Dear Pen Pal

by Heather Vogel Frederick

  “We haven’t finished it yet,” she says, “but you’ll still get the idea.”

  The baby’s going in the old guest room, right next to Cassidy. It’s a tiny room, but her mother says that by the time the baby is old enough to notice, Courtney will have moved out and they can switch him or her into that room. Cassidy gets a funny look on her face when her mom mentions Courtney moving out. I guess it must be kind of hard to imagine life without your sister around. I try to imagine how I’ll feel when Darcy leaves for college, but I can’t.

  The only thing in the room so far is a crib piled high with presents from Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid’s viewers. Cassidy says the UPS truck stops at their house just about every day now.

  “It took us a while to find the right yellow,” says Cassidy’s mom, pointing to some streaks of paint on one of the walls. “I wanted to match the exact color of the moon in this rug I ordered.” She bends over awkwardly and rolls it out for us. “See? Isn’t it cute? It’s a Mother Goose rug. There’s the cow jumping over the moon, and the mouse running up the clock, and Little Boy Blue and Miss Muffett and Jack and Jill and Bo-Peep and Humpty Dumpty.”

  She waddles over to the dresser to show us some of the baby clothes people have sent, and lets out a little snort of laughter. “Actually, I think I’m Humpty Dumpty!”

  Joyful barks from the front hall alert us to the fact that Eva Bergson and Pip have arrived. Megan and Becca and Cassidy all rush downstairs to see the not-so-secret-puppy, who is running circles around Murphy.

  “Take these two wild creatures outside, would you please, girls?” asks Cassidy’s mother, as the rest of us follow her down to join them.

  We manage to corral the dogs and herd them into the backyard. Pip is crazy about Murphy, and fortunately Murphy is crazy about Pip, too. The two of them chase each other around, barking wildly, until they both collapse in a heap at our feet.

  “So are you getting excited about the baby?” Megan asks.

  Cassidy shrugs. “I guess.”

  “Have your mom and Stanley picked out names yet?”

  “Not yet. My mom’s got this long list, but Stanley keeps crossing things off it.”

  “I’ll bet it will be fun helping out with everything—you know, feeding it and taking it for walks in the stroller and changing its diaper and stuff.”

  Cassidy looks at her like she’s crazy. “I don’t do diapers,” she states flatly.

  “They’re not so bad,” Megan tells her. “I’ve helped Jess babysit for Maggie a lot this year, and we had fun. Right, Jess? Bathtime’s the best part. Babies are so cute at bathtime.”

  Cassidy doesn’t look convinced.

  “Since when are you so interested in babies?” I ask Megan.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “I just think it’s cool that she’s going to have a little sister or brother, I guess. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t an only child.”

  “Girls!” calls Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid, sticking her head out the back door. “We’re just about ready to start! Put the dogs in the garage, would you?”

  Back inside, the rest of the Mother-Daughter Book Club is assembled in the kitchen. Cassidy’s mother distributes aprons to everybody, which is a good thing because it hides Mrs. Chadwick’s peppermint striped getup, which really shouldn’t have been allowed out of the house. Megan’s grandmother, who is standing in the middle of the room pointing at things with a wooden spoon like a symphony conductor, assigns us to chopping stations.

  Just as we’re about to start, my mother’s cell phone rings.

  “Oops! Sorry gang, I forgot to turn the ringer off.” She steps into the hall to answer it, and when she comes back, her eyes are shining. “You’ll never guess who that was!”

  “Humpty Dumpty?” mutters Cassidy, and her mother shoots her a look.

  “That was Jill Cunningham from the school board. It looks like Emma’s editorial made an impact.” My mother beams at me. “Apparently Mrs. Hanford called an emergency session today to discuss yesterday’s events in the cafeteria, and Jill suggested they take Emma’s plea seriously. She proposed a compromise, and the board voted and agreed to it.”

  “Agreed to what?” asks Mrs. Delaney.

  “Free choice Fridays,” my mother tells her proudly. “School uniforms won’t be dropped entirely, but from now on students will be able to wear whatever they want on Fridays.”

  Cassidy whoops and drums on the countertop. “Way to go, Emma!”

  Megan does a little victory dance. “Good-bye, khakis, hello, free choice!”

  Mrs. Bergson gives me a hug. “I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so,” she whispers. “Well done.”

  Our collective good mood carries over to the filming session, which turns out to be a lively one. Megan’s grandmother is completely in her element, joking with Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid and the crew and all of us as she demonstrates how to make the various dim sum dishes. Between takes, she flirts with Mr. Goldberg, who looks quite enchanted. Everyone looks enchanted. Gigi is irresistible. Well, to everybody except Mrs. Wong, who stays mostly on the sidelines even though Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid and my mother and Mrs. Delaney try to draw her in. I guess she’s still a little miffed that no one’s asked her to do a vegetarian episode.

  Gigi’s food is irresistible too. By the time we’re done we’re all practically licking the plates, and laughing our heads off at a hilarious story she’s telling us about the time she went to some fancy restaurant in Hong Kong and ordered lobster and the chef must have been new because he didn’t cook it all the way and it walked right off her plate.

  “I haven’t had so much fun in ages,” gasps Cassidy’s mother, plopping down onto a chair and fanning her face with a potholder. “Gigi, you’re a born TV chef! Can you believe her energy, Fred? She’s worn me out.”

  “Mom!” says Cassidy, staring at a puddle on the floor. “Gross! You laughed so hard you wet your pants!”

  Her mother looks down and her smile vanishes. “That’s not—I didn’t—” A look of panic spreads across her face. “Phoebe, would you call Stanley for me? Tell him my water broke.”

  My mother runs for the phone.

  “But I thought the baby wasn’t due for another month,” says Jess’s mother.

  “It’s not,” says Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid. “But it’s definitely on the way now.”

  SUMMER

  “They were learning by the laboratory method, the social graces that would be needed later in the larger world.”

  —Just Patty

  Cassidy

  “Kid McCoy was supposed to be an irreclaimable tomboy, but in this crucial moment the eternal feminine came triumphantly to the fore.”

  —Just Patty

  “What the heck is taking so long?” I demand.

  Mrs. Hawthorne puts her arm around my shoulders. “Try to relax, honey,” she tells me. “Babies can take a while.”

  Pulling away, I get up from the sofa and start to pace. Our entire Mother-Daughter Book Club, plus Courtney and Gigi and Eva Bergson and Fred Goldberg, are all crammed into the waiting room at the Concord Birthing Center. It’s a good thing nobody else is having a baby this afternoon because their families would have to sit on the floor.

  “She’s right, Cassidy,” says Mrs. Delaney. “Waiting is perfectly normal. Everything’s going to be fine, you’ll see.”

  “How can you say that? How do you know?” My voice rises and cracks, and I’m practically shouting as I finish. “Sometimes everything’s not all right—look at what happened to Jean Webster!” The nurse at the front counter looks over at me and frowns, but I don’t care. It’s not her mother in there having a baby.

  The room falls silent. What can anybody say, though? It’s true. It was right there in our last book club meeting’s “Fun Facts.” Excuse me, “Terrible, Awful, Horrible Facts.”

  Courtney gets up and comes over and gives me a hug. I lean against her, breathing hard, too wound up to hug her back. After a while she leads me back to the sofa and I sit down
again. She squeezes in next to me and links her arm through mine.

  The minutes tick by. I put my head against the back of the sofa and try and relax, but my knee is jouncing up and down in time to the rapid beating of my heart. Where is everyone? Shouldn’t Stanley or the doctor come out and tell us what’s going on? Shouldn’t the baby be here by now? Has something gone wrong?

  It’s not like we didn’t get here fast enough. As soon as my mother announced that the baby was on the way, everyone sprang into action. Mrs. Hawthorne called Stanley and told him to meet us at the hospital. Mrs. Wong ran upstairs to get my mother’s suitcase, the one that’s been ready practically since the day she found out she was pregnant. Gigi and Mrs. Delaney packed a picnic basket full of leftover dim sum to take with us. And Mrs. Chadwick—well, Mrs. Chadwick should have been a general. She started barking orders at everyone, even Fred Goldberg and the whole Cooking with Clementine crew. She told Mr. Goldberg to put my mom in his car, then went along with them to make sure he didn’t get lost. The rest of us crammed into our minivan and the Wong’s little hybrid and followed. Courtney was too nervous to drive, so Mrs. Delaney took the wheel of our van. She must have a secret desire to be a race car driver or something, because she managed to get us here ahead of everybody.

  I guess Mrs. Chadwick called the maternity ward on the way, because a team of nurses was standing by with one of those rolling beds, and they whisked my mom onto it and inside before I even managed to get out of the van. Stanley pulled into the parking lot a minute later, his bald head all pink and shiny with excitement and worry.

  “Where is she?” he hollered.

  We all pointed to the hospital and he sprinted through the doors and that’s the last we’ve seen of him for nearly three hours now.

  Another agonizing half hour ticks by, and then, finally, the doors at the end of the hall swing open. I sit bolt upright. A person draped in a light blue gown thing with a matching hat and face mask appears. The person pulls off the hat and I spot a bald head so I’m pretty sure it’s Stanley, and then he takes off the mask and I know for sure it’s Stanley. There’s an expression on my stepfather’s face that I’ve never seen before. He looks a little like the way Coach Danner did the two times our team won the New England regional hockey championship.

  “It’s a girl!” he announces, and bursts into tears.

  To my horror and embarrassment, so do I.

  Megan’s grandmother looks over at me, her forehead puckered with concern. “You’re not happy about a baby sister, Cassidy?”

  “Is Mom okay?” I manage to stutter, as Mrs. Hawthorne hands me a tissue.

  Stanley crosses the room and puts his arms around me. I hug him back, tightly. “Your mother is absolutely fine, honey,” he assures me. “The doctor said it was a textbook birth, and things couldn’t have gone more smoothly.” He sounds so happy and calm I know he’s telling the truth.

  “All those prenatal yoga classes paid off,” says Mrs. Wong.

  “And as for your new sister, she’s fine too,” Stanley continues. “They’re going to keep her here for a few days just to be sure, since she was so early.”

  “Can I go see them?” I ask, blowing my nose and feeling stupid for being such a basket case.

  “You bet,” Stanley replies. “The nurse will come out in a few minutes to get you. I just wanted to give you all the good news right away.”

  He hugs Courtney, too, then disappears again through the swinging doors. A few minutes later, as promised, a nurse pokes her head out.

  “Who’s here to see Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid?” she asks, and her eyes widen as we all stand up.

  “Oh, my,” she says. “There are a lot of you, aren’t there? Well, I suppose it won’t hurt to let you take a quick peek. But then I’ll have to shoo everyone out but immediate family.”

  We follow her back down the hall, and I push past her when we get to my mom’s room. My mother looks up and sees me and her face lights up with a smile that’s a mile wide. For once she’s not wearing a speck of makeup, and her hair is kind of stuck to her head like mine always is after hockey practice, but she looks prettier than I’ve ever seen her look before.

  I’m across the room in a flash. I give her a hug and a kiss and she kisses me back and then looks down at the little bundle wrapped in white flannel that she’s cradling in her arms. “Would you like to meet your new sister?” she asks me.

  I look down at the baby, the one I wasn’t sure I wanted, and I start to cry again. Then Mom starts to cry and so does everybody else in the room and the nurse has to go find another box of tissues.

  “Babies can make you do that,” says Gigi, dabbing at her eyes.

  “Birth is a miracle,” agrees Eva Bergson.

  Everybody crowds around the bed to get a closer look, and Mom lets Courtney hold her.

  “She’s almost eight pounds,” Stanley tells us proudly. “The doctor said it’s probably a good thing she decided to put in an early appearance—she’d have been a whopper if she’d gone full-term. She’s going to be an Amazon just like Clemmie.” Stanley looks at my mother adoringly. For once I don’t mind him using that dumb nickname. Today feels like a day to be gooshy.

  “She looks like Stanley,” says Courtney.

  “Because she’s bald, duh,” I point out, and everybody laughs, even Stanley.

  “So what’s her name?” asks Mrs. Wong.

  My mother gives her a blank look. “Um, we hadn’t quite decided yet,” she admits. “We thought we still had a few more weeks.”

  Stanley grins. “I guess Connor is out now.”

  “And so is Stanley Kinkaid the second,” adds Courtney.

  “Whatever we name her, we know we want it to start with a C,” my mother continues, ignoring them both. “We’ve got a good thing going here with Clementine, Courtney, and Cassidy.”

  “How about Clarissa?” Becca suggests.

  “Ick,” I say.

  “Or Kristen—you could go with a K name since it sounds like C,” says Emma. “Kylie, Kelsey, Kendra, Katrina,” she says, ticking them off on her fingers.

  “How about Coco, like Coco Chanel?” suggests Gigi, and Megan nods vigorously.

  “That’s kind of cute,” says my mother, gazing at the baby. “What do you think, honey?”

  Stanley cocks his head to one side and frowns, thinking it over. “Coco. Hmm. I’m not so sure. It kind of sounds like something you’d name a pet poodle.”

  “I’ve got an idea!” I tell them. “How about Cammi, like Cammi Granato, the hockey player?”

  “Is that short for Camilla?” Becca asks. “That’s pretty.”

  My mother shakes her head. “Nope,” she says. “No way. There was a model I had to work with once at Flash named Camilla. We didn’t get along.”

  “Savannah’s named after a city back in Georgia,” says Jess. “Maybe you could name the baby Concord and call her ‘Connie.’”

  “Dude, that is so lame,” I tell her.

  She shrugs. “It’s just an idea.”

  “My sister’s name is Caroline,” suggests Fred Goldberg. “You met her once, Clementine, remember?”

  My mother nods. “She’s a real sweetheart.”

  “This is kind of like playing the synonym game, isn’t it?” says Emma.

  The nurse reappears, frowning. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask everyone but immediate family to leave now. Mother and baby need their rest.”

  “Not yet!” Jess pleads. “Please can’t we stay just another minute or two? We’re trying to pick a name for the baby.”

  The nurse looks over at my mother and raises an eyebrow. My mother nods, and the nurse smiles at Jess. “I guess I can give you a little more time. Make it quick, though.” She closes the door behind her.

  And then, out of the blue, I have it. “I know!” I cry. “Chloe!”

  “Chloe,” my mother repeats softly. “I like it.” She looks over at my stepfather. “How about you, honey?”

  Stanley nods slowly
. “I like it too,” he replies. “In fact, I love it. Chloe Kinkaid it is. Good work, Cassidy!”

  “Her middle name can be Elaine, after your mother,” my mom tells him.

  I lean down and give my baby sister a kiss on the cheek. “Hi, Chloe! Welcome to the family.”

  The nurse comes back to clear everybody out, and our friends leave in a chorus of good-byes and congratulations. Stanley and Courtney leave too, because Courtney has to go to graduation rehearsal, but they promise to come right back afterward.

  “Don’t forget my cheeseburger and chocolate milk shake!” my mom calls after them. “I earned them!”

  When the room is finally empty, I pull a present out of my backpack and place it on the bed next to my mother.

  “What’s this?” she asks.

  “Something for Chloe,” I tell her, feeling suddenly shy.

  My mother pats the bed and I climb up and fit myself into the narrow space beside her. She passes the baby carefully to me, and at first I’m scared to hold her and worried that I’m doing it wrong, but Chloe looks up at me solemnly with big, gray-blue eyes and yawns. She’s obviously not concerned.

  I laugh. “That boring, am I?” I tell her softly. “Just wait until you get to know me.”

  “Should I open it?” my mother asks, and I nod.

  Inside the box is a photo album, except there aren’t any photos in it. It’s filled with my letters to the baby instead. It was Dr. Weisman’s idea, and Courtney helped me pick out a nice album at the Concord Bookshop. The soft green cover matches the bunny stationery, which doesn’t seem nearly as stupid now as it did when my mother first bought it. The postcards of Washington are inside too, along with Megan’s sketch of Martha Washington’s dress.

  My mother opens it. “Oh, my goodness,” she says, her eyes widening. “These are the letters Dr. Weisman had you write!”

  “Uh-huh,” I tell her. “I thought you might like to see them.”

  She turns to the first page and begins to read aloud:

  Dear Baby,

  I’m only writing this because I have to. If I don’t, I won’t get to go on the field trip to Washington, D.C. It’s kind of a long story, and it involves cheese, but maybe someday I’ll tell you what happened.