Page 2 of The Nanny Next Door

So that was my nephew’s name. He looked like a Jamie, I thought. The little boy looked up at the sound of his name, cooing quietly. I blinked at my sister.

“What about him?”

“I need you to watch him for a while,” she said in a rush.

“What?”

“I’m in a tight spot, big brother,” Whitney said in her best “feel sorry for me” voice. “I’ve… I’ve gotten in some trouble. Some bad people might try to come after me, and I don’t want him in it.” She nodded toward her child, who was looking out the window, oblivious and content the way only a child could be.

“What do you mean, bad people? What have you gotten yourself tangled up in, Whit?” My long-neglected big brother voice was starting to come out, all laced with sympathy and concern I had little use for in my business dealings, and there was nothing I could do about it. When I looked at this woman, strung out and bedraggled, an amalgamation of years of bad decisions and worse genes, I still saw the little girl who was so excited to see me when I came home from school.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” Whitney tried to backtrack. “Forget I said anything. I just—I can’t really focus on Jamie right now, you know?” She sniffled, and the twitchiness of her movements as she adjusted her hold on my nephew again only further painted the picture of an addict who would never reform. “You’re–You’re responsible and strong. Not like me. You can give him a way better life than I can.”

Suddenly, this sounded much more permanent. Like she wanted me to raise her child indefinitely. Like she hoped to free herself of the burdens her own choices had brought her.

“I’ve never even held him,” I shot back. A little fear threatened to break through my voice, so I made an effort to sound colder, impenetrable. “You’re insane if you think I’d be a good guardian to a child, much less have time for one. I’m very busy.”

“But you’ve got all your money and all,” Whitney fired back. “He can grow up so much better than we did, have everything we couldn’t afford.”

Of course. The money. That was what it always came back to with Whitney, even if she wasn't asking me for a decent chunk of change to fuel her next bender this time. I was a walking bank account to her. Hell, that was how most people saw me these days, and after years of eschewing real connections for the sake of making business gains, I was starting to get tired of it.

I was prepared to tell Whitney to fuck off and find someone else to shove her responsibilities onto. But before I could find the most diplomatic way to say that, her phone rang, a single, loud bleating sound that made baby Jamie start to fuss. She halfheartedly shushed him as she fished the cracked smartphone out of her pocket.

“One sec,” she mumbled to me as she looked at the screen. Annoyance mounting, I watched her face contort as she, I assumed, read some kind of text. The second I started to sense that there was fear in her eyes, she was shoving her son into my arms.

He knew it was wrong just as soon as I did because baby Jamie let out a wail. I could relate to the impulse.

“What the hell, Whit? I didn’t?—”

“I have to go,” Whitney hurried to say, and while I was sputtering out my attempts to keep her from running out, her son squirmed in my arms. I held the little guy tighter, pulling him into my body though my instinct was to hold him at arm’s length. He finally seemed to settle against me, his fussy noises calming to gentle coos, and when I looked up, Whitney was gone.

Even when I hurried back out into the lobby and exchanged a panicked look with Holly, there was nothing to be done. Whitney was gone, breezing out of the building just as easily as she’d breezed in, leaving a trail of tornado debris in her wake. Had my sister really just abandoned her young son? Had she really just left him with me, of all people?

“Your mom is in big trouble,” I grumbled to the kid, who stared up at me with no knowledge of the huge change his life had just incurred. Well, the new situation I’d have to navigate had one thing going for it. This was certainly less boring than a business meeting.

2

LILA

Ilove my job, I love my job, I love my job, I reminded myself on a constant loop as a nightmare child threw a hard plastic car directly at my head. I ducked just in time to avoid a concussion, and the kid had the nerve to laugh. Deep breaths, Lila, I reminded myself. I took those deep breaths as I tried ever harder to believe my internal mantra. I love my job. I love being a nanny. I love all children. Really, I do.

Right now, though, when I was faced with Reggie Mayhew, an eight year old who was much too sniveling and bratty to earn his full name of Reginald Marcus Anthony Mayhew III, I was questioning every decision I’d ever made that led me to this point. Leaving my small Midwest town for the lights of New York City, deciding to take up nannying as a way to work with kids and make enough money to afford my share of rent…

Okay, no matter how aggressively Reggie tried to ruin my day, he couldn’t really make me regret that. I loved living in the big city with my two roommates, loved going to the bodega at the corner for snacks and to pet the stray cat that often lingered near the frozen foods on hot days. I even loved being crammed into the subway during peak commute times, despite the pungent odor of sardine-cozy New Yorkers in the stale air.

It was probably a little sad that thinking about these mundane, less-than-glamorous aspects of city life was helping me maintain my calm. But when Reggie hurled his smartphone at my head this time, he actually made contact—with my boob.

“Ouch,” I let out accidentally. It felt like a misstep to show normal human weakness. Never let him know your next move, or something. But dang it, it really did hurt, even if I was blessed with an abundance of padding in that area, among others. At least I wouldn’t be coming out of this day with a cracked skull. Instead, my boob would probably be bruised. And not even for fun reasons! I could hear my roommate, Gina’s, voice in my head.

I grabbed the errant iPhone and shoved it in my own skirt pocket to keep it away from the little menace. Before the tantrum from hell, he’d been too absorbed in his screen to even acknowledge my attempts to connect with him. So at least I could make one positive difference in this kid’s privileged life by taking away his phone for a while.

Of course, the second his phone was out of his sight, Reggie wailed like he was being murdered.

“Reggie, it’s not nice to throw things, remember? You’ll get it back when you learn not to throw it.” I tried futilely to reason with the four-foot-tall menace.

“I don’t care!” Reggie screamed with more power than his little lungs should allow. “Gimme it back! That’s mine!”

“Your parents wouldn’t want you to treat people this way,” I told Reggie. I wasn’t totally sure that was true, though. Rich kids like this often had parents who didn’t care much either way, and though Reggie’s mom and dad had been kind to me when I interviewed for this position, this little tantrum wasn’t a huge vote of confidence for their parenting skills.

---