Ben and Mal and I put our heads together and had a conference. We decided to let the kids try to work things out for themselves. And so the teasers kept teasing. In the middle of the worst of it, though, I noticed something. James was eyeing Susan. When Bob-or-Craig (the short one) stood in front of her and began flapping and clicking right in her face, James ran to Susan and put his arm around her protectively.
“Leave her alone,” he said. “She’s — she’s my mate.”
Susan had a friend! My heart soared. And then I got another of my ideas. Even though Mallory and Ben and I had decided to stay out of things, I joined James, Susan, and Bob-or-Craig.
“You won’t believe this,” I said, “but Susan is really smart.”
“Yeah, right,” said the teaser. “Sure she is.”
“No, really.” I explained that Susan had a calender in her head. “Go on,” I said. “Give her any date. She’ll tell you the day of the week it fell on.”
“Okay,” said Bob-or-Craig (the tall one) with a smirk. “December first, nineteen eighty-three.”
“Thursday,” said Susan woodenly.
“That’s right!” exclaimed the boy. “That’s my sister’s birthday. How did she know that — and so fast?”
“Oh, that was probably easy for her,” I said. “Go back further in time. Do you know the birthdate of one of your grandparents or something?”
“I do,” said the shorter boy.
Susan performed her trick again.
Everyone was aghast — the teasers, the Hobarts, the Pikes.
I felt extremely proud of Susan.
Stacey arrived at my house at a hectic time. Nannie was rushing out the door, afraid she’d be late meeting her friends. Sam and Charlie were standing in the kitchen, begging. They’d remembered that they’d promised to bring food — potato chips or something — to the party they were going to, and not only had they forgotten to pick anything up, but they were broke.
“Gee, you wouldn’t be broke if you had a great job like mine,” I said.
Boy. If looks could kill. Sam and Charlie gave me Dagger Eyes.
I shrugged. Then I led Stacey into the den. On our way I could hear Mom saying to my brothers, “You mean neither of you has any money?”
In the den were Karen, Andrew, Emily, and David Michael. They were watching The Wizard of Oz on the VCR.
“Remember,” I said, “you can only watch until Dorothy leaves Munchkinland. Then the TV goes off.”
“You’re not in charge,” replied David Michael, never taking his eyes off the set. “You don’t make the rules tonight.”
Mom appeared in the doorway. “You can only watch until Dorothy leaves Munchkinland,” she said. “Then the TV goes off.”
“Darn,” said David Michael.
“Bullfrogs,” said Karen.
Sam and Charlie left then, each carrying a bag of potato chips, which Watson had probably given them. And then I left with Mom and Watson. They were going to drop me off at Susan’s, and the Felders were going to bring me back later.
Stacey was alone with my little brothers and sisters. She sat on the floor and watched the movie with them. “Okay,” she said after awhile. “Dorothy’s outta there. Time to turn the set off.”
Some minor arguing followed.
“She’s not out yet,” said Karen. “She’s on the Yellow Brick Road and she hasn’t met the Scarecrow. So I think she’s still in —”
The Scarecrow appeared on the screen at that very moment.
“Okay,” said Stacey. “Dorothy is now definitely out of Munchkinland.” She switched off the TV.
“Aw, what are we going to do now?” complained David Michael.
“Play checkers?” suggested Andrew halfheartedly.
“I know!” exclaimed Karen. “We can play ‘Let’s All Come In.’ We have to teach Emily the game.”
“Let’s All Come In” is a game my little brothers and sisters play. Karen invented it, though, and she likes it better than any of the others. She usually has to coerce the others to play with her. That’s because Karen takes all the best parts for herself and gives the other parts to everyone else. See, the game is supposed to take place in a hotel lobby. One person (usually me) has to be the clerk at the desk. Another person (usually David Michael) has to be the bellman (bellperson?), who takes people’s luggage to their rooms. Karen gets to play all the guests, or to assign guest roles to Andrew and Emily. She always makes them play the roles like babies or pet dogs or something.
Anyway, since everyone dresses up and changes costumes frequently for “Let’s All Come In,” no one minds the game much. In fact, I think they like it, but they just won’t admit it.
“Costumes, everybody!” cried Karen as soon as Stacey and the others had agreed to play.
They trooped upstairs to the playroom, where the most incredible box of dress-up clothes sits. Honestly. When I first met Watson and his kids, I couldn’t believe the stuff in this playroom — and Andrew and Karen only visited their father two weekends a month. David Michael and Emily didn’t even live in this house yet.
As you can imagine, in the trunk are costumes like you’d expect to see only in the fanciest toy store. So David Michael suited up in a pretty impressive bellman’s uniform, and then Karen directed the others in their costuming.
“Now,” she began, “I will be playing Mrs. Kennelworth, a very, very rich lady who is going to stay at the hotel. Emily, you will be my little girl. Andrew, you will be my pet monkey.”
“What?” cried Andrew.
Karen ignored him. “David Michael, you go downstairs and get ready in the living room. Stacey, you go with him and make sure you have a pad of paper for our guest book.”
“Okay,” agreed Stacey. She and David Michael went into the living room and waited for the others to arrive.
A few minutes later, “Mrs. Kennelworth” made her entrance. She was very dressed up. Karen had found a long, fancy-looking dress, silver high heels, a sequined hat, a fake-fur muff, and plenty of necklaces and bracelets.
“Good evening,” said Karen. “I am Mrs. Kennelworth, here for the night with my —” (she turned around and pulled Emily and Andrew into the living room) “— with my little girl, Perdita, and my little monkey, Spunky.”
In came Emily wearing her Sunday best — a white dress with pink ribbons down the front and her black Mary Jane shoes — and Andrew wearing a hat with ears on it, mittens for paws, and a realistic-looking tail.
“I’m sorry,” said Stacey, the desk clerk. “No monkeys allowed in the hotel. Only people.”
“But my dog — my Mexican shorthair — came last time,” replied Karen. “Besides, I am very, very rich, and anyway, where are my lovely little girl and I going to stay tonight if we can’t sleep here? We’re on our way to Istanbul, you know…. Bellman, take our bags. Here’s a one hundred-dollar tip.”
Stacey pretended to look agitated. “Very well then, Mrs. Smellyworth — I mean, Mrs. Kennelworth. Sign the register, please. Sign in Perdita and Funky, too.”
“Spunky,” Karen corrected her. She turned to Emily. “Say, ‘Thank you, nice lady,’” she instructed her.
Emily loves being included in the game. “Fank oo, nice wady,” she repeated proudly. (She has no idea what she’s saying when she repeats these things.)
“Say, ‘My, but what a beautiful hotel,’” Karen went on.
“My booful tell,” said Emily.
The game continued. Karen registered at the hotel as a witch with her ghost and black cat, as an old lady with her grandchildren, and as several more characters. She was dressing for the part of a professional tennis player on tour when I returned.
“The Felders came home early,” I explained, as Andrew and Emily threw themselves at me, hugging my legs.
“Oh,” said Stacey. “Well, my mom can’t pick me up for another hour. I’m stuck here. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” I replied.
Stacey and I sat on the couch in the li
ving room.
“David Michael,” I said, “why don’t you be the desk clerk for awhile so Stacey and I can talk.”
“Goody,” replied my brother. “This uniform is hot.”
“How was Susan?” Stacey asked as soon as we sat down.
I shrugged. “The usual. You know what makes me mad? I told her mother about James saying Susan was his friend, but Mrs. Felder didn’t seem to care. She’s still sending Susan away to that new school. I wish she could let Susan try living at home. That’s where kids belong, I think. You know, I plan to show Mrs. Felder just how ‘normal’ Susan can be. I want her to change her mind about the school.”
“I know you do,” answered Stacey. “Just don’t go overboard.”
“I won’t,” I sighed. “You know, even I have to admit that Susan is one of the most handicapped kids I’ve ever seen. She wouldn’t let me touch her tonight. I couldn’t get her pajamas on her, and she kept screaming.”
Stacey sighed, too.
And at that moment Emily, wearing a huge hat, long gloves, and high heels, came over to us and said, “Scooze me. I have dance?” (Karen was standing behind her, grinning.)
“Of course you may,” I replied.
And I forgot about Susan as the grand hotel became a grand ballroom.
“Susan … Susan … Susan?”
Guess where I was. At the Felders’ again, of course. Susan’s mother had just left for the afternoon, and Susan was lost in her world of piano music.
For the life of me, I could not attract her attention.
I thought of putting my hands over hers, as I had done before, and stopping the music, but her mother had said she’d had a good day so far. She’d eaten breakfast and lunch, she’d behaved herself on a walk, and she had only just begun playing the piano.
Besides, for the first time since I’d started sitting for Susan I noticed a look of absolute rapture on her face as she played. She was still staring off into space, her head cocked, but she was smiling beautifully and she looked relaxed. (Usually she’s wound up tighter than a tick, as Watson would say.) So I let Susan play.
I was sitting in the living room with her, about to begin my homework, when the doorbell rang.
Maybe, I thought excitedly, it was James Hobart, coming to play with his new “mate.”
I dashed to the Felders’ front door, peeked out the window, and saw a boy there. He was not James. In fact, he was one of the kids who’d been teasing the Hobarts. He was the short Bob-or-Craig.
I opened the door, frowning, “Yes?” I said. Maybe he had a paper route and the Felders owed him money or something.
“Hi,” said the boy nervously. “Can I come in? I’m here to see Susan.”
“You are?” I could hardly believe it. Still, it was great! Another friend! “Come on in,” I told him.
“Thanks.” The boy stepped inside. “Where is she?”
I pointed to the piano.
“You mean she plays the piano, too?” he asked incredulously.
“Yup. She can play almost anything. Do you have a favorite song? She — she takes requests,” I added grandly, as if Susan were performing at a party or a wedding.
The boy stepped over to the piano. “Play ‘Way Down Upon the Swanee River,’” he said, clearly expecting Susan not to know the song.
Susan switched flawlessly from whatever she’d been playing to “Swanee River.” She played and played.
“Doesn’t she ever stop?” asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I hadn’t heard Susan play anything but classical music up until now (her mother said it was her favorite) and all classical music seems long to me.
“Okay,” said the boy. “Okay. Hey, Susan, play ‘Monster Mash.’”
“Monster Mash”? That was a silly old rock-and-roll song. Susan would never kn —
But she did know it. She switched from “Swanee River” to “Monster Mash” without missing a beat.
“Wow,” said the boy, awed.
“Listen, what’s your name?” I asked the boy. “I mean, what is it really? Are you Bob or are you Craig? If you’re going to be Susan’s friend I should know, so I can tell her your name, and talk to her about you.”
“Oh,” said the boy, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Well … well, the truth is I’m Mel Tucker.”
“Mel,” I repeated, smiling. “I’m Kristy Thomas, Susan’s baby-sitter.”
Mel just nodded. Then a grin lit up his face as he regarded Susan at the piano again. “I know!” he exclaimed. “I just saw The Music Man. That was a good movie. We rented it and I watched it three times before we had to return it. Hey, Susan, play that song about Marian, the librarian.”
Again, Susan began the new song, only this time Mel’s eyes nearly fell out of their sockets when Susan began to sing, too. She knew every word of the entire song. When she finished it, she began again. I had a funny feeling Susan knew every song from the movie.
“She has a pretty voice,” said Mel, which was probably the highest compliment he could muster.
“She does, doesn’t she?” I replied, and wondered why Susan couldn’t use that voice to talk with people instead of just to sing songs she’d memorized and to give dates.
“I guess,” Mel went on, “that Susan knows lots and lots of songs.”
“Just about any one you can think of,” I bragged.
“And I guess she can sing to all of them?” This was a question, not a statement.
“No,” I replied. “Not all. But when she does know a song, she knows the whole thing. She’s even memorized some songs in other languages.”
“You mean she can speak Spanish and Italian and stuff?”
“Not really. It’s just that if she hears a song sung in a different language, then that’s how she memorizes it.”
“She just memorizes things?” asked Mel. “How fast?”
“First try, sometimes. I mean, she hears a piece, she can play it. She hears a song, she can sing it. Sometimes it does take more than one try, though,” I admitted. “That’s what her mother said.”
“Gosh, Susan is amazing. I was at a circus once and I saw a chicken that could play this little piano with its beak. I thought that was amazing. But this is even better. Susan is really amazing.”
I smiled. “Yeah. She’s special.”
“She should go on one of those TV shows about incredible people,” Mel continued. “Really. She should.”
“I don’t know….”
“Well, I have to go now,” said Mel abruptly. Then he added, “How often do you baby-sit for Susan?”
“Three times a week,” I replied. “Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays after school.”
“Okay. Well, I better be going. See you around!”
Mel let himself out the front door.
“Susan!” I squealed, running to the piano. I sat next to her on the bench. “You have two friends now! Do you understand? Two friends. Two people who like you. Well, make that three friends, since I like you, too. Your friends are named James, Mel, and Kristy. I’m Kristy. I’m Kristy. Me,” I added, pointing exaggeratedly to my chest.
“Susan, you can stop playing that song about the librarian now,” I said, changing the subject. “You’ve played it practically forever. Let’s go outside.”
Susan continued playing.
The doorbell rang again.
I answered it. This time James Hobart was on the front steps.
“Hi, James!” I cried.
“Hullo. Can Susan come out and play?” he asked.
Talk about music. Those words were music to my ears. “Sure she can,” I answered. “But come on inside for a few minutes first.”
James followed me into the Felders’ house. Immediately, he said what Mel had said just a little while earlier: “You mean she plays the piano, too?”
“Yup. But it’s time for her to stop,” I said, thinking that if I heard Susan sing, “I love you madly, madly, Madame Librarian, Marian,” again I wou
ld scream. “Sometimes stopping her is a little difficult,” I informed James.
I placed my hands over Susan’s and tightened them until she couldn’t play freely anymore.
“I — I don’t want her to stop playing if she doesn’t want to,” said James.
“Don’t worry. I don’t think she does want to, but it’s more important for her to make friends.”
“That’s true,” said James as I coaxed Susan into her sweater. “I know exactly how Susan feels.”
“I thought you might.”
I took Susan by the hand, and without being asked, James took her other hand. We led her into the backyard and sat under a tree.
“In Australia,” said James, “I have lots of friends. I have two pen friends, too.”
“Pen friends?” I repeated.
“Oh, um, here in America you call them pen pals. Now they’re the only friends I have left, and I’ve never even met them. One lives in England and the other lives in Canada. Oh, well. At least we can write letters.”
“A real friend would be better, though, right?” I said.
“Right,” agreed James. “Someone I can ride bikes with and go skateboarding with. Someone who could show me around Stoneybrook. Someone who could teach me what American kids say.”
James looked so lonely that I put my arm around him. Then he put his arm around Susan, who didn’t pull away. But something was wrong, I thought. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something was wrong.
The three of us sat under the tree for nearly an hour, James and I talking, Susan clicking her tongue and staring at something no one else could see.
“Attention, please! Attention, please! There will be an assembly in the auditorium immediately following homeroom. Everyone is expected to attend. Thank you.”
I sighed. I had just gotten to school. It was early in the morning, I was tired, school assemblies are usually boring, and my locker smelled. The only funny thing was that our public-address system wasn’t working too well, so the announcement sounded like this: “A-ention, ease. A-ention, ease…. will be an … embly in the au-i-orium mediately foling ome-oom. Every-nn is ex-ted to a-end. -nk oo.”