there.
“It’s trying to say something” is what my mother always said when she looked at things this ugly, but I couldn’t say that. I did not want to know what these pictures were trying to say, or why Mrs. Stone was trying to say it to me.
“Elizabeth may not be ready to comment on her employer’s artwork, sweetheart.”
I kept quiet, listening to that complicated “sweetheart.”
“All right, Max,” she said, and she took her hand off my shoulder.
The boys were behind Mr. Stone, hanging on like little freight cars and wearing the weirdest pajamas I had ever seen. They were like flannel nightgowns, but instead of being navy or plaid, which would have made them a little less weird, they were hot pink with tiny black houses, grey with rust-colored stars, and yellow with blue frying pans printed all over. Danny and Marc were real twins, not fraternal, and one of them was wiping his nose on the hem of his nightie. He wasn’t wearing underpants.
“You’re quite tall,” Mrs. Stone said.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say, And you’re quite old. Or, Your teeth are quite yellow and your paintings are quite nuts.
“I designed the boys’ nightwear,” Mrs. Stone said.
I figured. “What time do you want them to go to bed?” That’s what babysitters always asked my parents.
“Oh, let’s see. Eight-thirty for the twins, I don’t know, they’re only eight. Nine for Benj, I guess … if that seems reasonable.” She didn’t seem to have much experience with babysitters.
I asked them for the phone number where they’d be and if the boys were allowed to have snacks and everything else that my babysitters used to ask. My parents’ favorite sitter wrote it all down in a little notebook, which I thought was pretty obsessive, even though I hadn’t known the word at nine. Benjie probably knew the word.
Mrs. Stone clasped each boy’s face in her palms and turned around to look at us all as Mr. Stone led her out, as if she were going away for years. When the door closed, all three boys sucked thoughtfully on their lower lips, just like Mr. Stone.
“So, who eats ice cream?”
I was the babysitter I’d never had. I was better than Mary Poppins because I didn’t care what kind of people they became, I just wanted to be their favorite; I wanted them to despise other babysitters. I showed them how to soften the ice cream, mix it with broken-up cookie pieces, and refreeze it. We ate a quart of that. Their eyes got big and starry when I found the hot fudge and let them eat it out of the jar while we watched
Million Dollar Movie
. We played cowboys-and-Indians-in-outer-space until the twins collapsed in the hall, and then I wiped the biggest chocolate streaks off their faces and dragged them heels first up the stairs to their beds. They had bedspreads as weirdly patterned as their nightgowns.
Benjie said, “They have to go, you know. Or else.” And I got them back up for that and threw them in bed again.
“Let’s play something,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, and took out a deck of cards in case he wanted to learn Spit or Crackerjack.
He leaned back against the couch, opened his mouth wide, and rolled his eyes up until only the whites showed. Opening his mouth made him look much worse, the wet pink hole and the brown-tipped fern leaves almost grazing his bulging, blank eyes.
“Benjie. Benjamin.”
“I can’t hear you or see you. You are invisible.”
“Okay. You can unroll your eyes if you want. I’m now invisible.”I had a babysitter who would play this kind of game with me: Let’s pretend you’re an animal in the zoo, you get under the table and you can’t get out, while I go talk on the phone. I hated her when I understood, but if he
wanted
to play like that, I didn’t mind. I picked up a
Life
magazine and flipped through pictures of hundreds of girls getting their hair cut like the Beatles. Benjie unrolled his eyes, and they were very bright and liquid, like they’d been washed