Burn and Dodge

Pandora and the Summer Au Pair

 Pandora and the Summer au Pair That you are her boss bemuses her, reclining on the overnight flight, tucked into her diary, disapproving of the balloon pants you wear (so dowdy, hiding her belly). Upon landing: haughty looks, hands forever on hips as though about to launch into an aria of I’m not really with them. Can anyone fail to admire her thick tresses spun up with chopsticks against the Italian sun, darkly cascading in the Riviera dusk, tight Armani-sheened pants highlighting hips? (The kid I’m sitting for a complete brat I do cartwheels for on the lawn: What form!) Has anyone ever seen such perfect skin before? She thinks not. Watch her braid stray flowering weeds into a garland for her hair. (Some man has got to notice.) Outwardly cool, her yearnings under cover, she barely speaks through dinner, only rising to fetch the toddler. When she leaves her diary lying under a chair in the boy’s room, how can you not open it? She’s the perfect caricature of a doting Jewish mother my sister and I would have laughed over. I cringe when she orders the waiters in imperious Italian while her husband sits there drinking quietly like a Buddha. Never mind. This afternoon I met the Fiat tycoon—or is it Olivetti or Barilla pasta it hardly matters; He’s invited me to Sardegna on his private yacht! He’s the kind of man—so rich and handsome who cares  if he’s my dad’s age—I’ve always dreamed of meeting . . . Here even you stop reading: embarrassed by the schoolgirl gush just as she, terrified she’s left the book and you might read of her disgust, tries the lockit’s well past tenhammers at the door. Now who would have opened to that knock instead of feeling affronted at being disturbed at such an hour and crying, “Go away! You woke us up!”—or admitted to reading it? And who wouldn’t have held such confidence like a lost key in their back pocket while she’s locked out, reduced to waiting upstairs in her roomshaken, insomniactill morning to recover her spiral book. Entering the breakfast room unrushed, you say, “Oh, was this what you were missing?” holding it out. “Yes.” Profuse apologies for having knocked, she glances up: the book returned over espresso cups with a blank look confirms it unread. You’re wondering now why you didn’t guess when opened, her book becomes a box unleashing Envy, Spite, Shame . . . and Hope? Half carelessly that afternoon you leave your notebook lying out (It’s better not to know what others think of you), half-expecting her to find it and read of your transgression and regretor else half-hoping, someday, she might read this. ...