You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again: The True Adventures of a Hollywood Nanny (26 page)

“ ‘Michael, I
didn’t
order it,’ Judy attempted to explain.

“ ‘Well then who sent this?’ Michael demanded.

“ ‘I suppose they’re going to charge us for this now,’ Judy grumbled.

“ ‘Call them and tell them to pick it up,’ Michael ordered.

“Judy picks up the phone and punches the button for the front desk. ‘Hello. This is Mrs. Ovitz in room 77. Would you please send someone to pick up the rolling cart that was just delivered to our room? We didn’t order any fruit, and we can’t be expected to pay for it.’

“Silence as she listened for a minute.

“ ‘What’s that? Oh, I see … the … the manager did. Oh … with the suite. Well then. Okay. Just leave it, and tell the manager thank you. And uh … you have a nice evening as well.’ ”

“Turns out our suites are so flippin’ expensive, it’s standard to get this assortment of goodies as a gift every other day.”

“Yeah, we do, too. Do you believe the service in this place? It’s gonna be a blast!”

Right.

Maybe
she
would have a blast.

I did have a gorgeous two-bedroom suite adjacent to the main hotel building. Amanda and Joshua shared one bedroom and Brandon and I the other. We were on the ground floor. Everyone else was in the hotel proper, I guess. I never did get a chance to see anyone else’s room.

“Bet you never dreamed you’d have your own hotel suite in Hawaii,” Michael’s brother commented one day as he breezed by.

Yes, it sure is unbelievable!
I wanted to say. It’s great to have a convenient spot for everyone to drop off a wallet, grab a towel, or make a phone call. Sunscreen? Have at it. Flip-flops? Sure, just root around in the pile of them there. Don’t worry about my privacy—it’s much easier to let yourself in through the patio rather than go around and knock on the front door. Yes, it’s really quite something having my own suite in Hawaii!

One morning the phone rang while I was shooing out several non-Ovitz kids. Brandon felt feverish, so I wanted to settle him into a nap.
Amanda sat grumpily in front of the TV, complaining that I’d turned down her
Sleeping Beauty
video too low. I was tempted to just let the phone ring, but I picked it up.

“Suzy, is Michael in your room?” Sarah sounded tense.

“Good guess. I had a crowd of ten here a few minutes ago, but no, he isn’t here now.”

“There’s a message for him. I called his suite but didn’t get an answer.”

“Okay, I can take a message,” I said, transferring Brandon to my other arm while I grabbed for a pen.

“No, Suzy, the client wanted to leave it in his own words so Michael would get it straight. He made me write it down verbatim,” Sarah explained. “Listen to this.”

“Wait, do I have to write this down exactly?”

“I’m sorry, yes.”

“Shoot,” I said. Brandon was whimpering now, and I just wanted to hurry up so I could go take his temperature.

“Okay, here goes: ‘Michael, I can’t believe you’re on vacation again!’ ” Sarah began. “ ‘Isn’t this the third one this year? That must be nice.’ ”

“Sarah, am I supposed to be infusing the anger and sarcasm into the phone message?”

“No, just keep writing. ‘Damn it, did you get the FedEx package? I want to know what’s in that contract,
now
. What the hell is going on there? This is the last time I put up with this horseshit. You tell me you’ve got this handled—handle it! Call me back
immediately.’ ”

“Okay, I got it; now what do you want me to do?”

“Wait, Suzy, Jay wants to talk to you. We were both here when we got the message.”

“Hi, Suzy, you have got to make sure he gets this right away,” Jay said breathlessly. “I promised Redford I’d deliver the message.”

“When did he call?” I asked.

“A few minutes ago. Can you find Michael right away?”

“Yes, sir, I will. You gotta love this work, don’t you, Jay?” I laughed.

The adults were down at the beach. Great. Amanda hated the hot sand on her feet, and I couldn’t leave her in the room alone. I slung Brandon on one hip, wiggled Amanda into my other arm, and we
waddled slowly down to the shore. As soon as I gave him the message, Michael went bounding back to the room ahead of us. I told Judy what had happened, and she said, “Oh, Bob. He is the worst, just the worst,” shaking her head in disgust.

I told Judy I thought Brandon was coming down with something. I then casually tried to encourage Amanda to stay on the beach with her mother, so Amanda wouldn’t catch whatever Brandon was coming down with. But she insisted that she wanted to finish watching
Sleeping Beauty
.

When we finally made it back to the room, Michael was spread out on my bed with the phone to his ear. Sarah was patching him through to Redford. I tried to usher Amanda back out the door to the patio, but she began to wail. Michael had been leaning back against the headboard, but now he was leaning forward to brush sand off his legs onto the floor.

Was he motioning to me to keep her quiet? That’s what it looked like, but that couldn’t be it. He had to know there was no way I could control the noise level in the room. I tried to coax Amanda outside again, but she just started to fuss more, and then Brandon chimed in.
No, that’s not good; reverse course
. Poor Brandon started to lunge out of my arms for his crib. Wow. He really must not be feeling well if he wants to get in his crib. I had to let him lie down.

By now Michael had evidently reached “Bob.” He threw himself back onto the pillows and launched into high-voltage appeasing mode. Oh no. He was going to need his full concentration for this. Amanda kept crying. She wanted to finish her
Sleeping Beauty
video,
right now
. I told her I would read a book to her quietly, but she insisted we sit on the bed to start the story. Nothing was working!
Please don’t have a tantrum. Please don’t have a tantrum
, I prayed. Then I remembered my gum-drops. I desperately searched through my bag for them to use as a mouth-stopper. She took the bait. I jiggled Brandon a little in his crib and discreetly tried to see if Michael was distracted by the ruckus. Although of course I was desperately curious and listening as hard as I could.

I leaned down to Amanda, whispering and crooning. We perched as
far away from her father as we could and still be on the bed, and then I started the story.

“I promise as soon as Daddy’s done talking, we will start the movie again,” I said, smoothing her hair. “Thank you for being so quiet, sweetheart.”
Positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement; don’t have a tantrum, don’t have a tantrum
.

Finally Michael wound up his business with a smile, laughing and promising Redford that he’d be in touch again soon. Then he jumped up off the mattress and smoothed down the comforter. “Thank you, Suzy,” he said. “I appreciate all your efforts; thanks for keeping the kids quiet.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding in.

“Why did you bring that jacket?” Judy asked Joshua one night as we got in the van to go to dinner. “You’re not going to need it.”

He reluctantly toted a light windbreaker.

“ ’Cause Suzy
made
me,” Josh said sarcastically, sticking his tongue out at me.

Judy didn’t turn around. She just shook her head, like she was trying to repel a mosquito. “I doubt you’re going to need it. It’s eighty-five degrees out.”

“I know, but she
maaade
me.” He flipped around in his seat and made another face at me. How nice. A bonding moment for mother and child as they shared a snort of scorn at the expense of the “weather-forecasting-impaired nanny.”

It wasn’t like I asked him to bring a
snow parka
. How was I supposed to know it never cooled down in Hawaii? I’d never been here before. And now that I was here, I’d hardly left the hotel room.

It only got worse. Brandon threw up in my egg drop soup at dinner, and that was curtains for the two of us. I stayed up most of the night trying to soothe him. Eventually I ordered in room service, the highlight of my trip so far. A completely delicious and interruption-free meal. Poor miserable Brandon never did improve much. He was beset with diarrhea and attacks of vomiting the rest of the trip, and I was beset with record numbers of diapers and dirty laundry.

The following night, after finally settling down to sleep, I woke up,
startled, at two or three in the morning. I froze under the covers, sensing someone in the room other than the kids and myself. I was disoriented, but the scent of Fendi perfume tickled the air, and my gut said it wasn’t a burglar. Turning very slowly under the covers, I peeked out, and there, lying next to me, was a blond woman, sound asleep.
Judy! What the hell was she doing in here?
A hundred thoughts raced through my mind. Had she gotten drunk and gone to the wrong room? Did she feel terrible for the way she’d been treating me and wanted to apologize to me after all these months? Oooh, maybe. Oh. Or maybe she and Michael got into a fight. That had to be it. It made perfect sense. I mean, she’d had to use her key to our room to get in, so I doubted it was a mistake. I feigned sleep when she beat a hasty retreat at dawn, and neither of us ever brought it up.

On the return trip, we had to go through customs, or at least it seemed like customs. Since we weren’t in a foreign country, it couldn’t have been. Maybe it had something to do with gypsy moths trying to hitchhike in on fruit? The fact that I don’t remember what they were looking for shows how tired I was. Everyone was already cranky, though I don’t know how you can spend eight days in paradise and end up cranky. Unless your trip consisted of one outing to the beach and one dip in the pool and the rest of your stay in a hotel room.

Out of our army of first-class passengers, I was the first one in line, with Brandon in the stroller. Judy and Michael stood behind me, about ten people back. The inspector rummaged through my things, looking for contraband. The wait was interminable. Would it never be over?

“What the hell is the holdup?” Mr. Checchi asked, loud enough for everyone in the airport to hear.

Oops. Me. I had put two apples in my backpack for the kids to snack on. Once those strident inspectors found the illegal fruit, they had to fill out a report and confiscate it. Then they grilled me for another fifteen minutes about any marijuana, food, or plants I might have. Of course, Michael marched up to the head of the line to see what all the ruckus was. I was mortified.

As we were boarding the plane, I overheard Judy asking Michael what had been the problem. “Oh, one of the kids had put an apple in
one of the bags,” he explained. I remained silent, fussing over the baby. Thank God he thought it was the kids’ fault and not mine.

On the plane ride back, I broke open my backpack, looking for something to read. I had forgotten that I’d brought the latest nanny newsletter. The headline on a front-page article read
TRAVELING WITH MARY POPPINS: NEGOTIATING THE ROAD WITH CAREGIVER IN TOW
.

Caregiver in tow? That’s just about how I felt: I was a flatbed trailer, and they were cranking the winch to load me up with a minivan full of kids. I read on. “To many, bringing a nanny on family journeys would be antithetical to the notion of quality family time. Increasingly, however, many parents are finding a pair of extra hands the best excess baggage they can bring.”

Excess baggage was right. I felt like an old dented Samsonite.

The brief positive attitude I’d had when thinking of my four days off had vanished. Shortly after the trip, my mother called. “Did you have a good time on your vacation, honey?” she asked innocently. “Did you stay in a fancy hotel?”

“I have just spent a long week with a group of people who never appreciate all that they are fortunate enough to have,” I snapped, feeling my blood pressure rise. “They make everything an ordeal and hardly ever smile, even when they’re sitting in the lap of luxury, surrounded by paradise. There was absolutely nothing about it that was enjoyable.”

Undaunted, my mom mentioned that her friend Earleine had said, “Wow, Suzy sure has it good with all the trips she goes on. Sure must be rough being paid to travel all over.”

“Mom, why don’t you give her a rundown?” I yelled. “I pack up all the kids and get criticized for what I choose to pack. I travel with a family that never experiences any joy. Everything in their life is a hassle to them. Everyone they encounter is out to screw them over. The kids are crabbier when we’re in paradise than when we’re at home, since they don’t have all the stuff they require to be entertained. When they’re around their parents, they treat me like crap. And they can get away with it. I never know exactly what to do. I just know they expect me to know what to do.”

Venting felt good. Nice mom that she is, she continued to listen to my tirade.

“I’ve got Judy asking me why Brandon still takes two naps while I am trying to inform her of her youngest son’s sleep schedule. I have the nanny from the other family snapping back, ‘You don’t
even know
how many naps your own son takes?’ It’s all just splendid,” I said, shrieking by this point. “Add to that, I’m with two miserable adults who don’t enjoy each other’s company. Oh, I’m living inside a fairy tale all right. Just like good ole Cinderella after she married the prince and lived happily ever after.”