Mary Anne loves to sit "for the Perkinses now that she"s gotten used to the fact that they live in my old house. Lucky for her such a nice family moved in. Even luckier that a new baby is on the way. Mary Anne is really excited. I know she"s helped Mrs. Perkins paint the room and pick out curtain material - although the baby isn"t due for several more months.
She"s excited, and Myriah and Gabbie are, too. What the Perkins girls didn"t realize was that not everybody would share their feelings.
As soon as Mrs. Perkins left on that Thursday, Jamie Newton came over to play. Myriah took him by the hand and said, "Come look at the baby"s room. It is so, so beautiful. Mommy and Gabbie and I have been working very hard." She pulled Jamie up to the tiny room that used to belong to David Michael. Mary Anne and Gabbie followed.
"Oh, it looks great now!" Mary Anne exclaimed as they stood in the doorway. "You finished painting it."
"And one curtain is up, but Mommy"s still hemming the other one."
"I didn"t help my mommy with Lucy"s room," said Jamie.
"How come?" asked Gabbie.
Jamie shrugged. "Just because."
"Well, we"re helping," said Gabbie.
"You"ve been working hard," said Mary Anne, stepping inside the room.
"Look in the drawers," Myriah said to Mary Anne, "and you"ll see what we did."
Mary Anne opened the drawers of the bureau to find piles of neatly folded sleepers and undershirts and jumpsuits.
"We washed everything that was in the box in the attic," Myriah told her. "And I folded all those clothes."
"Boy, I guess you"re almost ready for this baby."
"Almost," agreed Myriah, "except for one important thing."
"What?" asked Mary Anne.
"We need a name for the baby. You want to hear the names Mommy and Daddy like? They like Sarah or Randi-with-an-"i" for a girl, or John Eric or Randy-with-a-"y" for a boy. But they haven"t decided."
"What do you like?" I asked.
"I like Laurie for a girl, but I can"t think of any good boys" names."
"I want to name it Beth," spoke up Gabbie.
"Laurie and Beth are both very pretty names," said Mary Anne. She glanced at Ja-mie. He was scowling.
"You know what I wanted to name my baby?
I wanted to name her Stupid-head."
"Stupid-head!" cried Gabbie. She looked crushed. "Nah-nah and a boo-boo. That is so, so mean."
"It is not," said Jamie. "I"m going home."
Gabbie marched out of the room. "I"m going to take a nap," she called crossly to Mary Anne.
"Wow," said Mary Anne to Myriah. "Gabbie sounds really mad."
"She must be upset about what Jamie said. We love our baby, even thought it isn"t here yet."
"I"m glad you feel that way," said Mary Anne.
"How can Jamie be so mean?"
"I don"t think he"s being mean. He was jealous when Lucy was born. He used to be the baby of the family. Then everything changed for him. I think he felt a little scared."
"Now Gabbie feels bad," said Myriah.
"I know," agreed Mary Anne.
Myriah looked thoughtful. "Let"s do something nice to make her feel better."
"That"s a good idea," said Mary Anne. "Like what?"
"I"m not sure."
Myriah and Mary Anne sat down on the floor of the baby"s room.
"What are some things Gabbie likes to do?" Mary Anne asked.
"She likes to color."
"What"s something special that she can"t do every day?"
"Go on rides at Disney World."
"Not that special. Something we could do this afternoon."
"I know!" said Myriah. "She likes tea parties. She likes to give tea parties for her dolls, but sometimes it"s a big pain because she wants to get dressed up first, and dress her dolls and teddies, too."
"Well, let"s have a tea party, then!" exclaimed Mary Anne. "I"ll go downstairs and set it all up. We"ll have juice and cookies. You and Gabbie get dressed up, and then dress up the dolls and animals. ... I don"t think Gab-bie"s really taking a nap, do you?"
"No way," replied Myriah.
So Mary Anne ran downstairs and found Gabbie"s tea set in the playroom. She set eight places around the kitchen table. Then she put a cookie at every place, and filled the tiny teacups with Hawaiian Punch. She folded napkins and even grabbed a vase of flowers from the living room and put them in the middle of the table.
"Myriah! Gabbie!" she called from the bottom of the stairs. "Tea time!"
"We"re not ready yet!" Myriah called back.
Mary Anne ran upstairs to see what was going on. In Gabbie"s room she found Myriah wearing a pink party dress with white tights and shiny Mary Jane shoes. But Gabbie had had a different idea about getting dressed up. She was wearing one of her mother"s slips, a necktie belonging to her father, a feather boa, a straw hat, sungla.s.ses, and snow boots.
"How do I look?" she asked.
Mary Anne glanced at Myriah who shrugged.
"Lovely," Mary Anne told her.
"I"m all dressed up," she announced.
"I see. Are your dolls ready?" It was hard to tell. One of them was wearing sungla.s.ses. Another was wearing a bathing cap.
"Yes," replied Gabbie, "but the bears aren"t."
"Show us how to dress the bears," said Mary Anne. "Myriah and I will help you."
Gabbie instructed them to put undershirts and socks on the three bears, and then they carried the dolls and bears down to the kitchen, and sat them around the table.
"This is beautiful," said Gabbie, looking at the tea party and trying to sound grown up.
"It is too, too diveen," added Myriah.
Mary Anne giggled.
She and the girls drank their tiny cups of punch and ate their cookies. Then they drank the bears" and the dolls" punch and ate some of their cookies, too.
"Did you like the party?" Mary Anne asked Gabbie when it was over.
Gabbie nodded. "I loved it. It was too, too diveen."
Mary Anne smiled. The crisis was over.
Chapter 6.
Linny and Hannie were right. The Delaney children are awful. They are nasty and bossy and everything Hannie said they are. I know because I baby-sat for them. Mrs. Delaney called the Baby-sitters Club, and of course my friends urged me to take the job since it"s in my neighborhood.
I arrived at the Delaneys" after school on a Friday. (What a way to start the weekend.) Their house is the opposite of the Papadakises" or Watson"s (I mean, mine). Last year, one of my spelling words was "ostentatious." (I"m a good speller.) And that"s what the Delaneys" house was. Ostentatious. It was showy and show-offy and ornate. Guess what was in their front hall - a fountain. No kidding. There was this golden fish standing on its tail, fins spread, with water spouting out of its mouth and running into a little pool surrounding it.
Guess what"s in our front hall - two chairs and a mirror.
Guess what"s in the Papadakises" front hall - two chairs and Myrtle"s box.
In the Delaneys" gigantic backyard are two tennis courts. In their library and living room are gilt-framed portraits and Oriental rugs, and the kitchen looks like a s.p.a.ce control center with gadgets and b.u.t.tons and appliances everywhere. I hope I never have to give the Delaney kids a meal. I wouldn"t even be able to figure out how to toast a slice of bread. (I think the Delaneys" have a part-time cook, though.) But I could have handled all this stuff okay. It was the children I couldn"t take.
For starters, they weren"t even interested in meeting me. Their mother answered the door, gave me instructions and phone numbers, and put on her coat, and still I hadn"t seen the children.
"Where are Amanda and Max?" I finally asked.
"Oh, of course," said Mrs. Delaney, sort of breathlessly. "I suppose I ought to introduce you."
She led me into a room that I guessed was the family room, but it sure didn"t look like ours. Our family room is always on the messy side - a newspaper strewn around, Louie lounging on the couch, Watson"s cat, Boo-Boo, asleep on the television set, maybe a coloring book or some homework left out.
This room was not only tidy, it was clean. And it was all white. White s.h.a.g rug, white leather couch, even white lacquer tables and a white TV set. Priscilla (fluffy and white, of course) sleeping daintily in a white wicker cat bed, looking as if somebody, maybe the director of a play, had posed her just so, to be the perfect complement to the perfect room.
Posed on the couch were two perfect (looking) children. Amanda, the eight-year-old I"d met with Shannon, her Mary Janes polished, her blond hair parted evenly and held in place with a big blue bow, sat primly on one side. She was wearing a blue corduroy jumper over a white blouse. Her jumper matched her hair ribbon exactly. Next to her was Max, the six-year-old, a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel of a boy, dressed in corduroy pants, an unwrinkled alligator shirt, and docksiders.
"Children," said Mrs. Delaney, "this is Kristy. She"s going to baby-sit for you this afternoon. I"ll be back in a couple of hours. You do what Kristy tells you, all right?"
Amanda and Max merely nodded, their eyes glued to the TV. Amanda didn"t give any sign that she"d met me before.
Mrs. Delaney left then, and I sat down in a white armchair.
"Don"t sit there!" Amanda squawked, and I leaped up.
"Why?" I asked.
"It"s Daddy"s chair."
This didn"t make any sense to me, since Mr. Delaney wasn"t at home, but I moved over to the couch anyway. Neither Max nor Amanda made any room for me, so I squished into a corner.
"What are you watching?" I asked the kids.
No answer.
But when a commercial came on, Amanda said, "Get me a c.o.ke, Kristy."
"What do you say?" I replied in a singsong voice. When you have a little brother, a little stepbrother, and a little stepsister, you find yourself repeating this all the time, as a reminder to say "please" and "thank you."
"I say, "Get me a c.o.ke," " Amanda repeated dryly.
"Get me one, too," said Max.
My mouth dropped open. What was I supposed to do? I couldn"t very well scold Amanda and Max during the first fifteen minutes of my job. So I got up, went into the kitchen, found the c.o.ke in the maze of appliances, and poured some into two gla.s.ses.
When I handed Amanda her gla.s.s, I didn"t expect her to say "thank you" (I was too smart for that), but I also didn"t expect her to say, "Where"s the ice?"
I rolled my eyes, took the gla.s.ses back in the kitchen, dropped three ice cubes in each gla.s.s, and gave the c.o.kes to Amanda and Max. Amanda accepted hers and began to drink, but Max looked from me to his gla.s.s and back, and said, "I hate ice. Take it out."
Now if David Michael had said that to me, I would have replied, "Take it out yourself." But the Delaneys were new clients of the Babysitters Club, and I didn"t want any unhappy children on hand when their mother returned. So I went to the kitchen for the third time and fished Max"s ice cubes out of his gla.s.s with a spoon. When I handed the c.o.ke back to him, he and Amanda drank in silence until their show was over.
"Well," I said, "let"s go outside and play. There"s nothing good on TV anyway."
Amanda shrugged. She handed me her empty gla.s.s and said, "Can you put this back in the kitchen? We"re not allowed to leave stuff in here."
Max handed me his gla.s.s, too.