Ann Martin - Mary Anne And Too Many Babies

"Probably. I think she wants us to consider ourselves as couples and also as the single parts of couples. Remember the questions she asked at the beginning of class one day? The

day Shawna said she wanted to divorce Miles?"

"Yeah. Plus we learned some things about loyalty and trust and independence and responsibility. Maybe we should divide our paper into two sections. In one, we'll describe what we learned about ourselves. In the other, we'll describe what we learned about relationships; about the aspects of relationships."

"That's a great idea," agreed Logan. He sighed.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing. I'm just sitting here looking at Sammie. When this project is over, I'll kind of miss her."

"Me, too."

"But not too much."

"No, not too much." I paused. "I wonder what Mrs. Boy den will do with our babies when we don't need them anymore."

"I don't even want to think about it."

"Neither do I. I guess I should go now, Logan. I haven't started my homework yet. But I'll see you and Sammie in school tomorrow."

"Okay. 'Bye, Mary Anne. Love you."

"Love you, too."

We hung up. I headed to my room but de-toured down the hall to Dawn's room instead.

I entered it and sat in her armchair.

"What did Logan want?" asked Dawn. She was seated at her desk, writing up a lab report for science class, but she stopped and looked at me. She stuck her pencil in the pencil jar.

"To talk about Sammie. Nothing special, though. You know what I've been thinking, Dawn?"

"What?"

"About the Kumbel catalog. You can throw it away."

"I can? How come?"

"Well, what's your opinion about my dad and your mom having a baby now? I mean, what's your opinion since you spent the afternoon with a fussing, teething baby?"

"Oh." Dawn looked sheepish.

"Because / was thinking," I went on, "that maybe it isn't a very good idea after all. Not that we couldn't take care of a baby just fine. We are professional baby-sitters. But a new baby might be rough on our parents at their age. Not that they're old — "

"Of course not," interrupted Dawn. "But they might not be strong enough to go through teething."

"Or to toilet train a kid."

"Plus, they need their sleep now. How could they get up every three hours during the night to feed a newborn?"

"They couldn't. And in about ten years the kid would want to go to Disney World. Do you think Dad would ride Space Mountain with our brother or sister?"

"No way. Mom probably wouldn't, either."

"And you and I would be out of college and living on our own by then," I pointed out. "So we wouldn't be any help."

"That's right."

"Where is the Kumbel catalog?" I asked.

Dawn found it in her closet. We opened it to the baby pages we had marked, and we gazed at the pictures.

"Not having a baby will save a lot of money, too," I said, looking at the prices. Baby equipment was not cheap.

"But that little lamp is awfully cute," said Dawn wistfully.

"Well, save your pennies," I said. "Maybe one day you can buy it for your own room." Dawn closed the catalog. I stood up. "I'm still curious to know what our baby brother or sister would have looked like."

"And I think it would have been neat if our parents had had a baby of their own. A little Schafer-Spier."

"But I guess it wasn't meant to be."

"I guess not."

Chapter 15.

It was the last session of our Modern Living class. The following week we would begin a new course — Health. No one was very interested in it, but we had to take it, so complaining was no good. (Miles tried to look on the bright side. "Isn't sex education part of Health?" I heard him say. Logan laughed. I blushed.)

Logan and I walked into Mrs. Boyden's class together. I was carrying Sammie in her basket. Logan was holding our precious term paper. It was 32 pages long, typed, single-spaced. Well, actually, word-processed, not typed. Logan had printed it out on his home computer.

We took our seats, and I set Sammie on my desk. Logan and I watched the room fill up with our classmates and their eggs. Mrs. Boyden was at her desk, thumbing through her

lesson book. When the bell rang, she closed the book and stood up.

"Well," she began, smiling, "you've made it. You survived."

"We didn't," said Angela. "Kevin and I lost Cathy. We — "

"I meant you survived as married couples," Mrs. Boy den replied gently. "And I'm proud of all of you. Some very heavy issues have been discussed in this class, along with some very personal feelings. Your honesty is what made the class a success. Also, your ability to suspend disbelief. If you hadn't been able to pretend your eggs were babies, you wouldn't have learned so much.

"Today," Mrs. Boy den went on, "I would like each husband and wife to pair up and write a short composition, which will be handed in with your final papers. The subject of the composition is saying good-bye to your children. The time is now twenty-one years in the future. Your babies have grown up, become adults, and finished their schooling. They are ready to leave you and lead lives of their own."

"Logan," I whispered, feeling tearful, "Sam-mie doesn't need us anymore. She's going to leave us!"

"At the end of the class," said Mrs. Boyden,

"you will leave your eggs behind. They will no longer be your responsibility."

"What are you going to do with them?" asked Shawna.

"Do you really want to know?"

Shawna shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Okay. Break into your pairs, then."

I slid my desk over to Logan's desk, bringing Sammie with me.

"So?" said Logan. "Where's Sammie go-ing?"

"Off to her first important job," I answered. "In New York." (New York is where I hope to land my first important job.)

"We're going to let our baby move to big, dangerous New York City?"

"Dear, she's not a baby anymore," I reminded my husband. "She's an adult. She's twenty-one. And she's been offered a position in a publishing house. She will be an editorial assistant. We can't hold her back."

"You're right," agreed Logan.

We wrote our composition and added it to our paper.

After we had handed in our work, I looked at Sammie and said, "I guess this is good-bye. You've been a real — "

"A real good egg?" Logan interrupted.

I made a face at him. But I didn't say any-

thing. I knew he was joking around because he didn't want to get sentimental in class, where everyone could see him. Some men have such a hard time dealing with their emotions.

That afternoon our BSC meeting was attended by seven humans and no eggs. Although earlier I had been sad about letting Sammie go off to New York, I was now feeling quite free. I wasn't the only one.

Stacey bounced into club headquarters crying, "Freedom at last!" She sounded the way most kids do on the day summer vacation starts. "No more mixing bowl," she went on, "but I do miss Bobby . . . sort of. Well, just a teensy bit."

At 5:28, Jessie ran into the room, the last club member to arrive. As she settled onto the floor next to Mallory, she looked around, then asked, "Where are your babies?"

"Gone," said Kristy sadly.

"They grew up," added Dawn.

"Mine went to New York to start a career," I said.

Jessie and Mal did not know what we were talking about, so we described our last Modern Living class to them.

"Cool. What are the rest of your children doing?" asked Mallory.

"Bobby is going to teach high school history," said Stacey.

"Izzy became a car mechanic," said Kristy. "He opened a garage in Stamford. I made him promise to visit every Sunday."

"My baby is going to become a famous artist," said Claud. "Naturally."

"Mine's in medical school," said Dawn.

The phone rang then, and we arranged a job for Claudia with the Newtons.