Mal nodded. “Beautiful,” she said. She paused. Then she asked, “What were you going to tell me about your new doll?”
Jenny scowled. “The doll is different from the other new things. Mommy buys me those new things so I won’t be mad about the baby. But the doll is for this. Come on.” Jenny picked up the doll and left her room. Mal followed her. They walked down the hall to the room next to Jenny’s.
“This is the baby’s room,” Jenny informed Mal.
“It’s very pretty,” said Mal politely, looking at the cheerful yellow-and-white room. A white rug covered the floor. Yellow-and-white striped curtains hung at the windows. The walls had been painted a pale, pale yellow, and around the walls ran a frieze of parading ducks and lambs. The Prezziosos were ready for the baby. The crib was made up (some stuffed animals already sat in it); the changing table was equipped with diapers, powder, Baby-Wipes, and more; and a yellow duck lamp sat on the dresser. Everything looked brand-new, except for the crib.
As if she had read Mal’s mind, Jenny said, “That used to be my crib.”
Mal wasn’t sure what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. Jenny didn’t seem to expect an answer. She had marched over to the crib, expertly pulled the side down, and placed her new doll on the mattress.
“Mommy,” said Jenny, “is teaching me to diaper my doll and give it a bottle.”
“It?” repeated Mal. “Isn’t your doll a girl or a boy?”
“Not yet,” replied Jenny.
Mal let that one go by. She said, “Show me what you’ve learned so far.”
“Okay,” said Jenny grimly. She moved the doll from the crib to the changing table. Then, steadying the doll with one hand, she reached for a disposable diaper. And then, as if she’d done it a thousand times before, she cleaned her doll with a Baby-Wipe, shook some powder on it, and then peeled off the tabs on the diaper and fastened it securely to her “baby.”
“Wow! Very nice,” said Mal. “Soon you’ll be ready to be a baby-sitter yourself. Maybe you can join the Baby-sitters Club.”
Jenny didn’t even crack a smile. “I’ll be busy with our baby,” she said. “Anyway, look. See how you give a bottle to a baby?” Jenny sat in a rocking chair, held the doll carefully, and pretended to feed it. “Then you burp the baby,” she went on. Jenny put the doll to her shoulder, patted its back, and said, “Burp!”
Mal smiled. “Terrific!”
“I told you I could do it. Mommy makes me practice every day.”
“Oh.”
With that, Jenny stood up, walked out of the baby’s room, and down the hall toward hers. But instead of going into her room, she just tossed the doll through the doorway as she went by.
“Can we have a snack?” asked Jenny as she headed downstairs.
“Sure,” said Mal. “Let’s make peanut butter crackers.”
“Yum!” was Jenny’s reply.
Mal got out paper plates, napkins, two plastic knives, a jar of peanut butter, and a box of crackers. Also a bottle of grape juice.
Jenny and Mal ate in silence at first. Then Mal asked, “So how do you feel about becoming a big girl?”
“I already am a big girl,” replied Jenny.
Mal smiled. “That’s true. You are a big girl. I guess I meant how does it feel to know you’re going to be a big sister?”
“Yucky.” Jenny was spreading peanut butter on a cracker. She didn’t look at Mal.
“Yucky? How come?”
“Because of what I just showed you. The baby is going to need lots of help. Mommy and Daddy will probably spend all their time with the baby. The baby won’t know how to feed itself or anything. Mommy will have to feed it, and carry it places, and change its diapers, and — I don’t know. Lots of things.”
“But,” said Mal, trying to create a bright spot in what Jenny saw as her dark future, “babies sleep a lot. You’ll be able to spend plenty of time with your mom and dad when the baby’s asleep.”
“I guess …”
“You know, I have seven brothers and sisters,” Mal pointed out.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s great!” exclaimed Mal.
“How can it be?”
“For lots of reasons. There’s always somebody around to talk to or play with. Plus, I like taking care of my younger brothers and sisters. I feel grown-up and important. I can teach them things. And — guess what being the oldest means.”
“What?” asked Jenny.
“It means you get to do things first. I’m the only girl in my family with pierced ears. Vanessa and Margo and Claire will have to wait a few years before they get theirs pierced.”
Jenny looked interested.
“Plus, think of all the things you can do that the baby won’t be able to do. You can ride your tricycle. You can play games. You can look at books. You can go into the backyard to swing and slide. The baby won’t be able to do that. The baby will be stuck, depending on your mom or dad to carry it around.”
“Plus, I can talk,” added Jenny.
“That’s right,” said Mal. “You can say, ‘Mommy, I’m hungry.’ Or, ‘Mommy, I’m tired.’ When the baby wants something, all it will be able to do is cry. Then your parents will have to guess what it wants.”
Jenny was silent for moment. Finally she said, “Mallory? Do you really like having brothers and sisters?”
“I really do. When they’re babies, I can take care of them. When they grow up, they become my friends. I’m never lonely.”
“After the baby, you and I will be kind of alike,” said Jenny.
“We will?” Mal asked.
“Yup. We’ll both be the oldest in our families. And we’re both girls.”
“That’s right!” said Mal. “Maybe we should form a Big Sisters Club.”
Jenny smiled this time, but she didn’t look deliriously happy. In fact, her smile faded and she stared into space, saying nothing.
“Jenny? What are you thinking about?” Mal wanted to know.
Jenny sighed. “Oh, the baby. I know I’ll be able to do more stuff and have more fun than the baby. But some things are going to change.”
“That’s true,” Mal agreed.
“I’m used to having Mommy and Daddy all to me. Now I won’t be so important. The baby will be here, and it will be important, too.”
“Oh, Jen,” said Mal, suddenly feeling sympathetic. “You’ll be just as important as you were before.”
Jenny looked unconvinced. And Mal thought she knew why. Mal didn’t remember ever having been the only child. She was just a year old when the triplets were born. But Jenny had been the center of attention for four years. Now she was going to lose that position.
It would be hard for anybody.
“Mary Anne! You look —” Kristy started to say something, but thought better of it. For once, she controlled her big mouth.
I had a pretty good idea how I looked, though: awful. It was a Monday afternoon, just before a club meeting, so my friends had seen me in school a few hours earlier. I hadn’t looked great then (I hadn’t been sleeping well), but I couldn’t possibly have looked as horrible as I did by 5:20. That was because I’d spent most of the afternoon crying. I’d been home alone. (Dad and Sharon were at work; Dawn was baby-sitting.) And I’d been thinking about what Logan and I were going through. I’d started to cry and couldn’t stop. Now my nose was red and my face was blotchy, plus I had dark circles under my eyes.
“I know,” I said to Kristy. “I look like my own evil twin.”
Kristy laughed. “You don’t look that bad. But something is wrong, isn’t it, Mary Anne? Are you in trouble?”
I shook my head.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not yet,” I replied. “We might as well wait until everyone else gets here. Then I won’t have to tell the story five times.”
“Okay.” Kristy settled herself in the director’s chair and adjusted her visor. She was ready for the meeting.
I sat on
Claud’s bed.
We waited.
By five-thirty, everyone had arrived, and Kristy called our meeting to order. We got club business out of the way, and then waited for the phone to ring. When it didn’t, Kristy looked at me with raised eyebrows. The others then glanced from Kristy to me. I could almost hear them wondering what was going on.
I cleared my throat. “Um, you guys have noticed that Logan hasn’t been sitting at our lunch table recently.”
My friends nodded curiously, except for Dawn, who knew the story already. And Stacey said, “You haven’t exactly been yourself, either.”
“I know,” I replied. “Well, the thing is, I told Logan that I wanted to cool our relationship a little.” I looked down at my shoes. “I didn’t know how hard that would be, but I had to do it. See, Logan was getting to be — I mean, I felt like he was taking over my life. Or taking something away from it. So I told him I wanted to cool things off, and well, we haven’t spoken in days.”
“I noticed that he hasn’t been hanging around your locker,” said Kristy.
I nodded. “He hasn’t called or anything. When I said ‘cool off’ I didn’t mean ‘break up,’ but I think Logan took it that way.”
Jessi gasped.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” asked the rest of us.
“I can’t believe you guys are breaking up. It seems like you’ve been a couple practically forever,” said Jessi.
“I thought they were going to be a couple forever,” said Dawn. “I thought they’d go through school together, then get married, then have kids —”
Dawn stopped talking when Stacey cleared her throat loudly.
I was crying. As usual.
“Oh, Mary Anne, I’m sorry,” said Dawn, leaning over to give me a hug.
“That’s okay. Almost anything makes me cry these days.” I sniffed.
The phone rang then, and we arranged for a sitter at the Perkinses’.
When business was over, Stacey said quietly, “Separation is never easy. Remember when I thought I was in love with that lifeguard? Boy, was I hurt when I found out he had a girlfriend.”
“But then Toby came along,” I reminded Stacey.
“And then we had to separate when vacation was over and we left the beach.”
“And I had to separate from Alex, Toby’s cousin, remember? That hurt, too.”
“But then Logan came along.”
“And now we’re …”
I couldn’t finish my sentence, so Claudia said, “Well, I fell in love with Will at camp, and then we had to leave each other when camp was over. And then I fell in love with Terry in California, and we had to separate.”
“Ow, ow, ow!” said Jessi. (We looked at her as if she were crazy.) “All this separating,” she explained. “All this hurting. Ouch!”
We laughed. Then Claudia continued, “I fell in love when we were on the cruise through the Bahamas. How come we always fall in love when we’re out of town and the relationship can’t last?”
“Logan’s in town,” I said.
“And maybe your relationship will last,” Mal pointed out.
“I hope so.”
I looked around the room then at all the somber faces, and was glad when the phone rang again. We needed something to lighten the atmosphere.
And the call certainly did lighten the atmosphere. That was because the caller was Karen, Kristy’s little stepsister. “Just a sec,” said Dawn, who’d answered the phone. “I’ll turn you over to Kristy.”
Dawn handed the phone to our president, whispering, “It’s Karen.”
Kristy smiled. “Hi, Karen. What’s up? … You want to hire a baby-sitter?”
My friends and I looked at each other, amused. We were even more amused to hear Kristy say, as gently as possible, “We don’t usually sit for stuffed animals. Haven’t Moosie and Goosie stayed by themselves lots of times before?” (Moosie and Goosie are identical stuffed cats. Karen keeps Moosie at her father’s house, and Goosie at her mother’s house.) There was a pause. Then, “Why don’t you introduce them to some of Andrew’s animals?” we heard Kristy suggest.
Kristy and Karen talked for a few more minutes before hanging up the phone. When the receiver was back in its cradle, Kristy burst out laughing. “Can you believe it?” she asked. “Karen suddenly decided that Moosie and Goosie get lonely when they’re home alone. So she wanted to hire us as sitters. She offered to pay us fifteen cents an hour.”
The rest of us couldn’t help giggling.
“I suggested that she introduce them to some other stuffed animals,” Kristy continued.
“That was nice,” said Jessi, grinning.
“Thanks,” said Kristy. “I try to be sensitive to Karen and Andrew. They’ve been through separations like the rest of us — and they’re a lot younger.”
Another job call and then another came in. When we were finished handling them, I said, “You know what? I don’t know if Jenny realizes it, but in a way she’s anticipating a separation from her parents when the baby comes. She knows she won’t be the center of attention anymore.”
“Poor Jenny,” said Kristy sincerely. (Generally, Kristy doesn’t like Jenny.)
Something occurred to me then. “Hey, you guys,” I said, “I just thought of something. Okay, so we’ve been talking about all these separations. But you know what the difference is with Logan and me? I’m choosing to leave him. He isn’t leaving me. In a way, I have control over this situation. I can —”
The phone rang, and this time I answered it. Guess who was calling?
“Logan?” I exclaimed.
“Hi,” he said. “I’ve got business to discuss with you.” (He did sound businesslike.) “I need a sitter for Kerry and Hunter” (they’re Logan’s younger sister and brother), “on Valentine’s Day. It’s a Friday night. Mom and Dad are going out, and now so am I. Kerry and Hunter asked if you’d be their sitter, Mary Anne. I know that’s not club policy, but they miss you.”
“I’ll get back to you,” I told him brusquely, and hung up the phone.
I looked at my friends in shock and amazement, and told them what Logan had just told me. Everybody was saying, “Go ahead and take the job,” or things like that, but all I could think was, Who was Logan going out with on Valentine’s Day? Had he found another girlfriend? And did I really want to go over there and see him leave the house with some new girl?
But then I remembered Logan saying that Hunter and Kerry missed me. I didn’t want to disappoint them. Besides, as a professional businesswoman, I shouldn’t let emotions get in the way of my job.
So I called Logan back and told him that I would sit that night.
“Great,” he said. “Thanks, Mary Anne.”
“You’re welcome.”
“See ya.”
“See ya….’Bye.”
I tried to imagine Logan’s girlfriend. She was probably the opposite of me — tall, blonde, not shy, self-assured. Maybe that was what had gone wrong in our relationship. I was so shy that Logan felt he had to take over for me.
Oh, well. I began to look forward to Valentine’s Day in the same way I look forward to a trip to the dentist.
“Da-da. Ma-ma. Goo-goo.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. Jenny was giving me a headache. It was a Saturday evening, and I was taking care of her from six until ten. And she was pretending she was a baby. She was driving me crazy.
I looked at my watch. It was only 6:45.
I sighed. Not only was Jenny driving me crazy, but I was driving myself crazy. I couldn’t stop thinking about Logan. I kept imagining his new girlfriend. But that was all I could do — imagine. I hadn’t seen him with the girlfriend yet. Not in school, not downtown, not anywhere.
So my imagination was running wild. Now not only was the girl tall, blonde, not shy, and very self-assured, but she was extremely smart; had a lovely, romantic name like Olivia; and was getting started in a promising singing career. Sometimes Logan would go to the sound studios with her. Ma
ybe one day he would be “discovered” at the studios. (He is awfully handsome). Then he would become an actor and, after college, he and Olivia would go to Hollywood and make it big.
“Ma-ma,” said Jenny again. She patted my knee. She’d been crawling around the living room, but now she was sitting on the floor, sucking her thumb.
“Yes, Jenny?” I said. (I was low on patience.)
“Not Jenny! Baby. Me baby.”
“Okay, baby. What do you want?” I tried to concentrate on her instead of on Logan and Olivia.
“Wet. Baby wet.” When I didn’t respond right away (I mean, what was I supposed to say?), Jenny tugged on my jeans. “BABY WET!” she screamed. “DIAPER!”
“Okay.” I pretended to reach for a diaper, then fasten it on Jenny.
“NO! Real diaper.”
“Jenny, I’m not going to put a diaper on you,” I said. “That’s silly.”
Jenny got to her hands and knees again, and crawled frantically out of the living room. I could hear her going upstairs. A few minutes later she crawled back to me (I was daydreaming about Logan again) with a diaper in her mouth.
“Put diaper on baby,” she demanded.
You do not need a diaper,” I replied. “You’re a big girl. You can use the bathroom now.”
“NO! Not a big girl. Me baby.”
“I know. You already told me.”
“PUT DIAPER ON!”
“Jenny,” I said with as much patience as I could muster, “I am not going to put a diaper on you.”
“Okay-ay,” said Jenny, switching to a singsong, four-year-old voice.
“Thank you,” I replied, not realizing that I should have paid more attention to that change in her voice. “Now would you please go back to the baby’s room and put the diaper where it belongs?”
“Okay-ay,” said Jenny again.
She stood up and marched out of the room. And I went back to Logan and Olivia. They were living in Hollywood with a mansion and a swimming pool and maybe a tennis court. Once or twice a month, Olivia would throw a huge, gala party for their glamorous friends, and Logan would often say to her, “What a wonderful hostess you are, dear. Mary Anne could never have done anything like this.”