Returning from a tug boat trip around the pool, he swims up to me, saying, “I am so glad you convinced me to do this. I didn’t realize how much I needed it.” And when I watch them, it’s clear he’s already so much closer to Maeve, so much more her daddy and not just her guardian.
Something sexy about a good father, I’ll tell you that.
When Maeve starts to doze off in her ring, Corbin notices that it’s almost time for his call, so we head inside again.
I get her into dry clothes and into her crib, but she’s perked up a bit and babbles to herself in bed. While I wait for Maeve’s breathing to get regular, signaling that I have an hour or two of nap time, I check my email. There’s a continuation of yesterday’s roll call for who could make the Board of Directors meeting, but dropped into the middle of it is a message from the treasurer. She writes that it would be a good idea for all of us to keep our ears open for job opportunities. She says that the funds just aren’t there and she challenges anyone to dispel the rumor that the school’s air conditioning had broken and had to be replaced before we’d be clear to open. No one does.
My stomach is in knots and I feel angry. Briefly, I even recall Corbin joking that he’d shut down the school to keep me. He didn’t, right? He couldn’t. I don’t really think he would but I wish I had the guts to challenge him, to ask him to keep it open. Just get through the Board meeting, I think, See where we are then.
I’m responding to emails, brainstorming and trying to calm down the Voices of Doom on the list. A knock at my door startles me and I realize I’ve been at it almost an hour, completely forgetting to text Corbin.
He’s there when I open the door, smiling as happily as I’ve ever seen. “I just had a great idea!” he says.
“It must be, you look pretty pleased with yourself, c’mon in! Sorry I forgot to text you, I got wrapped up in school stuff.”
“No problem,” he says, sitting down on the loveseat. “I was making phone calls anyway. What would you say to going to the Adirondacks?”
“Um, I’d say ‘Why? When? What are you talking about?’”
“To camp!”
I shake my head. “Oh no, you are not dragging me off on one of these white people adventures where you give up a perfectly good bed to sleep on the ground. I am happy to hike and kayak and make a s’more, but at night I want to be well off the ground. And not in a hammock, either.”
Corbin laughs and says, “No, not that kind of camp. My family’s camp–it’s a…well, a compound, really. A bunch of cabins on the lake. We used to go every year, but lately it’s only been my folks and a sibling or two. I haven’t been in years. I’d told them I wouldn’t come this year, either, since I really just got out here and started work. But it turned out all three sisters could make it and I thought hey, this place really does run itself and I was having such a nice time with you and Maeve that I thought it would be nice to take a week, go up to New York, be with family like old times,” he takes a breath at last and adds, “and start new times.” His eyes are shining, he’s so excited by this idea, but I’m starting to feel sick. “So what do you say? I called Mom and Dad and told them I’d bring you along.”
I hesitate, wanting to choose my words carefully. “It…feels like a lot. I’m not sure I need to be there. You’d have all those extra people to help out with Maeve. I don’t think you’d need me.” I don’t say Actually, I think I’d rather face a firing line than to drop myself into your huge rich family so they can judge me and see if the waitress you picked up as a nanny is a fit replacement for the sainted dead mother. But that’s totally what I meant.
He takes my hand and pulls me onto the couch beside him. “But I want you with me. Things are more fun with you along. And I want them to meet you, to see how great you are.”
It is disarming to have a hot man tell you that you’re so great you should meet his family. But it doesn’t make it a less terrifying prospect. I decide to come clean, at least a little. “Corbin, the very idea of meeting your whole family at once, on their ground, scares the crap out of me.”
He nods. “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. But here’s the thing–they already think I screw everything up. So if you manage to keep from dropping Maeve into the jaws of a bear or feeding her rat poison, you’ll have exceeded their expectations. I’m the little brother. My sisters have their own kids to worry about, they barely even notice I’m there. Then, at night, you and I can go down to the dock and laugh about them behind their backs. It’s great fun, I promise.”
Okay, that part does sound fun.
“Say you’ll come,” he says in that way that powerful men have of making a request that sounds like an order.
I don’t know whether it’s his boss-man mojo or his infectious excitement or just that stupid need to please a new boyfriend, but I nod. “Okay. I’ll go. When?”
“Next week. We’ll get there on Sunday.”
We hear Maeve start to wake on the monitor. “You promise no sleeping in a bag on the ground, right?” I ask, standing up.
“I’ll make sure you get the best bed in our cabin.” He smiles. “It’ll be the one with me in it.”
“Presumptuous,” I say with a toss of my head as I open the door to the playroom.
“Your daddy is crazy,” I say to Maeve as I pick her up from the crib. “He’s lucky he’s cute.”
“I can hear you!” Corbin calls from the bedroom, but I knew that.
I change Maeve’s diaper and bring her into the playroom. I’m about to set her on the rug with her busy box when Corbin comes in, tapping at his phone.
“Sarah texted me and asked me to bring her old camp sweatshirt. She’s sending Zoe, her ten year old, to sleepaway camp for the first time and wants to give her the vintage Camp Wakota sweatshirt. She says it’s in the pink room.”
“The pink room?”
“Yeah, so your room is just called ‘the au pair suite’ but most of the other bedrooms are called by the color of the walls. I guess it was homier than just putting numbers on the doors so anyone could know what you were talking about. So there’s a Grey Room, a Green Room, and so on. Even when Elise came out here while I was on an India trip and ordered all new everything, she kept the room color the same. Sarah used to sleep in the Pink Room if we came out here. Guess she tucked her sweatshirt away some time in the late 80s and it was never seen again.”
He heads for the hall, so I set the box down and tag along with Maeve.
“Hey, how come I have to be ‘the nanny’ instead of ‘the au pair’?” I ask as we walk.
He waggles his eyebrows at me. “Because you are not a sylph-like young French girl with impeccable credentials, sent from the agency.”
I punch him.
“See? Babette would never hit me in front of the baby.” He grins at me and opens the door. Cad.
The Pink Room is well named. The walls are so pale that they’re nearly white, but the bedspread and that giant pile of throw pillows all the beds seem to have are shades of pink from shell to magenta. And, like all the other rooms I’ve seen, it is immaculate and unused.
Corbin heads for a white trunk with gold fittings and opens the lid. It’s full of carefully folded quilts and hand-knitted sweaters.
“Should I check the dresser drawers?” I ask, pulling one open. It’s empty.
“No, she said it’d be in the trunk. But so is every itchy sweater Nanna ever bought at a charity sale.” He’s moving things carefully, trying to keep them folded as he lifts them out.
“Shouldn’t they go to Goodwill or something if no one cares about them?”
“Probably. Although I don’t know who’d want them.” He turns toward me, unfurling a sweater. It’s a late-80s riot of color and pattern. It has…shoulder pads.
“Dear god, set that thing on fire.” I shield Maeve’s eyes with my hand and she cheerfully bites my thumb. “Don’t let the baby see that atrocity.”
Corbin laughs. “I don’t think anyone ever wore it. But I’m a guy, what do I
notice?” He pulls out an envelope and pictures flutter out. He picks one up and laughs. “I stand corrected.” He flashes it toward me and I see a washed out Polaroid of a thin woman with a blonde bob wearing the sweater. She looks as if she’s trying not to let it actually touch her. Like it’s an anaconda. “Mom, pretending to like her gift.”