Au Paris Page 9

  I hung up the phone and returned to the table, where Léonie and Constantin were looking at me expectantly. I gave them what I hoped was a reassuring smile, then I collected Diane’s empty place setting and put it away quickly before my inability to take charge could be questioned by the younger souls staring up at me.

  The rest of the evening passed with no sign of Diane, but without incident. After dinner, Léonie went back to cyberspace and Constantin amused himself by my side, while I straightened up the kitchen and prepared for the next day. I was just prying Léonie away from the computer and into bed at 9:30 when I heard the door downstairs slam, followed by footsteps in the foyer. Knowing Diane was home and safe and out of trouble made it instantly easier for me to get the other two to sleep.

  Before retiring to my nanny room, I called, “Good night,” through Diane’s shut bedroom door. As long as she was on the other side, I was completely content going to bed with no other exchange of words. Confrontation was never my strong suit, but the peace allowed me to continue sanely in the nanny role for now.

  “Good night,” she replied. Her tone was friendly, even sweet. Perhaps I had overreacted and things would be okay after all. I smiled, having received enough of a dosage of peace to get me through the night.

  I woke up earlier than usual the next morning, probably because I’d actually rested for the first time since I’d arrived. I sat in the kitchen hovering over my morning espresso, grateful to have a few more moments to enjoy it than usual. I loved this new obsession. It was my constant—the only thing I had with me from the beginning, unchanging. Plus, I was convinced I really was losing weight through its charms and my dedication to it, so this made me an even bigger fan of, if not a slave to, my morning ritual.

  I was at the end of the kitchen table, savoring my brew, when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs—big footsteps that certainly were not the darling pitter-patter of Léonie and Constantin. Considering the only other possibility, I assumed investigation mode, turning immediately from espresso-lover to detective agent. From my vantage point at the table, I could see the foot of the stairs, the entryway, and the front door. I repositioned myself slightly so as to appear oblivious to the action, yet through my peripheral vision, I had keenly activated my spy radar.

  There was some muffled laughter, then as suspected, Diane crept into view. She moved cautiously, holding her hand behind her to lead someone. I listened for another voice, but heard nothing. Then the mystery person came into full view—a boy. Diane was leading a boy down the stairs and to the front door. Incroyable! It was all I could do to not whip my head to the right and stare him down. As soon as they turned their backs I slyly adjusted my head and watched in horror. They paused at the front door, her hand resting on his chest. He took her other hand in his, swinging it playfully. I listened to an exchange of way-too-adult-sounding good-byes followed by a casual kiss on the lips. You know, the kind you do without thinking because it’s such a familiar habit.

  Now, I’m not going to deny kissing before I was fourteen, but I certainly didn’t have it down the way she did. The art of the morning-after farewell hardly made sense to me in the movies, let alone in real life. Who was this girl?!

  As she turned away from the door, I forgot all about playing detective. I stared at her openly, my mouth agape. She sauntered blithely up the steps, caught my gaze, and said, “Good morning,” without hesitation or remorse. Then she pursed her lips, smiled at me, turned, and continued up the stairs. It wasn’t a sweet smile or a befriending smile. It was the kind that says I’ll show you—the kind that only a woman can execute. But she was not a woman. And I was certain that even if fourteen was the legal drinking age, fourteen was definitely too young to own that look. She owned it, though, and threw at it me with a cunning and effortless toss.

  Shit.

  Now, I don’t like to cuss. It’s not ladylike, it’s not commendable, and there are better ways to express a point. But at that given moment, all other words evaded me. I didn’t say it loud—I didn’t actually say it at all. I just thought it. And thought it. And thought it. And thought it.

  By the time Estelle and Alex returned home the next night, my original rehearsed conversation with Estelle had now grown from une petite probleme to un grand catastrophe.

  I was downstairs in my room when I heard the front door slam. I paced back and forth, debating whether to bring it up tonight or leave it until the morning. On one hand, I hated to go one more day of allowing Diane free rein, on the other, I was tired and I dreaded giving Estelle the report. I was still pacing when Estelle called my name through the door. I eyed the windows for an escape route, but gave up upon realizing that my head would have gotten stuck in between the iron bars outside. Facing my fear, I opened my bedroom door.

  “Hi, did you have a good trip?” I asked in a perky tone, avoiding the inevitable. Estelle entered the room, and I, restraining from pacing, stood as still as I could manage.

  “We did. How were the kids?” Estelle was never one to delay a meeting’s agenda.

  “They were good!” I said, straining to keep the perky tone. “Or fine, rather,” I corrected. “Umm, actually, I need to talk about something,” I answered at last, leaving both of us uncertain of what expression to hold on our faces.

  Estelle narrowed her eyes in suspicion and cocked her head to one side, listening. I wondered if she knew already. But how could she? I wouldn’t put it past Maria Celeste to get all up in arms and call the madame, but I was pretty sure even Maria Celeste was clueless about the events. Keeping my voice calm and even, I told her about the rhum incident.

  “You saw her drinking?” Estelle questioned, wrapping her confident composure around her like a trenchcoat. Now someone else was playing detective and I was in the plaintiff’s chair. No, I didn’t see her drinking, I wanted to say, but does it matter? I mean, I saw evidence everywhere and the point is, she’s fourteen!

  “No, I didn’t see anything. I came into the kitchen as she and her friends were leaving and I saw everything out after she had already left.”

  “Where were they going?” It was a totally logical question, yet until now, it hadn’t occurred to me.

  “Umm ... I didn’t ask,” I responded, explaining that with all the friends she had over who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, she’d left me stunned. As I spoke, I realized I was sounding more and more to blame here. My primary responsibility is to know where the kids are at all times. I didn’t. I had messed up. I felt myself shrinking, as if sliding from the plaintiff’s chair would relieve me of accusation.

  “Hmm,” Estelle murmured, no longer trying to hide her irritation. I had yet to master reading Estelle’s many expressions, but I had every reason to believe this irritation was directed not at her unruly daughter, but at the very irresponsible nanny standing in front of her. I had to defend myself—I was, after all, the only one available to plead my case.

  “I know this doesn’t look good on my part, but there’s something else I need to tell you.” Estelle stood still, readily accepting my further plea. “The next morning, when I was up in the kitchen, I saw Diane walk a boy out of the house.”

  Estelle maintained her calm stance, her face unaffected.

  “Did you see him come in that morning?” Estelle asked.

  “Umm, it was early. I’m pretty sure he was leaving from the night before,” I answered.

  “You are sure he didn’t come that morning?” The thing is, I really wasn’t sure. I didn’t see him come into the house. But the smile on Diane’s face after the boy left had told me everything I needed to know. And I wasn’t about to leave myself open to blame just because Estelle couldn’t see the truth about her daughter.

  “Yes,” I answered, looking her straight in the eye. At this revelation, Estelle’s eyes widened considerably.

  Estelle looked at me for several long moments, her lips curling into the disappointed, wry smile I was getting to know very well.

  “Hmmm,” Estel
le thought out loud. “I’m going to have to have a serious talk with her,” she said, brushing off her pants legs as if to wipe the episode from her mind.

  That’s it? I thought, as she turned to leave the room. I don’t know what I was hoping for, but I had an uneasy feeling that things weren’t going to be resolved as easily as I had at first thought. So Estelle was going to have a talk with Diane. Great. But when? And what was I supposed to do in the meantime?

  “Should I say anything to Diane?” I asked, half hoping she would say yes, half hoping she would say no.

  “No, I will—soon,” she said. “Good night.”

  And that was that. After worrying myself sick, the only solution I got from Estelle was wait. I was sick of waiting. I hated waiting. Especially when I didn’t know what I was waiting for.

  Chapitre Sept

  Thursday morning. It was two days and counting until Diane left for Spain. The maternal part of me still wanted to reach out to her before she flew off to a foreign country. But the frustrated nanny part of me left her unattended, sleeping in her room while I took the lower maintenance kids to the parc, where I ran off my frustrations in healthy form by chasing Léonie and Constantin as they swirled around on their scooters.

  A late-morning drizzle caused us to retire from scooter-chasing activities early—a grave disappointment to the children, who were inflicted with summer fever. I promised the sunshine-hungry little ones that we would watch a movie at home and make the most of the rainy day. Movies and television were against the rules, but I saw nothing wrong with spoiling the children royally every once in a while. It made them happy, and if they were happy, then I figured I could write off my nannying duties as a job well done.

  As we made our way home, Léonie raced ahead of her brother and me, then rode back and forth down the street until we caught up to her.

  Once there, Léonie begged me for the key to unlock the door, a favorite task of hers. Since the rhum episode, a twinge of anxiety crept up in me every time the key hit the front door. But following the kids into the house, I saw that everything was quiet and relatively clean, save for a pile of pink, silk-flowered corduroy blazers piled on the entryway floor. I smiled in relief. Girls upstairs in Diane’s bedroom was heaven compared to the catastrophes I had imagined while walking home. I could deal with coats lying around. I was happy to deal with coats lying around. I sent the little ones down to my bedroom to pick out un film. “En Anglais!” I cried out to them, knowing if they were going to rot their brains with television, at least they would do so while perhaps sharpening their English, a skill I’m supposed to regularly enforce.

  Knowing that Diane was under control and the kids were happy, I turned my attention to the more important matter of food. I was getting more comfortable in my environment, and with the Celsius stove. Plus, I’d finally figured out what aubergines and courgettes were (eggplant and zucchini), and I was anxious to put them to use.

  I was also inspired by Alex’s culinary escapades. My favorite thing about Alex’s cooking was his inconsistency, which to me was the sign of a true artist. No meal was repeated, no menu was imitated. Alex had mentioned several times that ratatouille was très facile to make from scratch, and in the Vladesco family kitchen on a rainy afternoon with so many fresh vegetables on hand, ratatouille seemed the perfect lunchtime choice. I pulled out the aubergines and munched some leftover rétrodor as I chopped, eager to soak the bread rounds into the hot stew.

  Aubergines, courgettes, tomates, carottes, squash (which was also called courgette, I believed), un petit d’oignon, et garlique, bien sûr, I sang to myself as I assembled the ingredients. I was happily chopping away when I heard footsteps and voices coming down the stairs. I cowered, my healthy appetite retreating at the thought of dealing with Diane and company. I tried to think of something to say as they entered the kitchen, but my language capabilities had, naturally, suddenly gone the way of my appetite. I felt like a complete joke in front of them, imagining the gossip that was circulating about Diane’s au pair who freaked over a bottle of rhum and one too many guys. Since friendship was out of the question at this point, I swallowed my pride and aimed for professional, and offered the girls something to drink (albeit water). They declined politely, though they were not overly friendly, lest their air of coolness be interrupted. They stood on the other side of the counter from where I chopped, unbothered by my presence. I tried to act nonchalant, uninterested by their petite fête.

  I concentrated instead on the pleasurable smells of ratatouille, losing myself in the music of my thoughts and the girls’ effervescent exchange of French words. Now don’t get me wrong—I love America. In fact, I never loved it more than while in the midst of my French experience. But there is no language more beautiful than French. We say, “Good night”; they say, “Bonsoir.” We say, “Nice to meet you”; they say, “Enchantée.” It’s not just the words; it’s the sounds—sounds that I tried so hard and failed so miserably to imitate. It’s as if there’s air blended into the sounds of the vowels and consonants and it lingers between the words. Some French, the French of the butchers, the bakers, the produce men, is guttural, honking right in your face. Then there’s the pretty, airy kind that skates in a single, flawless line from one consonant to the next. Diane and her friends spoke the pretty kind, and they sounded so adult doing it. So I listened to them, understanding nothing, wondering exactly how early they all grew up.

  It never failed to surprise me how easily they said, “We’re taking the métro,” and hopped from one side of the city to the next like it’s normal for girls their age to gallivant through Paris as if it were their own backyard. Then I realized it was their backyard, which made them seem even cooler. Then again, considering that their language and their city are birthrights, it wasn’t really fair, was it, to elevate them to such a high caste within the realm of female coolness? So I instead considered the how, not the what. How they spoke, how they ran around. Correction: they flitted, or sauntered around, more so than ran. It was all wrapped up in an entirely different culture of mannerisms, one that can’t be taught or aspired to. Like people who try to be classy—if effort is involved it’s simply not so. I was thinking all of this as I turned to grab a soup pot from the cabinet. When I looked back, they were gone.

  From the other room, I thought I heard one of them say “we’re taking the métro.” Just as I was about to call out to them, I heard a commotion. I walked out of the kitchen to find three guys climbing through the window. Yes—the window. They were similar in grungy, slimy appearance to the last herd I’d shooed out after the rhum incident. Two looked unfamiliar, the other I recognized from Diane’s morning-after tryst.

  “Hel-looo!” One of them hollered at me, in a pathetic attempt to sound American. I couldn’t tell if he was hitting on me or just mocking my existence in general, and either way it didn’t matter. I was disgusted.

  “He-eyy,” the other two said, cooing and smiling in my direction as they climbed through the window into the huge, pristine living room as if it were something they did every day.

  Diane et cie., completely unhindered by my presence, pranced down the steps into the living room. It was clear they had been expecting guests. They giggled and preened in front of the boys, who looked them up and down appraisingly. The girls all stood, shuffling their feet, hanging their heads in shy flirtation, laughing, talking, just hanging out with the living room windows wide open and footprints on Alex’s sofa, which had been covered with animal skin he’d brought back from an African safari hunt. Why these young beauties found any flattery in the attention of such ill-mannered slugs, I could not imagine.

  Rather than inquire about the situation, I shot Diane a stare of death that I hoped she knew meant Get them out of here. Now.

  She smiled saucily in reply, taking her merry time to casually breeze into the scene, and the calculated coolness I had admired just moments earlier seemed immature, ugly . . . and dangerous. These kids were not elegant or mysterious—they were
teenagers. They were cold and utterly disrespectful and I felt my temperature rising. I’d put up with too much from Diane lately, and I wasn’t going to take it for another second.

  First things first, the babies were not to be witnesses. So I quickly shut the door that led to my nanny basement. Hopefully they were in my room, curled up, unaware, enjoying their afternoon of cinema.

  “Diane, I need to talk to you—now,” I said. I was so angry that my voice was shaking. Shaking and angry or not, it didn’t seem to phase the group. They hung their heads and snickered at me, but made no move to leave. Whether they were laughing at my ridiculous Franglais or my red face, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care.

  I didn’t care about waiting for Estelle to “have a serious talk” with Diane. I didn’t care when she was leaving for Spain. I didn’t care about anything. The only thing I did care about was that I wasn’t going to tolerate another minute of this. It was all too much, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Diane hesitated just a fraction of a second too long before responding, and I lost it.

  “Okay. Everybody out. Now,” I screamed in a mangled mix of French and English. “Diane, your friends need to leave. Now. This is not okay!” There was stunned silence for a second or two, then the entire group burst into laughter at my Franglais. Words may have failed me, but my body language did not. I kept my death gaze on Diane, whose expression sobered once she realized I was not backing down.

  I clenched my teeth and walked, with what I hoped was considerable composure, into the dining room where the girls had dropped their little pink corduroy blazers, fighting the urge to hurl them down the entryway steps and scream my head off until the little punks ran out the front door. Instead, I walked as calmly as my quivering legs would allow me to the front door, and held the jackets out until the girls collected them in a civilized manner, one by one. I held the door open to show them clearly that they were to take their jackets and keep walking.