Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Ulrika had seen The Nutcracker in New York once when it was shown on Barnkanalen, the Swedish children’s channel. She especially liked the way the tree rose from the floor, bigger and grander, more bedecked than anything she could imagine even in her own rich home on the edge of the forest. That was her vision of New York, a city with its dream wonders ever increasing. Now she was here for the summer as an au pair.

The family was out and, as often, Ulrika, was not included. She understood that Marilyn and John lived for display and had to make it seem that they were devoted parents, seen at certain events with certain other New York parents, but she knew, and the child, Poppy, sensed otherwise.

Ulrika headed for Marilyn’s closet, one of her favorite places in the large apartment. When they were out she loved to try on Marilyn’s clothes and study herself in the mirrors that surrounded her, pushing up her long fair hair, turning and turning with pleasure streaked with the fear of discovery. She knew that Poppy, who caught her once, would never tell. The other times Poppy was asleep.

The clothes hung loose upon her. She walked through the racks like a high stepping seabird stooping to select morsels of beach food. Ulrika fell just short of beauty because of the vulpine pointiness of her nose, the smallness of her blue eyes and a certain gawkiness, all somewhat redeemed by her natural blond hair. Ulrika liked Marilyn’s clothes but would never trade her life for that of Marilyn Abernathy who worked hard and late and often quarreled with John who did the same. They each had a vicious streak and often forgot to close their door.

Ulrika also liked to read Marilyn’s gossip magazines. She thought of it as practice for her English which already was excellent. Sometimes she would pick at Marilyn’s special food in the refrigerator and, after she set the timer on her phone, take a nap on top of the covers of their big bed. Her bed in the maid’s room was too small for her long legs and also sagged. Poppy’s bed was just right.

Ulrika had been with the family a month and had placed her sister Birgitta with another couple who were friends of Marilyn and John. Both the girls were countesses though they never mentioned it, the daughters of a prominent newspaper executive and Napoleon scholar and his wife who edited books and, so far, they had been expecting much more from the city.

On Tuesdays, their day off, the sisters went out late to the clubs and both John and the other employer watched them swish out the door in their tiny skirts and high clompy shoes realizing the danger of daughters and the sway of young beauty.

They were men in their late forties and fifties, men who remembered the song The Girl from Ipanema—“ tall and tan and young and lovely/ the girl from Ipanema goes walking/ And when she passes/ Each one she passes /Goes ‘Ahhh’” They had one of those girls in the house and they were each the sighing man that the girl does not see.

John would think of last year’s summer girl, a solid girl from the Midwest, quiet and jolly, without wiles, and no threat at all and could not help making comparisons. He felt a certain guilt because he had given the Swedish sisters passes and tickets for the clubs which he got for nothing at the newspaper where he worked and one night Ulrika had had her purse stolen.

The first time the family went away for the weekend was a shock to Ulrika. She had been thinking of and planning for The Hamptons, a mythical place of parties by overheated moonlit pools and beaches where famous magazine people stretched out waiting for a nineteen year old Swedish countess to lope along.

Instead it was a house in Connecticut that duplicated everything in New York but with trees. True, there was a tennis court and a pool so cold it might as well have been carved from Kimena’s Ice Hotel. When Ulrika appeared in her bikini expecting to find a lawn full of friends, there was only Marilyn and that hairy foreign Fader looking up with his big sad bear eyes as she led Poppy to the shallow end of the cold water. She had to get in to receive Poppy who could not quite swim yet.

Marilyn, who had a strong sense of what was appropriate or inappropriate in the eyes of her narrow world, gave Ulrika’s black Ibiza bikini, her flat stomach, and very long legs a frown and a quiet sigh.

Inside the Connecticut house, it was very tidy. Marilyn was a maker of lists and the pantry was stocked with two of everything in both homes. The towels hung in a straight line like in that movie Sleeping with the Enemy, the cans and jars were in military rows, Poppy had duplicates of her toys—all clutter was banished. It was the way Marilyn controlled the lava underflow of her hysteria.

In Connecticut no one came to visit. Nights were early as possible and Ulrika, missing Ibiza and even Torekov at home, complained bitterly to Birgitta in Swedish when the family slept.

Poppy, a wise child, saw it all and did not allow herself to become too attached to Ulrika, sensing she would not stay forever. The summer girls never did. Like Mary Poppins, they blew away on the west wind with the first brown leaves.

 

“I was wondering if you would pick up,” said Detective Daniel Rivkin of the Nineteenth Precinct. He had been calling without stop ever since Ulrika and Birgitta stopped in the stationhouse at two in the morning to report Ulrika’s stolen bag. Once Ulrika had determined his intentions, she had avoided him.

“Have you found it yet?”

“Actually no, but I was wondering if you would like to meet for a drink…”

“I do not go out from here except on my day out with my sister but please call only when you find my little bag.”

Ulrika continued to roam the apartment opening drawers, looking on top of closet shelves, all the while listening for the Abernathys’ return. She had been unable to sleep in her saggy lumpy bed, had run out of magazines and was doubting her whole New York adventure.

She sat on the antique Swedish chair in the living room that had just come back from Veterans Caning. She heard a crack as she sat and felt her little rump go through. How was this possible? She had seen the tag that said it cost $1000 to have it recaned. She placed a cushion on top of the tear in the caning.

Ulrika opened the refrigerator and took a few leaves of kale from Marilyn’s Thursday lunch portion, then two slices from John’s leftover massive steak. She took three healthy swigs from the vodka bottle, careful to wipe her frosty lipgloss off the rim. After an hour of TV she staggered in to sleep and, fairly drunk by then, crawled into Poppy’s bed. The little girl curled herself in Ulrika’s arms.

“What the fuck’s this?” Marilyn shrieked. “John! John!”

Ulrika sat up rubbing her eyes. Poppy started to cry.

“Hey!” John said.

“She has to leave. Right now! This is sick.”

Ulrika had no idea what was going on. She thought it might be the relative emptiness of the vodka bottle or the missing kale or maybe she had messed up some of Marilyn’s clothes or the broken antique chair.

Marilyn had ripped the duvet from little Poppy’s bed. Ulrika realized she was in her underwear which is how she usually slept and how she walked around in the house in Malmo with Birgitta. It was her habit there to sleep half the night in one bed and then, like Napoleon, move to another for the rest of the night.

“Out!” she has to leave this house now. Stop crying Poppy.”

“Really? It’s the middle of the night, Marilyn.”

“Who knows what went on. This is sick! In the bed with her?”

“How could you think that? “ Ulrika said, finally awake enough to speak . “At home we are always in the bed together. This was warm and good.”

Then she remembered just who she was and her ancient noble family.

“You put me in the back in that broken little bed. The room of a maid. How can I sleep that way. I want to leave. I will go to Birgitta in the morning.”

“No, pleeeeze…” said the child

“Be quiet, Poppy. You can’t understand. I will pay for a hotel. Out of this house, now!”

Marilyn, a little drunk herself, was pulling at the covers like a madwoman. John was thinking of the Girl from Ipanema in her underwear in the wrong bed in his house.

Ulrika, wrapped in the topmost duvet, stalked off through the rooms and through the kitchen. They all heard the thump of her large wheeled bag and then drawers being opened and slammed.

John sighed while Marilyn tried to calm the child, already growing sleepy. He wrote Ulrika a very large check and handed her a great deal of cash. She was going to sleep with Birgitta at their friends’ apartment a few blocks away on Park Avenue.

“Far, what should I do?” Ulrika had asked her father and he told her. It was six in Stockholm and he was already awake.

John walked her downstairs and waited until the night doorman got her a cab. Ulrika got the sense that this was not the first time he had had to apologized for Marilyn’s behavior. Nonetheless, she was going to do what Pappa had told her to do.

Ulrika walked into the Nineteenth Precinct dragging her big wheelie and asked for Detective Rivkin who was there on night duty. Summoning a few tears made easier by the vodka and the recent drama, she told the policeman her story.

“Threw you out in the middle of the night, huh?” he said.

“They are very strange people.”

“How so?” That was the suspicious cop voice from the American television she had grown up on. Do not lie, just tell them what happened, father had said, Birgitta can back you up.

“Things are so different here than I thought, maybe worse?”

He told her there was no crime involved on either side, no charges to press and offered to drive her to her sister.

As he lifted her bag into the unmarked police car, Ulrika hoped her trouble was over. She decided not to roam around any more in other people’s houses where things did not fit her, where the food was too spicy hot or cold, and the newly fixed chairs broke and the too small bed sagged.

“I was trying to call you,” the detective said on the way. “I have a good surprise. Reach into that evidence bag at your feet.”

There was her little purple satin evening purse on the gold chain. No money inside but all her papers. The detective let her out on the corner of Fifth Avenue.

 

Birgitta was standing on the sidewalk wearing her backpack when Ulrika arrived. She was crying.

“I just called. He is on the floor. He went after me and he fell down. The others are out.”

The sisters fell into each other’s arms, their golden hair hanging down like capes over each other.

“I stepped over him and ran out. Maybe he is dead.”

“Do you have your papers? I got mine back, I have money and we have Pappa’s card. We should go to the airport.”

In the taxi to Kennedy the girls looked back and thought of the havoc they had left. As they walked through the airport together, many people looked up and a few of them sighed but the girls did not see, they just did not see.