Anastasia Again! (5 page)

They moved on to another room, a huge octagonal room stuck onto the side of the house. It was all windows. They stood there, silently, with the same silly grins, and Anastasia read her mother's mind. Her mother was setting up easels in the room. She was doing huge paintings
with sweeping brush strokes. She was hiring models tc stand there in the brilliant light. She was doing sculpture Murals.

The real estate lady began to talk very fast, trying to mend the silence. "Of course, in the Victorian era, when this house was built, they always had these strange rooms that they called solariums. Useless, now. You could close it off to conserve heat. Or, in fact, you could even have this room torn down. It does stick out rather awkwardly, from the side of the house, I know. The yard would be bigger if you just had this room taken off, and..."

But no one was listening to her. She stopped talking, mid-sentence, confused, and they moved on.

Upstairs, they moved from one bedroom to another. Big bedrooms, with fireplaces and huge closets for playing hide-and-seek. Their feet echoed in the empty rooms: the heavy, decisive steps of Dr. Krupnik's size-twelve shoes; the staccato taps of the real estate lady's high heels; the duet of Anastasia's sneakers and her mother's sandals; and behind them, the pad, pad, pad of Sam's little feet.

Now not even the real estate lady was saying much. She was embarrassed. She thought they hated the house. Halfheartedly, in a bathroom, she said, "New plumbing. Wonderful copper pipes," but then she fell silent again and looked through her pocketbook for a cigarette.

Finally, she opened a door on the second floor and gestured toward the narrow, curving staircase behind it.

"You could just close this off," she said, and puffed nervously on her cigarette.

Anastasia scuttled up the little staircase alone to the tower room and stood there looking out and down, at the green lawns, the huge elms, the curving streets, and in the distance, the Charles River and the buildings of Cambridge and Boston.

Her parents didn't come up the stairs. They had read her mind and knew that she wanted to be in the tower room alone.

But after a moment she could hear Sam's small feet climbing the stairs. He appeared in the room, looking puzzled, and said, "Do you want me to cry again? Do you want to do the plot now?"

But Anastasia said no and took his hand. They went back downstairs just in time to hear her father tell the real estate lady that they would buy the house.

***

"The Mystery," wrote Anastasia carefully, "of Why You Sometimes Hate the Idea of Something, but Then You Like the Thing Itself."

Now that had possibilities for a book. She would have to refine the title a little, because it seemed a little complicated. But it had real possibilities.

Below the title, after she reflected on the possibilities, she wrote, "Subtitle: Or Why You Sometimes
Like
the Idea of Something, But Hate the Thing Itself."

Moving, and the new house, seemed to fall into the first category. And Robert Giannini seemed to fall into the second.

"Boy, Anastasia, I don't know," said Jenny. "I said I'd help you pack. And I
will
help you pack." She put a stack of Anastasia's paperback books into a carton, halfheartedly. "But boy, Anastasia. I really hate it that you're moving. You've been my best friend ever since we started kindergarten."

"Yeah," said Anastasia glumly. "Except for that one summer, when Lindsay Cavanaugh moved in down the street."

"Yeah, Lindsay Cavanaugh, that jerk."

"She was your best friend that whole summer. I wanted to kill myself."

"Yeah. You know why it was, though. Her father was a
filmmaker, remember? He was going to use Lindsay and me in a movie."

"Big deal."

"Yeah, big deal. We had to get up at 5:00
A.M.,
and he took us out to Crane's Beach, and we had to run on the beach with no clothes on while he took movies. When my father found out he did that, he almost broke old Lindsay Cavanaugh's father's neck."

"Yeah, I remember." Anastasia giggled. "It wasn't porno or anything, though. You were only seven years old, for pete's sake."

"Actually, it was probably a pretty good movie. The sun was coming up and everything, and we were the only people on the beach. Except birds. Nobody ever got to see it, though, because my father made him destroy the film."

"I sure hated you that summer. You were so conceited."

"Well, I thought I was a big movie star. Except for that summer, we've always been best friends. Are you taking this, or throwing it away?" She held up a battered arithmetic book.

"Good grief. Where did you find that?"

"It was under your bed."

"I thought I lost it. My mother had to pay the school for it. I guess you'd better throw it out."

The arithmetic book sailed into the big trash can that was in the middle of Anastasia's room.

"Can I have this picture of you? I don't want to forget what you look like." Jenny had a Polaroid snapshot of Anastasia in her hand.

"Sure, but it's ugly. And you're not going to forget what I look like anyway, Jenny. Aren't you going to come visit me? Robert Giannini said that he was going..." Anastasia stopped talking abruptly, and blushed.

"Who?
Robert Giannini?
What's Robert Giannini going to do?"

"Nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing? Robert Giannini's going to
visit
you, isn't he, Anastasia? He's going to
visit
you! I can't believe it, that jerk!"

"Do you think I should keep this orangutan poster, or throw it away? I've had it about five years. I'm kind of bored with it."

"Throw it away. And quit changing the subject. Are you going to let that jerk Giannini visit you? Did you
invite
him?"

"No, I didn't invite him. He invited himself. But he isn't so bad, Jenny. He really isn't. He's
kind
of a jerk, but not full-fledged."

Jenny threw herself onto Anastasia's bed, held her stomach, and groaned. "You
like
him, don't you? You actually
like
Robert Giannini! I can't believe it."

"I don't like him. I just don't
hate
him anymore."

"Traitor. Traitor traitor traitor. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot."

"You didn't forget. You were embarrassed."

"Yeah, I was embarrassed."

Jenny lay on the bed with her eyes closed. "Well, guess what."

"What?"

There was a long silence. Then Jenny took a deep breath. "I don't hate Michael Gottlieb anymore, either."

"
That jerk?
"

"He's not really a jerk. Really, he isn't, Anastasia. The other day he came over, and we went down to the store and got Popsicles. He was sort of nice, all of a sudden."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot."

"Liar."

Jenny looked at Anastasia and grinned. Anastasia began to laugh. Jenny began to laugh. Anastasia could hardly talk because she was laughing so hard; but finally she sputtered, "Michael Gottlieb! He always wears that stupid baseball cap!" Jenny doubled up, laughing, and gasped, "Robert Giannini! That briefcase! That gross briefcase!"

For the rest of the day, they couldn't look at each other without making the kind of semisneezing noise that holds back a brand new laugh.

***

It was hard, packing. Not hard on the muscles—Anastasia had pretty good muscles—but hard on the head. And hard on the heart.

Anastasia found her mother crying, one afternoon. Not curled-up-on-a-bed, pounding-your-fists-into-the-pillow sort of crying. Just silent, tears-running-down-your-cheeks crying. Her mother was standing in the pantry, packing dishes, and there were tears on her face.

"Did you hurt yourself?"

Her mother sniffed and smiled. "No. I'm just sad."

Anastasia picked up a plate and looked at it. It was an ordinary yellow plate. It made her think of spaghetti and of meat loaf. It didn't make her feel sad.

"If I were you, I would feel good about this plate," she told her mother. "
Most
people in the suburbs eat off of plastic dishes."

"Assumptions again."

"No, really. They do. Except when they eat TV dinners. Those they eat right out of the tin tray."

Her mother leaned against the cupboard and began to laugh. "Anastasia, haven't you figured out yet that your assumptions all turn out to be
wrong?
Take the new house, for example. You thought we'd have to move to a split-level house in a development. Instead we found that wonderful house with a tower."

Anastasia shrugged and grinned.

"How did you become such an expert on suburban life, anyway?"

"Told you. Books and TV. Mostly TV commercials. You never see
city
people worrying about ring-around-the-collar."

"Well, we won't worry about it either, not even when we live in the suburbs."

"Why were the dishes making you cry?"

"It wasn't the dishes. I was feeling sad about the stained glass in these cupboard doors. I've always loved this stained glass."

Anastasia looked at the stained-glass windows of the cupboards. She remembered when Sam was a tiny baby, and they had kept his little crib in the pantry. She used to open the cupboard door, stand behind it, and make faces at the baby. The very first time Sam had smiled was when Anastasia had been making a purple-and-amber face at him, wiggling her nose.

Oh, dear. Now Anastasia was starting to feel sad, too.

She wiggled the loose pane of colored glass. "Maybe we could take it out and take it with us, Mom."

"No. It doesn't belong to us."

"Of
course
it belongs to us! It's always been ours! All my
life
I remember this stained glass!"

"But we don't own this building, or the things that are part of it. So when we leave, we have to leave all these things for the next people who will live here."

Good grief. Anastasia hadn't even thought about someone else living in their apartment. All of a sudden, she thought of the wallpaper in her bedroom. She had chosen it herself, when she was eight. It was blue and white, with people riding old-fashioned bicycles on it; some of them were playing flutes and violins while they rode.

She didn't want anyone else to have that wallpaper. But there was nothing she could do.

Well, there was something. She thumped her way down the echoey hall to her room, which seemed hollow and empty now. The rug was rolled up, and the curtains had been taken down. Her desk, usually cluttered with
paint boxes and notebooks and comics, was bare, except for the goldfish bowl where Frank swam lazily back and forth, back and forth.

"Frank," she said, "don't tell anyone that I'm doing this." Frank made a kissing face at her.

Anastasia found a pencil stub in the trash can. She knelt on the bare floor in a corner of the room and wrote, on the wallpaper, in her best printing: "This is my room forever. Anastasia Krupnik."

That made her feel better.

Then she thumped down the hall to her father's study. He was standing beside his own bare desk by the wall with his back to her, and he jumped, startled, when she came in.

He looked guilty. Anastasia was an expert on guilty looks.

"What are you doing, Dad?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said very quickly.

"Nothing" was what you always said when you were doing something that you felt guilty about and someone came along and asked what you were doing. Anastasia was an expert on that. Either you said "nothing," or you whistled, or hummed.

Her father began to hum. He did a little drumming rhythm on his desk top with his fingers.

"You all packed in here?" she asked, looking around the bare room.

"Yep. All ready for the movers. It sure looks empty with the books packed, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. I suppose someone else will move new books in.
Probably their books won't be as good as yours, though."

"Probably no one else will have a first edition of
The Old Man and the Sea,
" her father said, and that seemed to make him feel better. "I think I'll have a beer."

He headed for the kitchen. When he was gone, Anastasia saw, suddenly, the place on the wall of the study where, in his best writing, very small, with his fountain pen, he had written his name.

***

Anastasia found Sam in his bedroom, sitting on the floor, crying silently.

"What's wrong, Old Sam?" she asked.

"I'm feeling sad about my blanky," he said.

"Oh, Sam, I'm sorry. I was just teasing when I said your blanky couldn't come to the new house. Of course it can come."

Tears trickled down Sam's cheeks. "But it wants to live here," he whispered to her. "It told me so."

Anastasia thought and thought. "I have an idea, Sam," she said, finally. She ran to the kitchen and got a pair of scissors. Then, sitting beside Sam on his bedroom floor, she carefully cut his ragged yellow blanket in half.

"There," she said. "Now part of it can live here, and part of it can come to the new house." She folded one half and Sam showed her where to put it: on a dark, narrow shelf in the closet. He wrapped the remaining half around his hand, held it against his cheek, and sucked his thumb, testing how it worked with only half. After a moment he smiled. "Okay," he said. "It's okay."