Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job

  We gave them to him, and he waved a hand at us and drove off. Irene giggled. “Do you realize a man has finally asked for our phone numbers?”

  I laughed, too, and then I turned to look after the police car.

  It was just turning a corner, beyond the store.

  The black car was gone.

  Chapter Three

  I rode my bike up the Fosters’ driveway at five minutes to one the next afternoon and looked around for a place to park it. It wasn’t the kind of house where a bicycle would look right on the lawn or leaning against the front porch. Actually, it wasn’t a porch, just a roof over dark red tiles inside the Spanish-style arches across the front of the house, and I decided I’d better take the bike in there under the roof. I didn’t want anybody to come along and steal it.

  I rang the bell and waited, feeling a bit fluttery in the stomach. Freddie Cyphers was a little demon, but he was a lot smaller than I was, being only five, and there was only one of him. The Martino kids were girls, two and three; and if you read them stories and fed them periodically, they seldom caused any problems at all.

  The Foster kids were going to be a new ball game altogether.

  The door swung inward, and a plump, gray-haired lady stepped backward to let me enter. “I take it you’re Darcy? The new sitter?”

  “That’s right,” I said, and tried to look confident.

  “I’m Mrs. Murphy. I have about twenty minutes before I leave for the dentist’s office, so I’ll show you around a bit. The children are playing in the backyard; they’re looking forward to having you here while I’m gone.”

  I’ll bet they are, I thought, and remembered Jeremy sticking out his tongue and gesturing at me with his thumbs in his ears.

  “Ordinarily, they’d have had lunch before this, but Jeremy cut himself this morning and I had to take him to the emergency room for some stitches, so we got behind. I’m sure you can fix them something. There’s tuna mixed in a bowl in the refrigerator, and fruit. Eat whatever you want yourself, of course.”

  “I just had my own lunch,” I told her. “Thank you.”

  Tuna fish, I thought. It seemed like in a house as big and fancy as this one, they’d have something different from what the kids had for lunch at our house.

  “This is the living room, of course,” Mrs. Murphy said, indicating the room at the side of the wide, tiled entrance hall, where I’d sat on the oatmeal-colored sofa for my interview. “Usually I get the children to play somewhere besides here. Dr. Foster likes this room to be tidy when she comes home.”

  I nodded, understanding. I could imagine the kids getting peanut butter and jelly on those pale sofas or the cream-colored carpeting. When I’d told Mom about that carpet, she’d raised her eyebrows and said, “With three kids?” in an incredulous voice.

  We paused before an open doorway. “This is Mr. Foster’s study. There’s no reason for the children to be in there, either, nor in the master bedroom.”

  I peeked into the rooms, seeing walls of books and dark paneling in the study, a broad expanse of deep blue velvety carpet and a king-sized bed with a quilted white silk spread in the bedroom. I could understand why they wouldn’t want the kids to play in those places, but I noted the housekeeper hadn’t said they weren’t allowed in those rooms, only that it was better if they stayed out of them. I hoped that wasn’t a clue that nobody made these kids do anything they didn’t want to do, or kept them from doing what you didn’t want them to do.

  “This is Jeremy’s room,” Mrs. Murphy said, and I looked in there, too.

  There was no resemblance to the room my little brothers shared. There were twin beds with bright red spreads, a desk, two dressers, bookshelves, a toybox made to look like a train with four cars, and a whole wall of open shelves that held trucks, trains, teddy bears, a miniature farm, and about everything else I remembered seeing in Sears’ Christmas catalog.

  Everything was neat and in its place. I could even see under the beds, and there wasn’t so much as a discarded sock visible, let alone the toys and books and records and orange peelings my brothers had under their beds.

  Mrs. Murphy continued the tour. “This is Melissa’s room, and Shana’s is just across the hallway.”

  They were much like Jeremy’s room, except that Melissa’s was blue and white, and Shana’s was pink and white, and the toys ran more to dolls and stuffed animals; in Melissa’s there was the most elaborate dollhouse I’d ever seen, standing on a table of its own so you could walk all the way around it. Even though I was past the age for dollhouses, I felt a twinge of envy.

  “The playroom is back here,” Mrs. Murphy said. “The children spend most of their time here, or in the back yard, if the weather’s nice.”

  The playroom was about the size of half the ground floor of our house. The carpet was a frosted dark brown, which seemed to indicate that the decorator hadn’t been a complete idiot about young children; and the room had a rocking horse, a table with a set of electric trains, a music player along one wall, and all around the place more books, stuffed toys, and games than our school has in the kindergarten. There was a real rowboat, with cushions in it, and a playhouse I was sure Jeremy could stand up in. Through its windows I saw miniature furniture as nice as the stuff in the rest of the real house, except that it was smaller.

  Wow! Lucky kids, I thought.

  We’d made almost a circle through the house. Mrs./Dr. Foster had a study, too, and there was a formal dining room with a crystal chandelier and murals on the walls, and a smaller family dining area, and a kitchen in pale wood with gold and white vinyl floor and counter tops and every appliance I’d ever heard of—and some I hadn’t. Beyond the kitchen was a utility room; and though she didn’t show it to me, Mrs. Murphy said there was a recreation room downstairs with a pool table, a sauna, and exercise machines.

  “It’s time for me to go,” the housekeeper said, consulting her watch. “I’ll probably be back around four. The children are right out there. Oh, Dr. Foster said she forgot to ask you—can you swim?”

  “Yes,” I said, still sort of overwhelmed by the house, trying to memorize it all to tell Irene about it.

  “Good. The children are allowed to swim whenever they like, as long as they have a swimmer in the pool with them. Good-bye, then, I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  When she was gone, I stood for a minute in the middle of the kitchen, almost wishing I was the one who’d gone to the dentist instead of Mrs. Murphy.

  What was the matter with me? All I had to do was keep three little kids from killing themselves, or each other, or me, until Mrs. Murphy came back.

  The kids looked up when I went out through the patio doors into the back yard. As I’d expected, it too was oversized, and there was a six-foot board fence around it.

  Shana, the little one, was playing in a sandbox, spooning up sand into a bucket. As I approached, Jeremy came along and kicked the yellow plastic pail, sending it contents flying all over his sister.

  I expected her to start crying, but she didn’t. She snatched up the pail and hit him on the leg with it.

  “You stop that, Jeremy!”

  He paid no attention to her, coming to a halt instead before me. “We told you we didn’t want you for a sitter,” he said.

  “I want you for a sitter,” Melissa decided. “So does Shana, don’t you, Shana?”

  The two year old looked me over, then nodded. “I’m hungry. Let’s eat in shicken.”

  “Mrs. Murphy said there was tuna fish for sandwiches,” I told them. “She didn’t say anything about chicken.”

  Melissa reached for the younger girl’s hand. “She means in the kitchen. Shicken means either kitchen or chicken.”

  “Oh. Well, shall we go get something to eat? We could even bring our sandwiches back out here in the sunshine, if you want.”

  “I don’t want tuna fish sandwiches,” Jeremy said. He was actually an angelic-looking little boy, very handsome, when he wasn’t sticking his tongue out. There were
several stitches in his left hand, made with black thread. “I want bacon and tomato.”

  He saw me looking at his injured hand and he held it up so I could see it better. “We were playing Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, with a pop bottle. I kicked it over accidentally and it broke. When I fell down, I got cut, and we had to go to the hospital.”

  “Jer’my bleeded all over,” Shana contributed.

  “He cried,” Melissa added.

  “Not very much,” Jeremy said quickly. “Come on, I’m hungry.”

  We walked into the house, and I told them, “Mrs. Murphy didn’t say anything about bacon and tomato sandwiches.”

  “I can fix them,” Jeremy said, seeming to have forgotten he’d said he didn’t want me there. “I can cook the bacon in the microwave, the way Mrs. Murphy does. It’s easy that way, and the grease doesn’t pop all over you and burn you.”

  He was already into the mammoth refrigerator, hauling out bacon.

  I looked at him uneasily. “I don’t know anything about cooking with microwaves. We don’t have one.”

  “It’s all right. I know.”

  “I’ll have bacon and tomato, too,” Melissa said. “What’s your name again? I forgot.”

  “Darcy,” I said.

  Shana echoed it. “Darcy. I want jelly butter.”

  “She means peanut butter and jelly,” Melissa translated.

  Jeremy got up on a chair and got down a big yellow plastic platter. He started spreading a thick layer of paper towels on it and then separating the slices of bacon to put on the towels. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I went ahead and made the sandwich for Shana.

  “How long, Jeremy?” Melissa asked, opening the microwave oven for the platter of a whole pound of bacon, which had now been covered over with more paper towels.

  “You fix the bread and then I’ll cut the tomatoes while the bacon cooks,” Jeremy said authoritatively. “I’ll set the timer.”

  The door was closed, the controls punched, and the light came on inside. I guessed he was handling it all right when, after a minute or two, the aroma of bacon drifted through the room.

  I helped Melissa put mayonnaise on the bread, talked them into lettuce along with the tomatoes, and was feeling reasonably in control when the timer went off on the oven.

  “Oh, crumb! I must’ve done something wrong,” Jeremy said, peering inside the microwave. “Maybe I set it for too many minutes.”

  I moved along the counter to look inside, and my stomach twisted.

  The bacon had cooked, all right, the slices around the edges being charred almost black. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. As the bacon cooked, the grease had melted out of it, and the yellow platter wasn’t deep enough to hold it all. The grease ran in a great yellowish puddle down over the floor of the oven, onto the counter, and it didn’t take long to see why it had such a peculiar color.

  The plastic platter had split and blistered and melted, so that it mingled with the liquid bacon fat in a lake that threatened to overflow onto the floor.

  Luckily there were paper towels in sight, which I grabbed and began mopping up the mess. I remembered, now, something about needing special dishes to cook in a microwave. Not plastic ones, I guessed.

  Jeremy looked disappointedly at the bacon. “I think it’s all burned up.”

  “No, the slices in the middle are all right. You like it crisp, don’t you? There’s enough for two sandwiches, one for you and one for Melissa.” I picked out the salvageable bacon and scooped up the rest of the mess to put it into the garbage can under the sink. I hoped the platter wasn’t anybody’s favorite and that I wouldn’t be blamed for allowing Jeremy to use it in the oven. What a way to get started on a new job!

  They ate at a picnic table in the back yard, and I left them there when a bell sounded within the house. “The doorbell?” I asked, and the other kids nodded, their mouths too full to reply.

  I’d reached the front door when it occurred to me that even though it was broad daylight, it might not be wise to allow anyone into the house.

  There was no window in the door, so I couldn’t see out. “Who is it?” I called.

  A man’s voice answered. “Gas company. I’m here to check the gas lines.”

  I hesitated. I’d feel like a fool if I didn’t let him in and the Fosters thought I should have. Yet I’d heard so many times about criminals misrepresenting themselves as service men, and I knew there were plenty of valuables in this house for a crook to steal.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I’m the baby-sitter, and I’m not authorized to let anyone in.”

  “I’m from the gas company,” the man said, sounding impatient. “There’s a problem with the gas lines in this neighborhood, and I need to get inside to check them. I have identification. Open the door, and I’ll show it to you.”

  I hesitated again. What if there really was a problem? Something dangerous? Would the house blow up if I didn’t let him inside?

  “Go over to the window, to the left of the door,” I decided. “You can show me the ID through the window.” I didn’t know what else to do.

  I heard him swear softly, and then, as I walked toward the nearest window, still feeling uneasy about the whole thing, I heard his boots on the tiles. There were decorative wrought iron bars over the windows, on the outside, so he couldn’t get the wallet right close to the glass, and it was very shadowy out there. He was wearing a blue coverall, all right, but though I craned my neck, I couldn’t see any gas company van on the street. And I couldn’t read what was written on the plastic card he held up, either.

  “Look, I’m in a hurry,” the man said, his voice muffled. He was tall and slim, that was all I could tell. I couldn’t get any better look at his face than at his ID.

  I was feeling more and more uncertain and foolish, but something held me back from opening the door to him. I kept remembering those boring lectures Mrs. Hopkins gave at school, mostly intended for latch-key kids who spent a lot of time at home by themselves.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t let you in. If it’s really an emergency, have the police come here with you. There’s a patrol through this area every day. Just have them send a patrol car. When I see that, I’ll open the door.”

  Again the man swore, and a minute later I could see, peering through the barred window and out through one of the white plastered arches, the man in blue coveralls striding away toward the street.

  No doubt everybody would laugh at me for being so silly, I thought, checking to make sure the front door was locked the way Mrs. Murphy had left it.

  I went back through the house to the kitchen. Through the window I saw the Foster kids throwing their bread crusts at each other, laughing as a smear of mayonnaise left a trail across Melissa’s nose. It was a good thing I’d had them eat outdoors. I looked at the clock.

  Only two and a half hours to go before the housekeeper came home, I thought, and hoped nothing else unexpected would happen.

  Chapter Four

  The trouble with watching three kids at once is that they can go in three different directions, and you can only go in one.

  While the kids were all playing outside, I sat in a plastic chair and watched them scattered over the lawn. The pool was there, behind a high chain-link fence; fortunately, the kids couldn’t get at it. I didn’t have a bathing suit, and I wasn’t sure enough yet of the kids to know I could keep up with all three of them in the water.

  Shana saw me looking at the pool and leaned against my knee. “I can swim,” she told me.

  “She’s not supposed to go in the deep end, though,” Melissa said. “Can you read, Darcy?”

  “Yes, of course I can read. Can you?”

  She shook her dark head, and the soft little curls danced around her face. “No. I won’t go to kindergarten until next year. Jeremy can read some, but not whole books. Will you read us a story?”

  I felt safe reading stories, I did that all the time; so we went inside and sat in the pl
ayroom. They had more books than the library, and they each chose one and sat beside me on the big squashy couch.

  “Mine first,” Shana insisted, thrusting a book into my hands. “Greg-ry Gray and the Brave Beast.” It was about a little red-headed boy who was left to spend his vacation alone with the housekeeper in a big old Victorian house, while all the other boys in the school went home to their families; Gregory made friends with a big, tough alley cat called Lionel. Obviously the kids knew it by heart. If I left out a word, they filled it in, in a chorus.

  I read until my throat got dry. “I need a drink,” I said, and then I realized that only Melissa and Jeremy were sitting beside me. “Where’s Shana?”

  “Maybe she’s tired,” Melissa suggested. “Sometimes she takes a nap.”

  The little girl wasn’t in her bedroom though. She didn’t answer when we called her name, so I went looking through the house. It occurred to me that the gas man hadn’t come back, nor had the police come to say it was truly an emergency. Maybe they’d discovered whatever the problem was, somewhere else, and they hadn’t needed to come back. I looked into the master bedroom.

  And there she was.

  Shana was seated at the dressing table, intent on her own small face in the mirror before her. Lipstick was smeared across the lower part of her face, and she was trying to apply eye shadow with ludicrous results.

  “Oh, Shanny, shame on you!” Melissa cried, and the applicator jumped in Shana’s hand, leaving a blue mark across one cheekbone.

  “Like Mama,” Shana said, unrepentant, as I took the applicator out of her hand.

  “You can do this when you get bigger,” I said, seeing no damage that soap and water wouldn’t take care of, except for the gouge in the cake of eye shadow. I wondered how Mrs. Murphy managed to keep up with all three of them at once.”

  I guess I must have asked the question aloud, because Melissa piped up the answer. “She keeps the doors locked so we can’t get in.”