"No, not like Michael Jackson," Sam said patiently. "Wait a minute and I'll show you." He left the kitchen and Anastasia could hear him heading for his father's study. In a minute he was back, holding a record album. "Like this," he said, and showed her the cover.
Anastasia looked carefully at the picture of Sarah Vaughan standing beside a piano. Her hair was swept up on top of her head; she was wearing dangling earrings. And she had on gloves that went right up to her elbows.
"That looks pretty good," Anastasia mused. "Pretty sophisticated. Trouble is, I don't have any gloves like that. And Mom doesn't either."
Sam got down from his chair again and trotted off to the pantry. "Here," he said when he came back, and he handed Anastasia two quilted pot holder mittens: one blue, the other yellow with tiny red flowers.
Anastasia put one on each hand and leaned against the washing machine as if it were a piano. She struck a pose. Sam giggled.
"Caaan't help loooving that maaannnn of mine," sang Anastasia, gesturing with her thickly gloved hands.
"Good idea, Sam," she said, "but it won't work." She took the gloves off. "Tonight I'll take a bath in Clorox. And if I'm still purple after that, I'll just make the lights very dim tomorrow night. Maybe no one will notice that I'm purple."
She found a piece of paper and a pencil. "Time for another schedule," she said.
8
Anastasia reached over and tapped some fish food into Frank's bowl.
"I'm sorry I forgot this morning, Frank," she said, watching him swim frantically to the surface with his mouth open. "You're a little overweight anyway, so a brief diet won't hurt."
Frank glared at her, and gulped another mouthful of food.
"I've been so busy preparing for my first date," Anastasia explained.
"And now," she went on happily, "everything's ready. I'm so well organized. I made the veal yesterday, and now it's back on the stove all ready to be heated up. And there's a gorgeous purple tablecloth on the dining room table, and two purple candles, so it's super-romantic.
"And you know what, Frank?" she asked her fish. "Dad didn't forget the flowers. He brought home a whole bouquet of purple and white chrysanthemums, and they're right in the middle of the table, and—"
She stopped talking so that she could examine herself in the mirror. Frank didn't seem to be listening anyway. Goldfish were not very good listeners.
It was five-thirty, and Anastasia was wearing her bathrobe. The Clorox bath hadn't removed all of the purple stains, but it had helped, and she would simply keep the lights very low. Her mother's make-up was waiting on the top of her desk, and laid across her bed was a dress she had found in her mother's closet. It wasn't exactly purple, but it was a deep shade of blue: close enough, especially with the dim lights.
"Anastasia?" her father called up the stairs to her third-floor bedroom.
"Yeah?"
"Have you done any laundry recently? I have a shirt to wear tonight, but it's my last clean shirt."
Anastasia made a face. Of course she hadn't done any laundry recently. She'd been much too busy with more important things. Men just didn't understand things like that.
She went down the stairs and found her father in his bedroom.
"I've gotten a little behind with the laundry, Dad," she said. "But I'm so well organized that I can put your shirts in the washing machine right now. The dinner's all made, and the table's all set, and the record is waiting on the stereo—"
"You've done a remarkable job, Anastasia," Dr. Krupnik said. "The dining room looks beautiful. By the way, I noticed that you hadn't dusted. So I just took off my shirt downstairs and ran it across the furniture."
He pointed to a pile of dirty shirts, with a dusty one on top.
"Oh. Thanks. I didn't even think about dusting. I cleaned everything up, though. I took that stack of magazines off the top of the TV, and I stuck them in the hall closet. And I picked up Sam's blocks from the living room floor, and put them behind the couch in the study." Anastasia gathered up the dirty shirts in her arms. "I'll just load these into the washing machine; then later, after the dinner party, when I'm cleaning up the dishes, I'll put them in the dryer. You know, Dad, after Mom gets home I think I can give her some lessons in organized housekeeping. It really isn't hard at all."
She took the shirts downstairs, tossed them into the machine, added detergent, and turned it on. Laundry was so easy. Everything about housekeeping was easy. She couldn't figure out why her mother got so frustrated.
By five minutes of seven, all three Krupniks were downstairs and waiting for the guests to arrive. They had just undergone two rather large wars.
First, Sam had refused to wear the little blue-and-white sailor suit that Anastasia had tried to dress him in.
"NO WAY!" Sam had screamed. "It's a baby suit! I hate it!"
"Well, it's the only good suit you have," Anastasia had pointed out angrily. "What are you going to wear if you don't wear your only good suit?"
Sam pouted. "My Incredible Hulk T-shirt," he said. "And jeans."
Anastasia glared at him. He was standing in the middle of his bedroom wearing nothing but underpants and a look of outrage. His whole body was a mass of chicken pox spots connected by purple lines. She wished she could hide him away in a closet and forget that he existed, just for this evening.
Instead, she tossed his Incredible Hulk shirt and his jeans to him and said, "Here, then. Put them on, if you want to look like a jerk."
Twenty minutes later she had come down from her own room, dressed for the party. Sam was sitting sullenly on his bed, still in his underpants. She ignored him.
But her father came out of his bedroom, took a look at her, and said, "No way, Anastasia. You can't come to dinner like that."
"Like what?"
He handed her a handkerchief. "Go into the bathroom this instant and remove about fourteen pounds of that make-up."
"But, Dad—"
"No buts. Start with the purple lipstick. Maybe you'll need to use a spatula to take off the first twelve layers."
Anastasia stomped into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Okay, so maybe the lipstick was a little thick, and dark. But still. Grudgingly she rubbed at it with the handkerchief.
"Can I keep the earrings on?" she yelled.
"If you want to look like Carmen Miranda, keep the earrings on," her father called.
Anastasia didn't know who Carmen Miranda was. She didn't care who Carmen Miranda was. She finished removing the lipstick, went back to her father's room, and tossed him the purple-smeared handkerchief. She tossed her head at the same time, so that the earrings jangled. Her father ignored her, the way she was still ignoring Sam.
Sam emerged from his room, still pouting. He was wearing jeans and the top half of the sailor suit instead of the Incredible Hulk T-shirt.
"That doesn't look too bad, Sam," Anastasia said. "You look like Popeye."
Now they were all downstairs, and suddenly it was five past seven, and just when Anastasia began to worry that neither Steve nor Annie would show up, the doorbell rang.
"You get it, Dad," Anastasia said in a panic.
"You get it, Sam," her father said, his face pale.
Finally all three of them went to the door.
"I'm starving," said Steve Harvey.
It wasn't the kind of greeting Anastasia had daydreamed about. She had envisioned someone tall and handsome—someone who looked a lot like Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights—maybe wearing a tuxedo and holding a corsage in his hand.
Steve was tall for thirteen, and he was handsome—in a braces-on-the-teeth and needing-a-haircut sort of way—but he was wearing jeans and a jacket, which he shrugged off and dropped on a hall chair. Under the jacket was the sweatshirt Steve usually wore, the one that said psychotic state across the front.
"Hey, Sam," Steve said, "you look gross."
"No, I don't," Sam said. "I look like Popeye, in my sailor shirt."
"What's with the scabs?"
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"Chicken pox," Sam explained.
Anastasia groaned inwardly. Would Laurence Olivier have worn psychotic state sweatshirt? Would Laurence Olivier have discussed scabs? Never. Laurence Olivier was too suave.
"And I connected my chicken poxes with Magic Markers," Sam went on, holding up one arm to show Steve.
"Please come in," Anastasia said.
"I am in," Steve replied. "What's for dinner? The lunch at school today was really lousy—real barf-city stuff."
"Veal," Anastasia told him. "Come on in the living room and have some hors d'oeuvres." She passed Steve the bowl of peanuts which she had put on the coffee table, and averted her eyes while he stuffed a handful into his mouth. "We're expecting another guest, an old friend of my father's."
"Yeah?" said Steve with his mouth full.
"Her name is Annie O'Donnell," Dr. Krupnik explained. "She's a very interesting woman—a fine painter. She did that painting over there." He gestured toward the painting on the wall.
Steve glanced at it and grinned. "Looks like what we had for lunch today at school," he said, with his mouth still full. "I hate that kind of painting. You know the kind I like? That artist who works for Sports Illustrated; I forget his name. He does this great sports stuff."
"Yes, well, everyone has different taste, of course, Steve," said Anastasia's father. "I think it would be a good idea if you, ah, didn't mention to Annie that you don't care for her style. Annie's a very sensitive woman."
Steve shrugged. "Yeah, well, sure, I wouldn't tell her it looks like garbage or anything. Are there any more peanuts?"
"Sam, would you get them from the kitchen?" Anastasia asked. She was amazed. Steve had eaten the entire bowl of peanuts in two bites. Would Laurence Olivier eat peanuts like that? No way. Laurence Olivier would take one at a time, and nibble politely.
"Dad," Anastasia said suddenly, "there's a taxi out front. I think Annie's here."
And she was. She entered with a swoop, a cape flying around her, and she threw her arms around Dr. Krupnik. Her booming voice filled the high-ceilinged hall.
"Mike, you son-of-a-gun!" Annie bellowed. "You bleeping son-of-a-gun! Where have you been for the last umpteen years? Why didn't you ever write?"
Anastasia could see her father's startled eyes through the huge tangle of Annie's hug. No wonder he was startled, Anastasia thought. He had always described Annie as a gentle, quiet, sensitive soul—a waif with long, pale hair and a soft voice. Who on earth was this giant, booming stranger? And why was she calling him Mike? His name was Myron. Everyone called him Myron.
Dr. Krupnik extricated himself from Annie's arms and helped her take off the voluminous cape. Sam had appeared with a jar of peanuts in his hands. He stood silently and stared up at the woman. She was no smaller with the cape removed. She was enormous, both in height and width. She filled the hall. And her hair—the hair that Anastasia had heard described as long and pale—was a frizzy mass of bright red, almost orange, curls. Her eyelashes were long spikes of jet black. Monstrous earrings like doorknobs dangled from her ears, and her hands were cluttered with rings on every finger.
"I'd like you to meet my children," Dr. Krupnik said after he had hung her cape in the closet. "I'm sorry my wife is out of town.
"This is Anastasia," he said. "She's thirteen."
Annie swooped upon Anastasia. "What a bleeping horrible age, thirteen," she pronounced in her deep voice, grabbing Anastasia's hand and squashing it into the collection of rings. "Listen, kid, don't despair, thirteen doesn't last forever. Things will improve.
"Why don't you get her some bleeping contacts, Mike?" she bellowed. "You've got a kid here who looks like a bleeping owl with those glasses!"
"And this is Sam," Dr. Krupnik said, gesturing toward Sam, who was still clutching the jar of peanuts and staring at Annie with his mouth open.
"What does he have, premature acne?" Annie roared, laughing. She reached over and did the one thing Sam hated most in the world: She rubbed her hand through his curly hair. Sam took a step backward. "Hey, Sambo, you're okay," she said, "even if you do have leprosy or something god-awful."
"Sam is recovering from chicken pox," Dr. Krupnik explained, but Annie didn't seem to be listening.
For Anastasia, the "Sambo" had done it. She hated Annie. She hated anyone who said "Sambo." She wished she hadn't prepared a gourmet dinner. She wished she had stuck to her plan of hot dogs, eaten standing up.
Annie had burst into the living room, where Steve was still sitting on the couch. "ANOTHER ONE?" she brayed. "No wonder you never wrote, Mike; you spent all those years just turning out bleeping kids!"
"This is my daughter's friend, Steve Harvey," Dr. Krupnik said in a tense voice. "Steve, this is Annie O'Donnell."
Annie flung herself onto the couch beside Steve and roared with laughter. "I haven't heard that bleeping name for years!" she shrieked. "It's Annie Cummings now."
"Oh," said Anastasia's father politely. "I should have realized that you were married."
"Past tense," Annie said, and reached for some of the peanuts which Sam had poured carefully into the bowl. "Cummings came and went, but I kept his name. Before that I was Valdez. He came and went, too. And before that was, let's see, Wolf. Or maybe it was Fox: some nasty animal, anyway."
"You've been married three times?" Anastasia asked in amazement.
"But who's counting, right?" Annie chortled. "Lemme look at you, Mike." She peered across the room at Anastasia's father. "Got a bit of a pot, and you've lost your hair. Age takes its toll, right? Look at me, I'm forty bleeping pounds overweight!" While Anastasia watched in embarrassment, Annie grabbed two handfuls of her own stomach and shook it. She grinned. "Know what I call that? Love handles, that's what!"
Steve Harvey hadn't said a word. He hadn't even taken any more peanuts. He was simply staring. So was Sam. So was Myron Krupnik.
Anastasia took a deep breath. "Excuse me," she said. "I'm going to serve dinner."
***
They ate, as Anastasia had planned, by candlelight. The purple tablecloth glowed; the flowers gleamed in the center of the table. Sam sat politely, boosted up in his chair by books, and stirred the food on his plate with his fork. He picked out a few mushrooms, ate them, and left the rest.
Anastasia had lost her appetite. She ate a few bites of veal and wiped her mouth a lot with her napkin because she couldn't figure out what else to do with her hands.
Her father ate mechanically, smiling a lot, a frozen sort of smile. "It's very good, Anastasia," he said.
"Yeah," said Steve, and reached over to help himself to more.
"Good?" Annie bellowed. "It's bleeping fabulous! Did you cook this all by yourself, kid?" Anastasia nodded.
"Well, no question," said Annie with her mouth full, "you've got a bleeping genius here, Mike. And she'll be pretty sometime, too, if she just gets rid of those bleeping glasses and quits looking like a bleeping owl!"
Anastasia stared at her plate. From the corner of her eye, she saw Annie's huge arm reach over to take another helping of veal.
Suddenly Annie screeched. "WHAT THE BLEEP IS THIS?"
Anastasia looked over. Annie was poking her fork at a grayish mound on her plate with a look of disgust.
"It's veal marrow and knucklebones," Anastasia said in a loud, distinct voice. "I added them to give additional flavor. That's what Mastering the Art of French Cooking told me to do, and it wasn't easy. It took me a long time to figure out how to do it."
"Well, you're supposed to take it out, kiddo, before you serve the meal. Good thing I have a strong stomach. For a minute I thought it was a bleeping dead mouse or something." Annie picked it up with a fork and spoon and dropped it back into the serving dish.
Everyone was silent. Finally Steve said, "What's for dessert?"
Dessert? Anastasia hadn't even thought about dessert. How on earth did people make dessert, too, when it took two days just to make dinner?
Sam looked up. "I'll serve dessert," he announced.
"I'm in charge of dessert." He climbed carefully down from his chair and headed for the kitchen. In a moment he was back. He walked around the table and politely handed each person a Popsicle.
"They're grape," Sam said. "Because the color scheme is purple."
I forgot to turn on the music, Anastasia thought after Steve had left. I forgot to turn on the romantic record. With slumped shoulders she went to the kitchen and surveyed the mess. Every pot they owned was in the sink. Dirty dishes were piled on the table. Popsicle wrappings were stuck to the plates. There were spilled peanuts on the floor. The pantyhose bag of veal marrow and knucklebones lay in a sagging, soggy pile beside a cup half-filled with coffee.
It was a horrible evening, she thought. Sam thought it was horrible—he had said so when she put him to bed. And Steve thought it was horrible—he had said so when she said good night to him at the door. He had also said, "Good night, Analgesia." The instant he was gone, Anastasia had run to the dictionary and looked it up before she forgot the word.
The dictionary had said, "Analgesia. Insensibility to pain."
What a lie. Anastasia was so sensitive to pain that she had been suffering the entire evening, and not just from the horrible earrings. And she was still suffering.
She wondered if her father thought it was a horrible evening. She couldn't tell because he had been so silent, just smiling that tense smile all through dinner.
Well, her father had better think it was horrible, because it was his horrible friend Annie who had made it so. She was finally leaving. Anastasia looked at her watch; it was almost midnight. Annie had stayed and stayed, bleating and bellowing and bleeping. Finally Dr. Krupnik had simply gone to the phone and called for a taxi. Now he was out there saying good night to Annie.
And he sure was taking his time about it, Anastasia thought angrily. At least an hour's worth of cleaning up lay ahead, and her father had promised to help with it.
She went out into the hall, and finally, after a moment, she heard the taxi door slam, and the taxi drove away. Her father came back into the house, looking exhausted.