Switcharound (2 page)

"He's still there," she reassured her mother. "He didn't get lost."

Together they walked on toward Gate 45. At each gate they could read the destinations of the airplanes. San Francisco. Denver. Honolulu. If only her father lived in Honolulu, Caroline thought;
then
she wouldn't mind visiting him for the summer. Heck, she'd even visit him for the
winter
if he lived in Honolulu.

"Now," said her mother, as they reached Gate 45, "your boarding pass is with your ticket. And I hate to tell you this, but you and your brother are sitting next to each other."

"Who gets the window?" Caroline asked suspiciously.

"I can't remember which one has the window seat. But you can switch halfway there, to make it fair. Where
is
J.P.?" Joanna Tate peered down the long corridor. "I thought he was right behind us."

"Listen!" Caroline grabbed her mother's arm. "They said your name."

They listened. Sure enough, the public-address system was saying in its monotonous voice, "Joanna Tate. Please report to the security checkpoint."

Caroline trotted along beside her mother as they hurried back to the place where they had last seen J.P. waiting in line. And there he still was. But he was surrounded by a cluster of uniformed airport officials. His pockets were turned inside out, and the contents—a jackknife, some small screwdrivers, and a pair of needlenose pliers—were in front of him on a tray. They were the things J.P.
always
carried in his pocket; Caroline knew that because when she did the laundry, she sometimes had to dump them out if he had forgotten.

In front of him, on a table, his small suitcase was open. Two men were examining the contents, and their faces were grim. Carefully they removed the broken alarm clock that J.P. had retrieved from a trash can. Then they took out the radio with the missing dials. One man poked suspiciously at the tangle of wires which protruded from a pocket of the suitcase.

"What's the trouble?" asked Joanna Tate in a worried voice.

"Mom!" said J.P. "That's my mom and my sister," he explained to the men, in relief.

"Gentlemen," announced Caroline loudly, "we have never seen this person before in our lives."

J.P. stared at the clouds. Beside him, Caroline stared at the back of the seat in front of her. Finally she turned to her brother.

"You'll get it back," she said. "They said you'd get it back in Des Moines. It was only that you couldn't carry it on the plane. It's down with our other suitcases."

J.P. frowned. "I know," he said. "But it's all my valuable stuff. And you sure weren't any help, Caroline. For a minute I thought they were going to haul me off to jail."

"I said I was sorry," Caroline told him.

A stewardess appeared beside their seats. "Want anything to drink?" she asked.

Caroline and J.P. took two ginger ales and sipped.

"I
am
sorry, too," Caroline admitted finally. "I'm sorry I did that, back at the gate. You know what, J.P.?"

"What?" He stirred his ice cubes with a straw.

"I've been thinking. You and I have always been enemies, right?"

"Right."

"At home we're always plotting rotten things to do to each other," Caroline pointed out.

J.P. nodded. He grinned. "Like the time I hot-wired the coat hangers in your closet, so that every time you reached for something to wear, you got a shock."

"Exactly," Caroline acknowledged, remembering the incident. "And then I hid a centerfold from
Playboy
inside your math book, so when you opened your book in class, Miss October popped out, and Mr. Jacobsen made you stay after school and explain—"

"Yeah, that was really stupid, Caroline. I don't even
like
girls. The only thing I like in
Playboy
is the science fiction and the car stuff. Remember how I got even? I wired up that burglar alarm on your locker at school, so when you opened it to get your books out—"

"Right. And then I—wait a minute, J.P. Let me tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that in Des Moines, you and I shouldn't waste a lot of valuable time being enemies. We should maybe take a summer vacation from being enemies. We should team up."

"What do you mean, team up? You're not going to try to get me to play baseball, Caroline—"

"No, no," Caroline reassured him. "I just meant we should stick together. Because there will be
other
enemies in Des Moines."

"Dad, for one," said J.P. gloomily. "If he calls me 'fella' just once—just
once—
"

"And his wife. I can't remember her name. She wasn't so bad, but she's always on his side," Caroline said.

"His wife's name is Lillian. Don't forget that I have a photographic memory, Caroline. Anything you want remembered, just ask me."

"Their kid. That obnoxious little kid. He had some weird name—what was it?" Caroline asked. "Was it Butchie?"

J.P. choked on the last piece of ice. He sputtered, laughing. "You can't remember the kid's name?"

"No. Dutchy?"

J.P. doubled over. "I'm not going to tell you. Wait till you find out, though. They'll be at the airport, and the kid will be there, and Dad will say something like, 'You remember our son—' and you wait, Caroline, you
see
if you can keep a straight face. I
dare
you to keep a straight face."

Caroline sighed. "I'm pretty good at straight faces," she said. "Anyway, you see what I mean, J.P.? It's you and me against
them.
So I think we ought to call off our own war, just for the summer."

"Détente," announced J.P.

"What?"

"You ought to pay more attention in school, Caroline," he said. "Or read the newspapers. When two countries that have been enemies decide to try being friends, it's called détente."

"Like the United States and Russia?" Caroline asked.

J.P. nodded. "We might as well try it," he said.

"The Tate Détente," Caroline pronounced. "It sounds pretty impressive."

"You want to shake hands?" her brother asked.

She looked at him suspiciously. "You don't have your hands hot-wired, do you, so I'll get a shock?"

J.P. exhibited his hands, palms up. "They took all my electronic equipment away, remember?"

Caroline shook his hand solemnly. Then she giggled suddenly when she thought of something.

"I have a toast," she said, and held up her empty ginger ale glass. J.P. tapped his glass against hers.

"To us," Caroline announced. "To the United Tates of America!"

"You won't be able to miss our car," Herbert Tate announced as he carried the two suitcases across the parking lot. The gleaming parked cars all shimmered in the bright sunlight. It was so hot that the asphalt was steaming, and the air seemed blurred in front of Caroline's eyes.

Of course, she had a particular problem that might be affecting her eyes. She was still trying to keep a straight face. She had told J.P. that she was pretty good at straight faces. And she
was,
ordinarily. But this was an unusual situation. When her father had said, as Caroline and J.P. got off the plane, "You remember our son—" and then gone on to say it—out loud—that
name
—well, she had been having a very tough time, ever since, with her face. She was having to bite the inside of her lips very hard.

"Why?" asked J.P. He was walking beside Caroline, clutching his clanking suitcase. "Why won't we be able to miss your car? I don't even know what kind of car you have." Then he stopped walking and stood still. "Oh," he said. "I see what you mean."

Caroline stopped, too, and looked. The car was a gray station wagon—nothing extraordinary about that. But it was covered with writing. On the driver's door, it said, in dark red letters:
MAKE A DATE WITH HERBIE TATE.

On the door behind that:
MEET YOUR FATE AT HERBIE TATE.

Silently, Caroline and J.P. walked around to the other side of the station wagon and looked. On one door:
DON'T BE LATE FOR HERBIE TATE.

And on the other:
WE'RE CUT-RATE AT HERBIE TATE.

Across the back of the car, in larger letters, it said simply:
HERBIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS.

Caroline's face failed. She couldn't bite the inside of her lips anymore. She started to giggle. She glanced at her brother. J.P. wasn't a giggler; he didn't even
laugh
very often. But he glanced back at Caroline and lost control of himself. He set his suitcase down in the parking lot and doubled over, clutching his stomach. Together Caroline and J.P. laughed until tears appeared on their cheeks. When, breathless, they finally managed to stop, they saw that Herbie and Lillian Tate were grinning proudly at them.

"You like it, huh?" said their father. He opened the back—
HERBIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS
—and put their suitcases inside. "Lillian just had it done, as a surprise for my birthday. Her uncle's a sign painter."

"He would have painted footballs and baseballs and basketballs all over, but I thought that would be too much," Lillian explained.

"We'll have to have it all redone in a few years," Herbie Tate said as he lifted his little boy, who was sucking his thumb, into the back seat. "When my boy gets old enough to come into the business, then we'll have new signs. Right, fella?" He tickled his son under the chin, and the little boy nodded, still sucking noisily on his glistening thumb.

"And the new signs will say—" Herbie Tate went on. Then he stopped and gestured to Caroline and J.P., so that they could guess the ending.

"
HERBIE AND POOCHIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS,
" they said together and bit their lips so that they wouldn't break up again.

"Come on," called Lillian from the front seat. "Let's go home!"

Caroline and J.P. climbed into the back of the station wagon beside the little boy, whose curly hair was damp with sweat. He glanced over at them shyly. Finally he removed his thumb from his mouth and revealed missing front teeth. "Hi," he said nervously, the way you might say "hi" to someone who had just appeared in a dark alley, pointing a gun in your direction.

"Hi, Poochie," Caroline replied. She felt a little sorry for someone who was so terrified and who had to be named Poochie, as well. She also felt a little sorry for herself.

The car moved along through the streets, which were very, very different from the familiar streets of New York. Caroline pushed her hair back under her headband with a moist hand and watched through the windows. Shopping centers. Schools. Churches. Apartment complexes. And more shopping centers, shopping centers, shopping centers. Apparently people in Des Moines did nothing but go shopping.

"There's a Radio Shack, J.P.," she whispered, pointing. He nodded. But he looked as if he felt just as depressed as Caroline did.

"I'd take you by the store," their father said, turning to glance at them from the front seat as he drove, "but it's a little out of the way. And everything's a mess there this week, anyway. I know you saw it when you were here last—when was that? Two years ago?"

"Three," Caroline said. "It was three years ago."

"Well, we've expanded a lot since then. We used to be strictly sports equipment. But now we've branched out into clothes, too—sports clothes, you know? Tennis outfits, jogging wear, even shoes. We have a whole line of shoes. Maybe you kids could do with some jogging shoes while you're here. What do you think?"

Caroline smiled politely, even though her father's head was turned back to watch the road, so he couldn't see her smile. One of the sayings on the door of the car came to her mind.
MEET YOUR FATE WITH HERBIE TATE.
That's what I've done, thought Caroline; I've met my fate. My fate is to spend the summer with people who want me to wear jogging shoes.

She felt hideously depressed. Through the windows of the car, more shopping centers and shopping plazas and shopping malls whizzed past. Where were the museums? In New York, Caroline spent all her time at the Museum of Natural History. It was her favorite place in the entire world. And this July they were going to be having an entire special week devoted to primates: lectures, movies, famous people in primate research visiting and showing slides. Since it wasn't during the school year, Caroline would have been able to go. She would have been able to spend a whole week learning more about primates.

If she weren't in Des Moines, that is. Trying on jogging shoes.

"Almost there," announced Herbie Tate.

"J.P.," Lillian said, turning around to look toward the back seat. "We've put you in Poochie's room—there are bunk beds. I hope you won't mind having the top; Pooch is afraid of the height."

Poochie slumped farther down into the seat, looking humiliated, his mouth working around his thumb. J.P. just stared morosely at Lillian Tate. Caroline knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. All of his electronics gear. J.P. had been planning to survive the summer in Des Moines by shutting himself in his room and working with his tools and wires and batteries. How could he do that if he didn't even have a room of his own?

At least, thought Caroline with some grim satisfaction, I don't have to share a room with them. I'll have a room of my own, and I can
read
all summer.

She had brought with her, in her suitcase, almost more books than clothes. She began trying to recall their titles:
The Clan of the Cave Bear
(one of her favorites; she was going to read it for the second time),
An Anthropologist's Life, Primitive Man,
and—

Caroline's thoughts were interrupted when Herbie Tate swung the big car around a corner of the residential street. He pulled into a driveway leading to a garage. Next to the garage was an ordinary looking brick house. Caroline stared. Herbie and his wife had moved since she had visited before, and this house was one she had never seen. But it had an odd, familiar look to it.

She poked her brother. "'Leave It to Beaver'?" she murmured.

J.P. stared at the house. "'My Three Sons'?" he responded.