The nanny Diaries

- Part Three

THE NANNY DIARIES

The distance of the child's room from the parents' room always runs the gamut from far away to really, really far away. In fact, if there is another floor this room will be on it. One has the image of the poor three-year-old awakening from a nightmare and having to don a pith helmet and flashlight to go in search of her parents' room, armed only with a compass and fierce determination.

The other telltale sign that one is moving into the Child Zone is the change in the decor from muted, faux Asian to either a Mondrian scheme of primary colors or Bonpoint, Kennedy pastels. Either way Martha has been here---personally. But the effect is oddly disquieting; it's so obviously an adult's conception of a child's room, as evidenced by the fact that all the signed first edition Babar prints are hung at least three feet above the child's head.

After having received the Rules I am braced to meet the boy in the bubble. I expect to see a full-out intensive care unit complete with a Louis Vuitton IV hookup. Imagine my shock at the ball of motion that comes hurtling across the room at us. If it's a boy the movement is reminiscent of the Tasmanian Devil, while a girls tends toward a full-tilt Mouseketeers sequence, complete with two pirouettes and a grand jetè.

The child is sent into this routine by some Pavlovian response to the mother's perfume as she rounds the corner. The encounter proceeds as follows: (1) Child (groomed within an inch of his/her life ) makes a beeline directly for mother's leg. (2) At the precise moment the child's hands wrap around her thigh the mother swiftly grabs the child's wrists. (3) And she simultaneously sidesteps out of the embrace, bringing the child's hands into a clapping position in front of the child's face, and bends down to say hello, turning the child's gaze to me. Voilá. And thus the first of many performance of what I like to call the "Spatula Reflex." It has such timing and grace that I feel as if I should applaud, but instead move directly into my Pavlovian response set off by their expectant faces. I drop to my knees.

"Why don't you get to know each other a little..." This is the cue for the Play-With-Child portion of the audition. Despite the fact that we all know the child's opinion is irrelevant I nevertheless become psychologically animated. I play as if I'm Christmas and then some until the child has been whipped into a foaming frenzy of the interaction, with the added stimulant of a rare audience with mother. The child has been trained in the Montessori approach to fun---only one toy is pulled from its walnut cubicle at the time, I overcompensate for the lack of normal childhood chaos by turning into a chorus of voices, dance steps, and an in-depth understanding of pokémon.

Within moments the child is asking me to go to the zoo, sleep over, and move in. This is the mother's cue to break in from where she has been sitting with her mental clipboard and Olympic score cards on the edge of the child's bed to announce that it is "Time to say goodbye to Nanny. Won't it be fun to play with Nanny again?"

The housekeeper, who has been folded into a child-size rocking chair in the corner this entire time, offers up a dejected storybook, making a meek attempt to match my display of fireworks and delay the inevitable crash. Within seconds there is a replay of a slightly more sophisticated version of the Spatula Reflex, this time encompassing a maneuvering of both mother and myself outside the room, punctuated by a slammed door, all in one seamless motion. She runs her hands through her hair as she leads me back into the silence of the apartment with a long breathy "Well..."

She hands me my purse and then I stand with her in the foyer for at least half an hour waiting to be dismissed.
"So, do you have a boyfriend?" This is the cue for the play-With-Mother portion of the audition. She is in for the night---there is no mention of a husband's imminent arrival or plans for dinner. I hear about her pregnancy, Lotte Berk, the last Parents' Night meeting, the pain-in-the-ass housekeeper (left for dead in the Child Zone), the wily decorator, the string of nanny disasters before me, and the nursery school nightmare . Completion Phase III: I am actually excited that I am not only getting a delightful child to play with, I'm getting a new best friend!

Not to be outdone, I hear myself talking---trying to establish my status as a person of the world; I name-drop, brand-drop place-drop. Then self-consciously deprecate myself with humor so as not to intimidate her. I become aware that I am talking way, way too much. I am babbling about why I left Brown, why I left my last relationship---not that I'm a leaver no, no, no! I pick something, I stick with it! Yessiree! Did I tell you about my thesis? I am revealing information that will be dragged up repeatedly for months in awkward attempts to make conversation. Soon I am just bobbing my head and saying "Okay-ay!" while blindly groping for the doorknob. Finally she thanks me for coming , opens the door, and let's me pass for the elevator.

I am caught mid-sentence as the the elevator door starts to close, forcing me to shove my bag in front of the electronic eye so I can finish a meaningful thought on my parents' marriage. We smile and nod at one another like animatrons until the door mercifully slides closed. I collapse against it, exhaling for the first time in an hour.

Minutes later the subway barrels down Lexington, propelling me toward school and back to the grins of my own life. I slump against the plastic seat, images from the pristine apartment swimming in my head. These snapshots are soon interrupted by a man or woman--- sometimes both----shuffling through the car begging for change while their worldly possessions INA shredded shopping bag. Pulling my backpack onto my lap, my post performance adrenaline leveling out, questions begin to percolate.

Just how does an intelligent, adult woman become someone whose whole sterile kingdom has been reduced to alphabetized lingerie drawer and imported French dairy substitutes? Where is the child in this home? Where is the woman in the mother?
And how, exactly, am I to fit in?

Ultimately, there would come a turning point in every job when it seemed that the child and I were the only three-dimensional people running around on the black-and-white marble chessboard of those apartment. Making it inevitable that someone would get knocked down.
Looking back, it was a setup to begin with. They want you. You want the job.
But to do it well is to lose it.
Hit it.
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- Naomi