Anastasia Again! (10 page)

"Yeah. It's lousy to be the new kid. I know, because I just moved here last year. But it doesn't take long to make friends. Do you play tennis?"

"Not very well."

"Me neither. But there are courts down behind the school. You want to play later?"

"Sure. Wait here a minute, and I'll go ask my mom about the lawn."

Her mother was standing in the kitchen, grinning.

"Mom, there's a boy at the door who..."

"I know. I was eavesdropping."

"We
do
need the grass cut. You were just saying to Dad this morning that..."

"Anastasia, up in my bathroom there's a brand new bottle of shampoo. You'll have time to wash your hair and dry it while he's doing the lawn."

"Do you think maybe I should shave my legs?" whispered Anastasia.

"The last time you tried to shave your legs," her mother whispered back, "you practically needed blood transfusions. I'd forget it if I were you."

"
Cosmopolitan
magazine says that it's fashionable not to, especially if you have blonde hair, like me."

"Fine. Wonderful. Now scoot. I'll get him started on the lawn."

***

Hmmm, thought Anastasia, as her hair dried, and she practiced her backhand, standing in the center of her tower bedroom. Maybe it's true, what Mom said. Maybe other boys besides Robert Giannini will like me.

Maybe
this
boy will.

Maybe my hair will look okay when I go to play tennis.

Maybe my legs aren't quite as skinny as they were last month.

Maybe I will think of something intelligent to say to him. And maybe I won't hit the ball into the net every time, the way I usually do.

I think I will have a hyphenated name, she thought, when I get married. Anastasia Krupnik-Harvey, she thought. That doesn't sound too bad.

Anastasia peeled a strip of the old, loosened, flowered wallpaper from the wall of her room, exposing an even older layer of paper underneath. She rolled the strip into a ball and shot it into the wastebasket.

Outside, she could hear the clatter of Steve Harvey's lawn mower.

Maybe I will get to feeling at home in this room before too long, she thought.

Maybe the suburbs aren't as bad as I used to think.

Maybe I was making premature assumptions.

Anastasia picked up her notebook and began a new version of Chapter 2.

"After she moved to her new home," Anastasia wrote, "the young girl began to be more adaptable than she had been in the past. She began to take up tennis, as a hobby."

The phone rang, and it was Jenny MacCauley.

"Jenny! I've called you twice, and you weren't home either time."

"Oh. I guess I was out."

"Yeah, your mother said you were out. How are things in Cambridge?"

"Booorrring," said Jenny mournfully.

"Yeah, here too. Booorrring," said Anastasia.

"Do you hate it there?"

"Well, sort of," Anastasia lied. "When are you going to come see me?"

"I thought Robert and I might ride our bikes out next Saturday. He said he looked at a map and figured out how to get there."

"Robert
Giannini?
When did you talk to
him?
"

Jenny hesitated. "Well, yesterday he came over and we rode our bikes down to the river."

"That jerk."

"Yeah, that jerk Giannini. Anyway, we sat by the river for a while because Robert was doing one of his surveys. We were counting joggers. How many old joggers and how many young. How many male and how many female. How many wearing special jogging shoes. How many female joggers wearing bras and how many not. Robert's going to send the results of his survey to
Psychology Today.
"

"That idiot."

"Yeah. Anyway, after that we went over to the Brattle Theater and saw
Casablanca.
"

"J
ENNY
M
ACCAULEY
! Y
OU TOLD ME THAT WE WOULD GO SEE THAT
TOGETHER. Y
OU
KNOW I
'VE ONLY EVER SEEN IT ON TV!
"

"Well, you weren't
here,
Anastasia."

Anastasia glowered. "Funny that you said things were boring in Cambridge, Jenny. It sure doesn't
sound
boring."

There was a long silence. Finally Jenny changed the subject. "Have you met anyone out there?"

"Yeah. The woman next door. She takes Sam out for a walk every afternoon."

"Any boys?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. A boy named Steve Harvey. He's going to be in the seventh grade, and he's tall and good-looking. I've played tennis with him three afternoons now."

Jenny interrupted her. "You're a terrible tennis player. You always hit the ball into the net."

"That's because I never had a good partner before, Jenny MacCauley, you rat," said Anastasia angrily. "It just so happens that when I play tennis with Steve Harvey, I hit the ball over the net at least fifty per cent of the time. We're playing again today. Probably by the end of the week I'll hit the ball over the net
eighty
per cent of the time, and probably—"

Jenny interrupted her again. "Anastasia," she said pointedly, "you promised me you'd
call
me if you met any boys."

"I
did
call you. You were always
out.
You were always out seeing
Casablanca
with Robert Giannini, probably."

"So? You're always out, playing tennis, it sounds like. Funny that you said things were boring
there.
"

There was another long and uncomfortable silence.

"Are people like you expected in the suburbs?" asked Jenny finally. "Do they wear pink curlers and eat TV dinners and have bowls of artificial fruit?"

Anastasia thought about the past three afternoons, when she had gone to Gertrustein's house after tennis and rolled Gertrustein's ragged gray hair up in pink curlers so that she would look nicer. On one of those days, Gertrustein had put a TV dinner into the oven while Anastasia was there. She had explained how she very seldom did much cooking anymore, because it was so lonely to cook for just one person.

"Yeah," said Anastasia to Jenny. "The lady next door is just like that. Pink curlers. TV dinners. Artificial fruit. The whole bit."

"Sick-o," said Jenny.

"Yeah," said Anastasia vaguely. "I guess."

"Listen, I gotta go. But Robert and I'll ride out next Saturday, okay?"

"Okay. Hey, did Robert ask you anything about Sam? Did he say anything about Sam, well, not having any legs, or anything like that?"

"Good grief. Why would he ask me that? Sam has
legs.
He kicked me once, because I hid his blanket as a joke."

"Oh," sighed Anastasia, "it's too complicated to explain. I'll see you guys on Saturday."

"Don't forget to watch TV tonight.
The Maltese Falcon
is on."

After Anastasia had hung up, she thought, I should have asked her if she was going to watch it on TV. Or if she was going to go see it at the Brattle Theater. With Robert Giannini, that jerk.

She decided that maybe this afternoon she would get the tennis ball over the net more easily, and
harder,
by pretending that it was Robert Giannini's head. Whammo.

***

One of the things that Anastasia liked about her tower room was that her parents didn't very often come up to it. So it was very private.

Not that she ever did anything subversive in her room. A lot of kids she knew sometimes smoked cigarettes in
their rooms and then sprayed air freshener around so their parents wouldn't know; but Anastasia thought smoking cigarettes was gross.

And some kids she knew occasionally drank beer in their rooms. But there was always beer in the Krupniks' refrigerator, and whenever her father drank a beer, he gave it to her first, so that she could sip off the foam, because he didn't like foam. So she was actually pretty bored with beer, and it never seemed like a big deal, the way it did to some kids.

And of course lots of kids read dirty books in their rooms and hid them under the mattresses. But Anastasia's house had always been filled with books, and some of them had sex in them, and she had always been allowed to read whatever she wanted. Anastasia thought that dirty books were generally not as gross as cigarettes, but rather like beer: interesting now and then, in small doses, but no big deal.

So there was not, really, anything private in her room except her private notebook, and she didn't even need to hide that. Her parents had told her once that they would never read her private notebook. So she had tested them a few times, by leaving it around the house conspicuously, with an almost-invisible hair on it, which would be dislodged if anyone opened the notebook. She had learned that trick from spy novels. But the hair always remained in place. Her parents really
hadn't
opened it. Sam had, once, and scribbled with crayons on a few pages. But Sam couldn't read yet.

Still, even though she didn't need a private place for
subversive stuff, she did like having a room that was very private. It was quiet. It was a good place to read, or to think, or to daydream, or to be sad.

Right now she was lying on her bed, wondering what to do next Saturday when Robert Giannini showed up in the suburbs.

First of all, it was a problem because she didn't want Steve Harvey to know that the Other Man in her life carried an idiotic briefcase everywhere and wore a SeaWorld tee shirt.

It was okay for Steve Harvey to know that there
was
an Other Man. In fact, it was probably a good thing. It made her seem
desirable,
at least, and according to
Cosmopolitan,
that was a good thing. "Keeping Him on His Toes" was the title of the article that had pointed that out.

But keeping Steve Harvey on his toes was one thing; keeping him doubled over, laughing, when he
saw
Robert Giannini was something else again.

She reached out and peeled another strip of old wallpaper from the wall, while she thought. Her wastebasket was almost full of crumpled bits of old wallpaper.

Second—Anastasia almost groaned aloud—was the problem of what to do about Sam, when Robert Giannini came. Probably that jerk was going to show up with a get-well card and a March of Dimes contribution for Anastasia's poor crippled, deformed brother.

Downstairs, she could hear the familiar padding sound which was Sam wandering around the big house in his little red sneakers. On his two very sturdy, healthy legs.

Maybe she could just shut him in his room while Robert was visiting. But that wouldn't work, she knew. Sam never stayed anyplace where you put him. He was always popping out of doors, doing his Ed MacMahon imitation. "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" Sam would announce loudly and wait for applause.

Maybe if she fed him a lot of beer, he would just go to sleep for a long time. But Sam didn't
like
beer. He didn't even like foam. It made him sneeze.

Maybe she could convince him to just sit in his stroller with a blanket over his legs. But it was ninety degrees outside. Nobody in his right mind would sit in a stroller with a blanket over his legs when it was ninety degrees.

Anastasia sighed and pulled off another strip of wallpaper. There were three layers of wallpaper. After she pulled off a piece of the top layer, she could see green flowered paper underneath. If she picked at that and peeled it off, there was a blue striped paper under that. Finally, behind the blue striped paper, there was bare plaster. It made kind of interesting designs, as she poked and peeled at the three layers.

"Anastasia? You up there? May I come up?" It was her mother calling.

"Sure. Come on up."

Her mother appeared in her room, puffing from two flights of stairs, but grinning. "Guess what! They still make Stanley and Sibyl! I've just been to the wallpaper store."

"No kidding!"

"No kidding. It costs more than it used to, but that's
okay. I ordered three rolls, and it'll be in next week. We'll have to strip off the old stuff. Oh, I see you've already started!"

"Yeah, I was just lying here thinking, and I was kind of peeling while I was thinking."

"I like to have something to do with my hands, too, while I'm thinking. Usually I knit. But I can see where peeling wallpaper would be okay, too." Her mother picked at a corner and pulled back a strip of the top layer. "What are you thinking about?"

One of the good things about Anastasia's mother was that she never laughed at you. Especially not at your problems. Anastasia always imagined Dear Abby bent double most of the day, laughing at people's problems and having to bite her tongue in order to keep a straight face while she wrote what sounded like a very serious answer.

But her mother was definitely not like that.

"I have a dumb problem," she said to her mother gloomily. "It's about Sam."

"About Sam? Has he been coloring in your notebook again? Or poking at Frank Goldfish? It's been at least six months since he's flushed anything down the toilet—I think the last time was my silver earrings, and that was just after Christmas..."

"No, no. It isn't anything that Sam has done. It's that ... well, you know how weird Sam is."