(Isabel had never really settled on a job title for her, instead always referring to her as “Lily, who keeps the train on the tracks,” whenever her name was mentioned in discussions of logistics with other moms.)
But Lily loved the twins so much that she’d postponed the natural conclusion to her time with the D’Amico family, removed the word “temporary” from her inner monologue. She’d been here long enough that she allowed herself to take pride in them as if she were responsible for the fact that they weren’t like other little boys. Which, quite frankly, they weren’t. This was a truth she often had to remind herself to keep internal, when she was sitting with the other nannies on the corrugated metal bleachers at the elementary school. She’d watch the other children eating grass, scratching and pawing at one another and throwing elbows like barbarians. While her twins stood together in close conference like two little robber barons, heads cocked to one side, considering the soccer field in front of them as if puzzled by all the ways it diverged from whatever they’d rather be doing. They looked so thoughtful out there, so peaceful and old.
She did try to remember not to brag about them to the other nannies, though. You aren’t supposed to take the credit for children you’re paid to nurture; no one wants to see you form a true, unshakable bond with the angelic offspring of the man who signs your checks. The most jealous ones, actually, were usually the older nannies, the women born in Guatemala or Jamaica or the D.R. rather than on a safe, if unglamorous, block at the south end of Carroll Gardens. They couldn’t stand the fact that Lily, so much younger than they were, so inexperienced when she’d been given the job and already so spoiled by an Ivy League degree, was so good at it. Took it so seriously.
She shut off the faucet and turned back to the table, leaning uncomfortably against the center island, the dishwasher buttons poking her lower back. Her phone erupted on the counter. She grabbed it, ignored it, and put it in the back pocket of her jeans.
Why couldn’t it be research? That was the other thing all the men hassling her about this never wanted to hear, not even her old adviser. She wanted to work with children at some future stage. If she was considering a Ph.D. in East Asian History, would anyone argue against her spending five years, whatever, maybe even six or seven, in Japan? Would anyone criticize her for waiting to apply until she was fluent in the language, the people, all of it? No. The answer was no. But because her research meant caring for children, somehow she was stalling, putting her life on hold. Somehow it was unserious.
And what about the boys, their lives?
She’d been plucked out of the city by Isabel only a month after graduation. Her thesis adviser had insisted she call this woman he knew a little bit, this was a Wall Street CEO’s wife, for God’s sake, Lily’s loans would be paid off within a few years and she’d be making more than she could make as a paralegal. Every trust-fund-baby Lit major at the school had heard the rumor about this job and was clamoring for it, but he would give her a personal introduction to the family. And so she’d given him a résumé that was polished to the point of fiction and waited for the call from Isabel’s then-assistant, a creamy-cheeked redhead who had blinked compulsively and conducted Lily’s entire interview, practically, in a frantic whisper, inspiring Lily to do the same for at least the first few months she’d lived out here.
She smiled now, remembering the constant seasickness of those early days, never quite knowing her role. But she’d picked it up; she’d followed Isabel’s cues. She had a lifetime of experience as a mimic, after all, as the scholarship kid, as the girl surrounded by other girls who had grown up with more. It was that ear that helped her pick up the inflections of the other girls in her dorm freshman year, their specific emphases. How they had to live like paupers because they literally had like fifty dollars to their name right now, because they’d blown through more than a hundred dollars at an open bar, for fuck’s sake. And they couldn’t go to their dad, not again, to ask if he could do the deposit early this time, before the first of the month, please, Daddy. Just this once. I’ve learned my lesson. I swear.
By the end of that first year of college, though, Lily had realized that the best thing she could do with her ability to sound like them was to turn it on its head. It felt like she could only disguise her own marvel at these girls, their exotic, careless lives, by playing up the very things that they found exotic in her. They’d chosen Columbia, often, for the city. It had been a choice. To them, she was interesting by virtue of her lifelong residence there. They’d come from mansions in Holmby Hills or Rye or the North Shore, and they just assumed she knew all the byways and shortcuts to the city. So, she embellished. She invented middle school muggings, drug deals in Prospect Park, older men who took her to loft parties in Williamsburg before Williamsburg was even a thing. She never again tried to sound like them.
And she was proud of the fact that her early Greenwich whisper, that early fear, only ever really returned now when visitors came to the house. It had always come back with vigor when Isabel’s father was around, the expansive Mr. Berkeley. He was the clear source of the twins’ sun-drenched gene, that look of having spent one’s early years crawling across some dappled croquet lawn in Rhode Island or Massachusetts or wherever it had been. Lily had only actually spoken with him a few times, though she’d often laundered his golf khakis and even more often prepared his breakfast. She’d never been able to keep from jumping, startled, when he cornered her in some upstairs hallway, his piercing eyes a milky blue, like a cloud-skimmed sky.
The boys looked more like Isabel’s side of the family, definitely. But when you saw them all together, the twins and their parents, something clicked. All of their mother’s light and beauty and yet none of the things that made her seem breakable, like some fragile glass bauble placed unwisely on a high shelf. The boys’ faces spread out broadly from their strong noses, their flushed cheeks, then gathered with animalistic intensity whenever they were busy with some task. And in those moments you saw Bob’s face floating over Luke’s or Matteo’s, like a menacing ghost.
Madison was different; Madison was her father’s coarse energy poured over ice. She was her mother’s goddess features, infused with her father’s ceaseless certainty that he was right.
The phone buzzed, again, in her back pocket. Lily dried her hands, took it out, silenced it, and left it on the counter. It was Jackson, again, she knew.