Anastasia on Her Own (5 page)

She arrived home just a few minutes before Sam. Anastasia was mad. All of her friends had stayed after school for a basketball game. The streets were absolutely deserted as she walked home, and she imagined that she could hear the cheering junior high crowd back there at the gym. She imagined that Steve Harvey was making basket after basket and was wondering why she hadn't stayed to cheer for him.

Back home, there were three unmade beds—she had pulled the covers up hastily—and a sink full of dishes with congealed egg on them.

And Sam was bratty. He was tired after an unaccustomed day at school, and he whined. He wanted Anastasia to play trucks with him.

"I can't play trucks," Anastasia said. "I have to do these dishes."

"Mom always plays trucks," Sam whimpered.

Anastasia looked at him in exasperation. "Tell you what," she suggested finally. "Bring your trucks down here and you can transport the clean dishes to the cupboard."

He trotted off and returned with a large red dump truck. On his hands and knees he
rrrrrrrred
each clean dish to the pantry and put it away. Anastasia waited impatiently, holding cups and glasses after they were dry, for the trucking company to return for a pickup.

When the last one was done, she hung up the dish towel and wiped the sink with a sponge. She sat down wearily in a kitchen chair, and Sam climbed into her lap.

"Scratch my back," he said. "My back itches."

Automatically Anastasia scratched his little back through his shirt.

"More," Sam said when she stopped.

Anastasia sighed and scratched again. She was still scratching when the back door opened and her father appeared.

"Greetings," he said. "Your mom's in sunny California by now!"

"You're home early," Anastasia began, but then she looked at her watch. "How did it get to be five o'clock?" she asked.

Sam flopped himself around in her lap. "Scratch my front," he said. "My front itches, too."

Anastasia lifted him down to the floor. "I can't," she told him. "I have to start dinner. What vegetable do you guys want? Corn okay?"

"Sure," said her father. "Good thing I remembered to take some meat out of the freezer."

"Yeah," said Anastasia. "I was halfway down the back steps before I remembered to—what do you mean,
you
remembered?"

Her father went to the pantry and came back with a plate full of something, which he set on the table.

"Chicken breasts," he announced. "I remembered just before I went out to warm up the car this morning."

Anastasia looked at the chicken breasts in dismay. She took her own package of meat from the side of the sink. "But I thawed out hamburger!" she wailed.

Sam looked at both of them. Then he trotted off to the small counter beside the refrigerator, the one where the toaster stood. He reached up, pushed aside the toaster, and took down a package.

"Hot dogs," he announced. "I did hot dogs."

Anastasia stared at the hamburger. Then she stared at the chicken breasts. Then she stared at the hot dogs.

"Well," she said flatly, "make my day."

"Actually," her father replied, "I think what we have to make is a new schedule."

Sam sat down on the kitchen floor and began to cry. "Make me stop itching!" he howled. "I itch
all over!
"

Anastasia opened her eyes sleepily when her father called "Seven o'clock!" up the stairs to her third-floor bedroom. She groaned. Why was it so hard to get up in the morning?

Frank, her goldfish, was swimming in circles, chasing his own tail around his bowl. Frank was always wide-awake and cheerful in the mornings. He was the kind of guy who would go jogging at dawn, if he had legs.

Groggily, she reached over to the fish-food box and tapped some into Frank's bowl. If only she could do
all
the household chores without getting out of bed.

"You and I have very little in common, Frank," Anastasia said, yawning, "except that we both like to eat."

Frank stared out at her with his bulging eyes through the side of the bowl. He flipped his tail.

Down on the second floor, she could hear sounds: the shower running, her father's feet squeaking in the bathtub, and Sam—Anastasia groaned and got out of bed. Sam was crying again. Ordinarily Sam
never
cried; once she had seen him fall right over the railing of the back porch, head over heels, into a prickly bush. Then he had climbed out of the bush, covered with scratches, brushed himself off, remarked, "Ouch," and gone scampering off to find his tricycle.

But last night he had cried and cried. He hadn't eaten any dinner—even though there were several choices—and he had complained about a hundred different things. His head hurt. His toes itched. His nose ached. His belly button felt too tight.

Finally he had fallen asleep on the hard linoleum floor of the kitchen while Anastasia and her father ate.

"What a hypochondriac," Anastasia had said, whispering, so that he wouldn't wake up and start wailing again.

"He just misses his mom," Dr. Krupnik had pointed out.

They had both looked at Sam curled into a sleeping ball on the floor. "Should we wake him up for his bath?" Dr. Krupnik had asked.

Anastasia had shaken her head. "He's not that dirty. And if we wake him up he'll just start missing Mom again, and crying. Let's just put him to bed with his clothes on."

Dr. Krupnik had frowned. "He'll wet the bed if we don't take him to the bathroom."

It was true. They had both thought about that. "Well," said Anastasia finally, "I think I'd rather change his sheets tomorrow than listen to him howl anymore tonight."

Her father had nodded. "Me too," he agreed. Carefully, he had scooped Sam up and carried him upstairs to his bed. "By morning, after a good night's sleep," he had said when he came back down, "he'll be fine. It's just a difficult adjustment."

But now it was morning, and Sam was howling again. Anastasia sighed and pulled on her clothes, noticing as she did that this was the last of her clean underwear. The jeans didn't matter—she had worn these for three days anyway—but she would have to wash underwear after school today. And socks.

She found Sam standing in the hall, his hair damp and matted, his face bright pink, his yesterday's clothes wrinkled and wet.

"I want my pajamas!" Sam yowled.

Anastasia took his hand and led him to his bedroom. "It's morning, Sam. Time to put on clean clothes for school. You can't wear pajamas to school, silly."

"I don't want to go to school," Sam whined as she began taking off his clothes. "I hate school."

Never get sucked into an argument with a three-year-old, Anastasia remembered her mother saying. Because you can't win one. An adult will lose against a three-year-old every time.

"I know," she said soothingly. "Sometimes I hate school, too. But we have to go anyway. There's a
law
that says you have to go to school." She pulled his shirt off over his head. "Now stop crying, because it makes you all sweaty."

Then she stared at him. "Sam," she said, "what are all these spots?"

Sam looked down at his own bare chest dotted with pink. It was so interesting that he stopped crying. "I've turned into a polka-dot person," he said. "Look at me, poking the dots." He began to poke each one with his finger.

Anastasia turned him around. His back, too, was covered with spots.

"Dad?" she called through the closed bathroom door. "Something's wrong with Sam. Something
bit
him! Could we have bedbugs?"

Sam grinned. "Bedbugs," he said. "Millions of bedbugs."

Dr. Krupnik came out of the bathroom, tying his tie. "Of course we don't have bedbugs," he said. Then he looked at Sam. "Holy—"

"Holy moley." Anastasia completed it for him. She finished undressing Sam. "
Look.
Every inch of him."

Now that he was the center of attention, Sam was completely happy. "Every single inch," he announced proudly. Naked, he began to dance around his bedroom. "Puff, the magic bedbug," he sang, "lived by the sea—"

"What's his doctor's name?" Anastasia's father asked. "Didn't your mom leave a list with all the important phone numbers on it? Where is it? I'd better call the doctor."

"He's my doctor, too, Dad," Anastasia said. "Dr. Nazarosian. I'll call him. He's in his office early. The list's right by the phone in your bedroom."

Sam was still prancing around.

"Do you feel okay, Sam?" Anastasia asked. "I need to tell the doctor all your symptoms."

"Tell him I'm like a leopard," Sam suggested. "A spotted leopard." He began to crawl across the rug, growling. "Lookit me, being a leopard," he said. He grabbed the corner of the rug between his teeth and shook it back and forth with a ferocious growl.

"Dr. Nazarosian," Anastasia said on the phone, "this is Anastasia Krupnik. I'm calling because—"

"Anastasia!" he said heartily, interrupting her. "How
are
you? I haven't seen you in ages. You're one of my favorite patients because you're never sick. Don't tell me you're sick!"

"No, I'm not. But my mother is in California, so—"

"California! Getting a little sunshine, is she? Can't say I blame her. I'm getting pretty sick of this snow. Of course if I had time to take a vacation and do a little skiing, I might feel differently. Do you ski?"

"No," said Anastasia, looking at her watch. She was going to be late for school
again.
"I'm calling because I'm in charge, and it's about Sam. Sam's -—"

He interrupted her again. "Good old Sam—my very favorite patient, in all due respect, Anastasia. Remember the time Sam fell out the window and—"

This time Anastasia interrupted
him.
"Dr. Nazarosian," she said, "Sam's entire body is covered with pink spots."

He chuckled. "Not surprising," he said. "Not at all surprising."

Anastasia was taken aback. Not surprising to be covered with pink spots?
She
found it surprising. What on earth would surprise Dr. Nazarosian? Blue spots, maybe? Green?

"They're even on his ears," she went on.

"How old is Sam now—three?" the doctor asked. "Let me get his chart out. Here it is. Three years old, like I thought. Does he go to nursery school?"

"Yes," said Anastasia. She told him the name of Sam's school.

"I should have guessed. Half the kids in that nursery school have it. The other half will by next week. Except for a few. There are always a few who for some reason seem to be immune. We've never been able to figure that out. And then sometimes the ones who don't get it when they're three suddenly come down with it as
adults,
for some reason, even though they were undoubtedly exposed to it when they were young—"

"Exposed to
what?
"

"Chicken pox," the doctor said. "Sam has chicken pox."

Anastasia's father came into the room and looked at her quizzically. He pointed to his watch at the same time.

"I don't need to see him, unless he has special problems," the doctor was going on. "Give him a little baby aspirin for the fever. And if he itches—well, that was a foolish thing to say; of
course
he itches—add some baking soda to a bath and let him soak in that. He'll feel fine in a day or two. But of course he'll have to stay out of school until the lesions heal. Well, that was a foolish thing to say, too; they're probably going to close that school down for a couple of weeks. Can't run a school when everybody has chicken pox, now, can you?" He chuckled.

Anastasia looked up at her father and mouthed the words "chicken pox."

"
Chicken pox?
" her father mouthed back.

"Now, let me just get out
your
chart and see if you've had chicken pox, Anastasia," the doctor was saying.

"I had it when I was—"

"Here we are. Krupnik, Anastasia. You were right in the filing cabinet next to your brother. Let's see, you're thirteen now. Pretty soon you won't even need a pediatrician. For heaven's sake, look at this—"

"I had chicken pox when I was—"

"I'd forgotten all about that time we had to pump your stomach when you were two. You ate ant poison. Well, that's nothing compared to what
some
toddlers eat. I had one who drank a whole bottle of Windex once. Wouldn't you think it would taste terrible? Now, let's see, you had an ear infection that same year, and—"