My Life Begins! Read online

  Dedication

  For my grandsons, Nicky and Harry,

  with my love.

  —P. M.

  Epigraph

  Wishes—

  Sometimes what we don’t wish for

  leads us to things we want.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. “The Trips”

  2. Futures

  3. “Three Dolls”

  4. Mimi

  5. On the Move

  6. A Sneak

  7. The Magic!

  8. Names

  9. What Lizzie Knows

  10. The “Forever Name”

  11. Blue Eyes

  About the Author

  Books by Patricia MacLachlan

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1.

  “The Trips”

  I am nine years old when my life begins. Before then I was the only child. The son of Maeve and Daniel Black.

  My baby picture hangs on the large living room wall all by itself. My name, “Jacob,” is printed in the margin below my face.

  “I look lonely,” I say.

  “I think ‘serious’ is the word, Jacob,” says my father. “Or ‘solemn.’”

  I don’t like either word.

  “We need more happy pictures,” I say. “My friend Bella’s dog has a litter of puppies. Maybe we can get puppies.”

  “Soon we’ll have babies,” says Mother. “Remember?”

  “Not puppies,” I say.

  “Not now,” says Father. “Soon we’ll have happy faces.”

  “Very soon,” says Mother, looking tired and big.

  “But the babies will be yours,” I say. “Maybe one puppy?”

  No one answers me.

  Then one day it happens. The Trips are born. That’s my name for the triplets—Charlotte, Katherine, and Elizabeth.

  They will soon become—

  “Char,”

  “Kath,”

  “Liz.”

  It’s a little like a litter of puppies.

  I write in my notebook:

  “A Litter of Trips”

  The Trips are here.

  They’re not pretty.

  They look like birds without feathers.

  Puppies are cuter.

  —Jacob

  I am only nine, remember. But I can tell right away that it will be my job to study and train the Trips. My mother and father are too tired for that.

  Their first months—days and nights—are full of sleep and waking to feed the Trips with sterilized bottles of formula and Mother’s milk. And constant diaper changing—the diapers are the size of party napkins.

  “Puppies would be easier,” I say to Father.

  “True,” he says, yawning.

  The kitchen is full of bottles. Sometimes I have to search for apples, oranges, bread, or milk for my cereal.

  Father puts a small refrigerator for me in the pantry. I can find my milk, juice, snacks, and ice cream. The pantry is mine. I don’t mind. It’s out of the way.

  More than once I find Father in there, just leaning against the counter in the quiet.

  I lean against the counter too.

  “I’d like a puppy,” I say.

  “Yes,” says Father.

  “Yes I can have one?”

  “Yes, I know you want one,” he says wearily.

  The Trips are identical, so Mother dresses them in separate colors to tell them apart:

  blue for Char,

  red for Kath,

  yellow for Liz.

  They wear tiny bracelets with the same colors as their names. That seems strangely sad to me. After all, they’ve been curled up together inside my mother for months.

  When my friends Allie and Thomas come to my house they are startled.

  “What are those, Jacob?” Thomas asks, pointing to the beds. Thomas always asks questions when he knows the answers. He once explained to me that it gives him time to think.

  “My litter of puppies,” I say.

  Thomas ignores my joke.

  “Three,” Thomas says, staring at them.

  “Triplets,” I say.

  “They are all the same,” says Allie.

  She means “identical.”

  “They look the same,” I say. “Mother says they’ll change.”

  Thomas touches Liz’s hand very gently. Her hand curls tightly around one of his fingers.

  “Liz seems to be the most responsive one now,” I say.

  “Wow,” says Thomas under his breath, already charmed by Liz.

  I don’t tell him that I’d read it is a reflex, not because she is charmed by him too. But who knows? I am just starting my study of the Trips. I am a beginning scientist.

  “What do they do?” asks Allie, looking at them as if they are a science project.

  They are a science project, of course. Mine.

  “What you see is what they do for now,” I say. “Except for crying, bottles, spitting up, wet diapers. And worse,” I add to shock Allie.

  She steps back as if the worst might happen right there in front of her.

  Allie repeats what Thomas has said. “Wow.”

  I smile.

  The Trips’ first visit is over.

  “Wow” is Thomas’s and Allie’s word for it.

  It is a moonlit night. I hear a baby crying.

  I get up and look in at my parents. They are fast asleep.

  I go into the nursery, where the Trips sleep.

  It is yellow Liz. She stops crying to look up at me. I pick her up.

  I know how to do this. I can warm a bottle. I can change a diaper.

  Her diaper is dry. Liz doesn’t want a bottle. She wants to look at me. Her eyes are a dark color I can’t name.

  She watches me in the moonlight.

  I sing her “All the Pretty Little Horses” and she is very still, listening the way she does when Father sings to her.

  I touch her hand, and she curls it around my finger the way she had with Thomas. And suddenly she smiles.

  She smiles!

  I am right—she is the most friendly Trip so far. I also know the smile may be just a reflex. But it’s still a smile.

  I stand there for a while until her eyes close, and I put her back in her bed.

  I cover her with the yellow blanket.

  My father stands in the doorway, watching me.

  “Lizzie just wanted company,” I whisper.

  “I love it when you call her Lizzie,” he says softly.

  We walk back to my bedroom.

  “And she smiled!” I say, looking up at him.

  “I remember when you first smiled at me,” says Father. “I got tears in my eyes. I could see your future in you.”

  “I don’t see Lizzie’s future,” I say.

  “You will soon,” says Father.

  I get back into bed, and Father pulls the covers over me the way I pulled the blanket over Liz.

  “This is not like a litter of puppies,” I say.

  “Not yet,” he whispers. He touches my cheek and goes back to bed.

  I watch the moonlight, thinking that I might have tears too. Like my father.

  But I smile instead.

  I smile. Like Lizzie.

  2.

  Futures

  My school class is learning how to do research. Our teacher, Mr. Kelly, hands out research notebooks to all of us.

  “Choose something that interests you—something you want to know more about,” says Mr. Kelly. “Or a subject that is surprising and new,” he adds. “The notebooks are for your notes.”

  My friend Thomas will study the migration of hummingbirds that come ba
ck to his feeders every spring.

  Allie is researching her aunt who was a spy in France.

  I think about writing about the growth of a litter of puppies. But I’ve already started my research.

  My topic is: “A Litter of Trips—From Birth On.”

  Mr. Kelly laughs when he reads my topic title written on the first page of my notebook.

  Our projects are due the last two weeks of school. Lots of time to study the Trips.

  “A Litter of Trips”

  They still look the same.

  They cry and eat, wet their diapers, and sleep.

  Nothing else.

  Except—there’s Lizzie’s smile.

  —Jacob

  My mother will be glad the cold weather is over. She points to the tiny winter buntings—blue, red, yellow—and mittens and warm hats. “So much stuff!” she complains.

  I don’t say that puppies don’t wear buntings, hats, and mittens. My parents are tired of hearing about puppies.

  They’re tired—period.

  “The Trips”

  Surprise—

  The Trips are changing quickly. Every day.

  They all have eyes turning muddy blue.

  They all have their own ways of getting attention.

  Char waves her hands in the air—

  Kath calls “ba ba ba”—

  Lizzie quietly takes my hands.

  They are all getting dark hair, a bit curled—not yet wild like my mother’s.

  —Jacob

  “I think their hair will soon be out of control,” I tell Mother.

  She laughs a long time.

  Kath, in a bouncy seat, begins imitating the sound of Mother.

  “Ba, da, ba, ba!”

  Char waves her arms, excited.

  That makes Mother laugh more, the two sounding wild together.

  “Kath’s the raucous one,” I say.

  “It seems so,” she says. “Did you mean their hair will be like mine?” Mother asks, grinning.

  It’s true. Mother has to “calm her hair down” every morning—her words.

  Father goes back to work. He’s the principal of a middle school. The first day back he falls asleep at his desk.

  “It was so quiet and peaceful there,” he tells us, making Mother laugh. “My assistant, Jim, joked that the school ran even better when I was sleeping!

  “The school nurse was sympathetic. She had twins herself. ‘Only twins?!’ I said to her,” says Father. This makes Mother laugh more.

  Mother has taken a long time off from teaching preschool children.

  “Aren’t you tired of being with children all the time?” I ask. “Teaching, and now the Trips? Wouldn’t you want to talk to a mature person?”

  “I am right now,” says Mother, smiling at me. “I’ve got you, Jacob.”

  Our house is filled with “Trip equipment,” as Father puts it.

  Three single strollers, one double, and a triple, depending on what we need. And special containers to carry bottles and diapers.

  Three car seats—

  Three bouncy seats—

  Two large playpens—

  And toys—rings to chew on, rattles, and colorful balls that they drop for us to pick up again and again.

  Julie, a photographer friend of Mother’s, comes to photograph the Trips. We call Julie “Holy Moly” because that’s what she says all the time.

  When she sees the Trips she says it. “Holy Moly! There are three of them!”

  She takes out her camera and takes many pictures, one after the other, as if she is snapping photos of movie stars. She makes noises to attract the Trips.

  “Move close to them, Jacob. You should be in the pictures too.”

  Lizzie smiles and puts her hand on my cheek.

  Kath’s chant has become “la, la, la,” in a loud voice.

  “Holy Moly, they’re cute,” says Julie.

  She sits in front of Char, who is the quiet one. Char pulls a baby blanket over her face and peeks around it.

  “That will be a great picture,” says Julie. “She’s the shy one. Right?”

  “Or the shy sly one,” I say. “Shy Sly Char.” Mother smiles at me.

  “True,” she says. “Sometimes she hides her face under my chin when I hold her. But she always finds a way to peek at me.”

  “Holy Moly, I’ve loved this! I’ll send you the photos. My present to you,” says Julie.

  And Holy Moly is out the door.

  The Trips stare at the door as if hoping she might burst in again to entertain them.

  Two weeks later a large package arrives. Holy Moly has sent a dozen photographs of the Trips. And she has framed four.

  Mother and Father and I look at them, one after the other—

  Kath, excited, with a grin, her arms in the air—

  Char, peeking around the baby blanket, looking as if she knows a secret.

  Lizzie with her wise smile, reaching over to me.

  “I see their futures in their faces now,” I say.

  “And yours,” Father says to me. He hands me another framed photograph.

  A surprise. Me smiling.

  “The Trips”

  A photograph of me—

  Lizzie’s hand touching my face.

  Not the lonely look of me that hangs alone.

  Me surrounded by the Trips—

  Me happy—

  As if my life is truly beginning.

  —Jacob

  3.

  “Three Dolls”

  It’s doctor checkup day for the Trips. We carry them out to the car.

  “Will they get shots?” I ask.

  Mother nods.

  “Kath won’t like that,” I say.

  Father nods.

  “Kath doesn’t like change,” he says as he kisses the Trips, one by one, and packs them in their car seats.

  I sit in the wayback seat and take out my research notebook.

  I have written:

  “The Trips”

  My research shows Kath becoming the “tough Trip”—a good nickname.

  Char is the quiet, mellow one.

  And Lizzie the “sweet, sly explorer,” as my mother puts it.

  —Jacob

  Mother yawns three yawns in a row as we drive off.

  “I think it’s time,” Father says to her.

  “Time for what?” she asks. She yawns again.

  “Time for you to get some help for the babies. So you can go back to exercise class. To get ready for what is coming next,” Father says.

  “What’s coming next?” I ask.

  Father looks at me in his rearview mirror.

  “The babies crawling. And walking. The babies running!” he says. “Unleashed!”

  I take my notebook out again.

  I write, “the Trips unleashed.” I like the sound of it. Wild puppies. “Sounds like an explosion,” I say.

  Mother laughs. Father reaches over to tap her hand.

  “Let’s get some help,” Father says softly. “And it will be good for the babies to have someone new in their lives,” he says.

  “Maybe,” says my mother, leaning back and closing her eyes as we turn into the doctor’s parking lot.

  In the waiting room a small girl walks up to stare at the Trips sitting on our laps.

  “Three dolls!” she announces, pointing to them. “One, two, three!”

  “Three babies,” I say to her. “One, two, three.”

  She frowns fiercely at me.

  “Dolls!” she repeats loudly. “Three dolls!”

  The nurses are happy to see the Trips.

  “They’ve all gained weight, the dolls!” one nurse says, hugging the bare, rosy bodies of the Trips one at a time.

  “Dolls” again. I almost say “babies” to correct her.

  The Trips like Dr. Will, but Kath doesn’t like her shot and sharply bops Dr. Will on his nose. It makes his eyes water as he grins.

  “I didn’t see that coming,” he says.
br />   “When will they pull themselves up in a standing position?” asks Father.

  Dr. Will sighs.

  “No telling. One of our own babies got up very early,” he says. “Very early for us! My wife spends a lot of time running after her. Full days of it!”

  He peers at the Trips. “They’re all strong and very agile. This one”—he taps Kath— “is my bet to be the first.”

  He pats my mother’s hand.

  “Good luck,” he says. “And get some help. We’ll see what they’re doing in one month.”

  We pack up the Trips again, safe in their car seats. And the three “dolls” sleep all the way back home.

  4.

  Mimi

  My mother finally gives up being the only day-after-day caretaker. She hires a helper—more than a helper!

  Mimi is cheerful, smart, and French. She wears long, sparkling earrings and jeweled necklaces and bracelets. The Trips’ eyes get wide when they touch them.

  “La,” says Lizzie, reaching up to make Mimi’s earring swing.

  And sometimes Mimi talks to them in French.

  They learn “oui” and “bonjour” and the song “Frère Jacques” in French and English. The Trips love the ending.

  “Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong.”

  “The Trips sound very French,” says Father.

  “Oui,” Mother says. “Oui means ‘yes.’”

  “Be careful of your jewelry,” Mother tells Mimi.

  “Poof!” says Mimi. “I had five children and we were fine with my jewels. Don’t you worry, lamb.”

  Soon all the Trips begin to say their own versions of “poof,” sometimes sounding like they’re spitting. And once I hear Father answer a question with a “poof.”

  “Bonjour, sweet Lizzie!” Mimi calls.

  Lizzie looks up at Mimi and grins. No reflex smiles anymore.

  “Poof!” she says happily, both arms in the air.

  Right away Mimi is a family favorite.

  She is interested in what I write about the Trips. “Remember ‘poof’ in your research, dear Jacob,” she says to me.

  I peer at her. No one has ever—ever—called me “dear Jacob.”

  I love that Mimi calls me that.

  “I feel Mimi is my caretaker too,” says Mother. And it seems true.