When Judy and Albert came back into the room she found her nanny watching Punk’d on MTV with the kids. She wanted to fire her on the spot, but she knew Albert wouldn’t allow it. Discreetly Judy took the nanny into the hall.

“Why are you watching TV?”

“Charlotte threatened to poison me if I didn’t let her,” the nanny replied.

“That’s no excuse. If I see this kind of behavior again, you’re fired.”

“I quit.” The nanny stood up.

“You can’t quit! We’re on vacation!” Judy screamed.

“Yes I can. And you can’t treat me this way. I could write a novel about you just like those other nannies, and don’t think I wouldn’t.”

Judy took a deep breath. She couldn’t afford to lose this girl right now. She had to go to that party on Adrienne’s yacht and she wasn’t leaving her kids with some Florida hotel babysitter. “Listen, tomorrow I’d like to buy you a pair of alligator sandals I saw in the shop downstairs. I think they’d be terrific on you.” Judy forced herself to smile at the girl.

The nanny sat down while Judy continued.

“Oh yes, and there’s a terrific little evening bag with the most darling gold clasp to match. Is that okay with you?”

By the time the nanny finally nodded her head yes, Judy was exhausted. She went back into her room to vent her frustration on Albert, but he had already taken the girls into their suite to hear James Fenimore Cooper. Judy sat down alone on the lemon yellow divan and started to weep. Her evening had gone so well and then that stupid selfish girl had to ruin it. Overwhelmed and emotionally spent, Judy picked up a blank piece of stationery on the coffee table and began to write. She decided she would try to do her version of that diary before her nanny ever got to it.

·CHAPTER NINE·

Frankie

Since her time as a resident, Frankie had offered to be on call Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It wasn’t that she was a practicing Jew, but she wasn’t a practicing anything else either.

Christmas morning Frankie was at the hospital neonatal intensive care unit by 6 a.m. She planned to spend an hour there and then continue on her practice’s rounds. When Frankie was still a resident, the six weeks she spent in the NICU had been her favorite rotation. In Frankie’s eyes, the NICU was a cross section of humanity on the cusp of life; the premature triplets of two Scarsdale bankers were in incubators right beside the one-pound twelve-ounce offspring of a South Bronx crack addict. The survival of all the children, as Frankie saw it, was based on the perfect confluence of modern medicine and the inexplicable randomness of life. Frankie had toyed with specializing in neonatology but ultimately decided she preferred a practice where she could follow her patients’ long-term development. But she remained fascinated by the evident human character in a one-inch heart.