A Nanny for Harry

CHAPTER ONE

Off the coast of Long Beach, the oil drilling islands shimmered in the heat: silent, remote and mysterious. Palm trees tucked among the multi-colored buildings heightened the illusion that they were high-priced condos for the rich and famous, or fabulous resort islands. Kali Miller stood on top of the retaining wall at the end of the Millers' backyard and gazed at those islands, longing to float out over to them—weightless and carefree and unbound by space, time or the constraints of a third trimester pregnancy.

Since the start of her mat leave, Kali was realizing how small and confining her world had become. It was her size that was now making her crave unlimited space, and their 1920's house seem pokey and cramped. She and Matt could sit against opposite walls of the living room and share the same footstool in the middle. If Kali reached out a kitchen window, she could almost touch their garage on one side of their house, their neighbors' house from the other window.

As soon as Kali had found out she was pregnant, the Millers started house hunting, whipped into a frenzy by predictions of infinitely rising prices, into buying any home they could possibly afford, just to break into the market. You couldn't even get a parking space in trendy Belmont Shore—at the south end of Long Beach—for less than a hundred-grand, so the detached, single family house (with added-on guest-bedroom and bath!) that was right on Alamitos Bay—practically on the beach itself—seemed too good to be true. Which, of course, it was. The dark secrets of 67 Pine Beach Road emerged soon after closing, as the rosy pink glow of being actual home owners faded for Kali and Matt.

Like most other homes on or near the beach, the Millers' sat at a slight tilt: no part of it was completely square, flat or level, and the front porch was likely home to a million termites, though the Millers' agent had jabbed a pocket-knife into the top step to prove it wasn't.

The previous owner—a man by the name of Eric Proctor—had done did a quick and dirty reno on number 67, prior to listing it for sale. Though they'd never met him, Kali and Matt nicknamed him 'Hookman-Nailman-Screwman' for the number of hooks, nails and screws he'd left behind, peppering the walls with so many holes it looked as though the mob had fought a gun battle in there, once the designer furniture, paintings and photos, copper pots, wall hangings and other artful and homey touches were whisked away by the staging company.

The Millers were forever discovering bits of Eric Proctor's slipshod, penny-pinching handiwork: the wrong type of solder in the bathroom plumbing that allowed the tub water to seep into the front hall; the missing subfloor in the kitchen that led to the buckling and cracking of the cheap press-on tiles. In the halcyon days of post-home-purchase bliss, Matt and Kali had just laughed about these things, chanting, in unison, as if doing a mid-century radio ad: 'It's a Proctor! It's got to be bad!' But they didn't laugh much anymore; Mr. Proctor's legacy was getting expensive.

Less than six months after they bought in, the market had bottomed out: house prices slumped, then plummeted. Since they would not soon recover close to what they'd paid for the house, Kali and Matt were having to accept the reality that they might well grow old and die in 67 Pine Beach Road.

A few stones from the retaining wall tumbled onto the sand as Kali stepped down off it, and she noticed, with alarm, that it was falling apart in places. One more thing their home inspector had not bothered to mention! Not for the first time—and not for the last, she was sure—the thought of suing their home inspector crossed Kali's mind.

Turning her back on the beach and the new worry of the retaining wall, she lumbered through her shabby garden, towards the Millers' house. Now that she was on mat leave, it was only her shadow she had to avoid, since there were no shop windows or mirrored walls on Pine Beach Road to confront her with her enormity. She didn't even want to know her weight when Dr. Gerber clucked about it at the start of each monthly visit, just grateful his scale only measured kilograms and she was too metrically-challenged to convert the number to pounds. But though pregnant, she wasn't yet barefoot as well: there was still one pair of Matt's old Converse sneakers that fit her swollen feet. The last pair of shoes she'd bought herself looked Cinderella-small. Now, like an ugly step-sister, she could wedge only a couple of immense toes into them.