Switcharound

  Why on earth would anybody voluntarily have babies? Caroline wondered. It's just a lot of work and mess.

  Lillian went over to the playpen, leaned in, and made kissing noises at the twins. "Hi, Holly," she cooed. "Hi, Ivy. Did you girls have a nice day?"

  The twins answered her: gurgle, slobber, spit, burp giggle.

  Next Lillian went to the place where Poochie was curled up like a pretzel on the floor, watching cartoons. She kissed the top of his head. "Don't sit so close, Pooch," she said. "How was baseball?"

  He wiggled away from her. "I stink at baseball," he muttered.

  "J.P. will help you to get better," his mother said cheerfully. "That's what a coach is for." She went to the kitchen and began getting some things out of the refrigerator. Good, thought Caroline; Lillian's going to cook dinner. At least I don't have to do that, too.

  "Look who's coming!" Lillian exclaimed, looking through the kitchen window toward the driveway. "Make a date with—" She waited expectantly.

  "Herbie Tate," Caroline and J.P. said in unison. Poochie reached forward and turned the sound up a little louder on the TV.

  "Ta-DA!" said Herbie Tate as he entered the house. He set a package down, kissed Lillian on the cheek, formed his right hand into a phony gun, and aimed it at Poochie. "Blam," he said. Poochie clutched his stomach, crossed his eyes, and fell over on the carpet, pretending to be dead. "You got me," Poochie said. Then he sat back up and turned his attention to the two cartoon mice who were being chased by a cat.

  Herbie leaned over the playpen. "Hi hooooo," he said in a high voice to the babies, who grinned.

  Caroline and J.P. stared at each other. Caroline had often fantasized about how nice it would be to have a father at home, instead of just a mother. In her daydreams, the father came in from the office in the evening, wearing a three-piece gray suit, carrying a briefcase and a newspaper. Her daydream father was very intellectual: a professor, or a physicist. He always came home and said, "Good evening," to the family in a deep voice. Maybe he would comment on a world event.

  But here, in real life, was her actual father. He was wearing a plaid shirt. He had come home from work, and now he had been in the house for several minutes, and all he had said was: Ta-DA. Blam. Hi hooooo.

  Now, turning to Caroline and J.P., Herbie stepped back, held his arms away from his sides for a moment, and then suddenly drew two imaginary pistols from two holsters.

  "Blam! Blam!" he said and shot both guns.

  Caroline and J.P. didn't move. Poochie glanced up to see if they were doing death scenes. Then he looked back at the TV. Lillian wasn't paying any attention ; she was washing some lettuce. Apparently she was used to this.

  "Missed," announced Herbie. He blew imaginary smoke from each imaginary gun, and replaced them in their imaginary holsters.

  He didn't seem to mind that they hadn't been shot. He picked up the package he had brought home, said, "Think fast!" and tossed it to J.P. J.P. grabbed, startled, but missed. The package landed on the rug.

  "It's a present for my Tater Chips coach," Herbie said.

  J.P. picked it up and opened it. "Thanks," he said and turned the baseball glove over and over in his hands.

  "Lookee here," Herbie said. He took a small can out of his pocket. "Neat's-foot oil. We rub the glove good, then fold it over, and set it under something heavy overnight. A piece of furniture or something. Then in the morning you've got your glove all shaped, ready for use. Pretty soon you'll have a nice pocket in there, just like a major-leaguer. What's your team, J.P.?"

  J.P. looked confused. Caroline knew what Herbie meant; but she knew, also, that J.P. didn't. J.P. didn't follow baseball. He followed chess championships and computer developments.

  "Red Sox," Caroline said loudly, to make up for J.P.'s silence.

  "Right," said Herbie, apparently pleased with that answer. "After dinner, we'll fix that old glove up for you, just like Jim Rice."

  "Gee, great, Dad," J.P. said. Caroline recognized an Eddie Haskell voice.

  "Game against the Half-pints on Friday," Herbie announced. "Are the Chips going to be ready?"

  "Half-pints?" J.P. repeated.

  Herbie chuckled. "That's Fred Larrabee's team. He owns a dairy, see, so his team's the Half-pints. Mine's the Tater Chips—well, you can see why. Then there's Phil Stevenson's team, the Squirts. Guess why they're the Squirts!"

  Caroline and J.P. stared at Herbie. They shook their heads.

  "Phil manufactures plastic products. His biggest seller: garden hoses. Get it? Squirt!" Herbie aimed an imaginary garden hose toward Caroline and J.P.

  "Caroline?" Lillian said from the kitchen. "Could you put the twins into their highchairs? I have their supper ready. You can feed them while I finish cooking."

  "I'll help you, Caroline," J.P. said. "I'll feed the yellow one while you feed the pink one." He laid the baseball glove down on a chair. "Gee, thanks, Dad," he said, Haskell-like, to Herbie. "That was really nice of you."

  Herbie smiled broadly. He settled himself on the couch. "How's it going, Poocheroni? Get a hit today? Maybe a home run?"

  Poochie shook his head morosely and concentrated on the cartoons.

  Caroline and J.P. sat together on Poochie's bed. Poochie was in the bathroom, having his bath. The twins were asleep in their cribs, so Caroline's room was off limits. There was no place in the house where they could have any privacy, and no time: just these few minutes, huddled together on the bottom bunk, before Poochie's bedtime.

  She looked around the little bedroom. The wallpaper appeared to be plaid, at first; but Caroline realized, looking more closely, that the plaid was made up of football goalposts and basketball hoops. The curtains were dark blue, with a little border of red and white football helmets. The bedspreads matched the curtains, with the addition of a huge brown appliqued football in the center of each one.

  "I can't stand it," J.P. was muttering.

  "It's not that bad," Caroline said, looking around again. "It's bad, but not THAT bad. If you don't look too carefully, you can't tell that the wallpaper is goalposts. And most of the time you're asleep when you're in here, anyway."

  J.P. glared at her. "I didn't mean the room, stupid. I mean the whole situation. The whole summer. I can't stand it. I have to run away."

  "Don't be a jerk, J.P. You can't run away. Mom would freak out, and there would be lawyers and everything," Caroline pointed out.

  "But I can't stand it," J.P. said one more time. He put his head into his hands. "I haven't even been able to open my case of stuff. I won't be able to work on any of my electronics stuff all summer. There's no room and no time. And now look. I won't even be able to sleep tonight. I'll be off balance all night long. My metabolism's going to get all messed up."

  He pointed. His newly oiled baseball glove, folded over onto itself, had been placed under one of the legs of the double-decker bed. It was quite thick. The bed tilted noticeably. "Herbie says we won't even feel it," J.P. went on, "but that just proves that Herbie doesn't know me at all. I have to be absolutely horizontal when I sleep."

  "We could switch beds, just for tonight," Caroline suggested. "I don't mind being tilted when I'm sleeping. But if we switch beds, you'll be in with those disgusting babies. And they'll wake you up at dawn. They'll reach out of their cribs and pull your hair."

  "Caroline," J.P. said slowly, "we have to do something. This situation is unbearable."

  The splashing in the bathroom had stopped, so they knew that Poochie would be appearing soon, ready for bed. "J.P.," Caroline whispered, "I've been thinking all afternoon. And I have an idea about what I'm going to do. At least I think I'm going to. But I have to get my nerve up. It's really a horrible, horrible, horrible revenge."

  "What is it?" J.P. asked.

  "I can't tell you," Caroline said.

  "What do you mean, you can't tell me?"

  "It's too horrible."

  J.P. glared at her angrily. But Poochie opened the door and came in. He was wearing pajamas p
rinted with baseball bats, and there was toothpaste on his chin. He stood there shyly. Finally he said in a low voice, "I been thinking, J.P., that if I sleep on top of the baseball glove, all crooked like that, maybe it will rub off on me and make me a good baseball player."

  J.P. didn't say anything.

  "Maybe tomorrow I'll get a hit," Poochie said wistfully. He climbed into the lower bunk after Caroline and J.P. stood up.

  "Well," J.P. said finally, "maybe."

  They turned off Poochie's light and left the room. J.P. muttered as they went down the hall, "If that's the way you feel, I'm not going to tell you what I've been dreaming up, either. I bet mine's more horrible than yours."

  "It couldn't be," Caroline replied. "It couldn't possibly."

  8

  Caroline lay awake that night, in her bed between the babies' cribs. J.P. had decided to sleep in his lopsided bed after all. He was mad at Caroline because she wouldn't tell him her plan. The Tate Dé- tente, he said, was called off. He had seceded from the United Tates.

  But she couldn't tell him. She couldn't tell anyone, not even J.P. It really was too horrible. She lay there staring at the ceiling and thinking of the revenge she had figured out. It was the worst thing she had ever done in her life, she was quite sure. And Caroline had done some pretty terrible things in eleven years.

  Once, when she was eight, she remembered, there had been some asparagus in the refrigerator. Fresh asparagus. Her mother had paid a fortune for it, and her mother couldn't afford a fortune—but it was spring, and the asparagus at the market down the street was brand-new, bright green—and her mother had bought it for a treat.

  The trouble was, Caroline hated asparagus more than anything in the world. At least when she was eight (Later, when she was nine, it was broccoli. Ten, beets. And eleven, eggplant.)

  So when her mother was at work—and the asparagus was going to be cooked for dinner that night—Caroline removed it from the refrigerator and flushed it all down the toilet. One stalk at a time. It took twenty flushes, and at the end of it the toilet sounded totally exhausted, as if it hated asparagus, too.

  She had never confessed, either. With a perfectly wide-eyed, honest look, she had told her mother that a burglar had apparently broken into the apartment and stolen the asparagus.

  That was a pretty horrible thing to do, Caroline thought, lying in her bed in Des Moines.

  Then she remembered something more recent and worse than the asparagus. Just this past spring, when her mother had been dating the professor from Columbia who lived upstairs, Caroline and J.P. had decided that he was a murderer, and they were going to have him put in jail. They had broken into his apartment, looking for evidence, and—

  Well. That was almost too horrible to think about.

  But this, she realized, tossing restlessly in her bed, was worse. And she was going to do it. She was going to do it soon.

  In the next room, in the top bunk, with Poochie below him snoring a little, J.P. also stared at the ceiling. He was really mad at Caroline because she wouldn't tell him her revenge. But he could understand why. Because now that he had dreamed up one, too, he realized that some things are just too horrible to tell.

  Whatever Caroline had thought up, J.P. mused, his was worse. He was quite sure. His was unspeakably horrible.

  One thing about summer in Des Moines, Caroline thought as she watched baseball practice the next morning: the weather's always good. Her shirt was sticking to her in the heat, and she wished that she had a bonnet, the way the twins did, to shade her eyes.

  "Catch it, Pooch! Catch it!" Caroline yelled from where she stood with the baby carriage, at the edge of the ball field.

  Poochie had both hands, the left one with a huge baseball glove on it, up in the air. The ball came sailing toward him. It wasn't a fast ball. It was a slow, lazy fly ball that had been hit by Matthew Birnbaum, the only kid on the Tater Chips team who could hit.

  Poochie squinted in the sun, ducked as the ball came closer, and reached up awkwardly. The ball fell between his outstretched arms to the ground and rolled toward second base. The second baseman, Christopher McGowan, dived for it, tripped on an untied shoelace, and fell. He burst into tears and rubbed his scraped chin.

  The ball rolled a little farther and came to rest near the pitcher's mound. J.P. picked it up.

  "That's enough batting practice, I guess," he called in a resigned voice. He took his notebook out of his back pocket. "Okay, let's see how we did today. Gather around."

  The twelve Tater Chips came to stand in a circle around their coach. Caroline pushed the baby carriage across the field and got closer so she could hear what he was saying to them.

  "How many people got a hit today?" J.P. asked, with his pencil ready to write it down. Matthew Birnbaum raised his hand. "I got ten hits," he called.

  "I sort of got a hit," said the little bucktoothed boy named Eric.

  "Anybody else?" asked J.P. Ten ballplayers shook their heads miserably.

  "How about catches?" J.P. asked. "Who caught a fly ball today?"

  "Mel Me! Me!" All the team members raised their hands eagerly.

  "It doesn't count if you dropped it," J.P. pointed out.

  All of the hands went down. Eric, the little boy who looked like a beaver, raised his hand again, tentatively. J.P. looked at him suspiciously. "Eric?" he said. "I don't remember you catching a fly ball today."

  Eric nodded vigorously. "Yeah, I was out there by third base, remember? And I caught it barehanded ! You saw me!"

  J.P. stared at him. "But, Eric, that was a ball that you threw into the air yourself. Then you caught it when it came back down."

  Eric nodded again. "Yeah! Right! I caught it!"

  "Poophead Eric! Poophead Eric!" yelled another boy. "You can't catch!"

  "Quiet!" J.P. bellowed. He made a check mark in his notebook. "Anybody get any grounders on the first hop?" he asked.

  No one raised a hand. "I would have," Matthew Birnbaum said, "but stupid Kristin got in my way."

  "I did not!" shouted Kristin. "You dumb bomb-brain Birnbaum!"

  Caroline backed the baby carriage away from the dust cloud that rose as the scuffle began. Holly and Ivy peered over the edge of the carriage, their eyes wide, at the sound of angry shouts.

  Finally the fight subsided. Several Tater Chips were crying and, as usual, one had a bloody nose, and several shirts were ripped. "See you tomorrow at practice," J.P. said as he walked away, Poochie trudging behind. "Don't forget we have the big game against the Half-pints on Friday. That's just three days away!

  "I wonder what their mothers think when they come home," he said to Caroline. "They always look as if they've been in a war."

  "They have been," Caroline pointed out. She tilted the carriage to get it up over the curb as they crossed the street. The babies slipped forward, and the one in the pink hat started to whimper. "You ought to help them more, J.P. Teach them how to hit and throw and catch. They're just little kids, for heaven's sake. Shhh, Holly. Quit crying." She jiggled the carriage. But the baby in the yellow hat joined her sister and they both began to wail.

  "Quit criticizing, Caroline," J.P. said. "What do you know about it? You don't have any idea what it's like, to get stuck with a job you don't want and don't know how to do. And quit shaking the carriage. No wonder they're crying. Here, give it to me."

  J.P. took the handle of the baby carriage. He stopped it, leaned in, and spoke to the babies. "Hey, girls. Shhhh. No problem; you just slid forward. Here. I'll put you back where you belong." One by one he lifted the babies back against their pillows and settled them there. Holly's crying stopped; her chin quivered, and she smiled, finally, up at J.P. Then Ivy stopped wailing abruptly and grinned. J.P. pushed the carriage forward, ignoring Caroline.

  She didn't care. She had turned back to walk with Poochie, who was plodding along unhappily, rubbing his eyes with his arm and sniffling.

  "Of course you can learn to hit, Pooch," she was telling him. "This afternoon I'
ll work with you out in the back yard. We'll practice keeping your eye on the ball, okay?"

  "Okay," Poochie sniffled. "But don't throw them hard. J.P. always throws them wicked hard."

  "I won't," Caroline reassured him. "We'll start real slow. Now: no more crying."

  "Okay." Poochie gave one last moist sniffle and grinned up at her.

  "Shoulders straight," Caroline said.

  He pulled his little slumped shoulders upright and took a deep breath. "Okay," he said.

  In the afternoon while the babies slept, Caroline worked with Poochie in the yard for more than an hour. At the end of that time, she flopped, exhausted, into the grass. Poochie sank down beside her eagerly.

  "I'm better now, aren't I?" he asked. "I'm better! I know I'm better!"

  Caroline put her arm around him and nodded. "You sure are, Pooch. You really got some hits!"

  She had been keeping count in her head. Her arm ached from pitching to Poochie: slow, accurate pitches that almost contacted the bat on their own. She had counted each one.

  One hundred and fourteen. She had pitched one hundred and fourteen pitches.

  And he had hit four of them. Caroline wasn't a math genius like J.P., so she didn't know how to figure out Poochie's batting average. But he had hit four out of one hundred and fourteen, and it was bound to be a big improvement over his previous batting average, which had been zero.

  9

  One thing Caroline had to admit: Dinner was better in Des Moines than it was in New York.

  It wasn't that Caroline's mother was a bad cook. Actually, she was a pretty good cook, and she had a collection of recipes that she tore out of magazines in the laundromat and the dentist's office. The trouble was, she never had much time for cooking. She didn't get home from her job at the bank until 5:30 every evening, and she was always exhausted by then.