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"It doesn't really matter," Lillian had explained to Caroline, "because the juice is just the same. But it's a good idea just to stay in the yellow/pink habit."

"Here," Caroline said. She poked the yellow bottle into the yellow baby's mouth and waited while Ivy reached up and got a grip on it. Then she did the same with the pink bottle and the pink baby. The crying silenced. The bottles were like plugs.

Now that the babies were quiet, absorbed with their orange juice, Caroline flipped the switch on the TV and sank onto the couch near the playpen. Half asleep, she stared at some ancient cartoons and wondered if she would remember how to make the babies' oatmeal. The little pink bowl and the little yellow bowl were set out on the counter, waiting.

Poochie appeared, glanced at the twins in the playpen and then at Caroline, hitched up his drooping pajama pants, and went to the cupboard. Carefully he took out a bowl and a box of cereal. Then he went to the drawer for a spoon, to the cupboard for the sugar bowl, and to the refrigerator for a bottle of milk. He arranged everything precisely on the floor in front of the TV, plopped down, and put it all together for his breakfast.

Well, thought Caroline, at least I don't have to feed him, too.

She was beginning to feel more awake. In a minute she would start to make the babies' oatmeal.
Their bottles were empty. Holly was whacking Ivy across the back with her empty bottle. Ivy wasn't paying any attention. She was trying to poke the nipple of hers into her ear.

"How are you doing, Pooch? You all ready for baseball practice?" Caroline asked.

Poochie grunted. He stirred his cereal and took another bite. "I hate baseball," he said with his mouth full. He stared at the cartoon on the television. "Roadrunner goes over the cliff," he said, "and lands on a train that's going past. I've seen this one a million times."

"Me too. But it's all news on the other channels." Caroline began to warm some milk in a shallow pan on the stove. She added the oatmeal and stirred until it was the right consistency. Then she lifted the pink baby into the pink highchair and the yellow baby into the yellow highchair.

"Yuck!" Caroline said. "They're wet again. I just changed them!"

"Yeah," Poochie said matter-of-factly. "They're always wet."

The babies began to bang the trays of their highchairs with their fists. Caroline used the pink spoon to put oatmeal from the pink bowl into the mouth of the pink twin. Then she switched over and used the yellow spoon to put oatmeal from the yellow bowl into the mouth of the yellow twin. When she looked back at the first highchair, she saw that there was oatmeal in the baby's sparse dark hair.

"Hey!" she said. "How did that happen? I put it into her mouth and now it's in her hair!"

Poochie glanced over. "You have to hold their hands while you feed them," he told her. "Or else they grab it out of their mouths and smear it around." He looked back at the cartoon on TV.

He was right. The second baby, the yellow one, was happily smearing oatmeal into her hair, too.

Caroline filled the pink spoon with oatmeal, moved in toward the pink highchair, and grabbed both of Holly's arms with her left hand. When she had the baby restrained, she poked the oatmeal into the mouth. Holly grinned, gummed the oatmeal, and swallowed. Then Caroline did the same thing with Ivy.

"I think I'm getting the hang of it," she said to Poochie.

"Yeah," Poochie replied, without looking away from the TV.

"But I'm going to have to wash their hair," Caroline said. "Your mother didn't show me how."

"Just sit them in the sink," Poochie said, "and spray them with the squirt thing. They really hate it. They scream."

"Great." Caroline sighed and lunged at Holly with another spoonful of oatmeal.

"I couldn't sleep with all the noise in here." J.P. stood in the kitchen doorway, half-asleep, wearing his enormous COACH T-shirt and his pajama bottoms. He yawned and looked around.

One baby, Holly, freshly washed, with her hair still damp, wearing a dry diaper and a clean pink jumpsuit, was lying on her back in the playpen, happily drinking a bottle of milk.

Caroline was on the floor, trying to fasten fresh yellow clothes onto a wiggling, squirming, damp, fussing Ivy, who was anxiously reaching for her bottle.

Both highchairs were smeared with oatmeal.

Caroline had oatmeal in her hair.

There was water all over the kitchen floor, from the babies' baths.

Poochie was still staring at the TV. He had turned up the volume to drown the babies' screaming and was sitting on the floor about ten inches from the set, munching on his third bowl of cereal.

"What's for breakfast?" J.P. asked. "If I'm going to coach a stupid baseball team, I need a really big, nourishing breakfast."

Poochie, without moving his eyes away from the TV, shoved the nearly empty box of dry cereal across the rug toward J.P.

Caroline buttoned Ivy's final button, handed her the bottle of milk, and plopped her into the playpen beside her sister. She collapsed onto the couch. "I'm dead," she said. "It's only eight o'clock in the morning, and I'm dead. I am not cut out for motherhood. I don't even
like
those babies."

J.P. peered into the playpen. "They're kind of cute," he said. Then he leaned over farther and wrinkled his nose. "But they smell sort of gross. Do they need their diapers changed?"

Caroline looked at her watch. Eleven
A.M.
This isn't
fair,
she thought; they only slept for an hour, and soon it will be time for their lunch, and then I'll have to bathe them again because they'll have squash and peas in their hair, and I don't even
like
babies, and I wanted to go to the primate seminar, and when the court said we'd have to go to Des Moines, the court probably didn't know about "The Holly and the Ivy"—

Whoops. She'd almost tied a yellow sunbonnet around the head of the pink baby. She switched the little cotton hats, got them on the correct babies, and then lugged them one by one—they were
heavy—
outside to the wide carriage.

The babies sat side by side, smiling and drooling. Carefully Caroline buckled the straps that held them in. She didn't
like
them, but she wasn't going to run the risk of dumping them on the sidewalk.

She pushed the carriage along the wide tree-shaded sidewalk, toward the park where J.P. was coaching the Tater Chips. Again she noticed how different it was from New York. Every house was nicely painted, every yard was neatly mowed, every car looked clean. There were no taxi drivers yelling obscenities at each other the way there were at home. No drunks lying in doorways. No trash littering the sidewalks.

This looked like—well, it looked like Leave It to Beaver's neighborhood. She almost expected Eddie Haskell to come through one of the front doors and say "Good morning" in his wonderfully fake Eddie Haskell voice.

"Gee whiz! Gosh! Golly, hi, Eddie!" Caroline said aloud, in her Beaver Cleaver voice, and the twins chortled.

As she approached the ball field, she could hear shouts. Even the babies heard the noise. They turned their heads, wide-eyed, listening.

It was hard, at first, to see the ball team itself because of the dust rising around them. Caroline could see heads wearing blue baseball caps, but below the heads was nothing but swirling, tan dust. Out of the dust cloud came the shouts.

She didn't try to get any closer. If she walked the babies into all that dust, she'd have to give them extra baths for
sure.

"J.P.!" she called. "It's Caroline! It's almost time to come home for lunch!"

The tallest head emerged from the swirling dust, and attached to the head was J.P.'s lanky body in its oversized COACH shirt.

"I said cut it out!" he yelled into the whirlwind of dust. Then he walked over to where Caroline waited with the carriage. He was filthy: sweaty, dusty, with his sneakers untied. Caroline had never seen her brother so disheveled before. In New York, J.P. always wore a tie and jacket to Computer Club.

"What's going on?" Caroline asked, peering beyond J.P. to the mass of yelling little baseball players.

J.P. scowled. "They're fighting," he said. "What time did practice start? Nine o'clock? They've been fighting since 9:08."

"Why?"

His shoulders slumped. "I don't know. I told one to practice batting, and he struck out, so he got mad at the pitcher. Another one was supposed to practice throwing, but he threw it the wrong way and hit the third baseman—or maybe I should say third baseperson, since it's a girl—so the third baseman, excuse me, I mean baseperson, punched him in the nose. Then the shortstop started to cry because he missed an infield fly, and two other kids laughed at him for crying, so they all started to fight. It's been that way all morning."

"Well, you're supposed to keep things in order, J.P. That's what a coach is for," Caroline pointed out.

J.P. gave her a long, disdainful look. Then he leaned over the carriage. "Hi, babies," he said and tickled Ivy under the chin. "You guys don't fight, do you?" The twins giggled and waved their arms.

"Keep an eye on the babies for a minute, J.P.," Caroline said. She left him there with the carriage and walked over to the screaming mob of little ballplayers.

"POOCHIE!" she yelled.

Out of the mass emerged Poochie. His Tater Chips shirt was torn, and he was crying.

"You're a mess, Pooch," Caroline said. "Straighten up. Dry your eyes." Poochie obeyed, wiping his eyes and his running nose on his arm.

"Now tell me some of their names," she said.

"Jason," Poochie sniffled.

"JASON!" roared Caroline. "Stand over here!"

A drippy-nosed redhead emerged from the fight and stood where she indicated.

"Another name, Pooch."

"Adam."

"ADAM!" bellowed Caroline. "Front and center!"

Another scowling Tater Chip emerged from the dusty throng.

"Now Kristin," muttered Poochie.

"KRISTIN!" In a very few minutes, the dust had settled, and Caroline was facing a sulking line of twelve six-year-olds. They were all sniffling. They sounded like a Dristan commercial. One little boy had a bloody nose, but it seemed to be subsiding. Two had torn their Tater Chips shirts, but not beyond repair.

"Now," said Caroline—actually, she didn't say it; she
barked
it as if she were a drill sergeant—"what's going on here, people?"

"Kristin hit me with a line drive I" someone called accusingly.

"Eric cheated!" someone else yelled. "Eric is a big poophead!"

"HOLD IT!" Caroline announced. "Shut up, everybody, and listen to me. You guys have to learn to follow orders. Do you know what ORDERS are?"

They all stared at her sullenly. Noses dripped.

"Orders," Caroline went on, "are rules. RULES. Got that?"

Twelve heads nodded.

"And rules have to be obeyed. If you want to play ball, you have to obey the rules. Do you want to have a good ball team?"

"Yeah," someone muttered.

"I can't hear you," Caroline bellowed. "Do you want the Tater Chips to be a championship ball team?"

"YEAH!" the team members all yelled.

Caroline grinned. "You should try out for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," she said. "Okay, men. And women. Tie your shoes. Wipe your noses. Be here tomorrow at nine o'clock sharp. DISMISSED!"

Poochie walked beside her as she went back to the baby carriage. J.P. was leaning over, playing with the twins. "They need to be changed," he said, looking up, "and I think they're getting hungry. Do you know what you're supposed to give them for lunch?"

"Of course I do," Caroline told him. She sighed and took the handle of the carriage. They started toward their father's house.

"I can't stand that ball team," J.P. whispered, so that Poochie wouldn't hear.

"And I can't stand these babies," Caroline whispered back.

"You and I, Caroline, we really got stuck. You know what we ought to do?"

"What?" Caroline asked.

Her brother kicked a stone and glanced back at Poochie, who had lagged behind and was walking lopsided, with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot in the street. J.P. looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then he said, "We ought to think up a revenge."

"Hi there! Boy, am I exhausted! How was your day?" Lillian Tate asked as she came in from the driveway and put down her briefcase.

She sounds exactly like Mom, Caroline thought. "It was okay," she told Lillian.

J.P. didn't say anything.

Poochie grunted without taking his eyes away from the television. He was sprawled on the floor in front of the set.

In their playpen, the babies gurgled and kicked. They had just woken from their afternoon nap and had had their diapers changed. Now they were each happily chomping with their two teeth on special baby cookies. Caroline could see that already they had gluey cookie crumbs stuck to the creases in their fat little necks. They were going to need baths again before they went to bed.

Why on earth would anybody voluntarily have babies? Caroline wondered. It's just a lot of work and mess.

Lillian went over to the playpen, leaned in, and made kissing noises at the twins. "Hi, Holly," she cooed. "Hi, Ivy. Did you girls have a nice day?"

The twins answered her: gurgle, slobber, spit, burp giggle.

Next Lillian went to the place where Poochie was curled up like a pretzel on the floor, watching cartoons. She kissed the top of his head. "Don't sit so close, Pooch," she said. "How was baseball?"

He wiggled away from her. "I stink at baseball," he muttered.

"J.P. will help you to get better," his mother said cheerfully. "That's what a coach is for." She went to the kitchen and began getting some things out of the refrigerator. Good, thought Caroline; Lillian's going to cook dinner. At least I don't have to do that, too.

"Look who's coming!" Lillian exclaimed, looking through the kitchen window toward the driveway. "Make a date with—" She waited expectantly.

"Herbie Tate," Caroline and J.P. said in unison. Poochie reached forward and turned the sound up a little louder on the TV.