Read Anastasia on Her Own Online

Authors: Lois Lowry

Tags: #Ages 9 & Up

Anastasia on Her Own (8 page)

BOOK: Anastasia on Her Own
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"How's the weather out there?" asked Dr. Krupnik.

"Gorgeous. Sunny and warm. My hotel has a pool, and of course I'm too busy all day to use it, but there are a lot of people who lie around the pool all day—glittering, I think, Anastasia. How's the food holding out, by the way? Don't forget you can call the store and have things delivered if you need anything. What did you have for dinner tonight?"

"Chicken," said Dr. Krupnik.

"Hamburger," said Anastasia at the same moment.

"Hot dogs," said Sam along with them.

But apparently Mrs. Krupnik didn't notice. "They're taking me out to dinner tonight," she went on. "It's three hours earlier here, remember? So I've just finished work and I'm getting ready to go out to dinner. You guys ought to treat yourselves to a dinner out, too—maybe Friday night, at the end of the week," she suggested.

"Well, ah," began Dr. Krupnik.

"Bludoth, Daddy," muttered Sam.

"What was that?" asked Mrs. Krupnik. "I couldn't hear what Sam said."

Sam said, "I'm only talking about trucks."

"You know what?" Mrs. Krupnik went on cheerfully. "There are palm trees everywhere out here. It almost looks like that painting in the living room, you know that one I sometimes wish you would throw away, Myron? It looks like that scene. Where is it that Annie lives?"

Anastasia covered the mouthpiece of the kitchen phone with her hand and yelled toward the study: "BLOOD OATH, DAD!"

She put her ear back to the phone and heard her father mumble, "Guatemala."

"Right. Well, I ought to hang up because I have to change my clothes. It's just about your bedtime there in Massachusetts, Sam; have you had your bath?"

"Yeah," said Sam, "I had a burping bath with baking—"

"Blood oath, Sam!" Anastasia and her father roared together into the phone.

"This is an odd connection," Mrs. Krupnik said. "But even so, it's great hearing your voices and knowing that everything's okay." She made some kissing noises into the phone. "Love you all," she said.

When everyone had hung up, Anastasia went back to the study. Her father was sprawled on the couch, looking drained and miserable. "I'm a nervous wreck," he announced. "A basket case."

"Hang in there, Dad," said Anastasia. "Only eight more days to go, till Mom gets home."

Sam came down the stairs and appeared in the doorway of the study. He looked puzzled. "Anastasia," he asked, "what
is
a bludoth?"

6

Now it was interesting and exciting, all of a sudden, being in charge of a house. There was laundry, but Anastasia didn't do it. There were dirty pots and pans in the sink, but she didn't wash them. Those things didn't seem important anymore. The important thing was that she had three days to make a daydream come true: the daydream of her very first date.

On Wednesday morning, she looked through the drawers in the pantry and found a pair of purple candles. High on a shelf she found a pair of silver candlesticks.

One of the articles she had read—the one called "Creating a Romantic Evening"—had recommended a color scheme. Purple was not one of Anastasia's favorite colors. In fact, she had always despised purple. But the article had rated colors according to romance, and purple had rated very highly. Purple, the article said, was the color of passion.

All right, thought Anastasia when she found the two purple candles, passion it is.

She put the candles into the candlesticks and arranged the pair in the center of the dining room table, for a tryout. It didn't look very passionate. In fact, Anastasia decided, it looked stupid. But maybe that was because there was a stack of Sam's coloring books on the table, and Sam's crayons and her father's pipe, in an ashtray, and Anastasia's old blue sweatshirt was hanging on the back of one of the dining room chairs.

She removed all of those things and looked at the table again. It still didn't look very passionate. It needed a tablecloth.

Anastasia went to the linen closet and poked through the stacks of things that her mother stored there. There was an orange-and-white-striped plastic tablecloth, which they used in the summer when they ate on the picnic table in the yard. Obviously that wouldn't do.

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."

BOOK: Anastasia on Her Own
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ads

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