“Stop acting like a silly little fool!” her mother shouted.
Dani turned on her mother angrily. “You only want him to shave it off because I said I liked it! You don’t want anybody to like me or me to like anybody!” She turned to Rick. “Tell her you won’t shave it off!”
Rick looked at her, then at her mother. He hesitated.
Her mother smiled then. It was a funny sort of smile, the kind that came over her face when she made you do something you didn’t really want to do. “You’re free, white and over twenty-one, Rick. Make up your own mind what you want to do.”
Rick stood there for a moment, then turned and went to his room. When he came out a few minutes later the mustache was gone.
Dani stared at him. He looked different somehow. There was a funny white line where the mustache had been. He didn’t look like Clark Gable anymore. She burst into tears and ran to her room.
After that Rick didn’t go riding with her anymore. Neither did he take her out in the speedboat to water ski. But it really didn’t matter very much because their vacation was almost over. Her mother sent her off to a camp for the rest of the summer.
__________________________________________
Nora looked up from her work in answer to the soft knock at the studio door. “Come in.”
The door opened slightly and Mrs. Holman stood hesitantly in the doorway. “May I have a word with madam?” she asked formally.
Nora nodded. “Of course.” She put down the lump of clay and rubbed her hands clean.
The governess came in awkwardly. It was one of the few times she had ever entered the studio. “I’d like to talk to you about Danielle.”
She glanced at Rick who was standing nearby. “What about her?” Nora said.
Mrs. Holman looked at Rick again. She hesitated. Rick took the hint. “I’ll leave you two alone.” He went into the other room leaving the door open.
“Well?” Nora asked.
The old woman was still awkward. “Danielle is growing up.” “Of course,” Nora said. “We all know that.”
“She’s not so much a baby anymore. She’s quickly becoming a young lady.” Nora looked at her silently.
“What I mean,” the governess continued, embarrassment in her voice, “it’s not easy to explain things.”
“What things?” Nora asked in an annoyed voice. “I’m sure she doesn’t have to have the facts of life explained to her. They do that very efficiently at Miss Randolph’s School.”
“That’s it!” Mrs. Holman said excitedly. “She knows.”
Nora shook her head. “Of course she does. She should know.” “She knows,” the old lady said. “And she sees.”
Nora was silent for a moment. “Exactly what are you getting at, Mrs. Holman?”
The governess didn’t look at her. “Danielle sees what is happening in this house. And she knows what she knows. Together it is not good for a girl to see such things in her own home.”
“Are you telling me what to do in my own house?”
The governess shook her head quickly. “No, Miss Hayden. I’m just telling you about your daughter. These things she sees and these things she knows, they are too much for a child like her to understand. She thinks all the wrong things about them.” Her eyes met Nora’s candidly. “It is no
longer possible for me to explain to her that she does not really see what she does see.” “I don’t think that’s any of your concern, Mrs. Holman,” Nora said coldly.
The old woman’s face grew stubborn. “In a way it’s not, Miss Hayden. But I have been Dani’s nanny since she was born. I would not feel right if I did not tell you how this is affecting Dani.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Holman,” Nora said, still in that cold voice. “But please remember that I have been Danielle’s mother since she was born. She is my responsibility, not yours.”
The governess looked at her. “Yes, Miss Hayden.” She turned and left the studio. The door closed behind her and Rick came out of the other room.
“Did you hear what she said?” Nora said.
Rick looked at her. “That old lady’s got to go.”
“She’s right, in a way. Dani is growing up.” Nora picked up a piece of clay. “We’ll have to be more careful.”
“Careful?” Rick exploded. “How careful can we be? You just try sneaking out of this house in the small hours of the morning and back to that apartment over the garage. I bet half the neighborhood knows what I’m doing!”
Nora laughed. “You could try making a little less noise when you close the doors.” “You try it! Especially when it’s raining and everything sticks. I get half drowned.” Nora put down the clay. “Yes, we’ll have to do something about that.”
“We could get married,” Rick said. “That would put an end to all this jazz.”
“No.” Nora looked at him frankly. “We’re not meant for marriage. I’ve tried it twice and I know.
And at heart you’re no more for it than I am.”
He walked over and put his arms around her. “But we haven’t tried it with each other, baby. It would be different then.”
She pushed him away. “Stop kidding yourself. Neither of us is the type to be tied down. We’re alike. We both like something new once in awhile.”
“Not me, baby. I could be very happy with just you.”
She avoided his grasp. “And how would you explain to your friends when you couldn’t get out Tuesday and Thursday nights? Especially to your little Italian girl, the night-club photographer, who makes spaghetti for you on her night off? What would you tell her after she’s been waiting all this time for you to marry her?”
He stared at her, his face flushed. “You know about her?”
Nora smiled. “I know everything about you. I’m not that much a fool.” She shrugged her shoulders and picked up a cigarette. She waited for him to light it before she continued. “But I don’t mind, really. You can do what you want so long as I get what I want.”
He started to smile slowly. “And I got what you want. Is that right, baby?”
He reached for her. This time she didn’t avoid his embrace. He took the cigarette from her lips
and put it in an ashtray. He kissed her, his mouth hard and brutal against hers.
She kept her eyes open, looking into his face.
He pressed her back against the table, his hand reaching up under her skirt.
“The window,” she said, gesturing toward the expanse of glass before which they were standing. “To hell with that, I can’t wait. Let the neighbors eat their hearts out.”
Charles met Dani at the station when she came home from camp. She looked around. Mrs. Holmes usually came with him. “Where’s Nanny?”
Charles didn’t meet her eyes as he picked up her assorted gear. “Didn’t you know, Miss Dani?
Mrs. Holman’s left.”
Dani stopped suddenly. “Nanny left me?”
Charles was embarrassed. “I thought you knew, Miss Dani. She’s taken another job.” Dani’s face was angry. “Did Mother send her away?”
“I don’t know, Miss Dani. It happened right after you left for camp.” He opened the car door for
her.
“Do you know where Nanny is working?” she asked. Charles nodded.
“I want you to drive me there.”
Charles hesitated. “I don’t know. Your mother—”
“I want you to drive me there!” Dani said angrily. “Now!” “Miss Dani. You mother will be very angry with me.”
“I won’t tell her. Drive me there!”
Dani got into the backseat and Charles closed the door. He made one more attempt to dissuade
her when he got in the front seat. “Miss Dani—”
Suddenly the child’s voice became as icy as her mother’s. “If you don’t take me there, I’ll tell Mother that you did.”
It was one of a group of new houses in St. Francis Wood. Nanny was just coming down the walk, pushing a small gray baby carriage. Dani was out of the car almost before it stopped. “Nanny!” she cried running toward her. “Nanny!”
The old woman stopped and squinted into the afternoon sun. She shielded her eyes with one hand. “Dani?”
Then her vision cleared and she flung her arms open to embrace the onrushing child. “Dani!” she cried, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. “Dani,
mein kleines Kind
.”
Dani was crying too. “Why did you leave me, Nanny? Why did you leave me?”
The nurse kissed her cheeks, her face. “My baby,” she crooned. “My little girl. Let me look at you. How big you’ve grown, how brown.”
Dani buried her head in the ample bosom. “You should have told me,” she sobbed. “You shouldn’t have left me like that!”
Suddenly the old lady realized what Dani meant. She raised her head and looked over at Charles. The butler shook his head slowly.
Intuitively she knew what he meant. She turned back to the child. “You’re a big girl now, Dani.
Too big a girl to need a nanny.”
“You should have told me,” Dani said, the tears still in her eyes. “It wasn’t right.” “My job is really with little babies, Dani child. Babies need me.”
“I need you,” Dani said. “You’ve got to come home with me.” Slowly the governess shook her head. “I can’t, Dani.”
“Why not!”
Mrs. Holman put her hand on the carriage. “This baby needs me too,” she said simply. “I need you more than she does. You’ve always been with me.”
“And now it’s time you learned to do without me,” the old woman said. “You’re a big girl now. What is there for me to do except sit around and watch you come and go? You can take care of yourself. Didn’t you do it all summer without me? Why should it be so different just because you’re home?”
“But I love you, Nanny.”
The governess hugged her again. “And I love you, my little Dani.” “Then you have to come home with me.”
“No, Dani,” the old woman said. “I can’t go home with you. Your mother was right. She said it would have to happen sometime.”
“My mother? Then I was right! She
did
send you away!”
“Sooner or later, Dani,” the governess said sadly, “it would have happened. You’re twelve years old already. Almost a young lady. Soon boys will be coming to see you. You will be going out on dates and to parties. What would you want an old nanny hanging around for? You’ll have a life of your own.”
“Did Mother send you away?” Dani asked stubbornly.
“We agreed it would be best. Your mother was very kind about it. She gave me a whole year’s severance pay.”
“You still should have talked to me about it,” Dani said. “You weren’t her nanny, you were mine.”
The old lady was silent. The child’s logic was too much for her. “I think you had better go now. Your mother will be worried what’s happened to you. Besides, she has a very nice surprise for you.”
“I don’t care about her surprise,” Dani said. “Can I come to see you? Once in awhile, I mean.
That is, if you can’t come to see me?”
Mrs. Holman hugged her closely. “Of course, Dani. I have every other Thursday off. Maybe I can meet you after school.”
Dani kissed the governess on the cheek. “I’ll miss you something terrible.”
“I’ll miss you too,” Mrs. Holman said. She seemed on the verge of tears again. “Now go, or Charles will get in trouble.”
They kissed again and Dani walked slowly back to the car. She was silent almost all the way home. When they were nearly there she leaned forward to the front seat. “What kind of a surprise has Mother got for me?”
“I can’t tell you. Your mother made me promise to keep it a secret.”
But in the end it came from Charles anyway. Her mother was having a meeting in the studio and had left word that she was not to be disturbed. Dani went up the stairs, Charles following with her things, and turned toward her room.
“Not that way, Miss Dani. This way.” Charles turned and started down towards the other end of the hallway, away from her old room and her mother’s.
She followed him. “Is this the surprise?”
He nodded as they stopped at the door of what had formerly been the largest guestroom. He opened the door with a flourish. “After you, Miss Dani.”
The room was more than twice the size of her old one. Everything in it was new, from the sparkling canopied bed to the built-in hi-fi and television set along the wall. There was a large walk- in closet, just like her mother’s, and a new bathroom with a sunken tub and a dressing alcove.
“You can adjust the TV and hi-fi from the headboard,” Charles said proudly.
“It’s very nice,” Dani answered unenthusiastically. She looked around the room. “Where’s my treasure chest?”
“It didn’t match the new things, so your mother had it put in the attic.” “Bring it down.”
“Yes, Miss Dani.”
“What happened to my old room?”
“Your mother had it made into an office for Mr. Riccio. And Mrs. Holman’s old room is now his bedroom.”
“Oh,” Dani said. She was old enough to know what that meant. The girls at camp all whispered about what was going on between the men and woman counselors who had rooms close to each other.
Charles brought her gear into the room. Her camp trunk was already there. “I’ll send Violet in to help you unpack. We were waiting for you to bring the trunk key.”
“I don’t need any help.”
“Of course you do.” Her mother’s voice came from the open doorway. “You can’t possibly unpack all that yourself.”
Dani turned to face her mother. “I packed it all myself,” she said. “I don’t need Violet’s help.”
Nora looked at her. She knew that there was something wrong. She glanced at Charles. He nodded. “Is that any kind of greeting to give your mother after being away all summer? Come over here and let me look at you.”
Nora leaned forward slightly to allow Dani to kiss her cheek. Obediently Dani followed the custom. Charles left the room and closed the door behind him.
“Why did you send Nanny away?” she asked, the moment the door clicked shut.
“Is that the first thing you can think of saying after I’ve gone to all the trouble of fixing up this room for you? The least you could do is let me know you like it.”
“It’s very nice.” Dani’s tone of voice indicated she couldn’t care less. “The television and record player have remote controls in the headboard.” “I know. Charles already told me.”
Dani seemed to be waiting for an answer to her question and Nora was just as determined not to give her one. “You’ve grown. You’re almost as tall as I am. How tall are you now?”