Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job (3 page)

“Oh. Well, shall we go get something to eat? We could even bring our sandwiches back out here in the sunshine, if you want.”

“I don't want tuna fish sandwiches,” Jeremy said. He was actually an angelic-looking little boy, very handsome, when he wasn't sticking his tongue out. There were several stitches in his left hand, made with black thread. “I want bacon and tomato.”

He saw me looking at his injured hand and he held it up so I could see it better. “We were playing Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, with a pop bottle. I kicked it over accidentally and it
broke. When I fell down, I got cut, and we had to go to the hospital.”

“Jer'my bleeded all over,” Shana contributed.

“He cried,” Melissa added.

“Not very much,” Jeremy said quickly. “Come on, I'm hungry.”

We walked into the house, and I told them, “Mrs. Murphy didn't say anything about bacon and tomato sandwiches.”

“I can fix them,” Jeremy said, seeming to have forgotten he'd said he didn't want me there. “I can cook the bacon in the microwave, the way Mrs. Murphy does. It's easy that way, and the grease doesn't pop all over you and burn you.”

He was already into the mammoth refrigerator, hauling out bacon.

I looked at him uneasily. “I don't know anything about cooking with microwaves. We don't have one.”

“It's all right.
I
know.”

“I'll have bacon and tomato, too,” Melissa said. “What's your name again? I forgot.”

“Darcy,” I said.

Shana echoed it. “Darcy. I want jelly butter.”

“She means peanut butter and jelly,” Melissa translated.

Jeremy got up on a chair and got down a big yellow plastic platter. He started spreading a thick layer of paper towels on it and then separating the slices of bacon to put on the towels. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I went ahead and made the sandwich for Shana.

“How long, Jeremy?” Melissa asked, opening the microwave oven for the platter of a whole pound of bacon, which had now been covered over with more paper towels.

“You fix the bread and then I'll cut the tomatoes while the bacon cooks,” Jeremy said authoritatively. “I'll set the timer.”

The door was closed, the controls punched, and the light came on inside. I guessed he was handling it all right when, after a minute or two, the aroma of bacon drifted through the room.

I helped Melissa put mayonnaise on the bread, talked them into lettuce along with the tomatoes, and was feeling reasonably in control when the timer went off on the oven.

“Oh, crumb! I must've done something wrong,”
Jeremy said, peering inside the microwave. “Maybe I set it for too many minutes.”

I moved along the counter to look inside, and my stomach twisted.

The bacon had cooked, all right, the slices around the edges being charred almost black. That wasn't the worst of it, though. As the bacon cooked, the grease had melted out of it, and the yellow platter wasn't deep enough to hold it all. The grease ran in a great yellowish puddle down over the floor of the oven, onto the counter, and it didn't take long to see why it had such a peculiar color.

The plastic platter had split and blistered and melted, so that it mingled with the liquid bacon fat in a lake that threatened to overflow onto the floor.

Luckily there were paper towels in sight, which I grabbed and began mopping up the mess. I remembered, now, something about needing special dishes to cook in a microwave. Not plastic ones, I guessed.

Jeremy looked disappointedly at the bacon. “I think it's all burned up.”

“No, the slices in the middle are all right.
You like it crisp, don't you? There's enough for two sandwiches, one for you and one for Melissa.” I picked out the salvageable bacon and scooped up the rest of the mess to put it into the garbage can under the sink. I hoped the platter wasn't anybody's favorite and that I wouldn't be blamed for allowing Jeremy to use it in the oven. What a way to get started on a new job!

They ate at a picnic table in the back yard, and I left them there when a bell sounded within the house. “The doorbell?” I asked, and the other kids nodded, their mouths too full to reply.

I'd reached the front door when it occurred to me that even though it was broad daylight, it might not be wise to allow anyone into the house.

There was no window in the door, so I couldn't see out. “Who is it?” I called.

A man's voice answered. “Gas company. I'm here to check the gas lines.”

I hesitated. I'd feel like a fool if I didn't let him in and the Fosters thought I should have. Yet I'd heard so many times about criminals
misrepresenting themselves as service men, and I knew there were plenty of valuables in this house for a crook to steal.

“I'm sorry,” I said finally. “I'm the baby-sitter, and I'm not authorized to let anyone in.”

“I'm from the gas company,” the man said, sounding impatient. “There's a problem with the gas lines in this neighborhood, and I need to get inside to check them. I have identification. Open the door, and I'll show it to you.”

I hesitated again. What if there really was a problem? Something dangerous? Would the house blow up if I didn't let him inside?

“Go over to the window, to the left of the door,” I decided. “You can show me the ID through the window.” I didn't know what else to do.

I heard him swear softly, and then, as I walked toward the nearest window, still feeling uneasy about the whole thing, I heard his boots on the tiles. There were decorative wrought iron bars over the windows, on the outside, so he couldn't get the wallet right close to the glass, and it was very shadowy out there. He was wearing a blue coverall, all
right, but though I craned my neck, I couldn't see any gas company van on the street. And I couldn't read what was written on the plastic card he held up, either.

“Look, I'm in a hurry,” the man said, his voice muffled. He was tall and slim, that was all I could tell. I couldn't get any better look at his face than at his ID.

I was feeling more and more uncertain and foolish, but something held me back from opening the door to him. I kept remembering those boring lectures Mrs. Hopkins gave at school, mostly intended for latch-key kids who spent a lot of time at home by themselves.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I can't let you in. If it's really an emergency, have the police come here with you. There's a patrol through this area every day. Just have them send a patrol car. When I see that, I'll open the door.”

Again the man swore, and a minute later I could see, peering through the barred window and out through one of the white plastered arches, the man in blue coveralls striding away toward the street.

No doubt everybody would laugh at me for
being so silly, I thought, checking to make sure the front door was locked the way Mrs. Murphy had left it.

I went back through the house to the kitchen. Through the window I saw the Foster kids throwing their bread crusts at each other, laughing as a smear of mayonnaise left a trail across Melissa's nose. It was a good thing I'd had them eat outdoors. I looked at the clock.

Only two and a half hours to go before the housekeeper came home, I thought, and hoped nothing else unexpected would happen.

The trouble with watching three kids at once is that they can go in three different directions, and you can only go in one.

While the kids were all playing outside, I sat in a plastic chair and watched them scattered over the lawn. The pool was there, behind a high chain-link fence; fortunately, the kids couldn't get at it. I didn't have a bathing suit, and I wasn't sure enough yet of the kids to know I could keep up with all three of them in the water.

Shana saw me looking at the pool and leaned against my knee. “I can swim,” she told me.

“She's not supposed to go in the deep end, though,” Melissa said. “Can you read, Darcy?”

“Yes, of course I can read. Can you?”

She shook her dark head, and the soft
little curls danced around her face. “No. I won't go to kindergarten until next year. Jeremy can read
some,
but not whole books. Will you read us a story?”

I felt safe reading stories, I did that all the time; so we went inside and sat in the playroom. They had more books than the library, and they each chose one and sat beside me on the big squashy couch.

“Mine first,” Shana insisted, thrusting a book into my hands. “
Greg-ry Gray and the Brave Beast.
” It was about a little red-headed boy who was left to spend his vacation alone with the housekeeper in a big old Victorian house, while all the other boys in the school went home to their families; Gregory made friends with a big, tough alley cat called Lionel. Obviously the kids knew it by heart. If I left out a word, they filled it in, in a chorus.

I read until my throat got dry. “I need a drink,” I said, and then I realized that only Melissa and Jeremy were sitting beside me. “Where's Shana?”

“Maybe she's tired,” Melissa suggested. “Sometimes she takes a nap.”

The little girl wasn't in her bedroom though. She didn't answer when we called her name, so I went looking through the house. It occurred to me that the gas man hadn't come back, nor had the police come to say it was truly an emergency. Maybe they'd discovered whatever the problem was, somewhere else, and they hadn't needed to come back. I looked into the master bedroom.

And there she was.

Shana was seated at the dressing table, intent on her own small face in the mirror before her. Lipstick was smeared across the lower part of her face, and she was trying to apply eye shadow with ludicrous results.

“Oh, Shanny, shame on you!” Melissa cried, and the applicator jumped in Shana's hand, leaving a blue mark across one cheekbone.

“Like Mama,” Shana said, unrepentant, as I took the applicator out of her hand.

“You can do this when you get bigger,” I said, seeing no damage that soap and water wouldn't take care of, except for the gouge in the cake of eye shadow. I wondered how Mrs. Murphy managed to keep up with all three of them at once.”

I guess I must have asked the question aloud, because Melissa piped up the answer. “She keeps the doors locked so we can't get in.”

“In all the rooms? This one, and your father's study, and your mother's?”

Melissa nodded solemnly. “And the door to the basement, after Jeremy broke his arm falling off the back swing.”

Wonderful, I thought sourly. Why hadn't the housekeeper locked those rooms for my benefit? I lifted Shana down from the stool and headed for the bathroom, then changed my mind about using
that
bathroom. Better to use the one the girls shared.

Melissa trotted beside me. “She unlocks the doors before Mama gets home,” she offered.

Oh-ho. Mrs./Dr. Foster didn't know some of the rooms were kept tidy because the children weren't allowed to get into them. I wasn't sure if this was fair or not. Sensible, probably; but if it was all above-board, why keep it a secret from the lady of the house? I figured it
was
a secret, or the housekeeper wouldn't unlock the doors before Mrs./Dr. Foster came home.

“Does Mrs. Murphy live here, in this house?”
I asked as I chose a brown washcloth to get the goop off Shana's face. She felt soft to my touch, and she didn't object to being washed.

“She has a room downstairs,” Melissa said, nodding. “Sometimes she goes to see her son Kenneth, but she doesn't like Kenneth's wife, so it's not very often.”

I finished with Shana and looked around. “Where's Jeremy?”

This time we found the missing one easily. He was in his father's study, talking on the telephone. He looked up and smiled at us, speaking into the phone. “All right. Good-bye, Uncle Rick.” He hung up and informed me, “I was talking to my uncle. He lives in Hawaii.”

I hadn't heard the phone ring. “Did you call him, or did he call you?”

“I called him,” Jeremy said importantly. “This number, right here.” He leaned forward over an open directory, holding a finger near the numbers written after the last name. “It's easy, you just punch the button for each number, and if it's a long one like this, you have to punch
one
first.”

What did it cost to call Hawaii? Day rates?
I swallowed. “I don't think you'd better call any more, unless Mrs. Murphy says you can.”

“She won't let me call,” Jeremy said, smiling. “Where's Melissa?”

That was the way it went. I only had two arms; I couldn't keep hold of all three of them at once, and if I knew where two of them were, the third disappeared. Nothing else horrible happened, but I was sure glad when Mrs. Murphy came home.

“Did it hurt?” I asked sympathetically. I never had a root canal, and Mom says if I go every six months for checkups and brush and floss between times, I probably never will. But it made me feel peculiar, thinking about it.

“Oh, Dr. Hughes is a very good dentist,” the housekeeper said. “I was nervous and tense. But it wasn't too terrible. How did things go here?”

I hesitated. “Well, Shana got into her mother's makeup, but it all washed off. And a platter melted in the microwave. I had to throw it in the garbage can. A yellow plastic platter.” I held my breath, waiting to hear that it was somebody's favorite one.

“Jeremy cooking in the microwave again? Last time he heated rolls without wrapping them in a napkin first, and they came out hard enough to be bullets.” She sighed. “You'll have to be careful, or they'll talk you into things.”

I wanted to ask what things; how was I supposed to know what they were allowed, or not allowed, to do? She didn't give me a chance, though. She was heading for the kitchen.

“Time to put the roast on, they're having company tonight. Then I think I'll rest a bit, in my room.”