Anastasia Again! Page 5

  Mrs. Stein began to push the door closed. Then she stopped, looked beyond Anastasia, and said, "Who's that?"

  Anastasia looked. It was Sam, who had come out from behind his bush and was looking at them fearfully, his yellow blanket wrapped around his arm and his thumb in his mouth.

  "That's my brother, Sam."

  "What is that disgusting thing he's holding?"

  "It's his blanky. He holds it when he's sleepy or scared."

  "Come here, young man," called Mrs. Stein.

  Sam climbed the steps to the porch, carefully holding the railing. It took him a long time because he still went up stairs the baby way, with both feet on each step at the same time.

  "Do you like cookies?" Mrs. Stein asked him.

  Sam nodded.

  "How can you eat cookies if you keep your thumb in your mouth?"

  Sam removed his thumb and wiped it dry on his blanket.

  "Can you talk?"

  "Yes," said Sam solemnly.

  "My name is Gertrude Stein. Can you say that?"

  "Gertrustein," said Sam. He said it the way he said Frankenstein when he was playing monsters.

  "Do you prefer chocolate chip cookies or molasses?"

  "Both," said Sam.

  Gertrude Stein began to laugh. "Come in then, and I'll give you one of each."

  She looked sternly at Anastasia. "What was it you said you wanted to borrow?"

  "A pitcher."

  "You come in, too. I'll give you one." Then, as if she needed to explain something, she said, "I like little children. I do not much care for middle-sized ones."

  Anastasia and Sam followed her into the dark house.

  "This house smells funny," whispered Sam.

  It surprised Anastasia that he whispered it. Why was it that Sam, who was only two and a half, already understood something about manners? Some people Sam's age, or even older, would have said that very loudly, which would have been rude. But Sam whispered it, what he said about Gertrustein's house. Anastasia squeezed his hand.

  And yet Gertrustein herself, who was probably eighty years older than Sam, had been rude when she opened the door. Or at least she had seemed rude.

  Anastasia remembered that her grandmother—who had been ninety-two when she died—had sometimes seemed rude.

  Maybe it was just that people who were very old, or very young, were the only ones who said exactly what they thought. If they were young, they hadn't learned yet to worry about what other people might think. And if they were old, they didn't care any more.

  And the house did smell funny. Sam was right. It wasn't a bad smell; it was just the smell of being closed up: a no-fresh-air-for-a-long-time sort of smell.

  "I walk very slowly," said Gertrustein. Anastasia had already noticed that.

  "I do, too," said Sam. "It's because I have small legs."

  Gertrustein looked back at him and smiled.

  Anastasia was surprised again at Sam. He had said something which made her feel good. What a nice guy Sam was beginning to be.

  "I don't have small legs," said Gertrustein. "I have big legs, as a matter of fact. But they don't work very well. The doctor says I should go for long walks."

  "Do you?" asked Anastasia. "Do you go for long walks?"

  "No," sniffed Gertrustein.

  The kitchen was not as dim as the rest of the house, because there was sunlight coming in through the windows. But it was very old-fashioned. Gertrustein shuffled over to a thick crockery pot with a lid, opened it, and took out some cookies. She put them on a plate and put the plate on the table.

  "There," she said. "Sit down, Sam. You too, girl."

  Sam climbed onto a chair and sat with his legs sticking out straight in front of him. Anastasia sat down next to him, and Gertrustein eased herself slowly into a chair and passed the plate of cookies.

  "Why don't you go for long walks?" asked Sam, with cookie in his mouth.

  "Because," said Gertrustein, with cookie in her mouth, "I don't have anyone to walk with, and it is boring to walk all alone."

  "Couldn't you go for walks with your friends?" asked Anastasia.

  Gertrustein glared at her. "All my friends are dead," she said.

  Good grief. There wasn't any cheery answer to that, not that Anastasia could think of. Except "I'm sorry," which she said softly.

  But Sam looked up, grinning, and said, "I could be your friend."

  Gertrustein grinned back at him. Her face didn't look quite as much like a witch when she smiled.

  "I like to go for walks," said Sam, reaching for a second cookie. "And also I like to ride in my stroller. I have a stroller that folds up and looks like an umbrella. You could push me in it. It has a pocket where my blanky rides. Cookies could ride there, too."

  "Well," said Gertrustein, "that sounds like a good idea."

  ***

  When they went home, Anastasia had a chipped pitcher for her mother. Sam had two cookies in his pocket and a date to go for a walk the next day.

  Anastasia felt funny. She felt the same way she had when Sam was born, when her mother brought him home from the hospital, and friends came to visit to see the new baby. They brought gifts: little sweaters and stretch-suits and stuffed animals. They stood beside his crib, looking down, and said how cute he was.

  Anastasia had loved him, even then, even when he was just born and only weighed eight pounds and hadn't even ever smiled at her yet. But when all those people had come and talked about how cute he was, she had gone into her own room and closed the door. She had said to Frank Goldfish, then, "Don't tell anyone this, Frank. But sometimes I hate Sam."

  She had a feeling now that she wanted to go say that to Frank again. She didn't know just why.

  On the way home, Sam said happily, "Gertrustein really likes me."

  Anastasia smiled sweetly at him and said, "Wait till she finds out you still wear diapers, big shot."

  ***

  At home, there was loud music playing in the living room. The Verdi Requiem. Her father had found it. He was standing in the center of the room with his eyes closed, waving his arms, holding a pencil in one hand. Anastasia giggled. She thought her father was the only person in the world who conducted orchestras that he couldn't even see.

  She and Sam tiptoed past.

  She found her mother in the room that the real estate lady had called the solarium. Its name had been changed, now, to the studio. Her mother was there, humming, with a pitcher—she had found their pitcher—of iced tea on a paint-spattered table. She was leaning canvases against the wall. An easel was set up.

  "Hi!" she said. "How was your visit? Look! Don't you love this room?"

  "Yeah," sighed Anastasia. "I see you guys have recovered from your depression. But now I've got it."

  "What's wrong? Was she really a witch? I see she gave you a pitcher."

  Anastasia curled up in a battered armchair. "No. She looks like a witch, Sam was right about that. But she's just an old woman with very messy hair."

  "So why do you look so miserable?"

  Anastasia drew patterns with her fingers on the arm of the chair. Finally she said, "She didn't like me. She only liked Sam."

  Her mother kissed the top of her head. "Are you sure, sweetie? Tell me about her."

  Anastasia told her all that she could.

  "She sounds lonely," said her mother, sipping some iced tea thoughtfully.

  "Yeah. She said all her friends were dead."

  "Well, forgive me if I sound like Ann Landers for a moment. But I think I can explain something. People who are lonely have usually been disappointed by people. So they become defensive. Do you know what defensive means?"

  "Yeah. Having weapons. Nuclear bombs. Dad's always bellowing about the defense budget."

  Her mother chuckled. "Well, it's sort of the same thing. Sounds as if she has a whole arsenal over there. Her big weapon is not liking anyone. That way..."

  "...no one can disappoint her, right?"

  "Right."

&
nbsp; Anastasia frowned. "But she liked Sam. She really liked Sam," she said darkly.

  "Sweetie, with all due respect to Sam, he doesn't really qualify as a mature person yet. So she can take the risk of liking him."

  "But why not me? I wouldn't disappoint her. I wouldn't let her down."

  "Well," said her mother decisively, "maybe you'll have to prove that to her."

  Anastasia thought for a long time. "You know what I think I'll do, if Dad will drive me to the dime store?"

  "What?"

  "Well, someone who never ever disappoints me, and who keeps me from being lonely, is Frank. I think I'll buy Gertrustein a goldfish."

  ***

  Her father still had his eyes closed, so he didn't see her come into the living room. But now he had come to the part in Verdi's Requiem where he always sang along with the record. Anastasia cringed. She lived in mortal fear that someday one of her friends would be there when her father was belting out the tenor solo from the Verdi Requiem, with his eyes closed and sweat on his bald head.

  Of course now that they lived in the suburbs where she didn't have any friends, that couldn't happen. Her depression came back.

  Toward the end, at the very high part, her father stood on his tiptoes while he sang. Anastasia giggled.

  He opened his eyes when it ended and bowed to Anastasia, who applauded politely; then he went and switched the stereo to Off. He wiped his damp face with his handkerchief.

  "I'm always too exhausted to conduct the next section after I sing that section," he said. "How did I sound?"

  "Pretty good. You're getting better, I think."

  "'Inter oves lacum praesta et ab haedis me sequestra,' " he said. She recognized them as some of the words he had sung. "Know what that means?"

  "Nope."

  "You will after you study Latin. It means, 'Give me a place among the sheep and separate me from the goats.'"

  Anastasia laughed. "Okay. You're among the sheep."

  "So are you. In fact, I don't know anybody who is among the goats."

  "I do. Gertrude Stein."

  Her father put his handkerchief away and looked at her in astonishment. "Don't tell me you've become familiar with Gertrude Stein!"

  "Yeah. Just today. Do you know her already?"

  "Know her! I teach her in a graduate seminar. Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, Ezra Pound, and Henry James."

  Anastasia wrinkled her forehead. "She's awfully old to be going to school still."

  "No, no. She's not a student. She's a writer. I teach my students about her writing."

  "That's funny. She didn't tell Sam and me she was a writer."

  "What are you talking about? How could she tell you and Sam anything? She's dead."

  Good grief. Anastasia's stomach felt funny. She's a ghost. I'm living in a ghost story. Gertrustein is dead. No wonder she looks so awful.

  "Anastasia," said her father suddenly, "I have a feeling that you and I are talking about two different Gertrude Steins."

  "The one I'm talking about lives next door to us. She looks like a witch."

  "Oh. Well, the one I'm talking about is dead, and she looked like a car mechanic."

  Anastasia started to laugh. "If Gertrustein next door were a car mechanic, maybe she could fix our car so it wouldn't backfire."

  Her father chuckled. "Maybe so. Now scoot. I want to conduct this last section of the Requiem."

  "After you do that, could you drive me to the dime store? I want to buy Gertrustein a goldfish."

  One of the things that Anastasia loved most about her father was that when you said something like you wanted to buy a goldfish for the next-door neighbor who looked like a witch, he didn't say "why." He said, "Okay," switched on the stereo, closed his eyes, and began to wave his arms in the air.

  ***

  Anastasia looked again at the title she had written on the day the movers came. "The Mystery of Saying Good-by." It still seemed, as it had that day, a wonderful title. She chewed on her pencil eraser for a while.

  Then she began the first paragraph of her book.

  "Once there was a young girl," Anastasia wrote, "who had had, in her short life of twelve years, to say good-by many times. Her grandmother had died. And her goldfish had been flushed down the toilet and was irretrievable even though plumbers had been called.

  "She had said good-by to her grandmother two ways. One, by going to the funeral, which was okay even though it was sad. And two, by keeping her grandmother's wedding ring, which was given to her, and looking at it now and then, which made her remember her grandmother in a nice sort of way.

  "And she had said good-by to her goldfish by holding memorial services over the toilet bowl, and playing taps on a harmonica. Her father had sung 'Many brave hearts are asleep in the deep.'

  "But one day, she had to say good-by to the house she had lived in all her life. Actually it was an apartment, but apartments can feel like houses, and this young girl's apartment had always felt like a house to her.

  "That was the hardest good-by of all, because there was no funeral, no souvenir to keep, no memorial service, no harmonica music, no final flush.

  "Also, it became complicated, because at the same time she had to adjust to a new house. This young girl was not a very adjustable person."

  Anastasia read that again, and then she crossed out the last two sentences. She didn't like the word adjustable. It sounded like a training bra.

  "...she had to adapt to a new house. This young girl was not a very adaptable person," she wrote.

  She chewed on her eraser again, and watched Frank the Second swirl gently around his bowl. Frank hadn't even seemed to notice that he was living in the suburbs now.

  She wondered if whoever published her book would mind if it had footnotes. At the end of the sentence she had just written, she made an asterisk.

  Now it said, "This young girl was not a very adaptable person."*

  At the bottom of the page, she wrote:

  7

  Anastasia took the new goldfish up to her tower bedroom. He (she? it was hard to tell, with goldfish) had survived the trip home from the dime store comfortably, and she set the little bowl on her desk beside Frank Goldfish's bowl.

  "Frank," she said, "this is going to be your next-door neighbor."

  Then she opened the little bag of goldfish things on which she had spent most of her savings.

  "Frank," she said, "don't be embarrassed about all this stuff. I got it because I thought Gertrustein would probably like it. I know you wouldn't like it." And she put into the new goldfish bowl a handful of pink pebbles, a plastic castle, and a little fake man in a diving suit,

  Frank made a face as if he had eaten a lemon.

  "Yeah, I know, Frank. It's really stupid looking. But you haven't met Gertrustein. Her house is full of stuff that you and I wouldn't like. But she likes it, and that's what matters. And this is going to be her goldfish."

  She sprinkled some fish food into both bowls and watched the two goldfish eat. She wondered if goldfish ever felt lonely. She was beginning to feel lonely. On the way to the dime store, she had seen some kids her age: a boy mowing a lawn a few houses away and two girls sitting together on a porch. Maybe if she walked past, she could say hi. But what if they didn't say hi back? Or what if they did? What would she say next?

  She lay on her bed and looked around the room. Through the windows, she could see the tops of trees and a lot of sky. It was nice, being up in a tower. Vaguely she remembered the fairy tale of Rapunzel, who had been locked in a tower, and who had hung her long hair from the window so that her lover could climb up. That was kind of neat.

  But then Anastasia ran her fingers through her own hair, which had begun to be pretty long—halfway down her back—but she realized that it needed washing again. Yuck. If a lover tried to climb her greasy hair, he would slide back down.

  Not that she wanted a lover, anyway, for pete's sake. But a friend would be nice.

  Her old furniture was all in this room
, but the room didn't feel familiar yet. She began to wish that she hadn't thrown her orangutan poster away. And she missed her old wallpaper. She had gotten to know the funny-looking bicycle riders on her old wallpaper quite well. She had even given them names. The lady in the long skirt who rode a unicycle and played a violin was named Sibyl. The man on an old-fashioned racing bike who rode no-hands and played a flute was Stanley. Stanley had chased Sibyl around the walls of her old bedroom for years. She wanted them back.

  This wallpaper was old, with dumb flowers. In some places, in the corners, it was peeling a little.

  Anastasia clattered down the stairs and found her mother arranging the kitchen cupboards.

  "Mom, I miss Stanley and Sybil."

  Her mother frowned at a souffle dish and finally put it into the cupboard beside the refrigerator.

  "Who are Stanley and Sybil? I thought you would miss Jenny MacCauley."

  "I do miss Jenny. But I'm going to call her on the phone. Stanley and Sybil are the people on my wallpaper."

  Her mother smiled. "Oh, of course. I forgot they had names. Stanley had that sexy little mustache. I'm not surprised that you miss them."

  "My room doesn't feel like mine. I like it. But it's strange, still."

  Her mother took a heavy bowl out of the packing carton. "If you were a yellow pottery bowl with squiggle designs on your sides, where would you want to live?" she asked.

  Anastasia thought, and then pointed to a cupboard. "There," she said.

  Her mother put the yellow bowl into that cupboard. "I have an idea," she said.

  "What?" Usually her mother had pretty good ideas.

  "I could find out if they still make that Stanley-and-Sibyl wallpaper. And if they do, we could have your room papered with it. We were going to wallpaper that room anyway."

  Anastasia thought. "I chose that paper when I was eight. You don't think it would be dumb to still want it when I'm twelve?"

  "No. It wouldn't be dumb. It was pretty grown-up paper. I remember thinking when you were eight that it was a sophisticated choice."

  "No kidding?"

  "No kidding."

  Anastasia grinned. "Okay. I'd really like that, to have Stanley and Sibyl back."