Dawn on the Coast

  “I think Clover’s going to be an actress,” said Sunny. “Or a writer or something like that.”

  “And Daffodil is the real surprise,” I said. “You think because she’s quiet she’s going to be shy, but she has a real determination to her.”

  “Did you notice how she’s suddenly all leg?” Sunny asked. “She’s like a colt or a baby deer….”

  “Exactly,” I laughed.

  As we were talking, a warm, homey feeling spread through me. It occurred to me that what we were doing was sharing the exact same kind of information that Kristy has the members of the Baby-sitters Club write up in the official Club notebook. And here we were just talking. Simple as that. See, I thought, you can accomplish things informally.

  Jill and Maggie arrived together, talking about some kids at school. Sunny finished up her potting.

  “Do you remember Joe Luhan?” Jill asked me.

  “Sure.” He had been one of the boys in my class.

  “Well, he and Tom Swanson are having a party on Sunday. Will you still be here or are you leaving before then?”

  “The day before,” I said. “I’m leaving Saturday.”

  Too bad. That sounded like fun. A party with Joe Luhan and Tom Swanson. I’d grown up with those guys. I knew them better than I knew most of the boys in Stoneybrook.

  Sunny’s mom poked her head in the door.

  “Am I allowed in here?” she asked.

  “Mo-om,” Sunny moaned. “Of course. What do you think?”

  Her mom looked over at me and smiled.

  “It just occurred to me,” she said. “Dawn, would you and the girls like to stay for dinner? We won’t get many more chances to see you this visit. You’re just here for another week, aren’t you?”

  I looked at Sunny. Sunny looked at me.

  “Oh. Stay, stay, stay,” Sunny pleaded.

  “I’ll have to check with Dad,” I said. He was back at work that week and wouldn’t be home for another half hour. “Can I let you know at the end of the meeting?” I asked Sunny’s mom.

  “Sure,” she said. “If your dad says yes, we’d love to have you.” She winked at me. “Spinach lasagna,” she said, and she disappeared out the door.

  “Yum,” said Sunny. “That reminds me. I’m hungry.”

  “Me too,” said Maggie. “Starving.”

  “Should I get us our snack?” Sunny asked.

  “Yeah!” we all agreed.

  Sunny stood up and dusted the potting soil off her hands.

  “Ick! Wash your hands first,” Maggie teased.

  Sunny wiggled her muddy fingers in Maggie’s face.

  “No way!” she laughed, then bounded down the stairs.

  Since no phone calls were coming in, we just sat around chatting. Jill and Maggie talked some more about the kids I remembered in our class. Right then an idea began taking seed in my mind. I started to picture myself back in the class, and how easy it would be to slip right back in.

  Sunny came back up with the food — guacamole dip and cut-up raw vegetables that she had made earlier in the afternoon.

  “All right,” Jill said, grabbing a carrot stick.

  “No calls yet?” Sunny asked.

  We shook our heads. The phone hadn’t rung once.

  “Maybe we should work on the recipe file,” Sunny suggested.

  This was a project I hadn’t heard about yet. Sunny pulled a yellow plastic file box off the top of her desk. On the front she had pasted a picture of a bright red apple. Inside were cards with recipes that kids could make and that they liked to eat.

  “Healthy recipes,” said Sunny. “It’s an extension of that cookbook I showed you.”

  “Wow!” I said. “What a great idea.”

  Maggie and Jill fished into their purses and each pulled out a recipe she had found over the weekend. Jill’s homemade lemonade was from a magazine. Maggie’s “Raisin Surprise” was from the back of a raisin box. They set about copying the recipes onto the small yellow index cards.

  Sunny chomped on a celery stick and looked at me. “It’d be great if you can stay for dinner,” she said.

  I thought back to all the times in the past that I had had dinner over at Sunny’s house. How many times had it been? Probably a thousand. Well, at least a hundred. Sunny’s mom and dad were great. When we were younger they always let us be excused from the table as soon as we had finished eating, just so we would have a longer time to play.

  “I hope you can stay,” Sunny said again, and suddenly something popped into my head.

  Maybe I could stay. Maybe I could really stay. Maybe I didn’t have to go back to Connecticut at all, or just go back to get my things. Maybe I could move back in with Dad and Jeff, have my old room back, my old friends, my old school.

  It was a strange thought, scary and exciting at the same time. Until then, I had just been having a great time, a fabulous time, but it had never occurred to me that I could think about making it last forever (or at least for longer). Now that the thought occurred to me, what was I supposed to do?

  I was still sitting in the same room, but it felt like I was in another world. Around me, I could hear Sunny and Jill and Maggie chattering away. Jill rummaged around in her purse for her bottle of nail polish, a different color this time. The phone rang, a call came in. I think it was one of the neighbors down the street, and Maggie took the job.

  “Earth to Dawn. Earth to Dawn,” said Sunny. She had her hands cupped over her mouth like a megaphone.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I’m here.” (Just barely.)

  “So what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About the nail polish.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you think Berry Pink is better on Jill or Lucious Blush?”

  Hmm, I guess I had missed a part of the conversation. I took a look. Jill had half of the old polish on and half of the new.

  “Which is which?” I asked.

  “Forget it,” Jill giggled. “They’ll discontinue the colors before you decide.”

  “What time is it?” I asked suddenly.

  “Five-thirty,” said Sunny. “Hey, you can call your dad now.”

  Five-thirty. Time to leave.

  “I don’t think I can stay for dinner,” I said abruptly. “I have to do something. I mean, I have to talk to Dad about something.”

  “But …” Sunny started.

  The phone rang again.

  “It’s Mrs. Austin,” she said. “She needs someone for Clover and Daffodil. Do you want it?” she asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course. Thanks. Sign me up. But I gotta run.”

  Sunny and the others stared after me. I grabbed my purse and ran out the door. It must’ve all looked very strange. Well, what can I say? It felt strange for me, too. Suddenly it seemed like my whole world was changing.

  Well, that was a card I never finished writing. How do you tell your mother that you want to move away from her? That you want, in fact, to move to the other side of the country?

  When I came back from the We Kids meeting I ran right to my room. I thought it might help if I wrote a draft of a letter to Mom and figured out how I might approach this very delicate subject. As you see, I didn’t get very far.

  I decided, really, that it was too early to think about Mom. The first step was just to talk to Dad.

  Jeff knocked on my door to call me to dinner.

  “Hey, Sis,” he said. “Get your bod to the table.”

  How could I get through life without my dopey brother, I wondered. I didn’t want to leave Jeff. I didn’t want to leave Dad.

  Mrs. Bruen had made her usual terrific dinner (fish fillets baked with tomatoes and covered with cheese sauce), and we ate it in the beautiful, clean dining room at a table with a tablecloth and flowers. Everything was arranged nicely, everything was organized. No misplaced purses, no lost keys.

  I poured myself some juice from the frosty cold pitcher.

  “Broccoli???
? Dad asked me.

  “Yes, please.”

  How would I start?

  “Dad,” I began.

  “Yes?”

  “I was thinking….”

  “Yes?”

  “Um … Um … Hmm. I forgot what I was going to say.”

  Call me chicken if you want. It was very difficult for me to bring up the subject. We ate awhile, and I let Jeff and Dad talk.

  “Aw, come on,” Jeff was saying. “All my friends get to watch more television than that.”

  “Not on school nights,” Dad said firmly. “Enjoy this vacation schedule while you can.”

  “But, Dad …”

  “You heard me,” said Dad. “Subject closed.”

  That quieted Jeff. It also gave me space to try again.

  “Dad,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking….”

  “Sounds familiar,” Dad grinned.

  “Yeah, well, I was thinking … I mean, it’s just an idea, but I was wondering if … well, what I’m thinking is, maybe I want to consider, well, maybe I want to consider staying in California, moving here like Jeff did.”

  I paused. Nobody said anything.

  “It’s just that I like it so much here,” I continued. “Everything is just my style. The weather, the kids. I mean, I just got this idea today, but actually maybe it’s been brewing all along. I’m not even sure it’s what I want. But I’m thinking about it, so I wanted to bring it up.”

  Dad was watching me closely. Jeff was watching Dad.

  Dad let out a big breath. You’d have thought he was the one doing all the talking.

  “Well,” he said slowly. “It’s certainly a possibility.”

  Jeff tossed his napkin in the air. He’d been waiting for Dad’s response.

  “Yippee!” he cried.

  “Well,” Dad sighed again. “There’s a lot to think about here.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Dad didn’t want me. He didn’t seem too enthusiastic. But then he burst into a grin, the kind of grin that’s unmistakably his.

  “Oh, Sunshine,” he said. “You know how happy I would be if you were out here?”

  “Yippee!” Jeff yelled again.

  “Of course,” Dad added quickly, “there’s a lot of things we have to consider here. There’s your mother….” There was a long pause. “And the custody and your school. And, of course, what you really want.”

  “But it’s possible?” I asked.

  “Well, from a practical standpoint, yes,” Dad said. “You’ve got your own room here. Mrs. Bruen is already here and working…. But from a legal standpoint, I don’t know. Your mother has custody, but then, she still has custody of Jeff and here he is. I’d have to talk to her and see, uh, see what we could arrange. Do you want me to call her tonight, just to talk?”

  “No!” I was surprised at the strength of my answer.

  “Do you want to call her?” Dad asked.

  “Not yet,” I said. I wasn’t ready for that at all. “The first thing is I have to figure things out, decide what I want.”

  “You’re the only one who can decide that, Sunshine,” said Dad. “Your mother and I have the legal proceedings to work out, but we’ve got to know that it’s what you want.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Dad and I ate the rest of our dinner in relative silence. You wouldn’t have noticed the quiet, though. Jeff did a good job of filling that in.

  “If you stay here we can go to the beach all the time,” he said enthusiastically. “You can come to my school if I’m in an assembly. I can borrow your Walkman, you can borrow my camera….”

  Jeff went on like that for the rest of the meal, but I hardly heard him. All the things I had to think about were swimming through my head.

  When I finished dinner I went back to my room and closed the door. California, Connecticut. California, Connecticut. I couldn’t keep my thoughts straight. I decided to write them down.

  I tore a piece of paper off my notepad and drew a line down the middle. At the top of the left half I wrote PROS: CALIFORNIA. At the top of the right I wrote PROS: STONEYBROOK. When I finished my list, this is what I had:

  I thought about adding “Disneyland” under “California” but decided against it. It didn’t seem like enough of a reason to move from one coast to the other, and besides, the California side already had plenty of entries.

  Well then, it seemed pretty clear. California. I guess that’s what I wanted. Somehow, though, it didn’t seem resolved in my head. I needed to talk about it some more. I couldn’t talk about it with Mom, and I’d already talked about it some with Dad. Maybe I should call Sunny? I decided against it. She’d just persuade me to stay. Maybe Mary Anne … Of course. She’d said to call.

  I wandered out of my room.

  “Dad,” I called. “Can I call Mary Anne in Connecticut?”

  “It’s ten o’clock there,” he said.

  It was late, but it was vacation, so she should still be awake.

  “Can I?” I asked again.

  “Sure,” he said.

  The kitchen was now empty, so I set myself up in there. I opened my address book to the “S” page and ran my finger across. Mary Anne’s name was the first. She had, after all, been my first Stoneybrook friend.

  As I dialed her number, I could almost hear her voice answering the phone. She’d probably squeal when she heard it was me. Mary Anne was a good choice, I thought. She’d be perfect to talk to in a situation like this. She’s the kind of friend who would help me figure out what I wanted. I mean, of course she’d be sad if I wanted to stay in California, but she’d understand.

  On the other end, the phone was ringing. Three rings. Four. No one picked up. Maybe they’re just pulling into the driveway, I thought. I let it ring more. No one answered. I laid the phone back in its cradle and dropped down in a kitchen chair.

  Around me the light was getting softer. The kitchen took on a rosy hue. Ten o’clock in Connecticut. I pictured Mary Anne and her father coming home from wherever they were, turning the lights on in their darkened house. Then I pictured Mom. I wondered what she was doing. Probably she was reading in bed. Or maybe she was out with the Trip-Man. (Horrors!) I wondered what she would say when I told her what I was thinking about. What would she do in that funny old farmhouse all by herself? If only she could move back to California, too.

  Of course, I knew that was impossible.

  The hard thing was, I found myself realizing that the person I really wanted to be talking to about all this was Mom. I wanted the two of us to be sitting on my bed, having one of our heart-to-hearts. I wanted her to ask me questions, say wise things. I wanted her to help lead me through all this tangle I seemed to be tied up in.

  I started to feel closed in from all the things I had to think about. I went out to the back patio and watched the golden sun fade.

  I got the postcard from Kristy that Tuesday, when I still hadn’t made up my mind what to do. I didn’t find out the details until later, but I could picture the scene at the Pike household, where things are always a little wild.

  The Pikes, you may remember, have eight kids. And that’s just one family, not two combined or anything like that. Because it’s such a crowd, Mrs. Pike always gets two sitters whenever she goes out. Now that Mallory, the oldest Pike, is eleven and in the Baby-sitters Club, Mrs. Pike usually uses Mallory plus one other sitter. That day it was Kristy.

  Claire, the youngest Pike (she’s all of five years old), let Kristy in. She was still in her pajamas.

  “Moozie!” she cried. (“Moozie” is what she sometimes calls her mom.) “Moozie! Kristy’s here.”

  Moozie didn’t appear, but Mallory did.

  “Mom’ll be down in a minute,” she said.

  “Where’s everybody else?” asked Kristy. (The house seemed strangely quiet.)

  “The triplets and Nicky are in the backyard, and Vanessa and Margo are upstairs.”

  “Well,” said Krist
y. “Where should we start? How about with you, Claire? Let’s get you out of those pajamas and into your play clothes.”

  “These are my play clothes, Kristy silly-billy-goo-goo,” said Claire. “Today I’m wearing my pajamas all day long.”

  Kristy looked at Mallory. Mallory shrugged. That’s another thing about the Pikes. Mr. and Mrs. Pike hardly have any rules. If Claire were going to school that day, of course she’d have to get dressed. But for staying at home? If pajamas was what she wanted, pajamas it was.

  Claire streaked up the stairs, waggling her head and crying “Moo!” Was she calling her mother or making cow sounds? Did it matter? This was definitely going to be one of Claire’s sillier days.

  The back door swung open and the triplets appeared. They each grabbed a cookie from the jar on the kitchen counter and then raced back outside. The door swung open again. It was Nicky. He’d come for his cookie. (The triplets are ten and Nicky is eight. He sometimes has a hard time keeping up.) BANG! Nicky was back out the door, following his brothers.

  “Kristy, hi!” It was Mrs. Pike. In her hurry, she grabbed a sweater out of the closet. “Oops, that’s Vanessa’s,” she said. She grabbed another. “I should be back early afternoon. More library business. And if the meeting gets out on time, I’m going to squeeze in a haircut.”

  She gave the sitters last-minute instructions and reminded Mallory that there was canned ravioli and homemade cole slaw for lunch.

  Ravioli and cole slaw? Well, I guess, when you’re getting meals together for eight kids every day, you come up with some pretty unusual combinations.

  Mrs. Pike called good-bye over her shoulder and hurried out the door.

  “I’ll go let Vanessa and Margo know I’m here,” Kristy said to Mallory.

  To keep all fronts covered, Mallory headed out to the yard.

  Vanessa and Margo are two of the middle kids. Vanessa is nine and Margo is seven. You can pretty much trust them to play well by themselves, but you always have to check to see what they’re up to. In this case that was a good idea. Claire had joined them and Vanessa was showing her sisters how to write a letter in “invisible ink.” She had dragged a carton of milk upstairs and the three of them were dipping paintbrushes into the milk and using it as ink to write messages on white paper.