Maid Mary Anne Read online

  “Well …”

  “We have this picnic lunch packed,” said Logan.

  “Picnic lunch? Why don’t I make a few more things to add to it, and you can eat your picnic on the sunporch with me. It’s a lovely day for it. Do say yes, Mary Anne. I feel so bad about calling you in the middle of the day to do this for me.”

  “Well,” I said. I didn’t want to be rude. And I was hungry. The picnic would taste as good on the porch as at the lake. Wouldn’t it?

  I looked at Logan. He looked at me.

  “Thank you,” he said. “We’d enjoy a picnic lunch on the porch.”

  Mrs. Towne beamed. “I’m delighted. Now, let’s get everything set up …”

  It was a nice picnic lunch. Mrs. Towne recognized the pimento cheese right away and she and Logan had a long talk about the merits of pimento cheese sandwiches versus regular cheese sandwiches.

  After lunch, Mrs. Towne fixed tea for us to drink with the cookies and grapes.

  “That was delicious,” she said when we’d finished.

  “It sure was,” I agreed.

  “Let us help you clean up,” said Logan, jumping to his feet. He didn’t give the impression he was hurrying, but in almost no time we’d cleared the dishes, washed them, and put them away.

  I took the hint. And it was growing late.

  “We have to go,” I told Mrs. Towne.

  To my relief, she nodded. “Yes, it is getting on in the day, isn’t it? Well, I’m so glad I got to meet you, Logan. Do come by again.”

  “Thank you,” said Logan. He didn’t say anything else as Mrs. Towne hobbled with us to the door and waved good-bye while we walked our bicycles down the bumpy driveway.

  I could tell Logan was not happy.

  “Okay, what is it?” I said, although I had an idea I knew.

  I was right.

  Logan took a deep breath and shook his head. Then he said, “Mrs. Towne is a nice woman, don’t get me wrong. And I’m glad we could help her. But this isn’t exactly the way I had planned to spend today, you know?”

  “I know, Logan. Me, neither. But what else could we have done?”

  Logan shook his head again. He didn’t answer.

  “Why don’t we ride over to the park?” I suggested. “There’s a pond there and we can just hang out. It’s not the same as the lake but …”

  Logan nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  And that’s what we did until it was time for me to go to the BSC meeting.

  That night, I was tired. Not just my body — my brain. My thoughts kept going around and around like the wasp in the kitchen.

  I’d wanted too much to be a better person, someone not so selfish and self-centered. Helping Mrs. Towne out seemed to be a part of that. Wouldn’t refusing to help her — to go off and have fun at the lake — be truly, totally selfish? It made me feel awful, but I kept wishing I’d pretended I hadn’t heard Dawn when she’d called me back to the phone that morning.

  And, on the other hand, maybe it was selfish of me not to think of Logan’s needs, too. We’d barely seen each other lately. I’d promised him we’d spend the whole day together. And we’d ended up spending most of it at Mrs. Towne’s.

  That had made Logan feel bad. And it made me feel worse, because I knew I’d let him down. But why couldn’t he understand about Mrs. Towne?

  I didn’t know what to do. What was the right thing? Weren’t the needs of a lonely old woman more important than Logan’s?

  My head hurt from thinking and thinking and thinking when I finally fell asleep. And I still hadn’t come up with an answer.

  As Mal and Jessi were heading from the library toward Slate Street that afternoon, where they were about to start a baby-sitting job with Mal’s seven brothers and sisters, they talked about the books they’d checked out. Mal had found one by Louise Fitzhugh called Nobody’s Family Is Going to Change. Jessi had talked her into it. She liked the story of a boy who wanted to be a dancer like his uncle, only the boy’s rigid, uptight father wouldn’t let him, because he says boys don’t dance. Jessi said it was a really excellent book, and Mallory was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, since Louise Fitzhugh had also written Harriet the Spy, which both Mal and Jessi happened to like a lot.

  As it turned out, the book was a sort of foreshadowing to the afternoon.

  Of course, they didn’t know it when they arrived at the Pikes’. “I’m going to play tennis until I drop,” Mrs. Pike told them. She gathered up her tennis gear and added, “Adam and Jordan are watching horror movies in the rec room, Vanessa is sewing in her room. Byron, Margo, and Claire are building a maze for Frodo in Byron’s room” (Frodo is the Pikes’ hamster). “And Nicky is,” she picked up her keys and gave them a little jingle for emphasis, “weirdly energetic.”

  “Have a good time, Mom,” said Mal as her mother headed out to the station wagon. Mrs. Pike waved over her shoulder, and Mal and Jessi settled in for an afternoon of baby-sitting. They dumped the library books and their packs in Mal’s room and then decided to check on the kids.

  Sure enough, they found Adam and Jordan watching an old Boris Karloff movie. “Check this out,” said Adam, looking over his shoulder as Mal and Jessi came in. “He’s a mummy, see? And he’s about to walk!”

  One look at the screen was enough to convince both Mal and Jessi that it was not something they wanted to check out.

  “Um, thanks, guys,” said Mal. “When you’re done, maybe we’ll have a snack or something.”

  “Okay,” said Jordan, “but you’re missing a great movie!”

  Unconvinced, Mal and Jessi headed upstairs. Byron (who is a little more sensitive than his two brothers, proving that although they are triplets, they are not entirely identical) had opted out of the horror movie to work on an elaborate maze on the floor of his room.

  Claire, who is five, jumped up when she saw them and ran to throw her arms around Jessi. “Helllooooo,” she sang out.

  “Oof,” said Jessi. “Hi, Claire. Hi, Margo. Hi, Byron.”

  “Umm,” said Byron, frowning with concentration as he propped a paper towel tube against the open door of Frodo’s hamster cage. Frodo didn’t seem interested. He burrowed into the cedar chips that lined the bottom of the cage.

  The maze consisted of plastic fences from a bucket of farm toys, stacks of books, and a shoebox with a hole at each end. More books and another tube had been pushed to one side of the maze, like leftover materials at a construction site.

  “Frodo,” said Byron. “Come out, Frodo.”

  “Here, Frodo,” coaxed Margo.

  Frodo ignored them.

  “It’s a maze,” explained Claire.

  “Amazing,” said Jessi.

  That earned a brief, quick grin from Byron and a giggle from Margo. Claire, looking a little puzzled, giggled too.

  “Can we have a snack now?” asked Claire.

  “Not right this minute,” said Jessi. “Maybe in a little while. Besides, you have to finish your maze.”

  “Okay,” said Claire. She released her stranglehold on Jessi’s waist and skipped back to the maze.

  “Frodo,” coaxed Byron.

  Frodo continued to ignore them all.

  Shaking her head and smiling, Mal said, “Keep the door closed so he doesn’t get out of the room, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Margo.

  “Let’s check on Vanessa and Nicky and then maybe make some Toll House cookies,” suggested Mal. “I’m starving.”

  “Me, too,” said Jessi.

  Vanessa was in her room, bent over a square of green, sewing with intense concentration. She didn’t even look up when Jessi said, “How’s it going?”

  “I’m working on daisies, now,” answered Vanessa.

  “Well, if you get hungry, Mal and I thought we’d make some cookies.”

  That brought Vanessa’s head up. “Can I come sit in the kitchen?”

  “You want to help?” asked Mal. The power of cookies, she was thinking.

  But
Vanessa shook her head. “No, thanks. But I can talk to you while I work on my quilt blocks. Sort of like a quilting bee. You see?”

  “Sounds fine,” said Mal. “By the way, have you seen Nicky?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “I just have to finish this petal,” she answered.

  Correctly figuring out Vanessa’s response, Mal told Jessi, “Well, I’ll check around for him and meet you in the kitchen.”

  A few minutes later, as Jessi was getting out the ingredients for cookies, Vanessa entered the kitchen carrying her shoebox sewing kit. Setting it carefully on the table, she sat down, opened the box, took out a needle and thread, threaded the needle, put the thread back in the box, took out the green quilt block, and bent her head back over her quilting.

  Jessi had stopped to watch, impressed and a little amused by Vanessa’s intensity. Vanessa didn’t notice. She didn’t even look up when Mal came back into the kitchen.

  “So far, no Nicky,” reported Mal. “I’m going to check the —”

  Before Mal could say what she was going to check, the front door slammed open.

  “Don’t move,” a voice ordered. “I’ve got you in my sights.”

  It was Nicky. He was dressed in green — khaki cut-offs, a lime green T-shirt, kelly green socks, and what looked like his father’s work boots. Around his waist hung a tool belt holding about a million different tools. He was waving a toy gun.

  “Nicky?” said Mal, surprised.

  “I’m a mighty hunter,” announced Nicky. He saw what Vanessa was doing and narrowed his eyes. “A hunter, strong and brave and true!”

  “Is that why you’re dressed in green? Are you Robin Hood?” asked Jessi.

  “No! This is camouflage,” said Nicky. “I blend in with the woods. I can sneak up on my prey.”

  “Oh,” said Mal.

  Vanessa was more outspoken. She glanced up, then looked back down at her sewing, saying, “You wouldn’t blend in at all.”

  Nicky narrowed his eyes into a real scowl. “How would you know? You’re just a girl.”

  “You’re just a boy,” countered Vanessa. She held up her square of the quilt. “Just a boy,” she repeated.

  “Well, I’m not sewing a dumb old quilt, like a girl,” said Nicky. With his free hand he reached down to the tool belt and came up with a tape measure. “I build things!”

  Vanessa shifted her attention from the quilt square to the tape measure for a moment. “You use tape measures to sew, the same as you use them to build things.”

  Realizing that he was holding a tape measure, Nicky hastily stuffed it into the pocket of his shorts. “Aw, you know what I mean. It’s not the same thing!”

  “Why not?” asked Vanessa. “I’m building a quilt out of blocks, except they’re blocks of material.” She tilted her head, obviously admiring the square on which she was working.

  Nicky scowled. “That’s not the same,” he repeated. He folded his arms and waited. No one said anything.

  Finally, Jessi said, “We’re making some chocolate chip cookies. Also …” (she held up another bag that was half full of coconut) “… some chocolate chip coconut cookies. Want to help?”

  This was the wrong thing to say to Nicky the Macho Man. “No!” shouted Nicky.

  “Well, Byron and Claire and Margo are building a maze up in Byron’s room for Frodo,” said Jessi. “Maybe they’d let you join them.”

  Nicky kept his arms folded and his scowl in place.

  “No, huh? How about horror movies with Adam and Jordan?” asked Mal.

  Nicky wavered on that one, until Vanessa said, “They’re not even scary horror movies. They’re funny.”

  Uh-oh. Not tough enough for Nicky. He shook his head.

  “Well, what do you want to do?”

  “Build a fort,” said Nicky. “We could play war.”

  “No one wants to play war, Nicky,” Vanessa told him calmly.

  Nicky scowled again. Then he said, “May I call Buddy and ask him to come over?”

  “I don’t see why not,” replied Mal.

  Still scowling (although not as ferociously), Nicky charged out of the kitchen, his tool belt clanking.

  Jessi and Mal exchanged looks over Vanessa’s head.

  But they didn’t say anything. Instead, Mal opened a cabinet, studied it thoughtfully, and said, “What about some peanut butter cookies, too?”

  “Mal! We’re going to have a ton of cookies!”

  “That’s okay, Jessi. We’ve got a ton of kids here. Besides, we can save some.”

  “Then let’s really be creative.” Jessi joined Mal in her perusal of the cabinet. “What else is in there?”

  “Frodo is a silly-billy-goo-goo,” a voice announced.

  “Silly,” another voice agreed.

  Claire and Margo came into the kitchen, followed by Byron. The girls plopped down at the kitchen table.

  “Couldn’t get him to do the maze, huh?” asked Jessi sympathetically.

  Byron said, “It might have been too complicated. What kind of cookies are you making?”

  “So far, chocolate chip, coconut chocolate chip, peanut butter …”

  “Peanut butter chocolate chip,” suggested Vanessa.

  “That too,” agreed Jessi.

  “Decent,” said Byron. “Can I watch?”

  “Why don’t you help?” asked Mal.

  “Me, too,” said Claire.

  “Me, too,” echoed Margo.

  “Pretend you’re a baker,” Jessi said.

  “We’ll be the Pike-Ramsey Bakery, cookies a specialty,” said Mal.

  In short order, she and Jessi had everyone (except Vanessa, who needed to concentrate on her daisy) in aprons, assigned to various tasks. And the roster of cookies was growing. At Byron’s suggestion, they’d branched out into oatmeal.

  Just then, the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” shouted Nicky, his feet thundering down the hall. A moment later two sets of feet thundered back. Buddy Barrett stuck his head in the door.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, Buddy,” said Jessi. “Want to help us make cookies?”

  “No,” said Nicky.

  “What kind?” asked Buddy.

  “Chocolate chip, coconut chocolate chip, peanut butter, peanut butter chocolate chip, and oatmeal,” replied Mal.

  “What about M&M’s? Could we make some cookies with those?”

  “Sure,” said Mal.

  “Cool,” said Buddy. He rooted around in his backpack and came up with a large, half-empty, squashed-looking bag of M&M’s.

  “Buddy! We’re playing fort,” said Nicky, looking outraged. “You should come, too, Byron.”

  “Why?” asked Byron.

  “Because making cookies is …” (Nicky hesitated, obviously having second thoughts about calling Byron a sissy) “… is for girls.

  Byron looked at his brother and made a face. “Says who?” answered Byron.

  Seeming to take courage from Byron’s attitude, Buddy came into the kitchen and put the M&M’s on the table. He looked at Vanessa’s daisy quilt block. “It’s pretty,” he said.

  “Thank you,” replied Vanessa.

  “Buddy!” said Nicky.

  Buddy looked guiltily over his shoulder. “Okay,” he replied. To the kitchen at large he said, “You can keep the M&M’s.”

  “We’ll make them, we’ll bake them, we’ll shake them into cookies,” sang Vanessa.

  Soon the oven was full of cookies, with more stacked around the counters waiting to go in as soon as the first batch was done, while the bakers added more fillings to more dough and rolled it out to cut into cookies. The smell of baking cookies filled the kitchen.

  It was hardly surprising that, a few minutes later, Adam and Jordan joined the bakers too.

  “What happened to the mummy?” asked Jessi.

  Adam grabbed his throat and made rasping sounds.

  “I see,” said Jessi. “Well, find an apron and make some cookies.”

  “Okay,” agreed Adam. He a
nd Jordan were soon creating their own flavors of cookies with the ingredients Jessi and Mal had set out, which now included raisins and peanuts.

  While Mal pulled the first trays of cookies out, and Jessi poured the milk, a mad scramble, Pike-style, broke out for chairs around the kitchen table. Although Jessi is used to the exuberance of the Pikes, she still half expected chairs to crash over and maybe the table to collapse, but everyone got a seat unscathed. And of course, Vanessa kept sewing through it all.

  “I’ll go tell Nicky and Buddy the cookies are ready,” said Mal.

  Apparently, eating cookies was not on Nicky’s list of sissy activities, because a few minutes later he and Buddy followed Mal into the kitchen and claimed places at one end of the table. Buddy was now wearing an old leather belt with a hammer and a screwdriver precariously hooked on it. Nicky had added a cap to his outfit, and had stuck branches and leaves under it.

  Jordan raised his eyebrows. “Nicky, you look weird. Like a tree.”

  Nicky had just stuffed a cookie in his mouth. His face grew red as he chewed, trying to finish it in a hurry so he could answer. At last he said, “Well, what about what you’re wearing? Huh?”

  Jordan looked down at his T-shirt, shorts, and apron. “What about it?”

  “An apron! You’re wearing an apron!”

  “Yeah,” said Jordan. “So?”

  “Aprons are for girls.”

  Jordan looked at Adam. Adam looked at Byron. Then the triplets all looked at Nicky and burst out laughing.

  Nicky’s face grew even redder. “Stop laughing!”

  Of course, that made his brothers laugh even harder.

  Enraged, Nicky jumped up and charged out of the kitchen. “Come on, Buddy!”

  Buddy obeyed, but not before he’d grabbed a big handful of cookies.

  “Thanks,” he remembered to say, as he hurried after Nicky.

  The timer for the second batch of cookies rang, and the triplets stopped laughing to attend to the more important business at hand.

  The Pike-Ramsey Bakery made about six dozen cookies, and after extensive taste tests conducted on chocolate chip, raisin chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, M&M cookies, peanut peanut butter cookies, peanut butter coconut cookies, and a few other varieties, voted chocolate chip cookies their favorite.