The Au Pair

The Au Pair: Part 3

I settle into the rhythms of Platz family life easily.

Stephen and Heather work together at their shared office space a kilometre down the road. 

Each morning Stephen bikes to work. Heather runs.

I need space to think, she says.

Stephen guffaws. Well I need to boss a few people around. No one around here listens to me anyways!

We all laugh sitting around the dinner table. My schedule is written on an antique chalk board hung on the wall just inside the kitchen entrance. It includes two dinners a week where we will all eat together and "catch up."

We have at least two dinners a week booked with clients, Hannah. Having you here means the kids won't be forced to tag along.

Adult stories are boring! says Juliana. Georgie stares across the table at his mother and stays quiet.

My room is in the basement of their too-large home. Georgie and Juliana feel like the subterranean space is opened to them now that I'm there. Hide and seek is their new favourite after school game.

Scary lived downstairs Hannah. But you're here now so he must have left, says Georgie.

Or he's hiding, says Juliana.

Who's Scary? I ask as I spread Wowbutter on Georgie's whole wheat wrap. I learn early on that lunch prep is when I gather information. The kids share the ins and outs of school and neighbouring children while the three of us work together, preparing for the morning to come. Georgie drops big facts between passing me items from the fridge. Juliana sits atop the large granite island packing the apple slices I pass her, filling in her brother's stories with five-year-old details.

The truths they tell me are like my old paintings. Layered. Some stories sound implausible. Fiction. But truth shines through when I listen closely. When I look for the colour behind the colour on the canvas.

We could hear Scary in the basement before you moved in Hannah. But the sounds have stopped.

Yup, I don't need to sleep in Georgie's room anymore!

Juliana beams at me proudly and Georgie gives us both a big brother thumbs up. We laugh, but as I send them off for screen time before bed I pass the door to my basement suite and pause. I know that the sounds they hear are just pipes banging in the recesses of an old house. Two wide-eyed children inventing a boogie man to make sense of the world.

But the heart of fiction is truth and the truth is that Scary is real. Juliana's right. He's just hiding.

The doorbell rings.

My name is Stephen. Stephen Johns.