Baby-Sitters Club 032 Page 7

  "Hello, everyone!" I called.

  "Hi," replied Claudia and the boys.

  "Here's Susan," I announced needlessly.

  "Hullo, Susan," called James.

  "Claud," I said, "I have to talk to you." Then I added, "James, can you play with Susan while I talk to Claud?" "Can - can Susan skateboard?" asked James doubtfully.

  "I don't think so," I replied.

  "Oh. Zach and I were going to go skateboarding." James looked quite pleased to be able to say "Zach and I" as if Zach were a celebrity. He also looked hesitant. I could tell he didn't want to hurt Susan or disappoint me.

  "Hey, that's okay," I said. "You guys go on. Susan will be fine with Claudia and me." Johnny went back to his truck, Mathew went back to the swing, and Claud and I sat on the stoop. Susan stood nearby. She refused to sit down for some reason.

  "So you know what that Mel Tucker was doing?" I said indignantly as I finished telling Claud about the afternoon's events.

  Claudia leaned forward. "What?" "He was charging the kids around here a dollar to go into the Felders' house and either ask Susan dates or get her to memorize a new piece of music. It was like she was a freak or something. Mel was calling her 'the retard who can memorize dates and music' and 'the dumbo who can sing but not talk.' " "That's - that's terrible!" cried Claud. Then she lowered her voice. "Are you sure you should say that in front of Susan?" I looked over at Susan, who was standing exactly where I had left her. As usual, her hands were flapping away. She was staring at the sky, weaving her head from side to side.

  "You know, I really don't think she hears us. I don't think she knows who we are. I don't think she even knows where she is. Worse, I don't think any of that matters to her." Claud's eyes filled with tears. So did mine.

  "Where does she fit in?" I asked.

  "Maybe not here," replied Claud sadly.

  "Maybe not with 'regular' kids." Susan and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the Hobarts'. James and Zach played the time away. Zach never asked Susan to join him, but he called "hullo" to her every now and then.

  James had found the kind of friend he needed. The friend was Zach.

  Chapter 13.

  There have been very few jobs in the history of the Baby-sitters Club that I really did not want to go on, and today's job was one of them. Oh, sure, there have been times when I didn't look forward to sitting for Jenny Prezzioso, or when I wondered what I'd be getting into when I signed up to sit for Jackie Rodowsky, the walking disaster.

  But today was different.

  Today was my last day at the Felders', and Susan's mother needed me not so much to baby-sit as to help pack Susan's trunk for her new school. This was a bigger job than it sounded. You might think that all Mrs. Felder would have to do was fold up Susan's clothes, put them in the trunk, and throw in a stuffed animal or two. It wouldn't be like packing for Karen, my stepsister, who would want to bring along books, games, toys, her roller skates, and a lot of other things.

  But it was a big job. The school had sent the Felders a list (a long one) of the belongings a new student was to bring, and each item had to be labeled with Susan's name. Plus, Mrs. Felder insisted on washing and ironing everything first. I guess she wanted to make a good impression.

  The washing and ironing and labeling were not what I disliked, however. What I disliked was that we had to pack Susan's trunk at all.

  I had failed in my mission to keep Susan at home, where I thought she belonged. But I did not mention this to Mrs. Felder.

  Anyway, I arrived at Susan's house at three-thirty, and Mrs. Felder greeted me with a smile and an armload of freshly washed and ironed clothes.

  "Hi," she said. "Come on inside." In the background I could hear Susan singing, "I love you madly, madly, Madame Librarian, Marian," and accompanying herself on the piano. Mrs. Felder and I left her alone. As long as we could hear the piano, we knew she was safe.

  We carried the pile of clothes to Susan's bedroom, where a steamer trunk was open on the floor.

  "Okay," said Mrs. Felder. "There's the checklist from the school." She pointed to a piece of paper lying on Susan's bed. "The items I've checked off have been washed, ironed, folded, labeled, and packed. I don't check anything off until all five things have been done. That way, I know I'll send Susan off in good - " Mrs. Felder paused, and her eyes looked awfully bright. I could tell she was trying not to cry, and I hoped she wouldn't. (I never know what to do when an adult cries, especially an adult I don't know very well.) "Off in good shape," Mrs. Felder finished, apparently getting control of herself.

  I guessed that sending Susan away again wasn't easy for Mrs. Felder. There were times when I thought that packing her off was the Felders' idea of the easy way out. But Susan was their only child. It couldn't be easy to let her go.

  "Can you sew?" Mrs. Felder asked me.

  "A little," I replied. (I hate sewing, but I can do it if I have to.) "Good. These clean clothes in the basket need Susan's name tags sewn inside them.

  The job goes faster than you'd think." "Okay," I replied, as Mrs. Felder handed me a threaded needle and then threaded one for herself.

  We settled into our work. At first we didn't talk. The sounds of "Gary, Indiana," another song from The Music Man, floated upstairs.

  "Today Susan is playing the score from the movie," Mrs. Felder informed me. "She's playing the songs in the order in which they're played on our record." I nodded. Then, from out of the blue, I asked, "What was Susan like when she was little?" I think I asked because I was looking around her room and it reminded me of a hotel room - no personality. No indication of what kind of person the room belonged to. There were no posters on the walls, no books, and very few toys, because Susan didn't care about such things.

  That was sad. Even my littlest sister, Emily Michelle, who is only two and barely talking, has much more of a personality than Susan. We know her. Emily already has strong likes and dislikes. As soon as she came to stay with us she developed a fascination with teddy bears. So there are bears all over her room, and pictures of teddies on her walls. She likes balloons, too, so we got her a lamp that's shaped like a bear holding a bunch of balloons, and someone made her a mobile of bears and balloons, and Nannie is knitting a sweater for her with bears and balloons on it.

  There are no secrets with Emily. Not like Susan, who is all locked up and so secretive we don't know her.

  "When Susan was little?" Mrs. Felder repeated. "You mean when she was a baby? Or when she was a toddler?" "Both, I guess," I replied. I knotted a thread, cut it off, folded one of Susan's shirts, name tag in place, placed the shirt in the trunk, and put a mark on the checklist.

  "Well," Mrs. Felder began, looking faraway, "I know this sounds silly - I guess every mother says it, or at least thinks it about her own child - but when Susan was born, my husband and I agreed that she was the most beautiful baby we'd ever seen. We thought she was perfect. She wasn't all scrunchy and red-faced and bald like the other babies in the nursery." (I smiled.) "She was born with curly dark hair, and she had wide eyes with long lashes and her face was just, well, perfect." "She is beautiful," I broke in.

  "Thank you," said Mrs. Felder. Then she went on, "Her father and I counted her fingers and toes and exclaimed over her tiny, tiny nails - just like all the other new parents were doing with their babies.

  "Anyway, we brought Susan home and she was so alert. Our pediatrician assured us she was very advanced. She did everything early. Held her head up early, sat early, crawled early, walked early, talked early. She was speaking in sentences before we knew it. She even taught herself to read. Mr. Felder and I thought we had a genius on our hands. We looked into progressive schools for Susan and dreamed of the great future we were sure she'd have. We put money away so she could go to the best possible college someday. . . . We never imagined we'd be spending that money on the school she's going to now." (I felt a lump rise on my throat and hoped I wouldn't cry.) "But then," said Mrs. Felder, "when Susan was two and a half, she just - ju
st shut down. She stopped speaking, stopped playing, even started wetting her pants, and she'd been toilet-trained for over six months. The pediatrician said it was the 'terrible twos/ but it soon became clear that that wasn't the problem at all. This was when I taught her to play the piano. It was the only way I could reach her. And it was a way to be near her, since she wouldn't let anyone touch her or hold her anymore. Apart from the piano, she became fascinated with the oddest things, like little pieces of paper that she'd wave in front of her eyes. When she found her father's perpetual calendar we let her be fascinated with that because it seemed more . . . normal. It seemed smart, not like hand-flapping or paper-twirling. But soon it became an obsession, like the piano. That was how she learned the years and dates.

  "By the time Susan was three and a half, we'd lost her completely. She's pretty much now the way she was then, except that she's toilet-trained again, for the most part, and can dress herself and feed herself, with a lot of prompting." Wow. I hadn't expected to hear all of that. I was trying to think of what to say to Mrs. Felder when the piano-playing stopped.

  "I'll go check on her," I said.

  I ran downstairs to find Susan wandering through the living room.

  "Mrs. Felder?" I called. "Susan looks sort of antsy. Do you want me to take her outside?" "That would be great," replied her mother. "She's been indoors all day." So I led Susan out the Felders' front door, although that was clearly not something she wanted to do. She pulled at my hand and made a strange, whining noise.

  But 1 was determined. "We're going for a walk," I told Susan resolutely. "Maybe we'll see your friend James." It took a lot of pulling, but I managed to walk Susan around the corner to the Hobarts'. There we found James and Zach, Johnny - and Jamie Newton! So Johnny had made a friend, too.

  "Hi!" I called.

  "Hullo!" replied James, ever cheerful. "Hullo, Susan!" Susan had picked up a leaf. She was twirling it in front of her face.

  "That girl," Zach began, eyeing Susan, "is the weirdest - " He was stopped by a look from James.

  And Susan chose that moment to wet her pants. Right there on the sidewalk in front of everyone.

  I guess I should have taken her to the bathroom before we left the house.

  "We have to go home," I said lamely.

  1 led Susan back around the corner, feeling ashamed. I felt ashamed for both of us - ashamed for Susan because she didn't know enough to feel ashamed for herself, and ashamed for me because . . . because ... I wasn't sure why. My feelings were all mixed up.

  Chapter 14.

  It was a Friday afternoon.

  It was also Susan Felder's last day at home.

  My sitting job was over. Nevertheless, Charlie dropped me off at the Felders' after school as usual. The Felders were leaving at four or four-thirty and I planned to be there to see Susan off.

  When I rang the Felders' bell, Mr. Felder answered the door. It was the first time I'd met him. He'd been out of town the two times I'd sat for Susan in the evening. I don't know why, but I'd been expecting a serious, morose little man. What I found was a big bear of a man with a beard, a ready grin, and lots of curly hair, who greeted me with a hug.

  "You must be Kristy," he said. "My wife has told me all about you. I hope you know how much you've meant to us - Susan, too - this past month." "Thank you," I said, taken aback. (How could silent Susan have been the daughter of this easygoing, effusive man?) "Susan!" called Mr. Felder. "Look who's here!" He held the door open for me, and I entered the Felders' house.

  Susan didn't appear, of course. She never comes the first time you call her. So Mr. Felder ushered me into the living room, where Susan was sitting tensely on the couch, flapping and clicking. She looked as if she knew something unusual was going to happen.

  "Susan? Honey?" said Mr. Felder. He sat next to Susan and took one of her hands in his, but she yanked it back. "Look who's here, honey," Mr. Felder went on, undaunted. "It's Kristy. She came over just to say good-bye to you." Flap. Click. Susan stared at something off to the left of me. She stared so intently that I turned around to see if Mrs. Felder had entered the room. But nothing was behind me except an armchair.

  Susan wasn't staring. She was lost. Her mind was . . . where?

  "Mrs. Felder is upstairs," Susan's father told me. "Last-minute stuff. If s hard to - I mean, we keeping thinking of things the people at the new school should know. About Susan. So Mrs. Felder began a letter and it's getting longer and longer." I smiled. "I think I understand what you mean. You should have seen my mom when my brother and stepsister and I went to camp for the first time. She actually wrote a note to Karen's counselor saying that Karen doesn't like turnips. As if Karen wouldn't say that herself. She's such a chatterbo - " I stopped abruptly, realizing what I'd almost said.

  "Don't worry," Mr. Felder replied. "It's hard for a parent to send any child away." "I know." I remembered what Mrs. Felder had said while we'd been packing Susan's trunk.

  And suddenly, even though I'd only known Susan's father for a few moments, I felt that I could talk to him. "When I first came here," I told him, "when I first met Susan, I hoped I could change her. I hoped I could make a difference this month so that she wouldn't have to go away to school. I really thought Susan would be better off at home. I thought she could go to the class for handicapped kids at the elementary school." "Oh, we looked into that," Mr. Felder assured me, as I sat down in the armchair, "but we felt the program wasn't individualized enough for Susan, and the teachers felt that Susan functioned at too low a level for the program. That was when Susan was five. And at about the same time, we found the school she's been attending for the last three years. Believe me, it wasn't easy sending her away at that age - it was like sending a baby away, and she was our only child - but we knew we had to do it.

  . "Now," he continued, "she's back again . . . and about to be sent away again." Mr. Felder looked at his daughter and for just a second, his twinkly eyes became the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. "But we've looked and looked," he said. "We've researched schools from here to California, and we really think the one we've found will do wonders for Susan. We're lucky if s so close by. We especially like the music program. Music is the only way we've been able to reach Susan. And if the special training can improve her music technique, too, well, who knows? Maybe one day we'll have a prima donna pianist on our hands: Susan Felder, IN CONCERT! Wouldn't that be something?" "It sure would," I agreed, and for the first time, I began to see just how much hope parents pin on their children. I wondered what Mom had pinned on my brothers and Emily and me. Would she be disappointed if I became one thing and she'd secretly been hoping for something else all my life? Was she proud of me? Did my father - wherever he was - even have any hopes for me?

  Then I thought of the Felders, the hopes they'd had for Susan when she was an advanced baby, and even the thin thread of a hope that Mr. Felder still clung to: Susan Felder, IN CONCERT! I was beginning to feel dangerously sad when Mr. Felder spoke up.

  "I don't suppose Mrs. Felder has told you our good news," he said.

  Their good news? Had they found out something about Susan's prognosis?

  "No," I replied. "She hasn't." Mr. Felder grinned. "Susan is going to become a big sister. Mrs. Felder and I are expecting a baby." "You are?" I shouted. I couldn't help it - I jumped up. "Oh, that's fantastic! If s wonderful! Susan, Susan, you're going to have a baby brother or sister!" I tried to give her a hug.

  "She's going to have a sister," said Mr. Felder. "We're having lots of tests done. We know we can't detect autism before the baby is born, but a lot of other problems can be detected (so can the sex of the baby), and Mrs. Felder and I aren't taking any chances. Besides, we're getting older by the minute." (I grinned.) "Anyway, so far, so good. The baby seems perfectly healthy. Her name," he added, "will be Hope." "Oh, I just know Hope will be wonderful," I said. "I can feel it. She'll go to Stoneybrook Elementary. Hey, she can be friends with Laura Perkins - the baby who lives in my old house. They'll be just about the
same age. And maybe one day you'll let me sit for Hopie. That's what I'll call her. Hopie." "Hi, Kristy!" called a voice that sounded forcefully cheerful, if you know what I mean. Like the person would be cheerful if it killed her.

  It was Mrs. Felder. She was heading downstairs, a fat envelope in her hand and Susan's pillow under one arm.

  "Hi!" I cried. "Congratulations! I just heard your news. About Hope. I'm so excited. That's great!" Mrs. Felder smiled a genuinely cheerful smile. "Thank you," she said, patting her stomach. "Do I look any fatter to you?" I peered at her. I never notice when people gain or lose weight, unless it's, like, a hundred pounds. "You know, I think you do," 1 said, because that was the answer she wanted to hear. "Yup. Just a little." Mrs. Felder's smile became a grin.

  Then Mr. Felder looked at his watch. "We better get going," he said. "The school wants us there by dinnertime. The way they introduce students to school life is to thrust them right into it. Susan's room became ready for her this afternoon, and she's expected to eat supper in the dining room with the other students at six-thirty tonight." I nodded. "Is there anything I can do to help?" "Could you give me a hand with the trunk?" asked Mr. Felder. "It's heavy. I don't want my wife trying to lift it." So I helped Mr. Felder load Susan's trunk into the back of the car. Then Mrs. Felder led Susan outside. She was just about to settle her in the backseat with her pillow when we heard, "Hullo'," Who else but James?

  The Felders and I turned to see James Hobart running across the lawn toward the car.

  "I came to say good-bye!" he called. "Susan's leaving, isn't she?" "Yeah," I replied. Then I added, "Mr. Felder, have you met James Hobart? He and his family moved into Mary Anne Spier's old house." James and Mr. Felder shook hands. Then the Felders and I kind of stood back while James approached Susan. "So long," he said. "I'm glad you were my mate." No response from Susan.

  "Susan?" said James. "Susan?" Nothing.

  James extended his hand as if he were going to take Susan's, then thought better of it, and pulled his away. "Well, good-bye," he said. "I'll miss you. I hope you come back soon." Mrs. Felder started to cry, and James looked at me as if he might cry, too, so I put my arm around him. Then the Felders buckled Susan into the car, climbed into the front seat, and rolled down their windows.