“The guest room will serve as my study,” she explained. “I talked to my office and they said they could offer me plenty of freelance work to do at home.”
“Oh, Peaches, that’s perfect,” Mom said, giving her a quick squeeze. “And just what you wanted.”
“That way, if we have a baby, I can still continue to work part-time from here.” Peaches gestured to the nursery with a wan smile. “This room looks pretty empty right now, but Russ and I have agreed to start thinking about trying again.”
I crossed my fingers when she said that and made a secret wish that it would happen soon.
We celebrated the move into their Father Knows Best house (as Russ called it) with a backyard barbecue. Barbecues are usually reserved for summer, but Russ and Peaches insisted we eat outside in the brisk autumn air. (I was glad to see that they’d returned to their kooky ways.) Peaches dug into one of the wardrobe boxes and found funny hats and scarves for all of us. Then Dad brought over our hibachi and we made shish kebabs. Russ even managed to pull out the lawn furniture the movers had stacked in the garage, and all of us watched the sun disappear behind the big golden maple trees that lined their back fence.
On Sunday I called Stacey and asked her to come over. We sat on my bed eating carrots (hers) and chocolate stars (mine), marveling at all that had happened during the last four weeks.
“It’s hard to believe that Peaches and Russ lived with us for a whole month,” I said. “It really only felt like a week or two.”
“You guys sure did a lot,” Stacey said. “I mean, you went on a gigantic shopping spree at Baby and Company, had a late night adventure at Pizza Express —”
“I met Mr. DeSalvio and discovered In Good Taste,” I continued. “Plus I saw some wonderful old movies, and even learned to knit.”
“When are you going to show me your blanket?” Stacey asked. “I’m dying to see it.”
I had been hesitant to show the blanket to anyone but Mary Anne and Peaches before it was completely finished. But I had made some headway during the past week, and it was actually starting to look like a real blanket. I brought it out of my closet and held it up for Stacey to see.
“What do you think?” I asked, hiding my face behind it.
“Oh, Claud, it’s great,” Stacey cried. “I didn’t know it was going to have that block pattern in it. That must be really hard to do.”
“No, not really,” I said with a shrug. “You just knit five, purl five, and then reverse it in the next row.” As I spoke I looked over at Mimi’s portrait and grinned. She would have been proud of me!
“Well, as long as we’re doing show and tell,” Stacey said, hopping off the bed, “I want you to come to my house and see the new hat my dad sent from New York. It’s velvet, with all these patches of different colors, and it has this really cool bead work around the brim.”
“It sounds so cool.”
We walked over to Stacey’s, passing Natalie Springer’s house on the way. Charlotte, Becca, and Natalie were in the driveway playing — what else? — jump rope.
“Those three have practically become inseparable,” I commented as Stacey and I paused to watch them. “All they do is jump rope.”
“And sing those darn rhymes.” Stacey tossed her head from side to side and chanted, “Fudge Fudge. Call the Judge. Momma’s gotta a newborn baby. It ain’t no boy. It ain’t no girl. It’s just an ordinary baby.”
Just then Charlotte shouted, “Wait a minute, Natalie. You have to share, remember? That’s rule number two.”
“Oh, sorry, Char,” Natalie said. “I guess I forgot.” Then she called in my direction, “Rule number six.”
I smiled at Stacey and explained, “Rule number six is, a good friend admits when she’s wrong.”
We waved good-bye to the jump ropers and continued down the street. “You know,” I said, looping my arm through Stacey’s, “I thought this past month was hard, but some really good things came out of it.”
“That’s right. Our Friendship Campaign was a big success.”
“And Peaches and Russ moved back to Stoneybrook, so now we can see them as often as we like.”
Just mentioning Peaches’ name made a lump form in my throat. Stacey squeezed my arm. “Now that they’re settled in their new home, maybe they will be able to have a baby.”
“I hope so,” I whispered to Stacey. “I truly hope so.”
* * *
Dear Reader,
In Claudia and Crazy Peaches, we get to know Aunt Peaches better, and to see the special relationship Claudia has with her aunt. I have three aunts — Aunt Adele, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Merlena — and I have special memories of all of them.
Aunt Martha is my father’s sister-in-law. She and Uncle Lyman used to give my sister and me the best presents. One Christmas, when we were very little, they gave us stockings with garters. They were meant for grown women, and we thought they were hysterical! Another year they gave my sister a red cuckoo clock, and they gave me a music box with two dancing figures under a glass dome. I still have the music box.
Aunt Merlena, my mother’s sister-in-law, was my only aunt who lived nearby. And she loved arts and crafts as much as I did. We made puppets together once, she showed me how to make doll clothes, and one summer day she invited me over especially so that we could make my birthday party invitations together.
Aunt Adele is my father’s sister, and we are extremely close. We talk on the phone a lot, and we share a love of sewing and needlework. We exchange patterns in the mail, we give each other sewing tips, but mostly we just enjoy talking. I’m very lucky to have three such wonderful aunts — maybe that’s where the idea for Claudia and her wonderful aunt came from.
Happy reading,
* * *
The author gratefully acknowledges
Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner
for their help in
preparing this manuscript.
About the Author
ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.
There are currently over 176 million copies of The Baby-sitters Club in print. (If you stacked all of these books up, the pile would be 21,245 miles high.) In addition to The Baby-sitters Club, Ann is the author of two other series, Main Street and Family Tree. Her novels include Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life, On Christmas Eve, Everything for a Dog, Ten Rules for Living with My Sister, and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far). She is also the coauthor, with Laura Godwin, of the Doll People series.
Ann lives in upstate New York with her dog and her cats.
Copyright © 1994 by Ann M. Martin
Cover art by Hodges Soileau
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC, THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
First edition, September 1994
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
e-ISBN 978-0-545-76848-1
Ann M. Martin, Claudia and Crazy Peaches
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