Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst (10 page)

In personality, they resemble my mother. They're very grouchy.

Day Three Continued.

People who have serious emotional problems sometimes have difficulty doing real good gerbil-observation because they suffer from inability to concentrate. I myself have serious emotional difficulties so I have this problem.

As part of my Science Project I will talk about serious emotional problems. I will tell you what someone named Freud says about this.

The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life, which are as common as they are important, and to find a place for them in the framework of science.

Day Five.

My gerbils gave birth to premature babies. Instead of twenty-five days, it took them only five days to have babies.

Now I have eleven gerbils, and their names are Romeo, Juliet, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc, Snow White, and Prince.

I also have a psychiatrist. His name is Freud. He is dead. But there is no need to be grossed out by that because with some psychiatrists it doesn't seem to matter much if they are alive or dead.

Day Twenty-five.

I have not written anything for a long time because I have felt very tired and it may be that I have a wasting disease. My dependent relations have no sympathy for someone with a wasting disease, I am sorry to say.

Here is what my psychiatrist says about dependent relations:

...the derivation of the super-ego from the first object-cathexes of the id, from the Oedipus complex, signifies even more for it. This derivation, as we have already shown, brings it into relation with the phylogenetic acquisitions of the id and makes it a reincarnation of former ego-structures which have left their precipitates behind in the id.

To identify my gerbils scientifically, I have colored their heads.

RED—ROMEO BROWN—GRUMPY
BLUE—JULIET BLACK—SLEEPY
YELLOW—HAPPY PINK—DOPEY
GREEN—SNEEZY TURQUOISE—SNOW WHITE
ORANGE—BASHFUL WHITE—PRINCE
PURPLE—DOC

This will make it easier for me to know who is who, in case one of them has babies or something.

To identify my psychiatrist, I have put a large MAGENTA spot on his head. (There is, of course, no chance that my psychiatrist will have babies.)

Day Twenty-nine.

My gerbils have disappeared.

My gerbil book says this about disappeared gerbils: "If, in the process of escaping, the gerbils have been frightened, it is best to just sit very still In the middle of the floor until the gerbils come out of hiding on their own."

But my scientific assistant, Sam, and I sat very still in the middle of the floor for one hour, and my scientific assistant fell sound asleep while we waited. But the gerbils never appeared.

I think that by now there are eleven gerbils loose all over the house. And if my mother sees even ONE of them she is likely to have a nervous breakdown.

My mother doesn't even know I HAVE eleven gerbils.

And my psychiatrist is no help at all. He has his
own
problems: a villain has painted his nose blue.

"Myron," said Mrs. Krupnik at dinner one night a month later, "I think I should make an appointment with the eye doctor. I think I need glasses."

"Really? I'm surprised. Your vision has always been perfect. I've always thought it was a shame that Anastasia inherited my astigmatism instead of your perfect vision."

"Don't feel bad, Dad," said Anastasia. "I don't mind wearing glasses. I used to think that I wanted contact lenses when I got older. But now I've decided that glasses make me look scholarly. I
like
looking scholarly."

Mrs. Krupnik, at the end of the table, held up a piece of chicken on her fork. She peered at it thoughtfully. "I can
see
all right. This piece of chicken is perfectly clear."

"How about across the room?" asked Anastasia. "If I take my glasses off, I can't tell if that painting on the wall is a landscape or a still life."

Her mother looked across the dining room at the painting. "I can see that just fine," she said.

"Then why do you think you need glasses?"

"It's strange. I've been noticing it for several weeks. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye—I guess it's my peripheral vision—I see something move. It's just an instantaneous sensation, that something is moving very quickly. Then when I turn to look, nothing is there."

"It could be migraine," said Dr. Krupnik. "Migraine does that to people sometimes."

"It could be Dopey," said Sam. Anastasia glared at him.

His mother laughed. "It
is
sort of dopey, Sam. But I guess I'd better have my eyes tested."

"Sam," said Anastasia later, privately, "remember that you shouldn't mention the gerbils in front of Mom."

"I know," sighed Sam. "I forgot. But it
is
Dopey she sees, I'm sure of it. Or maybe Grumpy, or Doc, or Romeo."

"Or Sleepy. We don't have Sleepy back yet, either."

"Yeah. Dumb old Sleepy."

There were still five gerbils missing. It had been a frustrating month.

They had found Snow White first, the day after Nicky Coletti's visit. Snow White had holed up in a sneaker in Anastasia's closet. She had poked her head up curiously when Anastasia reached into the closet for a sweater and had been caught.

Two days later Sam had found Bashful in the coal car of his train.

Two weeks ago, Anastasia had vacuumed up Sneezy when she was cleaning her room. It happened so quickly she couldn't stop it; he was under her bed, and he got sucked right in. Frantically she opened the vacuum cleaner, and there he was, wrapped in a layer of dust. She had thought he was dead. But while she was looking around for a small coffin, he opened his eyes suddenly. If she hadn't grabbed him, he would have taken off again.

The day after that, Sam had come across Juliet, sitting right in the middle of the kitchen floor, eating a Rice Krispie. Fortunately, his mother had not been in the kitchen at the time.

Happy had finally surfaced last week, in a pile of dirty clothes that Anastasia had been carrying down from her room. He had eaten a hole in the sleeve of her favorite tee shirt.

And she had discovered Prince only yesterday, sitting in the dirt of a potted plant in the living room, munching on a leaf of her mother's favorite begonia.

But there were still five gerbils missing. Anastasia wondered if they had starved to death by now. She realized guiltily that she didn't really care if they had.

And her psychiatrist was no help at all. He continued to smile serenely, even when Anastasia was at the peak of despair. It was as if Freud didn't even
care
about the missing gerbils.

Freud would certainly have to care if Mrs. Krupnik had a total nervous breakdown; and Mrs. Krupnik would
certainly have a total nervous breakdown if she knew there were five gerbils loose in her house.

"Mom," asked Anastasia during dessert, "are you in any particular part of the house when you have this problem with your eyes?"

Her mother thought. "I hadn't considered that. I remember that it's happened in the studio. Several times in the studio. I've been working, and then I'd see this—this
movement
—over to the side."

"It must be the light in there, Katherine," said Dr. Krupnik. "The light's very bright in there, particularly this time of year when there are no leaves on the trees. I think it's migraine. Bright light affects migraine."

"What day is today?" asked Anastasia. "Wednesday?"

"Yes," said her father. "Mom's turn for the dishes."

"While you're doing the dishes, Mom, could I use your studio? I want to do some drawings for my Science Project."

Mrs. Krupnik cringed. "As long as you don't use live models, Anastasia. I will
not
have those two things in my studio."

"I will definitely not take any live creatures into your studio, Mom," she promised truthfully.

Sam grinned. "Dopey," he murmured under his breath. "I think it's Dopey."

But it wasn't Dopey. It was Romeo and Doc. When Anastasia turned on the studio light, she saw them, sitting side by side on the table, gnawing on a 4-H pencil.
She recognized their red and purple heads. They looked up, startled by the light, and turned to scamper away. But Anastasia was too quick for them. She grabbed a basket of fruit that her mother had been using as a model for a still life, dumped three pears and a banana on the floor, and overturned the basket on top of the gerbils. They were caught.

With both gerbils tightly restrained in one hand, she replaced the fruit in the basket, turned off the light, and left the studio. In the hall, she met her father coming out of his study.

"That was fast," he said. "Are you all finished already?"

Anastasia held her handful of gerbils behind her back. "I am for now," she said.

He hesitated. "Anastasia, I need to speak to you privately," he said. "Do you have a few minutes?"

"Sure," she told him, with her hand still uncomfortably behind her back. All of a sudden, her hand was wet. One of the gerbils had peed in her hand. "But I have to go upstairs for a minute first."

"I'm going to go get some coffee," her father said. "I'll meet you in the study."

Anastasia took the gerbils to her room and put them into the cage. She counted. Eight down, and three to go.

She went to the bathroom to wash her hands. Gerbil pee, for pete's sake, she thought. The things I have to go through. Talk about disgusting.

Sam wandered by the bathroom and looked in. "Did you find him?" he asked. "Was it Dopey?"

"It was Romeo and Doc," she told him. "And Romeo was disgusting. He has no self-control."

"So, Dad, what's up?" asked Anastasia. "What do you want to talk to me about?"

He looked uncomfortable. "I find this very embarrassing," he said.

Anastasia was astonished. "You're not going to talk about the facts of life, are you, for pete's sake? You and Mom already did that,
years
ago!"

He laughed, and lit his pipe. "No. This is a problem I have, and I don't want your mother to know about it."

"But you and Mom don't have any secrets from each other!"

"Normally we don't," he admitted. "But you know your mother's still upset about that Coletti child. I just hate to add another problem to her list, especially one as bizarre as this. This one would
really
blow her mind."

He has a mistress, Anastasia thought suddenly. My father has a mistress. He's fallen in love with one of his students: a sweet young thing with big eyes and dangly earrings, and they're planning to run off together and be vegetarians, and maybe join a weird religion, and probably he's going to take the stereo with him, too.

"Well, it might upset me, too!" she said angrily. "Didn't you ever think of THAT?"

"There was this movie awhile back—I'm sure you saw it," her father said.

Anastasia tried to think of a movie in which a middle-aged man ran off with a young vegetarian.

"
An Unmarried Woman?
" she asked suspiciously.

"No," he said. "It was called
Poltergeist.
"

He doesn't have a mistress, Anastasia thought. I knew it couldn't be that. Not my good old dad. She relaxed. "I hated
Poltergeist,
" she said.

"Me too. And I've never believed in that stuff—ghosts that move objects around and break things."

"Idiotic," said Anastasia.

"Right. That's what I always thought. But, Anastasia, I think I have one."

"A
ghost?
"

Her father nodded miserably. "A poltergeist. Right here in my study."

Anastasia looked around the study, her favorite room in the whole house besides her own bedroom—and lately she'd begun to hate her bedroom, because it smelled like gerbils. The study was lined with bookcases filled with books. There was the fireplace, her father's big desk, the soft couch with its piles of bright-colored pillows, her mother's paintings on the walls.

"
Here?
" she asked in amazement.

He sucked on his pipe, looked around, and shuddered. "I know. It sounds ridiculous. But lately things have been moving, just the way they did in that movie. Earlier this evening, I was sitting at my desk correcting some papers, and suddenly I heard a metallic sort of clunk."

"A clunk?"

"Exactly. And when I looked up, my hubcap ashtray was still vibrating. It had jumped up and down."

They both stared at the hubcap.

"And it's happened before. The hubcap jumps, but when I look at it, there's nobody there. Sometimes I've thought that Sam must be hiding behind the couch, playing tricks. But he isn't. There's never anybody there.

"And once," he went on, "I saw a book move. Up there, in the bookcase. Just a fraction of an inch. But I
saw
it, Anastasia. It jumped out of the bookcase a fraction of an inch. Look: I left it that way. See how that one book is sticking out farther than the others?" He pointed.