NFTN 20: Leaving the The Thebaults

After my first attempt at church on the East Coast, the Thebaults forbade me to go to any church that was outside of a 5 mile radius, and I was trapped. They forbade me to speak to the only other woman on their property, Maritza.

I was so bored, I went to a craft store one day and spent my entire salary and some of my savings on craft supplies, and stuffed them in my closet, to use for entertainment on my own time. I let the kids use some of it too. I didn't buy the kids presents, but I did use my own money to buy stickers and some craft and art supplies for them. One day, Brian peered into my closet and said, "What is this?" My tiny closet was stuffed with bags of ribbons, buttons, glue guns, oil paints and brushes and paper, and poupourri. Brian said it smelled like a floral shop. I wrote in my diary and kept it well-hidden. Every pen in the Thebault house disappeared somewhere in my room. The Thebault's had an ancient computer they said I could use, but I was afraid they would be able to monitor what I wrote, so I didn't touch it. I did find Lisa Thebaut's high school yearbooks, in a drawer near the computer, and read them. Other than that, I was really not nosy. I don't remember ever being in Lisa's room longer than 1 minute. Once Maritza asked me to put away some 34 B bras for her and I did, and I noticed, when I pulled open the drawer, that all of them were folded in this peculiar manner, and were all shades of taupe, white, and black. How boring, I thought. I didn't see one piece of lingerie, although Lisa's bedroom was a kind of boudoir.

Lisa slept separately from Brian. They each had their own bedroom and I was told it was because of Brian's working hours. He got up earlier and had to make noise. So, separate bedrooms with separate bathrooms.

Lisa's bedroom was at the end of a very, very, long hall. Lisa told me once that this house was what she'd always wanted. She said she wanted a house with a very long hallway. There were bedrooms lined up on the side of the hall, and a playroom. Brian's room was austere, with neutral tones and a lot of chrome or silver in the bathroom. Lisa's room was elevated, on a kind of platform. At the end of the halls there were small steps that led up to her room. She had a King size bed and a butterfly motif. Everything was butterflies, everywhere.

The bedroom on the platform gave it a kind of "I am the Queen" feel. I could imagine Brian approaching the Great Throne to inquire whether Lisa would let him in. Or maybe he just barged through the veil after a hard day and night at the office. I couldn't decide whether it was the lair of a concubine or a Queen.

As stated before, my bedroom was about 6 x 8 feet. It was a closet and the closet was even smaller. Right next to my room, which was at the other end of the hall from Lisa's room, was a large spare room and an adjoining bathroom. They were empty. Another nanny told me I should take the other room, but I didn't dare. The Thebault's wanted me in the closet.

The kids' rooms were down the hall from mine. Lauren had a crib in a small room, and Christie and Philip had larger rooms. Lisa had samples all over, and the interior decorator was often at the house. Christie's room was painted in bright versions of pastels and Miami colors. Soft pink with a vivid bright rose, forest green and turquoise to accent the bright yellow walls. White painted wood. I don't remember the colors for Philip's room. He may have had a sailboat motif but I cannot recall. They were working on Christie's room and the library at the time I left. There was a playroom/exercise room on this floor as well. It was a drab and boring room and no one, including the kids, wanted to play in there. There was a treadmill in the middle of the floor.

The bathroom I used was also very small. The former nanny had left behind a huge jar of Queen Helene's Placenta for the Hair.

There was an elevator going from the first to the second floor. No one used it. It worked, I believe, but it was slow, and gated with iron.

The kids and everyone else spent the most time in the kitchen, which was the warmest place in the house. The house was rather large for the children. After waking, we went downstairs, where there was a country-french kitchen in hand-painted tile, a rec room with a TV, a bathroom to the side of the rec, a "ballroom" or entertainment room which was bare, a library, a cutting room for flowers, a little parlor with old hand-painted murals of trees and birds, french-style, on the walls, and another bathroom. The bathrooms didn't have regular terry towels but only embroidered fine-linen hand towels.

There were vaults, which I knew of, but I won't write about their locations. Even at the house on the Shore, Lisa seemed paranoid someone would steal from her, and I think she even worried I would. Once or twice she left gold earrings out in the open and when she discovered her error she gasped. I think she left a diamond ring and diamond studs out, once, as well. She couldn't find them one time and asked me about them, with this "look" and then she found them. There were probably other vaults besides the ones I was aware of.

There was a garage for the cars, and Brian had a driver who took him to work and brought him home. Brian sat in the backseat.

I roamed the house and the grounds, taking photos, when I knew I was going to be leaving. I called Joan with the agency and asked for a new family. She said she didn't blame me for wanting to leave, and she refused to refund the Thebault's money when they asked; it had been their fault, not mine. Joan sort of liked being filled in on the gossip while I worked there. She wanted the scoop. But I just wanted out. I told Joan I wanted a family that would treat me with respect and honored their agreements; I wanted my time-off when it was my time off. I told her I didn't care how rich they were.

One day Lisa told me she didn't think it was "working out". Well, she didn't say that exactly...She said "You don't seem happy." I think this was after the time I burst into tears about Philip and how the kids needed more attention from their parents. I smiled. Had she been listening to my phone conversations with Joan or my mother for the last several months? I think they knew I was leaving because I'd been interviewing with other families. Maybe they had thought that I was using their car to go to interviews, much earlier, when I was only trying to go to church. I don't know, but I didn't use their car to go on interviews until after I gave my one month notice. I had wanted to stay a year, out of determination to be true to my contract. But they had already violated our contract a number of ways, by forcing me to work longer hours without compensation, and they had also lied about themselves before I ever flew out. I had specified I wanted a non-smoking family and they smoked. I caught them in the den shortly after I'd arrived. I didn't hold it against them, the smoking, because the house was so big I couldn't even smell it, but it was one of a number of little lies. They also said they were Protestant, and I never specified any religion but perhaps they thought I would be more comfortable working for a family of the same background, given the strength of my own religious convictions and history of involvement in church. They were Catholic, but I didn't even find that out until years later.

I made the most of the last month, putting everything into the kids, and determined to make the most of it. After I gave my notice, it was as if a great weight had come off of my shoulders. I was free!!!! I was going to be free! I was so happy about it, I began singing during the day, and played harder with the kids, and talked to my friends from home and my fellow nanny Kelly, on the phone, laughing. Lisa and Brian looked uncomfortable.

I thought about a birthday party for the kids that I and Maritza had been required to help with. Lisa's friend from the private school ordered us around, actually clapping her hands together as if we were horses, to "Ladies, get the forks please!" She instructed us on how to cut the cake, and to take off the kid's muddy shoes, all the while, making these sharp and short little "clap-clap", pronto, gestures. Maritza looked at me and rolled her eyes. In the back, Maritza made a perfect imitation of the woman and then when I was laughing, said, in her familiar way, "Can you beleeeeeve these people?! UNbeleeevable!" Lisa had this to say about her demanding friend, "Oh! So-and-so really knows how to handle her help!"

I realized my determination to "stick it out", from the beginning, was sheer stupidity. On the other hand, had I not stayed as long as I did, I would not have these things to write about.

A couple of weeks before I left, I was accused of not supervising their daughter Christie who had run around the corner outside with Philip and the servant's boy who was 7 years old. I had been outside with them the entire time, and then Lisa came to the backdoor and asked me to watch Lauren too. As I was taking Lauren, the other kids ran around the corner, playing tag, and Brian drove up. I guess he witnessed Christie flashing her privates to the servant boy. Lisa yelled at me, "He could have molested her!!!" I looked at her, a little surprised, but I said nothing. I let Lisa yell, and I listened and nodded. When she was done, I explained she had just given Lauren to me and that this was the only reason I had been distracted as to the child's exact whereabouts at that moment. They didn't live on a farm with machinery that could injure, and they didn't live anywhere near civilization. They were in the country and the most immediate dangers, I guess, besides the servant's little boy, were the river and the pool. I was always nearby around the pool, fountain (which had a shallow pool), and river. I was standing by the pool, which was surrounded by a latched gate, and the river was half a mile away, and I was also near the fountain. It was unfortunate that I had not seen Christie go around the corner with the boys, but I could hardly be blamed. The children were out of control and their own parents undermined my authority. If I had asked Christie to come back, she would have stuck out her tongue at me, told her mother, and then Lisa would have given Christie a lollipop after reprimanding me for interferring in her child's play. I remembered the incident where I asked Philip to eat at least some of his dinner before ice cream, and what Lisa's response had been. But it was my fault that the servant's boy had had a look at their daughter. That little 7 year old was the "inappropriate" and "unsuitable" playmate who would have attacked their daughter, right then and there, had Brian not intervened. If anything, I had the impression that the boy was an innocent bystander. He hadn't pulled her pants down himself. And I thought too, didn't they realize kids sometimes are curious at that age, even their daughter?

In the two weeks before my stay was over, Christie flashed the servant's little boy, and Philip ran to his father, complaining that I had hurt him "on purpose" when I was trying to kick the soccer ball back at him.

I had been shocked at what a good player Philip was, at 7 years old. I didn't know if his athletic talent was a natural gift alone, or partly because of his private lessons, but he was good. I played with him for about an hour and could hardly keep up. I have no idea what happened now...I can't remember if the ball hit him the wrong way, or, more likely, I accidentally kicked him in the shin while we were fighting for the ball up close. I tried to be challenging for him, because he was already better than I was, but Philip howled and then ran off. Brian had been watching us from an upstairs window. We were playing on the grass in the back of the house. Of course, Brian gave me "the look" again, when I went back into the house. At that point, I didn't even care. I did my job, I did a good job, and I was getting the hell out of there.

There are more details I may save for a book, such as the day Lisa told us all about "lunching" with a soap opera star, and hearing about the neighbors (Forbes, Delorean, and Whitney Houston), going to the horse race/show with the elite tailgate parties, and about being told I could not meet the relatives in Connecticut (Beau and Christian and the rest), but for now, this shall suffice.

When I left, I cleaned my room and bathroom thoroughly, finding about 30 pens in the process. THAT's where all the pens in the house had gone! I left the room exactly the way I found it, vaccumed and with the bed made. I looked out the windows with the iron bars once more and said farewell to the house. What secrets were there...If the walls could only speak...I put the 30 pens in the little drawer on the nightstand. I knew Brian and Lisa would find them. I could have taken them downstairs, but I thought it was more fitting that I leave them there.

Once Brian overheard a "letter" I wrote for Maritza to give Freddy, her husband, when we were at the Shore. Maritza said it was really good, and she had asked me to write a love letter for her. Brian read it and blushed, saying it sounded like a romance novel. He looked at me and said, "You're a writer." Or something like that. I was actually very surprised that he would notice anything about my writing. It was only a page long, and it was dramatic. I didn't think it was very good at all. But I suppose perhaps Brian is something of a writer himself if he noticed, and could write his own blog one day. I suspect the Thebault's style would be to ignore me altogether and I don't think I would be included in a book they wrote. I was only one out of 7 or more nannies. Probably many more, as I was told they'd have 7 nannies in just the one year before ME. And Brian had told me he could give me a job in his "factory" if I wanted to keep track of my hours working. I was a number.

They were my first experience, however, with "the real world", out of high school. And, my first extremely negative experience with the very rich. So, those first several months are a part of my life story. The next family I worked for was very different: liberal, poor (by comparison), and Jewish. My next family was certaintly more talkative. They called my former employers "the WASPS" and called me one too. I didn't even know what a WASP was, until I worked for a Jewish family.