Kirstin Allio: Clothed, Female Figure: Stories

No, Ivy was not curious about my personal childhood. I understood immediately that she was taking the measure of my judgment of her as a working mother.

And, I suspected, she wanted to know what I knew about her daughter that she didn’t.

But I simply winked. “Do I have any choice but to be a feminist in this apartment?”

“Feminist!” She laughed. “It sounds so — the way you say it — May Day! Sputnik!” She hit the air with her fists for our relics.

To wink, in those days, was my constant habit, if not directly, then atmospherically, or at an imaginary bystander, my alter ego, off in a corner.

I winked again. Ivy looked around to see if Leah was in the doorway. No, Leah was fast asleep, the tape recorder resting on her pillow, tape like flypaper catching flecks of sound-dust, so that if she talked in her sleep she could listen to it in the morning.

Before my employment, Wendell had stayed home with Leah, sacrificing his art, but leaving plenty of time to meet the drop-off mothers at Leah’s school in the West Village who had just rolled out of bed and into those American blue jeans, pulpy and white at the knees and buttocks.

It was five flights up to Leah’s apartment at the top of the brownstone, and the stairs were made of solid black rubber. The walls were tiled, with a black border, and the lights were so dim I supposed they cost the landlord a negative number. Leah never touched the railing, descending or ascending, but pedaled in the air, or rather like a drum majorette marching to her own, hectic heartbeat. I had no difficulty imagining what she had been like as a baby: a root face, an early, succinct talker, a body like a tail, too thin, too expressive.

Just as I don’t have “favorites,” I would say that I never become “close” to a child or a family. I have always suspected it’s a work ethic left over from my previous profession; also, I prefer families who refrain from using intimacy as a means to wheedle extra hours. I prefer families who wish — and are cognizant of this wish themselves — to remain a rather closed unit, penetrated only by the specific terms of my contract.

And yet I would not characterize my particular style as “distant.” In fact I have been accused, in one mother’s fumbling manner, of “apocalyptic thinking,” and by another, giggly with reprobation, “your weather eye, Natasha.” Clearly, I’ve been, at times, overly concerned for the safety and well-being of my charges.

I stayed three years, until Leah’s parents separated. I had begun to notice that Ivy seemed not so sad as tired, and I admired that, I thought to myself, a mother refusing sadness. I knew that money was tight, in fact Leah had told me, with a child’s candor, and I suggested they didn’t need me. Ivy said I was very intuitive and gracious. With Ivy’s excellent letter of reference, I was able to find employment almost immediately with a family in Nyack.

It is true that over the years I thought of Leah. At first, it was practical: How would Ivy manage to take her to the museum class she loved so much on Wednesday evenings? Those lovely little leather sneakers — would they last through the season? Would she succeed in making friends with that laughing black girl at school she so admired? And once I even heard her voice, a rather comic announcement, “Whoever’s in charge of me pours my soy milk.” But then, of course, I had new sets of children to think about… and in my imagination the apartment between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues and my old, first apartment began to swirl together so that I had to think of both, or neither.

I certainly never keep records; in some cases I can’t even remember all of the names of the family members. If there were previous marriages, children in college who visited their little half-siblings over long autumnal weekends… In one case, well, I can picture his two-seater sports car and the wrinkles on the seat of his suit jacket, but I simply cannot remember the name of the father. Why spend so much time on him? Why not his children? The boy, Harrison, wore a fireman’s hat for a year, even — and I suppose especially — in the bathtub; the girl, Kimball, collected pandas.

In any case I don’t take solace looking back. I don’t take solace at all, and I take my coffee black, which is unusual for a nanny. Nannies are notorious for their sweet tooth, and while every Russian dreams of drinking coffee when he gets to America, he’s without fail stricken homesick and tea-addled upon arrival. I am the exception, in both groups I claim membership, to such material and sentimental happiness.

It was last Saturday when I heard my employer’s appraising step along the attic hallway that leads to the little room that comes with my paycheck. I have calculated how much is subtracted in “rent,” but in this suburban neighborhood it is difficult to compete with the stream of au pairs from Thailand who accept a salary that assumes caring for children is as breezy as summer camp. They are accustomed to summer camp — back home, twelve little siblings are waiting.

I rose to greet her. My defense, as always, is formality. My current employer is a female doctor. She is tall and forced to bow her neck beneath the attic roof, the suggestion being that her own house oppresses her. As a hobby, she figure skates, and I believe figure skating is her true nature. That it fails to bring her recognition…

“Oh, Natasha!” Her surprise at finding me in my own private corner was unconvincing. “Here’s this—” and she held out a rather bulky letter, laden with small stamps, as if someone had a tedious math assignment. I had the impulse to snatch it up, but it seemed essential that I measure my response: that it be equal, exactly, to my employer’s.

“Thank you, Virginia.” There was a pool of quiet around us.

“It’s so quiet up here,” said Virginia, taking a breath of air distilled by the attic. I remained expressionless. The envelope passed between us.

“Is Colin napping?” I inquired.

“A miracle,” said Virginia. I nodded as if to excuse her.

“Oh!” She paused to signal that what was coming was such an incidental request it had only just now occurred to her. “Would dinner at six be possible?”

My day off was always cut short. If I pressed, I could get an evening to make up for it during the week, but I rarely bothered.

“Or shortly before…” she added. She looked at me curiously. I was aware that it would have seemed more — normal — if I told her from whom I had received a letter. It was true: at this address, I had never before had mail.

Very calmly I walked over to my desk with the letter. Of course I had scanned the return address. A woman in my position can’t afford not to. I placed it on my desk and turned back to my employer.

She said, “Five forty-five-ish?” I nodded once, curtly.

Dear Natasha,

I’m writing you from college. Taking it for granted that you remember me, Leah Halloran? I would have written before but did you know that you are the invisible woman? I actually had to get a boy here to help me find you. He is the original computer geek, very sweet, will do anything because he is from Ohio.

My college is one of those Vermont enclaves that used to be all women, with a name that sounds like high tea in Britain, so that now it’s not so much co-ed as college for the sensitive . I’ve given myself away — sensitive. An artist like my dad. My mom is still the only one who makes an honest buck in the family. I rent a room off campus, in the town, perched over a manmade waterfall. I look across the dam at the abandoned mill buildings from the 1800s. Sometimes I take pictures of townies from my windows. You know, girls with laundromat hair who walk like fat babies? Kind of voyeuristic, but what am I supposed to do, snap shots of trees and historic cottages? I impressed my photography professor, anyway, who is British. Gavin. He gets a lot of washings out of that accent.