Kristy and the Mother's Day Surprise (6 page)

     
Shannon was playing in the yard, but I knew she’d want to take a walk. Any change of scenery was fine with her. I clipped her leash to her collar and we set off. I chose one particular direction. It was the direction in which Bart Taylor’s house lies.

     
Bart Taylor is nice. Oh, okay, he’s gorgeous and wonderful and smart and athletic. We sort

of like each other, even though we don’t go to the same school. Bart coaches a softball team called Bart’s Bashers, and I coach one called Kristy’s Krushers. So Bart is my rival, too. We try not to think of that. But we hardly ever see each other anyway.

     
Which is why I walked Shannon by his house that day. I tried to glance at it casually every few steps, but I couldn’t see a thing that way. So finally I just stared. The front door was closed, the shades were drawn, the garage door was pulled down.

     
No one was home.

     
I walked Shannon sadly back to my house, feeling lonely and a little depressed. But the warm weather and the thought of the weekend stretching before me cheered me up again.

     
“Hey, you guys!” I called when 1 reached our yard. “How about some batting practice? The Krushers have another game coming up!”

     
Andrew, David Michael, and Karen are on my softball team. That ought to give you some idea of what the team is like. It’s a bunch of kids who are either too young for Little League or even T-ball, or who are too embarrassed to belong to one of those teams — but who really want to learn to play better. The first time the Krushers played Bart’s Bashers we almost beat them. That’s how much spirit we have.

     
“Batting practice?” echoed Karen. “Okay. Let’s go.”

     
We found several bats and two softballs.

     
“I’ll be the pitcher,” I said. “We’re going to work on your technique. David Michael, show me your batting stance, okay?”

     
My brother demonstrated.

     
“Good!” I cried. “That’s really terrific.” No doubt about it, my brother had improved since I’d started coaching him. I don’t mean to sound conceited, but it was true.

     
I tossed the ball — underhand, easy.

     
David Michael missed it by a mile.

     
I take it back. Maybe he was still a klutz.

     
“Karen?” I called. “Your turn.”

     
Karen was testing the weights of the bats when Mom dashed into the backyard, waving a paper in her hand.

     
Oh, darn, I thought. Which one of us messed up? What was she waving? A math test with ~an E on the top? A report with the words “See me” in red ink? (I swear, those are the worst words teachers ever invented.)

     
“Kristy!” Mom called.

     
Yikes! It was me! I had messed up!

     
“Honey, thank you,” said my mother breathlessly as she reached me.

     
Thank you? Well, I couldn’t have done anything too bad. I dared to look at the paper. It

was the Mother’s Day surprise. Whew. “You’re welcome,” I replied, smiling. Mom put her arms around me.

     
“It’s your Mother’s Day surprise,” I said unnecessarily.

     
Immediately, Mom began to cry. It wasn’t that sobbing, unhappy crying that mothers do when they’re watching something like Love Story or Brian’s Song on TV. It was that teary kind of crying where the voice just goes all wavery. “Wha-at a lo-ovely invita-ation,” she managed to squeak out. She wiped at her eyes. Then she found a tissue stuffed up her sleeve, so she blew her nose.

     
(Well, I knew the invitations were nice, but I hadn’t expected this. I would have to call Jessi and Mallory to find out if their mothers had freaked out, too.)

     
“Urn, Mom,” I began, gathering my nerve to ask the question that so far only Sam had dared to ask, “are you pregnant?”

     
My mother shook her head. She blew her nose again. “No.”

     
“Are you positive?”

     
“Positive. . . . But if you were to have a new brother or sister, how —“

     
“Well, you know how I feel about kids, Mom,” I said. “It would be fine.”

     
But suddenly it didn’t seem quite as fine as

it had seemed in the past. I love babies. I really do. But what would it be like if Mom and Watson had a baby of their own? That would be different from Mrs. Newton or Mrs. Perkins having a baby. It might draw Morn and Watson closer together — and shut us kids out, just when us kids need to be drawn closer to everyone in the family. Why hadn’t I thought about that before? But all I said was, “Fine, fine.”

     
Mom smiled. The two of us sat down in the grass. “So tell me more about this invitation,” said my mother. “Who planned the surprise?”

     
“Everyone in the Baby-sitters Club,” I answered, “only, the basic idea was sort of mine. Well, it was all mine.”

     
“I’m sure it was. You always did have big ideas.”

     
“Remember when we lived in the old house, and I worked out the flashlight code so Mary Anne and I could talk to each other from our bedroom windows at night?”

     
“Of course. And your big idea to marry me to the mailman?”

     
“David Michael wanted a father,” I reminded her. “I was only ten then.”

     
Mom and I laughed. We watched Andrew, Karen, and David Michael practice their pitching and catching.

     
“Well, anyway,” I said, “we sent out invitations to twenty-nine kids.”

     
“Twenty-nine!” squawked Mom.

     
“Don’t worry. They won’t all be able to come. Besides, Stacey is going to be in town that weekend. She’s going to help us. So there’ll be seven sitters. If we wind up with, let’s say, twenty kids, that’s only about three kids per sitter. We can handle that.”

     
“And you’re taking the children to a carnival?”

     
“Yup. It’s called Sudsy’s. It’s just a little one. It’ll be set up in that big parking lot near Carle Playground. We’ll spend the morning at Sudsy’s, go to the playground for lunch and some exercise, then walk back to Claudia’s house for stories and stuff, so the kids can rest. We figure we’ll have the kids from about nine until four. That’ll be a nice rest for you, won’t it, Morn?”

     
“A wonderful one.”

     
The phone rang then. We could hear it through the open kitchen window. A moment later, Watson called, “Elizabeth? This is an important one.”

     
My mother leaped to her feet like an Olympic athlete and dashed inside.

     
I went back to my sister and brothers.

     
“How are you guys doing?” I asked. I asked

it before I saw the scowls on the kids’ faces.

     
“He is a klutz,” said David Michael with clenched teeth, pointing to Andrew.

     
“Am not.”

     
“Are too, you little wimp. And you’re Watson’s favorite.”

     
“No, he isn’t,” cried Karen indignantly. “Daddy loves us both the same.”

     
“What about me?” David Michael threw his bat angrily to the ground.

     
Karen and Andrew did the same thing. Softballs, too.

     
“Well, I guess it figures,” my brother went on. “Of course he loves you guys more than ~me. He’s your real father. He’s just my step.”

     
“Your mom loves you more than us,” spoke up Andrew, to my surprise. “She’s our step.”

     
“Hey, hey, HEY! What is this talk?” I cried. “Everybody loves everybody around here.”

     
“No,” said David Michael. “Sometimes Thomases love Thomases more, and Brewers love Brewers more.”

     
Karen sighed. “I’m tired of this. Let’s play ball again.”

     
The kids picked up their bats. They forgot their argument for awhile.

     
But I didn’t.

LJc~~T~!

     
VVe11, it’s finally happened!” I announced.

     
“What?” asked Claudia, Jessi, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Mallory.

     
We were holding a meeting of the Babysitters Club, and the last of the RSVPs for the Mother’s Day surprise had just been phoned in. I gave the news to my friends.

     
“We can get a total count now,” I said. “That was Mrs. Barrett. Buddy and Suzi can come on the outing. They were the last kids we needed to hear about. Mary Anne?”

     
Mary Anne had opened the record book to a page on which she was listing the kids who’d be coming to Sudsy’s with us. “Ready for the total?” she asked.

     
The rest of us nodded nervously. “Okay, just a sec.” Mary Anne’s pen moved down the page. Then, “It’s twenty-one,” she announced.

     
“Twenty-one! That’s perfect!” I cried. “Seven

sitters including Stacey, so three kids each. We can manage that.”

     
“Sure,” said Dawn.

     
“We can help each other out,” added Claudia.

     
“Read us the list, Mary Anne,” I said. “Let’s see exactly what we’re dealing with here.”

     
“Okay.” Mary Anne began reading, running her finger along the list. “Claire, Margo, Nicky, and Vanessa Pike.” (Vanessa had surprised everyone by immediately agreeing to come.) “Becca Ramsey; David Michael Thomas; Karen and Andrew Brewer; Jamie Newton; Jackie, Shea, and Archie Rodowsky; Jenny Prezzioso.” (I tried not to choke.) “Mynah and Gabbie Perkins; Matt and Haley Braddock; Charlotte Johanssen; Nina Marshall; and Buddy and Suzi Barrett.”

     
“And who couldn’t come?” I asked.

     
“Let’s see,” said Mary Anne, turning to another page in the record book, “the Arnold twins, Betsy Sobak, the Papadakises, and the Delaneys.”

     
I nodded. “Okay. I was just curious.”

     
Ring, ring.

     
Dawn reached for the phone. “Hello, Babysitters Club,” she said. “Yes, hi, Mrs. Arnold. . . . Oh, we’re sorry, too. The twins

would probably love Sudsy’s. .. . Yeah. Yeah. . . . Okay, on Tuesday? I’ll check.

I’ll call you right back.”

     
We arranged for Mal to sit for Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold (can you believe their names?) on Tuesday afternoon. Then we went back to our work.

     
“I guess we should make up groups of kids for the outing,” said Claudia. “That worked well before.”

     
Once, our club had sat for fourteen kids for a whole week. We kept the kids in groups according to their ages. It was really helpful. And we had done the same thing when Mary Anne, Dawn, Claudia, and I had visited Stacey in New York and taken a big group of kids to a museum and to Central Park.

     
“The only thing,” spoke up Mary Anne, “is that I’m not sure we should group the kids by age. I think we should group them, but, well, Matt and Haley will have to be in the same group, even though Matt is seven and Haley’s almost ten now. Haley understands Matt’s signing better than anybody.” (Matt is deaf and communicates using sign language.)

     
“And,” I added, “I think Karen and Andrew should be in the same group, and David Michael should be in a different one. Andrew

is really dependent on Karen, and lately the two of them have been having some problems with David Michael.”

     
“And Charlotte and Becca have to be together,” added Jessi. “Becca won’t come if she can’t be with Charlotte.”

     
“Hmm,” I said. “Anything else?”

     
“Keep Jenny away from the Braddocks,” said Dawn.

     
“And Nicky away from Claire,” added Mallory.

     
“Boy, is this complicated,” commented Claudia.

     
“I know,” I agreed. “But we can do it. Let’s try to draw up some lists. Let’s just see how far we get. Everyone, make up seven lists and then we’ll compare them.”

     
Mary Anne passed around paper and we set to work. We were interrupted four times by the telephone, but at last everyone said they had done the best they could.

     
I collected the papers. I looked over the groups my friends had come up with. I said things like, “No, that one won’t work. Matt and Haley aren’t together.” Or, “Oh, that’s good, that’s good, that’s — Nope. We’ve got Claire and Nicky together.”

     
“I’ve got an idea,” said Dawn after awhile. “Why don’t you cut out all the groups, all

forty-two of them, sort through them, and try to find the seven best?”

     
“Okay,” I agreed. Claudia handed me a pair of scissors. “But I think I’ll need some help.”

     
Every single club member got down on her hands and knees. We spread the lists on the floor, examined them, and shuffled them around.

     
“This is a good one,” said Jessi. “This is a good one,” said Claud. Finally we had chosen seven good lists. We counted the kids. Twenty-one. We checked the kids against Mary Anne’s list. Nina Marshall showed up twice; Shea Rodowsky was missing.

     
“Darn it!” I cried.

     
We started over. Finally, finally, finally we had seven lists that worked:

     
Kristy
     
Claudia

     
Karen Brewer
     
Mynah Perkins