The Au Pair

The Au Pair: Part 4

May I help you? I ask.

I'm looking for Stephen. Ha! The other Stephen I mean, he says, looking me squarely in the eye and holding out a bottle of expensive looking red wine. I owe him big! You must be Hannah? Your Heather was telling my Heather all about you.

Your Heather? I say, taking the wine bottle out of his hand. I'm still blocking the door when he gives me a quizzical look. I self-correct, moving aside. The Platz family lives on a street where expensive wine enables immediate entry.

Come in please, I say, holding the door, the wine and a card Stephen Johns stuffs into my hand on his way past me.

Heather wrote out a thank you. She's better with words. Then he steps into the foyer and turns to put his coat in the closet before I can offer to take it from him. He obviously knows his way around this house.

I usher him towards the family room but he redirects me towards the kitchen.

You should leave the card where Heather will see it when she gets home. It's the little things, he says, taking the card out of my hands and placing it prominently on the kitchen desk.

Right. Well can I get you some water? I ask, starting to feel anxious about who I have let into the house. The kids are busy in their rooms so there is no one to take care of. No buffers. The high octane energy of this Stephen is very different from the laid back cool of the Stephen I work for. This one is forcefully pleasant. Demanding.

Yes please. And you might as well open that red, he says. Stephen will understand!

I feel helpless in the face of his demands. The Platz's world takes getting used to. The money. The expectation. The social rules that change depending on the size of your bank account. Stephen Johns has move over money. The kind of wealth that makes people like him talk loudly in restaurants. They take up space. I weakly hand him the bottle opener, starting to form the question he's practically begging me to ask.

What are you celebrat–

But before I can finish I hear the other Stephen and Heather walk in the front door.

Hannah! they call.

But Stephen Johns beats me to it and strides out of the kitchen to the front door.

Stephen? I hear Heather say. What are you doing here?

I can't read her tone. I hear air kisses but I swear I hear something like hesitation in her voice.

Or at least I think I do. But now the Stephens are laughing and clapping each other on the back and when the three of them come back into the kitchen it's all smiles.

I see you've met our Hannah, say Heather.

Yes – lovely – oh Heather, this is for you, says Stephen Johns handing Heather the card written by his wife.

Stop with the foreplay Stephen, Heather laughs. What's this all about?

It's finally happened!, he says, looking past Heather to the person he really came to see. The patent came through. It's what we've all been waiting for!

Heather reaches for glasses so they can cheers Stephen John's win. A new business plan emerges. She stops mid pour and announces that she must call the other Heather.

I retreat into the shadows and make my way towards the large staircase. It's my job to say goodnight to the children, but it's not out of obligation that I head up the stairs. To end the evening with them feels cleaner. Clearer. I hear the door open again and a new voice enters the mix. It's high pitched, shrill. I realize it's Heather Johns. As I hug Georgie and then Juliana I can hear the din of congratulatory clinking and what sounds like forced laughter on the part of the women.

I remember thinking it strange when I learned that both Heathers worked together at the same design firm. Wasn't it too close for comfort to work alongside one's neighbour I asked Heather one night over dinner.

I design, she sells, Heather shrugged at the time. 

But now, as I listen to them downstairs making too much noise in their oversized kitchen, I can't help but laugh. Two couples with exactly the same names are becoming all the more intimately connected by choosing to go into business together.

What could go wrong? I say to myself and to a sleeping Juliana. 

You can't make this stuff up my mother would say of the wealthy women in town. They were other. Or we were to them. The encounter I've just witnessed is like a modern piece I saw once in a gallery. A framed piece of canvas with a slash mark down the middle of it. Ridiculous but someone called it art.

I give the sleepy kids a kiss on their foreheads and pause at the sound of a glass breaking and then more laughter. I remember that the slash marked canvas made me shudder when I stood in front of it for the first time. The violence of it was palpable. I see now that the blank canvas was never art. It was the mystery hidden at the center of the slash mark. In all that dark.

In the world of Heathers and Johns the art of money talks. To survive means listening to what's said aloud and in the silence. In the dark.