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eliza is not the new au pair
ELIZA THOMPSON TAPPED LIGHTLY ON THE GAS PEDAL of her candy-apple red CLK convertible, zipping around the clunky gray station wagon that had been blocking her way. Didn't they know better than to putter down the Montauk Highway at five miles below the speed limit? She sighed happily as she cruised along, flashes of bright blue ocean in the distance peeking out through the trees, her rumbling engine the only noise disturbing the crisp June air.
Once she was safely past the offending family-mobile, Eliza patted the steering wheel and tightened the silk Hermes scarf holding back her long, platinum blond hair. With her Chloe sunglasses and her white halter dress, Eliza felt like she'd come straight out of the movie Casablanca. The dress was one of her own designs, inspired by the scene in which Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart explore the Parisian countryside in a convertible not so terribly unlike Eliza's own.
Eliza loved her new car, but it was also a reminder of how much
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things had changed--the car was a guilt present from her parents, who had separated earlier this year. Eliza was in the middle of a studio critique as a first-year student at Parsons when she got the news. She'd been so excited to present her vision for her fall collection: an elaborate fantasy of black satin baby-doll dresses and velvet capes, perfectly in step with the current gothic mood in fashion--but then her cell phone rang just as she was about to go up.
Eliza had flipped open her cell to the deafening roar of hair dryers--her mother was always at the salon--and then proceeded to listen as she rather candidly told Eliza that she was leaving Eliza's father for a much younger man. Her new trainer at the Reebok gym, to be precise. Eliza had stared at the sewing machines lining the Parsons workroom in a state of total shock. Throughout her dad's business scandal, his bankruptcy, and then his consequent comeback, her mother had stood by his side, just as stoic as Sienna Miller taking back Jude Law during Nannygate. Eliza had always had her suspicions that as soon as her parents got comfortable again, old (bad) habits would resurface, and here they were. Why did money always have to change everything?
Eliza's cell phone rang, playing Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack," and after giving her hips a little jiggle she picked it up. "Hello?"
"Hey, gorgeous. What's shaking?" Her boyfriend Jeremy Stone's deep, sexy voice reached her ear.
"Hey, yourself." Eliza smiled. "And I'm what's shaking,
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actually--I just got a new ringtone and I can't stop dancing every time someone calls."
Jeremy laughed into the phone. "Oh yeah? I wish I were there to see it."
"I wish you were too. But I'll see you soon enough--I'm on the Montauk Highway right now, less than half an hour from my dad's house." She had to mentally remind herself not to say parents' house---her mom was with her boy toy, sunbathing in Saint-Tropez and Capri for the summer, and she'd left the house in Amagansett entirely to Eliza's father.
"Really? Think he'll be there with her?"
Eliza's father had responded to the news that he was being left by his wife by immediately finding himself a new girlfriend--who just happened to be more than twenty years his junior. Suzy Finnemore was a divorcee who ran an enormously profitable hedge fund and was notorious for her affairs with even more powerful men. While Eliza didn't relish the idea of spending the next three months with a quasi-stepmother, it would be better than hanging out in the city all by herself. It was already the second week of June and New York was like a ghost town, all the "right people" having absconded to their summer houses around Memorial Day.
"Oh God, don't remind me." She rolled her eyes. "I really don't feel like having to play daughter to some woman who's not that much older than I am."
"Hey, don't worry about it--I'm sure you guys will get along fine." Jeremy's voice was consoling. "And besides, you'll be so busy
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