11. Nova
11
NOVA
B ryan’s mother was a piece of work. I didn’t believe people like her really exist, having only seen characters like her on television and in the movies. But there she had been, standing in that kitchen, large as life and as snobby as she could be. She had no idea who I was or what my background was. All she cared about was that I was the hired help, and her granddaughter wasn’t supposed to speak to the help.
Instead of delivering dinner like some kind of waitress, I served it family style. I set the table with plates and cutlery. And then I put all of the food into serving dishes so they could plate their own food. I would probably get a talking to about my methods, but I was the cook, and now the nanny. I wasn’t some parlor maid to stand by and ladle a serving of rice for the cranky old lady.
Amelia squirmed in her seat, and from the furtive glances she kept sending my way, I got the impression that she had been told not to speak to me. As I placed the tureen with the artichoke chicken in the center of the table, Bryan murmured a soft, “Thank you.” He even caught my hand and gave it a squeeze while his mother was helping Amelia put food on her plate.
I would have been fuming if Bryan’s flirting hadn’t caught me off guard. Now my emotions waffled back and forth between outrage on Amelia’s behalf to remembering how that man had made my skin feel when he touched me. This was a dangerous house for me to be in. I was going to get into trouble one way or another by opening my big mouth to speak up and defend that child, or by saying something a little too scandalous to Bryan.
I stared at my hand for a long moment before I realized that washing it while I cleaned up would not remove the memory of his fingers hooking mine or the soft, reassuring pressure. With Amelia’s assistance earlier, I had not been cleaning as I worked, and the kitchen was a disaster. There was the cooking mess on one side of the room and the crafting mess on the other.
I staged the dishes first and cleaned off the counters. As soon as dinner was finished, I would be able to get that part of my work completed and set the dishwasher to run.
I stood with my hands on my hips and looked over the mess Amelia and I had made when it came to creating our decorations. I hadn’t had that much fun in a long time. I taught kids how to fold and cut out paper snowflakes, but this was the first time in a long time that I let myself enjoy doing it. I didn’t have to monitor every child to make sure no one was cutting someone else’s hair or to make sure that the child will demonstrate manual dexterity through use of safety scissors, while also listening to scientific facts regarding water crystals. Lesson plans and the precise language for documenting them took all the fun out of hiding the science lesson that no two snowflakes are the same in an arts and crafts project.
I decided not to clean up our little arts and crafts area. We were only going to make a big mess again tomorrow. The best I could tell is they either came in very late at night, or they swept in early in the morning and hit the kitchen first before working in the rest of the house so that I never saw them.
Assuming they came in every night, I left a little note saying, Please don’t clean up our mess. We will take care of it when we are done. Thank you . And signed my name. I also left a plate of cookies and included them on the note. I hoped six were enough. I didn’t want to seem stingy, but I also didn’t want to overburden a single person with too many treats.
In the morning, the garbage fairies had come and taken the garbage away again. I don’t know why that tickled me so much. Maybe because I spent most of my preteen and teenage years taking the garbage out from my parents’ house. It was a thankless job, a stinky job, but somebody had to do it, and so I was very grateful that it wasn’t me.
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” I said as Amelia came into the kitchen.
She was still in her nightgown and had a chokehold on her stuffed animal, Humphrey. Her hair was a complete mess. Not that her hair hadn’t been messy before, but she had managed to get herself dressed, and I had a sneaking suspicion that Bryan helped her to get ready, whether or not he admitted it. He seemed like he wanted to be a good father. He also seemed very overwhelmed.
“Are you my friend, Nova?” Amelia asked. She sounded very sad.
I swept around the counter and swung her up into my arms. “Yes, of course, I’m your friend, but your grandmother barely met me last night, right?”
Amelia nodded.
“She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know that I can be your friend and still be paid to cook for you.”
My words weren’t getting through her sadness. Her grandmother’s words had delivered a hard blow.
“I talked to your daddy last night.”
“You did?”
“I did. And you know what he said? He said that we can go ahead and decorate the rest of the house.”
Amelia’s eyes immediately lit up. “We can?” Her mood lifted with the thought of Christmas decorations.
“Yes, we can. As soon as you get dressed and come back and have breakfast, we can start working on finishing up those paper chains and popcorn garlands that we didn’t finish yesterday because I had to make a fancy dinner.” I set her down, expecting her to scamper back to her room to get dressed.
“You didn’t know Grandmother was coming,” Amelia said.
“I found out when you found out, remember? Your daddy came in and told us.”
She nodded. She rubbed her little fist against her big, dark eyes and yawned. What time had they put her to bed last night?
“Go get dressed and come right back,” I told Amelia.
She nodded and plodded on very tired feet out of the kitchen.
By the time Amelia bounced back into the kitchen, she seemed like her old self, full of energy and giggles.
“Do you have any Christmas decorations we could add to these?” I asked, thinking that somewhere in an attic or storeroom, there had to be a collection of fancy glass ornaments and colorful twinkle lights that we could add to our collection.
Amelia shook her head. “We don’t decorate for Christmas.”
“You don’t? Do you mean you have people come in and do the decorating for you?” I asked, trying to get clarification.
“Grandmother does that. We do not.”
I noticed the pattern of her speech was very much like the first time I met her, and I recognized that was her grandmother’s influence.
“So you don’t have decorations around here?”
She pointed at the pile of what we had been working on. I realized that she might not even know whether they had decorations in storage. She was a kid. I should ask Bryan. Or, we could go buy some new ones.
“What should we decorate first?” I asked.
“Can we buy one of those giant blow up—” she started.
“Whoa, kid.” I put my hands up, stopping her. “I think we need to keep it a little more low-key than that. You said you don’t ever decorate at Christmas. If your daddy isn’t used to a lot of bright, colorful decorations around, we should probably start small, get him used to having pretty, sparkly things around.”
She gave me a thoughtful nod. “And if we overwhelm him and get things that are too loud and too bright, too colorful, he might become overstimulated,” she said understandingly.
She was a smart kid, and it was clear that she understood that sometimes things could be too much to deal with. But those were big words coming out of her mouth.
“Are those words Miss Brennan uses at school?” I asked.
Amelia nodded. “Charles can get overstimulated.” She pronounced each syllable very carefully. “We have to be careful with him.”
“Is that a little boy in your class?”
She nodded.
“We don’t want your father to become overstimulated, do we?”
She shook her head. “Charles is not happy when that happens. Nobody is happy when that happens,” she said with a little eye roll.
“We want to make sure your daddy is happy,” I said. “He doesn’t seem to like Christmas, does he?” I whispered conspiratorially. I was being nosy and wanted to know why they didn’t decorate.
Amelia shrugged. “That’s when my mother left us.”
“Oh, I understand.” I didn’t understand at all, but I wasn’t gonna push. I was willing to listen if she was going to talk. Immediately, I felt as if I had already crossed a line by pushing some kind of holiday agenda when it was obviously a sore spot for their family.
“Why don’t we go measure the stairs and see if we have enough popcorn garlands?” I suggested, grabbing a roll of ribbon and a pair of scissors.
“That sounds like a very good idea.”
I stood at the bottom of the stairs and handed Amelia the roll of ribbon. “Now you hold on to this and I’m going to go up the stairs, and we’ll see how far we go before the ribbon runs out.”
This measuring game seemed to tickle Amelia greatly, and she could not stop giggling.
“What’s all this racket?” Bryan said as he stepped out of his office.
I gasped, not realizing that we were next to his office. “Sorry, sorry,” I said.
“We’re measuring for decorations, Daddy,” Amelia said as she stayed in place and bounced as I held the end of a ribbon halfway up the stairs.
“Why don’t you use a tape measure?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t have one,” I admitted.
“Good point. Where were you thinking about putting the tree?” he asked.
Amelia let go of the spindle of ribbon and squealed with delight as she launched herself at her father. “Can we get a Christmas tree? Can we really, really? Can we?” Amelia danced around in her excitement.
The smile he gave his daughter warmed my heart.
“I think that would be good this year. We can have a Christmas tree.” He looked up at me and asked, “How do we get one?”
I couldn’t help but laugh.