Well, it sounded like a good plan. Mary Anne and Claudia were very pleased with themselves for having so much foresight. Except, of course, it rained. Early that evening, when the two of them arrived at the Newtons, the sky had turned a dark shade of purple and a few big, splotchy raindrops had already splattered the front walk.
Mary Anne looked at Claudia. Claudia looked at Mary Anne. Jamie answered the door.
“Hi-hi!” he said.
Gabbie was right behind.
“Hello, Mary Anne Spier. Hello, Claudia Kishi,” she said.
Jamie and Gabbie, both with their characteristic welcomes. Mrs. Newton was right behind.
“Hi, girls. Great. You’re a few minutes early. Everybody’s here. The kids are in the playroom. I made a big pot of chili for dinner. The babies, of course, get their own food. Come in the kitchen, let me show you.”
Mrs. Newton had organized everything as well as she could. Dinner was on the stove, cots and sleeping bags had been set out in the living room (this was going to be a long evening), and she had settled the kids in the playroom with coloring books and toys. (Rob was watching television.)
Mary Anne and Claudia went to the playroom and sat themselves among the group. Mrs. Perkins was there with the babies, who were playing on the floor with plush toys.
“They’ll go to bed by seven, seven-thirty,” she said.
The parents all gathered around their broods to say good-bye, then they were off. The crowd looked smaller after the six adults had left but, somehow, it did not look quite small enough. Big drops of rain were now pelting the windows. (It kept up the whole night long.)
“How about one of us takes the babies, and the other the kids?” Claudia suggested.
Two little babies or six growing (active) kids. Somehow, it didn’t seem balanced. Mary Anne looked skeptical.
“Okay, how ’bout we do it that way, then trade off?” Claudia suggested.
Mary Anne took baby duty first and Claudia took the kids.
Now, when you’re baby-sitting for a crew, you’d better place yourself so that you can keep an eye on everybody at the same time. That’s one thing we learned when we ran a play group last summer. You can’t afford to get so involved with any one kid that the whole group falls apart. Claudia pulled a chair up to the play table. Jamie and Gabbie were working at one end and Myriah, Brenda, and Rosie were working at the other. All the kids had fresh sheets of white paper and their own little box of crayons. (Thank you, Mrs. Newton.) Except for Rob’s television blaring in the background, the room was surprisingly peaceful.
Brenda pressed hard on her crayon to color in the giraffe she was drawing. Snap! It broke in half.
“My brown!” she said. “My brown broke!”
She grabbed the brown crayon out of her sister’s box.
“Gimme!” Rosie shouted back.
“It’s mine!” shouted Brenda.
Rosie began banging on the table. She had probably been waiting for just such an opportunity to make a lot of noise.
Now, Claudia is really the only sitter who has a lot of experience with the Feldman kids. A lot of experience, in this case, really means only two times. The first time she encountered this kind of problem, she ignored it and, when they didn’t get any attention, the Feldman kids calmed down. The second time she sat for them, Kristy was along. Kristy had let out a sharp, shrill whistle and called the whole scene to a halt. Claudia didn’t know how to whistle like Kristy, so she quietly took the brown crayon out of Brenda’s hand and gave it back to Rosie.
“You know that’s Rosie’s crayon,” she said gently.
Just then Mary Anne stepped in and took Brenda’s hand. That’s baby-sitting teamwork. “I need some help with the babies,” she said. “Brenda, you’re a good helper. You come over and work with me.”
Surprisingly, Brenda got up from the table and went to join Mary Anne. Claudia quieted Rosie and got her interested again in her picture. Rob looked over from the sidelines.
“I’m the oldest,” he muttered. “And I know most about babies.”
Mary Anne looked at him curiously.
“Would you like to join us, too?” she asked.
Rob eyed the babies.
“I’m watching television,” he said. He turned his attention back to the screen.
Mary Anne and Brenda started a little rolling game for the babies with a cloth ball, but when Brenda rolled it, the ball rolled over toward Rob and bumped his knee.
“Here you go, babies,” he said. He rolled the ball gently back.
Mary Anne shot Claudia a look as if to say, “Did you just see what I saw? Is that really Rob Feldman, girl-hater, sitting over there?”
Claudia shrugged her shoulders in reply. Maybe Rob didn’t consider babies to be girls yet. Or maybe he had just grown out of his nasty phase. (After all, it had been almost a full year since Claudia had sat for him.)
“Blast off!” he said suddenly, his eyes fixed on the screen. “Babies into space!” Since he was watching a cowboy movie, no one knew quite what he meant.
The kids colored for awhile. At one point, Rosie started up her noise, banging her fists on the table, her feet on the floor, and loudly chanting a song she knew, but she was silenced by, of all people, Gabbie. When Rosie started her tirade, Gabbie put her hands over her ears and stared Rosie straight in the eye.
“You be quiet, Rosie Feldman,” she said, very precisely. “You are really hurting my ears.”
Rosie was so surprised at getting a reprimand from Gabbie that she screwed up her face and went back to her picture.
When it was time for dinner, Mary Anne volunteered to take Brenda and Myriah (the two oldest girls) to the kitchen to serve up the plates.
“What about the babies?” Claudia asked.
“Hmmm,” said Mary Anne. “Maybe I could take them up and get them set up in their high chairs and the girls could serve the chili.”
Rob swung around from the television.
“Little babies can’t coordinate their hands with their eyes,” he said. Then he looked at his cousin. “But you can, can’t you, Lucy?”
Mary Anne shot Claudia another look. Well, it was worth a try, she thought.
“Rob,” she asked, “why don’t you come help me with the babies in the kitchen. Can you carry Lucy?”
Rob picked Lucy up and followed Mary Anne and the kitchen crew out of the playroom. He set Lucy into her high chair and strapped her in.
“How do you know so much about babies?” Mary Anne asked as she set the other baby down.
“Babies in Space,” Rob said tersely.
“Is that a TV show?” Mary Anne asked.
“No,” he said, as if everyone knew. “A book.”
“Oh,” said Mary Anne.
As it turned out, the book was a science fiction story about some scientists who send babies in a rocket to another planet. First, of course, they have to know everything about babies that they can, so the book is filled with little bits and snatches of scientific information about babies and how they develop.
Mary Anne opened a jar of strained pears, stuck a spoon in it, and set it down on Lucy’s high-chair tray. Rob picked up the jar and started to feed her.
“When babies are nursing, they get immunities from their mothers,” he said. He spooned some of the strained pear and aimed it high at Lucy’s little mouth. “Ready! Aim! Fire!” He made rocket noises as he dipped the spoon into Lucy’s waiting mouth.
Mary Anne told me later that she thought, Well, you just never know. Rob Feldman, girl-hater/baby-lover. Now he seemed more like future baby-sitter material. Who could figure it? Baby-sitting is always a surprise.
Dinner went fairly smoothly. Claudia maneuvered the seating so Brenda wasn’t sitting next to Rosie. (Those two were just a bad combination.) And after dinner, Rob helped Claudia get the babies off to bed.
When the parents got home, all the kids were in their pajamas and most were asleep. (Brenda kept waking up confused. “Where am I?”) Th
e Perkinses and the Feldmans picked up their pajama-ed and sleepy-eyed kids, covered them with raincoats, and ran them out to their cars.
“Oh,” said Mrs. Newton, as she shook out her umbrella. “What a refreshing evening. And how did it go for you girls?”
Mary Anne grinned at Claudia.
“Surprisingly well,” said Mary Anne.
Well, Thursday was what I would call a perfect day. (Perfect except for the strange feelings that were brewing inside me.) Dad volunteered to take me and Jeff, plus the members of the We Kids Club, plus a friend of Jeff’s … to the beach! (Brave Dad.) Everyone gathered at our house after breakfast in the morning, and it did take us awhile to get going.
I had to run back into the house to slip a cover-up over my bikini so I’d feel okay for the car ride. (What if we stopped at a store for drinks or something?) Sunny, Jill, and Maggie arrived in their bikinis and the sight was just too much for Jeff and his friend Luke. “Underwear!” they screamed. “The girls are going to the beach in their underwear!” (Ten-year-old boys will be ten-year-old boys, all right.)
There we were, all dragging beach totes with suntan lotion and beach towels, and all wearing flip-flops. No question about where we were headed. I took a look at us as we gathered in the driveway and noticed that we were all blond. Jeff and I are white-blond, but everyone there was some kind of blond or other. Well, this really was a stereotypical California group.
We waited for Jeff to run back into the house (two times) for more comic books, I checked to see that I had stuck my Walkman in my bag and, finally, we were off.
In the car, Jeff and Luke insisted on singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.”
“Dad,” I said. “Make them stop.”
“I think it would take a power greater than I,” he said.
Luckily, the boys got bored after about 82 bottles.
When we got to the beach it really was not very crowded. People in California wait until it’s really summer to go to the beach, and also, it was the middle of the week. Actually, it was beautiful beach weather. Not a cloud in that whole wide blue sky, and the sun was beating down, warming the sand, the ocean, and us!
I ran ahead and found us a big stretch of sand. (We needed a big space.) “Blonds over here!” I shouted and everyone ran to the spot and spread out their towels.
“You’re right about blonds,” said Dad. “We look like the Swedish delegation to the blond convention.”
And the whole rest of the day, that’s what he called us, “The Blond Convention.” Of course, it didn’t help when Jill and Maggie pulled out their Sun-Light and combed it through their hair.
“Blond and want to be blonder?” Dad teased. He was using a deep, announcer’s voice, like a TV commercial. “Try our products. That’s Products for Blonds. In the pale yellow packaging.”
We arranged the beach towels so that Dad was on one side of me, and Sunny and the girls were on the other. Jeff and Luke spread their towels a little ways away. I think they were looking for a place that would give them the best aim — at us — because, as we lay there in the sun, all slathered up, Jeff and Luke tossed little bits of dried seaweed and tiny pieces of shells onto our oiled backs and bellies.
“Bull’s-eye!” Jeff yelled, when he got a shell right on Dad’s bellybutton.
“Why don’t you guys take a shell hike?” Dad suggested. He handed them the red plastic beach pail we had brought along.
“BO-RING,” said Jeff.
“How about digging for clams?” Dad suggested.
“Yeah!” said Luke and Jeff at the same time. They were off and running.
Sunny, Maggie, and Jill decided to head down to the edge of the ocean and wade in. I wasn’t really warm enough yet, so I decided to stay put and let the sun do its work.
“So here you are, Sunshine,” Dad said when we found ourselves alone. “Sunshine in the sunshine.”
Dad can be a real cornball sometimes. He grinned at me, then squinted out at the ocean.
“I’m glad you could come for a visit,” he said.
“Me too.”
Somebody walked by us with a radio. I could tell Dad was going to start up a serious talk, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it. Well, ready or not, a father-daughter chat was in the air. I waited for Dad to start.
“So how’s it going in Connecticut?” he asked.
“It’s okay,” I said.
“School?”
“Fine.”
“Friends?”
“Friends? Friends are great,” I said. I sat up on my towel and started to push my fingers through the sand.
“How does Jeff seem to you?” Dad continued.
Jeff seemed fine, and I told Dad so. I told him again how unhappy Jeff had been in Connecticut and how much trouble he’d gotten into at school and all.
“I guess Jeff’s the type who just needs to be home in California,” Dad mused.
“Lucky him,” I said, half under my breath. I was surprised at how sullen I sounded all of a sudden. Usually I’m about as even-tempered as they come.
Dad glanced at me and then stared out at the surf where my friends were playing.
“So how’s your mother?” Dad asked after awhile.
“Oh, you know Mom,” I said. “I have to check her every time she goes out of the house for —” I almost said, “for a date with the Trip-Man,” but I caught myself just in time. I really didn’t want to get into a discussion about the Trip-Man with Dad. I paused awkwardly, then said quickly, “— for work. Out of the house for work.”
It felt silly to have something I couldn’t talk to Dad about. Somehow, the whole conversation was feeling awkward to me. I didn’t know what was the matter. I dug my fingers deeper into the sand.
“Is she, uh … doing okay?” Dad asked.
“Pretty good,” I said. The truth was, Mom was doing okay. She might be scattered, but that was just Mom. She might be a little weepy every now and then, but that was natural — her family had been split up. “She likes Connecticut,” I said. “She sees Granny and Pop-Pop. She loves the farmhouse….”
“I hear you have a secret passageway,” Dad smiled. “Something right out of one of your ghost stories, huh?”
I told him all about the passageway, about how we had found it, and how Mallory’s brother Nicky had discovered it before any of us.
“He still hides out in there sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes when he just needs some solitude.”
“In a family with eight kids?” Dad said. “I can see why.”
“Well,” I said glumly, “I don’t have that problem.” Again, the tone of my voice surprised me. What was the matter with me? I was in California, at the beach…. The last thing I should have been doing was complaining.
Dad knew right away that something was up. He waited awhile before he said anything. Dad’s good that way. He gives you whatever time you need to think things through.
“A little lonely, are you?” he said.
I hadn’t thought of it that way before, exactly. Maybe I was. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.
Just then Jeff and Luke ran up and dropped a little sand crab in my lap.
“Ew!” I screamed.
“Jeff. Luke,” Dad said sternly.
All of a sudden I felt like running, moving, getting up, doing something. I popped up, brushed the sand crab back onto the sand, and took off for the ocean. Sunny and the others were now waist-deep in the water.
“Aughhh!” I cried as I ran toward them, into the surf. The water was cold and shocked my skin, but I plunged in, ducked under, and came up wet and dripping. I bounded out to where my friends stood. The waves crashed against us and we jumped them and laughed. I waved to Dad back on shore. Suddenly I thought how happy, how ecstatic, I was to be home.
When my friends and I came back in, we were blue-lipped and shivering. Dad bundled us up in towels and we let the sun do the rest.
I sat at the edge of my towel and built a little sand castle.
?
??Want to help?” I asked my friends. They didn’t.
I stuck some shells in the castle for turrets. My emotions were beginning to calm. I thought, in passing, of Claudia. The sand castle looked like something she might make. If Claudia were with us, I thought with a smile, she’d probably be building castles all up and down the shore.
After awhile we had a wonderful lunch that Mrs. Bruen had packed us — avocado salad with shrimp and sprouts and an unusual potato salad made with fresh parsley and herbs.
Yum! My friends and I gobbled it up.
When the sun started to fade, we gathered up our things and straggled back to the car.
“Blond Convention, ho!” Dad called, leading the way.
That night, much later, Dad suggested that I call Mom, just to say hi.
I wasn’t sure, but I think she sounded a little shaky-voiced when she answered the phone.
“Dawn!” she said. Her voice was surprised. “So how are you?” she asked. “Are you having a good time?”
I babbled on about the beach, the weather, the housekeeper, my friends.
“We already went to Disneyland, then today we went to the beach…. And, Mom, I don’t even have to miss the Baby-sitters Club. Saturday I baby-sit for Clover and Daffodil, and Sunny runs her club just like ours, except it’s much more relaxed…. I’m having a great time. Jeff is real happy, and Dad is just super….”
I think I must’ve babbled on for quite awhile. Out of nervousness? Something about it felt wrong.
“I’m so glad, honey,” Mom said, when I had finished. Jeff was calling me in the background, so I put Dad on the phone.
There we were in our busy, active household, a family, and there was Mom in the farmhouse all alone. I guess, at the time, I didn’t think of it that way. I certainly didn’t realize how much I was really missing Mom. I guess I wasn’t sure what I was thinking.
My first job for the We Kids Club really was a great success. When I got to their house, Clover and Daffodil practically knocked each other over trying to say hello to me. Daffodil was a little more subdued — she’s nine years old and more grown-up than Clover, who’s only six. Clover was pulling at my sundress before I could even get through the door.