Mrs. Garrett shakes her head. “Jase is right. You’re a natural.”
I feel a glow of pleasure that Jase thought I did anything well.
“Anyway,” she continues. “Could you do one or maybe two times a week—in the afternoon, if that works with your summer job?”
I agree, tell her my schedule, even before she offers me more than I make at Breakfast Ahoy. Then she asks, again looking a little self-conscious, if I would mind starting today.
“Of course not. Just let me change.”
“Don’t change.” George reaches out to touch my skirt with a grubby finger. “I like that. You look like Sailor Supergirl.”
“More like Sailor Barbie, I’m afraid, George. I have to change because I worked in this all morning and it smells like eggs and bacon.”
“I like eggs and bacon,” George tells me. “But”—his face clouds—“do you know that bacon is”—tears leap to his eyes—“Wilbur?”
Mrs. Garrett sits down next to him immediately. “George, we’ve been through this. Remember? Wilbur did not get made into bacon.”
“That’s right.” I bend down too as wetness overflows George’s lashes. “Charlotte the spider saved him. He lived a long and happy life—with Charlotte’s daughters, um, Nelly and Urania and—”
“Joy,” Mrs. Garrett concludes. “You, Samantha, are a keeper. I hope you don’t shoplift.”
I start to cough. “No. Never.”
“Then is bacon Babe, Mom? Is it Babe?”
“No, no, Babe’s still herding sheep. Bacon is not Babe. Bacon is only made from really mean pigs, George.” Mrs. Garrett strokes his hair, then brushes his tears away.
“Bad pigs,” I clarify.
“There are bad pigs?” George looks nervous. Oops.
“Well, pigs with, um, no soul.” That doesn’t sound good either. I cast around for a good explanation. “Like the animals that don’t talk in Narnia.” Dumb. George is four. Would he know Narnia yet? He’s still at Curious George. Edited.
But understanding lights his face. “Oh. That’s okay then. ’Cause I really like bacon.”
When I return, George is already standing in the inflatable pool while Harry sprays water into it. Mrs. Garrett efficiently removes Patsy’s diaper, pulling on some sort of puffy plastic pants with little suns all over them.
“You haven’t really met Harry. Harry, this is Jase’s friend Samantha, who’s going to be watching you for a while.”
How did I get to be Jase’s friend? I’ve talked to him twice. Wow, is Mrs. Garrett ever different from my mother.
Harry, who’s got green eyes but fairly straight dark brown hair and lots of freckles, looks at me challengingly. “Can you do a back dive?”
“Um. Yes.”
“Will you teach me? Right now?”
Mrs. Garrett interrupts. “Harry, we discussed this. Samantha can’t take you in the big pool because she has to keep her eye on the little ones.”
Harry’s lower lip juts out. “She could put Patsy in the BabyBjörn like you do and go in the water. She could hold George’s hand. He can swim pretty good with his swimmies.”
Mrs. Garrett glances at me apologetically. “My children expect everyone to multitask to an extreme degree. Harry, no. It’s this pool or nothing.”
“But I can swim now. I can swim really good. And she knows how to back dive. She could teach me to back dive.” While wearing the baby and holding George’s hand? I’d need to be Sailor Supergirl.
“No,” Mrs. Garrett repeats firmly. Then, to me: “A will of iron. Just keep saying no. Eventually he’ll move on.” She takes me back into the house, shows me where the diapers are, tells me to help myself to anything in the refrigerator, gives me her cell phone number, points out the list of emergency numbers, cautions me not to bring up the subject of tornadoes in front of George, hops into her van, and drives off.
Leaving me with Patsy, who’s trying to pull up my shirt, George, who wants me to know that you should never touch a blue-ringed octopus, and Harry, who looks like he wants to kill me.
Actually, it doesn’t go that badly.
I’ve mostly avoided babysitting. It’s not that I don’t like kids, but I hate the uncertain hours of it. I’ve never wanted to deal with parents arriving late and apologetic, or that awkward drive home with some dad trying to make small talk. But the Garrett kids are pretty easy. I take them over to our house so I can get our garden sprinkler, which is this complicated standing copper twirling thing. Harry, fortunately, thinks it’s amazing, and he and George spend an hour and a half playing in it, then jumping back into the baby pool while Patsy sits in my lap, gnawing my thumb with her gums and drooling on my hand.
I’ve finished doing the snack thing and am herding the kids back out to the pool when the motorcycle pulls in.
I turn with a tingle of anticipation, but it’s not Jase. It’s Joel who gets off the motorcycle, leans against it, and does that whole slow-appreciative-scan-of-your-entire-body thing. Which I get quite enough of at Breakfast Ahoy. “George. Harry. Who’ve you brought home?” Joel says. He is good-looking, but a little too much on the and-well-he-knows-it end of the scale.
“This is Sailor Supergirl,” George says. “She knows all about black holes.”
“And back dives,” Harry adds.
“But you can’t have her because she’s going to marry Jase,” George concludes.
Wonderful.
Joel looks surprised, as well he might. “You’re a friend of Jase’s?”
“Well, not really, I mean, we just met. I’m here to babysit.”
“But she went to his room,” George adds.
Joel raises an eyebrow at me.
Again with the full-body blush. All too apparent in a bikini. “I’m just the babysitter.”
George grabs me around the waist, kissing my belly button. “No. You’re Sailor Supergirl.”
“So where did you come from?” Joel folds his arms, slanting back against the motorcycle.
George and Harry run back into the copper sprinkler. I’m holding Patsy on one hip, but she keeps trying to pull off my bikini top.
“Move her to the other side,” Joel suggests, without batting an eyelash.
“Oh. Right.” Patsy, the baby with the one-breast preference.
“You were saying?” Joel’s still leaning lazily back against the motorcycle.
“Next door. I came from next door.”
“You’re Tracy Reed’s sister?
Of course. Naturally he would not have overlooked Tracy. While I’m blond, Tracy is A Blonde. That is, I’m straw and sort of honey-colored with freckles from Dad, while Tracy’s tow-headed with pale skin. She, unfairly, looks like she’s never seen the sun, although she spends most of her summers on the beach.
“Yup.” Then, suddenly, I wonder if my sister too has secretly interacted with the Garretts. But Joel isn’t blond, Tracy’s chief boyfriend requirement, right up there with a good backhand, so probably not. Just to be sure, I ask, “Do you play tennis?”
Joel looks unfazed by this non sequitur, no doubt used to flustered girls making no sense.
“Badly.” He reaches out for Patsy, who’s apparently decided at this point that any breast will do. Her little fingers keep returning determinedly to my top.
“Yeah, the leather jacket probably slows down your return volley.” I hand him the baby.
He gives a mock salute. “Sailor Supergirl and smartass. Nice.”
Just then a Jeep pulls into the driveway, very fast. Alice slams out, reaching back to disentangle her purse strap from the gearshift and yank the purse to her. Her hair at the moment is electric blue, pulled into a side ponytail. She’s wearing a black halter top and very short shorts.
“You knew the score, Cleve,” she snaps at the driver of the car. “You knew where you stood.” She straightens, stalking over to the kitchen door and slamming it behind her. Unlike her brothers, she’s small, but that does nothing to deflect from her unmistakable air of authority.
Cleve, a mild-looking guy in a Hawaiian-print bathing suit and a PacSun shirt, does not look as though he’d known the score. He slumps behind the wheel.
Joel hands Patsy back to me and goes over to the car. “Bummer, man,” he says to Cleve, who tips his head in acknowledgment but says nothing.
I return to the sprinkler and sit down. George plunks down next to me. “Did you know that a bird-eating tarantula is as big as your hand?”
“Jase doesn’t have one of those, does he?”
George gives me his sunniest smile. “No. He useta have a reg’lar tarantula named Agnes, but she”—his voice drops mournfully—“died.”
“I’m sure she’s in tarantula heaven now,” I assure him hastily, shuddering to think what that might look like.
Mrs. Garrett’s van pulls in behind the motorcycle, disgorging what I assume are Duff and Andy, both red-faced and windblown. Judging by their life jackets, they’ve been at sailing camp.
George and Harry, my loyal fans, rave to their mother about my accomplishments, while Patsy immediately bursts into tears, points an accusing finger at her mother, and wails, “Boob.”
“It was her first word.” Mrs. Garrett takes her from me, heedless of Patsy’s damp swimsuit. “There’s one for the baby book.”
Chapter Nine
With Mom and Tracy both out, the house is so quiet at night that I can count the sounds. The whir-clunk of ice dropping from the ice machine into the freezer bin. The shift of the central air from one speed to another. Then a noise I don’t expect as I’m lying in my room at about ten o’clock that night, wondering if I should say anything to Mom about that woman with Clay. It’s this rhythmic bang, bang, bang sound outside, below my window. I open it, climb out, looking down to find Jase, hammer in hand, nailing something to the trellis. He looks up, nail between his teeth, and waves.
I’m happy to see him, but this is a bit odd.
“Whatcha doing?”
“You have a loose board here.” He takes the nail out of his mouth, positions it on the trellis, and begins hammering again. “It didn’t seem safe.”
“For me or you?”
“You tell me.” He gives a final knock to the nail, puts the hammer down on the grass, and, in seconds, has climbed up the trellis and is sitting next to me. “I hear you’ve been engulfed by my family. Sorry about that.”
“It’s fine.” I sidle back a little. I’m again in my nightgown, which seems a disadvantage.
“They’re the best thing I’ve got, but they can be a little”—he pauses, as though searching for a definition—“overwhelming.”
“I’m not easily overwhelmed.”
Jase gazes at me, those green eyes searching my face. “No. You wouldn’t be, would you?” It strikes me, sitting there, that I can be anyone I want to be with him. Then I notice something move on his shoulder.