Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Diane realized, baffled by the similarity of the nannies (sweet and obsequious, but with proud remarks on how good they were with children, and lots of smiles and coos at Byron’s great bald head and unsmiling countenance), that the one essential fact, how well they could take care of an infant, was unknowable. Diane was haunted by the fear that once out of her sight, the nanny would watch soap operas all day, leaving Byron’s brain to rust from tears at sentimental melodrama.

Diane feared intellectual and physical neglect despite the consistent theme each woman voiced: that she would take Byron to the park every day the weather was nice, to the museum during the winter, to infant swimming classes, and so on. The woman with the invalid mother even claimed she had done Suzuki violin (a method of teaching two-year-olds how to play) with her last charge.

How to know? The references? That meant relying on the judgment of other women, who might be wrong or have lower standards.

The New York Times , as it had so often, rescued her with a snooty piece on nanny stealing. A reporter had sat with the nannies in Riverside Park and discovered that new mothers often spied on them, picked out the best, and stole them away from their current employers by offering more money. The story was disapproving, but Diane understood too well why those mothers did it and promptly took Byron to Washington Square Park with her notepad.

There were two children’s areas in the park, quarantined by chain-link fences from the drug dealers, the bums, the necking students, and the quarrelsome teenagers of Washington Square. The smaller of the two was for infants and early toddlers. Its sandbox was modest; mostly the place was for sitting with carriages and strollers. On the other side of the square the children’s area was four times larger. Besides having a much bigger sandbox, there were swings, slides, a climbing dome, a pole, and two wooden structures ideal for hiding, climbing, or sleeping — the last done not by the children, but by the homeless who, at night, scaled the four-foot fences and left in their wake a pungent odor.

Diane reasoned that to observe nannies with immobile babies was uninstructive, so she made for the more grown-up playground. There, at ten o’clock in the morning, she found few possibilities. Half of the caretakers present were the actual mothers. Two mothers came over to look at Byron, their faces glowing with affectionate memory, their questions amazingly precise. “Does he sleep through the night? Really? You’re so lucky. Janie’s four and she still doesn’t.” This mother, who seemed to laugh at every problem, to admit to being overwhelmed, was young, dressed in sloppy jeans and a wrinkled New York University T-shirt (the park was surrounded by that school; presumably she was a faculty wife); the other woman, although she seemed to be a friend of the cheerful incompetent (as were their daughters), was dressed casually, but in fashion: red Reebok sneakers, black tights, a loose white-and-red pin-striped oxford shirt, her haircut short on the sides, long in back, hinting at punkishness, but still arranged enough to allow entry to Lutèce. The fashionable mother made casual fun of her friend’s confessions that she couldn’t get her daughter to obey her at anything, and had definite opinions on every aspect of child rearing.

Diane told them she needed a housekeeper-nanny and asked if they knew of a good one. The fashionable mother seemed to distance herself immediately. Her back straightened, and a close-mouthed smile of uncomfortable formality appeared, as if she had donned a mask. The incompetent laughed, inexplicably, and said, nodding at her chic friend: “Karen’s got the best in the world. She even irons her husband’s underpants.” The comment wasn’t sarcastic, and Karen seemed to withdraw even more, as if she were mentally hastening home to lock up valuables. Diane asked Karen whether she worked (she already knew that the slob did not. “I’ve done nothing for four years but watch cartoons,” the woman had said at one point) and learned that Karen was an art director at Newstime , which meant she got Mondays off — hence her presence at the park.

Since there were few actual examples of hired child care to watch, Diane concentrated on interrogating Karen about her prize nanny, Pearl. To Diane’s surprise Pearl was described as a southern black who spoke with a heavy accent, was in her fifties, had an invalid mother and a grown daughter who lived with her, was hired without references, and never took Karen’s daughter to museums, Suzuki violin, infant swimming, or, indeed, any other activity than to the playground at Washington Square. “What makes her so great?” Diane asked finally.

“She loves Laura, my daughter.”

“Pearl carried Laura everywhere for a year,” the incompetent said, laughing again. “If it were up to Pearl, Laura might still be in her arms.”

Karen nodded. “She did the ironing, the vacuuming, everything, while holding on to Laura.”

“Weren’t you worried it would spoil your daughter?”

“It did, in some ways. But what would you rather worry about? Spoiling or neglect?”

“That’s true,” Diane conceded, but later, at home, she couldn’t fit the various sociological pieces of those two women and their notion of the perfect nanny into a coherent picture. She returned to the park the next day, in the afternoon this time, having learned that most children in the mornings were in day camps, or tumbling classes, or Suzuki violin, or any of a dozen other activities during the break between the end of the nursery school year and the start of Hampton vacations.

She spotted Pearl, the so-called best housekeeper-nanny, and her charge, Laura, right away. Laura was a self-possessed dark-haired girl who stood in front of Pearl delivering a self-centered speech about her friendships. Pearl smiled and nodded patiently through the talk. “Paula doesn’t want to play She-Ra in yard,” Laura said. “She doesn’t want to share the pretend. She only wants to play with me. That’s because I have better toys than Zoey. And Zoey always messes things up in yard.”

“All right,” Pearl said, nodding while she brushed off the little girl’s dress so unobtrusively the cleaning was almost subversive.

“It’s clean!” the little horror complained anyway, but she didn’t step away.

“I know it is. I’m sorry,” Pearl said penitently. “I’m always fussing, you know that.”

“Yeah, yeah, you fuss too much. It’s not good for you. You need to relax,” Laura added, and then skipped off without a good-bye.

Instead of being angry, Pearl laughed with delight and threw her head back, the white of her dentures bright against her golden brown skin. Diane’s concentration on Pearl caused their eyes to meet and Pearl cut off her laughter, even covered her mouth, self-consciously. “She’s right,” Pearl confessed. Then she noticed Byron. “Oh, a new baby!” she exclaimed. “How old’s he?”

“Three weeks.”

“He’s big! My, my. So big!” Her own big hands reached into the carriage. Pearl offered her fat index finger and Byron immediately closed his tiny white hand on it. She allowed him to pull the tip to his mouth, the soft lips closing, sucking. “Strong. Yes, yes, yes,” she said, and leaned over his carriage. “You’re a strong one.” Byron froze, his bold stare focused on her. It was the first person Diane had seen him truly notice besides herself. “Yes, little man, you’re strong. You hungry? You always hungry, right?”

Diane heard herself laugh. Her breasts were sore, one nipple had cracked — even when she wore a shield, his jawing hurt. “He sure is.”

“Well, you’re a big one, that’s why,” Pearl continued, her focus on Byron so complete the conversation seemed to be between them. Pearl gently pulled her finger back from his lips. “My hand’s not clean,” she whispered to Byron. “I been in the park messing with things. I’m dirty. My hands are dirty. Yes, yes, they are!” Pearl turned from him, her hand straying on his belly, a comforting paw. “He’s a beauty.”