Anastasia's Chosen Career (10 page)

"As a matter of fact," she said suddenly, "when you came in here, Henry, you reminded me of something—or someone—and I couldn't put my finger on what it was. But I just realized. Look." She walked over to the section marked travel and reached for a large book. She leafed through its pages, found what she wanted, and turned to show the photograph to Henry and Anastasia.

"Jeezum," Henry said softly. "My haircut." She took the book from Barbara Page and sat down.

Anastasia peered over Henry's shoulder and looked at the portrait of the Masai woman. She was wrapped in a red blanket and had large, beaded necklaces around her throat and rings of beads dangling from her ears. Her head was shaved down to a thin layer of hair, the same as Henry's, and she had Henry's high cheekbones, slender neck, and large dark eyes.

"I saw a lot of women who looked just like her—and you—in Kenya and Tanzania," Barbara Page said. "They were all very beautiful."

Henry closed the book slowly and laid it on the desk. She looked worried. "You don't think they'll all come over here and go to modeling school?" she asked. "I don't think I can deal with all that competition."

Barbara Page laughed. "I don't think so," she said.

"Can I look at the children's books?" Henry asked. "I got two little nephews who like books."

"Sure. Go through the ones on the little table, and if you find one you want, you can have it. The nursery school comes in here for story hour, and the kids have dirty hands sometimes. So those books have some smears, and I can't sell them."

While Henry was leafing through the children's books on the table, Anastasia sat down beside Barbara Page's desk and spoke softly. "I told you I wanted to buy a book," she began.

Barbara Page laughed. "Don't be silly. Take one of those kids' books home for your brother—no charge. I'm not going to take your money."

"No, wait," Anastasia whispered. "I really want to. But I didn't know which book I wanted. And now I do. I want to buy that one." She indicated the book on the desk. "I want to buy it for Henry, so she can look again and again at how beautiful the Masai woman is."

Barbara Page smiled. "I'm sorry, Anastasia. But it's not for sale. It's already spoken for."

"
Rats.
"

The telephone rang. "Could you answer that, Anastasia, and practice being a bookstore owner? Get it in the front room. I have some stuff to tend to in here."

Anastasia nodded and went to the front of the bookstore where another telephone was on the wall. "Pages, good afternoon," she said, remembering how Barbara Page always answered the phone. Henry, sitting at the children's table, looked over at her and grinned.

"Barbara?" a woman's voice asked.

"No," Anastasia answered, "Mrs. Page is busy at the moment. This, is her assistant. May I help you?" She crossed her fingers, hoping the woman had a question she would be able to answer.

"Well, I'm looking for a gift for a friend. Could you recommend something? Nonfiction, I think."

Anastasia glanced quickly at the shelves. She saw cookbooks, gardening books, biographies, travel books, photography books.

"Well, ah, what are your friend's interests?" she asked.

"She's quite literary," the woman responded. "She's the librarian at a boys' boarding school."

Suddenly Anastasia's eyes fastened on a particular section of the shelves.

"In that case," she said into the telephone, "she would appreciate an autographed edition. And we just happen to have here an autographed copy of the latest volume of Myron Krupnik's poetry."

"Myron Krupnik? Have I heard of him?"

"I should hope so," Anastasia said. "The
New York Times
called him 'Master of the Contemporary Image.'"

"Goodness. Well, I think she
would
like that. You say it's autographed?"

"It certainly is. He has terrible handwriting, but lots of famous people have terrible handwriting. I know someone who got Bruce Springsteen's autograph once, and Bruce Springsteen had terri—"

"Yes, well, could you gift wrap that and mail it for me? I'll give you the address and you can charge it to my account."

Anastasia copied down the information carefully. Then she took it triumphantly to the back room, where Barbara Page was still at her desk. "I sold a book!" she said.

"No kidding!" Barbara Page looked delighted.

"My own father's book! She wants you to mail it to her friend. Here's the address."

"Anastasia, I think you have a great future as a bookstore owner. Thank you. Now, here—it's almost one o'clock. You guys have to go back and practice talking. Not that you seem to have any trouble with it, either one of you." She handed Anastasia and Henry each a paper bag with pages printed on the side in wide blue letters.

"What's this?" Anastasia asked.

"A present for each of you. And a few smeary books for your little brothers and nephews."

She walked them to the door with an arm around each of them. "Come back and see me again, okay?"

"Okay, and thank you," Henry and Anastasia said.

Outside, walking back through the Common, they looked inside their shopping bags. Anastasia found a book about trucks for Sam and a book for herself which contained beautiful color photographs of animals. Inside the front cover, Barbara Page had written, "For my friend and future bookstore owner, Anastasia Krupnik. Giraffes are my very favorite. With love from Barbara Page."

Henry pulled out the two picture books she had chosen for her nephews and the book that contained the picture of the Masai woman. Inside, Barbara Page had written, "For Henrietta Peabody, who comes from a long tradition of great beauty."

Henry held it out, looking stricken.

"Anastasia," she said, "I saw the price on this book. It was thirty-five dollars!"

"Well," Anastasia said, thinking it over, "she wanted you to have it. Like my father said, she's a terrific person. And she can afford it. But boy, she sure is a terrible bookstore owner, though.

"Oh, no!" she added, remembering something. "Oh, rats! I forgot to do the interview again!"

But Henry wasn't listening. She was turning the pages of the book slowly. She found the Masai woman, stared at her silently as they walked, and then turned back to the inscription again. "I sure am glad," she said finally, "that she wrote my real name: Henrietta."

Anastasia Krupnik

My Chosen Career

It really is not all that difficult being a bookstore owner. If someone calls up and asks you to recommend a book, it is really pretty easy to convince them to buy something, like maybe a book by a moderately successful poet,
^*
just by speaking pleasantly to them about it. Of course, if they come into the store, you have to look them in the eye at the same time.

One of the problems with being a bookstore owner, if you are a terrifically nice person, is that you are tempted to give stuff away.

If you sell a book by a moderately successful poet
^*
for $12.95, and on the same day give away a book that costs $35, you will be a terrible failure as a bookstore owner even though you would still be a terrifically nice person.

You could solve this by selling the $35 book and giving away the $12.95 book. That way, you would still be a terrifically nice person, and you could also be a moderately successful bookstore owner.

"I've never been in Dorchester before," Anastasia said to Henry as they sat side by side on the rattling subway. "Imagine that. All my life I've lived in Boston but I've never been in that part of Boston before."

"Well, shoot, that's no surprise," Henry said. "All my life
I've
lived in Boston and I've never been to the suburbs where you live, either."

"Maybe you could come to my house sometime. You'd like my family."

"What're they like? I know your dad is famous and all. But what're your parents really like?"

"Well, my dad has a really neat beard. It's the same color as my hair. And he tells terrible jokes, and he watches sports on TV. When he's working on a book of poetry he shuts himself up in the study and groans about how he should have chosen another career."

"That's so cool," said Henry. "In school, I always like when we study poems. And now that we learned about walking and talking and stuff, I bet I'll do really good when we have to recite. Shoot, maybe I'll do gestures, like Miss Cranberry Bog."

They both collapsed in giggles, and an elderly lady sitting nearby stared at them. No men were staring at Henry, but that was because she had her hat on. If she took her hat off, Anastasia knew, she would change to beautiful in about the same way that Clark Kent changed to Superman.
Then
men would stare at her.

"And my mom's an artist," Anastasia went on. "She works at home, so she can take care of my little brother at the same time. She illustrates books."

"My mom's a waitress. That's the hardest job in the whole world. You should see how her feet swell up. She has to soak them when she comes home. Boy, I'm never going to be a waitress."

"Well, of course not, Henry. You're going to be a model."

"Yeah." Suddenly Henry sat up very straight and removed her hat. Two men sitting together on the opposite side of the train stopped talking, nudged each other, and stared.

"Just testing," Henry remarked in a whisper to Anastasia, and grinned. She put her hat back on and slouched down again.

"What does your dad do?" Anastasia asked.

"Policeman."

"No kidding! Does he have a
gun?
"

"Whaddaya mean does he have a gun? Of
course
he has a gun. You think he wants to be the only cop in Boston with no gun?"

"Did he ever shoot anyone?" Anastasia asked in awe.

Henry shook her head. "Nope. Never once. Once he had to aim it at somebody, though. It gave him nightmares afterward."

Anastasia shuddered. Never in her whole life, she thought, had she known someone whose father had once aimed a gun at someone.

"We get off here," Henry announced as the train slowed and stopped. Anastasia followed her through the subway station and out into the street.

The Peabodys' house, two blocks away, was gray, a little in need of new paint, with a big front porch. Inside, it smelled of something delicious cooking. And it was noisy. Two small children ran giggling through the front hall as the girls were taking off their jackets and hats. Henry grabbed one of them by the shoulders, and the other stopped, stood still, and looked up shyly at Anastasia.

"These are my sister's kids," Henry explained. "It's my mom's day off, so she's babysitting. This evil one's Jason." She wiggled the arm of the one she was restraining, and the little boy grinned. "And that one there, that's John Peter. Say hi, you guys."

John Peter opened his mouth, his eyes wide, and whispered, "Hi." Jason squirmed loose from Henry's grasp and stuck out his tongue. Then they both ran off, laughing.

"Henrietta? Is that you?" a voice called. 102

Henry hung up her jacket and called, "Yes, Mom. I have Anastasia with me. We'll be right in."

"You walk in here normal, Henrietta," her mother called. "None of that panther stuff."

Anastasia followed Henry into the warm kitchen, where the two little boys were now tussling on the floor and Mrs. Peabody stood at the stove stirring something steamy in a large pot. She turned and shook Anastasia's hand when Henry introduced them.

"Now look at that nice haircut you have," she said. "I just don't know what to make of Henrietta's. Seems as if they just shaved her down to nothing."

"But don't you think it's beautiful?" Anastasia asked.

Mrs. Peabody frowned, looking at her daughter. "I have to get used to it, I guess," she said. Then she called to her grandchildren. "Jason! John Peter! You settle down now! We have company! You want Anastasia to think we're raising wild animals here?"

The little boys ignored her and continued tickling each other and shrieking with laughter.

"Henrietta, you go wake up your daddy and tell him dinner's almost ready." Henry left the kitchen and Mrs. Peabody turned back to the stove. "He's working the night shift this week, so he slept all day. He's going to take you home when he leaves to go to work," she explained to Anastasia. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable."

Anastasia took a chair at the big kitchen table. It felt something like her own house: the warm, friendly, good-smelling kitchen; the little boys, just Sam's size, playing on the floor; the potholder mitten hanging from a magnet on the refrigerator door. She noticed a teapot shaped like a little house, exactly like a teapot that her own mother had.

Wait till I tell Mom, she thought, about how a black family here in Dorchester has a teapot exactly like ours. I thought we were the only people in the whole world with that teapot.

Wait till I tell Mom and Dad and Sam that Henry's father is a policeman—just like Bobby Hill on
Hill Street Blues
—and that once he actually aimed a gun at someone.

Suddenly Anastasia had a terrifying thought. Henry's father was going to take her home on his way to work. That meant that she—Anastasia Krupnik—would be driven right up her own driveway in a police car. Maybe the blue lights would be flashing. She would be riding with someone who had a gun in a holster on his hip. The police radio would be on. What if a call came in—an
emergency
—and he had to stop along the way and arrest a criminal? Then she—Anastasia Krupnik—would be riding in the police car, probably in the back seat, and there would be a metal grille separating her from Henry's father, and she would be sitting beside a hardened criminal. Of course the criminal would be in handcuffs. But maybe, even with the handcuffs on, he could grab her. Take her hostage. He could say to Henry's father, through the grille, "Unlock these handcuffs or I will kill this thirteen-year-old girl."