Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst (5 page)

"Yes," said Anastasia with steely dignity. "That would be nice, I think."

"Well, let me tell you something. Joanne Woodward had a script! Someone wrote all her dialogue! And that's the whole blasted trouble with motherhood—there isn't any script!" Mrs. Krupnik was furious. "Now
go to bed!
"

Anastasia stood up with perfect posture, and tilted her nose into the air, with her glasses balanced midway down. "Good night," she said coolly. She nodded haughtily to her mother, who was becoming pretty steely-eyed herself. She left the room, carrying the volume of Freud, and headed up the stairs.

On the second floor, as she headed toward the small staircase that led to her third floor bedroom, she could hear Sam splashing in the bathtub. Through the open door of Sam's bedroom, she could see her father bending over to change Sam's sheets. She caught a glimpse of ketchup and averted her eyes quickly.

Talk about a lower-class environment, Anastasia thought. Queen Elizabeth would
hire
someone to do that.

Anastasia unlaced her hiking boots, dropped them on the floor, and flopped down on her bed. She glanced over at the goldfish bowl, where Frank Goldfish was swimming in slow, lazy circles. Frank never seemed to be emotionally disturbed. Of course, Anastasia had never kept it a secret from Frank that he had been adopted at a very young age.

She looked at the gerbil cage. Both gerbils were busy, rushing around in the shavings, pushing pieces into mounds to make nests. It sure is boring to observe gerbils, Anastasia thought.

She flipped idly through the pages of her father's book. Then she picked up the Science Project notebook, found her pencil, and began to write.

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.

Day Three.

My gerbils haven't changed much. They lie in their cage and sleep a lot. They're both overweight, because they eat too much, and they resemble Sonya Isaacson's mother, at least in chubbiness.

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.

Anastasia read aloud what she had written. She glanced at the gerbils. They were both asleep in the nests they had built. She looked at Frank Goldfish. He swam in a circle, opening and closing his mouth. She could tell that he was amused.

"Quit being so arrogant, Frank," she said angrily. "Just wait till you're thirteen.
Then
you won't be so well adjusted."

"Is it Saturday, Mom?" asked Sam anxiously as he ate his breakfast cereal. "Promise me that it's Saturday?"

"I promise," said Mrs. Krupnik. "It's Saturday. All day."

"Good," said Sam, as he took another bite of Rice Krispies. "I love Saturday. Because on Saturday I don't have to go to nursery school."

Anastasia was sitting on the kitchen floor, lacing up her hiking boots. She'd had to unlace them completely to put them on because she was wearing two pairs of thick wool socks; it was suddenly very cold outside for mid-October. "Why?" she asked her brother. "I thought you loved nursery school. You like those blocks with the letters on them."

But Sam shook his head gloomily. "My friend Nicky takes the blocks and throws them. I'm scared of Nicky. My friend Nicky punches me and kicks me."

"Some friend," said Anastasia, tugging at her boot laces.

"Nicky does
what?
" Mrs. Krupnik put her cup of coffee down on the table and stared at Sam.

"Punches," said Sam. "And kicks."

"Myron, did you hear that?" asked Mrs. Krupnik. "Myron, stop reading the paper for a minute. Did you hear what Sam just said?"

Reluctantly, Dr. Krupnik lowered his newspaper. "Have you read this article about the possibility of a nuclear disaster here in Massachusetts?" he asked.

"No," said Katherine Krupnik. "I have enough problems right here in this house. Did you hear what Sam just told us? There's a child in his nursery school who beats him up!"

"Nicky," said Sam cheerfully. "Nicky punches and kicks. And
bites,
too. Look!" He pulled up the sleeve of his striped jersey. On the side of his arm was a small pink semicircle of teeth marks.

"Myron! Look at this!" Mrs Krupnik examined Sam's arm with dismay.

Dr. Krupnik adjusted his glasses and took a look. "It didn't break the skin," he said. He began to pick up the newspaper again.

"What is Nicky's full name, Sam?" Mrs. Krupnik asked angrily. She was reaching for the telephone book.

Sam thought about that, wrinkling his forehead as he munched on his cereal. "Big fat ugly Nicky," he said, finally.

Anastasia giggled. "Mom meant
last
name, Sam," she
explained. "Like your last name is Krupnik. What's Nicky's last name?"

Sam thought. "Coletti," he said. "Nicky Coletti."

Anastasia stood up and stamped her feet to make sure her boots were just right. "Sounds like Mafia to me," she said. "Definitely underworld. If you call Nicky's mother, Mom, probably thugs will come to the house and break both your legs."

Sam grinned.

Mrs. Krupnik was running her finger down the page of C's in the telephone book. "Cohen," she murmured. "Colby. Coleman—"

Dr. Krupnik put the newspaper down again. "Don't call her, Katherine," he said.

"Is that an order?" asked his wife angrily.

"No, it's a suggestion. Don't you remember what happened when Anastasia was about seven, and she came home one day crying because her friend—What was that little girl's name, Anastasia?"

"Traci," said Anastasia. "It was Traci Beckwith, that little fink."

"Right," said her father. "Traci Beckwith had pushed Anastasia off a swing in the playground, if I remember correctly."

"Yes, she did. I got all this gravel in my knee."

"And you called Mrs. Beckwith, Katherine, remember? You were furious."

"I had every right to be furious. That child could have killed Anastasia. Imagine, pushing a seven-year-old off a swing!"

Dr. Krupnik lit his pipe. "And Mrs. Beckwith, you'll recall, became very aggressive?"

"I had no idea that woman was a criminal lawyer," said Mrs. Krupnik. "But it wouldn't have changed things if I
had
known."

"And she began making countercharges," Dr. Krupnik went on. "She said that Anastasia had taken scissors during Art period, and had cut the ends off of Traci's pigtails."

"Well," said Anastasia hurriedly, "that was no big deal. She had these very
long
pigtails. And her desk was right in front of mine, so her stupid pigtails were always dangling on my desk and flopping into my finger-painting. There wasn't any need to make a federal case out of it."

"My point," said her father, puffing on his pipe, "is only that before we knew it, the two mothers were talking about law suits, and yelling at each other over the phone. But in the meantime, Anastasia and Traci were the best of friends. They were out riding their bikes together."

"I don't see how that relates to Sam," said Mrs. Krupnik grumpily. But she had closed the telephone book. "Who gave that Coletti kid the right to gnaw a whole chunk out of Sam's little arm?"

"Yeah," said Sam mournfully. "A whole big chunk." He gazed at the small pink mark on his arm.

"Why didn't you bite Nicky Coletti back, Sam?" asked Anastasia.

Sam's eyes grew wide. "Nicky Coletti is
big,
" he said. "Nicky Coletti is a
giant.
"

They all stared for a moment at the tiny pink teeth marks.

"Well," said Dr. Krupnik, "I think it's best to let the kids work it out between themselves."

"Maybe so," said Mrs. Krupnik reluctantly. "But I found their name in the book: Coletti, on Woodville Avenue. Just in case I ever need to call."

There was a knock on the kitchen door.

"Oh, no!" cried Anastasia. "That's Sonya and Meredith. We're going to a garage sale on Bennington Street. Oh, rats! They're five minutes early!"

"So what?" asked her mother, puzzled. "Go let them in.

"Mom," said Anastasia, "you're wearing your bathrobe!"

Her mother looked down at her plaid wool bathrobe. "It's clean," she said. "Surely they've seen bathrobes before."

"Mom," said Anastasia hastily, "just do me a big favor, okay? Hide. Go stand in the pantry. It'll only be for a few minutes. And Dad?"

Her father looked up from the paper. "I'm dressed," he pointed out.

"Hide your pipe. Sonya's father is a doctor. I don't want her to know that you smoke. And Sam! Quick. Somebody comb Sam's hair, okay? And wipe your face, Sam; there's a Rice Krispie stuck on your chin."

Anastasia's parents and brother all stared at her in
astonishment. None of them moved. Dr. Krupnik continued to puff on his pipe. Sam chewed silently on a mouthful of Rice Krispies.

There was another knock at the back door.

Anastasia threw up her arms in disgust. She grabbed her jacket from the doorknob where it was hanging. "All right, then!" she said. "Humiliate me! See if I care! I won't even ask them in!"

She slammed the back door behind her as she went out. "Hi," she said to her friends. "I thought you guys would never get here."

It was much more fun being with her friends than it was being at home with her family, Anastasia thought. Her friends never acted stupid or anything. Tall, slim, pale-blonde Meredith Halberg was full of fun; and Sonya Isaacson, chubby and freckled, was good-natured and bookish.

And they knew how to dress. The three of them were all dressed alike, in jeans and hiking boots and jackets. Last week a girl in seventh grade had come to school wearing a jumper and a ruffled blouse, and everyone had hooted and laughed and teased her until she almost cried. Her mother had made her dress that way, the girl explained, because they were going to the airport after school, to meet her grandmother who was flying in from Chicago.

It was the kind of thing Anastasia's mother might do, too. Thank goodness she didn't have a grandmother in Chicago.

"It's really getting cold," said Meredith as the three
girls headed down the street. T hope it snows soon. If it snows before Thanksgiving, my whole family's going skiing over vacation. We always go to this ski lodge in New Hampshire."

"I don't even know how to ski," said Anastasia. "But if I did, I can't imagine going with my family. My parents would act weird. My father would recite poetry about snowfall, and my mother—well my mother is such a klutz she'd probably fall all the time. And then she'd laugh. My mom's big on
laughing,
for pete's sake. It's so embarrassing."

"My mother laughs, too," said Meredith. "And she does it with a Danish accent, so it's even worse. But I just pretend that I don't know her. Her
or
my father. My sister and I just take off, at the ski lodge. The only time we have to see our parents is at dinner. And sometimes my sister even eats at a different table."

"How old is your sister?" asked Anastasia. "She's pretty old, isn't she?"

"Kirsten? Seventeen. Why?"

Anastasia stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, her shoulders slumped inside her jacket. "Oh, terrific!!" she wailed, in a voice that meant it wasn't terrific at all. "I thought it was only when you were
thirteen
that you felt this way about your family! You mean it lasts till you're seventeen?"

Meredith thought it over. "I don't think it's the same," she said. "Kirsten doesn't even notice our parents. She goes off by herself because she wants to pick up guys when she's skiing."

"That's Stage Two," said Sonya, who had been listening intently. "Stage Two of Adolescence. We're still in Stage One. My father told me that."

"Doctors," scoffed Anastasia. "They always think they know everything."

Sonya shrugged. "He says it's all hormones."

"Hormones schmormones," said Anastasia. "My mother said the same thing. But I think it's a lie. I think grownups got together and made up this hormone theory. I don't even believe in hormones," she added gloomily.