“I HAVE A MOM!” The scream is pure, unfiltered agony. “SHE HAS BLONDE HAIR AND SHE SMELLS LIKE FLOWERS AND SHE’S COMING BACK FOR ME AND YOU ARE NOT HER!”
She bolts for the kitchen. I’m on my feet, but my limbs feel leaden, trapped in the syrup of this slow-motion disaster. She returns instantly, her face a mask of tragic defiance, one hand hidden behind her back.
“Youaren’tmy mom,” she whispers to Patricia, the tremor in her voice more terrifying than the shout. “And you won’t ever be.”
Her arm swings forward in a short, violent arc. The egg—a large, brown one from the carton we’d left on the counter—flies across the space between them.
Time dilates. I see the trajectory, the slow spin, the inevitable conclusion. My hand reaches out, a futile gesture. Patricia’s eyes widen in dawning, surreal comprehension.
Thwack.
The impact is softer than you’d think, a damp, solid sound. The shell collapses against the fine wool of her navy blazer. For a suspended second, nothing happens. Then, a vivid sunburst of yolk and albumen blooms across her chest, a grotesque, dripping badge of honor. It oozes downward, clinging to the fabric.
Patricia gasps, a short, sharp intake of air. She looks down at the ruin of her blazer as if it’s a foreign object, something that cannot possibly be attached to her. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t move. She simply stares.
“Emma Irene!” The roar is out of me before I can stop it. But she is already in flight, a blur of strawberry apron and blonde ponytail. Her bedroom door slams with a force that reverberates through the floorboards, a period at the end of the sentence.
Silence, thick and sickly sweet with the smell of raw egg.
Patricia slowly raises her eyes from the devastation on her blazer to my face. Her expression is not one of anger, but of profound, almost clinical reassessment. The polished professionalism has evaporated, leaving behind a cold, clear understanding.
“I am… so sorry.” The apology is ashes in my mouth. I snatch a dish towel, thrust it toward her. “Here, let me—”
“It’s alright.” Her voice is eerily calm. She takes the towel, dabs once at the mess, and stops. The egg has already bonded with the wool. The gesture is pointless. “Really. It’s fine.”
“It’s not okay.” I run my hand through my hair. “She’s been struggling since her mother left, but that’s not an excuse. I’ll pay for the dry cleaning, of course, for the blazer—”
“Dr. Roussos.” She interrupts me, setting the soiled towel neatly on the coffee table, as if arranging evidence. “I don’t believe this will be a suitable arrangement.”
“Please, if you could just give me a moment to speak with her, this is not who she is—”
“I’m sure it’s not.” She stands, collecting her purse with a steady hand. Her gaze is direct, pitiful, and final. “She’s clearly dealing with significant trauma. She needs specialized support that I am not qualified to provide. I wish you both the very best in finding it.”
She moves toward the door with a dreadful, dignified composure. I follow, a condemned man escorting his executioner, still mouthing useless platitudes. “Thank you for your time. I’ll…I’ll send a check.”
A single, curt nod. Then she is gone, the door clicking shut with a sound of absolute finality.
I stand in the echo of her departure. From behind Emma’s door comes the muffled, heart-wrenching sound of her sobs—not of guilt, but of a grief so vast it has curdled into rage.
I’m out of strategies, out of hopeful narratives. I’m simply a father, alone in a hallway, with eggshell on the living room floor and the devastating understanding that love, in its most ferocious form, can look an awful lot like sabotage.
Seven interviews. Seven perfectly good nannies.
And I’m right back where I started.
Chapter 6
ANNIE
Our living room floor is an archipelago of newsprint, each section a new continent of desperation. I sit cross-legged in the middle of it, my knee a point of contact with Cori’s as she hunches over her own quadrant. The scent of sesame oil and fried starch from The Golden Dragon hangs in the air, a greasy perfume over the musty smell of old paper. An extra container of fried rice sits by the door, a peace offering for Ernie on our way back. I take a sip of flat, lukewarm Coke and circle an ad for a “Dynamo Executive Assistant to a Media Mogul.” The required qualifications include fluency in Mandarin and “five years in private aviation logistics.” I circle it anyway. The act of circling is a placebo, a ritual to ward off the panic that’s begun to hum like a bad electrical wire behind my sternum.
Marcus is out with Brett.Friendsflickers on the TV, a new show Cori and I have adopted like a shared nervous tic. We’ve become archivists of its brief history; when she’s at the ballet, I record each new episode on our temperamental VCR, fighting the inevitable tracking lines. Cori’s allegiance is to Phoebe, the feral mystic who speaks in koans. My loyalty lies with Rachel, the runaway bride in the Alaïa dress, for obvious reasons. I don’t just watch her; I study her. Her trajectory is a map I’m trying to read by torchlight. A bulletin board in my room is nowa collage of sartorial commandments ripped from magazines: Julia Roberts’s power shoulders, Naomi Campbell’s liquid grace, Kate Moss’s heroin-chic insouciance, Drew Barrymore’s grunge whimsy. And presiding over them all, Princess Diana, caught in paparazzi shots leaving a gym, wearing a crewneck and bike shorts—a look I’ve begun to emulate on damp October mornings, hoping the clothes might work a kind of sympathetic magic, transmitting not just style but a backbone.
Cori laughs at a Phoebe-ism on screen as I look down at my newspaper, and the numbers, which have become a silent, screaming refrain in my mind, rise to the surface.
Next month’s rent is a wolf at the door. The specter of Ernie—not as a joke, but as a prophecy—looms larger each day.
I’ve been to five interviews in the past two weeks. A receptionist position at a law firm where they asked if I knew how to use WordPerfect and I said “of course” even though I had no idea what that was. I didn’t get it. A retail job at a boutique in SoHo where the manager took one look at me and said I didn’t have enough “sales experience.” A waitressing position at a diner where I lasted exactly one training shift before I dropped an entire tray of plates and got sent home. An administrative assistant role at an ad agency where the guy interviewing me spent more time staring at my legs and chest than looking at my resume. I left halfway through.
