”

“Oh, Delma.” I hugged her. “That makes me feel so much better—for both of you.”

I was grateful Delma had brought me some of my mail. She said she had begged Judy to stop sending all my mail back, saying that she could take it to me. But apparently Judy didn’t like that idea. She had been marking everything, bills and bank statements, with “return to sender.”

I hoisted Brandon into a swing as Delma and I kept chatting. Knowing someone he trusted and loved was his nanny made me feel so much better. He wouldn’t have yet another person coming into and then leaving his life. And even though Joshua had always been hostile to Delma, even more than he was with me, I was glad he, too, didn’t have another new person he felt he had to put his guard up against. This was the best situation possible for all three of the children. Maybe I didn’t need to feel so guilty anymore.

But was I in the best situation?

The scene at the park really tore me up. I loved that little guy so much. And even though I wasn’t paid to worry about him anymore, I still had a big emptiness in my heart. I almost felt like I was holding myself back from giving Nolan the love he deserved because I didn’t
want to go through another gut-wrenching departure. Maybe I should give some serious consideration to moving home.

Delma and I arranged a few more clandestine meetings, but I could feel that Brandon’s memories of me were slipping away. I was happy he was bonding with Delma. It would be best for me to duck out. I thought of what a woman at one of the placement agencies had told me, that some Hollywood mothers were so paranoid that their children would become more bonded to the nanny than to them that they changed nannies every year, regardless of how good a job they were doing or how much their children liked them.