Chapter Twenty-Three
The cabbie left Molly’s suitcase on the curb in front of a house with faded peace flags blowing on the porch, concrete pagodas in the yard, happy Buddhas plopped among ferns.
Molly sucked the last breath of cinnamon out of a spent piece of gum then spat it into the gutter.
She hoped the girl Brenda was home, hoped that she wouldn’t have to stay in some cheap hotel or the Y.
The place gave off hippie vibes, and the word “ashram” popped into Molly’s head.
She briefly considered the possibility that it was some kind of religious cult or sex cult.
It would be just her luck. If Brenda let her stay, this would be the fifth place she’d lived since she’d dropped out two years before.
She’d spent her last weekend at college getting drunk with that guy Chris, having sex in the top bunk of a double while his roommate slept below them.
Shelby was pissed at her for bailing, but after—no.
She hated even thinking about it. She’d called home and asked her dad to come get her.
So, the first place was back home. The dreaded farmhouse.
She spent over a year living there, babysitting for Maeve when she absolutely had to, working at the same florist where her mother had worked.
She dip-dyed white carnations in orange for homecoming, red for Valentine’s Day, green for Saint Paddy’s.
She made corsages and boutonnieres and wristlets and bouquets for confirmations and weddings.
She stuck it out through all the seasons—black fly, monster mosquito, tourist, brief autumn, deepening snow, through nor’easter season, stick and mud.
She made deliveries when she was forced to, though she hated driving.
Then her old friend Jonie walked into the shop.
Her hair was long and straight, pulled back in a plaid cloth headband.
The white collar of the polo shirt under her Colby College sweatshirt was tastefully upturned.
Molly endured her going on about how peachy everything was for her, how much she utterly adored college.
“Dean’s list every semester!” Jonie had barely gotten to the question mark about Molly and college when she stopped herself.
“Tell me that is not the same leather coat!” she chortled, pointing to the jacket draped over the swivel chair behind the counter. “You were obsessed with that thing!”
That afternoon, Molly saw a flyer in the grocery store.
Nancy’s Nannies. A nanny service that paired girls from Maine with families in Washington, DC, run by the wife of an environmental lobbyist. Molly called the number, jumped through all the hoops, and cleared all the screenings.
She chopped the last of the bleach blond off the ends of her natural red hair.
She bought a floral dress and sensible shoes for the full-body photograph she had to send in with her applications.
She did it all without telling anyone until she was placed.
Maeve had been the worst, of course. “You don’t even like kids!
” she’d said, and Molly had replied with the only reasonable response.
“No, Maeve. I don’t like your kids.” Her parents—ever hopeful—had driven her all the way to Boston to take the train.
House number two: A ten-year-old boy who hardly needed a nanny, and his sister, a seven-year-old, who definitely needed a psychiatrist. Molly had tried but, when the girl escaped the house for the third time, Molly was referred back to the agency like a poorly trained stray.
House number three: A lucky break. Fancy place in Chevy Chase, two attorney parents, doting grandparents who lived nearby, swimming pool, one adorable little boy who needed a European nanny, according to his mother, so he could learn French before he started preschool.
Molly had the gig for seven weeks between the time Inga returned to Denmark and Vivienne arrived from Paris. Good while it lasted.
House number four: Molly interviewed with Sideny (“Not Sidney,” she’d said politely.
“Sideny.”) and Charlie Grant together. They looked like models—her, Ralph Lauren, him, Banana Republic.
She was a political consultant. He was an economist bureaucrat.
They’d held hands. Their entire house, inside and out, was painted some shade of mint green.
All the wood was dark. Their two boys were adopted.
They had a beloved golden retriever called Walter.
They were lovely and perfect, and Molly couldn’t believe her luck.
They made Molly want to be lovely and perfect too.
Sideny traveled constantly for work, was on the inside track with an Arkansas governor planning a presidential run.
But then there was Charlie. Charlie snuck into her bedroom when the boys were sleeping and his wife was out of town.
The day Maeve called to tell Molly that Wendy was more than a friend, that Maeve and Sam were splitting up, that Maeve hoped Molly would be okay with all of it, that she’d told their mom and dad and “Molly, they were so cool about everything” was the same day Charlie told Molly that he had chlamydia and that Molly needed to go to the doctor, that he’d arranged for an appointment with a trusted friend, that she’d need to stay quiet about it all, of course, but that “this thing” between them couldn’t go on, that he’d need her to submit her resignation, but that he’d pay her “a severance” of course, but that Sideny couldn’t know, that she must never know, that “it could negatively affect her career, you see,” and then ripped up the first check he wrote to double the amount if she would please go to the doctor, get the pills, and be gone by the end of the week.
Molly was on a stiff course of penicillin when she pulled the rope that rang a gong somewhere inside house number five. Brenda, a “retired” nanny who Molly had met months before at one of Nancy’s mixers, opened the door. “Hey,” Molly said. “I need a place to crash.”
In the backyard, the soggy heat curling her hair like rollers, Molly broke down.
She told Brenda it was all a show—the Grants and their perfect marriage—how Saint Charlie would walk in at the end of the day, drop to his knees like he’d been rescued from a hostage situation so the boys could run into his arms. She told her how it all started with Charlie talking dirty into the baby monitor, how he’d forced her to give him head under their Christmas tree when Sideny was upstairs in the bath, about everything else that happened on the days when Sideny was out of the house.
Molly told her about the check in her purse but not about the diamond bracelet she’d stolen from Sideny’s jewelry box or about how she’d cut Charlie’s designer neckties in half.
She didn’t tell her about the STD. She didn’t confess her feelings, muddled as they were.
“First things first,” Brenda said. “You have a bank account, right? You need to turn that paper into money pronto. My dad was a gambler—high stakes poker—and his rule was, ‘Never trust an IOU. Not worth the paper it’s printed on.’ That’s all a check is.”
They walked to the bank, Molly fuming about Charlie all the way there and all the way back to the house, egged on by Brenda’s rage.
It felt good to talk, though it was hard to get a word in edgewise with Brenda.
“Jesus, what is wrong with this town? First Gary Hart, then Clarence Thomas. I’ll vote for Clinton, but man, I do not trust that guy.
Men are so gross. You’re like Anita Hill. This is harassment.”
In the common room, Brenda pulled down double-hung windows. “Open at night, closed in the day. That’s the worst thing about this house. No AC. Let’s go outside.”
Molly followed her through the kitchen lined with open shelves and mismatched plates and glasses. Brenda pulled a bottle of pink wine from the refrigerator.
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“Who cares! You deserve to get drunk after dealing with that pig.” She grabbed two jelly jars with her fingers, then pushed the screen door open with her hip.
Outside, Brenda went on and on about the Anita Hill hearings and how some group of congressmen—“Biden, Specter, Kennedy, and the rest”—looked like they were getting off on the spectacle of this young Black woman having to sit there while they questioned her integrity.
Molly had hardly paid any attention to the hearings and couldn’t keep up with Brenda’s rant. “Yeah,” she said, offering the only detail she knew. “I heard about that thing with the pube on the Coke can.”
Wendy scoffed. “Yeah, what was it that old fart said? ‘Are you a scorned woman, Miss Hill?’ Like I said, men are gross.”
Molly had not wanted this thing with Charlie, not at the beginning at least. But she liked the attention, the risk of playing with fire.
She’d daydreamed that their clean life was her own, that she could walk away from every mistake she’d made into a new life.
How had she tricked herself into thinking Charlie was a good guy?
That morning, he’d stood on the porch, holding a coffee cup, making sure she got into the taxi like it was carrying his bad rubbish away.
Scorned? Maybe. Used and stupid? Definitely.
Molly’s head was dizzy with wine and fury. “I am no Anita Hill.”
“You’re acting like only the most virtuous women can rightly claim abuse. Charlie had power over you. Simple as that. I don’t care how many people you’ve slept with. He had no right to do that. Honestly,” Brenda said. “Let’s call the agency. Right now. Tell Nancy what he did.”
“God no! That would be mortifying. And Sideny would eat me alive. She went to Wellesley. Like Hilary Clinton. She’s always talking about that.
I think that’s how she got on the campaign.
Plus, I mean, the money. He bought my silence, right?
That’s how it works.” At least I’m getting paid to keep my mouth shut this time. At least there’s that.