Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst (2 page)

"You tricked me somehow. Tell me how."

Anastasia took a cookie and began to pick the raisins out, one by one. She popped them into her mouth. She didn't say anything.

"Why am I always outsmarted by a thirteen-year-old? Tell me how you did it!"

Finally Anastasia shrugged. "It wasn't a trick. It was just that I've been teaching Sam to play Scrabble. I knew when he left the kitchen that he was going off to check the Scrabble points in 'sex.' X is one of his favorite letters. Eight points for an X." She broke off a bit of the raisinless cookie and put it in her mouth.

Her mother watched her chew. After a moment she said, "Someday, Anastasia, I am going to offer you for adoption."

"Me and my gerbils, right?"

Anastasia Krupnik
Mr. Sherman's Class

On October 13, I acquired two wonderful little gerbils, who are living in a cage in my bedroom. Their names are Romeo and Juliet, and they are very friendly. They seem to like each other a lot. Since they are living in the same cage as man and wife, I expect they will have gerbil babies. My gerbil book says that it takes twenty-five days to make gerbil babies. I think they are already mating, because they act very affectionate to each other, so I will count today as DAY ONE and then I will observe them for twenty-five days and I hope that on DAY 25 their babies will be born.

This will be my Science Project.

"What are you writing?" asked Sam. He was on his knees on Anastasia's bedroom floor, one arm in the gerbil cage as he stroked the heads of the furry creatures with his fingers.

"My Science Project for school," Anastasia explained. "I'm telling about Romeo and Juliet."

Sam looked up and frowned. "These are partly my gerbils, right?" he asked.

"Sure. It was because of you that I got to keep them. So I guess they're partly yours."

"Well, I want to name one Prince," said Sam.

Anastasia made a face. "Prince is a dog's name," she said.

Sam sighed. "Yeah," he said. "I really wanted a dog. I could
play
with a dog."

"You can play with the gerbils. Gerbils are friendly."

"These gerbils aren't. Look. They're biting each other." Sam pointed his finger into the cage.

Anastasia looked. Sam was right. The two gerbils were tussling with each other, their little teeth exposed.

"That's a domestic fight, I think," she told her brother. "Like when Mom and Dad have an argument. These gerbils are husband and wife, so of course they have little fights now and then."

Sam looked at the gerbils dubiously. "They're kind of ugly," he said. "And they're fat."

Anastasia closed her notebook and sighed. "Quit complaining, Sam. They're fat because they eat a lot. And they're not ugly."

"That one," said Sam, pointing, "is very, very ugly.
Can I name that one Nicky?"

"No," said Anastasia impatiently. "Why on earth would you name a gerbil Nicky?"

"Because it looks like an ugly kid at my nursery school. Nicky. Nicky is the ugliest person I know. And fat, too. Nicky is very fat and very ugly, just like these gerbils, and Nicky also bites."

Anastasia glanced out of her bedroom window, down into the yard where her father was raking leaves. "Sam," she said, "why don't you go down to the yard? Maybe Dad will let you jump into the leaf piles."

"Are you going to come and jump in leaf piles with me?"

"No," Anastasia sighed. "I have to stay here and observe the gerbils. For my Science Project. Close the door when you leave. I promised Mom that she would never hear one single gerbil noise from my room."

Sam latched the lid of the cage and headed for the door. "I wish you were doing a dog for your Science Project," he said wistfully, "so I could name it Prince."

Anastasia came in from school, dropped her books on the kitchen table, rummaged through the refrigerator until she found something that looked appealing—a piece of cold chicken, which she dipped in some mustard—and then headed up the back stairs to her room.

At the closed door of her bedroom she stopped, startled. Her way was blocked by the vacuum cleaner, which was sitting in the middle of the hall floor. Attached to it with a piece of Scotch tape was a note.

"Anastasia," the note said. "You realize that I can't possibly clean your room anymore, since you have those things in there, and I suffer from this phobia. Be sure to do in the corners, and under the bed. Put the vacuum cleaner away in the hall closet when you're done. Love, Mom."

"LOVE, MOM"?Did Hitler sign notes "Love, Adolf"?

Anastasia glowered, and went back downstairs in search of her mother. "Love, Mom" indeed!

Mrs. Krupnik, wearing jeans and a paint-spattered man's shirt, was sitting on the floor of the room that she used as her artist's studio. Beside her was Sam, squatting on his short three-year-old legs. His face and clothes and hands were daubed with different colors. He grinned up at Anastasia and then went back to stirring a coffee can filled with bright orange paint.

There were oatmeal boxes all over the floor of the big room, on top of newspapers. Two of the boxes had been painted bright blue; the others were waiting. The Quaker Oats man was smiling his patronizing smile at Anastasia. That was all she needed, to be leered at by Mr. Quaker Oats when she was
already
furious.

"I hate that guy's looks," Anastasia said, frowning. "He looks so
wholesome.
I wish someone would make him eat sugary cereal filled with chemical additives."

"Goodness. Why are you so grouchy?" asked Katherine Krupnik.

"Three guesses," said Anastasia, glaring at her mother.

Mrs. Krupnik picked up one of the empty boxes, studied the Quaker Oats man for a minute, and then painted an orange mustache on his face with a flourish. "I think he's cute," she said. "He has a benevolent look. I like Quakers in general. I just wish I liked oatmeal better. It's taken two years to save up these boxes."

"I SAID, THREE GUESSES," Anastasia repeated loudly.

Her mother smiled at her pleasantly. "I don't want to discuss it," she said. "You told me you'd keep them completely out of my sight. Okay. That means you clean your own room, kiddo."

"We're making a train!" announced Sam gleefully. "The blue ones are going to be the boxcars, and now we're going to do orange, and they'll be the—what are they going to be, Mom?"

"Cattle cars," said Mrs. Krupnik. "And we'll have a green coal car, and a black engine with silver trimming, and of course the caboose will be red—"

She interrupted herself. "Here, Sam," she said, handing him the box she was holding, "take this one with the mustache and paint the whole box orange."

Anastasia scowled. "What's for dinner?" she asked.

Her mother was blowing on the blue boxes to dry them. She looked up. "Dinner? What time is it?"

"Almost five. I stayed late at school because stupid Daphne has a crush on a guy on the stupid football team, and she made me stay and watch stupid football practice with her."

Mrs. Krupnik sighed and wiped her hands on a rag. "I forgot all about dinner, Anastasia. I forgot to take anything out of the freezer. I was so excited about making this train because I'd been saving the boxes for almost two years. This morning when Sam was at nursery school, I opened a closet door and all these oatmeal boxes fell out at me, and I realized I had enough, finally, and so when Sam got home, we—Sam, did we ever have lunch?"

Sam was painting the Quaker Oats man industriously. His tongue was wedged between his teeth. There was an orange spot on his nose. "Yeah," he told her. "Hot dogs."

Anastasia's mother put the rag down and stood up. "Dinner," she said. "Dinner. Let's see. You know what? In order to get that one last box, the one for the caboose, I emptied out a batch of Quaker Oats into a plastic bag. Maybe I could—"

"MOM!" wailed Anastasia. "I don't want oatmeal for dinner! I
hate
oatmeal!"

"I don't," said Sam cheerfully. "I
love
oatmeal, because it makes me get a train."

Anastasia headed angrily toward the door of the studio. "I'm going to the kitchen," she announced, "and I'm going to examine the contents of the refrigerator, and there had better be something in there that we can have for dinner. Because it's against the law to starve your family, Mom. If I call this special phone number that I know about—this phone number you call if you know of a Very Troubled Family—they'll send social workers to investigate."

Her mother laughed. "We have eggs," she said. "I'll make an omelet. I'll put cheese in it, and onions, and green peppers, and I think I have some mushrooms. Your social worker would arrive, Anastasia, and it would smell so good that she'd want to be invited for dinner."

"Ketchup," said Sam. "Put ketchup on it, too."

Anastasia sniffed. It was a sort of sniff that she'd been practicing in her room, a huffy sort of noise she could
do with her nose, which meant "I am above this sort of thing." It was the kind of sniff that she imagined Queen Elizabeth would do if Diana asked her to change William's diapers.

"Mother," she said, "I would like to have a private conversation with you. I would like to have it now, before Dad gets home, and I don't want Sam there, either, because it is a
female
conversation."

Her mother sighed, dropped her paintbrush into a can of water, and said, "Sam, you keep doing the orange, okay? You can probably get two more boxes done before it's time to get cleaned up for dinner."

Sam nodded solemnly, his tongue between his teeth again.

Mrs. Krupnik followed Anastasia down the hall to the kitchen. Anastasia's feet went thump, thump, thump; partly because she was upset, and partly because she was wearing her very favorite heavy hiking boots. Her mother's feet made no sound at all because her mother was barefoot. There was bright blue paint on Katherine Krupink's toes.

They sat down on two kitchen chairs, facing each other across the round table.

"What's up?" asked Mrs. Krupnik cheerfully. "Got female troubles?"

"No," said Anastasia in a grim voice. "
You
do."

"
Me?
A healthy, happy, lovable person like me?"

Even though she was still angry, Anastasia began to feel a twinge of sympathy. Her mother didn't even
realize
she had this problem. I'll be gentle with her, she decided.

"Mom," she said as gently as she could, "I believe you are entering menopause."

"Beer," her mother said, after a long silence. She stood up and opened the refrigerator. "I am going to have a beer."

"Typical," murmured Anastasia. "Typical escape mechanism."

Her mother opened the can with a hiss, took a drink, and made a face. "Yuck," she said. "I hate beer. But I hate this conversation even more. What on earth do you mean, Anastasia?"

Anastasia picked up the salt shaker, sprinkled some salt in the palm of her hand, poked it with a finger, and licked her finger. It was a thing she always did when she was thinking; at least if she was thinking in the kitchen. You needed something to do with your hands if you were thinking heavy, painful thoughts.

"Mom," she said finally, "you're becoming very weird."

Her mother took another sip of beer and made another face. "Tell me what you mean by that," she said at last.

"It's kind of hard to describe," Anastasia began.

"I can imagine. Please try, though."

"Well, I used to like you a whole lot. I thought you were a really neat mother. You used to be fun. But lately—"

"Yes? Go on. Tell me about lately." Her mother sipped again. This time she didn't even make a face.

"Well, your clothes, for example. They're embarrassing.
You always wear jeans. I don't even like to walk beside you on the street because you don't look like a regular mother."

"I see," said her mother tersely. "And what else?"

"You're always doing stupid stuff. Like the fuss about my poor little gerbils, for example. The note on the vacuum cleaner. What if I'd had a friend with me? What if a friend of mine had seen that note on the vacuum cleaner? And for pete's sake, Mom, then I find you on the floor with a billion oatmeal boxes, making a dumb train. What if a friend had seen
that?
I can't even think about how embarrassed I would have been if I'd brought a friend home with me today. I don't want my friends to know the kind of stupid stuff you do." Anastasia licked a little more salt from her fingertip. She was beginning to feel perfectly miserable.

"And all of this has just started lately, you say?" asked her mother.

"Yeah. It's only been, oh, say the last couple of weeks."

"But I told you that I'd been saving those oatmeal boxes for almost two years. Since Sam was just an infant. Wouldn't you call that weird and stupid ■—saving oatmeal boxes to make a train? But you said I was fine until recently."

"Well, I just began to notice it recently," muttered Anastasia, looking at the floor.

"And I've always worn jeans. I'm a painter, so it makes sense for me to wear jeans. You want me to wear a tweed suit while I stand at an easel?"