Taking Care of Terrific

by Lois Lowry

  I made arrangements to take her kid—naturally there was only one; she would be into zero population growth—to the Public Garden that afternoon after his nap. Ms. Cameron would be taking her harpsichord lesson then.

  I had planned to go to the Public Garden that afternoon anyway, to start my new life, and I liked the idea of having a kid with me. I like to babysit. It's a good feeling to have somebody need you, and nobody needs you more than a little kid who has wet diapers or scraped knees and who looks at you and cries and holds up his arms.

  "Mrs. Kolodny," I said, "I'll watch As the World Turns with you after lunch, but then I'm going to babysit."

  She got her glazed look again. "Lunch," she said. "Omigod."

  "What's the problem with lunch? There's that chowder on the stove." But as soon as I said it, I knew. "Mrs. Kolodny. You didn't."

  But she had. It's absolutely astounding that in fourteen years my mother has never realized that Mrs. Kolodny is such a space cadet. What an enormous secret to keep.

  She and I dumped the chowder thickened with Tide down the garbage disposal. Then we opened a can of Chunky soup and shared it for lunch.

  Chapter 4

  Joshua Warwick Cameron IV. I knew it.

  I liked him, though. He had thick blond hair cut like Buster Brown, corduroy overalls right out of a New Yorker ad, and he looked very suspicious of me when his mother introduced us.

  I liked it that he looked suspicious. Even though his mother had obviously gone through Charm School with straight A's, old Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, age four, was still half asleep and not too thrilled that his mom was urging him to shake hands with someone named Enid Crowley.

  "Ms. Cameron," I said, giving old Joshua time to wake up and assess the situation, "do you know my mother very well?"

  "No," she said. "I met her at a meeting, and when she mentioned that she had a teenage daughter, I just happened to ask if you'd be interested in babysitting, afternoons. Why?"

  "Well, I guess she didn't have a chance to tell you that I really prefer to be called by my middle name, Cynthia. It gets kind of complicated, because my parents like to call me Enid. So if you call me up or anything, it's easier to ask for Enid. But I really like Cynthia better."

  "Oh. I see. Yes, I can understand that. My own parents still call me Elizabeth, although everyone else has called me Betsy for years. Joshua, sweetie, this is Cynthia. She's going to take you to the Public Garden."

  Joshua yawned. He looked at me carefully, now that his eyes were wide open, and finally he nodded.

  "Okay," he said. "I'll go get my sweater."

  Ms. Cameron began giving me instructions. Don't let him pat dogs because you never know about strange dogs.

  Okay.

  Make him keep his sweater on because she doesn't want him to catch cold; he is very prone to ear infections.

  Okay.

  No candy or other sweets. She is very careful about sweets because she doesn't want him to get cavities.

  Okay.

  Explain to him about not picking the flowers in the Public Garden because it is against the rules, although certainly she wants him to enjoy looking at the flowers.

  Okay.

  Watch him so that he doesn't fall into the pond, but don't make him feel fearful about the pond.

  Okay.

  And especially don't let him talk to any strangers because, well, you know the sorts of people who might be hanging around the Public Garden; you just never can tell.

  Actually, there are all sorts of interesting people hanging around the Public Garden. But from the way she said it with a kind of knowing look, a just-between-us-adults sort of attitude, I could tell that she meant: don't let him talk to what Mrs. Kolodny would call preverts, people who would kidnap old Joshua for weird sexual reasons.

  I said okay.

  He came trotting back down the hall, dragging a little Irish sweater and carrying a stuffed bear. His mother buttoned him into the sweater and tried very pleasantly to take away the bear.

  He held on tightly. "Bearable wants to go along," he said.

  "Sweetie," said his mother, trying the old child psychology, "Bearable has a cold, I think. I heard him coughing this morning. He really should stay home in bed."

  "No," said Joshua, outpsychologizing her. "I gave him penicillin."

  "It's all right," I told her. "I don't mind. I'll keep an eye on Bearable, too."

  So off we went, me and Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, and Bearable staring glassy-eyed at the brick sidewalk from under his master's arm, down West Cedar Street to Chestnut, and down Chestnut to Charles, on our way to the Public Garden.

  On our way, we stopped and patted a large Airedale tied to a post in front of the bookstore, thereby breaking rule one.

  We took off his sweater because it really was pretty warm, breaking rule two.

  And we stopped at DeLuca's, where I bought some Life Savers, and we each ate one, breaking rule three.

  All that was before we even got to the Garden.

  The other thing we did, which was not really breaking a rule because his mother hadn't told us not to, was old Joshua's idea, and it made me realize that he and I were going to get along just fine. We changed his name.

  As we stood at the corner of Beacon and Charles, waiting for the light, I said, "Watch for it to turn green, Joshua."

  "Don't call me that," he said firmly. Then he added politely, "Please."

  I asked him if he would like me to call him Josh.

  "No," he said thoughtfully, trotting beside me as we crossed the street. "I want you to call me Tom."

  "Tom Mix? Or Uncle Tom?" I asked, wondering if he knew about old cowboy movies or Harriet Beecher Stowe.

  "Nope," he said. "Tom Terrific."

  So the kid was allowed to watch cartoons. I remembered Tom Terrific; he had that Wonder Dog, Manfred. Mrs. Kolodny and I used to watch them together, back when I was just a little kid.

  At the entrance to the Public Garden, we had a small name-changing ceremony, my little four-year-old buddy and I. We shook hands solemnly after he shifted Bearable to his other arm, then we each popped another Life Saver—he liked the green ones best—into our mouths. We entered the Garden holding hands. Cynthia, and Tom Terrific. Those other people, Enid Crowley and Joshua Warwick Cameron IV, whoever they were, got left behind, at least for the afternoon.

  It looked as if it might be a pretty good summer.

  Chapter 5

  I have this theory that it's very important to know your turf well. Up until then, my main turf had been my bedroom, and I know my bedroom very, very well. I know my room as well as I know my parents, or Mrs. Kolodny, or Emily and Trina, my best friends from school.

  I know that my bed once belonged to my grandmother, who died when I was little, probably right around the time I was wearing corrective shoes and wishing I had a Wonder Dog named Manfred. I remember that I had a Youth Bed, with a plastic covering over the mattress in case I might still wet at night. Then all of a sudden I had this big mahogany fourposter that had been my grandmother's, because my grandmother had died. I suspect that she died in the very same bed, but I have never gotten my mother to admit it.

  "Enid," says my mother when I ask her exactly where my grandmother died, "she died at home, very peacefully." (That means bed, right? Would you die peacefully in the shower?)

  "Enid," says my mother, "the exact location is not at all important." (I wonder if she says that to her patients as she aims her million-volt X-ray machines at them. "The exact location is not at all important, tra-la. Head, stomach, knee, somewhere around there; relax.")

  I like to think that my grandmother died in her—my—bed. The thought doesn't gross me out. It gives me a sense of history.

  "Tom Terrific," I said to Joshua Cameron, "this is going to be our turf. The Public Garden. So we have to get to know it really well."

  Tom Terrific looked at me with that frowned-up sort of face that four-year-olds get when they don't know what you're talking abou
t.

  "Why do we have to do that?" he asked.

  I thought for a minute. I wanted to tell him all about green places: how everyone needs a green place in his life, a place where you can be whatever you want to be, a place where you feel alive and ageless. If you are fourteen, like me adolescent, Famous Psychologist Wilma Sandroff says; God, how I hate that word adolescent), it doesn't matter in your green place. You can be three, or forty, or eighty—whatever you want to be. And if you are four, like Joshua Warwick Cameron IV (what would Wilma Sandroff call four? Early Childhood? How I hate Wilma Sandroff), you wouldn't have to be four anymore. You could be a hundred and nine, if you chose, in your green place. You could be Tom Terrific.

  But I realized he would be a little confused by all of that.

  He pulled at my sleeve. "Why is this our turf?" he asked. "Why do we have to get to know it really well?"

  I thought of an answer he might understand. "Because," I said, "it's where we escape from the enemy."

  Tom Terrific was mulling over that bit of information (and smiling; he understood about the need to escape from the enemy) when suddenly he was whomped on the head. Not by a weapon. Not by a club or a blackjack or anything. But by a huge, soft, black purse. The woman who was carrying it hadn't meant to hit him. It was just that he was so short. As she walked past, her fat pocketbook knocked the top of his blond head and almost wiped him out. Some babysitter I was turning out to be; it would be tough to explain, bringing him home with a concussion.

  "Hey!" I said to the woman who had hit him. She turned, startled, and looked back at her victim, who was rubbing the top of his head and deciding whether or not to cry.

  "Well," she muttered, "don't stand in the middle of the path, then." She turned and walked on. Hobbled, really. She wasn't too great at walking, maybe because her shoes were both untied, so that she was tripping herself, and her ankles looked swollen. Also, her gray hair was in her eyes, so she could barely see where she was going. And her long black coat (this was July. Hot. I had already taken Tom Terrific's sweater off) flapped around her like a giant bat.

  "Is that the enemy?" Tom asked. I could see that he was intrigued by the idea of enemies. And his head was okay. Her purse was overstuffed and probably just as soft as Bearable, who was still under Tom's arm.

  "No. It's just a bag lady."

  "What's a bag lady?"

  Boy, did Tom Terrific have a lot to learn. Probably his mother had taught him every nursery rhyme that Mother Goose ever dreamed up, and probably he knew the words to the Apostles' Creed and also the seven warning signals of cancer. But no one had ever told him about bag ladies.

  "Well, first of all," I told him, "they're ladies. You know what ladies are."

  "Yep."

  "And usually they're kind of old."

  "The one who whomped me on the head was old."

  "And they're poor," I said.

  Tom Terrific thought about that for a moment. "What's 'poor'?" he asked.

  What's "poor"? Tough to explain that one to a kid who lives in a huge house on one of Boston's most exclusive streets and whose Teddy bear has a Steiff label.

  "They don't have any money, and so sometimes they don't have any place to live, or very much to eat. They walk around the city, and at night they sleep in doorways, or on park benches, or in the subways."

  "Not in a bed?" asked Tom, his eyes wide.

  "Nope. Not in a bed."

  "That's neat."

  "Well, it may sound neat," I told him, "but it isn't, really. It isn't any fun to be poor. They carry all their stuff around in shopping bags, or in big pocketbooks."

  "Like my bag lady. She had a big pocketbook and she hit me on the head with it."

  "Yeah. But she didn't mean to."

  We looked down the path and could see Tom Terrific's bag lady shuffling along, her coat flapping. The Public Garden was crowded with all sorts of people; no one paid any attention to her. After a moment she disappeared from sight beyond a horde of roller-skaters.

  "Okay, old Tom," I said, putting her out of my mind, "this is our turf, like I said. So we have to get to know it. Let's stake out a spot—how about that bench over there?—and draw some pictures, okay?"

  Sure, said Tom Terrific.

  I took my art supplies out of my backpack and gave him some pages from a sketch pad and a pencil. I started drawing a tree. A Japanese larch. The trees in the Public Garden have labels on them; that's how I knew it was a Japanese larch.

  Tom T. drew squiggles and snowmen. After a few minutes he was bored.

  "Look at the Swan Boats," he said, pointing toward the pond.

  The pond filled the middle of the Garden, shaped like a big pair of spectacles, with a bridge across the middle where the bridge of the nose would be. On the bridge, people stood taking pictures, aiming their cameras down toward the water, photographing the famous Boston Swan Boats as they glided by. Each boat had rows of seats for passengers and was operated by a boy who pedaled with his feet as he sat inside a huge swan, molded with outstretched wings and a tall curved neck. The Swan Boats have been there for more than a hundred years. I remember riding in them with my grandmother when I was very small, on Sunday afternoons in the summer. After she died (peacefully, in my bed), I used to think back to those times when she and I rode together in the Swans. All Boston children have memories like that. Or so I thought.

  "That's fun, isn't it, riding in the Swan Boats?" I said to Tom Terrific. "It's so quiet, and all the ducks swim alongside."

  "I never rode in one," he said wistfully.

  "You didn't? Why not?"

  He looked puzzled by the question. "I don't know," he said finally. "I guess I'm not allowed to."

  I didn't say anything. What could I say? We just sat there for a minute, watching the Swans glide silently by.

  "Can I go for a walk?" he asked.

  I was pretty close to getting the shading right on my Japanese larch, and I didn't want to quit yet.

  "Well," I said, "you can go for a little walk. Not out of my sight, because I'm taking care of you. Just down the path, okay? Not near the pond. I'll walk with you after I finish this picture."

  "Okay. You forgot something, though."

  "What did I forget?"

  "You're spozed to tell me not to pick the flowers."

  "Oh. Don't pick the flowers. It's against the rules."

  "And don't talk to strangers. You're spozed to tell me that," said Tom Terrific.

  I groaned. "Don't talk to strangers," I said.

  "I'm not going to. I'm going to go count stuff. I can count to a hundred."

  And off he went. I kept an eye on his red turtleneck jersey as he wandered down the path. Some roller-skaters made an opening for him and he trotted through—seven of them, in case he was counting roller-skaters. I kept working on my Japanese larch and glanced up from time to time, watching his little red shirt.

  It sure doesn't take long to start to love a kid.

  Chapter 6

  Behind me, as I sat working on my drawing of the tree, I suddenly heard the beginning of some music: a few notes sliding up and down into scales, then from the scales into a melody I didn't recognize. It was something you would hum a lot after you'd heard it once or twice: a melody that made you want to dance a long, slow dance cuddled up close to someone you liked a whole lot.

  I picked Tom Terrific out of the crowd with my eyes, just to make certain where he was and that he was okay, and then I turned around.

  Sitting behind me, on a bench, was a black man, the tallest man I've ever seen if you don't count professional basketball players on TV. His legs were sticking out into the path, crossed at the ankles, wearing jeans, and they were so skinny and long that I thought of a giraffe I'd seen at a zoo once. At one end of the legs was a pair of huge white sneakers, and at the other end was the top of a black man with a small beard and a big saxophone. His long, thin fingers moved around on the keys, and his shoulders swayed a little as he played. His eyes were closed.
>
  I think it is against the rules to play a saxophone in the Public Garden. He looked like someone who didn't care about that.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the little red shirt, zigzagging back toward me; Tom Terrific plopped himself down on the grass by my feet. I placed the drawing pad on the bench and sat down in the grass beside him. Bearable lay on his back, staring vacantly at the sky.

  "Twenty-nine," said Tom T. breathlessly. "Twenty-nine red rosebushes. I didn't count yellow yet."

  "Listen," I whispered, and I nodded toward the saxophone player. Tom leaned against me, resting, watching the man's fingers on the keys and listening to the melody. With his hands, Tom began to do a Seiji Ozawa thing, as if he were directing a whole orchestra. I could tell he wasn't doing it to be funny; he did it unconsciously, as if the music had told him to.

  The saxophone player, who had opened his eyes, glanced over, saw Tom T. directing him, winked, and kept on playing. Without a pause, he slid from the unfamiliar melody into something I recognized, though I couldn't think of the words. Tom Terrific could. He began to sing, in a high clear voice.

  Hush little baby, don't say a word

  Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird...

  With one hand stroking his glassy-eyed stuffed bear, old Tom sang it all the way through, verse after verse, his little voice right on pitch, even when the musician took the melody and sent the notes soaring around, up and down, wrong side out, all around the song.

  A few people glanced over and raised their eyebrows. Some smiled. Then they went back to their conversations, their newspapers, their naps. But off to the side, suddenly I heard another voice join in: a voice quieter than Tom's, but right on key too, and with the right words, until the pair of voices finished together, softly, at the end:

  Hear, oh hear the night bird call;

  Soon, oh, soon the dark will fall.

  The saxophone player sent the sound swirling in circles into the bright blue air, then tapered it off and let it die. He took the instrument away from his lips and grinned, first at me and Tom Terrific; then he turned and grinned in the direction of the second voice. I looked. It was the bag lady, the one who had whomped Tom's head.