Anastasia Krupnik

  "Then we looked at each other and I started to cry." Anastasia was puzzled. Why would her mother cry? Then suddenly she understood.

  "I know why. Because your fortunes didn't match."

  "Right."

  "And he cried, too."

  "Nope. He was very sweet. Very sad. Very kind. And he said all the right things. But he didn't cry."

  "Because men don't cry much."

  "No. Men don't cry much."

  "Daddy does, sometimes. He always cries when he hears that Sibelius violin concerto."

  "Sweetie, that's one of the reasons I married your dad."

  Anastasia understood that. "Yeah," she said. She looked at her mother. Her mother wasn't barefoot, because it was December; but she was wearing one green knee sock and one white knee sock, and there was a bit of orange paint on the white one; and there was another bit of orange paint on her chin. She was smiling, and she looked very, very beautiful to Anastasia. For a moment it didn't matter too much that in the middle, somewhere between the knee socks and the smile, was the baby.

  "Daddy, I think love is one of the hardest things in the world to understand."

  "Wait till you encounter calculus." Her father did his Groucho Marx eyebrow thing.

  "Don't joke, Daddy. I really mean it. I need to start worrying about making myself some memories. I have to understand stuff."

  "I'm sorry. You're right, Anastasia. Love is just about the hardest thing to understand. Maybe that's why there are painters and musicians and poets."

  "And obstetricians," giggled Anastasia. "Can I have my allowance? And have you found the Christmas tree decorations? And did you ever have love affairs?"

  "Yes. No. Yes." He gave her three quarters. "What kind of box are they in? Do you remember?"

  "A Jordan Marsh box, kind of smashed in on one corner. Tell me about your love affairs."

  "Good grief. I had lots. Poets always do. They read poetry to women, usually young, wide-eyed women, and then the women get all misty-eyed and lick their lips a lot and next thing you know they say, 'I love you.' Happens all the time, to poets."

  "There's the box, under that old sweat shirt." Anastasia pointed. "Did you really love any of them?"

  "Nope. Pretended, though. Well, maybe I really loved one."

  "Annie?"

  "How did you know about Annie?"

  "Your book. It says, To Annie.'"

  "Yeah," said her father. "I'd forgotten that. Annie was pretty wonderful. But she ran off to someplace, Guatemala, I think, and broke my heart."

  "What does a broken heart feel like when you're a grownup?"

  "Stomachache. Lasts about six months. If you're a poet, you get some good poetry out of a broken heart, though."

  "Did you ever have a love affair after you and Mom got married?"

  "Sure. With your mom. It's still going on."

  "Come on, Daddy. Be honest. With anybody else?"

  "Nope. Because I've never had any clean underwear. Come on, kiddo, let's put up the Christmas tree."

  "Grandmother, would you like to tell me about Sam?"

  Anastasia was sitting beside her grandmother on the living room couch after Christmas dinner. She had tried and tried and tried to think of things to talk about. She had talked about the lights on the tree; she had talked about her best present, a record player, and had tried to show her grandmother some of her favorite albums; she had tried to talk about the czar; and she had tried to talk about school. But her grandmother had only seemed puzzled and confused, nodding her head up and down with a questioning look. She held Anastasia's hand tightly, as if she were frightened.

  "Maybe you would like to tell me about you and Sam when you were young," suggested Anastasia again.

  Her grandmother smiled suddenly. "Is Sam here?" she asked, looking around.

  "No," said Anastasia gently. "But tell me about him."

  "He calls me Ruthie. 'Ruthie with the red, red hair.' Isn't that silly?"

  Anastasia looked at her grandmother's white hair. She felt sad, even though it was Christmas. "No," she said. "It isn't silly."

  "I made him a shirt for his birthday. It was a secret. I never sewed on it when he was around. I kept it hidden away. I did every seam twice, by hand—such a soft, blue shirt. And when his birthday came, I made a special dinner, but I told him that I had no gift. I pretended to be very sorry, and of course he knew that we didn't have any money. It costs so much to feed the boys—goodness, how the boys eat! Are they here? Have they had dinner?"

  Anastasia wasn't sure what to say. "Yes," she answered finally, "they've had dinner."

  "Well, then I brought out the shirt! And my goodness, wasn't Sam surprised! He put it right on, and gave me a hug even though I was so big because the baby was about to be born, and do you know what?"

  "What?"

  "That night, that very night, the baby came. Two weeks early. So Sam was wearing his birthday shirt when the littlest one, Myron, was born, right on his father's birthday! I looked up and saw Sam holding the baby against the blue shirt, and he told me we had another boy. That was such a happy time!

  "What a happy, happy time," the old woman said softly, stroking Anastasia's hand.

  "The inward eye,'" thought Anastasia, "that makes you feel happy, and not so all alone. Good old Wordsworth."

  Suddenly her grandmother sat up straight, looked around, and said politely, "Little girl, I would like to go home now. I would like to be with Sam."

  "Grandmother, I wish you could go and be with him," said Anastasia, and then felt frightened by what she had said. She looked across the room to where her mother and father were sitting and listening, and she knew that it had been all right, to say it. She knew that they were wishing it, too.

  "Merry Christmas, Grandmother," she called softly after the car as her father took her grandmother back to the nursing home. Funny, how it had never felt sad to say Merry Christmas before.

  9

  "Daddy, I need to know a word."

  "Mmmmmmm?"

  "What's a word that means, well, someone who changes his mind all the time?"

  "How many letters?"

  "Daddy, I'm not doing a crossword puzzle, for pete's sake. I just want to know a word to describe that. Someone who thinks one thing one day and another thing the next day."

  "Well, let me think. Mercurial's a pretty good word. Someone like that has a mercurial temperament."

  Anastasia said that to herself a few times. Mercurial temperament. Mercurial temperament. It sounded pretty good. She got out her green notebook and wrote, on page two, under "These are the most important things that happened the year that I was ten": "I began to have a mercurial temperament."

  She put the green notebook away and wandered into the little pantry between the kitchen and the dining room. Her mother was there, trying to put a curtain rod up over the little window. They had already taken all the dishes out of the pantry and painted the walls pale blue. It was going to be the baby's bedroom. Anastasia thought it a very peculiar sort of bedroom and she felt a little sorry for the baby, who would be lying in a little crib looking up at glass-doored cupboards that had once held cocktail glasses. But her mother had made some nice curtains for the little window; the curtains had blue and green cross-eyed unicorns on them.

  Anastasia looked cross-eyed briefly at the curtains. She was pretty good at it, but it made her eyes hurt. Robert Giannini could look cross-eyed all the time, just by taking off his glasses, and he said it didn't make his eyes hurt at all; but he couldn't see when he was cross-eyed.

  "I have a mercurial temperament," Anastasia said to her mother.

  "You also have a terribly dirty shirt on," her mother said. "Don't you have any clean clothes?"

  "Yes, but I hate all my clean shirts. This is my favorite shirt. I'll save the clean ones for school. This is okay for Saturday."

  Her mother hammered a nail into the window frame, said "ouch," and the bent nail fell onto the floor. Her mother put her thumb into her mouth.
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  "Don't you agree that I have a mercurial temperament?"

  "Tell me what it means," said her mother, sucking her thumb.

  "It means someone who changes her mind a lot."

  "What have you changed your mind about?"

  Anastasia hoisted herself up on the countertop and sat with her legs dangling. What a strange bedroom, she thought again. With a sink and everything.

  "Well, just for an example, do you remember that at Thanksgiving I told you I hated pumpkin pie?"

  "Mmmmm."

  "Did you notice at Christmas that I ate a whole lot of pumpkin pie?"

  "Yes," said her mother thoughtfully. "As a matter of fact I did notice that. Christmas night, very late, I sneaked into the kitchen to get something to eat, and what I wanted was a piece of pumpkin pie. And it was all gone. You ate all the whipped cream, too."

  "Yeah. Mercurial temperament."

  Her mother took another nail from the package and began to line it up on the window frame.

  "And remember I loved Washburn Cummings? And then after a while I hated Washburn Cummings? Guess what."

  "What?"

  "Now I'm starting to love him again."

  Her mother took a whack with the hammer and another bent nail fell to the floor. "Damn/' she said softly.

  "And for a while I wanted to be a Catholic? And then I didn't want to?"

  "Do you want to be a Catholic again?"

  "No," said Anastasia glumly. "But now I'm starting to think about being a Hare Krishna."

  "A what?" Her mother took out another nail.

  "Hare Krishna. You know those guys who wear yellow robes and have shaved heads and they dance around in Harvard Square saying 'Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna'?" Anastasia hopped down from the countertop and began to dance, shuffling her feet, around the little pantry. She bumped into the folded crib, which toppled against her mother, who was about to swing the hammer. Another nail fell on the floor.

  "Anastasia" said her mother, angrily.

  "Sorry," said Anastasia, and jumped up onto the countertop again. "And my name. Sometimes I hate my name and sometimes I think it's okay. Those Hare Krishna guys, they all get to take new names."

  Her mother sighed, set the crib upright, and took out another nail.

  Anastasia kicked her feet against the wooden drawers under the counter. What a weird bedroom, she thought, with drawers that used to hold tablecloths. Thunk thunk thunk. A little chip of white paint fell onto the floor beside the bent nails.

  Her mother held the nail in her left hand, took a deep breath, and aimed the hammer with her right.

  Thunk thunk. Anastasia kicked some more paint off the drawer, and said, "If you're not real careful you could hit the windowpane."

  Her mother hit the windowpane with the hammer. The glass shattered and fell into the little sink.

  Her mother stood very still for a moment. Then she said, very quietly, "If you don't get out of here, Anastasia, I am going to kill you."

  Anastasia jumped down from the counter and shuffled away, doing her Hare Krishna dance. "I thought you liked me," she said. "You must have a mercurial temperament, too."

  She wandered into the kitchen where her father was slicing some garlic cloves. There was company coming for dinner.

  "Yuck," said Anastasia. "Those smell terrible."

  Her father looked grouchy. "Where is your mother?" he asked. "Why do I seem to be preparing this dinner?"

  "She's hammering, and she's very mad."

  "Well, I'm not too cheerful myself. I don't know how to fix a leg of lamb. I'm an English professor. Go tell her if she doesn't want to cook we can call off the dinner party."

  "I can't go tell her. I'm not speaking to her, maybe not ever again. Can I eat with you guys tonight?"

  "No." Her father poked the sliced garlic into the lamb a lot harder than it needed to be poked.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's a grownups' party. Probably there won't be any food anyway. At least she made the hors d'oeuvres before she copped out. We can eat hors d'oeuvres. As a matter of fact, if you change out of that crummy shirt you can pass the hors d'oeuvres."

  "I love this shirt. It has good memories attached to it. Bear in mind that I am someone who doesn't have a whole lot of memories yet."

  "That shirt has the memory of a cheeseburger on the sleeve. Don't you have any decent clothes? Didn't your mother buy you a dress once?"

  Anastasia ignored him. She lay down on the kitchen floor, on her back, and began breathing very loudly and quickly, huffing and puffing.

  "Should I call an ambulance? Are you having an epileptic seizure?"

  Anastasia stopped huffing, sat up, and looked at him with disdain. "Daddy, you of all people should recognize Lamaze breathing. I'm doing exactly what you and Mom do when you practice to have the baby. Transitional breathing.'"

  He patted some flour into the leg of lamb and looked at her with interest. "I'll be darned. I never realized it sounded so grotesque."

  She lay down again and puffed for a while. "Do I have it right?"

  "Sounds right to me. You've really been paying attention when your mother and I practice, haven't you?"

  "Yeah," she admitted. "I only pretended I wasn't interested. Actually I was listening all the time. And I looked through the book, too."

  "Hmmmm," he said. He was scowling at the leg of lamb.

  "Daddy, do you want to know why I'm doing the breathing?"

  "Sure. Why?"

  "Because I want to be there, the same as you, when the baby is born."

  Her father went to the refrigerator, poured himself a beer, gave her a sip of the foam, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  "You can't, sport," he said regretfully. "I wouldn't mind, and I'm sure your mom wouldn't mind. But the hospital has strict rules. No kids in the delivery room except the kid who is being delivered."

  "Why?"

  He sipped his beer and rubbed his beard. "Well, my guess is that it has to do with size. Everything is scaled to adult size. You're just not big enough, Anastasia. The hospital gown wouldn't fit you; it would drag on the floor. You're too short to stand by the delivery table; you'd bump your cute nose, sweetie."

  "Daddy, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard you say. Ever."

  "Why is it dumb?"

  "Have you ever heard of midgets?"

  "Of course I've heard of midgets."

  "Don't you think midgets have babies? For pete's sake, do you think they tell midgets, 'Sorry, but we can't let you in the delivery room even though you're having a baby because you'd bump your cute little nose,' for pete's sake?"

  He made a face, and touched her nose fondly. "You're absolutely right. It was a dumb thing to say. It doesn't have anything to do with size. It's just a rule. And we have to go along with it."

  "You mean you won't even try to talk them into letting me watch?"

  "No, sport. You can see the baby after he's born. But not during."

  'Traitor. I hope your dinner party turns out terrible."

  Anastasia glowered at her father and stomped out of the kitchen. In the pantry, her mother was kneeling on the floor and touching up the chipped paint with a small brush.

  "Don't you dare come stomping in here that way, Anastasia," said her mother. "I have just three weeks to get this room ready for the baby and I can't spend three weeks repairing your damage."

  So Anastasia stood in the center of the dining room, next to the table which was already set for the dinner, and called in her loudest voice, "Just for the record, everybody. I had almost changed my mind about that baby. I had almost begun to like that baby. I had almost begun to like the idea of having a brother living in the pantry, and I was even about to offer to maybe change his diapers occasionally. But just for the record for pete's sake, you guys shouldn't mess around with someone who has a mercurial temperament like mine, because just for the record I have absolutely changed my mind, and I do not like that baby at all."

  Then she stomped
noisily into her room, slammed the door, and scowled at Frank, who came to the side of his bowl, stared at her solemnly, and moved his lips in a silent blurp.

  "Shut up, Frank," said Anastasia.

  She rummaged in her desk and found the green notebook. Then she leafed through the last pages until she found the secret page on which she had written the name for the baby. It was still as terrible a name as it had been the very first day that she heard it. That had been the day last September when she had walked past Washburn Cummings and his friends as they stood on the street corner near the J. Henry Bosler Elementary School. They were singing. As Anastasia walked by, one of the boys had said "Shhhhh" and they had stopped singing. But they had started again when she was past, and she had stopped, knelt, pretended to tie her shoe, and listened to the song. It had a lot of verses, and she didn't understand all of them, but they were all about a man with a very peculiar, very terrible name.

  Now she looked at the name where she had written it on the corner of the page in pencil. Carefully she went over the letters with a red marking pen.

  The name was "One-Ball Reilly."

  10

  Anastasia woke up, reached one arm out from her bed to her desk, and tapped some fish food into Frank's bowl.

  Frank never slept, as far as she could tell; and he liked to eat all the time. On one page of her green notebook she had listed all the words that she could think of to describe Frank's appetite: the list began with huge and ended with her favorite, indefatigable, and it even included humungus although her father said that was not a real word.

  Frank blurped silently at her, flipped his tail, and swam around the bowl catching the bits of food as they floated down.

  Something felt very strange. Something was missing. Anastasia sat up in bed and looked around her room. Sometimes the Scotch tape dried out and her orangutan poster fell off the wall; but it was still there. Her Red Sox cap was on the lampshade where it always was. Her arithmetic book was on the floor, where she had left it.