Desmond Chapin opened his door to a spare, plainly dressed woman of about forty, nose tilted, reddish hair in a strict bun. “Miss . . .”
“Valerie Gordon,” she said.
“The new nanny.”
“Well . . . If we all suit each other.” She had a faint Canadian accent.
“You remind me of somebody,” Desmond said, escorting her into the living room. When Val did not respond, he plunged on anyway. “Mary Poppins?”
She shook her head. “I’m not like Mary Poppins. I’m sometimes fanciful, but I don’t work magic. I like courtesy, but I don’t care about manners.”
This was Val’s first interview in the nanny line and she considered it a rehearsal. She had no references other than clerical. After shaking hands with Deborah Chapin, she said hello to the four-year-old twin boys. They grinned and giggled.
“I have a special rapport with twins,” she dared to say to the boys. “You see, I am . . .”
But they were already running out to play in the fenced-in backyard.
Desmond asked why she was leaving office work. Too repetitive, after twenty-odd years, she told him—too penitential. Yes, she could manage simple housekeeping; yes, prepare simple dinners on occasion; yes, mending. “Simple mending,” she clarified.
Deborah wrote down the names of Val’s references, office managers all.
Desmond said: “I am puzzling the difference between courtesy and manners.”
“Oh . . . one is innate, the other learned.”
Val left the rehearsal. She guessed that Deborah had been writing with invisible ink. But the next day a telephone offer came—“though we would be even happier,” Deborah said, “if you’d live with us, and the salary would be the same. Would you reconsider?”
“I won’t live in, sorry.”
Sigh. “We want you anyway.”
Val’s new career began.
The Chapins gave her a car with two child boosters and told her she should consider it hers. She used it sometimes, though most of her outings with the boys were by bus, trolley, or subway, or on foot. And since her flat didn’t have a parking space she kept the car at the Chapins’ and walked back and forth to work. If the Chapins asked her to babysit at night, she left without escort at the end of the evening, ignoring Desmond’s doomsaying. “I know this is safe old Godolphin, the most dangerous things here are the oak-leaf skeletonizers, still,
Val . . . it would take just a minute to drive you.” But each time she said no, strode down the path, turned her head at the gate, and gave him an impish smile perfected long ago. He probably couldn’t see it. She tramped home without mishap.
Photo by iStockphoto / dontcut
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