It gave him pause. Why?
Peter’s childhood — after the divorce — had been the same, although his caretakers had been white: a fat, affectionate Polish woman, a dour young Swedish graduate student, a cheerful middle-aged English nanny dressed in starched white. Weren’t they merely versions of the current phenomenon? He had grown up intelligent, well educated, socialized. He was no finger-licking, drug-taking street tough. He had no urges to have a few beers and go bowling.
He began to laugh. All these thoughts were so deliciously unliberal, unprogressive, bigoted. And as he laughed, the sleeping silence of his tedious home was broken by the ringing phone.
“Hello?”
A pause. Not a broken connection. There was someone there. Rachel? He hoped.
“Hello,” he repeated, gently, to encourage her.
“Uh … hello, this is Pearl. Is this the Hummel residence?”
The black southern accent told him this was Diane’s hope. “Yes, it is.”
“I met your wife in the park. I take care—”
“Yes, yes,” he said eagerly. “She told me.”
“Is she there?”
“She’s asleep. I can have her call you tomorrow, or—”
“She said you needed a baby-sitter for your boy. He’s so beautiful! A strong head. I think he’s gonna be a big boy.”
That pipsqueak? My son? Peter was five-seven, Diane five-five. The chances Byron would be big were small. “Thank you,” he said.
“I can’t leave my girl right now. Wouldn’t be fair to her parents. But my friend — I don’t know whether you need to hear about other people — but my friend Francine is looking for work. She’s taken care of many children. I never recommend people, you understand? I would be ashamed to recommend somebody who wasn’t any good, who might not be good. Oh, I would die if something bad happened because people had trusted me and I had to recommend someone who wasn’t good. My friend, I’ve known her since I was young, she’s taken care of many, many children—”
Peter had opened his mouth several times to answer, but she kept on, her pauses unexpected.
“—she knows what she’s doing. And she’s ready right now, just like your wife needs. But you don’t even have to see her or talk to her. I just felt obliged to help out, you understand?”
“Yes—”
“And my friend, she’s good, just as good as me. Although I like to think I’m the best, you understand; we all think we’re special in some ways. I may not be much — I didn’t get much schooling, I’m no good handling doctors or Con Edison, but I knows children. I love them and take good care. My friend’s the same. But let me tell you something, you can never tell my friend I said so, but there’s no need to be paying her three hundred dollars. She’ll be happy with two hundred and fifty.”
“Oh?” Peter said, at last with something firm to grasp.
“Oh, my, three hundred! You don’t need to be paying nobody that much. But now don’t you be telling Francine I said so. She’d kill me! But really there’s no need to be paying anybody that much.”
“I see. How do I — how do we get in touch — how do we call—”
“I can give you Francine’s telephone number. She knows all about the job. Hope you don’t mind my talking. Course, I didn’t tell her nothing about money. I don’t be talking money with my friends. That’s not something I do. Her number is—”
“Hold on.” He got a pad and pen and wrote down the digits. She repeated her speech again about how rarely she recommended anyone because of her fear that she would feel ashamed later. And once again she referred to the money, asking for an assurance that Peter and Diane wouldn’t tell Francine how much they might have offered if she, Pearl, hadn’t told them otherwise.
The call left him laughing. The intrigue this black woman had gone in for, on the one hand getting a job for her friend, on the other making sure she wasn’t paid more than herself, reminded him of New York theater people, allies who pulled for each other as long as none of their separate boats got too far in front. When Ted Bishop, head of the Harlequin Theater, had lobbied Peter to get the Stillman Foundation to put up money to help relocate the Uptown Theater (in theory a rival of Harlequin), Peter had done so and reported back to Ted his success: a hundred thousand for the move. Peter had forgotten to calculate that that was twice the foundation’s contribution to Harlequin for the past two seasons. Consequently, for the next six months he had to listen to Ted slight the Uptown Theater (now in midtown) until Peter convinced the foundation to liberate additional funds to give Ted one hundred thousand to refurbish Harlequin. Indeed, he reflected, this ignorant southern black had, unlike Ted Bishop, known in advance she would be jealous if her friend was paid more. What a thought. What if education and a privileged rearing only resulted in more self-deception rather than extra generosity?
And who had taught Peter his lessons? His mother, with her pretense of artistic talent? Or sad-eyed Swedish Gertrude, too shy to look his stepfather in the face, but able to read bedtime stories with such passion and fervor that Peter fell in love with being an audience? Or was it his English nanny, Betty? Betty had a taste for the theater and talked his parents, or at least his pretentious mother, into permitting her to bring Peter along for her weekly excursions to Shakespeare in the Park, Broadway matinees, and even several baffling Off-Broadway works.
But that was different from these black women caretakers. Surely they wouldn’t be taking Byron to see Kevin Kline at the Public or hear Mandy Patinkin sing Sondheim. Maybe Dreamgirls, he thought, and broke up again.
Shouldn’t I be horrified? Allowing my son to be raised by ignorant, overweight women? Spending forty, fifty hours a week in their care — that must have an effect.
He tried to remember his mother, Gail, caring for him — young, embracing him, taking him to the park, bathing him, holding him, reading a story at night.
But there were few memories.
Gail had held Peter’s head over the toilet one ill night, sick with dreams of grotesque creatures, wakened by vomiting. Later her elegant hand had tilted a crystal glass of ginger ale to his lips. He remembered the pale bubbles dancing on her wedding diamond.
It must have been a Sunday. The nanny’s day off.
Otherwise the images were of Gertrude’s thin, straight blond hair, so stiff the edge of her ear split through it; or the Pole’s sauerkraut lunches; or the little heaves of Betty’s shelf of a bosom, sighing over romantic lyrics, swelling with the brassy Broadway overtures.
Then, later, in real childhood, in the limber elasticity before the voice changed, Peter’s life was school and visiting his friend Gary. Dinner after dinner with Gary. Summer camp with Gary, overhearing fights between Gary’s parents, sleeping in Gary’s upper bunk on weekends.
Peter must have spent time at his own home.