Taking Care of Terrific (2 page)

The problem with most people's lives is that they have lost the capacity to believe that Gregory Peck would be along.

"Enid," said Mrs. Kolodny one morning as I came in from my art class, "some woman called. She wants you to babysit."

"Okay. Who was it? When does she want me?"

Mrs. Kolodny's face froze into her glazed expression. One of the things I know about Mrs. Kolodny, that my mother doesn't know, is that she can't remember things. Certain things fall out of her brain like water falling through a sieve. When that happens, she gets this expression on her face; her eyes glaze as if someone has frosted her onto the top of a cake and she will be like that, staring into space, forever. I know how to deal with it, though.

"Think back," I said. "The phone rang. It was
a woman, and she asked for me, and I wasn't home. What did she say?"

The glazed frosting began to melt on her face, and she thought. "She said she knew your mother from the Civil Club."

"There isn't any Civil Club, Mrs. Kolodny. My mother belongs to the Civic Association and the Civil Liberties Union. It must have been one of those."

The glazed look again. She was drawing a blank.

"Well," I told her, "that part doesn't matter. Think back. Can you remember her name?"

She thought some more. "I wrote it down," she said finally.

"Which phone?"

She brightened. "Kitchen. I was starting to do the laundry and reading
Passion at Penzance.
I answered the phone in the kitchen."

The washing machine was thumping away in the kitchen. The paperback copy of
Passion at Penzance
had a coupon for twenty-five cents off a pound of Maxwell House coffee stuck in it as a bookmark and was lying on the table. Standing on top of the dryer, next to the washing machine, was a large box of instant mashed potatoes. I had a horrible feeling about that, but I let it pass for a
moment. On the pad of paper by the phone was written, in Mrs. Kolodny's tiny, scrunched handwriting: "Mz Cameron, babysit." Under that was a telephone number.

"Mrs. Kolodny," I said, before I dialed Ms. Cameron's number, "why are the instant mashed potatoes on top of the dryer?"

She looked. "Omigod," she said.

"You didn't."

"Omigod. I had them out to thicken the chowder. And the box is the same size—"

"As the detergent box, right?"

"Omigod."

"You want to look or shall I?"

She just groaned. I looked. It wasn't too bad. Lumpy, but not disastrous. I found the box of Tide, put the instant potatoes back in the cupboard, and told Mrs. Kolodny, "Just let it run. Then do the clothes again with the Tide. It's not the end of the world." I rubbed her back for a minute because she looked so humiliated, and a backrub is always good for humiliation.

Ms. Cameron answered the phone on the second ring, and I could picture her from her voice. Young. Tall. Cheekbones. The sort of voice that has gone to all the best schools and knows which syllables to pronounce which way. She was the
kind of person who would wear only unobtrusive make-up, who would eat yogurt, listen to chamber music, ride a bike, jog, and save whales. But her bike would be a four-hundred-dollar Peugeot, and she would have the yogurt delivered from DeLuca's, along with cases of the right wine. She would go to antinuclear demonstrations wearing designer jeans and monogrammed sweaters from Land's End.

Funny how you can tell all of that from a voice.

She would no doubt have a rosy-cheeked baby with a biblical name, brought up on breast milk and natural foods. She would have read books about parenting. The baby would ride around in an expensive carrier on her back.

I made arrangements to take her kid—naturally there was only one; she would be into zero population growth—to the Public Garden that afternoon after his nap. Ms. Cameron would be taking her harpsichord lesson then.

I had planned to go to the Public Garden that afternoon anyway, to start my new life, and I liked the idea of having a kid with me. I like to babysit. It's a good feeling to have somebody need you, and nobody needs you more than a little kid who has wet diapers or scraped knees and who looks at you and cries and holds up his arms.

"Mrs. Kolodny," I said, "I'll watch
As the World Turns
with you after lunch, but then I'm going to babysit."

She got her glazed look again. "Lunch," she said. "Omigod."

"What's the problem with lunch? There's that chowder on the stove." But as soon as I said it, I knew. "Mrs. Kolodny. You
didn't.
"

But she had. It's absolutely astounding that in fourteen years my mother has never realized that Mrs. Kolodny is such a space cadet. What an enormous secret to keep.

She and I dumped the chowder thickened with Tide down the garbage disposal. Then we opened a can of Chunky soup and shared it for lunch.

Joshua Warwick Cameron IV. I knew it.

I liked him, though. He had thick blond hair cut like Buster Brown, corduroy overalls right out of a
New Yorker
ad, and he looked very suspicious of me when his mother introduced us.

I liked it that he looked suspicious. Even though his mother had obviously gone through Charm School with straight A's, old Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, age four, was still half asleep and not too thrilled that his mom was urging him to shake hands with someone named Enid Crowley.

"Ms. Cameron," I said, giving old Joshua time to wake up and assess the situation, "do you know my mother very well?"

"No," she said. "I met her at a meeting, and when she mentioned that she had a teenage daughter, I just happened to ask if you'd be interested in babysitting, afternoons. Why?"

"Well, I guess she didn't have a chance to tell
you that I really prefer to be called by my middle name, Cynthia. It gets kind of complicated, because my parents like to call me Enid. So if you call me up or anything, it's easier to ask for Enid. But I really like Cynthia better."

"Oh. I see. Yes, I can understand that. My own parents still call me Elizabeth, although everyone else has called me Betsy for years. Joshua, sweetie, this is Cynthia. She's going to take you to the Public Garden."

Joshua yawned. He looked at me carefully, now that his eyes were wide open, and finally he nodded.

"Okay," he said. "I'll go get my sweater."

Ms. Cameron began giving me instructions. Don't let him pat dogs because you never know about strange dogs.

Okay.

Make him keep his sweater on because she doesn't want him to catch cold; he is very prone to ear infections.

Okay.

No candy or other sweets. She is very careful about sweets because she doesn't want him to get cavities.

Okay.

Explain to him about not picking the flowers in
the Public Garden because it is against the rules, although certainly she wants him to enjoy
looking
at the flowers.

Okay.

Watch him so that he doesn't fall into the pond, but don't make him feel
fearful
about the pond.

Okay.

And especially don't let him talk to any strangers because, well, you know the sorts of people who might be hanging around the Public Garden; you just never can tell.

Actually, there are all sorts of interesting people hanging around the Public Garden. But from the way she said it with a kind of knowing look, a just-between-us-adults sort of attitude, I could tell that she meant: don't let him talk to what Mrs. Kolodny would call preverts, people who would kidnap old Joshua for weird sexual reasons.

I said okay.

He came trotting back down the hall, dragging a little Irish sweater and carrying a stuffed bear. His mother buttoned him into the sweater and tried very pleasantly to take away the bear.

He held on tightly. "Bearable wants to go along," he said.

"Sweetie," said his mother, trying the old child
psychology, "Bearable has a cold, I think. I heard him coughing this morning. He really should stay home in bed."

"No," said Joshua, outpsychologizing her. "I gave him penicillin."

"It's all right," I told her. "I don't mind. I'll keep an eye on Bearable, too."

So off we went, me and Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, and Bearable staring glassy-eyed at the brick sidewalk from under his master's arm, down West Cedar Street to Chestnut, and down Chestnut to Charles, on our way to the Public Garden.

On our way, we stopped and patted a large Airedale tied to a post in front of the bookstore, thereby breaking rule one.

We took off his sweater because it really was pretty warm, breaking rule two.

And we stopped at DeLuca's, where I bought some Life Savers, and we each ate one, breaking rule three.

All that was before we even
got
to the Garden.

The other thing we did, which was not really breaking a rule because his mother hadn't told us not to, was old Joshua's idea, and it made me realize that he and I were going to get along just fine. We changed his name.

As we stood at the corner of Beacon and Charles, waiting for the light, I said, "Watch for it to turn green, Joshua."

"Don't call me that," he said firmly. Then he added politely, "Please."

I asked him if he would like me to call him Josh.

"No," he said thoughtfully, trotting beside me as we crossed the street. "I want you to call me Tom."

"Tom Mix? Or Uncle Tom?" I asked, wondering if he knew about old cowboy movies or Harriet Beecher Stowe.

"Nope," he said. "Tom Terrific."

So the kid was allowed to watch cartoons. I remembered Tom Terrific; he had that Wonder Dog, Manfred. Mrs. Kolodny and I used to watch them together, back when I was just a little kid.

At the entrance to the Public Garden, we had a small name-changing ceremony, my little four-year-old buddy and I. We shook hands solemnly after he shifted Bearable to his other arm, then we each popped another Life Saver—he liked the green ones best—into our mouths. We entered the Garden holding hands. Cynthia, and Tom Terrific. Those other people, Enid Crowley
and Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, whoever they were, got left behind, at least for the afternoon.

It looked as if it might be a pretty good summer.

I have this theory that it's very important to know your turf well. Up until then, my main turf had been my bedroom, and I know my bedroom very, very well. I know my room as well as I know my parents, or Mrs. Kolodny, or Emily and Trina, my best friends from school.

I know that my bed once belonged to my grandmother, who died when I was little, probably right around the time I was wearing corrective shoes and wishing I had a Wonder Dog named Manfred. I remember that I had a Youth Bed, with a plastic covering over the mattress in case I might still wet at night. Then all of a sudden I had this big mahogany fourposter that had been my grandmother's, because my grandmother had died. I suspect that she died in the very same bed, but I have never gotten my mother to admit it.

"Enid," says my mother when I ask her exactly
where
my grandmother died, "she died at
home, very peacefully." (That means
bed,
right? Would you die peacefully in the shower?)

"Enid," says my mother, "the exact location is not at all important." (I wonder if she says that to her patients as she aims her million-volt X-ray machines at them. "The exact location is not at all important, tra-la. Head, stomach, knee, somewhere around there; relax.")

I like to think that my grandmother died in her—my—bed. The thought doesn't gross me out. It gives me a sense of history.

"Tom Terrific," I said to Joshua Cameron, "this is going to be our turf. The Public Garden. So we have to get to know it really well."

Tom Terrific looked at me with that frowned-up sort of face that four-year-olds get when they don't know what you're talking about.

"Why do we have to do that?" he asked.

I thought for a minute. I wanted to tell him all about green places: how everyone needs a green place in his life, a place where you can be whatever you want to be, a place where you feel alive and ageless. If you are fourteen, like me
adolescent,
Famous Psychologist Wilma Sandroff says; God, how I hate that word
adolescent
), it doesn't matter in your green place. You can be three, or
forty, or eighty—whatever you want to be. And if you are four, like Joshua Warwick Cameron IV (what would Wilma Sandroff call four? Early Childhood? How I hate Wilma Sandroff), you wouldn't have to be four anymore. You could be a hundred and nine, if you chose, in your green place. You could be Tom Terrific.

But I realized he would be a little confused by all of that.

He pulled at my sleeve. "Why is this our turf?" he asked. "Why do we have to get to know it really well?"

I thought of an answer he might understand. "Because," I said, "it's where we escape from the enemy."

Tom Terrific was mulling over that bit of information (and smiling; he understood about the need to escape from the enemy) when suddenly he was whomped on the head. Not by a weapon. Not by a club or a blackjack or anything. But by a huge, soft, black purse. The woman who was carrying it hadn't meant to hit him. It was just that he was so short. As she walked past, her fat pocketbook knocked the top of his blond head and almost wiped him out. Some babysitter I was turning out to be; it would be tough to explain,
bringing him home with a concussion.

"Hey!" I said to the woman who had hit him. She turned, startled, and looked back at her victim, who was rubbing the top of his head and deciding whether or not to cry.

"Well," she muttered, "don't stand in the middle of the path, then." She turned and walked on. Hobbled, really. She wasn't too great at walking, maybe because her shoes were both untied, so that she was tripping herself, and her ankles looked swollen. Also, her gray hair was in her eyes, so she could barely see where she was going. And her long black coat (this was July. Hot. I had already taken Tom Terrific's sweater off) flapped around her like a giant bat.

"Is that the enemy?" Tom asked. I could see that he was intrigued by the idea of enemies. And his head was okay. Her purse was overstuffed and probably just as soft as Bearable, who was still under Tom's arm.