Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [129]
BETTINA
One Wednesday morning in early August, when I was interviewing the third nanny of the morning, the telephone rang. “Someone’s here to see you,” said Ricky, our doorman.
“Send her up,” I said, looking at my watch. If it was the fourth applicant, she was twenty minutes early, and if it was the first girl, the one who was supposed to have been here at nine, she was two hours late.
“She says she’d rather meet you in the lobby,” said Ricky. “It’s your . . . it’s Mrs. Croft.”
“Excuse me,” I said to the applicant currently perched on the couch. I’d already decided not to hire her. True, her French accent was lovely, and her references were solid, but anyone who’d show up for a job interview wearing jeans with the words HOT STUFF spelled out in sequins across the back pockets was not someone I would be employing to care for a child.
I stuck my head into the nursery to make sure the baby was asleep. Then I tucked the baby monitor into my pocket, told the chef and the maids where I was going, then pressed the button for the lobby.
India was waiting for me behind the doorman’s desk. “Hello,” I said, having rejected Well, look who’s here on the way down. She was casually dressed and she was tan, which infuriated me. I imagined her lying on a beach somewhere while I’d been handling the details of her husband’s funeral and her baby’s birth. “Did you have a nice vacation?”
She didn’t take the bait. “I had some thinking to do.”
I stood there, waiting, looking her over. If she was wearing makeup, I couldn’t tell. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, and her roots were badly in need of a touch-up. I saw an inch or two of drab dark brown at her scalp before her hair made the transition to glorious caramel bronze, and there were wiry silver hairs threaded through the brown. She wore jeans—probably they were the six-hundred-dollar kind they sold at Saks, but they were still jeans—and a plain short-sleeved T-shirt. No earrings, no jewelry at all, except for her wedding ring.
“I loved your father,” she said.
“Which is why you didn’t bother showing up for his funeral.”
India flinched. “I have a hard time with . . . well. I was having a hard time with all of it.”
“Oh, really? Because I thought it was a total picnic. Do you have any idea what I’ve been dealing with? Any idea at all?” I was shouting, I realized, and Ricky was staring, although he was trying not to, and so was my neighbor Mrs. Schneider, collecting her mail, with her little Yorkie riding in her purse. I took India’s arm—it was, possibly, the first time I’d touched her since a brief, obligatory hug at her wedding—and dragged her back toward the service entrance. There was no way I was letting her come upstairs.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She’d followed me willingly enough, and now she met my gaze steadily, not fidgeting or flinching. I wondered if she was on heavy-duty antidepressants, or if she’d spent the last few months sitting on a beach, hanging out in a sweat lodge, doing yoga. Maybe she’d met up with my mother in New Mexico, sampled some of the Baba’s offerings. That thought made me even angrier.
“You’re sorry. That’s great. That’s a big consolation. I got a call from your fertility clinic because your surrogate was freaking out. She hadn’t heard from you, nobody knew where you were, and, in case you were confused, having a baby is not like ordering a pizza, then deciding you’d rather have Chinese. You can’t just decide you don’t want it.”
“I know.” No ducking, no tears, no excuses . . . just that same strange, narcotized steadiness.