I made it! Just in the nick of time I was able to wedge myself in between the sponge mops and pull the door closed behind me. My foot was in the bucket, but if no one noticed my fingertips holding the door shut, I would be safe.
They entered the kitchen talking and laughing. Ben and my mother and … wait a second. There were other voices too. The two of them weren’t alone.
“Hey! What’s that?” asked a small voice. It sounded like Beaver Cleaver. But that was impossible. Beaver Cleaver was just a TV character. And besides, he usually hung around with Larry Mondello on Saturdays.
Suddenly I felt a slight tug on the broom closet door. It caught me by surprise. I tightened my grip and tried to hold on. Outside the door I felt someone touch each of my fingers. One by one—like they were being counted.
“What are you doing over there, Thomas?” I heard Ben ask.
Whoever Thomas was, he didn’t answer. Instead, he got a better grasp on the door handle and yanked with all his might. I lost my hold. And the door came swinging wide open.
A small boy stood in front of the open closet door and stared at me in wonder. His face was covered with freckles and his ears stuck out. Also, his mouth was agape. Agape means “hanging open.”
His wasn’t the only one, either. My mother’s mouth and Ben’s mouth were agape too. So was the mouth of the teenage girl standing next to them.
I’m not sure how long we stood there like that. All I know is that the boy was in serious danger of drooling, when the pressure of all that silence finally got to me.
“Boo,” I muttered stupidly.
My mother’s eyes widened. “Charles?” she asked, as if she had been hoping it wasn’t really me.
I forced an embarrassed grin. Yup, it was me all right. It was Charles. Charles W. Hickle—Man of Steel.
Mom raised her eyebrows. “Er … exactly what are you doing in the closet?”
Dying, I wanted to say. Can’t you see I’m dying? But instead I looked around and shrugged. “Nothin’.”
Ben looked worried. “Charlie,” he said calmly and slowly. It was the kind of voice that doctors use in the movies when they talk to insane people in a mental ward. “I’d, uh, like you to meet my children. This is Lydia, and that’s my son, Thomas.”
Cautiously Lydia raised her hand and waved a few of her fingers.
I waved my box of Fruity Flakes. It’s all I could think of.
“Hey, Dad, look!” exclaimed Thomas, pointing excitedly. “He’s got jammies just like mine!”
I tried to cover up, but Lydia had already started to laugh.
At last it finally dawned on my mother why I was there.
“Ohhhh,” she said as the light bulb went off in her head. “I get it. You’re not dressed yet, are you?”
Good, Mom. Very good.
“Listen,” she said, turning to the others. “Why don’t the four of us go outside and unload the plants you brought over. That’ll give Charles a chance to run upstairs and get his clothes on.”
Then, without waiting for an answer, she ushered Ben and his kids outside.
I have never been so humiliated in my entire life. I’m serious. Even the time I was singing in the school chorus and a big wad of underwear was hanging out of my zipper, it wasn’t as bad as this.
I checked the kitchen carefully before making a mad dash for my room. When I finally got there, I shut the door, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, and threw myself on the bed.
Why in the world had Ben brought his stupid kids over anyway? Didn’t they have anything better to do on a Saturday morning? Hadn’t they ever heard of TV?
And why didn’t my mother warn me they were out there? Was that too much to ask? A little warning that there were strangers lurking around? Hadn’t I explained the pajama situation to her after the problem with Maurice? What did I have to do? Sleep in my clothes? Or maybe I should just lock myself in my room and never come out. That’d teach her. I could do it, too. All I needed was something to block the door, a little food, and a porta-potty.
I hadn’t been brooding very long when a quiet knock on my door interrupted my thoughts.
“Dressed yet, Charlie? Can I come in?”
I couldn’t believe it! She was actually at my door! What was wrong? Hadn’t she humiliated me enough?
I buried my head in my pillow. “No!” I answered. “No to the first question. No to the second question. The answers are no and no.”
Ignoring me, my mother took a quick peek into my room. She does this sort of thing all the time. Like a quick peek is not an invasion of privacy.
When she saw I was dressed, she opened it all the way and hurried in. Thomas was beside her. He was covering his face with his hands and peeking through the cracks. Don’t ask me why, but I think he was hiding.
“Hi,” she said cheerfully, pretending that nothing was wrong. “Guess who I brought with me?”
I rolled my eyes. Gee. This was going to be a tough one.
“It’s Thomas!” she announced. And as she did he uncovered his face.
Golly. What d’ya know. It was Thomas.
“Thomas wanted to know if he could see your room,” she explained. “So I told him, ‘Why, sure you can, Thomas. Charlie would love to show you his room.’ ”
I frowned.
“Wouldn’t you, Charlie,” she added, more sternly this time.
Then she stood across from me and silently mouthed, “Come on. He’s only five.” I was still trying to figure out what his age had to do with anything when she made a break for the door.
“The rest of us will be in the backyard. Holler if you need us,” she called, hurrying down the stairs.
I couldn’t believe she’d done this to me! Sticking me with Thomas, of all people! The kid who exposed my pajamas to the world! What was I supposed to do with him, anyway?
He was standing in the middle of the room rocking back and forth on his heels. I looked at him, but I didn’t speak. He didn’t seem to mind. He just kept rocking back and forth, quietly looking the place over. Then, when he was finished, he walked calmly over to my desk, held out his finger, and started touching stuff.
He began with my pencils. Carefully he touched each of them, one by one, on their erasers. Then he moved on to my digital clock, my scissors, my high-intensity lamp, and some baseball cards that were scattered across my desktop. When he got to my globe, he held it up in the air and spun it around.
“Can I have this?” he asked nicely.
I shook my head no. He put down the globe and headed for the closet. On the way he touched three race cars on my wallpaper—a red one, a blue one, and a green one. I’m not kidding. It was spooky.
Once he disappeared into the closet, I figured that was the end of him. It’s really a mess in there. My friend Martin Oates thinks there’s a hand living underneath my clothes pile. He says that someday it will reach out and grab my ankles, and no one will ever see me again.
I wondered if I should mention it to Thomas. But after only a few seconds he popped out on his own. He was holding his nose.
Next he moved his touching tour to my dresser. I have a couple of stuffed animals up there, and he tried to squeak their noses. When nothing happened, he picked them up and squeezed harder. You could tell he was getting frustrated. Finally I said, “They don’t squeak,” and he put them back.
This whole thing took about ten minutes. When he had finished, he walked over to the window screen and hollered, “I’m done!” Then he sat down in my chair and patiently waited for someone to come get him.
It was Ben. I heard his boots coming up the stairs. It made me feel funny. My mother must have told him where my room was. I wondered if she had told him my middle name was Walter.
The door was wide open, but Ben knocked on the door frame. Thomas ran to him and held up his arms. He was too big to be picked up, but Ben picked him up anyway. He dangled there for a second and his dad put him down again.
Ben smiled self-consciously.
 
; “Sorry we caught you off guard this morning.”
I would have said, “That’s okay,” but I didn’t want to lie.
After a second he turned to Thomas. “Well, can you thank Charlie for watching you?”
Thomas frowned. “He didn’t watch me. I watched my own self.”
Ben took Thomas’s hand, but he didn’t leave. I could tell by the look on his face that there was something else on his mind. Something more important than just taking Thomas back downstairs.
It made me uncomfortable. I started to squirm. It was awkward having Ben in my room without my mother along. Until then, the two of us hadn’t really had a conversation. Mostly we’d just said hi, see you later, and how’d you like the movie.
“Uh … Charlie,” he began at last. “Your mother and I were talking, and we thought that maybe next Saturday morning we could all go out for breakfast together. You know … the five of us.”
I wiggled around restlessly on the bed. Don’t say “the five of us,” I thought. There are two of us and three of you, but that doesn’t add up to “the five of us.”
Ben cleared his throat and forced another awkward smile.
“It’s just that … uh, we thought that it was time for all of us to get to know each other better.”
Suddenly I felt sick. I bent my head and nervously started picking lint off my bedspread. I couldn’t look up. I just couldn’t.
He paused a second. “Um, well … what d’you say?”
I knew I should answer. But I couldn’t. The words he had just used kept echoing around in my head.
It’s time for all of us to get to know each other. It’s time.…
I guess it was pretty clear from my reaction that I didn’t want to go to breakfast—or anyplace else for that matter.
Finally Ben mumbled, “Think it over,” and left the room.
On the way out, Thomas touched all the knobs on my dresser drawers.
(three)
W
E WENT to breakfast. Ben picked us up. When I got in the back seat I was very nervous. Lydia said hi. I waved. Sometimes when I’m tense, I act like a nerd.
I hadn’t really paid much attention to Lydia before, but she was sitting on the very edge of the seat, so I had the chance to study her. She had the same freckles as Thomas, but her hair was too long to tell if her ears stuck out.
I wondered if they both looked like their mom. My mother told me that Mrs. Russo had died when Thomas was just a baby. I didn’t know a lot of the details, but still it got to me. Having your mom die must be just about the hardest thing in the world. Harder than divorce, even.
Lydia seemed pretty normal, though. “How far away is this restaurant, anyway?” she asked as soon as we pulled out of the driveway. “I told Emily I’d be at her house at ten thirty and if we don’t eat fast I’m going to be totally late.”
“I’m not gonna eat fast,” Thomas stated loudly. “I’m gonna eat really slow. Right, Dad? Eating slow is better for you, right?”
Lydia looked at Thomas and stuck out her tongue. I didn’t want to, but it made me smile. You don’t usually think of girls her age still doing stuff like that.
Thomas sat between the two of us. I tried to ignore him, but he kept staring at me like I was a freak. Halfway there, he reached out and touched me with his pointer finger.
It seemed like forever before Ben finally pulled the car into the restaurant parking lot.
“Oh, boy, World of Waffles!” squealed my mother, sounding like a little kid. “Charlie loves it here, don’t you, Charlie?”
I mumbled, “It’s okay,” and hurried out of the car. The sooner we got this over with, the better.
The hostess spotted me coming through the door and grabbed a handful of menus.
“Good morning, sir,” she said cheerfully, knowing perfectly well that I wasn’t a sir yet. “How many in your party this morning?”
“This isn’t a party,” I informed her bluntly.
Mom held up five fingers. “Five! We’re five!” she shouted so loudly that the entire restaurant turned around to stare.
“Hey!” blared Thomas. “Guess what? I’m five, too!”
Lydia stared down at him. “We’re all thrilled for you, Thomas,” she said dryly.
Finally the hostess led us to a large booth in the corner. Mom slid in first. Then Lydia. I was planning to sit on my mother’s other side, but Thomas beat me to it.
“Beep-beep! Beep-beep!” he honked as he plowed through Ben and me to get into the booth.
“Thomas!” said Ben. But that’s all he did about it. He didn’t take him out in the parking lot and punch him or anything.
The waitress brought a booster seat. As soon as Thomas climbed in, he started measuring how high his head was.
“Hey! Look how tall I am. I’m the biggest one at the table!”
Then he tapped me on the shoulder. “Hello, shorty,” he said.
The kiddie menu could be folded into a pirate hat. Thomas handed it to my mother and she fixed it for him. He put it on his head.
“Aye-aye, matey!” he sang out.
Embarrassed, Lydia slumped down in the seat. “Could someone puhleez do something about him?” she begged.
No one did, though, and things didn’t get any better. Thomas and I both ordered waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. As soon as mine came he reached out with his finger and stole a big gob of whipped cream off the top of mine.
“Hey! Knock it off!” I blurted. “You’ve got your own!”
My mother turned her head and looked at me. Then she shook her head—like I shouldn’t have yelled at him; like having some germy little mitt in your whipped cream was a privilege or something.
Fortunately Ben came to my rescue. “Keep your hands to yourself, Thomas,” he said sternly.
After I was finished, I excused myself and waited outside on the curb. I know it wasn’t polite just to leave like that, but Thomas was playing with the food on his plate and it was making me sick.
AS USUAL, on the way home all anyone talked about was how stuffed they were. Anytime you go to a restaurant, the conversation on the way home is always the same.
“I ate too much,” said Ben predictably.
“Me too,” said my mother. “One more bite and I would have burst.”
Just then Thomas made a loud exploding noise. “I did! I bursted! Did you hear me?”
As soon as we pulled into my driveway I opened the car door. We were still moving, but I didn’t care.
“Thanks for the breakfast, Mr. Russo,” I mumbled. I didn’t mean it, but whenever I don’t mumble thank you, I get a lecture.
I hurried up the sidewalk. The front door was locked, so I sat on the step and watched as my mother said her good-byes.
A few minutes later she came waltzing up the walk. “That was nice,” she chirped. “Wasn’t that nice? That was really nice.”
In the next hour or two she must have said how nice it was a million times. Usually when you say a million, it means you’re exaggerating. But I’m not. I swear it was a million.
Every time she said it I felt sicker and sicker. I couldn’t believe this was happening. Just when my life had finally started to settle down, my stupid mother had to mess things up all over again! I know you’re not supposed to call your mother stupid, but it’s how I felt.
We did a lot more stuff with the Russos after that first breakfast. Picnics, a few movies and barbecues, junk like that. And even though I got to know them better—and Thomas finally stopped touching me—every time we were together the sick feeling came right back.
Just like with the divorce, I was being swept along to places that I didn’t want to go. And even though my mother promised—promised—that she wouldn’t make any decision about Ben without talking to me first, I was beginning to get nervous. Very, very nervous.
SEVEN months. That’s how long it took before the announcement finally came. It was a Saturday night in February. My mother had made a big pot of spaghetti an
d asked Ben and Thomas and Lydia over to eat with us. After they said they’d come, she asked me if it was okay. I just shrugged. Why did she always ask after they were already invited?
We sat down to eat at six. Since spaghetti is my favorite meal, I was the first one finished. Thomas was last. Spaghetti takes longer to eat when you suck up each noodle like a vacuum cleaner.
Lydia shook her head. “You’re such a toad, Thomas,” she told him. Then she looked at me.
“He’s a toad. Am I right?”
Happily I nodded.
“Use your napkin, Thomas,” Lydia commanded then. “Come on, you’ve got sauce all over your face. Daaaad, do something. He’s so gross.”
Ben hardly seemed to be listening at all. He just kept fidgeting with his napkin and drinking a lot of water.
Finally, when I was just about to leave the table, he cleared his throat like he had something to say. It surprised me. Normally Ben isn’t much of a talker. Ben’s more a listener and a nodder.
He stood up. His face was slightly red. He seemed embarrassed and excited and nervous all at the same time. “Er … Janet? Could you come over here a second?”
Mom had started clearing the dishes. She put down the plates and joined him at the head of the table.
Ben smiled sheepishly. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled something out.
“It’s just that … well, I thought it would be nice if we were all here when I put this on your finger, that’s all,” he said softly. “All right?”
He held it up for us to see. It was a ring. A gold ring with a small sparkly diamond.
Gently Ben took my mother’s left hand and slipped the ring onto her fourth finger. Her engagement one.
Mom sort of gasped. You could tell she hadn’t been expecting it. I guess most people don’t get engaged while they’re scraping food into the sink. Then her face lit up and she looked at me and at Lydia and at Thomas. And then she hugged Ben so hard I thought I heard a little whoosh of air go out of him.
“Oh wow!” screeched Lydia, making this tiny high-pitched squeal that only girls and dolphins can make. “Oh, Janet, let me see! Let me see!”