Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies Part 2
Eggs? Still not babies.
The BSC? Horrible.
Snark? Long and lolcatty.
Chapter 6
And now we go full on through the looking glass. Kristy notebook entry about sitting for four children at the Papadakises. Wha? How can this be?
Of course, it’s her damn egg baby, her “son,” Izzy, with her “husband” Alan Gray. She claims Izzy confused the kids “but what would you expect”? Actually, at this point Linny and Hannie are in the running for “sanest people in Stoneybrook," including the alleged adults.
Anyway, MA gives us some backstory on the Kristy/Alan feud and describes the marriage as “unfortunate,” saying Kristy “had a cow.” I’m sure Ann was super-proud of herself for that deft use of slang. Also, Kristy has Alan and Dawn has some random named Aaron Albright who she doesn’t like--is this a rejection of them by all the boys in their class? Hottie Stacey nabbed Austin Bentley with his luxury car names, after all.
But it turns out Alan is deeply disturbed a dedicated and enthusiastic father, who dreamily bestows the name “Izzy” on their son, over Kristy’s gender-normative protests. In a chilling glimpse of K. Ron’s future, she and Alan have put their egg in a shoebox “environment” lined with flannel, complete with a tiny music box to develop Izzy’s musical sensibilities and little educational pictures on the sides to stimulate intellectual development. Of an egg.
See, if I had been forced to do this in middle school, I MIGHT have made a fancy box for my egg to live in with leftover doll accessories, but it would have been to the extent it amused me, not as part of a folie a deux. Kristy even claims to read to her egg at night, and this is genuinely kind of creepy. Maybe you could try reading to EMILY MICHELLE, Kristy, if you feel the need.
Allegedly there are still some sane people in Modern Living who think this is a pain in the ass, but Kristy and Alan fight over who gets the most Izzy time. This apparently makes them “conscientious.” I’m not sure assuming it would just be A-OK to bring your infant to work with you is particularly educational, realistic, or responsible.
Kristy makes a Big Damn Deal of “introducing” her egg to the P kids, including Sari who is just up from a nap and sitting in her high chair, even though there’s no mention of her being given any food. Kristy acts like they are really dumb for not getting it, but when someone shows you an egg and says “This is my son,” I think asking if they mean their pretend son is a pretty rational response.
Kristy goes on and on about her feeding schedule when Alan calls up, which is also kind of creepy, and grills her about how Izzy is doing. She says he’s napping and Alan frets their EGG is getting scrawny. Kristy says he eats enough, but he seemed “really shy” when she first got there. Jesus wept. I don’t even know how to respond to that.
Also, I like how this assignment is actively making the baby-sitters less responsible, since Kristy has no problem tying up the client’s phone line for ten to twenty minutes to discuss the socialization of AN EGG. The kids get bored and Kristy barely even looks at them as Linny lifts Sari out of her high chair and they go off to the playroom. I really don’t even know what to do with this information. Except possibly suggest that Alan’s constant need for attention, even negative attention, and his willingness to take Kristy’s abuse speaks to a deep emotional void in his life.
Kristy quits her yakking and heads to the playroom, then realizes she left Izzy in the kitchen. Or did she? Because Izzy is GONE! She looks around the kitchen, like does she think the egg got up and walked away? Then she runs up to the playroom and shrieks like a banshee--the “environment is there, but no Izzy. Linny says he wanted to show Izzy the playroom (oh whatever) and held him very carefully and tightly. Kristy shrieks more at the last part, like does she think she wouldn’t notice a big egg stain on the floor? Linny put Izzy down to look at his bottle cap collection or something, and Kristy orders them to search. Linny and Hannie make various egg-related jokes and puns, the best of which is probably “If I were an egg, where would I go?” “The refrigerator.” But they are nine and seven, and not acting like it’s a real baby, so I cut them a lot of slack on the puns.
Meanwhile, Kristy is tearing up the playroom and ignoring the children who are not treating her “missing child” with the respect it deserves. Finally she says passive-aggressively that SARI will help her look, and notices that Sari is playing with a doll blanket and behold! Izzy is underneath. Apparently you can’t take your eyes off an egg, but it’s totally legit to be totally unaware of what a two-year-old is doing. Ace baby-sitting, there.
Kristy still acts like a jerk when Linny says he still thinks the whole thing is stupid. Also, in a fine model of co-parenting, she decides not to tell Alan about Izzy’s near escape. ( I’m pretty sure in the next book they’re back at each other’s throats, anyway.)
Chapter 7
I’m sure you will all be relieved to know Mary Anne and Logan’s egg has a name. They bickered over it for several days, with Logan wanting the “much too plain” Sally and Mary Anne pulling for Tara (a Gone with the Wind reference or a hat tip to Mary Anne’s eventual coming out?) They compromise on Samantha, AKA Sammie, and paint a one-inch pink letter S on the shell. For some reason, Scholastic thought we needed a visual aid, in case we somehow were reading this book without knowing what an ‘S’ looks like. Also, this apparently fucked up the layout so the chapter heading is significantly lower than usual and it’s freaking me out.
Anyway, Mary Anne says the paint makes the egg “beautiful. Our beautiful daughter.” Mary Anne is going to be a terrifying mother. Logan is no better, as Mary Anne insists he is a “natural father” based on how much he enjoys carrying around Sammie’s white wicker basket around school.
But then he hands off the basket to MA, saying he promised to take Kerry and Hunter to the park and he doesn’t want Sammie to get “too much sun.” I would roll my eyes, but since they have to carry these raw eggs around for a month (disgusting) he may have a point. And I will need all my eye-rolling energy for what is coming. This chapter is pretty maddening.
Mary Anne is supposed to sit for the Salems again, but says it shouldn’t be a problem. “It’ll probably be easier for me to take care of three infants than for you to take care one infant and two active kids.”
I can’t even deal with this level of stupid. First of all, IT’S AN EGG. Secondly, even if it wasn’t, NO WAY are three infants easier to take care of than an infant, a five-year-old, and a nine-year-old.
Mary Anne insists three babies can’t be any harder than two, and then in the next paragraph says she discovers even two could be. . .a nightmare. On the one hand, there’s some definite schadenfreude in her getting schooled. On the other, it’s kind of offensive what a drama queen she is over a couple of hours with fussy babies. This is not nightmare territory. Also, I saw a pair of adorable seven-month-old twins in a stroller on the train the other day and I keep picturing them as the Salems and getting even more mad at MA.
We open in media res at the Salems, and I kind of wish we had seen MA explain her egg to Mrs. Salem. Because if, in some Bizzaro World, I was leaving my infant twins with a thirteen-year-old who showed up with an egg in a basket chirping it was her baby, I would laugh in her face.
Anyway, Mary Anne is in the kitchen “feeding” Sammie when Ricky wakes up crying, as if a baby waking up crying is a totally unheard of event. She tells her egg it will have to finish its bottle later, and admits to us this is bad parenting. Oh, we’re just starting you afternoon of fail, honey. She carries Sammie’s basket upstairs and finds an unhappy Ricky sitting (no, Ann) at one end of the crib in tears. She puts the basket on the changing table and paces around the room holding Ricky until his crying starts to disturb Rose, and goes out in the hall, but zut alors! She left Sammie on the changing table, which is a no-no. I WISH the eggs were as alive as Mary Anne and Co think, because then Sammie might swan dive off the table.
Mary Anne goes back in the bedroom and Rose wakes up, and Mary Anne whines to the babies “Hey, come on, you guys. I can’t hold both of you.” I wonder if it ever occurred to Mary Anne (or Ann) to ask Mrs. Salem how she totes the babies around all day. She decides the babies are hungry, so somehow or other she gets them all downstairs, thinking the twins can feed themselves while she feeds Sammie. Um, no.
Mary Anne insists this was a fine theory (except not to someone familiar with actual infant development) but in reality, Rose continued to “fuss,” forcing MA to hold Sammie in her lap and hold Rose’s bottle for her, like how very dare that infant not be self-sufficient. Then Ricky flings his bottle to the ground and after MA retrieves it, immediately does it again. Attaboy, Ricky. Fight the power! MA huffily decides her egg has eaten enough and stands between the twins’ high chairs holding their bottles.
Then she sarcastically tells them they look “delightful.” Horrors! The babies have (gasp!) rumpled t-shirts, damp diapers, and tear-stained cheeks. “Time to fix you up,” she says decisively. I shudder.
She gets them back upstairs “with great difficulty” and sets the basket on the window sill, dumps Rose in her crib, and sets Ricky on the changing table. (That said, if I have twins, I think I'm investing in a downstairs changing table. That's a LOT of trips up and down.) He cries the entire time she changes him, italics hers. So does Rose, when she swaps them. She asks if they are sick, but decides they aren’t feverish. I would think a self-proclaimed expert on babies might consider the possibility infants six or seven months might be teething, considering it’s something they gave Mal so much grief over back in the day. Or, you know, maybe they’re having a “bad day,” because they woke up from their naps to find they were left to the mercy of a crazy, incompetent person paying more attention to an egg instead of their mommy.
She decides to go for a walk, and obviously they need to be dressed up to the nines for this. “I removed two lovely outfits from the closet. For Rose, a white ruffled dress with matching panties and a hat, and her pink shoes. For Ricky, a frog jumpsuit with a matching shirt and hat, and his tiny high-topped sneakers.”
The babies “eyed the clothes warily,” and then burst into tears. I like you, twins. I would never neglect you for an egg. Mary Anne grudging dresses them in clean t-shirts, pants, and socks, with no hats or shoes and for Rose “no earrings or frills.” The hell? I know there are some cultures and people who pierce infants’ ears, but they don’t usually put lots of different kinds of earrings on them right? And anything besides studs would be a big choking hazard, right? The fuck, MA.
She puts them in the stroller, grumbling “they weren’t happy, but they were quiet,” as they sniffle and hiccup. Poor babies. She hangs Sammie’s basket on the stroller handles and tells herself she hasn’t neglected HER EGG too much. I despair.
Rose begins moaning and thrashing in her seat, and rather than checking on her, MA decides it’s time for a “distraction technique” and points out a bird. “Ba!” Rose says, or she didn’t, because she is six or seven months, ANN. I know Gabbie Perkins would have identified the bird’s species and written down the sighting in her Audubon notebook, but this is Rose.
They stop next to a garden and Mary Anne points out the flowers. “Ricky reached for a tulip, got a grip on the stem, and pulled,” uprooting the plant. BULLSHIT, Ann. Have you ever seen a baby in a stroller? Or, for that matter, a baby? Or a garden? Babies' arms are not that long, and tulips are not that tall, and people don’t plant tulips on the exact edge of their lawn. But even if MA pushed the stroller right into the flowerbed, I STILL call bullshit on a six or seven month old even being able to see, grip, and pull hard enough to uproot a flower that quickly.
Mary Anne responds by shrieking “No!” at Ricky and burying the flower under some mulch, panicking that someone could have seen. Granted, if I saw a baby with a three-foot-arm emerging from a stroller to pick a tulip, I might have some concerns. Also, way to show responsibility, hiding the evidence and all. That’s a great example. She yells at Ricky more “for good measure,” and both babies burst into tears at the terrifying, yelling person they are stuck with. She hurries away with her stroller of crying babies and thinks if Logan were home, she might call him to get Sammie, but brave little martyr that she is, pushes on.
Goddamn, this chapter is long. At home, she tells Dawn about the job and Dawn agrees it was a nightmare, and MA says it could have been worse. Dawn asks “What, if the house had burned down?” Um. Ironic foreshadowing? MA can’t think of how it could have been worse, but falls back on saying it isn’t realistic to have to take care of three babies at once.
Uh, first of all, it wasn’t THREE babies. It was TWO babies and a fucking egg.
Secondly, have you MET Mrs. Pike? Who at one point had FIVE kids under three? Or for that matter, almost any of the numerous families with kids two years or less apart? (I would tend to think two under two is actually harder than twins. Also, there is a woman my mom knows who was undergoing fertility treatments AND pursuing adoption. While they were finalizing the adoption, she got pregnant with twins, and then less than six months later got pregnant again.)
Finally, babies fussing--not even crying for two or three hours--is not a nightmare. They didn’t immediately throw up the contents of their bottles. They didn’t have enormous poops that squished out of their diapers. They weren’t feverish. It wasn’t pouring rain so that you didn’t have the option of putting them in their stroller. And all of those STILL fall under normal parenting days. Shut up, girls.
Anyway, Mary Anne admits it was maybe a tiny bit silly to think three infants would be no problem because they can’t walk, but she still totally wants a little sister, or “even a little brother would be okay.” Well, that’s a totally mature and love-based perspective.
Dawn agrees, and dramatically tells Mary Anne the Kumbel catalog has arrived, and Mary Anne demonstrates her maturity by shrieking like a banshee. The Kumbel catalog sells EVERYTHING. Is this an expy of the Sears Roebuck catalog? Are we now back in 1900 instead of 1950?
I will say, even at thirteen, I liked looking at baby catalogs. (My mom got tons of catalogs. One I kept track for a month and the average was about seventeen a day, with a high of 37). Especially the Hanna Andersson catalog--I don’t know if it’s the Nordic air, or the Scandinavian health care system, or what, but those babies are crazy adorable. But I did not scream with pleasure when one arrived.
Dawn brings in the catalog and Mary Anne creepily turns right to the baby section, and they moan orgasmically over cribs and dressers. Mary Anne wonders if a baby would make them roomies again, euphemistically noting it had not gone well, but Dawn blithely gives away Jeff’s room. Happy again, Mary Anne squeals over a lamp with a stars-and-moon lampshade and says “Tara” would have to have it. Three voices says “Tara?” Oops! Richard and Sharon have overheard them again, and once again say “No way” to an aby-bay ister-say. “Double darn,” says Mary Anne. How eloquent.
Chapter 8
BSC meeting. MA tries to claim there are three infants in attendance and parenthetically (also pathetically) admits they were eggs. Claudia’s egg, who is never once seen in person, is with his father, and there is no mention of Dawn’s at all. So we have Sammie, Izzy, and Stacey’s egg Bobby, in a mixing bowl. Stacey’s “husband” is Austin Bentley, and MA goes into a fairly amusing aside about how Austin would have trouble choosing between Stacey and Claudia to be either’s fulltime boyfriend. Polyamory, BSC-style.
Claudia, ever the gracious hostess, has set up a “nursery” on her dresser, surrounded by pillows in case one of the eggs decides it can’t take it anymore and jumps off. Seriously, how the fuck is an egg in a mixing bowl or a basket going to fall off?
Mallory suggests they just put the eggs and their homes on the floor, and Kristy snottily says it’s too drafty. Jessi asks how their “kids” are doing, but before anyone can answer, Kristy barks the meeting to order.
There is no club business, so Mary Anne tearfully announces that Logan is “hogging” Sammie, and this is the first day she has had the egg since she sat for the “Tragedy Twins.” Mary Anne does not deserve to sit for babies. How rude.
Stacey giggles at the “Tragedy Twins,” and MA is too depressed to even laugh at her own non-funny joke.
Claudia takes a call from Bobby Gianelli’s dad, who somehow didn’t think an association with Karen was a blaring warning sign he should have heeded. Stacey takes the job, and then, in a near-brush with common sense, asks MA why she wants to spend so much damn time with an egg anyway.
Mary Anne gasps and insists Sammie is “our daughter!” and Stacey tells her to get a grip. Mary Anne snippily reminds her about Mrs. Boyden’s mind control forbidding them to call an egg an egg and Stacey says she and Austin are following the assignment to the letter, and switching off egg-duty every night, but it’s an enormous pain in her perfect ass. On Monday she took Bobby shopping with her mom, figuring a baby would need new diapers and undershirts pretty often, so she lugged the bowl around four departments looking at baby thermometers and sneakers and bottles and “baby minders” (monitors?) and blankets and notes that babies need a lot of equipment. Well, yeah, but it isn’t all being constantly replaced, and you don’t need it all at once. And I’m not even sure I understand Bellairs having FOUR baby departments: furniture, clothes, toys, and equipment, maybe? I don’t know why they would all be totally separate, though.
That said, if I were teaching this dumb class, instead of having kids contemplate whether a baby needs a new mobile every month (nope), to figure out how many diapers a baby goes through in a week, see how much a package costs, and do some math.
Mary Anne insists shopping for baby things is fun, but Stacey is pissed she had no time to look for leggings, jellies, and jumpsuits for herself. Mary Anne wants to disagree, but can’t think of a “nice” way. I’ve always felt this book is really lacking a knock-down, drag-out fight where Mary Anne and Kristy viciously judge the less insane and obsessive “parenting” of their friends. Can you imagine the kind of mommy-blogging they would do? Or the posts they would put up on booju_newju? It would be AMAZING.
Mary Anne whines more about Logan hogging Sammie, and Mal giggles. I would worship her right now if she were openly mocking the other fuckwits in the club, but instead she’s laughing at a dumb “bacon and eggs” joke the voices in her head told her. Jessi laughs, too, and the older girls glare and judge them until Claudia says “You guys don’t understand. You aren’t parents yet.” MY GOD. This level of delusion is genuinely frightening.
Kristy frets that Izzy is getting spoiled--not from “too much attention” (shut up, Mary Anne), but spoiling, from being a raw egg out of the refrigerator for however many days. “Kristy is forever asking me to smell disgusting things. I don’t know why she thinks I’ll do it.” I’ll just leave that there. Although after I drag my mind out of the gutter, I wonder how Mary Anne would handle checking to see if a baby had a dirty (not just wet) diaper. “Brave Dawn” sniffs Kristy’s egg (um) and says it’s fine, and Kristy grumbles.
Then Mallory and Jessi ask the older girls what marriage is like. I wish to God they were subtly trolling them on their ridiculousness, but they seem to be serious. Stacey says communication is important, and Kristy says you have to agree and trust your husband. I really wish the next time she gets in an Alan Gray-related snit someone would remind her of this. Mary Anne claims being married is expensive, which has jackshit to do with anything. Housing and groceries are still expensive if you’re single. Babies are expensive, but fake-feeding an egg in no way demonstrates this.
Jessi complains that no one has mentioned love, and instead of saying, “yeah, well, that’s what happens when you get mass-married in second period and handed an egg,” the girls contemplate that perhaps this is the sole missing element in their simulation. Mary Anne insists she DOES love Logan, and it’s still hard (because you are both emotionally warped) and if she didn’t “love” him they could never be “married” and raise a “child.”
Before I :headdesk: myself into a concussion, Logan calls and interrogates MA about whether Sammie has eaten and whether the room is too cold, and she passive-aggressively calls him “dear.” She hangs up and Stacey, Kristy, and MA “feed” their eggs, and Kristy says if they were real babies, they would have to stop and prepare formula, and they are “getting off easy.” Or you could breastfeed, but then MA would forget to feed her “baby” because she’d be too focused on everyone’s boobs.
Mary Anne whines that she still wants Logan to stop hogging Sammie, and Claudia says he’s just “overprotective,” and MA broods there’s a “lot of that going around.” I’m more worried about the levels of mass delusion, myself.
Jessi sensibly tells them they should be glad it’s only a school project, and they aren’t real babies, and Mal agrees that they’re lucky it’s only a month. She remembers when Mrs. P was pregnant with Claire and how tired she was, and Kristy says condescendingly Mrs. Pike had six other kids. Um. Is Kristy saying that when Mallory was SIX she was already promoted to slave labor status and no longer counted as a child?
Mal insists that pregnancy itself is exhausting, as is caring for a newborn. And for real, Mallory’s whole damn life has practically been babies, and Jessi is the only one who was old enough to really remember a newborn sibling coming home, so perhaps the older girls should STFU. Instead, MA wonders if Sharon could handle being busier and “tireder” with her job and a new baby, but brushes it off saying that Sharon would only have to do one-third of the “normal mothering.” I can’t even. I wonder if that means she thinks Richard has to do all the “normal fathering” because she and Dawn are both girls, or if like Ann and most of the Brook, she thinks fathers are negligible in childcare, which would be pretty obnoxious from a girl RAISED SOLELY BY HER FATHER TO AGE THIRTEEN. She brattily says that now her Dad and Sharon just need to come to their senses. I think she may actually be worse than Karen in this book.
Chapter 9
Stacey entry is a relief, even for a bizarre chapter. Alicia Gianelli turns out to be terrified of Stacey’s “son.” Stacey says an egg phobia seems odd, especially one specific to eggs-in-mixing-bowls-with-names, but she was terrified of pigeons when she was five. Pigeons are hella scarier than eggs.
Stacey arrives at the Gianellis and sees a “child sleeping, please knock” sign over the doorbell. She does so and is greeted by Mr. G, who lets her in and asks about the mixing bowl, but it turns out he used to be a teacher, so he knows about the egg-sitting project. Alicia is napping and Bobby is not home from school yet, and it’s kind of creepy to me how often BSC clients leave their napping children to find sitters when they wake up, especially brand new sitters.
Stacey sits at the table and monologues to her egg, telling it to “pretend I’m feeding you.” Ha. She says Austin will take the egg tonight instead of tomorrow, because somehow the effort of carrying an egg and holding it for “feeding” every once in awhile has led to her being massively behind on her week. What a convenient excuse.
Alicia comes in and hears Stacey talking to a mixing bowl, and is a little perturbed. Stacey says she bets what is in the bowl will surprise her, pulls back the washcloth blanket with a flourish, and Alicia bursts into tears. “I don’t like that thing!’ she wails.
Before Stacey has figured this out, Bobby comes in and greets everyone, showing no interest in his sister’s hysteria until she tells him to look in the bowl. He pronounces the egg “weird,” and pours himself a glass of milk. (Take note, Pike parents!). Stacey explains the project and adds as finale her egg is named Bobby. Bobby isn’t impressed.
Stacey asks Bobby what he wants to do and he ignores her several times, then acts like he thought she was talking to her egg. He says he wants to play football with the other kids and goes to change clothes, and yells from the stair if he can bring Bobby with him. Alicia is VERY disturbed about the two Bobbys, while Stacey frets over telling Human Bobby he cannot play football with a damn egg. There’s some tedious “who’s on first” banter as Stacey tries to establish whether Alicia is scared of Bobby-the-egg, or all eggs, or what, and apparently seeing the egg “in a bed” is just too much for her. That’s kind of weird.
Bobby comes down in sweats and a bike helmet and announces he’s ready to play football with the egg and Stacey freaks a bit. I’d think a seven-year-old should be able to grasp the basic physics of why eggs don’t play football, but Bobby has been taught by Ms. Colman, so maybe not. Instead of saying the egg could break, Stacey vaguely says the egg is her responsibility and asks Bobby if he understands. He doesn’t, but he doesn’t really care, and announces he’ll be across the street. Stacey does not bother to watch that he crosses safely or check who he’s playing with or anything.
Alicia wants to go to the brook (not the Brook), but not with the egg, and since she seems truly upset, Stacey calls Austin, who luckily is home and comes to relieve her of egg custody. I suppose if it were Kristy she’d have staged some kind of “Love my Egg-Baby” intervention instead of accepting this is a pretty stupid hill to die on.
Once the egg is handed off, Stacey and Alicia go to the brook, and Stacey muses on how hard it must be to be a single parent, and not have someone to help you out. Later that night she tells Mary Anne she wonders if it scares Maureen to be on her own, although what I notice is that as of yet, Maureen still hasn’t found a job. Mary Anne says all parents worry, and Stacey says it’s still harder to be a single parents, and MA somewhat non sequitirs to tell Stacey it’s okay if she worries about her mom. Ultimately, Stacey says she wants to be “really old” before she has a human baby, which is the closest to sanity we’re going to get in this book.
Chapter 10
This chapter. Ack.
Mary Anne whines that since having their “baby,” she and Logan haven’t been able to spend time alone together, because you can’t “easily” take an infant to Pizza Express or a diner or a coffee shop. Yes, MA, but you don’t have a baby, you have an egg. She says dismissively it “just didn’t seem like a great idea,” and besides, they would have to feed and hold and “occupy” Sammie which would defeat the purpose. The fuck? You can’t have a conversation while holding an egg?
Also, this project has been about two weeks. How many dates do they normally go out on during that timespan?
On Friday, Logan suggests just the two of them should go to a movie, even though he hates to leave Sammie behind. Oy. Mary Anne says Logan is taking the project more seriously than almost everyone else, not that she has any grip on reality. “If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he cared more about Sammie than me.” Um. She says she’ll take care of everything and he agrees to meet her at 6:30.
But oh no! When he arrives Mary Anne still has Sammie in her basket! He demands to know what Sammie is doing, and MA says “sleeping?” and then says they can’t leave her. Logan is appalled she didn’t get a sitter, and she whines that Richard and Sharon have dinner plans and Dawn is sitting for the Braddocks. Yeah, but it’s FRIDAY, so you must have just been at BSC headquarters, MA. Hire one of your damn friends. Call it a playdate. Unlike human babies, it isn’t harder to watch two eggs than one.
Logan suggests they call Claudia, but Mary Anne whines it’s too late and they’ll miss the beginning of the movie and why can’t they just take her? Logan is appalled at taking an infant to a movie theater. But you don’t have an infant, Logan, you have an EGG. An infant would cry and disturb other people who paid for their tickets, and the noise and crowds could distress an actual baby. None of this applies to an EGG.
Logan asks when Sammie is due to be fed and MA says in the middle of the movie, but it’s okay because one of them will be holding her anyway, and Logan passive-aggressives, “One of us will be.” They truly are a match made in hell. MA is puzzled by this, but is too busy juggling the basket, her “pocketbook,” and about fifteen extra sweaters she brought. I often find movie theaters too cold, but I’ve never brought an entire dresser drawer.
Logan asks if Mary Anne is hungry and takes her order, to prove he has Grown and Matured. She wants a small popcorn and small diet coke, and for himself he orders a giant popcorn, a giant diet coke, and a box of peanut M&Ms. I don’t really see why they couldn’t share the popcorn, at least. Mary Anne complains all that food costs a fortune and it’s too hard to carry with Sammie and the dozen sweaters, even with a cardboard tray. MA says if they were really married, they could have payed their electrical bill with what they spent on tickets and food (o rly?) so isn’t it GOOD they didn’t hire a sitter, too? Logan says he guesses they needed a splurge, but sounds doubtful, even though he’s the one buying overpriced cinema food.
No, little kitteh, it only gets worse.
They find three empty seats on the side of the theater, and MA puts Sammie’s basket down on one of the seats, but it isn’t heavy enough to hold the seat down, so it closes back up, with the basket inside. Mary Anne screams. Logan almost drops the “spilly sodas” and popcorn, and yells at her, and she huffily apologizes and retrieves the basket, with Sammie, unharmed. Logan says he KNEW this was a bad idea and orders her to hold Sammie, but she whines she can’t because then she can’t hold her food. She piles the sweaters and Logan’s coat on the empty chair and sets the basket on top and settles in with her fucking popcorn.
Then a man comes by and asks if that seat is taken, pointing out the theater is getting crowded. They grumblingly admit it is not, and rearrange themselves, and Mary Anne whines more about how she can’t eat and hold Sammie. He grumbles he can’t either, and he has more food, so Mary Anne puts the basket on the ground. The man in the third seat asks them to kindly stfu, while Logan hisses they can’t put Sammie on the ground. It’s an egg, in a damn basket. MA insists it will be fine, and the basket is between her feet, so she will know if anyone tries to eggnap her. I truly can’t even.
The man asks if they are going to talk through the whole movie, or just the first portion, and Logan sasses “just this first portion,” but under his breath. Big man, Bruno.
The unnamed movie is “funny and exciting,” and Logan seems more relaxed until Mary Anne’s foot falls asleep and she shifts her legs, then checks on Sammie. She is gone!
WTF. I don’t think Ann understands how objects move in space. Eggs do not jump out of baskets of their own accord. Unless, as I previously hypothesized, these eggs actually contain demon parasites.
Logan blames Mary Anne for “losing [their] daughter” and they whisper fight until an usher comes by with a flashlight and finds the egg under the seat. I hope the man in the third seat demands a refund.
Logan says they should hardboil their egg, which the much cooler Sunnydale students deemed as cheating, and announces they are leaving. Logan grabs the basket and Mary Anne cries it was her turn for the egg, and Logan calls her an unfit egg parent, and then whines that he doesn’t WANT to take care of her again, but he has to do all the work, GOD. Mary Anne insists that’s because he takes her without asking, and he passive-aggressively changes his stance and tells her to take the egg, and Mary Anne, Queen of Passive-Agressiva, flounces with spite, saying she won’t take Sammie if Logan doesn’t trust her. Can we get King Solomon in here to make a frittata or something? They both huff off to call for separate rides home, and part two of this book is finally over.