Mary Anne to the Rescue Part 1
I barely remembered the plot details of this. But this book is actually kind of incredible--filled with totally bizarre asides and insinuations, ridiculous similes, flat-out contradictions, and totally inexplicable situations. And Logan cries.
Everything about this cover is amazing. Logan's pouty, pursed lips and expression of indifferent disgust, the snazzy tucked-in tee shirts, MA's killer cheekbones, and the least affectionate kiss ever.
So, the sitters are hanging out at the airport, as they do, and generally being obnoxious and whining because Dawn’s plane is a whole nine minutes late. Then an announcement is made that it will be delayed another hour and they whine even more, until Richard offers to treat them at the “cafeteria” to shut them up. Also,weirdly, Claudia suggests going to the video arcade.
Mary Anne stops to dole out the Great Romance/Bicoastal Dawn segments of the backstory, because otherwise it would be totally incomprehensible that stepsisters might not live together.
Richard, God love him, tries to beg off carting this crew around, claiming that taking two cars to the airport is a waste of gas. Perhaps something for Little Miss Saves the Planet to consider? Also, for those of you trying to keep track of Stoneybrook geography (may God have mercy on your souls), Stoneybrook is “a little more than an hour” away from the airport. Anyway, Stoner Sharon convinced him to shlep the whole BSC, because it’s not like she might want some private family time with her two children who live on the other side of the country.
Also, Mary Anne shocks and confuses me by claiming to have pierced ears.
At the cafeteria, everyone gets salads and chips, except Claudia, who piles her tray up with a half-dozen desserts, which seems kind of rude in the circumstances. They sit near a family of five with three kids and Kristy stares at them creepily . “. . .whenever she sees a family like that, you can almost see a neon light blinking in her head. “CLIENTS. . .CLIENTS. . .CLIENTS.” That’s just not healthy.
She points out they COULD live in Stoneybrook, or know people there, and Claudia scolds her--not for being intrusive or stalkery or rude, but for considering embarrassing the rest of them by interrupting the family in the middle of a “huge, international airport.” On a scale of all the embarrassing things K. Ron has done, would this really rate? At least you’d never see most of these people again.
Mary Anne gets all judgy about the “innocent” family Claudia is trying to shield from the Wrath of K. Ron (Khran?), because experienced sitters would totally be appalled at a couple of restless kids flinging fries at each other and a toddler spilling milk. Wouldn’t that be an elegant dinner Chez Pike? But Kristy deems them unworthy of BSC-clienthood, or something, as the mother takes the milk-drenched toddler off to the bathroom.
Then the dad begins to bang on the table, a noise Mary Anne compares to gunshots. She needs to get out more. She claims to be “a very patient, understanding, tolerant person” but this was TOO MUCH. Jeez, Mary Anne.
The dad bangs on the table again and struggles to his feet, while Mary Anne continues to judge his rudeness. His face turns red and he begins flailing his arms, and finally people snap that something’s wrong as he falls to his knees. Various people say stuff like “it’s a heart attack,” when Sharon comes down enough to realize he’s choking.
But seriously, on the always low bar of Stoneybrook competence, she’s pretty awesome here, sprinting across the cafeteria to administer the Heimlich, while Mary Anne melodramatically thinks “I am watching a man die,” although she’s not too dazed to opine that that the man must have weighed 200 pounds. Anyway, on the fourth -- thrust? the man expels the food from his throat and starts breathing again.
Some restaurant workers show up, and the rest of the BSC are rubbernecking. Mal asks if Mary Anne is all right, and says she thinks Sharon saved that guy’s life.
People start clapping for Sharon as the man sits up. She seems a little puzzled, but beams at MA when she makes her way over and brushes off the praise by saying it was just instinct, and could have been done by anyone who passed a basic first aid course. Strong words from the woman who stores hedge clippers in the breadbox.
The man and his family are hugging, everyone is gossiping and praising Sharon, and Mary Anne has one of those self-centered anxiety guilt trips she does so well, and starts crying. Jessi points out the man is fine, and Mary Anne sobs that she just stood there. Abby, bless her, points out that pretty much everyone did, too. But Mary Anne morbidly thinks about how if Sharon hadn’t been there, he would have died (because apparently the Heimlich is a super secret maneuver no one knows), and his wife and children would have been devastated, and she, Mary Anne, could have done nothing. She wants to say something to the man, but since she can’t think of anything besides “Yeah, that was my stepmom who saved you. I almost fainted, though,” but some combination of shyness and I’d like to think an inkling of sense prevents her. Instead, she scolds herself for being a chicken and broods us into chapter 2.
And the thing is, this could all have been written in an interesting and psychologically realistic way, rooted into Mary Anne’s pre-existing neuroses and tendency to over-empathize. (Although she seems to have forgotten way back in the day how she held herself together fine to get Jenny to the hospital, in the book with the suspiciously similar title.) Instead she just comes off like a Flanderized basketcase.
Chapter 2
Claudia roots around in her closet, producing a “lumpy brown object wrapped in plastic, and a container of green mush.” Abby mixes herself up with Kristy for a moment to call them “boulders and boogers,” and Jessi and Mal find this so hysterical they practically wet themselves. I guess they haven’t heard Kristy do her shtick at lunch every day for twelve years.
Actually, these are “Dawn” snacks Claudia has graciously provided, because Ann has some kind of complex about being incredibly judgy about everyone’s food choices. The brown lump is “yeastless seven-grain molasses bread” and the green mush is “organic mint tabouli.” I’m not sure molasses bread screams health food, but I’m way more perturbed by the second. I love tabouli (and also chocolate!), but I’m a) pretty sure it shouldn’t look like green mush, b) pretty sure mint is part of the standard recipe and c) definitely wouldn’t want to eat it after it had been stored in Claudia’s closet. I’m pretty sure she’d be allowed to keep tabouli in the family fridge.
MA tells us Dawn is the world’s “number-one health food freak” and in evidence of this tells us that Dawn calls hamburgers “processed cow corpses.” Um, that has nothing to do with personally enjoying healthy food and everything to do with being obnoxious. (Also, Dawn will eat all kinds of “processed” foods, like veggie chips and juice, if you package it as “healthy.”) Mary Anne also recounts a time Sharon and Dawn forced Richard to return an entire load of groceries because the produce had been “tainted with chemical insect killer,” and I’m not sure I’d want to eat health food fixed by people who are apparently unaware that produce can be washed. Also, lol at “chemical insect killer,” as if organic pesticides aren’t also, you know, made of chemicals.
Dawn is also passionate about the environment, although apparently not to the point of contemplating her carbon footprint. Mary Anne claims kids at school made fun of Dawn’s environmental principles and I seriously don’t ever remember that happening. They avoided her when she turned into a humorless banshee who attacked people who agreed with her. But really, it’s because Dawn’s an individual.
So, Dawn is back, Claudia plies the rest of them with “real” snacks, and the grand recap begins. Mary Anne launches right into telling us what a bossy freak K. Ron is by saying she refers to the We Heart Kids Club as the We R Lazy Club, because K. Ron is as witty as she is charming. She believes a real club needs order and procedure and officers and dues and tons of pointless bureaucracy. She’s going to be an excellent Domme/middle manager some day.
Then, hilariously, Mary Anne asks us if she’s making Kristy sound unbearable. Well, yes, you are, but mostly because we already know her. She insists Kristy is kind and funny and loyal, even if she loves to be in control. But she doesn’t force them to wear three piece suits and laptops, so that’s almost like she’s a reasonable person, right? (The laptops MUST be a Lerangis detail--I feel they would just blow Ann’s mind too much.)
Blah blah blah Elizabeth and Watson, Brewer mansion madness, although it does have the weird BSC tendency n ot to consider Nannie as part of the family until she moved in.
Mary Anne then goes on to say Claudia, unlike her and Kristy, has the same family since she was born, because I guess Mimi dying didn’t count as a family change. Blah blah Janine the Genius, and then we get a fairly awful anecdote about how the Kishis made sticker charts for the girls when they were little, with yellow stickers for Janine and pink ones for Claudia to earn for every test score over 90, but gave up when they ran out of yellow stickers without opening Claudia’s box. I would say something about what shitty parenting that is (as opposed to, say, setting individual goals for each child) but the whole thing sounds so contrived and out of the blue that Mary Anne may well have hallucinated it.
Oh, Mary Anne DOES remember Mimi and says she and Claudia communicated “beautifully” even though Mimi’s native language was Japanese. The fuck? Mimi was never implied to be anything but fully fluent in English, and had lived in America most of her adult life by the time Claudia was born, so way to be randomly condescending, MA. Mary Anne says Mimi made Claudia realize how special she was because she’s the only Kishi with a talent for art, which is a fairly warped and fucked up way of seeing it (Claudia would still be valuable and lovable even if she couldn’t make earrings out of nail clippings and bubble gum wrappers.) It’s the kind of fucked up that would actually make sense for Mary Anne-- the girl who vowed never to complain about her horrible teacher so Mimi wouldn’t stop loving her--but I have a feeling this is actually some damage of Ann’s.
ANYWAY. Claudia is wearing “an old-fashioned felt hat, a billowy button-down white shirt, a super-wide tie hand-painted with a Hawaiian sunset [?], cuffed khaki shorts, and brown and white “bucks” with white knee highs.” Neither Mary Anne nor I could dream this up, but I think it may haunt my dreams tonight. Also, she “sure doesn’t look like a high-calorie food addict. She’s not an ounce overweight and I’ve never seen a pimple on her face.” Cram it, Ann. Although it’s pretty revealing to refer to her as an “addict.” I give MA a marginal point for only saying Claudia’s eyes are filled with humor, and not throwing in how they are exotic and almond-shaped.
They don’t make Claudia pay the whole phone bill, and I think that’s another thing Ann doesn’t get. Luckily they have Stacey, because she’s the only one with the “patience for all those numbers,” of collecting dues and paying Charlie. I weep for the Stoneybrook school system. Also, MA quickly assures us Stacey doesn’t look like a “math nerd with bad hair and a calculator in each pocket” and claims Stacey proves “stereotypes are stupid.” Well, you’re the one who keeps bringing them up, you dolt. No Stacey outfit (described, I mean; I assume she wasn’t nude) but lately she’s been into clothes that are “angular and urban.” As opposed to elliptical and unincorporated?
Blah blah blah diabetes, with a headdesking detail that Stacey has assured MA her insulin injections are pretty painless, so thank God Mary Anne doesn’t have that to cry over.
Blah blah Abby, with a foreshadowing/plug for Abby the Bad Sport.
Blah blah Jessi and Mal suffer horribly at the hands of their unreasonable parents, forbidding night-sitting and nose jobs. MA says their complaints are entirely true, but complaining is “part of their bond.” HA! Blah blah awkward racial references.
Logan is incredibly handsome and has “a hint of an accent he picked up from his hometown.” That’s not how accents work, MA, but I’ll let it slide since you promised to stop "gushing."
No, seriously, that’s what it says. Lerangis is a dirty birdie.
Shannon allegedly was “dying” to see Dawn, but oops! Drama club rehearsal! Well-played, Kilbourne.
Okay, back to the plot, such as it is. They gossip more about the choking incident and Mary Anne says it was the most scared she’s ever been in her life, and they have a fairly depressing dishfest about their scariest moments--Stacey in the hospital with her diabetes, Mimi having her stroke, Squirt’s car accident, Abby’s dad’s death. Mallory says that when her dad was laid off she thought she’d end up in an orphanage like Oliver Twist, and she has officially become so much the buttmonkey that she is retconning herself to be stupider than she actually was in that book.
Mary Anne repeats her fixation on what would have happened if Sharon wasn’t there, and Dawn scolds her for being morbid. Shut up, Dawn. You’d have gotten off the plane and held a damn seance. After a couple more pages, it occurs to Kristy to order them all to take a first aid class, and I’m honestly amazed she hasn’t thought of it before. Mary Anne thinks this will help her “de-chicken” herself and be Mary Anne the Meek no more. Seriously, honey, just go back to therapy.
Chapter 3
They’re all at “Basic Life Support for Teens,” which is a completely convincing class title, and Mary Anne is freaked out night unto fainting by the photos on the wall, which include a “sliced-up heart” (the hell?) and a photo of someone performing CPR on a baby. Because I guess Stoneybrook Community Center is too hard-core! to use a line illustration chart like everyone else, and I don’t even know what the heart pic is about. I’m pretty sure nothing that can be taught to teens in four sessions should include slicing up hearts.
Mary Anne muses that she has a weak stomach and hates horror movies and the sight of blood, and wonders what she was thinking taking a class covering every “horrible thing that could occur.” Again, therapy.
Also, for no apparent reason Alan Gray, Pete Black, and Irv Hirsch are there. Are they hoping to infilitrate the BSC with subversive activities? The instructor is named Shelley Golden and she is young and glamorous, and the boys are all “har har we have color names,” and she tells them to use their gray matter, so that they don’t regret giving up a golden opportunity when one of them is black and blue, which is apparently the wittiest thing ever said in Stoneybrook.
She tells them she’d like them to volunteer for demonstrations at the Firefighter’s Fair at the end of the month, and Mary Anne freaks out more. It’s called volunteering for a reason, MA.
Kristy yells out something about baby-sitting, Irv asks if Alan can practice CPR on Kristy, and Shelley says he and Alan can practice on each other. Oh, a gay panic joke. Fantastic.
Shelley says that in the moment, you won’t be worriyng about “lip cooties,” but it’s more important to know when to give CPR and when not to. Then she pulls out a bunch of household objects and quizzes them about baby-proofing, more or less, which seems an odd choice for everyone other than the BSC. Do normal teenage boys go around checking babies’ pacifiers for cracks in the nipples? Kristy boasts that the BSC always keeps balloons out of reach, and Alan snarks for me, saying “My hero.” Hee.
Then they talk about choking, which some boy calls the Heinlein maneuver, which definitely sounds like Lerangis. But Shelley asks them a trick question to point out that coughing /=/ choking.
She demonstrates on Alan, while the boys shriek with laughter because it’s the closest he’s ever been to breasts, or something. About this time, Logan comes in and seems “preoccupied” so MA can add that to her “things to obsess about today” list. She’s very organized, you know.
Logan says ominously he needs to tell her something. She and Logan ditch Dawn (hah) and go off to talk in an “isolated corner of the parking lot.” Logan is all teary-eyed, so of course she starts crying, and assumes he’s cheating on her with a high school girl, no a college girl. Gross, Mary Anne. Or he’s moving.
Logan is as much of a drama queen as Mary Anne, so he “suspensefully” drags this out to the next chapter.
Chapter 4
His dad wants to send him to boarding school. Mary Anne is confused by the concept of “sleepaway school,” which seems weird for someone as bookish and old-fashioned as she is. Mr. Bruno apparently went to Conant Academy, out in the wilderness of New Hampshire, and it kind of seems like if he was the sort of gung-ho, “best years of my life” alum, he’d have brought up the concept to Logan sooner. Mary Anne wants to know what’s wrong with the Stoneybrook schools, and I wonder how long she’s got. Mr. Bruno may have a point in thinking his son’s educational time could be spent better than feeding eggs and making tacos at the mall.
Mary Anne wonders if Logan is making this up just to mess with her, which is kind of revealing of their relationship, I think. Anyway, Mr. Bruno also wants to send him to some kind of wilderness/survival boot camp to “build character” by doing sit-ups and carrying shit up mountains and peeing outside and what not.
Mary Anne asks what if he gets eaten by a bear, and Logan quips he’s probably expected to use his newfound character to punch it in the nose. But Logan just wants to play baseball and keep his job at the Rosebud Brothel Cafe of Nubile Underage Busboys.
Mary Anne asks what will happen in September, and Logan says she can visit, like Richard will go for that. Mary Anne says maybe Mr. Bruno will reconsider, and Logan says his mind is made up. “You know the way he is.” MA says they must have had a big fight and Logan says he was too shocked to say much of anything.
They go back to Mary Anne’s house, and MA apologizes to Dawn for ditching her, and Dawn gets all wink-wink-nudge-nudge about Logan and MA needing time alone. Then she realizes they both look upset. She asks what’s wrong and Logan doesn’t want to talk about it, so she passive-aggressively guilt-trips Mary Anne. “Okay, keep your secrets from me. I don’t mind. I’m only your sister.” Shut up, Dawn.
Logan tells her he doesn’t want this to spread any further, and tells Dawn the story. The Dawn, hand to God, says “That’s bad. Listen, can I make you some bancha tea?” The hell?
Can we just tape some bacon to Dawn?
Logan declines and asks if they have YooHoo or Mountain Dew, and Dawn makes a face “like he asked for sewer water,” because her creepy and hypocritical health food campaign is what’s important right now. Mary Anne pours them all raspberry seltzer and asks Logan what his mom thinks about this. Logan says he isn’t sure, but he thinks she isn’t as sold on it as his dad, and Dawn gets all excited about how this means he can play his parents against each other, which Logan declines. Also, he reveals that Conant is single-sex, and Dawn gets all judgy about that, and pressures Logan some more to “work on his mom,” and he says shortly that his family isn’t like that, and his parents already discussed it a lot. He heads home with a weak excuse about helping with Hunter, which is pretty blatantly not wanting to sit and be nagged at by Dawn any more. Mary Anne feels totally destroyed.
Chapter 5
Abby entry about the Hobarts having “hard heads” and Jackie needing full-body amour.
Abby is helping Mathew learn to ride without training wheels while his brothers are jerks, but with “great” Australian accents Mary Anne claims Ben sometimes baby-sits (but. . .he’s not BSC-sanctioned!) but this book looks to have been published concurrently with the one where he competed in a fashion show with Karen Brewer and Claire Pike, so. Anyway, Abby is walking along with Mathew and tries to sneakily let go, and James yells out that she’s not holding him and Mathew freaks and falls down, and while Abby is comforting him, Johnny rides into him on his trike. James calls him a baby as he zooms around on his bike and almost takes out a couple of nannies. Maybe he’s a secret assassin for Kristy to take out the competition. Abby wearily tries to get them all up and not at each other’s throats when Jackie rides up. He’s wearing his helmet, elbow and knee pads, and does a proper hand signal as he turns into the playground, and then immediately gets his pants caught up in the bike chain and falls. The Hobarts laugh at him, which is pretty harsh considering how he was just in the hospital for a bike accident a few books back. Abby says none of them are in the running for a Safe Biker of the Year award. Johnny says there are no safety rules on Mars, and James says safety rules are “dorky.” Abby sensibly says it’s not about dorky or not dorky, it’s about smart and stupid. She tells them about how her dad always used to tell her to watch out for parked cars while she biked and she thought that was dumb, until one day she was racing on her bike and a guy almost took her out with his door, but because her dad had made her make a habit of checking she was able to swerve.
The kids are impressed by this story and Abby muses a bit on how her dad’s advice saved her, and how even if she couldn’t save him, she feels she has a duty to share what he taught her, and it’s actually fairly sweet and straightforward.
Some other kids show up on their bikes (going the wrong way on a one-way street), and she announces they are just in time for Road Safety Day, and bribes them with a promise of free ice cream for anyone who can pass the Stevenson Rules of the Road exam, they cheer, and just like that, she’s in business, KRISTY.
This is shaping up to be a long one, so I’ll sign off here.