Anastasia on Her Own (11 page)

Anastasia pictured it. He was right. It should work. "
Thanks
" she said. "You've saved my gourmet dinner."

"Well, listen, while I've got you on the phone again, how about saving my job by signing up for tap-dancing lessons?"

"Sure," said Anastasia. "Sign me up. What the heck."

She answered the questions he asked her, about her height and weight and shoe size and dancing experience. Then she hung up and went to find a pair of clean pantyhose.

By the time Anastasia had constructed the pantyhose and shoelace bag, filled it with veal marrow and knucklebones, added that to the mixture on the stove, and turned the burner to simmer, the washing machine was silent.

"Time to put the tablecloth in the dryer," she announced. She reached into the washing machine. "Hey, look, Sam! It really did turn purple!"

Carefully she lifted the heavy, wet, purple tablecloth and transferred it to the dryer. She turned the dryer on.

Then she looked down at herself. "Yuck," she said. "Good thing this is a grubby old shirt. I got purple dye streaked all over it."

Sam looked over. "Your arms, too," he pointed out.

Anastasia examined her stained arms and hands. She went to the sink and washed them, but the purple remained.

"Saaaamm," she wailed. "It won't come off!"

"Like my lines," Sam said. "My purple lines don't come off, either."

Anastasia had become so accustomed to Sam's odd appearance that she had forgotten he was a road map of purple lines connecting his chicken pox spots.

"Well, you're three years old," she said irritably. "It's okay if you look stupid. But I can't be purple for my first date!"

"Wear gloves," Sam suggested.

"Like Michael Jackson?" Anastasia asked sarcastically. "That would really look terrific—about as romantic as Ringling Brothers Circus."

"No, not like Michael Jackson," Sam said patiently. "Wait a minute and I'll show you." He left the kitchen and Anastasia could hear him heading for his father's study. In a minute he was back, holding a record album. "Like this," he said, and showed her the cover.

Anastasia looked carefully at the picture of Sarah Vaughan standing beside a piano. Her hair was swept up on top of her head; she was wearing dangling earrings. And she had on gloves that went right up to her elbows.

"That looks pretty good," Anastasia mused. "Pretty sophisticated. Trouble is, I don't have any gloves like that. And Mom doesn't either."

Sam got down from his chair again and trotted off to the pantry. "Here," he said when he came back, and he handed Anastasia two quilted pot holder mittens: one blue, the other yellow with tiny red flowers.

Anastasia put one on each hand and leaned against the washing machine as if it were a piano. She struck a pose. Sam giggled.

"Caaan't help loooving that maaannnn of mine," sang Anastasia, gesturing with her thickly gloved hands.

"Good idea, Sam," she said, "but it won't work." She took the gloves off. "Tonight I'll take a bath in Clorox. And if I'm still purple after that, I'll just make the lights very dim tomorrow night. Maybe no one will notice that I'm purple."

She found a piece of paper and a pencil. "Time for another schedule," she said.

Anastasia reached over and tapped some fish food into Frank's bowl.

"I'm sorry I forgot this morning, Frank," she said, watching him swim frantically to the surface with his mouth open. "You're a little overweight anyway, so a brief diet won't hurt."

Frank glared at her, and gulped another mouthful of food.

"I've been so busy preparing for my first date," Anastasia explained.

"And now," she went on happily, "everything's ready. I'm so well organized. I made the veal yesterday, and now it's back on the stove all ready to be heated up. And there's a gorgeous purple tablecloth on the dining room table, and two purple candles, so it's super-romantic.

"And you know what, Frank?" she asked her fish. "Dad didn't forget the flowers. He brought home a whole bouquet of purple and white chrysanthemums, and they're right in the middle of the table, and—"

She stopped talking so that she could examine herself in the mirror. Frank didn't seem to be listening anyway. Goldfish were not very good listeners.

It was five-thirty, and Anastasia was wearing her bathrobe. The Clorox bath hadn't removed all of the purple stains, but it had helped, and she would simply keep the lights very low. Her mother's make-up was waiting on the top of her desk, and laid across her bed was a dress she had found in her mother's closet. It wasn't exactly purple, but it was a deep shade of blue: close enough, especially with the dim lights.

"Anastasia?" her father called up the stairs to her third-floor bedroom.

"Yeah?"

"Have you done any laundry recently? I have a shirt to wear tonight, but it's my last clean shirt."

Anastasia made a face. Of
course
she hadn't done any laundry recently. She'd been
much
too busy with more important things. Men just didn't understand things like that.

She went down the stairs and found her father in his bedroom.

"I've gotten a little behind with the laundry, Dad," she said. "But I'm so well organized that I can put your shirts in the washing machine right now. The dinner's all made, and the table's all set, and the record is waiting on the stereo—"

"You've done a remarkable job, Anastasia," Dr. Krupnik said. "The dining room looks beautiful. By the way, I noticed that you hadn't dusted. So I just took off my shirt downstairs and ran it across the furniture."

He pointed to a pile of dirty shirts, with a dusty one on top.

"Oh. Thanks. I didn't even think about dusting. I cleaned everything up, though. I took that stack of magazines off the top of the TV, and I stuck them in the hall closet. And I picked up Sam's blocks from the living room floor, and put them behind the couch in the study." Anastasia gathered up the dirty shirts in her arms. "I'll just load these into the washing machine; then later, after the dinner party, when I'm cleaning up the dishes, I'll put them in the dryer. You know, Dad, after Mom gets home I think I can give her some lessons in organized housekeeping. It really isn't hard at all."

She took the shirts downstairs, tossed them into the machine, added detergent, and turned it on. Laundry was so easy.
Everything
about housekeeping was easy. She couldn't figure out why her mother got so frustrated.

By five minutes of seven, all three Krupniks were downstairs and waiting for the guests to arrive. They had just undergone two rather large wars.

First, Sam had refused to wear the little blue-and-white sailor suit that Anastasia had tried to dress him in.

"NO WAY!" Sam had screamed. "It's a baby suit! I hate it!"

"Well, it's the only good suit you have," Anastasia had pointed out angrily. "What are you going to wear if you don't wear your only good suit?"

Sam pouted. "My Incredible Hulk T-shirt," he said. "And jeans."

Anastasia glared at him. He was standing in the middle of his bedroom wearing nothing but underpants and a look of outrage. His whole body was a mass of chicken pox spots connected by purple lines. She wished she could hide him away in a closet and forget that he existed, just for this evening.

Instead, she tossed his Incredible Hulk shirt and his jeans to him and said, "Here, then. Put them on, if you want to look like a jerk."

Twenty minutes later she had come down from her own room, dressed for the party. Sam was sitting sullenly on his bed, still in his underpants. She ignored him.

But her father came out of his bedroom, took a look at her, and said, "No way, Anastasia. You can't come to dinner like that."

"Like what?"

He handed her a handkerchief. "Go into the bathroom this instant and remove about fourteen pounds of that make-up."

"But,
Dad—
"

"No buts. Start with the purple lipstick. Maybe you'll need to use a spatula to take off the first twelve layers."

Anastasia stomped into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Okay, so maybe the lipstick
was
a little thick, and dark. But
still.
Grudgingly she rubbed at it with the handkerchief.

"Can I keep the earrings on?" she yelled.

"If you want to look like Carmen Miranda, keep the earrings on," her father called.

Anastasia didn't know who Carmen Miranda was. She didn't
care
who Carmen Miranda was. She finished removing the lipstick, went back to her father's room, and tossed him the purple-smeared handkerchief. She tossed her head at the same time, so that the earrings jangled. Her father ignored her, the way she was still ignoring Sam.

Sam emerged from his room, still pouting. He was wearing jeans and the top half of the sailor suit instead of the Incredible Hulk T-shirt.

"That doesn't look too bad, Sam," Anastasia said. "You look like Popeye."

Now they were all downstairs, and suddenly it was five past seven, and just when Anastasia began to worry that neither Steve nor Annie would show up, the doorbell rang.

"You get it, Dad," Anastasia said in a panic.

"You get it, Sam," her father said, his face pale.

Finally all three of them went to the door.

"I'm starving," said Steve Harvey.

It wasn't the kind of greeting Anastasia had daydreamed about. She had envisioned someone tall and handsome—someone who looked a lot like Laurence Olivier in
Wuthering Heights
—maybe wearing a tuxedo and holding a corsage in his hand.

Steve was tall for thirteen, and he was handsome—in a braces-on-the-teeth and needing-a-haircut sort of way—but he was wearing jeans and a jacket, which he shrugged off and dropped on a hall chair. Under the jacket was the sweatshirt Steve usually wore, the one that said psychotic state across the front.

"Hey, Sam," Steve said, "you look gross."

"No, I don't," Sam said. "I look like Popeye, in my sailor shirt."

"What's with the scabs?"

"Chicken pox," Sam explained.

Anastasia groaned inwardly. Would Laurence Olivier have worn psychotic state sweatshirt? Would Laurence Olivier have discussed scabs? Never. Laurence Olivier was too suave.

"And I connected my chicken poxes with Magic Markers," Sam went on, holding up one arm to show Steve.

"Please come in," Anastasia said.

"I
am
in," Steve replied. "What's for dinner? The lunch at school today was really lousy—real barf-city stuff."

"Veal," Anastasia told him. "Come on in the living room and have some hors d'oeuvres." She passed Steve the bowl of peanuts which she had put on the coffee table, and averted her eyes while he stuffed a handful into his mouth. "We're expecting another guest, an old friend of my father's."

"Yeah?" said Steve with his mouth full.

"Her name is Annie O'Donnell," Dr. Krupnik explained. "She's a very interesting woman—a fine painter. She did that painting over there." He gestured toward the painting on the wall.

Steve glanced at it and grinned. "Looks like what we had for lunch today at school," he said, with his mouth still full. "I hate that kind of painting. You know the kind I like? That artist who works for
Sports Illustrated;
I forget his name. He does this great sports stuff."

"Yes, well, everyone has different taste, of course, Steve," said Anastasia's father. "I think it would be a good idea if you, ah, didn't mention to Annie that you don't care for her style. Annie's a very sensitive woman."

Steve shrugged. "Yeah, well, sure, I wouldn't tell her it looks like garbage or anything. Are there any more peanuts?"

"Sam, would you get them from the kitchen?" Anastasia asked. She was amazed. Steve had eaten the entire bowl of peanuts in two bites. Would Laurence Olivier eat peanuts like that? No way. Laurence Olivier would take one at a time, and nibble politely.

"Dad," Anastasia said suddenly, "there's a taxi out front. I think Annie's here."

And she was. She entered with a swoop, a cape flying around her, and she threw her arms around Dr. Krupnik. Her booming voice filled the high-ceilinged hall.