Anastasia's Chosen Career

  "Where do you live?"

  "Dorchester. Just takes me about twenty minutes to get here on the T."

  The T was Boston's subway. Anastasia nodded. "I come by bus," she said. "Robert comes on the T, though. He lives in Cambridge. I used to live near him."

  She glanced over at Robert and blinked. "Hey, look," she said to Henry.

  Robert was still bibbed in the plastic sheet, but he looked different. His mop of curly hair had been shaped into something sleeker, more sophisticated. He was staring at himself in the mirror while the old lady zapped the back of his neck with an electric razor.

  Next to him, Bambie was chattering to the woman cutting her hair. "I should've brought my mousse," Bambie said. "Do you have mousse? I really need it for body and highlights."

  "Hold your head still," the woman commanded, "or you'll get the point of these scissors right in your jugular."

  Beside the third chair, Aunt Vera was watching intently as the third old lady snipped at Helen Margaret's dark hair. "The ears are exquisite," Aunt Vera said. "I want you to shape it carefully to expose those ears."

  Exquisite ears? Anastasia had never in her life considered the possibility of ears being exquisite. Ears were necessary, period. You couldn't hear without ears. But she had never thought they were worth looking at.

  Yet, watching, she could see that Helen Margaret did have small, perfectly shaped ears. Earlier they had been concealed by the thicket of dark hair that had also covered her forehead and most of her face.

  Now her long, straggly bangs were gone. In their place was a smooth, even edge of hair above her eyebrows. The rest of her wet hair was combed sleekly back while the woman snipped carefully with her shiny scissors. Anastasia could see Helen Margaret's face for the first time. She could see the pale, almost translucent skin and a pair of deep blue, long-lashed eyes peering shyly into the mirror as the woman worked.

  Helen Magaret was beautiful. Anastasia realized it with astonishment, and then she poked Henry and said it to her in a whisper. "Helen Margaret's beautiful."

  Henry looked up from the magazine, where she was still studying the black woman in the yellow dress.

  Henry stared. "Holy—" she began, and then fell silent. Finally she whispered, "Like a painting. She looks like a painting at the museum.

  "Shoot," she went on, "that one's not going to be no Miss Cranberry Bog. That old Helen Margaret, she could be Miss World."

  ***

  Robert, with his hair blown dry, was reading Esquire magazine. Bambie was under a dryer, with her red hair twisted around a billion plastic rollers. Helen Margaret, her hair dry and shiny, shaped like a small curved cap, sat silently in the corner, her eyes on the floor, her hands fooling nervously with the long sleeves of her dark brown sweater. But Anastasia noticed that every now and then Helen Margaret looked up and across the room into the mirror with a pleased, amazed expression.

  Now Anastasia and Henry were in the haircutting chairs. They had been bibbed and upended and their hair had been washed.

  "You ever cut any black person's hair before?" Henry asked the old lady suspiciously.

  "Black, green, purple, it's all the same to me," the old lady said. "How do you want this one, Vera?"

  Aunt Vera was hovering near Henry. Anastasia felt a little jealous. She wished that Aunt Vera would hover by her and make her feel special. But Aunt Vera had only stood near her chair briefly and said, "This one needs a lot of thinning and some shape. Let's try just below the ears."

  Rats. Anastasia had hoped for exquisite ears.

  Now Aunt Vera was holding Henry's face in her hands and tilting it from side to side. "Henry, honey," she said after a moment, "how would you feel about spectacular? You want to go for it?"

  Henry grinned. Her eyes danced. "Here we come, Mama," she said. "Heart attack time. Sure, let's go for spectacular."

  Aunt Vera nodded, pleased. "Take it all off," she said to the old lady who stood there with her scissors poised.

  Anastasia Krupnik

  My Chosen Career

  There are a lot of traumatic things you have to go through in order to achieve the kind of poise and appearance necessary for a successful bookstore owner.

  First, you have to learn to look people straight in the eye and to speak distinctly. This ability will serve you very well when someone wants to return a book with coffee stains. You will be able to look them in the eye and say distinctly, "This book has coffee stains on it, you turkey. Of course I won't give you your money back."

  Next, you have to have your hair styled so that you look like a different and more attractive person. If somebody wants to buy a book that costs thirty-five dollars, they probably won't buy it from someone who has long, straggly hair. So even if you have always felt at home with long, straggly hair, you need to have it thinned and shaped.

  8

  "Okay, everybody," Anastasia announced to her family that evening, "I want you all sitting in a row, right here on the couch. Turn that light on, Mom. The lighting needs to be right."

  Mrs. Krupnik leaned over and flicked the light switch. She peered at Anastasia. "Are you wearing rouge?" she asked suspiciously. "Your cheeks look awfully pink to me. Either you're wearing rouge or you have a fever."

  "Why do you still have your hat on?" Sam asked. "You're spozed to take your hat off when you come in the house."

  Dr. Krupnik looked at his watch. "How long do we have to sit here, Anastasia?" he asked. "I want to watch the sports news. The Celtics won last night."

  Anastasia glared at him. "Which is more important, Dad?" she asked. "The Boston Celtics, or your very own thirteen-year-old daughter's self-image?"

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  "Don't answer that," Anastasia said hastily, remembering her father's passion for the Celtics.

  She waited until the three of them—her mother, father, and brother—were all arranged comfortably on the couch. Then she reached for her ski hat.

  "Ta DA!" she said, and pulled the hat off.

  Sam grinned and clapped his hands. Her mother stared in amazement.

  "I'll be darned," said Dr. Krupnik. "You look like one of the Beatles, back when they were young!"

  "Daaaad," Anastasia wailed.

  "I loved the Beatles twenty years ago," her father added quickly. "I watched them on The Ed Sullivan Show on TV. I thought they were terrific-looking. And you are too, Anastasia."

  "You really are, Anastasia," her mother said. "That's a wonderful haircut. I wonder why it never occurred to me that your hair would look so good cut short. My goodness, you look—"

  "Older?" asked Anastasia hopefully.

  "Yes. Definitely older."

  "Prettier?" Anastasia smoothed her new haircut with her hands.

  Her mother nodded. "Prettier. Of course I always thought you were pretty, anyway."

  "Me, too," said Sam. "I was always pretty, too, wasn't I? I have pretty curls."

  Anastasia ignored her brother, who was patting his own curly head. "I thought maybe they'd want to give me a perm, Mom," she said, "and I was mentally preparing myself for curls. But Aunt Vera—she's the lady in charge—she could see that I wasn't the curly type. And she was right, wasn't she, Mom? See how it hangs down all flat? I think it's kind of sophisticated-looking."

  "It is," her mother agreed. "I like the way it falls forward there over your ears."

  "Please," Dr. Krupnik said, "may I go watch the sports news on TV?"

  Over dinner, Anastasia described the hair-styling session.

  "This girl Bambie? The one with the V? She started out with curly red hair and she ended up with curly red hair, and she hadn't changed at all. But me, look how I changed!"

  Everyone nodded. "Could you pour me a little more coffee, Katherine?" Anastasia's father said. "I'm going to be up late correcting exams so I might as well stock up on caffeine."

  "Do you really have to work all evening?" Mrs. Krupnik asked as she added coffee to his cup. "I wanted you to watch Nova with me. It'
s all about creativity."

  "And Robert? Stupid Robert Giannini? He got all nervous because he doesn't have facial hair yet. And he looked like such a jerk after he had his shampoo, because you have to wear a big bib, and lie there with your feet sticking straight out, but—"

  "Excuse me, would you?" Her father stood up. "That's fascinating, Anastasia. But I really have to go and start on those exams. I'll try to take an hour off for Nova, Katherine." He headed for his study with the coffee cup in his hand.

  "And this girl Helen Margaret! Mom, she had all this hair in her face, so you couldn't even tell what she looked like. I mean she might have had a face full of zits, and nobody would have known! But she didn't! They cut her hair real short, and all of a sudden she looked like—well, let me think, maybe Isabella Rossellini. Talk about beautiful! She still hangs her head and doesn't talk much, but you can tell that she really likes the way she looks, Mom. She kept peeking in the mirror and smiling—"

  "Can I be excused?" asked Sam, squirming in his chair. "I want to play trucks."

  Mrs. Krupnik nodded, and Sam scampered away.

  "And wait till you hear this, Mom. My friend Henry? The one I told you about?"

  "Is that rouge, Anastasia? Tell the truth." Her mother was looking intently at Anastasia's face.

  "Just a little. We did make-up in the afternoon. All except Robert and Bambie. Did I tell you about that?" Anastasia chortled. "Robert and Bambie had to go in the other room for Diet Counseling. Of course Robert wouldn't have done make-up anyway; I mean he's a jerk, but not even Robert is that much of a jerk, that he'd wear make-up. But, Mom, the thin people—me and Helen Margaret and Henry—we got to do make-up, and the others—Robert and Bambie—had to go listen to a diet and exercise lecture. From Uncle Charley, of all people: one of the fattest men in the whole world!"

  "It looks awfully pink to me, Anastasia. I don't think you ought to wear it to school."

  School? Anastasia hadn't even thought about school since last Friday afternoon. Why did mothers always have to mention stuff like school?

  "Would you please listen? Forget the rouge. I promise I won't wear it to school. I want to tell you about my friend Henry."

  Her mother began to clear the table. "Help me with the dishes, would you? And you can tell me about Henry then."

  Typical, Anastasia thought. Try to tell a parent about the most interesting thing in the whole world, and they ask you to help with the dishes. Reluctantly she stacked up the four empty dinner plates and followed her mother to the kitchen, still talking about Henry Peabody. What had happened to Henry Peabody that day was certainly, in Anastasia's opinion, the most interesting thing in the world.

  First of all, the gray-haired lady had followed Aunt Vera's instructions and had taken it all off. Henry's hair, that is. First the green butterfly barrettes were removed and dropped onto the linoleum floor.

  "Hey, watch it, will you?" Henry said. "Don't just throw a person's personal stuff on the floor."

  "Honey," Aunt Vera told her, "those butterflies are going into permanent hibernation."

  Then the old lady started in with the scissors. Not snip, snip, snip, as she had done with Helen Margaret. But whack. Whack. Whack. Huge hunks of Henry Peabody's hair dropped to the floor until in no time at all the butterflies were hidden under the pile.

  Within moments—Anastasia was watching out of the corner of her eye because watching Henry's haircut was even more interesting than watching her own in the mirror—Henry's hair was clipped back into a rough, thick halo around her head.

  She saw Henry scowl at her own reflection. "You said spectacular," Henry bellowed, "but you're not doing spectacular. You're doing ugly!"

  "Trust us, sweetie," Aunt Vera reassured her. "This is just step one." She tilted Henry's head from side to side. "This is one great-shaped head," she announced. "Take it right down to the contour," she instructed the old lady. "Let's let that contour show."

  Anastasia stared glumly at herself in the mirror. Her haircut was progressing slowly; the woman was meticulously trimming it section by section. And Anastasia could see that it was going to look okay. But Aunt Vera had pronounced Helen Margaret's ears exquisite. And now she had said "great-shaped head" about Henry.

  Anastasia wished—no, more than wished; she yearned—for Aunt Vera to say something in superlatives about her. They had studied superlatives in English class at school. Often a superlative ended in "est." Like "loveliest" or "grandest."

  Anastasia wished that Aunt Vera would say, looking at her, "That is the loveliest hair."

  Or sometimes a superlative began with the word "most." Like "most brilliant" or "most magnificent."

  That would have been okay, too. "You have the most magnificent hair," Aunt Vera could say, hovering around Anastasia's chair.

  But she didn't. She had run through one list of superlatives for Helen Margaret, and she was trotting out a whole new vocabulary of superlatives for Henry.

  "The most glorious head I've seen in a long time," Aunt Vera said, watching as the old lady got out a buzzing electric thing and began to zzzzzzz Henry's head.

  "You electrocute me and you die," Henry announced, but she wasn't scowling any more. She was watching herself in the mirror with a look of wonder.

  And Henry was finished, even before Anastasia's beautician snipped her way around to Anastasia's left ear. All of Henry's hair except for a soft, even covering like a black fur cap was on the floor. The third old lady appeared from nowhere with a broom and swept it into a dustpan.

  "You want to save these barrettes?" she asked.

  Henry didn't answer at first. She was staring at herself, turning her head from side to side. Her brown ears, each with a tiny gold earring, lay flat against her perfect oval head. Her cheekbones showed. Slowly she began to smile: a tiny smile at first, just twitching her lips. Then the smile became broader as if she couldn't hold it back, and finally her small, white, even teeth showed in a wide, beautiful grin.

  She glanced at the old lady holding the grubby plastic dustpan. She glanced at the four green butterflies lying on the mound of hair.

  "Toss em," Henry said with disdain.

  "I was really feeling kind of sorry for myself," Anastasia explained to her mother after she described Henry's haircut, "because even though I could see my hair was going to look good, and / was going to look good—and older, and prettier—I could see that I wasn't going to be beautiful. I was feeling sorry for myself about that—"

  Her mother interrupted her. "You are beautiful, Anastasia, in your own way," she said.

  "No, Mom. I'm okay-looking. Not a dog or anything. But let's face it, I'm not ever going to be a knockout. All of us Krupniks, we're just nice ordinary-looking people. I was kind of hoping that some miracle would happen when my hair was cut, and it didn't. But you know, it happened for Henry. I stopped feeling sorry for myself the instant I saw it happen for Henry. Because she really wants to be a model, Mom, so she can earn money to go to college. And I don't. Because I'll go to college, anyway. So she was the one who needed the miracle. And she got it! Isn't that a terrific thing?"

  Mrs. Krupnik nodded. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and smoothed Anastasia's new, smoother, shorter hair. "You know, Anastasia," she said, "you are a truly nice, nice person."

  "Could you rephrase that as a superlative, Mom?"

  Her mother thought. "You are the nicest person I know," she said. "How's that?"

  Anastasia grinned. "Fine. Thank you." She hung up her own dish towel. "I'm going up to my room to rewrite the beginning of my career paper.

  "Boy," she added, as she left the kitchen, "I sure hope her mother didn't really have a heart attack."

  Anastasia Krupnik

  My Chosen Career

  Some of the nicest people in the world are bookstore owners.

  Other extremely nice people should not be bookstore owners because they can have a whole other glamorous career. People who have gloriously shaped heads and bony cheekbones and nice, w
hite, even teeth should not be bookstore owners because instead they can be successful models with their pictures on magazine covers.

  Then they can earn enough money to go to college. Maybe, after college, when they are old, they can be bookstore owners.

  I guess I am not one of those glamorous people, though.

  9

  The phone rang while Anastasia's parents were watching Nova on TV.

  "Hi! I found your number in the phone book. You're the only Krupnik!"

  Anastasia recognized Henry's voice. "Hi, Henry!" she said. "Is your mom okay? She didn't have a heart attack or anything?"

  Henry laughed. "She made me wash the rouge off, is all."

  "All mothers are alike," Anastasia said. "I bet all mothers hate make-up on thirteen-year-olds."

  "Maybe not all," Henry said. "I bet anything Bambie's mother buys her make-up."

  "Yeah." Anastasia laughed.

  "I called to see if maybe you could come have dinner at my house tomorrow night. We could go home together on the T, and then my dad can drive you to your house afterward. He said he wouldn't mind."

  "Great! I'd like that," Anastasia said. "I'll check with my parents. I'm sure they'll say okay."

  "I'll see you in the morning, then. It's gonna be boring tomorrow. Walking and talking, big deal. A robot can walk and talk."

  "Yeah. Yuck." Wednesday's schedule at Studio Charmante called for lessons and practice in posture and distinct speech. It did sound boring.

  "You wanta have lunch at McDonald's like we did today?"

  "Sure. Oh, wait! I forgot."

  "Forgot what? You can eat lunch. You didn't have to go to diet class with those tubs Robert and Bambie."

  "I know, but I forgot that I promised to have lunch with someone. But, Henry—"

  "What?"

  "I bet anything she wouldn't mind if I brought you along. I'll call her and ask."

  After Anastasia hung up and got an okay from her parents for dinner at the Peabodys' the next night, she dialed the bookstore owner and asked permission to bring her friend for lunch.