Anastasia Again! Read online

  "I sure hated you that summer. You were so conceited."

  "Well, I thought I was a big movie star. Except for that summer, we've always been best friends. Are you taking this, or throwing it away?" She held up a battered arithmetic book.

  "Good grief. Where did you find that?"

  "It was under your bed."

  "I thought I lost it. My mother had to pay the school for it. I guess you'd better throw it out."

  The arithmetic book sailed into the big trash can that was in the middle of Anastasia's room.

  "Can I have this picture of you? I don't want to forget what you look like." Jenny had a Polaroid snapshot of Anastasia in her hand.

  "Sure, but it's ugly. And you're not going to forget what I look like anyway, Jenny. Aren't you going to come visit me? Robert Giannini said that he was going..." Anastasia stopped talking abruptly, and blushed.

  "Who? Robert Giannini? What's Robert Giannini going to do?"

  "Nothing."

  "What do you mean, nothing? Robert Giannini's going to visit you, isn't he, Anastasia? He's going to visit you! I can't believe it, that jerk!"

  "Do you think I should keep this orangutan poster, or throw it away? I've had it about five years. I'm kind of bored with it."

  "Throw it away. And quit changing the subject. Are you going to let that jerk Giannini visit you? Did you invite him?"

  "No, I didn't invite him. He invited himself. But he isn't so bad, Jenny. He really isn't. He's kind of a jerk, but not full-fledged."

  Jenny threw herself onto Anastasia's bed, held her stomach, and groaned. "You like him, don't you? You actually like Robert Giannini! I can't believe it."

  "I don't like him. I just don't hate him anymore."

  "Traitor. Traitor traitor traitor. Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I forgot."

  "You didn't forget. You were embarrassed."

  "Yeah, I was embarrassed."

  Jenny lay on the bed with her eyes closed. "Well, guess what."

  "What?"

  There was a long silence. Then Jenny took a deep breath. "I don't hate Michael Gottlieb anymore, either."

  "That jerk?"

  "He's not really a jerk. Really, he isn't, Anastasia. The other day he came over, and we went down to the store and got Popsicles. He was sort of nice, all of a sudden."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I forgot."

  "Liar."

  Jenny looked at Anastasia and grinned. Anastasia began to laugh. Jenny began to laugh. Anastasia could hardly talk because she was laughing so hard; but finally she sputtered, "Michael Gottlieb! He always wears that stupid baseball cap!" Jenny doubled up, laughing, and gasped, "Robert Giannini! That briefcase! That gross briefcase!"

  For the rest of the day, they couldn't look at each other without making the kind of semisneezing noise that holds back a brand new laugh.

  ***

  It was hard, packing. Not hard on the muscles—Anastasia had pretty good muscles—but hard on the head. And hard on the heart.

  Anastasia found her mother crying, one afternoon. Not curled-up-on-a-bed, pounding-your-fists-into-the-pillow sort of crying. Just silent, tears-running-down-your-cheeks crying. Her mother was standing in the pantry, packing dishes, and there were tears on her face.

  "Did you hurt yourself?"

  Her mother sniffed and smiled. "No. I'm just sad."

  Anastasia picked up a plate and looked at it. It was an ordinary yellow plate. It made her think of spaghetti and of meat loaf. It didn't make her feel sad.

  "If I were you, I would feel good about this plate," she told her mother. "Most people in the suburbs eat off of plastic dishes."

  "Assumptions again."

  "No, really. They do. Except when they eat TV dinners. Those they eat right out of the tin tray."

  Her mother leaned against the cupboard and began to laugh. "Anastasia, haven't you figured out yet that your assumptions all turn out to be wrong? Take the new house, for example. You thought we'd have to move to a split-level house in a development. Instead we found that wonderful house with a tower."

  Anastasia shrugged and grinned.

  "How did you become such an expert on suburban life, anyway?"

  "Told you. Books and TV. Mostly TV commercials. You never see city people worrying about ring-around-the-collar."

  "Well, we won't worry about it either, not even when we live in the suburbs."

  "Why were the dishes making you cry?"

  "It wasn't the dishes. I was feeling sad about the stained glass in these cupboard doors. I've always loved this stained glass."

  Anastasia looked at the stained-glass windows of the cupboards. She remembered when Sam was a tiny baby, and they had kept his little crib in the pantry. She used to open the cupboard door, stand behind it, and make faces at the baby. The very first time Sam had smiled was when Anastasia had been making a purple-and-amber face at him, wiggling her nose.

  Oh, dear. Now Anastasia was starting to feel sad, too.

  She wiggled the loose pane of colored glass. "Maybe we could take it out and take it with us, Mom."

  "No. It doesn't belong to us."

  "Of course it belongs to us! It's always been ours! All my life I remember this stained glass!"

  "But we don't own this building, or the things that are part of it. So when we leave, we have to leave all these things for the next people who will live here."

  Good grief. Anastasia hadn't even thought about someone else living in their apartment. All of a sudden, she thought of the wallpaper in her bedroom. She had chosen it herself, when she was eight. It was blue and white, with people riding old-fashioned bicycles on it; some of them were playing flutes and violins while they rode.

  She didn't want anyone else to have that wallpaper. But there was nothing she could do.

  Well, there was something. She thumped her way down the echoey hall to her room, which seemed hollow and empty now. The rug was rolled up, and the curtains had been taken down. Her desk, usually cluttered with paint boxes and notebooks and comics, was bare, except for the goldfish bowl where Frank swam lazily back and forth, back and forth.

  "Frank," she said, "don't tell anyone that I'm doing this." Frank made a kissing face at her.

  Anastasia found a pencil stub in the trash can. She knelt on the bare floor in a corner of the room and wrote, on the wallpaper, in her best printing: "This is my room forever. Anastasia Krupnik."

  That made her feel better.

  Then she thumped down the hall to her father's study. He was standing beside his own bare desk by the wall with his back to her, and he jumped, startled, when she came in.

  He looked guilty. Anastasia was an expert on guilty looks.

  "What are you doing, Dad?" she asked.

  "Nothing," he said very quickly.

  "Nothing" was what you always said when you were doing something that you felt guilty about and someone came along and asked what you were doing. Anastasia was an expert on that. Either you said "nothing," or you whistled, or hummed.

  Her father began to hum. He did a little drumming rhythm on his desk top with his fingers.

  "You all packed in here?" she asked, looking around the bare room.

  "Yep. All ready for the movers. It sure looks empty with the books packed, doesn't it?"

  "Yeah. I suppose someone else will move new books in. Probably their books won't be as good as yours, though."

  "Probably no one else will have a first edition of The Old Man and the Sea," her father said, and that seemed to make him feel better. "I think I'll have a beer."

  He headed for the kitchen. When he was gone, Anastasia saw, suddenly, the place on the wall of the study where, in his best writing, very small, with his fountain pen, he had written his name.

  ***

  Anastasia found Sam in his bedroom, sitting on the floor, crying silently.

  "What's wrong, Old Sam?" she asked.

  "I'm feeling sad about my blanky," he said.

  "Oh, Sa
m, I'm sorry. I was just teasing when I said your blanky couldn't come to the new house. Of course it can come."

  Tears trickled down Sam's cheeks. "But it wants to live here," he whispered to her. "It told me so."

  Anastasia thought and thought. "I have an idea, Sam," she said, finally. She ran to the kitchen and got a pair of scissors. Then, sitting beside Sam on his bedroom floor, she carefully cut his ragged yellow blanket in half.

  "There," she said. "Now part of it can live here, and part of it can come to the new house." She folded one half and Sam showed her where to put it: on a dark, narrow shelf in the closet. He wrapped the remaining half around his hand, held it against his cheek, and sucked his thumb, testing how it worked with only half. After a moment he smiled. "Okay," he said. "It's okay."

  "Good."

  "I'm not a baby," he reminded her firmly.

  "I know, Sam. I know you're not a baby."

  ***

  She called Jenny MacCauley on the phone.

  "The moving van's coming in about an hour," she said. "So I called to say good-by."

  "Will you have a telephone in the new house?"

  "Sure."

  "Is it long distance?"

  "I don't know. Not long distance like Milwaukee, or anything."

  "Well, call me and tell me the number."

  "I will."

  "And call and tell me everything that happens."

  "Yeah."

  "Like if you meet any boys."

  "Okay."

  "Or if Casablanca ever comes to a movie theater out there, call me, and I'll figure out a way to get there. Don't ever go to Casablanca without me, promise."

  "I promise. Don't you, either."

  "I won't. And if Old Briefcase ever comes to visit, call and tell me."

  Anastasia giggled. "Okay."

  "Or if you get any new clothes, or anything."

  "Okay. And you, Jenny, if you read any good books, call and tell me. Or if Michael Gottlieb comes over. Old Baseball Cap."

  Jenny giggled.

  "I still can't believe you're moving, Anastasia."

  "Me neither. Come and visit me."

  "I will."

  "Promise."

  "I promise."

  Then, suddenly, Anastasia was too sad to talk any more. Very quickly, before she began to cry, she said good-by and hung up the telephone.

  ***

  Everything was packed, and the moving van was pulling up to the front door.

  But Anastasia hadn't packed Frank Goldfish—she was going to carry him with her, in his bowl, to the new house—and she hadn't packed her notebook.

  Now she sat down on the bare floor, beside Frank in his bowl, and looked around. The moving men were coming in, and she could hear their heavy footsteps on the bare floor of the apartment. Her entire life was packed into cardboard boxes, except for the life that she was leaving here.

  "The Mystery," she wrote quickly, before they got to her room, "of Saying Good-by."

  She reread it with satisfaction. Now that, she thought happily, is a title.

  6

  Anastasia's mother was sitting in the kitchen of the new house in a rocking chair, with her sandals kicked off and her long hair frizzy from the heat.

  "Look at me," she said dramatically to Anastasia, who had wandered into the kitchen for a peanut butter sandwich, "and you are looking at someone who is suffering."

  "Suffering from what?" asked Anastasia, as she spread peanut butter on a slice of whole wheat bread.

  "Angst. And sore feet. And heat stroke."

  "And the heartbreak of psoriasis?"

  "No. The heartbreak of not being able to find anything. Have you seen a pitcher? Can you tell me how to make iced tea, which I desperately want, without a pitcher?"

  "No." Anastasia licked the edges of her sandwich to even them off.

  "Damn." Her mother stood up and began to look through a half-unpacked carton.

  Her father came into the kitchen, wiping his face with a handkerchief. "Did you make the iced tea?" he asked.

  "I don't want to talk about it," said her mother tensely.

  "I'm not asking you to talk about it. I'm asking you to pour it."

  Her mother glowered at him.

  "She can't find a pitcher," Anastasia explained. "Here," she said to her mother, handing her a saucepan. "Use this."

  Her father sat down in the rocker, leaned his elbows on his knees, and looked at the floor.

  "What's wrong, Dad?" Anastasia happened to know that her father was not at all interested in floors. Whenever he stared at the floor, it meant that something was wrong.

  "I was unpacking the records," he said, "and I can't find the Verdi Requiem. I think the movers stole it."

  "Dad," said Anastasia patiently. "Those movers never even heard of the Verdi Requiem. Those movers were the sort of people who would only steal Peter Frampton."

  Her father wasn't paying any attention to her. He was only paying attention to the floor. "Also," he said, "I hate the car. And the car hates me. It backfires at me. It keeps running after I turn the ignition off, even after I get out, and as soon as I am behind it, it backfires at me."

  "I don't hate the car," said Anastasia cheerfully. "I thought I would, but I don't. I'm glad you got an old beat-up car instead of a gross Cadillac or something."

  "Here," said her mother, and handed them each a glass of iced tea. "If it tastes like aluminum, it's not my fault. I think the movers stole all my pitchers."

  She sat down in a chair across from Anastasia's father, took a sip of tea, and made a face. Then she put her elbows on her knees and stared at the floor.

  "You people are both suffering from Post-moving Depression," announced Anastasia.

  "For pete's sake, where did you come up with that idea?" asked her mother.

  "Cosmopolitan magazine."

  Her father set his glass on the table with a thud that almost broke it. "Anastasia Krupnik," he said, "we have subscriptions to at least seven magazines in this household, all of them with some intellectual content. Why do you insist upon spending your allowance to buy that garbage?"

  "It tells me stuff."

  "What stuff?"

  "Well, one issue had an article about lopsided breasts, how to disguise them, and also an article about wives who get fed up with things and run away. Those might be useful bits of information to me someday."

  Her father made a noise like a horse exhaling. He stood up and stomped out of the kitchen.

  "Post-moving Depression," said Anastasia to her mother. "It will only last a few days."

  Sam padded into the kitchen. "I stood in every closet," he said.

  "Sam," said his mother. "Where are your sneakers? You're going to get splinters if you don't keep your shoes on." She slid her own feet back into her sandals.

  Sam thought. "One sneaker is in one closet," he said, "and one is in a different closet. I forget where." He sat on the floor and examined the soles of his feet. "I like splinters," he said happily.

  "Sam's not depressed," pointed out Anastasia. "Neither am I. I wonder why the neighbors haven't come to visit, though. Neighbors are supposed to drop in and bring a chocolate cake or something, when you move to a new place."

  "I wish someone would drop in and bring a pitcher," muttered her mother. "This tea tastes terrible."

  Sam looked up suddenly. "A witch lives next door," he announced.

  "No kidding," said Anastasia. "How do you know?"

  "I looked out a window, and she was looking out a window."

  "How do you know she's a witch? Was she wearing a pointed hat?"

  "No," he said, picking some dirt out from between his toes. "She had an ugly witch face."

  "Hey," said Anastasia, "I have an idea. We need a pitcher until we find ours, right? Why don't I go next door and borrow a pitcher? That gives me an excuse to meet one neighbor, at least. I'm dying to meet the neighbors."

  "You want to meet a witch?" asked Sam, his eyes lighting up.

&n
bsp; "Sure. You want to come, Sam? Find your sneakers and I'll take you with me. I want to comb my hair first."

  She was heading out of the kitchen when her mother called her back. "Did it really have that article, the one you said? About wives who just chuck it all and run away? What happens to them? Do they end up happy, living in Malibu or something?"

  "Mom," said Anastasia, "just hang in there a couple more days. Post-moving Depression goes away. It really does."

  ***

  The house next door looked like a Charles Addams house. That didn't bother Anastasia. She even watched the shower scene in Psycho without covering her face with her hands, something her mother had never been able to do. She read vampire books and watched late movies about gooey blobs that grew and ate entire city populations, without ever having bad dreams.

  But Sam was scared. He wasn't old enough to have developed an immunity to it yet. He held tightly to Anastasia with one hand and tightly to his yellow blanket with another. When they got to the front steps, Sam let go of Anastasia and dropped back to hide behind a bush.

  "Dope," she needled him, and left him there. She went up on the porch and pushed hard on the unpolished brass bell. The shrill ring sounded inside the house. After a moment she heard footsteps, slow ones, shuffling.

  The door finally opened, and a woman peered out from the dim hall.

  Good grief. She really did have an ugly witch face. Sam was right. She would have looked perfect on a broom.

  "Hello," said Anastasia politely. "I'm your new neighbor. My name is Anastasia Krupnik."

  The woman with the witch face stared at her without smiling and didn't say anything. Her gray hair stood out around her face, tangled, like a nest that Anastasia had once seen high in a tree in winter.

  "What's your name?" Anastasia asked.

  The woman stared at her for another long moment. Finally she said, "Mrs. Stein."

  "My mother was wondering if maybe you have a pitcher we could borrow, just for this afternoon until we find ours. We're still unpacking, and it's so hot we need something to make iced tea in."

  "No," said Mrs. Stein abruptly. "I don't have one."

  Liar. Everybody has a pitcher unless they can't find it.

  "Oh," said Anastasia. She wanted to say sarcastically, "Well, thanks anyway, you old bat." But she didn't say that. Instead, she said nicely, "Thank you anyway. I'm sorry I bothered you."