Mary Anne And Too Many Babies

by Ann M. Martin

  It flipped back up, trapping Sammie and her basket between the seat and the seat back. "Yikes!" I cried.

  Logan saw what had happened, but he was holding that flimsy box full of spilly sodas and popcorn. He needed both hands to carry it. Even so, he nearly dropped it. "Mary Anne!" he hissed.

  "I'm sorry," I said crossly. I dropped my armload of sweaters and grabbed the handle of Sammie's basket with one hand and the seat with the other. I pushed the seat down and gingerly lifted the basket.

  Sammie was safe inside.

  "She's okay," I said to Logan.

  "I knew this wasn't a good idea," he replied. "Okay. Now hold Sammie."

  "I can't. I mean, I can't hold her and the popcorn and the soda. Just a sec." I pulled

  down the murderous seat again and placed the sweaters on it. "Do you want to give me your coat?" I asked Logan. (He actually likes the temperature in the movie theater.)

  Logan put the tray of food on the floor, took off his coat, handed it to me, and picked up the food. Then I placed Sammie on Logan's coat, and he handed me my popcorn and soda. At last we were settled.

  "Excuse me, is that seat taken?"

  Logan and I glanced up. Standing at Logan's elbow was a tall man in a suit. He was looking at Sammie's seat with raised eyebrows.

  "Well," said Logan.

  "Well," I said.

  The man checked his watch. "The movie's going to begin any minute now, and the theater is packed," he pointed out.

  I thought about what might happen if I told the man the seat was occupied by an egg. The outcome didn't look good.

  Logan must have been thinking the same thing, because he sighed and said, "No, it's not taken."

  I gave Logan back his coat, which he sat on.

  I put on one of the sweaters.

  I sat on the others.

  Then I put Sammie in my lap.

  "Logan," I whispered as the lights began to

  dim, "I can't hold Sammie and eat, too." (My food was on the floor.)

  "Neither can I," Logan replied. "Plus, I have more food than you do."

  "All right. I'm going to put Sammie's basket on the floor until I'm finished eating. She'll be okay there."

  "Shhh!" hissed the man on the other side of me. He was the first person I had ever met who wanted to pay attention to the cartoon about not littering in the theater, and buying fresh popcorn at the concession stand, and being able to locate the exits in case of fire.

  "Sorry," I replied.

  "You can't put Sammie on the floor!" Logan whispered loudly.

  "SHHH!"

  "Sorry."

  I put Sammie on the floor anyway. "She's right between my feet," I said to Logan. "If anyone takes her basket, I'll know about it."

  "Excuse me," said the man, "are you two going to talk through the entire movie, or just this first portion?"

  "Sorry," I said again.

  But Logan said, "I think just this first portion." Only he said it so softly the man didn't hear him.

  The movie turned out to be really good. It

  was funny and exciting. I was glad for that. During the first half of the picture, Logan kept turning to me and grinning. He was relaxing. So was I.

  Except for my right foot. It had gone numb from being held in the same position for so long. Sammie or no Sammie, I had to shift my legs. So I did. Then I reached down to check on her. I felt around inside the basket.

  Sammie was gone.

  I gasped.

  "What's the matter?" asked Logan.

  "Sammie's not in the basket," I said. My heart was pounding. Logan grabbed up the basket. Then he felt around inside it. "She must have fallen out!" he exclaimed, trying to whisper. "You let her fall out. You lost our daughter!"

  "I did not!"

  "You did too. I bet she's rolling around in the aisle somewhere."

  Logan was half right. Sammie was rolling around, but she wasn't in the aisle. She was just under my seat. Except we didn't discover that until after Logan had panicked and called over an usher to shine his flashlight on the floor. I thought the man in the third seat would kill us.

  When Sammie was nestled safely in her basket again, Logan said stiffly, "Maybe we

  should hard-boil her." Then he tugged at my elbow. "Come on. We're going now, Mary Anne."

  "Fine," I replied.

  "Good," said the man.

  We carried our stuff to the lobby, threw away our trash, and struggled into our coats. Logan picked up Sammie's basket.

  "I'm supposed to have her tonight!" I cried.

  "No way. You almost lost her," said Logan. "Not that I really want to take care of her again. I'm always taking care of her."

  "You mean you're always taking her. You never let me have her."

  "Okay, then you take her tonight."

  "Oh, no. You don't trust me. You just said so."

  Logan didn't answer. He grabbed Sammie's basket. Then he went off to call his parents for a ride home, and I called my dad, and Logan and I went off in a huff.

  Chapter 11.

  On Tuesday night Mr. and Mrs. Pike went to Parents' Night at Stoneybrook Elementary School. Imagine what the evening is like for them. Seven of their kids are students at the school: Claire in kindergarten, Margo in second grade, Nicky in third, Vanessa in fourth, and the triplets in fifth. No wonder they stay for the full three hours the school is open. (When I went to SES, my dad could do Parents' Night in under an hour.)

  While the Pikes visited SES, Mal and Dawn sat for Mal's younger brothers and sisters. Dawn left our house shortly after six-thirty. She left with her child, an egg named Skip. Skip lived in an empty Kleenex box, standard size. Dawn and her husband, this guy Aaron Albright, whom Dawn didn't like very much, hadn't fixed up the box except to line it with some paper towels to prevent Skip from injuring himself. (For the record, Dawn did not name Skip. Aaron did. Dawn said if she'd had her way, she would have named her son Douglas. She said Douglas is a good, strong name, and that Skip is what you'd name some little cartoon character, like maybe a young chicken wearing sneakers and a beanie.)

  Dawn and Skip arrived at Mallory's just as Mr. and Mrs. Pike were getting ready to leave. Mal was trying to involve the triplets in help-

  ing her clean up the kitchen after dinner.

  "Washing dishes is girls' work," Dawn heard Adam say,

  "Adam," Mal replied, "there is no such thing as girls' work. But if there were, it would be called women's work."

  "There is too girls' work," said Adam.

  "Is there boys' work?" Mal asked him.

  "Sure."

  "What is it?"

  "Shoveling snow."

  "I can do that," said Mal.

  "Mowing lawns."

  "I can do that."

  "Cleaning gutters."

  "I can do that."

  Adam turned away from his sister, looking pained. He couldn't win the argument, and he knew it. Luckily, when he turned around, he found a distraction. Dawn and the Kleenex box.

  "Hi, everybody," said Dawn.

  The youngest kids were still sitting at the kitchen table, dawdling over dishes of ice cream. Vanessa was sitting there, too, but a pad of paper lay in front of her. She was scribbling on it, probably composing a new poem. Mal was at the sink, and the triplets were hovering around the doorway, trying to escape the cleanup process.

  Adam spotted Skip's box immediately. "What's that?" he asked.

  "What's what?" answered Dawn, which only goes to show how accustomed my friends and I had grown to lugging around mixing bowls and Kleenex boxes and stuff.

  "That box/' said Adam.

  "Yeah, what is it? It's too small to be a Kid-Kit," added Margo.

  "Oh, it's Skip, my egg," said Dawn wearily. "I'm supposed to pretend he's my baby. You know, feed him and everything."

  "Feed an egg?" asked Jordan.

  "Well, not really." Dawn described the Modern Living experiment with a little help from Mallory.

  The Pike kids were so inter
ested that they barely noticed when their parents left for the elementary school. " 'Bye," they called vaguely.

  "Dawn? How long will you be married to Aaron?" asked Vanessa.

  "Hey, is your name Dawn Albright now?" Claire wanted to know.

  "Yeah, do we have to call you Mrs. Albright?" Nicky giggled.

  "Oh, I hope not," said Dawn, but she was smiling. "Even if we had really, really, really gotten married, I wouldn't have changed my

  name. I like my name. I will always be Dawn Schafer."

  Byron was looking into the Kleenex box for about the ninety-fifth time. "Your baby is naked," he commented.

  "Yeah, he isn't even wearing a diaper," chimed Vanessa.

  "I wish I were married and had an egg-baby," said Margo.

  "Me, too," said Vanessa. She looked hopefully at Byron.

  Byron sighed. "Okay. I'll be your husband," he said. "But only for tonight."

  "Who will be my husband?" asked Margo.

  "Not me," said Adam defiantly. "I am never, ever getting married."

  "Jordan?" said Margo.

  "Oh, all right."

  Surprisingly, Nicky agreed to be Claire's husband.

  "Okay, let's adopt babies!" cried Vanessa.

  "Adopt them from where?" asked Mal, even though she thought she knew what the answer would be.

  "From the refrigerator, of course." Vanessa removed a partially empty carton of eggs from the bottom shelf of the fridge. She set it on the table and opened the lid carefully. "Aw, aren't they sweet?" she said.

  "It's the egg nursery," added Nicky.

  "Hey, there are enough here for each couple to adopt two children/' Byron pointed out. "And Morn will still have one left over for tomorrow. Mal, can we? Adopt the eggs, I mean?"

  "I suppose so," Mallory replied.

  A bunch of hands reached for the carton. They were stopped in midair by Jordan. "Wait! Where are you going to put them? We better fix up rooms or something for them."

  "My children are not going to live in any Kleenex box," said Margo. "My children are going to live in a house. Come on, Jordan." Margo took two eggs and led her brother to the rec room, where she succeeded in talking him into fixing up the dollhouse for their children.

  Meanwhile, Vanessa and Byron arranged their eggs in a shopping bag, and Claire and Nicky put theirs in eggcups.

  "That's what eggcups are for," said Claire.

  "Plus, now they're dressed," added Nicky. (Each eggcup was in the shape of a pair of crossed legs wearing blue pants. On the feet were polka-dotted socks and big red clown shoes.)

  "We better dress our babies," said Vanessa. "I don't want them to go around naked, like Skip."

  "How are we going to dress them?" asked

  Byron. "I'm not sewing anything. I'll be these eggs' father, but not their tailor."

  "Oh, we don't have time to sew clothes," Vanessa replied. "We'll just color their outfits on with crayons." She retrieved a box of crayons from a shelf in the rec room. "Here we go." Vanessa aimed a yellow crayon at one egg. "A nice bright shirt for you. . . . Hey, this hardly shows up at all." Vanessa pressed down harder.

  The egg broke.

  "Oh! Oh, no! I've killed him!" shrieked Vanessa. "I've killed little — I've killed poor little, um, little — "

  "We didn't even name him," said Byron sadly. "Poor egg."

  "Poor, poor nameless killed egg," added Vanessa. She was holding the yellow crayon in one hand and the broken egg in the other. The yoke was sliming through her fingers and dripping onto the floor.

  Dawn and Mallory both rushed forward — not to comfort Vanessa, but to cup their hands under the egg goo in an attempt to catch it.

  "You stay here," Mal said to Dawn. "I'll go for the paper towels."

  "The paper towels?!" wailed Vanessa. "Is that all you care about? The rug? Our egg has just been in a terrible accident. If I were in a terrible accident, would you run around trying

  to clean up my blood, or would you — "

  "Vanessa! For heaven's sake, it's an egg/' Mal reminded her.

  "And you've only known the egg for a couple of minutes," said Dawn.

  "I had grown attached," Vanessa replied stiffly.

  Mal didn't answer. She ran off, then returned with a roll of paper towels and a plastic garbage bag (degradable). While she and Dawn cleaned up the accident, Vanessa watched sadly. She looked around the rec room at Margo and Jordan, who were putting their eggs to bed in the dollhouse, and at Nicky and Claire, who had loaded their eggs (in the cups) into a doll's stroller and were taking them on a walk to the garage door. Then she looked at Byron, who was lowering their remaining son into the paper bag.

  "Mallory, may we please have that last egg?" she asked in a small voice.

  "What — the one in the refrigerator?"

  "Yes."

  "Then we won't have any eggs." (Mallory had a sneaking suspicion that a few more accidents might occur.)

  "But. . . but . . ." Vanessa's lower lip trembled. "My baby!"

  "Maybe you should let her have it," Dawn whispered to Mal.

  Mal sighed. "Okay. I don't think one egg is worth all this trouble." She turned to her sister. "Vanessa, you can have the egg."

  "Oh, thank you! We'll be really careful this time, won't we, Byron? We won't try to dress either egg. They can be naked."

  "Hey, you guys!" called Nicky. "We're taking our eggs out to dinner at a restaurant. Want to come with us?"

  "Sure," agreed the other kids. And before long, the Pikes had returned to the kitchen and arranged the eggs around the table.

  Nicky stood to the side, a dish towel over one arm. "Here are the specials du jour," he announced. "Eggs over easy, eggs Benedict, egg salad — "

  "Nicky!" cried Claire and Margo.

  Mal and Dawn began to laugh. The Pike kids could make anything fun.

  Chapter 12.

  "I want a divorce."

  "Excuse me?" said Mrs. Boyden.

  "I want to divorce Miles."

  It was Shawna Riverson who was speaking, and she wasn't kidding. Our Modern Living class had just gotten under way, and I had a feeling it wasn't going to be a typical class. What was typical about a class in which the students got married and had to care for egg-babies?

  When we had settled ourselves at our desks that morning, Mrs. Boyden had moved in front of her desk. Usually she sits behind it in a teacher-y sort of way. But on that day, she was wearing jeans and a casual top, and she perched herself on her desk.

  "Okay, kids, let's talk," she had said. "Tell me how you're doing as couples. Tell me how each of you is doing as half of a couple."

  That was when Shawna had said she wanted a divorce.

  "Shawna? What's going on?" asked Mrs. Boyden.

  "It's just not working out, that's all," she said.

  A couple of kids snickered. Shawna sounded as if she were speaking lines from a soap opera. Logan and I looked at each other. We weren't snickering. We hadn't laughed much since the night at the movie theater. If something was wrong between Shawna and Miles, I could understand that. Things happened.

  Mrs. Boyden didn't laugh, of course. She gazed solemnly at Shawna. "Tell me what's happening," she said.

  "I have to take complete charge of the e — of our baby." (Apparently, Shawna and Miles had not named their child.) "Miles hardly ever takes care of it. I lug it around school. I do everything."

  Mrs. Boyden didn't so much as glance at Miles. She never turned her attention away from Shawna. "Have you asked him to help?" she wanted to know. "Or do you just expect him to?"

  "She just expects me to!" Miles burst out. "She never talks to me. She acts like I'm a mind reader. Like I'm supposed to know

  everything she thinks or everything she wants."

  "Hold on, Miles/' Mrs. Boyden interrupted. "Let Shawna finish speaking. Then you can have a turn. Shawna?"

  "Well, I shouldn't have to ask him to do everything."

  "Has he ever taken care of a baby before?" asked Mrs. Boyden. />
  "I don't know."

  "No, I haven't!" exclaimed Miles.

  "But the point is, I have this egg all the time," said Shawna. Yesterday I missed half my gym class moving the — the baby around, trying to keep it out of the sun. And I was late to school this morning because I left the egg at home and had to go back for it."

  "I see," said Mrs. Boyden. "Miles?"

  While Miles spoke, I thought. Shawna and Miles had not named their egg. They didn't want to be bothered with it. As far as Shawna was concerned, having a baby was a pain in the neck. Yet Shawna did treat the egg as her baby. If she'd been totally disinterested, she could have left her baby at home that morning when she realized what she'd done. But she went back for it. I was amazed by how real our children had become to us. On some level, my classmates and I felt as if we were actually married and as if we were actually parents.

  Mrs. Boy den was pretty clever. Maybe she was somewhat offbeat, but she was becoming one of my favorite teachers.

  "I don't really have time for the egg or for this experiment/' Miles was saying, "but I wouldn't, you know, abandon a kid. I'd take care of the egg, if Shawna would ever give it to me."

  "Why haven't you ever asked for it?" exploded Shawna. Her eyes had filled with tears. By then, the room was absolutely silent. No one was snickering. No one was even smiling.

  Miles looked at his hands, which were folded on his desk. His mumbled answer to Shawna was, "I don't know."

  Shawna didn't reply. She turned her head in disgust.

  That was when Logan poked me. I leaned toward him, thinking he was going to whisper something about Shawna. Instead, he pointed across the room to two kids I didn't know very well, Angela and Kevin. They were holding hands and Angela was crying. In the emptiness that seemed to follow Miles's statement, Angela raised her hand (the one that wasn't clinging to Kevin).

  "Yes, Angela?" said Mrs. Boyden. She handed Angela a box of Kleenex but didn't tell her to stop crying or anything.

  I was completely unprepared for what An-

  gela said. I'd thought she was crying because of what went on between Shawna and Miles. Like maybe they reminded her of her own parents. But when Angela said, "Um, Kevin and I lost our baby," I nearly died.

  "What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Boyden.