Anastasia on Her Own Page 6

  But the only other tablecloth was white. White was not a passionate color. Even the article pointed that out; it had rated white very low on the passion scale.

  She decided to think some more about tablecloths. There would be some solution, she knew; she only had to think of it.

  She glanced through the article again, and read what it said about flowers. There had to be flowers. Flowers were a MUST for a romantic evening.

  But the yard around the house was covered with snow. She would have to think more, to come up with a solution to the flower problem.

  Music. That was essential, too; but that would be easy. Her father's record collection covered almost an entire wall in the study, and it was arranged alphabetically. The article listed several extremely romantic pieces of music, and she found one with no trouble at all: Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto. She put it on the stereo and listened for a few minutes. PERFECT. It was so romantic—so passionate—that Anastasia almost passed out, listening to it. No wonder she'd never heard it before; her father had probably been saving it until she was old enough to understand passion.

  And now, of course, she was. Now she was having her first date.

  Sam sauntered into the dining room, in his pajamas, while Anastasia was still looking at the table with its two purple candles.

  "You shouldn't be barefoot, Sam," Anastasia said. "You'll catch cold."

  "No, I won't," Sam said. "I have chicken pox instead. When do I get my bath in that other stuff, so I won't itch?"

  "In a minute, after I figure this out."

  "Figure what out?"

  "How to create a purple tablecloth. All we have is this white one."

  "You could color it," Sam suggested, and fished a purple crayon out of the coffee can of crayons that Anastasia had taken off the table.

  "It wouldn't work. Thanks, Sam, but that's not a good solution." Suddenly she thought of something. The word solution had been the key. "I'll dye it!" Anastasia said. "They have all these bottles of dye at the grocery store, and when I call in the order of groceries to be delivered, I'll have them send some purple dye!"

  "I itch," said Sam.

  "Okay. Come on, and I'll fix you a bath with baking soda in it."

  Sam trotted behind Anastasia while she went to . the kitchen and found the box of baking soda. This time she looked at what was written on the box. "Hey," she said with satisfaction, "look at that. It says, right on the box, 'soothes minor skin irritations.' If I'd read the boxes yesterday, I wouldn't have used the wrong stuff last night."

  "But then," Sam pointed out as he followed her up the stairs to the bathroom, "I wouldn't have had that burping bath."

  "True." Anastasia emptied the box of baking soda into the tub and turned the water on. When the bathtub was full she stripped Sam's pajamas off and helped him in. "Now soak for a while," she said, and handed him some plastic boats, "while I call the grocery store."

  At the kitchen telephone, Anastasia consulted the cookbook that she had studied after breakfast. Her magazine article had suggested veal as a romantic dinner, so she had found a veal recipe called Ragout de Veau aux Champignons. Even the name sounded passionate. It looked somewhat complicated, but she had three days to work on it, she figured, and undoubtedly she could master it in that time.

  "Hi, Mr. Fortunato," she said when the grocer answered the phone. "It's Anastasia Krupnik. I'm in charge because my mother's away, so I want to order some stuff and have it delivered."

  "Sure thing," he said. "Your mama told me you might be calling. What do you need?"

  Anastasia looked at the recipe. "Three pounds of boneless lean veal cut into one-and-a-half-inch chunks," she said. "Wait a minute, Mr. Fortunato; it says 'see notes preceding recipe.'"

  "Take your time."

  Anastasia flipped the page back and read the notes. "The notes say that if your meat is boneless you should tie some chopped veal marrow and knucklebones in cheesecloth and simmer them with the meat," she told the grocer.

  "So you want veal marrow and knucklebones?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I guess so. Do you have cheesecloth?"

  "Nope."

  "Well, I'll find some around the house. Okay; let me go back to the recipe. Salt, pepper, flour: I have all of that. I need olive oil."

  "Okay. Olive oil. What else?"

  "Dry white wine."

  "This is quite a meal you're planning, Anastasia," commented Mr. Fortunato.

  "It's called Ragout de Veau aux Cham pignons. I probably didn't pronounce it right. Also, Mr. Fortunato, just so you won't get in trouble with the law or anything—I'm not going to drink that wine. I'm only thirteen. It goes in with the veal, to cook."

  "Fine. I've got some nice dry wines here. What else?"

  "Tarragon, basil, oregano, bay leaf, garlic, and two tomatoes."

  "Hold it," said Mr. Fortunato, "I can't write that fast." Anastasia waited.

  "Okay," the grocer said. "What else?"

  "Eight ounces of fresh mushrooms, and some parsley, and some heavy cream."

  "Is that it?" he asked.

  "Almost. I also want—let me think a minute." Anastasia calculated in her head. If Sam had de-itching baths three times a day, and if his chicken pox lasted, as the doctor had said it would, a week or more..."I want twenty-one boxes of baking soda."

  "TWENTY-ONE BOXES OF BAKING SODA?"

  "Yes. And a bottle of purple dye."

  There was a moment of silence. "That's going to be a very interesting dinner you're having, Anastasia," Mr. Fortunato said. "The boy'll bring everything over in a couple of hours. And I'll just add it to your mama's bill."

  "Thanks," said Anastasia, and she hung up. She grinned. It was neat, she thought happily, being in charge of a house—especially if you had a romantic dinner to prepare.

  Sam came down the stairs, naked. "I dried myself," he said. "And I don't itch anymore. And look—I did all my green lines over, in purple."

  "You look grotesque, Sam," Anastasia said. "But at least you'll match my color scheme."

  By late afternoon, Anastasia had put all of the groceries away except the bottle of purple dye. She was reading the directions on the bottle when there was a knock at the back door.

  "Hi, you guys!" she said in delight when she opened the door and saw Sonya and Meredith standing there.

  "We brought you your homework assignments and your books," Sonya announced, "but we can't come in. I could come in, because I've had chicken pox, but Meredith's mom can't remember if she's had chicken pox, so she can't come in, and I promised I wouldn't leave her standing out here all alone."

  "I think I had it," Meredith explained, "because I remember itching a lot, but my mother thinks maybe what I remember is poison ivy."

  Anastasia took the books and made a face. "I'm not going to have time to do homework," she said. "I don't know how my mom ever finds time to do her illustrating. It takes all day just to take care of a house. Keep that in mind, you guys, when you start thinking about getting married. Look for a rich husband so you can have servants."

  "Speaking of getting married," Sonya said, giggling, "tell us more about your date with Steve."

  "Well, he wanted to take me to the mov—ah, to the theater," Anastasia explained. "But I decided it would be better to have a romantic dinner date. So he's coming here, and I'm fixing a gourmet dinner, with candles and everything."

  She had already decided not to tell anyone—even her best friends—about Annie.

  "But Anastasia," Meredith said in her very practical voice, "you don't know how to cook a gourmet dinner. You even burned the English muffins that time you slept over at my house."

  "That's what books are for, Meredith," Anastasia pointed out. "I have this book—actually, it's my mom's—called Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I've been reading it practically all day. Anyway, that time at your house? I wasn't into cooking, then."

  "Don't even tell me what you're going to cook for your gourmet dinner," Sonya said, "because it'll make me hungry. All I had for lunch was an apple and two glasses of water. Practically zero calories."

  "What're you going to wear?" Meredith asked.

  "I don't know. I'm going to look through my mom's clothes and see if I can find something to borrow. It has to be purple. My color scheme is purple. Hey—that reminds me. I need some flowers. Do you guys know where I could find some flowers?"

  They all glanced out into the snow-covered yard.

  "There aren't any flowers this time of year," Sonya pointed out. "You'll have to use fake flowers."

  "My sister has some fake flowers in her room," Meredith said. "Big ones, made of crepe paper. You want me to steal them for you?"

  Anastasia thought about that. Crepe paper flowers didn't sound very romantic. She shook her head. "I don't think so. Only in an emergency. I'll call you if I need them."

  Meredith sighed, and her breath made a puff of steam in the cold winter air. "You know, Anastasia," she said wistfully, "of the four of us—you, me, Sonya, and Daphne—you're the very first one to get into a real romance, with a dinner date and everything. We're all really jealous. You know how supercool Daph pretends to be? Well, even Daphne confessed during lunch that she wished she would have a real date, like you, instead of just yelling insults back and forth with Eddie at McDonald's every Saturday."

  Anastasia nodded sympathetically. "The thing is, Steve just happened to become mature a little sooner than the other seventh-grade guys. They'll catch up pretty soon. Then we'll all have romantic dates every weekend."

  She turned to Sonya. "Even Norman Berkowitz will become mature, Sonya. You wait."

  Sonya stamped her feet up and down on the back steps. "I'm freezing," she announced. "My body chemistry is all screwed up since I haven't been eating anything. My bo
dy is living on my fat, and I'm freezing. My fat used to keep me warm."

  "You're freezing because it's cold out," Meredith told her. "I'm freezing, too, and I ate two whole lunches—mine and yours."

  "You'd better go," Anastasia said. "I'm freezing, standing here with the door open. Thanks for coming over."

  She waved as her friends headed down the driveway, toward the street. Then she went back to the kitchen to write out her schedule for the next day. The bulletin board in the kitchen was becoming cluttered with revised schedules. But there was so much to do when you had a romantic date. She wondered how movie actresses and models managed—they had romantic dates every night.

  After Sam was in bed, and Dr. Krupnik was in the study reading the paper, Anastasia went to her parents' room and looked through the drawer where her mother kept make-up. Mrs. Krupnik didn't actually wear make-up very often; she said it made her face itch. But she had quite an assortment of things. Some of them, she had told Anastasia, were probably twenty years old.

  Anastasia looked for everything that was purple.

  Then she lined it all up on the table in front of the mirror and began the application.

  First she took off her glasses and put deep purple eye shadow across her eyelids. With her glasses back on, though, she could hardly see it. If only she didn't have to wear glasses, Anastasia thought. Usually she liked the intellectual look that her glasses gave her—but for a passionate evening, she didn't want to look intellectual.

  Maybe she could leave her glasses off on Friday evening. But when she removed them, experimentally, she realized once again that everything was a blur. It would never work. She wouldn't even be able to serve dinner. She would bump into the table, and she would spill things.

  She sighed, and added more of the purple eye shadow so that it would show under the rims of her glasses.

  There was no purple rouge, but she used the deepest red she could find, and smeared circles across her cheeks. Then she carefully applied purplish red lipstick, going slightly beyond the borders of her lips to give herself a mature, passionate look.

  She opened her mother's jewelry box and found, to her delight, a pair of dangly earrings with some small purple stones. Wincing, she screwed them tightly onto her earlobes. Good grief. No wonder her mother never wore those earrings; they were excruciating.

  Still, when she looked at herself in the mirror, tilting her head from side to side so that the earrings moved and jangled, the effect was terrific.

  I glitter, Anastasia thought.

  But the hair, she thought despondently; the hair stinks.

  She brushed her long straight hair, bunched it up in her hand, and twisted it onto the top of her head. Firmly she adhered it there with bobby pins. That hurt, too. In fact, she was now in almost unbearable pain, both in her earlobes and on the top of her head.

  But it's worth it, she thought, looking in the mirror at her new self, purple with make-up, glittering in the ears, and minus the long mane of tangled hair. I'm a new person. A new sophisticated, mature, passionate person.

  Maybe I should show Dad, she thought.

  No. Better to surprise him, when I appear on Friday night.

  Quickly she undid her hair, removed the earrings, and went to the bathroom to wash off the make-up. A pink washcloth was ruined; she tossed it into the laundry hamper. She gathered up the make-up, the earrings, and the bobby pins to take them to her room. As an afterthought, she looked in the medicine cabinet and added a bottle of aspirin to her load. I may need that, she thought, to counteract the pain when I put on those earrings and bobby pins again.

  Scrubbed, brushed, and in her pajamas and bathrobe, Anastasia went down to the study. Her father had started a fire in the fireplace, and there was music playing on the stereo. He looked up from the book he was reading when Anastasia came in.

  "I want to talk to you, Dad," she said.

  "Guess what," he said. "Some intruder was here. Someone with no taste."

  "What do you mean? No one was here all day except me and Sam. Meredith and Sonya stopped by with my homework, but they didn't come in. Anyway, they have great taste. You should see the new sweatshirt Meredith has — punk city is written across the front, in rhinestones."

  Dr. Krupnik laughed. "I'll argue that one with you some other time," he said, "in about five years. No, look; here's what I meant. Look what I found on the stereo."

  He picked up the Rachmaninoff album and displayed it with a look of disdain.

  "Dad, I was playing that. It's great."

  "Anastasia, I wish you'd learn to appreciate Bach. Rachmaninoff is schmaltzy."

  Anastasia flopped on the couch beside him. "Wouldn't you say that it's romantic, Dad? I read in a magazine that that record is romantic, and so I tried it out, and it is. At least I thought so. It almost made me faint, listening to it."

  "Faint? Did you forget to eat lunch?"

  Anastasia thought. "Well, yes, I guess I did forget to eat lunch. I fed Sam, though. I gave him scrambled eggs."

  Her father put the album back down. "Try to remember to eat, Anastasia. It's important, especially at your age. You're a growing girl."

  "Dad, that's sort of what I want to talk to you about. About the fact that I'm growing up, and having a date Friday night and all that. And I want to talk to you, ah, about passion."

  Her father put his book down. He lit his pipe. "About passion?" he asked, after he got the pipe going. "Help! Where's your mother? I need your mother. This is the kind of conversation thirteen-year-old girls are supposed to have with their mothers."

  Anastasia giggled. "Don't panic," she said reassuringly. "It's just that I'm kind of worried about you."

  "About me?"

  "I mean about you and Friday night. The problem is this: it's my very first date, as you know, and that's important, and I think I'm being a pretty good sport about not going to the movies so that I can be a chaperone for you and Annie—"

  "'Good sport' isn't the term for it, Anastasia. You're a savior. You've absolutely saved my life, and my mental health, and my reputation. I was a nervous wreck, anticipating the evening with Annie. But look at me now: calm, cool. I'm not even worried about seeing Annie now, because of you. It won't be any big deal."

  "But you see, I'm planning a passionate evening."

  "You're planning a what?"

  "I have this magazine article that tells about how to plan a dinner date, and so I'm following its directions on how to make it romantic, and I have a color scheme and all, and that's why I got that record out, because the article said it was passionate."

  Dr. Krupnik glanced at the record with a wry look. "Oh," he said.

  "But I have several problems. One is that I have to have flowers, and I don't have flowers."

  "Well," said her father, "I can solve that one for you. There's a flower shop in Harvard Square. I'll bring home some flowers on Friday."

  "Purple," Anastasia said.

  "Purple?"

  "Yeah, because that's my color scheme. Purple is supposed to be a passionate color."

  "Just exactly how passionate is this evening supposed to be?" her father asked, with his forehead furrowed. "I thought it was going to be a casual dinner."

  "Well, I want to discuss that in a minute. But first, I have another problem. Do you know what cheesecloth is?"

  "No. Sometimes expensive cheese comes wrapped in a sort of disgusting clothlike stuff. Is that cheesecloth?"

  "I don't know. But I need some. Do you think we have any?"

  "Hold it. I do know how to do research. Hand me the dictionary, Anastasia."

  She took the thick red volume from the bookcase and gave it to her father.

  He flipped through the pages until he found the right one. "Here," he said. "'Cheesecloth. A coarse cotton gauze.'"

  "Gauze? Like a bandage?"

  "I guess so."

  "I bet we have bandages. From the time Sam fell out the window last summer and hurt his head. Mom had to change his bandages. I think there are some left over, in the bathroom closet. Good. That's solved. Now we can talk about passion."

  Dr. Krupnik groaned and put the dictionary on the floor. "I was afraid you were going to say that."

  "Here's the problem. You and Annie are going to be there—"