Page 24 of At Midnight

Nannies

Flicka von Hannover

I remember my nannies,

all of them.

Every.

Single.

One.

Flicka calmed herself for the next few hours by playing two-octave scales silently on the electronic piano until Raphael got home from work. She had one earbud in to listen, and the other dangled over her fingers as they walked up and down the keys in time to the metronome, crossingcarefully at the right spots.

The repetition, music, and very prescribed movements soothed her.

While she was, in fact, a prisoner and a hostage, she was staying in a gorgeous Swiss mansion on the shores of Lake Geneva. Outside, the deep, blue water of the wide lake sparkled in the sunlight, as she saw from the front windows that faced the water. Several small sailboats were tied to an anchor,radiating like daisy petals from where they were moored, beside a long, wooden pier that jutted out into the water.

From other windows, she had seen a tennis court, a pool with an expansive pool house and outdoor dining for sixteen, and a vegetable garden teeming with late fall pumpkins and hardy greens.

She kept a tight grip on her fears and tried not to flinch every time someone walked bythe guest suite’s door.

Alina had asked her, “Flicka-mama okay? Flicka-mama okay?” about a dozen times.

The little extrovert was perceptive.

After an hour of practice, Flicka read books to Alina and tried to play ha-boo with her, but she ended up sitting behind the couch with her hands over her face.

Alina crawled in her lap. “I’m kitty.”

“Did you have a kitty?” Flicka asked her, tuckingthe child into a huggable bundle.

“Suze-mama has kitties,” Alina said. “Three fur: black, white, turtle.”

“Tortoiseshell,” Flicka said absently.

“I miss Suze-mama,” Alina said. “Suze-mama play with us?”

Every nanny-swap that had punctuated Flicka’s childhood ran through her head. With her odd memory trick, she remembered all her nannies, from Wiebke who left because she had fallen pregnantwhen Flicka had been fourteen months old, to Melitta, Roswitha, and Nadine when Flicka had been shipped to Le Rosey for kindergarten.

Flicka leaned her cheek against Alina’s forehead. “I miss Suze-mama, too. I liked her.”

“She eats green,” Alina said.

“Yes, she does.”

“Meti, and Tabitha, and T’she-she-uncle.”

Her Las Vegas playgroup and sitter. “I miss them, too.”

Alina pointed at the window,where snowflakes drifted in the air. “Cold out.”

“A little, but there is no bad weather, only bad clothes,” Flicka said, echoing what the dorm mothers told her when they were insisting that Flicka learn to ski.

“Go out and play?” Alina asked.

“We haven’t been outside for days, have we?” Flicka said, musing about places where she could pick up Alina and disappear into a crowd. “I’ll talk toGrand-mamanabout getting us some good coats and shoes, and we will find a park to play.”