Glass Houses Read online

  Phoenix got to the blue box well before both his sisters and me. “That was stupid,” he said, but I could see him grinning, cheeks pink with exertion.

  “Oh, come on. Just think of me as Bowser.” I had to stop, doubling over to catch my breath. I wasn’t sixteen and running track anymore, though chasing after the kids all the livelong day kept me in pretty good shape. I ruffled Phoenix’s sandy hair. I don’t know how Maria coped with seven children on her hands. Hollywood magic.

  The pavement down Clay Street was all but melting under my shoes as we made our way home, armed with Mrs. Hamilton’s dry cleaning. It would’ve been easier to drive, but I didn’t have a car and asking the Hamiltons for one of theirs called for more explanations than I felt like giving. The kids didn’t complain too much, so I treated them to ice cream on the way back.

  I admit I wasn’t following the letter of the law as laid down by Mrs. Hamilton, but her draconian ways would have had an angel chafing under the pressure. Sometimes I adjusted to sweeten the pill and tried to keep to the essence of her instructions. There were many, written in red pen in the diary she had presented me with on my first day—the same agenda that included the kids’ roster of activities, their report cards and an outline of Mrs. Hamilton’s expectations.

  “This is between you and me, guys,” I said as I crouched down to feed Zara her pistachio and chocolate sundae. “Deal?”

  “Deal,” Riley answered, licking at her cone. She was a teenage girl and secrets were right up her alley. “You think Mom will let me wear lipstick tonight?” This was a new development. I wondered, briefly, if her parents thought I was somehow to blame for their eldest growing up so fast, then put the thought out of my mind. Suspicion was a slippery slope.

  “You can ask her, honey…” But I didn’t put much stock on Mrs. Hamilton giving the okay. If Mr. Hamilton was the cool dad, if slightly aloof, then his wife was the textbook disciplinarian. She was to my three kids what Christopher Plummer’s Captain von Trapp had been to generations of viewers—an icy, beautiful idol, completely untouchable—and a little scary when crossed.

  Phoenix slurped a big dollop of chocolate into his mouth. “Why do girls even wear lipstick? It’s sticky and it smudges all over when someone kisses you.”

  “Who’d want to kiss you?” Riley shot back, contemptuous of the three year difference between them. “God, you’re such a child!”

  “Okay, okay. That’s enough ice cream,” I interjected before World War Three could break out.

  During the weekend, Riley and her brother did the major meltdown thing about once a day or so. I was still working on figuring out the best way to anticipate their squabbles. Managing them once they broke out was like trying to pacify warring nations and I made for a pretty poor Switzerland. “Let’s head back,” I suggested, and made sure to keep Phoenix and Riley well apart on the way, just in case they tried to resume hostilities while my back was turned.

  The kids took to the couch as soon as we got home. I knew when to recognize defeat and didn’t press them to help with the groceries or stowing Zara’s stroller in the cupboard under the stairs. As laborious as it was, I liked the work. The Hamiltons were my first family and they weren’t as bad as some of the horror stories I’d heard around the playground.

  At least that had been my opinion until now. As I stepped into the kitchen, my arms laden with groceries, I realized it was likely prudent to consider a change of perspective. There was flour everywhere. Bits of eggshell crunched under my sandals, gluing the rubber soles to the slick kitchen tile. Paolo was lucky to have the weekends off. I doubted he’d believe me come Monday.

  “Um, Mr. Hamilton?” It was either that or calling out for Marco Polo. I didn’t put much stock on finding either of them.

  “Just a— Just a second!” I heard from somewhere at the far end of the room.

  Mr. Hamilton resurfaced moments later from behind the kitchen island. Flour streaked his hair white and I noticed that he was wearing his shirt backwards.

  “Help me up,” said a female voice. It was Mrs. Hamilton.

  “Oh!” I felt my face heat instantly.

  I didn’t know whether to turn around or step outside to give them privacy, so I wound up standing there and gawking like an idiot as my elegant, Vassar-educated employer tottered to her feet. Her lipstick had rubbed off on her chin. I thought of Phoenix and his observational skills and found myself biting back a giggle.

  Mrs. Hamilton cleared her throat. “Yes. Well. Did you get my dress from the cleaners, Miriam?”

  I envied her obvious sangfroid. She met my gaze unflinchingly, as though there wasn’t egg yolk slowly dripping down her spray-tanned collarbones.

  “Y-yes. It’s hanging. In the foyer. I was going to take it upstairs once I finished putting away the, um—the groceries.” I was doing my level best not to acknowledge the fact that I had walked in on my employers enjoying some personal time while the kids were out. It wasn’t very convincing.

  “Excellent,” said Mrs. Hamilton. “Thank you.” She turned to her husband, lips quirking at the corners. “I suppose I’ll see you later?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.” Mr. Hamilton was blushing all the way up to the roots of his ginger hair. I thought again of a cocker spaniel wagging its tail and had to bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing out loud.

  Paolo had told me once that Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton had been married for some twenty years. It didn’t show. Mr. Hamilton was often gone for months at a time, whether to teach in Italy and Egypt, or to participate in archeological digs in South America. Even when he was home, he and Mrs. Hamilton often slept in separate rooms, the better not to get on each other’s nerves.

  Their arrangement had confused me at first and I still didn’t think I could live like that, but it seemed to work for them. They hadn’t fallen out of love as much as embraced a more pragmatic approach to the whole ‘Until death do us part’. Maybe my folks should have tried it, back in the day. Maybe that was the key to avoiding divorce.

  I wasn’t in their shoes—though I was standing in their egg yolk.

  Left alone with Mr. Hamilton, I made a point to ignore the chaos around us and stowed away the groceries as efficiently and nonchalantly as I could. A small, perpetually frustrated part of me couldn’t help but muse that if they hadn’t wasted what eggs and flour we had in the pantry, I wouldn’t have had to brave the mid-afternoon sun to go shopping for more. I could have taken the kids to the park instead.

  That part of me was quickly silenced. This was work and Mr. Hamilton was my boss. I didn’t get to critique.

  “I may have told Riley you’re whipping up a cheesecake,” I confessed to her father, mostly just for the sake of breaking the awkward silence. “Had to bribe her out of the house somehow.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Hamilton paused in his sweeping, leaning both hands on the Swiffer. “That’s actually a good idea. It’ll make for a nice finish after the risotto.”

  Thank God for easy-going bosses, I thought. I didn’t want to overstep, but disappointing Riley seemed even worse. Her good moods were so volatile these days and it was hard to get a smile out of her. I knew she was angry with the world—most teenagers were—but I didn’t want her angry with her parents, too. At least not because of me.

  I helped Mr. Hamilton with the clean-up and loaded the dishwasher progressively as he went through bowls and plates and cutting boards. His cooking methods owed less to precision and science and more to the haphazard state of his home office. I had only glimpsed the interior once, before Mr. Hamilton quickly—and dare I say guiltily—locked the doors behind him. I was relieved that he didn’t let the children go in there—it didn’t seem safe. To say he was a pack rat would’ve been an understatement.

  Zara was dozing on the couch, Barbie still clutched tightly to her chest, when I went in to check on the kids. She was the only one to blink up at me and hold out her little arms. I picked her up easily, she was as light as a feather.

  “Ti
red? Let’s go upstairs and play dress-up, huh?” I offered. Mrs. Hamilton didn’t want the kids sleeping during the day and though I sometimes cheated if they were really tired and their parents weren’t at home, I couldn’t afford to do it on the weekends. Instead, I had to contrive ways to distract Zara. It was easily done. Dress-up was her favorite thing.

  I couldn’t say why at the age of four Zara still refused to talk. Granted, this was my first time working as a nanny, so maybe it happened often and I just didn’t know about it. Child psychology hadn’t been part of my college curriculum.

  I had tried to share my concerns with Mrs. Hamilton early on in my employment, but she wouldn’t have it. Her children were all unique. If Zara didn’t talk, that was her prerogative and I just had to accept her as an individual.

  Acceptance was not the issue. I worried Zara might have more serious problems and that her mother’s blinders were keeping her from receiving treatment.

  I knew Mrs. Hamilton loved her little girl. She had bought her a closetful of costumes to amuse her and she was never far when Zara wasn’t feeling well. Still, sometimes I wondered if having me around didn’t do more harm than good. It should’ve been Mrs. Hamilton helping Zara into her cowgirl outfit and playing tag around the nursery, or rocking her when she tripped over one of her Barbies and started sniveling. Not me.

  We watched Dora the Explorer as I braided her wispy blonde hair. She took after her mother in that regard. Maybe she, too, would end up the chairwoman of eight international charities in forty years or so. Or maybe she’d become a CEO, a female Richard Branson in her own right. I kissed the top of her head even as I told myself I wasn’t getting emotionally involved.

  Zara barely glanced away from the TV screen.

  It was coming up on seven p.m. when I took her back downstairs and peeled Phoenix away from his game controller for the second time that day.

  “Brush your teeth while you’re in there,” I called down the hall as he darted out of my grasp and into his room. I heard the door slam. Sometimes it was easy to reason with him and sometimes I felt like he was determined to make my life difficult. At least there was no lock on his door. That comforted me a little.

  I didn’t make a fuss about helping him dress—he was entering that stage of boyhood when he thought he was old enough to not need a nanny. I could respect that. Riley was the same. I found her putting lipstick on in the family bathroom. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder cocktail dress that made her look at least five years older than she was.

  I shook my head. “That’s not gonna work, sweetheart.”

  “Why?” she asked me, forming the word with blood-red lips. “Come on. It’s nice.”

  For values of ‘nice’ that wouldn’t get her carded at a night club, I could agree, but it wasn’t evening wear that her parents would tolerate. Mrs. Hamilton shouldn’t have bought it in the first place—what worked for one daughter didn’t necessarily work for the other. I arched an eyebrow. “You think your mom’s going to agree?”

  Riley rolled her eyes at me. “You can talk to her. She listens to you.”

  “Not about this she won’t,” I hedged, though the whole premise was false to begin with. “What are you doing getting all dressed up for a bunch of old people, anyway?”

  I knew I had her when Riley put down the lipstick.

  “I should just wear jeans and a ratty old tee,” she grumbled, dropping to the edge of the claw-footed bathtub with a pout. “That’ll teach Mom to get all fashion police on me.”

  “Go ahead,” I deadpanned. “But does that mean I can borrow one of those cashmere sweaters she just got you?” They wouldn’t fit, but that wasn’t the point.

  I did eventually manage to coax Riley out of the bathroom and into clothes more suitable for her age and while I was at it, I not so sneakily confiscated her lipstick with a plan to return it to her mother’s vanity before I went downstairs.

  The doorbell rang as I was tying Riley’s hair back with a scrunchie. We both jumped at the sound.

  “Oh, crap, I forgot to change…” With some dismay I realized I was still wearing this morning’s shapeless, flower-power disaster and that my feet were bare on the lush carpet of Riley’s bedroom. Like most of the clothes I owned, the baggy, bohemian dress was the definition of cheap. However well the Hamiltons paid me, I couldn’t justify buying clothes I knew were only good for wearing inside the house—or on grocery runs, or for picking the kids up from school. Once I saved enough for an apartment, I promised myself I would start shopping for blazers and tailored shirts to go with my future career as the next Christiane Amanpour.

  That was neither here nor there at the moment. In my current job, Mrs. Hamilton was calling my name and telling me to get the door. My room was on the second and topmost floor of the house, and I didn’t have the time to run in, get changed, and still play hostess to the Hamiltons’ guests.

  The doorbell rang again.

  “I’ll be right there,” I yelled stupidly, like my voice could possibly carry all the way outside.

  “Get your brother downstairs,” I told Riley. By now I knew the drill. The Hamiltons wanted their children to be seen, fawned over, and vanished into the depths of the house when they were no longer something to show off. We had attended a garden party organized by Mrs. Hamilton’s socialite peers recently and I’d noticed other parents in their set doing the same thing.

  The disengagement might not have come from a place of malice, but it was added pressure on people like me, people who had to herd kids in and out of sight according to often invisible cues. I didn’t relish the challenge. Getting Phoenix to eat all his greens was a trial when he wasn’t being scrutinized by strangers.

  No wonder Zara doesn’t talk, I thought as I clomped down the stairs and all but threw myself at the front door. “Hello,” I greeted, panting for breath as I slid Riley’s stolen lipstick into my pocket. As formless and cheap as they were, at least my clothes had pockets. I was all about practicality. “Please, come in. Mrs. Hamilton will be right down—”

  It was as if someone had seized me by the throat, grip fierce and brutal, strangling me into abrupt silence.

  There were three people standing outside the Hamiltons’ front door—two of them were very blonde and somewhat Nordic in their features. The sight of them alone made me shiver, although their smiles were big and broad, and nothing about them excused my less than charitable first impression. The third one, curly-haired and clad in a leather jacket, was a different story. I didn’t see his face until he turned around and confirmed all of my most dreaded suspicions. I felt the breath leave my lungs in a near-painful rush.

  “Terry, Jana!” Mr. Hamilton’s voice snapped me from my sudden torpor. I backed out of the way as the two women filed into the foyer. Mr. Hamilton kissed their cheeks, European-style, something I only noticed from the corner of my eye.

  I was too busy staring at the Hamiltons’ other guest, the one with the motorcycle helmet in hand and the well-worn leather jacket. I would’ve recognized those eyes anywhere, though the last time I’d seen them, I’d been tiptoeing my way out of his hotel room with my shoes in one hand and my tattered pride in the other.

  “Elliot!” Mrs. Hamilton purred as she slowly descended the stairs. She was a vision in turquoise, her pale neck adorned with a string of Tahitian pearls. I felt chronically underdressed by contrast, which wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t glanced back right at that moment to discover that Elliot was watching me and not Mrs. Hamilton.

  Did he remember me? Did he care? I assumed he must have slept with more than one undergrad in his day and I didn’t think I’d been that memorable. What he’d been to me was another story and not one I felt comfortable recalling with so many people around me.

  If not for my olive complexion, I was sure I would have been rosy-cheeked and obvious in my mortification.

  “This is Miriam,” Mr. Hamilton introduced, clearly attempting to be modern and relaxed about the help. “She’s our nanny.”
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  “Oh, how wonderful,” said one of the two blondes. I couldn’t tell if she was mocking me or my position. Or perhaps she was genuinely pleased that the Hamiltons had finally found someone willing to stay on. I, and my addled mind, honestly couldn’t tell.

  The woman who’d spoken had just a hint of an accent, but to my untrained ears it sounded more like French than Swedish. “It’s nice to meet you.” She squeezed my hand in her broader palm. She introduced herself as Theresa-but-everyone-calls-me-Terry. “And this is my partner, Jana—”

  The other blonde beamed a wide smile as we shook hands. She was about a head shorter than Terry, and the pea-size diamond on her nose ring caught the light. I had no doubt that it was the real deal. The Hamiltons didn’t associate with people who couldn’t afford actual gems.

  “That sad echo of Sonny Barger over there is Elliot McFarland,” Terry went on. “He writes very odd books, though he purports to be a literature professor in his spare time…” To hear her say it, Terry didn’t think much of this dual career. She laughed when Elliot fixed her with a smoldering glare. Mr. Hamilton chuckled along, if slightly awkwardly.

  I couldn’t find anything to say other than ‘I know’ to the latter and ‘What kind of books?’ to the former, so in the end I kept my mouth shut and locked my knees for fear of crumbling to the floor in a puddle of adolescent delight.

  Elliot held out his hand and I thought of how he had asked me to use his belt to tie his wrists to the headboard, how the bed had creaked under us as we moved together. My mouth was dry, my heart pounding a hundred miles an hour against my ribs. I touched my hand to his gingerly, too hesitant to shake it properly and far too aware of several pairs of eyes on me as I did so. Though I tried to ignore it, a zing of electricity arced through me at the contact. I pulled away quickly.

  “Miriam,” he murmured, and I remembered the warm cadences of his voice as he’d pressed his wet tongue to my cunt, his neck craning away from the pillows when I’d knelt above him. I remembered him.

  My college indiscretion.