I was idling at a red light at Mission and Western, a juncture where you could slip away from your life entirely and drive up the wild coast into the potential of ultimate freedom or make a left and then a right and end up at the gym. Each day since the inception of motherhood twice over and all at once, I chose the latter, Toadal Fitness rendered a Zen sanctuary by the existence of its childcare center. The Hot Box Yoga sauna was my refuge. You could lie supine within its womb-like walls in darkness and call it exercise.

The gym meant two precious hours to myself while college kids who resembled my former students supervised the twins in a confined space. I reveled in the muted top forty soundtrack playing over the speakers, imagining myself back in a time when motherhood was an alluring abstraction, a calling instead of daily realities: spit-up and crumbs, diapers and sleep deprivation, scrapes and ouchie-boos, collisions with corners and sharp edges. Deep into year two of the twins, my own edges had never felt sharper. 

I was headed to the gym as usual that afternoon when a man holding up a cardboard sign caught my attention. The sign read, “Will work for food/$$$/anything — Will do a really good job at anything you need!” Beneath: “(Exception: too cute to prostitute.)” I always did appreciate a clever slogan. 

The twins, in their also-identical carseats in back, blended into a cacophonous blur of flailing limbs and high-pitched alarm-inducing shrillness over the course of the ten-minute ride. The trivial took on life-or-death stakes when you had double two-and a-half-year-olds in your perpetual possession. One whined about chocolate. The other demanded the Katy Perry song “Fie-wok” (Toddlerese for “Firework”) to be played that instant, in perpetuity, on repeat. Try explaining to these new people that there’d once been a time when you could not receive any given thing you longed for on instantaneous demand. I could barely keep my head straight, much less tolerate yet another play of ‘Fie-wok.’ If I could have had anything on demand right then, it would have been some time to go to the bathroom alone.

Hence, the gym. But now the gym would have to wait because the idea had struck me suddenly and all at once. For a moment I hesitated about acting on it, but it was as if something in me already knew that this, yes this, was precisely the solution.

I pulled over and rolled down the window. 

“Excuse me?” 

I sized him up as quickly as he approached: early-to-late forties depending on how homelessness had weathered him. He reached the car. I scanned his eyes. No evidence of intoxication. He was on the scruffy side, sure, all scraggly hair and unwieldy beard, but sleeping on the streets, living on the move with no roof over his head, a less than socially acceptable appearance would be de rigeur. And who was I to judge, with my unbrushed nest of hair pulled into a messy mom-bun? Had I even brushed my teeth that morning after slurping black coffee between bites of dry bagel? Who remembered to stock the house with luxuries like avocados or butter anymore? Maybe we were two of a kind! On initial assessment, Too-Cute-To-Prostitute did not appear to be a tweaker, a junkie, or drunk. Good enough.

“I’m looking for someone,” I said. “It’s part-time, but could lead to more hours for the right person.”

“What do you need?” he asked. “I do carpentry, light plumbing, drywalling, I’m a pretty good cook…”

“Cook?” That would be beyond, with these gaping baby-bird mouths to fill, vortexes forever echoing demands for Mac and cheese! Chicken nuggets! Star soup! I could have filed for permanent residence in an industrial kitchen.

“You’ll be surprised,” he said, “to hear I went to culinary school in Seattle. Spent fifteen years as a line cook, a few more as a chef.”

“Where?”

“A restaurant called Il Bel Posto, near Pioneer Square. You know Seattle?”

“I grew up there. That’s quite a resume. How’d you end up here?”

“Is the job you have by any chance in food service?”

“Sort of.”

“I’ll wash dishes, anything to get back in the kitchen. I’m Will by the way.”

“So your sign is a double-entendre.”

He smiled beneath the bushy beard. “You noticed.”

I smiled back. “Will work for anything! Except you sound like a caveman if you say it aloud.”

“I thought it was funny,” he said.

 “Well, Will, I appreciate that you consider humor, and the light’s about to turn, so. Will meet by curb?” 

He chuckled as I drove off, pulling over by the Saturday Farmers Market parking lot. I turned around and saw Will running across Mission, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a Sprinter van. Its horn blared. I could picture the smug surfer couple inside. A childless couple that got massages and oat milk lattes at Verve on weekends and had no idea about people like Will or me. Will made it across the street intact. There was a chill in the air, the kind before a rain, the kind that gets into your bones. I realized I hadn’t introduced myself and did so.

“So what’s the gig?” he said.

“I need to know a few things about you first.”

“The job interview for the job I can’t know about unless I ace it?”

“It’s a sensitive matter.”

“Hey, you saw the bottom part of my sign too, yes?”

“What happened at Il Bel Posto?”

He paused and I figured I could guess—fired for drinking on the job…something involving addiction, I sensed, though he seemed not to be on anything at the moment.

“I could lie,” he said, “but you seem nice. I’m an alcoholic.”

Bingo. Will went on. “We all drank after work. Nobody really knew who was just having fun and who had a problem, you know? For me it got pretty bad. I stopped showing up to my shift, ran out of money, got evicted, lived in Volunteer Park for a while. Total rock bottom. Eventually figured out getting to meetings. I did all the steps, do meetings every day, sometimes twice. I’m looking for work, traveling around searching for a way back. Six years later mainly what I’ve learned is no one’s really that big on second chances. So yes, I can cook, but I also do carpentry, light plumbing, drywall, whatever. So. Did I pass? I can prove my sobriety.”

He pulled out some tokens. Then Will’s eyes drifted to the backseat, where the twins were spraying cracker crumbs in some kind of spitting contest. I had long stopped trying to clean my car. “Boys or girls?” he asked. People fucking loved this question, apparently even homeless people.

“I don’t gender my children,” I explained.

“Excuse me?”

“They. Since they were babies they’ve been theybys. They’ll decide on their own genders when they’re old enough to consider it. I don’t project socially constructed concepts on them.”

“You some kind of professor?”

“Was. First-year Rhetoric and Analysis. Pre-the twins. Themed around gender. I learned tons from my students. Really opened my mind.”

“Fancy.”

“Not really, not if you know. It’s the trenches, the dregs. But I liked it, or at least some things about it. Talking about concepts like gender as a social construction was gratifying.”

Will was quiet, and I realized he was listening. Really listening. As in, with interest. It had been a long time since anyone listened to things I said.

“I’m looking to hire a nanny.” 

“Wait, what? You pull over an unhoused dude from the side of the highway to ask him to be your gender-free kiddos’ nanny?” 

“Gender-undeclared,” I corrected. I pointed at his sign. “It does say you’ll do anything.”

Will laughed and shook his head. “And they say we’re the crazy ones.” 

He stared at me as if he was trying to decide whether I was even real. I couldn’t blame him. I did what I usually do. Launched into a thousand explanations, as if explanations ever really helped, as if anything could ever truly be explained. Was it Hemingway who said the only way to find out if you can trust someone is to trust them? All I did know for sure was I needed help. 

Our last nanny couldn’t afford to live in Santa Cruz anymore because no regular human can afford to live in Santa Cruz anymore. Another one got long covid and was getting by (or not) on disability somewhere. 

“My house has heat!” I went on. “And hot water. Room and board and as much food and coffee as you could stand.” 

“And those kids, you’re saying you’d leave them with me?”  

“I just really need someone who can watch them, who will stay and doesn’t cost more than the entire bank account.” I leaned over and opened the passenger side door. “Come on. What do you say?”

Behind me, one twin was crying. The other was not sharing a seaweed packet. Then they both started screaming. All language dissolved. Will looked at them and looked at me and seemed to understand. He got in the car, which took on an odor of fresh mud and wet socks. 

The dash started on with that annoying dinging sound. “Can you put your seatbelt on?” I asked. “One more unwelcome noise I’m afraid I’ll totally lose it.”

“Excuse me, please,” he said and buckled in. Polite. Maybe he could teach the twins some manners.

“You know, you don’t seem half as bad a candidate as you seem to think.” 

He smiled and I mentally planned all our dental visits. 

+ 

Will, the twins, and I pulled up into a spot in front of the house. I walked him through the living room and kitchen. “Please help yourself to anything, there’s fruit, vegetables, soymilk, whatever you like, just take it. The twins’ room is here. I’m working on getting them to sleep through the night, so you may have to wake up and rock them or at least one of them. The other will scream while you do.” 

“You may be a crazy person,” he said, “but this is like you’re telling me I won the fucking lottery.” I knew he was wondering, How did I end up here? It was a question I asked myself, too.

He’d soon find out. And I had a feeling he’d stick around anyway.

+

“Cass,” said Travis, beginning any major statement, annoyingly, as he usually did, with my name. “Are you aware that there’s a homeless guy in the kitchen?”

“I hired a nanny.”

“Good, I’m so glad you finally went ahead with finding someone. But I’m not talking about that. Whoever she is, that’s not who’s in there. There’s a dirty man wearing ripped clothes and he put a giant dirty backpack that smells like pee on our floor. I don’t know how he got in here but he looks to be washing our dishes right now. I’ll call 911.”

Travis went for his phone on the vestibule table. I grabbed it first. “Like I said, I hired a nanny. That’s Will. He hasn’t taken a shower yet because he wanted to learn a few of the ropes first. He’ll take one soon. And the only reason he smells like pee is because one of them peed on him as he was lifting them out of the car seat.”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

I said nothing further. 

“You’ve gotta be kidding. Have you lost your mind?”

“What? I need help.”

“We do need to get you some help,” he said, “but I don’t mean the nannying kind. Has your mind fallen into the realm of lost things?”

“We’ve talked about this so many times!”

“And I’ve been telling you, I’m fine with you hiring someone, but what about Margarita, or Irene, or what’s her name with the piercing?”

“Quit, moved to Idaho, and ‘what’s her name with the piercing,’ whose name is Violet, got long Covid and went to stay with her family in LA. Why don’t you know this already? Why is all this on me?” 

“Come on, Cass. I have a full-time job. I wish I was here to help you every day and let you have that tummy tuck, but I’m just not. I have to go to work. You know this.”

I stayed quiet after that because no matter what I said I knew I couldn’t win when it came to Travis. He was a lawyer who could argue a person into a hole and fill up the opening with boulders. My counterarguments remained silent. Such as: I had a job, too, but it no longer made sense or seemed possible after the twins. And my abdominal wall had been obliterated. 

“Why can’t you see it?” I said. But Travis was distracted by Will, who’d come into the entryway followed by two little silhouettes. The twins emerged. They’d taken to him, I could tell.

“I totally assumed you were a single mom,” he said.

“Well, Will,” I said, “why wouldn’t you. This is my husband, Travis. Travis, meet our new nanny, Will.”

They say where there’s a will, there’s a way. In my case, Will was the way. I walked off to the linen closet, gave him a towel along with a pair of Travis’ old pajamas, and escorted him to the attic to shower in the closet-sized bathroom. 

+

The sun was setting. In the other room, Will was entertaining the kids with what sounded like a country song sung by a drunk reptile, but they were loving it.

“Cass,” said Travis, following me around the house as I decluttered, “you’ve made your point. Consider your point made. You win this time.”

I cast my eyes through the doorway at Will, holding a red toy truck a twin had handed him. “Play more twuck,” said the child. Will glanced over at me, the other twin glanced at Will and the other twin, and the three of them absconded back to the playroom.

“Better get dinner started,” I said. “Will looks hungry, doesn’t he?”

I went to the kitchen to start the chili. Travis followed.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” I pulled out the beans, canned tomatoes, and veggie broth. “Travis, will you please pass me an onion?”

“You are doing this to get at me about something. What did I do?”

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. It’s not like this is new.”

“Does it not seem a bit extreme to you? I had no idea you’d gotten to the point where you felt your best option was a homeless dude! Come on.”

“Maybe it’s good for you, too. You can log more hours on Destiny 2.”

Travis opened and closed multiple drawers in the refrigerator, finally locating an onion in the drawer clearly marked Vegetables. “You know how much that game helps me unwind after my long day and commute.” 

I turned around to chop the onion so he couldn’t see I rolled my eyes and so I could dismiss the leap of wateriness as purely onion-induced. Garlic, a tablespoon of broth in the skillet. I’d been making this chili since the days my college housemate invited people experiencing homelessness to eat with us and sleep inside. Twenty-one. Not much of a gap between there and forty, it turns out. 

Travis was still talking. I’d zoned out as I tended to over the most recent years of our decade-long marriage. I tuned back in. “—ask him to leave. I will personally go on Care-dot-com and hire you an actual nanny,” he said. “Then we should also book a therapist. I get that the guy needs a meal. Feed him the chili. Then this prank is over.”

“It’s not a prank. And I’m not firing Will—it’s a good deal, and he’s a decent person.”

“He’s homeless, Cass.”

“Not anymore!”

“You’ve always worn rose-colored lenses, but this is next-level.”

Squeals and laughter came from the playroom. I went to see. Will was on all fours, in Travis’ old pajamas, all cleaned up and traversing the carpet with both of the twins on his back, playing horse, their favorite game, but one my lower back could not sustain. He kneeled up and they spilled off, laughing, and climbed back on for another ride across the room. It was sweet. There was still mud on the floor. It didn’t matter.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” I said. “Looks like things are going well?”

“They do seem to be,” Will said. 

“Great. Tomorrow, we can take them to the park.”

+ 

The next day, Travis got up early and went to work. I got up later. With Will around, I didn’t feel stressed. Will got the twins to brush their teeth, eat breakfast, start to dress themselves, hop into the double stroller. Off to the park we went. I showed him where the swings were and snuck away while the twins were facing forward in their little seats. I could get used to having a nanny, I thought. One extra person to purchase groceries for was nothing compared to reclaiming my time. 

Will didn’t want to only accept “charity” from me, he said, so he took a part-time job doing a nanny share with my twins and  a single mom I met in the gym childcare room when she was picking up her baby. 

She sang Will’s praises. “Where’d you find this guy?” she asked. “A real baby whisperer!” 

“Actually, here,” I said, and left it at that. She thanked me again for referring him, and carried away her baby, diaper bag, purse, keys, elephant stuffy, and water bottle. Her phone slipped and landed on the floor. I picked it up and put it into a pocket on her diaper bag. “Thanks, thanks so much again,” she said. New moms were full of gratitude for any kind of help.

+++

Liza Monroy is the author of the novels The Distractions (Regalo) and Mexican High (Spiegel&Grau/Random House), the memoir The Marriage Act: The Risk I Took To Keep My Best Friend In America And What It Taught Us About Love, and Seeing As Your Shoes Are Soon To Be On Fire (Counterpoint/Soft Skull), an essay collection based on one of the “most popular, provocative, and unforgettable” installments of The New York Times’ “Modern Love” column. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Best American Food Writing, and many other publications and anthologies. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and teaches for Stanford Continuing Studies Novel and Memoir Writing Certificate programs. She lives in Santa Cruz, CA, where she is currently working on a new novel, Boardmother, about a group of moms who create a surf-and-childcare exchange only to find themselves morphing into ocean animals.