How Nancy Drew Saved My Life

I did so wish she would stop referring to him as “the master.” Give her a humpback, crooked teeth, make her a man and put her in a castle, change her accent, too, and I’d swear I was sitting there with Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant.

“That will be all, Sylvia,” Mrs. Fairly said, indicating they could go.

I was curious: Why wouldn’t Mrs. Fairly, who seemed to be an uber competent woman, take care of Annette in Iceland? Was she perhaps staying behind in New York?

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Fairly answered after I voiced my questions aloud. “My job is to see to the general running of the household. I couldn’t possibly also be expected to be solely responsible for a small child myself. What sort of person could do both jobs at once?”

It was on the tip of my tongue to answer “a lot of mothers,” for I had read of such creatures in books and seen the role acted sometimes in that way on television and in movies, but I doubted snippiness would win me the job; pluckiness, perhaps, but not snippiness.

“I do hope you are chosen to come to Iceland with us,” Annette said, turning at the door. “We could have a lot of fun together.”

I somehow doubted that Mrs. Fairly’s greatest concern was that the new nanny be “fun.” Indeed, I somehow suspected that such a feature might prove a detriment in her eyes, for hadn’t she presumably hired the stern Sylvia? But at least she must be able to tell, obviously, that Annette and I would get along, which must surely be some kind of selling point when one is entrusting a precious young charge into the hands of a new nanny.

Mrs. Fairly studied me curiously once the other two were gone.

“Don’t you have any questions for me?” she asked. “Usually, it is normal for prospective employees to have some questions.”

Shit! I wanted to appear normal, but what to ask, what to ask…

I was sure if Nancy Drew were sitting in this wobbly chair, she’d know exactly what to ask. Of course, if she were sitting in this chair, I doubted it would have the audacity to wobble under her.

Nancy Drew would probably ask sensible questions: what her responsibilities would be, what was expected of her. She’d probably leave off asking to last—but she would definitely ask, being a practical girl and the daughter of a lawyer—about things like benefits, if they covered dental. Of course, if an injured carrier pigeon suddenly flew into the room, Nancy would undoubtedly wire the International Federation of American Homing Pigeon Fanciers in order to give them the number stamped on the bird’s leg ring since, as she’d pointed out in The Password to Larkspur Lane (#10), all homing pigeons are registered by number so their owners can be traced. Then she’d feed the bird water with an eyedropper, fill a box with wild bird-seed and notify all and sundry that carrier pigeons had been clocked at a mile a minute from Mexico City to New York. How did she know all these things? Was it just good instincts?

“Who is my employer and what does he do?” I blurted.

“His name is Edgar Rawlings…” She smiled, as though I should know whom she was talking about. “He’s to be the new United States ambassador to Iceland.”

Crap! I thought. Not another ambassador!

What were the odds? Then I remembered that the first time I’d found myself in the employ of an ambassador, an agency had placed me there. This time, on the other hand, I’d found the ad in the paper all on my own. I thought about the oddness of the coincidence, reeled at the notion of putting myself through this déjà vu. It was like the universe was playing a perverse trick on me, forcing me to repeat parts of my past. I supposed I could always turn down the position, provided it was even offered to me. But I had really liked Annette…

Mrs. Fairly misread the cause of my dismay.

“Don’t all countries have an ambassador? Surely,” she said, “even Iceland needs an ambassador, doesn’t it?”

She was asking me? I didn’t even know anything about Iceland. I mean, I knew that it was supposed to be completely dark there part of the year, completely light another part, but I had no idea what part I’d be flying into or if I’d indeed be flying into anything, if I indeed had landed the job.

“And is there a Mrs. Ambassador Rawlings?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said sternly, “you don’t need to know about her.”

Well, that sounded ominous.

“Now, then.” She leaned forward in her chair. “Why don’t you tell me why it was you left your last position.”

chapter 4

Icelandair must be the greatest airline in the world. The flight attendants wear these soothing uniforms that are kind of cool, they’re actually nice to the passengers and they give you real food, none of that “here’s your one-ounce bag of peanuts you’ll never be able to open and four ounces of soda and don’t you dare ask for the whole can, what else could you possibly need?” crap.

I was just getting ready to tuck into my salmon and grilled baby vegetables when my aisle mate, an elderly gentleman with not much hair, steel glasses and a lot of polyester recognized me.

This still happened occasionally, even though it had been sixteen years since I’d made the last commercial. It was the hair, the unruly black curls, and the quirky curve to my smile the few times I still smiled. At age three, right after my father had left me with Aunt Bea, that quirky curve had been deemed visually precocious, hence the casting director’s decision to select me as the face to represent Gubber Snack Foods. I was the Gubber Snack Foods Kid, had been spotted for my potential when Aunt Bea and I had been squashed next to the casting director on the subway.

“That child has amazing hair!” the casting director, Mort Damon, had enthused.

“If you like lots of hair on a little girl,” Aunt Bea had said.

“And that smile!” Mort Damon continued as he had begun. “It’s like looking at the Mona Lisa if she were a dwarf!”

Mort had given Aunt Bea his card and Aunt Bea had reluctantly accepted it.

“Don’t let this go to your head,” she’d cautioned after we’d answered the formality of a casting call and been called. “But this will be a way for you to earn your education. Not that I don’t think your father would be willing to pay, but you never know what might happen with an archaeologist.”

Gubber Snack Foods was supposed to be the perfect organic alternative to the overprocessed, oversugared foods for kids that lined the supermarket shelves. And a new generation of moms, working harder all the time both in and out of the home, had gratefully reached for it.

My big line, the one I intoned at the end of each commercial, having made sixteen commercials for various products in the line from the time I started until the time I turned seven, the words bubbling out of my organic chocolate-smeared mouth?

“It’s Gubberlicious!”

Four years later, at age seven, despite the fact that I was small for my age, I was deemed too old to hawk the product. Personally, I think it was because I stopped being cute. But whatever the reason, I counted myself lucky. Unlike other child stars who had difficulty adjusting to a life where they were no longer treated as special I had never been allowed by Aunt Bea to be treated as special in the first place and so I had no overinflated ego to recover from.

The commercials were still aired occasionally, appealing to audiences in a nostalgic way, and I still received the odd residual check.

As I say, people still sometimes recognized me, based on the hair and curvy smile. It by no means happened often, but at least a couple of times a year, some stranger would say, “I know I’ve seen that smile before! But where…?”

As far-fetched as it might sound, that people could recognize you just from a smile, I understood it from firsthand experience. Home sick with mono for a month in high school, I’d watched more old movies than I’d ever watched in my life or would ever watch again. On my first day of freedom, I’d been walking down Broadway when I caught the eye of an older woman, meaning someone lots older than me, traveling in the other direction, and she smiled.

“I know you!” I’d shouted, unable to come up with a name.

If she’d been someone truly recognizable, like Meryl Streep, I would never have stopped her. I mean, how mortifying!

She stopped on the street, smiling indulgently.

I racked my brain, trying to place that familiar face.

“Toothpaste commercial?” I tried.

She shook her head, smiled wider.

It was that last smile that nailed it.

“Animal House!” The way I jumped up and down, clapped my hands, you’d think I’d just beat Ken Jennings on Final Jeopardy. “You were the girl who was twelve but looked eighteen!” I shouted, talking to her like I was telling her something she didn’t know. “You passed out at the frat house!”

She smiled again, nodded.

“Well,” I said, winding down now that the glitch-in-my-memory itch had been scratched, “that’s just great. Thanks. And, hey, you really do have the best smile.”

I’d continued on my way, never even learning her real name. It wasn’t until later that it occurred to me to wonder how often that happened to her.