Chapter 261: Nannies
Back in grad school, Tim’s girlfriend was a sociology major,
specializing in feminine gender roles among pre-industrial societies.
Between Helen (said girlfriend) and growing up with a hard
core, sex positive, second-wave-feminist, pacifist grandmother, he’s still got
something of a specialized vocabulary bouncing around his head that he very
rarely uses.
One word that springs to mind is ‘liminal.’ The spaces on
the edge or inbetween.
Politically he inhabits a liminal space of being
simultaneously vastly more conservative than his grandmother/sister (and a few
degrees to the right of Abby and Breena) and being wildly more liberal than
Gibbs, Tony, or Ducky (and a few degrees to the left of Jimmy).
Mostly it’s not the sort of thing that he really thinks much
about. It’s just something he’s aware of, and occasionally takes some gentle
ribbing about when election time rolls around. (From both sides, on one day in
November of ’12 he managed to get called a McBleeding-Heart by Tony and The Tin
Man (no heart) by Sarah. They didn’t much mean anything by it, beyond the fact
that he wasn’t voting for the same guy they were, but still…)
But right now he can feel years of liberal race/class/gender
consciousness training creeping up and demanding he pay attention to it.
And the reason he can feel it, sitting there in the back of
his mind, is that he and Abby are looking at the list of resumes that
Anderson’s Child Care Services sent over. It’s the same agency that Vance used
to find his nanny, and all of the women… people… one of them is a guy… appear
to be highly trained, very competent, well-educated professionals determined to
provide exceptionally good child care.
Great.
But he can’t shake the idea of wealthy, career-oriented,
white family hires brown woman from a less well-educated, less-affluent
background to take care of the babies.
And it feels weird to even mention the fact that he’s aware
of it. That as he’s looking through the resumes he can feel himself checking
names, wondering about racial background and thinking about how the woman on
the resume in front of him has a Latina name, but a master’s degree in early
child development so hiring her isn’t really a paradigm of privilege, right?
And it’s not like they’re planning on paying a sub-minimum
wage to a woman who’s here illegally and barely speaks English. These are
hard-core professional women… people who have devoted their lives to providing
top flight child care.
If this was a stack of resumes for the next member of his
team, it wouldn’t be an issue. If these were new hires for Cybercrime, he’d
barely be aware of anything about them beyond the facts of the CV.
But it’s not.
They’re nannies. The pinkest of the pink collar jobs, and he
and Abby are so damn white they’re practically translucent, and…
“Who do you like?” he asks Abby, figuring the easiest way to
deal with this is to just let her pick.
She looks up from her computer. “So many good choices. But,
it’d take forever to interview them all.”
“We’ve got nine weeks. That’s time to see twenty applicants.
Compared to Vance, as long as we don’t interview the entire agency, we’re doing
well.”
Abby smiles at that. “There is that.” He sees her flipping
through the documents. “Marissa Allen, she stood out.”
Tim flips through his own to find her, and scans her CV.
“What…” Then he sees it. “Drummer for Twisted Puppies from ‘08-‘11.”
“Saw them live a few times.” She grinned at him. “Besides,
we want Kelly to have a sense of rhythm.”
He chuckles at that, and adds her name to the call back
list. “Okay, that’s one.”
“You know, this might be easier to just weed out the ones we
don’t want to see.”
He nods. That’s sensible. But… “None of the resumes we got
said, ‘Nope, Not Me!’ to me.”
“Me, either.” Abby starts to type rapidly.
“Abby?”
“Sending Lara a note.”
“Makes sense.” Lara came from the same agency. And while
it’s true that she’s been with Vance’s family for more than three years now,
she might have more of a sense of who the people they’re looking at are than they can get from just looking at resumes.
Tim kept reading through his stack, while Abby scanned hers.
After a few minutes he said, “Okay, found one we can discard.”
“What?”
“Looking for a live in position.”
“Hold up on tossing that one.” He’s giving her the tell me what you’re thinking look. “We
both work insane hours. You aren’t settled in Cybercrime, yet. We don’t
actually know how much having the other techs in the lab will change my
schedule. We’ve got two bedrooms we aren’t using, and a bathroom we almost
never use. So, someone here all the time might be a good thing.”
And, sure, that’s logical but… It’s a stranger, in his home,
all the time.
His discomfort with that must show on his face because she
nods and says, “Okay, no live in help.”
“Thanks.”
Kelly started to cry, letting them know she was awake and
would appreciate some tending, so he went up to grab her.
“Good nap?”
She stopped crying when he came in, but didn’t look pleased.
“Yeah, I’m usually not in a great mood right after I wake
up, too.” He picks her up, snuggling her
close as he takes her over to the changing table, and gets started on changing
her diaper. “Well, at least that was true until I started sleeping next to your
mama all time. Tend to be in a pretty good mood when I wake up next to her.”
The look Kelly’s giving him is best described as, Dad, I’m sure you find this amusing, but I’m
hungry, so speed up on the diaper change and get me to Mom.
He kissed her tummy and said, “Yes, love.”
A minute later, he’s downstairs, handing Kelly to Abby. “I
think we’ve really got to see them. See who jells best with us, and with her.
It’s not about who’s got the masters from the spiffiest university; it’s who
gets Kelly, and to a lesser degree, us, best.”
“Yeah,” she says as she gets Kelly settled on her breast.
“So, I guess I know what we’re doing from now until you go back to work?”
“Guess so. I’m back on the twentieth, so that’s ten days of
interview time.”
Abby thinks about that. “Five really. Doubt they want to do weekends, and I doubt
we’ll be able to get anyone in tomorrow.”
"Good points. I'll go give them a call. See what we can do."
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