Page 2 of Worst Nanny Ever
She has called all of twice to check on him.
A lawyer helped me secure emergency temporary custody, and I plan to seek sole custody as soon as Ollie has been with me for sixty days, which would legally qualify as child abandonment in North Carolina. While I might not know what to do with him, at least I would never abandon him.
“Sure,” I say. “But while we’re waiting, we might as well have a little fun, huh?”
“You’re not fun,” he says flatly. “You don’t have any toys, or anything interesting in this house besides your drums, and you won’t even let me play them. This place is a prison.”
Ouch.
I bought him a train set the week he got here in mid- September, nearly a month into the school year, but he insisted it was a boring baby toy. I asked if he wanted anything else, and he told me he wanted nothing from me. The only toy he’s accepted is a stuffed sloth my best friend Rob gave him. He also calls Rob “Uncle Rob,” while I’m still just Travis.
“What about Winnie?” I ask, referring to the new nanny. “She’s always got that cool fun pack with her.”
We’ve had three nannies. Three, in five weeks. That has to be some kind of record.
The first nanny quit because Ollie asked her not to sing to him anymore, and when she pressed him for a reason, he said her voice sounded like a dying parrot’s.
I told him not to be rude and found a new nanny.
She quit because he didn’t say a word to her. Not one word in two weeks.
He admitted he’d only given her the silent treatment because I’d told him not to be rude.
Now we’re on Nanny Number Three, Winnie, and she seems perfect. She’s young, pretty, and has a degree in early childhood education. Better yet, she’s got that fun pack of activity books, markers, bubbles, and other kid-centric crap like stretchy hands that probably leave stains on the walls. (I would have worried about that last month; I couldn’t care less now.) Ollie smiled the first time he saw her stash of goodies, which I figuredwas a good sign.
“I don’t think she’s coming back,” he says flatly.
The ache in my head instantly gets worse.
“What happened?” I ask, massaging my forehead. My band has a show at a brewery tomorrow night, and Winnie was supposed to watch him.
“I didn’t do anything,” he says.
“I didn’t say you did.” Although, let’s be honest, he totally did. Ollie is smart—his teacher, Mrs. Applebaum, told me he’s several grade levels above his peers—and he’s devoted his considerable intelligence to his new goal in life: making me miserable.
Let this be said for my son: he is very goal driven.
In addition to driving away two—possibly three—perfectly good nannies, he has written his math homework on the walls (to check if the markers are actually washable; they’re not), destroyed ten of my vinyl records because he “thought they were frisbees,” nearly burned down the house by microwaving metal, and stuck spiky dried sweet gum balls beneath the sheets of my bed (he denies it, but how else would they have gotten there?). Don’t even get me started on how he keeps calling his teacher Mrs. Applebottom.
Rob says Ollie’s just acting out to get attention. I get it. His world has imploded, but my world has imploded too.
For years, I’ve been keeping my anxiety at bay by closely controlling every aspect of my environment at home, and now I’m in control of nothing. I’ve barely slept. I stay up for hours, waiting for Ollie to scream or to start roaming the house in the middle of the night. My mind is a constantly whirling tornado of intrusive thoughts.
“I know you hate me,” Ollie says, glaring at me with burning eyes.
“I don’t hate you,” I say softly.
What I do feel for him would be harder to put into words. I didn’t have any time to wrap my brain around the idea of him before I was dealing with the reality. He’s my son, and I love him, but it’s not like any kind of love I’ve ever experienced. My feelings for him ache, and they’re awful—protectiveness wrapped in worry, encased in a shell of inadequacy.
“If you cared about me, you’d ask Hannah to be my nanny.”
Oh, Christ, not this again.
Hannah is Rob’s girlfriend’s friend. They brought her over here once, on the day Ollie was first dropped off. Honestly, I barely remember that evening. I was struggling to process the fact that I was a father, not of a baby, but of a fully formed seven-year-old boy who is probably smarter than I am.
Rob and his girl Sophie took off, but Hannah volunteered to stay behind and hang out with Ollie for a while. She watched some cartoons with him and made him mac and cheese. Everything seemed to be going well—she has a knack for talking to kids—and she said she was cool with me leaving them alone for a while. I needed to play the drums in the (mostly) soundproof music room. It’s one of the only things that helps me work through my emotions so I can feel like a functional human being.
When I came back, Hannah was playing Cards Against Humanity with Ollie, both of them laughing hysterically.
