Mallory and the Trouble With Twins

by Ann M. Martin

  At eleven-thirty, the phone rang.

  “I’ll get it!” said Claud. She dashed into the kitchen and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Arnolds’ residence.”

  “Yes, hello. Mrs. Arnold?”

  “No, I’m afraid Mrs. Arnold can’t come to the phone.” (Us baby-sitters know never to say that the parents aren’t home.) “This is Claudia Kishi. May I help you?”

  “Well … perhaps. I’m Margaret Cohen. I teach piano at the music school. I’ve got a very tone-deaf Arnold twin here, so I’m wondering where Marilyn is.”

  It took Claud a moment to figure out what Ms. Cohen meant. Then she sputtered, “You mean Carolyn’s there? The girls switched! I don’t believe it!”

  “Is there any way to, um, switch them back?” suggested Ms. Cohen. “I really need to work with Marilyn today.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. I can’t bring Marilyn over. I — I can’t drive yet,” replied Claud. “Has Mr. Bischoff left already?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he has.”

  “Oh.” Claudia was fuming, but she tried not to show it. “I’m sorry,” she said again. “I guess Carolyn will just have to stay there until one o’clock. Do you mind keeping her?”

  “Nooo…. But, well, I’ll have to speak to Mrs. Arnold about this. Will you please tell her to call me?”

  “Of course,” replied Claudia.

  When she’d hung up the phone, she peeped into the rec room. Marilyn was reading a comic book. She hid it quickly when Claudia walked noisily into the room. She picked up one of the science books instead.

  “You can stop pretending now, Marilyn,” said Claudia.

  Marilyn at least had the grace to blush and look embarrassed.

  “That was Ms. Cohen on the phone. She is not pleased that you skipped this rehearsal…. Don’t you like playing the piano, Marilyn?”

  Marilyn looked surprised by the question. “I like it,” she assured Claudia. “And Carolyn likes science. Really. We just wanted to play a trick.”

  “Well, you did that, all right. I think you also got yourselves into trouble. Ms. Cohen is upset, you’re missing an important rehearsal, and Carolyn is wasting time she could be spending on The World of Electricity. Now, I can’t punish you,” Claud went on. “That’s not part of my job. But I can make sure I can tell you guys apart for the rest of the afternoon.”

  Marilyn widened her eyes. “You can? How?”

  “Like this.” Claud took a Magic Marker out of the Kid-Kit. Before Marilyn knew what was happening, Claud had drawn a happy face on the back of Marilyn’s right hand. She knew it would wash off eventually. (Of course, when Carolyn returned later, she immediately drew a face on her hand, but it didn’t look like Claud’s, so Claud could still tell the girls apart.)

  That was the only good thing about the day. When the Arnolds came home later, Claudia had to tell them about the mix-up, and they were not happy.

  “I’m disappointed in both of you,” said Mrs. Arnold to the twins.

  “We know it must be tempting to play tricks and jokes,” added Mr. Arnold, “but you have to choose the right times for them. A time when Marilyn misses a piano rehearsal is not a good time.”

  “And Claudia,” Mrs. Arnold continued, “I must admit that I’m a bit surprised at you. We trusted you to be in charge of our daughters. We understand that it’s difficult to tell them apart when their bracelets are off. Still … you were supposed to be responsible for them while we were out.”

  “I know,” Claud replied, and she could feel her face burning. (This was so unfair!) “I’m very sorry. I’ll understand if you don’t want me to sit for you again. Or if you don’t want anyone from our club to sit for you again, either.” She hated to add that last part, but felt she had to.

  “Oh, no, no,” said Mrs. Arnold quickly. “Nothing like that will be necessary.”

  (Darn.)

  Claud wondered if the Arnolds had been having trouble getting sitters lately, but of course she didn’t say anything. She just offered not to take the Arnolds’ money (they gave it to her anyway) and got out of there as fast as she could.

  was the last line in Claudia’s notebook entry.

  Well, that was very kind of Claudia, but I didn’t want the twines. They were making my life miserable. I dreaded Tuesdays and Thursdays. I dreaded them so much that sometimes I would forget, for a moment or two, about wanting pierced ears and a decent haircut. I even considered asking Kristy if I could quit the job at the Arnolds’. But I knew I couldn’t do that. Couldn’t ask Kristy, I mean. That would be as good as asking to be kicked out of the club. As far as I knew, no one in the club had ever backed out of a job she was signed up for just because the kids were difficult. And certainly, no one had ever been kicked out of the club.

  There was something I could do, though, and that was discuss the problem of the twins with my friends at the next club meeting. I’d been writing about them in the notebook, so everyone was aware of what was going on. Maybe Kristy or one of the other more experienced sitters would have some suggestions for me. The problem was worth bringing up.

  * * *

  Monday. Five-thirty. The members of the Baby-sitters Club had gathered in Claud’s room. It was a typical scene.

  Our president, dressed in jeans, a white turtleneck, a pink-and-blue sweater, and new running shoes, was sitting in Claudia’s director’s chair. Her visor was in place, and a Connecticut Bank and Trust pencil was stuck over her ear. She was looking in the record book and exclaiming over how much money we’d been earning lately.

  Claudia was lying on her bed with one leg propped up on a pillow. She’d broken that leg a few months earlier and every now and then, especially if rain was on the way, her leg would give her some trouble. She looked absolutely great, though, pillow or no pillow. Her long hair was fixed in about a million braids which were pulled back and held in place behind her head with a column of puffy ponytail holders. She was wearing a T-shirt she’d painted herself, tight blue pants that ended just past her knees, push-down socks, and no shoes. From her ears dangled small baskets of fruit. She’d made those, I knew. She’d found the baskets and the fruits at a store that sells miniatures and dollhouse furniture. Claudia amazes me.

  Sitting next to Claud on the bed were Mary Anne and Dawn. I might add that they were sitting fairly gingerly, like they thought that if they so much as moved, they would break Claud’s leg all over again, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. (Claud wasn’t in that much pain.) Mary Anne was wearing a short plum-colored skirt over a plum-and-white-striped body suit. The legs of the body suit stopped just above her ankles, and she’d tucked the bottoms into her socks. I don’t know where her shoes were. She’d taken them off. The neat thing about her outfit was that she was wearing white suspenders with her skirt. I immediately decided to use some of my hard-earned Arnold money to buy suspenders. And maybe a pair of push-down socks like Claud’s. Or, if I became rich, to copy Dawn Schafer’s entire outfit.

  Dawn was wearing this cool oversized (really oversized) blue shirt. One of the coolest things about it was that it was green inside, so that when she turned the collar down and rolled the sleeves up, you could see these nice touches of green at her neck and wrists. She was wearing a green skirt — and clogs. I’d never seen a person actually wearing clogs, just photos of people in Sweden. Dawn was the only kid in school who could get away with wearing them. She is so self-possessed.

  Then there were Jessi and me. We were sitting on the floor and we truly looked like we were in the sixth grade, as opposed to Claudia, Dawn, and Mary Anne, who might have been able to pass for high school students. Jessi and I looked dull, dull, dull. We were both wearing jeans. Jessi was wearing a T-shirt that said YOU ARE LOOKING AT PERFECTION. And she was wearing running shoes. But no interesting jewelry or anything else. Same with me. I was just wearing jeans, a plain white shirt, and running shoes. Yawn.

  Kristy called the meeting to order. After we’d sworn that we’d been reading the notebook regularly,
and after Dawn had collected the weekly dues, Kristy said, “Any problems? Anything to discuss?”

  My hand shot up, and I didn’t even wait for Kristy to nod to me. I just blurted out, “The Arnold twins are a major problem.”

  “I’ll say,” agreed Claud. She sat up and stuck some pillows behind her so she wouldn’t have to be flat on her back while she tried to make her point. “That job Saturday was the pits.” (Since we’d been keeping up with the notebook, we all knew what she was talking about.) “I have never been so humiliated,” Claud went on. “Those girls got me in trouble. No parent has ever scolded me in front of the kids I’ve just sat for. The girls purposely made a big mess of things. And why? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

  “Me neither,” I spoke up.

  “No offense, Mal,” added Claud, “and I really mean no offense, but I have to admit that I went to that job on Saturday thinking that maybe, just maybe, there was some sort of problem with you and the Arnolds. You know, that they were okay kids, but somehow the three of you just weren’t hitting it off. In other words, that — that, um, you were the problem.” Claud blushed.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, even though I was a little hurt. “I was wondering the same thing myself. But after what happened to you on Saturday, I realized that wasn’t true. The thing is,” I went on, looking around at the rest of the club members, “we have problem clients. And, to quote Mom, I’m at my wit’s end. I just don’t know what to do about the twins.”

  The phone rang then, and a couple more times, too, so for awhile we were busy scheduling jobs. When we were done, Kristy said, “Mal, we’ve read your notebook entries, so we have a pretty good idea what’s going on, but tell us again anyway. Maybe you’ll think of things you didn’t mention in the notebook.”

  “Okay,” I said, and drew in a deep breath. I looked around and realized I had the complete attention of everyone in the room, which made me slightly nervous. I wanted to sound articulate. And I did not want to sound like a big baby, like someone who’d just run up against an annoying problem she didn’t feel like handling.

  “The twins,” I began slowly, “seem like nice girls. They’re always beautifully dressed, well, sometimes sort of over-dressed, but then their mother is, too. I think they’re smart. Marilyn is an excellent piano player. She’s been taking lessons since she was four. And Carolyn loves science. They both like to read, and I bet they do pretty well in school. Anyway, they must be smart to have invented their twin talk.”

  “Twin talk?” Dawn repeated.

  “Yeah. You know, their private language,” I explained, and Dawn nodded. “They can just babble away in it. Think how hard it is to learn a different language, like French or Spanish.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Claud, rolling her eyes. She absolutely hates foreign languages, even Japanese, which Mimi sometimes tries to teach her.

  “Well, if that’s hard,” I went on, “think how difficult it must be to invent a language.”

  “But you know something?” said Claud, “I’m not sure the twin talk is a real language. I mean, I think Marilyn and Carolyn have made up a few secret words, but when they sit around going, ‘Moobay donner slats impartu frund?’ or something, I’m positive they just want us to think they have this secret twin talk. They don’t understand each other any more than we understand them.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Why do they do that? And why do they take off their bracelets and confuse me when they’re playing hide-and-seek, and try to get extra snacks and stuff? I don’t get it. They’re mean, and I was never mean to them.”

  “Maybe those are just things identical twins do,” said Mary Anne doubtfully.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “The triplets are identical and they don’t do stuff like that. Not even to people who can’t tell them apart. And there are three of them. I mean, sure, they’ve played a few tricks, like switching places in school when there’s a substitute teacher, but all kids try to trick substitutes. It’s, like, a law.”

  Everyone laughed. And then the phone rang twice. Mary Anne scheduled a job for herself, and one for Kristy.

  When things calmed down, Kristy said, “I don’t know that there’s much you can do about the twins, Mal. It sounds like you’re being the best sitter you can be, and they’re just brats. You’ll have to finish up your job with them, but after that, I won’t expect anyone” (Kristy looked around the room at all us club members) “to feel she has to take a job at the Arnolds’. If Mrs. Arnold calls again, we’ll just tell her we’re busy. I don’t like doing that, but I think we’ll have to. Or we’ll ask Logan or Shannon if one of them wants to brave twin trouble.”

  I nodded. “Okay. I guess you’re right. But if anybody gets an idea about how to handle Marilyn and Carolyn, please tell it to me…. Boy, it’s too bad they’re so rotten. They’re really cute little kids. Even their identical clothes are cute. There’s just something … sweet … about seeing those lookalikes. I bet people stop them on the street to tell them how adorable they are.”

  “Nobody would ever stop me on the street to tell me I’m adorable,” said Kristy.

  “Me neither,” added Jessi.

  “Maybe they would stop me,” I said, “if I didn’t look like such a nerd.”

  “You don’t look like a nerd,” said Claud quickly.

  “Thanks,” I replied, “but yes I do. I wouldn’t if I had pierced ears and a better haircut, though. I’d look at least twelve, not nerdy, and adorable.”

  Dawn smiled. “What would you do to your hair?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure. Cut it short, I think, so it wouldn’t be such a wild tangle of curls.”

  “I want pierced ears and decent hair, too,” spoke up Jessi.

  “I want one more hole in my right ear.” (That was Claud, of course.)

  “And I want to get back to business,” said Kristy.

  And just as she said that, the phone rang. Kristy gave us a look that said, “See? We are here to do business, you guys.”

  But the caller was Stacey McGill, our former treasurer. Claud began shrieking, and begged to speak to her first. Then Dawn, Mary Anne, and even Kristy chatted with her.

  Jessi and I grinned. Club meetings are great, especially when something fun like this happens. But part of me was disappointed. I hadn’t gotten any suggestions on how to work with the troublesome twins — and I would have to face them again the very next afternoon.

  Tuesday afternoon. I turned up at the Arnolds’ at the regular time. Mrs. Arnold flurried out the door in a blur of jewelry, nail polish, and accessories. I heard the car door slam in the garage, and she was off.

  I was sitting on the floor in the living room, the Kid-Kit opened in front of me. I was looking hopefully at the twins.

  Marilyn and Carolyn, dressed in blue sailor dresses, red hair ribbons, white tights, and their Mary Janes, took off their bracelets, dangled them rudely in front of me, and dropped them on the floor.

  “Good,” I said. “Why should today be different from any other day? I think it would confuse me terribly if I could tell you two apart.”

  I don’t know what kind of answer I was expecting from them. Maybe no answer. That was just something to say, something rude because the girls were rude and I was feeling cross.

  “Poopah-key,” said one twin in a voice as cross as mine had been.

  I sighed. I deserved that. “Look,” I said, rummaging around in the Kid-Kit. “Here’s a sticker book. Oh, and Carolyn, I brought you a book about electricity. I borrowed it from Adam. He’s one of my brothers.”

  The girls remained standing.

  “Do you want to look at the book?” I asked.

  I was sure one of the girls was going to reply, “Which one of us is Carolyn?” Instead, the answer was, “Tibble van carmin.”

  That was a first. The girls usually spoke English in the beginning of the afternoon, or if I asked them a question. This was the first time they had completely ignored me. Well, they weren�
��t ignoring me, but they might as well have been. They were ignoring me in twin talk.

  “How about puzzles?” I asked.

  “Zoo mat,” replied one twin. But at least the girls sat down then.

  “Chutes and Ladders?” I tried. “Dominoes?”

  “Perring du summerflat, tosh?” asked one.

  “Du mitter-mott,” replied the other.

  “Okay. Go ahead. Have fun,” I said to the girls. I pulled my copy of Dicey’s Song, by Cynthia Voigt, out of my purse, sat on the couch, and began to read. The twins pawed through the Kid-Kit, babbling to each other.

  After about ten minutes, one of them stood up and said, “Mallory, can I have an ice-cream sandwich? We have a box of them in our freezer.”

  My first reaction was to say, “Oh, thank goodness you’re speaking English again.” But I didn’t jump in with that answer, which I knew the twins were expecting. Out of the blue a very different kind of answer came to me, and somehow I knew that it was exactly the right thing to try. I didn’t have anything to lose, and it might be kind of fun. At any rate, I could give the twins a taste of their own medicine. Fighting fire with fire.

  I answered the question in pig Latin. “At’s-thay ine-fay ith-way ee-may.”

  Marilyn-or-Carolyn looked stunned. “What?” she said.

  “Oh-gay on-hay. I-hay on’t-day are-cay.”

  The twins glanced at each other in confusion. The other one spoke up warily. “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “I’m-hay aying-say at-thay oo-yay an-cay ave-hay a-hay ack-snay. O-say an-cay our-yay ister-say.”

  “I can’t understand you!” cried Marilyn-or-Carolyn in frustration.

  I smiled. “Oo-tay ad-bay.”

  “But can I have an ice-cream sandwich?”

  “Ure-shay. Ine-fay ith-way ee-may.”

  The twin stamped her foot. Was she getting ready to throw a tantrum? I decided I didn’t care if she was.