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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.
    '"Father Knows Best'? 'The Donna Reed Show'?" Caroline suggested.
    "All of the above," J.P. announced as he picked up his small suitcase from the floor of the car.
    Caroline was staring at something she couldn't quite believe on the front lawn of the TV sitcom Leave It to Beaver house. How interesting, she thought: a mirage. The heat has created a mirage right here in Des Moines, the way it creates mirages on the desert. I wonder if J.P. is also seeing it, or if it is a single-person mirage. Suddenly she became aware that Lillian, still looking over the back seat, was talking to her.
    "And we've put you in with the girls, Caroline," Lillian was saying.
    Caroline blinked. "The girls?" she asked politely. "Who are the girls?"
    Lillian Tate looked startled. "The babies," she said as if that were an explanation. "Didn't your mother tell you about the babies?"
    "I don't think I ever mentioned to Joanna that we'd had the twins," Herbie said to his wife. "She and I don't really stay in touch, you know."
    Caroline looked again at the mirage. It was a huge double baby carriage parked on the lawn. "No," Caroline said