"Babysitters Club Special Edition Mary Anne's Book" - читать интересную книгу автора (Babysitters Club)

BSCSE - Mary Anne's Book - Martin, Ann M.
Chapter 1.
Well, I cry easily. For instance, I cry at movies and over some of the books I read. I cry over personal, real-life situations too, such as my friends' problems. I've also been known to shed a few tears over my own problems. But more about those later.
None of my friends is as shy or weepy as I am, but they don't mind my moods. I have some great friends. We're all members of the Baby-sitters Club, a sitting business which was started by my very best friend (and club president), Kristy Thomas. Kristy and I had lived next door to each other since we were babies. That changed when we were in the seventh grade. That year Kristy's mother married Watson Brewer, and her family moved into Watson's house, which happened to be a mansion. Then my dad married Dawn's mother, Sharon Schafer. The Schafer house was bigger than ours, so Dad and I moved in with them. Our new home isn't a mansion, but it's special. It's a two-hundred-year-old farm house with low ceilings and doorways, slanted floors, a ghost (according to Dawn), a secret passage (that used to be part of the Underground Railroad), a genuine outhouse (that we don't use), and a great big barn. I love our new old house.
My other friends in the Baby-sitters Club are Claudia, Stacey, Abby, Jessi, Mal, Shannon, and Logan. Claudia Kishi was one of my first
friends, and is the BSC vice-president. Claud's only official duty as V.P.~ is to host our meetings every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Her unofficial duty is providing us with the junk food that she keeps hidden in her room. Claudia is a beautiful, tall, Japanese-American. She's a gifted artist and dresses in outrageous clothes. People are always saying, "Wow! What a great outfit!" when they see Claud. Unlike me, she loves the attention. The way Claudia dresses is just one expression of her artistic talent.
Stacey McGill is also very into fashion. Her wardrobe is more sophisticated than funky, though. Stacey says that her sense of fashion comes from growing up in New York City. Her parents are divorced and her dad lives in New York City. So, while Stacey spends most of her time in Stoneybrook and goes to school with us, she also has a bedroom in her dad's New York City apartment. Stacey often feels torn between her parents and has had a lot of problems with the divorce. She also has diabetes, which means she has to be very careful about what she eats (absolutely no sweets) and has to give herself insulin shots. As you might guess, this has helped to make Stacey a very responsible person - and a responsible club treasurer. (It also helps that she's a math whiz!)
Dawn, my stepsister, used to be an officer in the BSC. Now that she's living in California she's an honorary member of the club. I miss Dawn so much that I'm getting teary just thinking about her. Dawn is a member of a baby-sitting club in California called the We
V Kids Club. My sister is athletic (she loves to surf), full of fun, and is seiiously into eating healthy foods. She actually prefers a tofu burger to a hamburger, carrot sticks to french fries, and an apple to an ice-cream cone.
Abby Stevenson is a new member, and the alternate officer, of the BSC. (She fills in for any club officer who can't attend a meeting.) She's the opposite of me in temperament. Abby is extremely outgoing and is always cracking jokes and fooling around. But Abby and I have one important thing in common:
we both have lost one of our parents. Abby's father died in a car accident about seven years ago. My mother died when I was a baby. By the way, Abby has a twin sister, Anna, but Anna isn't a member of the BSC.
Logan Bruno is the only male member of the BSC. Actually, he's an associate member, which means we call on him when we have extra baby-sitting jobs that we can't fill with regular members. Logan is a terrific sitter and a terrific guy. He's kind, intelligent, sweet, sensitive, funny, understanding, good
looking, and . . . he's my boyfriend. Logan and I have had our ups and downs. For instance, we once had a big misunderstanding about how much time we were going to spend together. He expected me to spend all my free time with him. But that made me feel suffocated and unhappy. I like my independence. Now we each understand what's important to the other person and our relationship is great. Logan Bruno is one of my very best friends.
Shannon Kilbourne is the other associate member of the club. Since the BSC is only one of Shannon's many extracurricular activities, we don't see her much. Also, she's the only one in our group who goes to a private school instead of Stoneybrook Middle School.
Jessi Ramsey and Mallory Pike, the junior members of the club, are younger than the rest of us. But the only real difference between us and them is that they can't baby-sit at night, unless they are sitting for their own families. Jessi and Mal are responsible, excellent members of the BSC and good friends. Mal is a serious writer and artist who wants to be a children's book author when she grows up. Jessi is an amazing ballet dancer. I'm sure she'll be a professional ballerina someday.
I finished my cereal and was about to go upstairs to work on my autobiography when
the doorbell rang. I saw that it was our postman and opened the door.
"Priority mail for you, Ms~ Spier," he said. I took the envelope, thanked him, and went back inside.
I saw right away that the return address was Maynard, Iowa. The package was from my grandmother, Verna Baker. I sat on the stairs and opened it. Inside was a letter and a pink satin baby book.
The letter started with my grandmother's saying that she was happy I was writing my autobiography and that she hoped I would send her a copy when I finished it. She went on to say that she'd recently located my baby book and thought it might be helpful as I worked on my project. "It's hard for me to believe that eleven years have passed since I completed the baby book that your mother began," she wrote.
I put the letter aside to finish later. I couldn't wait to see what my mother had written about me when I was a baby and she was still alive. The first entries - all in her neat handwriting
- were straight facts about how much formula I drank (a lot) and when I slept (most of the time). Then I read, "Mary Anne gave me her first genuine smile today. What a beautiful smile. What a beautiful baby." I burst into
tears. I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve so my tears wouldn't fall on the words my mother had written about me.
"What's happened, Mary Anne?" asked my dad.
"My goodness, - what is it?" exclaimed Sharon.
I hadn't heard my dad and stepmother come in through the kitchen. Now they were standing at the foot of the stairs staring at me. Sharon looked terrified. "Are Dawn and Jeff okay?" she asked. "Did you get a call from California?"
"They're okay," I assured her. "I'm sorry I scared you." I put the letter and the baby book back in the envelope. "I'm okay, too."
"What were you reading that made you cry?" my dad asked.
"Just stuff for my autobiography," I replied. "Grandma Baker sent me the baby book she and my mother wrote about me."
I don't usually mention my mother to my father. I know it makes him sad. And I didn't think it was fair to talk about my mother (my father's first wife) in front of Sharon (his second wife). But Sharon didn't seem to mind. She sat next to me on the stairs and took my hand in hers. "I'm sorry you feel sad," she said softly. That, of course, made me cry even harder.
"Is your autobiography going to be sad?" my dad asked.
I thought about that for a second, then I smiled through my tears. "No," I answered, "it isn't going to be sad, because my life isn't sad." I looked from Sharon to Dad. "I'm happy and I'm lucky."
"I'm glad to hear you say that," Dad said.
"Because you make me feel happy and lucky." "Me, too," said Sharon. She gave me a soft
kiss on the cheek.
My dad cleared his throat in the way he does when he's getting choked up over something. "Well," he said, "I better put the groceries away before the frozen items melt." Putting stuff away is a job my dad loves. He is just about the neatest person in the world. He even alphabetizes cereal boxes and the bottles on the herb and spice rack. "After I put things away I'm going to make ham and french toast for brunch," he told me. "Will you have some?"
"I'd love to," I said. "But can I work on my autobiography while you cook?"
"Sure," he said.
"I'll put the groceries away, Richard," Sharon offered, - "so you can start cooking."
My dad and I exchanged a smile. Sharon is as disorganized as my dad is organized. If she put the food away we were apt to find the ice
cream melted all over the vegetable bin and the lettuce in the freezer.
I knew Sharon and my dad would figure out who was doing what in the kitchen. And that they'd be happy while they were doing it.
Meanwhile, I went upstairs to work on my autobiography. I grabbed a fresh box of Kleenex from the bathroom cupboard. Even happy things can make me cry.
Chapter 2.
My father told me that I was a quiet and sweet baby. "When we first brought you home I didn't want to leave for work in the mornings," he said. "I just wanted to stay home and look at you."
"You must have been home a lot when my mother was sick," I said.
"Yes," he said, "I was home a great deal then. So it was the three of us, together. Alma, your mother, wanted you near her all the time. Your crib was next tO her bed. You were a comfort and a joy to her."
It makes me happy to know that I helped my mother, even if I can't remember. My grandmother Baker - my mother's mother -talks about what a comfort I was to her and to my grandfather, too. After my mother died, l)ad was terribly upset and concerned about whether he could take care of an infant on his own. When my mother's parents offered to take care of me, my dad thought that would be best. So he let me go to Iowa to live with my grandparents. They raised me until I was eighteen months old. I don't remember being with my grandparents, but Grandmother Baker has told me about that part of my life. She also continued the baby book my mother began. It's filled with details (most of them pretty boring) about my early life.
When I visited my grandmother recently, I asked her what I was like as a baby. "When you first came to us," she told me, "you were clingy. You didn't want us out of your sight, even for a minute." She smiled. "But of course we didn't want to lose sight of you for a minute either, so it worked out fine. Your grandfather would hold you against his shoulder and go off to the fields to look at the corn. And when I went to town, I'd push you around in the stroller while I did my errands. Everyone admired you."
"Didn't it bother you when I cried and stuff?" I asked. I was remembering some fussy infants I'd baby-sat for.