Eleven Kids, One Summer

  Back at Sandpiper House, Mrs. Rosso fixed a place on the couch in the living room near the window. Ira was surrounded by his toys, and everyone kept bringing him juice. And he could look out the window at the people on the beach. Jan went outside and built a huge sand castle for him.

  * * *

  After dinner that evening, Abbie’s friends Melanie and Justin dropped by.

  “How’s the patient?” Mel asked Ira.

  “Much better, thank you,” said Ira politely. He felt like a king. Mel had brought Ira a little puzzle, and Justin had brought him a kite.

  “As soon as you’re well enough, we’ll fly it together,” Justin told Ira. Then he turned to Abbie. “I have an announcement to make,” he said. “Do you think you could get your brothers and sisters in here?”

  “Sure,” replied Abbie. “Hey, everybody!” she yelled. “Come here!”

  Bainbridge, Candy, Woody, Hardy, Faustine, Dinnie, Hannah, and Jan ran into the living room. “Do you need Keegan?” teased Abbie.

  “No,” said Justin, grinning.

  “What’s going on?” asked Hardy.

  “I have some news,” answered Justin. “Today the director announced that pretty soon we’re going to need lots of extras for the movie.”

  “Extra what?” asked Jan.

  “Extra people.”

  “Like for crowd scenes?” asked Abbie.

  “Exactly,” said Justin. (Abbie looked quite pleased with herself.) “So,” Justin went on, “I am personally inviting all of you — even Keegan because we need babies — to be in the movie. What you have to do is —”

  But Justin was interrupted by Dinnie. “We’re going to be in a movie?” she shrieked. “In a movie? Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe it!”

  “Everyone will see us!” cried Hardy. “Cool!”

  “I’ll be up on the big screen with you and all those stars,” said Candy, dreamily.

  “Plus you get paid,” added Justin. “Fifty dollars for each day you work.”

  “Fifty dollars!” (That was Faustine.) “Maybe we could pay the fishermen to stop killing fish!”

  “Are you crazy?” exclaimed Hannah. “With fifty dollars — or more — we could buy half the toys in the world.”

  “I’ll be a millionaire!” cried Woody.

  “Oh boy,” said Ira. “I hope I get well soon. I want to be in the movie, too.”

  “Well, I’ll let you guys know when we need you. But I’m warning you. It’s hard work. You have to do things over and over. The day can be long.”

  Ira didn’t care. Nobody cared. They were going to be in a movie.

  Ira decided that the last two days had been the best in his life.

  “Keegan, Keegan. Baby Beegan,” said Jan in a sing-song voice.

  She looked at her little brother, who was sitting in his stroller. He was gumming up a teething biscuit. Abbie was cooing to him, “Hi, Keegie. Hi, Keegie,” and Keegan was smiling. Or sometimes he would laugh and spray the teething biscuit everywhere.

  It was like this almost every morning. The Rossos got up. They ate breakfast. Some of the kids would go outside to the beach. And the rest would stay inside for a while, making a fuss over Keegan.

  “At least you still like me,” said Jan to Zsa-Zsa. She put out her hand to pat the cat — and Zsa-Zsa jumped into Keegan’s lap, which made Keegan laugh again. This time he sprayed the teething biscuit at Jan.

  “Gross! Cut it out!” cried Jan.

  “Janthina, don’t yell at the baby,” said Mrs. Rosso.

  I used to be the baby until he came along, thought Jan.

  “Keegan, Keegan. Baby Beegan,” she muttered again.

  Abbie turned around and gave Jan a look. It wasn’t fair, Jan thought. At first Keegan had just been a cute little baby. Everyone peeked in his crib or wanted to give him bottles. But there wasn’t much else you could do with a baby as young as Keegan.

  Then Keegan got bigger. And bigger. He learned how to smile and then how to laugh. Now everyone spent time sitting with Keegan, trying to make him laugh.

  When I was the youngest, my brothers and sisters paid lots of attention to me, thought Jan. Abbie took care of me, Bainbridge made toys for me, and Mommy and Daddy bought me almost anything I wanted. Now it’s Keegan, Keegan, Keegan. Even Ira doesn’t play with me so much, but that’s because he got Lyme disease. Jan hoped Ira would hurry up and get better.

  * * *

  One Friday, Mr. Rosso arrived on Fire Island with news. “Guess what. We’re going to have guests next week when I’m on vacation.”

  “Who?” asked Mrs. Rosso. She looked alarmed. She was probably already planning systems for beds and bedding and meals and how to keep extra sand out of the house.

  “Nanny and Grandy,” replied Mr. Rosso.

  “Goody!” cried Jan. Nanny and Grandy always paid lots of attention to her. And they usually brought gifts.

  “Anyone else?” asked Mrs. Rosso.

  Jan didn’t hear the answer. She had quit paying attention. She was hoping that Nanny and Grandy would bring her the Puffin’ Pal doll she wanted so badly. She knew her grandparents knew she wanted the doll because she had written them a postcard that had said:

  The next week, Mr. Rosso reached the island earlier than usual. Jan knew he was going to arrive on an early ferry, so she and the twins ran to meet the boat.

  Jan couldn’t wait to see her pink Puffin’ Pal doll.

  But she didn’t get to see it at all.

  “Look!” cried Dinnie. She was pointing to the top of the ferry where Mr. Rosso was waving. Next to him were Nanny and Grandy (they were waving, too), and next to them were Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Martha, and Scott, Lyman, Courtenay, and Eleanor.

  “Who said they could come?” asked Jan, staring with dismay at her cousins.

  “Dad said last week that they were coming,” replied Faustine, sounding surprised. “He said Nanny and Grandy, Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Martha, Courtenay, Eleanor, Lyman, and Scott. Didn’t you hear?”

  “No,” said Jan. She’d been too busy thinking about a Puffin’ Pal doll.

  “Well, aren’t you glad to see them?” asked Dinnie. “We haven’t seen our cousins in ages. Uncle Jimmy or Aunt Martha, either. I can’t wait to play with Courtenay and Scott on the beach.”

  “Courtenay and Scott are your age,” muttered Jan.

  The Kiki sputtered to a halt, after turning around to face Patchogue again.

  The people on the top of the ferry began to climb down the stairs. Soon Jan’s father, grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins were rushing down the gangplank, and everyone began hugging.

  “What a wonderful reception!” exclaimed Nanny.

  Jan looked for bags that might hold gifts — like a Puffin’ Pal doll — but she didn’t see any. Only suitcases and hats and sandbuckets. The sandbuckets were for Eleanor and Lyman. They were four and two, lots littler than Jan. Now everyone would fuss over Eleanor and Lyman as well as Keegan.

  Jan was just a plain old kid in the middle. She was not special anymore.

  * * *

  At Sandpiper House that night, Mrs. Rosso organized and organized. She had already decided how the bedrooms would be divided up. Nanny and Grandy got their own room, and so did Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Martha. Bainbridge and Woody had to sleep on the couches in the living room, and the rest of the kids slept three or four in a room, except for Candy.

  Jan and Hannah wound up with Lyman and Eleanor.

  After dinner, while it was still light outside, the Rossos and their guests sat on the big deck overlooking the ocean.

  Lyman waved to the waves, and everyone laughed. Nanny said, “Isn’t he adorable? Waving to the waves?”

  Grandy held Keegan on his lap and played pat-a-cake with him. When Keegan laughed, so did everyone else. (But not Jan.)

  Eleanor said she could turn a cartwheel. When she tried, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Rosso, and Nanny and Grandy clapped, even though Eleanor had not turned a real cartwheel at all.

  “I can turn
a cartwheel,” said Jan. Jan took gymnastics during the school year, so she turned a perfect cartwheel.

  Eleanor cried. Her parents comforted her.

  The adults — plus Bainbridge and Abbie — even made a fuss over Zsa-Zsa. “She’s precious,” said Aunt Martha.

  Jan wished she could say that she had found and rescued Zsa-Zsa when Zsa-Zsa was a kitten. But she hadn’t. The twins had. So she kept her mouth closed.

  * * *

  That night was one of the longest of Jan’s life. It seemed even longer than Christmas Eve, when Jan would wait and wait and wait for morning to come. Eleanor had to go to the bathroom three times, and each time she woke up Jan because she was scared to go by herself, and Hannah wouldn’t wake up. Lyman mumbled in his sleep and then had a nightmare, so Jan had to comfort him and remind him where he was and tell him everything was okay.

  The next morning, Jan told her mother about her awful night.

  “Eleanor and Lyman are scared of everything. Eleanor wouldn’t go to the bathroom by herself, and Lyman had a bad dream. I had to talk and talk to him before he went back to sleep.”

  “Jan,” said Mrs. Rosso, looking surprised. “I’m very proud of you. You had a tough night, but you did all the right things.”

  “I did?” said Jan. She smiled. Then she thought, Today I will be very helpful.

  Jan folded laundry for her mother. She helped make lunch. She walked Eleanor to the Harbor Store and bought her a Popsicle. But by dinnertime, nobody was saying how wonderful and helpful Jan was.

  On Sunday, Jan’s cousins were playing on the deck. Their mother was watching them. Mrs. Rosso was holding Keegan and watching them, too.

  “Lyman is so advanced,” said Mrs. Rosso to Aunt Martha. “Look at how he’s stacking those blocks, and he’s only two.”

  Aunt Martha smiled.

  “And look at Courtenay,” Mrs. Rosso went on. “She reads to herself now.”

  “Look what I can do,” spoke up Jan. She scrambled onto the deck railing, spread out her arms, and began to walk along it as if she were on a tightrope. She looked down and almost lost her balance, but she kept going.

  “Jan!” screeched Mrs. Rosso. She jumped up, tossed Keegan into Uncle Jimmy’s arms, grabbed Jan, and pulled her onto the deck.

  “Don’t you ever do that again!” she scolded. “It must be ten feet from the railing to the sand. You could have hurt yourself badly.”

  “Falling into sand?”

  “There might be barbed wire or broken glass down there,” replied Mrs. Rosso, still sounding angry. “Not to mention poison ivy.”

  Jan ran to her room and didn’t come out until dinnertime. (But she let Ira come in and talk to her.)

  Nobody paid attention to Jan. They didn’t pay attention when she moped around the house all the next day, nor when she dressed up in her church clothes. (Well, Uncle Jimmy did tell her she looked pretty. But her father told her to take off her church clothes because it was not Sunday.)

  By Thursday, Jan was tired of everything and everybody. In the morning, she left the house by herself and walked to the area where another scene for Summer Blues was being shot. None of her brothers or sisters was there. They were so used to seeing Justin Hart now that they didn’t watch the moviemaking very often. They hung around with their friends or played on the beach unless something really interesting was happening with the movie.

  Jan watched the action for a while. She decided that making a movie must be very difficult. Justin Hart and his co-star, Chloe, were trying to shoot one little scene. The only thing they had to do was face each other, holding hands, while Justin said, “I think it’s over for the summer. We shouldn’t see each other anymore.” Then Chloe was supposed to burst into tears. But each time they were in the middle of a scene that Jan thought was going well, the director would yell, “Cut!” and then say something like, “There’s a glare on Justin’s face,” or “Justin, look right into Chloe’s eyes when you say that,” or “Chloe, your eyes should already be filling with tears.”

  Finally, after about fifteen takes, the director said the scene looked okay. Justin and Chloe sagged into chairs under an umbrella.

  “Hi, Justin,” said Jan shyly, approaching him.

  “Jan!” exclaimed Justin. “Are you here all by yourself?”

  Jan nodded. “I’m just watching.”

  “Great,” said Justin. “Have you met Chloe?”

  Jan shook her head.

  “Hi, Jan,” said Chloe.

  Jan took a good look at Chloe. And suddenly she decided that Chloe was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen. She was wearing a lot of makeup, Jan could tell. And her hair had been curled. She looked gorgeous.

  “Justin?” said Jan, feeling shyer than ever. “Do you think — I mean, I know that probably no one can do this. But do you think that someone could make me look like … like Chloe?” Jan’s voice dropped to a whisper.

  Justin and Chloe grinned.

  “Sure,” said Justin. “It’s kind of quiet around here. Let me take you to the makeup artist. Her name is Laura.”

  “Really?” squeaked Jan. “Oh, thank you, Justin!”

  Jan waved good-bye to Chloe, and Justin led her to a beach house that the movie company had rented for the summer.

  “Laura?” called Justin as he pulled open the screen door.

  “Justin? Is that you? You need a touch-up?” called a voice.

  “Nope. I’ve got a friend here who would like a — I guess she’d like a beauty treatment, wouldn’t you, Jan?”

  “Yes!” said Jan, gazing around the house. It didn’t look a thing like the inside of hers. It looked partly like an office and partly like a very messy beauty parlor. Laura was seated on a stool in front of a mirror in the beauty parlor part. All around the mirror were lightbulbs. And on a table under the mirror were jars and tubes and bottles and creams and brushes and powder puffs.

  “Ooh,” said Jan. “I want to look beautiful like Chloe.”

  “Laura?” said Justin questioningly.

  “I’ve got time,” Laura answered.

  “Thanks,” replied Justin. “You’d be doing a real favor for a friend.”

  Jan smiled. Justin thought of her as his friend!

  A call came from outside then. “Justin! They want you back for the next scene. Right now.”

  “Okay!” yelled Justin. He turned to Laura. “She’s all yours. Have fun, Jan. I’ll see you later.”

  Jan was left with Laura and the makeup.

  “So,” said Laura. “How do you want to look?”

  “Just like Chloe,” Jan replied.

  “Want me to do anything to your hair?”

  Jan hesitated. She looked at Laura’s hair. It was not hair that Jan would want. It was poofy, and it was two different colors: black and very, very yellow.

  Laura must have noticed Jan looking at her hair, because she said, “We can do anything you want to your hair. Maybe it would look pretty if I just curled it a little.”

  “Okay!” Jan only had her hair curled on very special occasions.

  “All right,” said Laura. “Let’s put some hot rollers in your hair, and then we’ll begin your makeup.”

  “Hot rollers?” repeated Jan. “How hot?”

  “Oh, don’t worry. They won’t burn you. I promise. They just work really fast. Here. Climb up on this stool.”

  Jan climbed onto the stool and found herself facing the mirror with the lights around it. I, thought Jan, am going to look so beautiful that my family will have to notice me. I’ll be cuter than Lyman or Eleanor — or Keegan or Zsa-Zsa. It won’t matter who can stack blocks or who can turn cartwheels or anything else. Everyone will look at me and say how beautiful I am.

  Laura began winding Jan’s hair onto the spiky rollers. She lifted one strand at a time and wrapped it around and around a curler. Then she fastened the hair in place with things that looked like big bobby pins. The rollers were hotter than Jan had thought they’d be, but she didn’t say anything
. She didn’t want to hurt Laura’s feelings.

  “There we are,” said Laura finally.” “All finished. Now we’ll begin your face. Would you like me to paint your nails, too?”

  “Oh yes!” cried Jan. This was getting better and better.

  “Well then, maybe we should do your nails next so they can dry while I put on your makeup. Here are the colors I have. You choose one.”

  Jan looked and looked. She’d never seen so many colors, not even in a beauty parlor. At last she chose bright red. She had seen her mother wear bright red polish sometimes. Red lipstick, too.

  Laura painted Jan’s nails. It took a long time. First she rubbed cream on Jan’s hands, then she put on two coats of polish, and finally she put on something called top coat. “That will keep the polish from chipping too fast,” Laura told Jan. “Now we better take the curlers out of your hair. They’ve been in a long time. You keep your hands still so you don’t smudge the polish before it dries.”

  “Okay,” said Jan. She looked in the mirror, watching Laura remove the curlers. Each time she did, a huge curl sprang to the top of Jan’s head. She had not expected to see such tight curls.

  “Oh …” she said in dismay.

  “Don’t worry. They’ll loosen up,” Laura assured her. “And while they do, I’ll put on your makeup.”

  For the next half hour, Laura put creams and powders on Jan’s face. She put mascara, eyeliner, and shadow on her eyes. She put blush on her cheeks. Finally, she said, “Okay. What color lipstick?”

  “Red,” replied Jan. “To match my nails.”

  Laura put the lipstick on, but she used a tiny brush to do it. Jan had never seen her mother apply lipstick with a brush.

  “There. All done,” said Laura.

  Jan stared at herself in the mirror. She looked beautiful — and at least ten years old. But her hair was still too curly and springy.

  As if Laura could read Jan’s mind, she said, “Just leave your hair alone. It’ll begin to fall naturally. Especially in this hot weather.”

  “Okay,” replied Jan. And then she remembered to thank Laura. “I have never looked so beautiful,” she told her.

  Jan ran all the way to Sandpiper House. When she got there, she discovered that everyone else was gone. Jan looked out the window. There they were, farther down the beach.