Nell Read Online Free

immediately—it was so large and falling apart, it needed constant repair.
    But at that time the real estate market changed, and she found that in order to buy a smaller house, she would have to pay a much larger mortgage, much more interest on the principal. She had decided to keep the house and for the first two years had been glad to stay there. It had provided a sense of continuity and stability for her two small children, whose lives had been upset by their parents’ divorce. And when, in desperation, she had begun a babysitting service in her home in order to make survival money and still be with her children, she had been glad of the size of the house.
    She had been especially glad on rainy days, when she had nine children under five years of age and two infants to take care of. What had once been a library became the napping room, where the children sprawled on the antique Oriental rug with their sleeping bags and blankets and comforters. The living room had been for quiet play, the kitchen for juice and snacks and lunch, and the dining room, the once-elegant dining room with the intricate parquet floor and the crystal chandelier, had been where little kids rode their tricycles and scooters around the long oak table during blizzards or rainstorms. The landing to the second floor was large enough for the television set, and the children could gather there in a group, sprawling on rug samples Nell had begged from a furniture store, to watch Captain Kangaroo or Sesame Street .
    My God, what a time that had been.
    That was four years ago. Nell had been ready to go on that way forever, and would have if the parents of one of the children hadn’t intervened. The O’Learys owned one of the best women’s boutiques in Cambridge; they specialized in understated cotton dresses and simple cotton sweaters that cost around two hundred dollars. They had decided to move to Nantucket to open up another shop there, and they asked Nell if she would be interested in running their shop on “the mainland” for them. They would do the major bookkeeping and buying; she would be a saleswoman and manager.
    “I don’t know a thing about running a store!” Nell had responded.
    “But you’ve got such a long, lean body!” Elizabeth O’Leary had said, studying Nell with her buyer’s eye. “You’d look super in our clothes. You’d be the best ad we could get.”
    “Are you kidding?” Nell cried. “I’d never be able to afford the clothes you sell!”
    “Well, honey,” Colin O’Leary said, “you won’t have to buy them. Just wear them—while you’re working in the store.”
    “You don’t want to be stuck here all your life with these—these children ,” Elizabeth had said, looking at the horde of jam-smeared midgets who straggled in and out of the kitchen as they talked. The O’Learys’ own child, Priscilla, was a lovely little girl of five who wore immaculate and expensive hand-smocked pinafores and Mary Janes with white socks every day. The O’Learys were sending Priscilla to live with her grandparents in Greenwich, Connecticut, so she could go to a good private school. “We can pay you very well ,” Elizabeth had continued.
    And they did pay Nell very well, and she had found, after she grew accustomed to the change, that she quite liked dressing up in fabulous designer clothes and working regular hours with human beings who did not spit up on her. Still, she missed the grand chaotic richness of those babysitting years.
    Not that there wasn’t plenty of chaos in her life still. This afternoon Nell was going to clean out her basement or die. The washer and dryer were in the basement, and a playroom for the children was there, too, in a corner of the basement where the cement was covered by a torn and faded piece of linoleum. Jeremy’s electric train table was in the basement, as were many of Hannah’s dress-up clothes and baby dolls. Still, thebasement was not Nell’s favorite place. In fact, it made her skin