He came back from the telephone chuckling. "It was Steve Harvey, Anastasia," he said. "He'll call you back. And he has a new name for you, by the way. I was wrong when I said that he would run out of new names."
"What's this one?" asked Anastasia, cringing.
"He has a real way with words," her father said.
"WHAT'S THIS ONE?"
"Anaconda," Dr. Krupnik said. "He asked if Anaconda Krupnik was home."
"What does it mean?"
"It's very imaginative. I wonder if he's using a dictionary, or if he actually has a highly developed vocabulary."
"DAD! What does it mean?"
"It's a South American snake," her father explained. "A kind of python."
"You're in charge, Anastasia," her mother said, looking up again from the letter that she seemed to be reading for the tenth time.
"How can I be in charge when I can't figure out how to get even? What if he calls me that in school? What if the other kids know that it's a python? How can I defend myself, for pete's sake?" Anastasia wailed.
Her mother was smiling. "I meant that you are in charge of the house," she said. "Starting Monday."
They all looked at her. Even Sam, who had flung himself to the floor and was starting to do a python imitation under the kitchen table, slithered back out and looked up curiously.
"What do you mean?" Anastasia asked finally.
"I'm flying to Los Angeles, Monday," Mrs. Krupnik said. "A book that I illustrated is being made into an animated film. They want me to act as adviser."
"Monday?" asked Dr. Krupnik. "That's just two days away. They can't give you such short notice."
Mrs. Krupnik handed him the letter. "They apologize for the short notice," she said. "Take a look at what they're going to pay me."
He looked and blinked. "Holy moley," he said.
"How long will you be gone?" Anastasia asked.
Ten days.
"Ten days!" said Anastasia. "I can't—how do you expect me to—"
Mrs. Krupnik stood up and took the silverware from a drawer. "I'll set the table tonight," she said, "since you made the salad."
"How on earth can a thirteen-year-old person—"
"Easy," her mother said. "You have this wonderful schedule."
3
Anastasia sat on her parents' bed Sunday evening, watching her mother pack. From the nearby bathroom came the sounds of her father bathing Sam.
"I'm worried about several things, Mom," Anastasia said.
Her mother looked up from folding a silk blouse. "Really?" she asked. "Like what?"
Anastasia arranged her legs underneath herself so that she was sitting like Buddha. "Well," she said, "don't be insulted or anything, but I'm afraid you're not going to go over real well on this trip."
Mrs. Krupnik placed the blouse in the suitcase and began taking some dresses out of her closet. "I'm not? Why not? I did terrific illustrations for that book. It was that really sophisticated children's book, re-member—the one about the wedding of two gazelles? It won some awards."
"No, it's not your work, Mom," Anastasia explained. "You're one of the best illustrators around. It's a couple of other things. One is your clothes."
"My clothes?" Mrs. Krupnik held up the blue silk dress she was about to pack. "What's wrong with my clothes? I should have had this cleaned, I suppose, but there wasn't time. And it's not grossly dirty, just sort of vaguely smelling of perfume from the last time I wore it." She sniffed the dress. "It really is perfume, Anastasia, not perspiration or anything."
"Mom, it's not the condition of your clothes. It's the style."
"What's wrong with the style?" Her mother looked at the simple blue dress again, puzzled.
"Mom, when you're on the Coast—and incidentally, you're supposed to call it the Coast, not California or Los Angeles—"
"I am? How do you know that?"
"From magazines."
"Oh. Well, I'll practice on the plane. I'll practice saying, 'Hello. It's so nice to be here on the Coast.'"
"Make sure it sounds casual. It has to sound casual."
"I'll try. What's wrong with this dress?"
"Mom, on the Coast, you're supposed to glitter."
"I'm supposed to what?"
"Glitter. You're supposed to be, well, glitzy."
Her mother frowned at her. "Anastasia, I don't know what you're talking about. All of a sudden you're speaking a foreign language. Can you give me an example of glitzy?"
Anastasia chewed on a strand of hair. "Well, do you by any chance have any leather pants?"
"Good grief. Of course I don't have any leather pants. You know that. You're always prowling around in my closet, trying to find something to borrow."
"Well, it's an example. You asked for an example. If you had leather pants, you could wear those, and then you could put that dress over the leather pants, like a giant blouse, and around the waist you could put a big cowboy belt. And huge earrings, of course."
Her mother was making a terrible face. "Then I'd glitter?" she asked.
"Yeah, I think so."
Mrs. Krupnik sighed and put the blue dress into the suitcase. "I've decided I don't want to glitter. Huge earrings make my ears hurt. It wouldn't be any fun to glitter if I had an earache. I guess I'll just be the only unglittery person in Los Angeles—excuse me, I mean on the Coast. Maybe that will make me seem interesting."
Anastasia was dubious. She thought it would make her mother seem boring. "There's another thing, too," she said. "The way you talk."
Her mother took a pair of shoes out of the closet, licked her finger, and rubbed a smudged spot off one. "Do they talk differently out there?" she asked.
Anastasia nodded. "I know you can't learn it all in one evening," she said. "But I could just teach you a few expressions, and then you could fake it."
"Okay. Teach me one."
"Well, if something happens that you don't like—say, for example, they tell you that they want you to redo the gazelles—"
"They won't. Those gazelles are perfect."
"It's just an example, Mom. If they tell you that, you should say, 'Make my day.'"
"'Make my day'?" Her mother made the same sort of face she had made about the glittering. "I don't understand what that means, even."
Anastasia stood up. "Here, I'll show you. It's all in the inflection. It has to be casual, and bored, and sarcastic. You play the part of the film producer, okay? And I'll be you. Tell me I have to redo the gazelles."
Her mother grinned and put down the shoes. She glanced around, picked up a ballpoint pen from the dresser, and clamped it between her teeth like a cigar. "Here's the thing, Ms. Krupnik," she said in a deep, harsh voice. "We're going to need a whole new set of gazelles here, something a little cuter, you get the idea?" She flicked some ashes from the imaginary cigar.
Anastasia leaned in a casual, languid pose against the bedpost. She looked at her mother, the film producer, with a bored stare, her eyes half closed. In a low, sarcastic voice, she said, "Like, maaake my daaay."
Her mother dropped the ballpoint cigar and roared with laughter. "I love it," she said. "I love it, Ana-stasia." She picked the shoes back up and put them into the suitcase. "But I can't do it. It just isn't me."
Anastasia flopped back down on the bed. She handed her mother some pantyhose that were waiting to be packed. She sighed. "Well," she said, "I just sincerely hope that you're not too humiliated out there."
Sam dashed into the room, naked and giggling. He glanced over his shoulder and called, "You can't catch me!" He dropped to the floor and disappeared under his parents' bed.
Dr. Krupnik appeared at the door with Sam's pajamas in his hand. "Where did he go?" he asked.
Anastasia and her mother pointed under the bed. "He's going to need another whole bath, Myron," Mrs. Krupnik said. "There are a thousand dust balls under there. I forgot to vacuum yesterday, even though it was on the schedule."
Sam's carpool driver honked in the driveway in the
morning. Sam kissed his mother good-bye, pulled on his mittens, and trudged out through the snow to the car. Before he got in, he turned and waved cheerfully toward the kitchen window.
"I've never been away from Sam before," said Mrs. Krupnik after she had waved back and the car had driven away. "What a strange feeling."
"We'll take good care of him, Mom," Anastasia said.
She sighed. "I know you will. It's all set with the nursery school. They'll keep him for lunch and for the afternoon session. He'll be home by three-thirty every day. Now you be sure to be here, Anastasia. They won't leave him at an empty house."
"I will, Mom, I promise. It's going to ruin my social life for ten days. But I'll be home by three-thirty."
A backfire sounded from the garage. Then another. Anastasia and her mother looked out the window and saw clouds of black smoke coming from the tail pipe of the car.
"He'll have the car warmed up in a minute," Anastasia said. "Did he take your suitcase?"
"It's in the trunk of the car." Mrs. Krupnik put on her coat. "Now, let's see; am I forgetting anything?"
"Tickets?"
"I'm picking them up at the airport."
Anastasia looked around the kitchen. "We all forgot the breakfast dishes," she pointed out. "But I'll do them when I get home from school."
"Right." Her mother pulled on her gloves, picked up her briefcase, and headed for the door. "You're in charge, Anastasia. I'll call you tomorrow night, just to make sure everything's okay."
"It will be, Mom. I'm a very organized person, you know."
"All right, then. I'm off." Her mother gave her a hug. Anastasia watched through the window as she got into the car, which jerked and bounced down the driveway toward the street. She kept waving until it was out of sight.
Then Anastasia got into her ski jacket and hat. She collected her schoolbooks and was halfway down the back steps before she remembered something and turned back.
"I almost blew it the first day," she said to herself. Quickly she went to the freezer, pulled out a package of rock-hard hamburger, and deposited it on the drain-board of the kitchen sink.
"Okay," she said, glancing at the schedule tacked to the bulletin board. "None of the beds is made, but I'll do that when I get home. Meat's out of the freezer. Breakfast dishes can wait. And if I don't leave this instant, I'm going to be late for school."
She headed for the door again. The telephone rang.
She hesitated.
It rang again. She went back and answered it.
"Ms. Krupnik?" asked a bubbly voice.
"Yeah."
"E-Z Telephone Shopping!" the voice said. "Anybody in your family in need of new underwear? We're having a special!"
Anastasia blinked. "That's a very personal question," she said.
"How about blankets?" the voice asked.
Anastasia looked at her watch. She was definitely going to be late for school. Talk about Unexpected Events. "The blanket on my brother's bed is kind of ratty," she said. "It was his security blanket when he was younger, so he used to suck on it, and chew on it, all the time, and now he doesn't do that, but the blanket is all messed up."
"How many new ones would you like?" the voice asked. "And what color?"
"Blue, I guess. Just one."
"Twin, full, queen, or king?"
Anastasia thought. "Twin," she said.
"Standard, or electric?"
"Stand———no, wait. Electric. Sam would like electric. He likes to fool with switches."
"Sheets or towels?"
Anastasia groaned. She didn't have time to think about sheets or towels. "No," she said. "Thank you," she added.
"Credit card number?"
Oh, no. "Just a minute," Anastasia said. "I have to get it."
She dashed to her father's study and opened the second drawer of his desk. There, in a typed list, were all of their credit card numbers. She ran back to the phone and read the MasterCard number to the voice.
"I really have to go," she said. "I'm late."
"Bye, now," said the voice.
Anastasia picked up her books again and headed off for school. Already it wasn't quite as easy as she had anticipated, being in charge.
She arrived home just a few minutes before Sam. Anastasia was mad. All of her friends had stayed after school for a basketball game. The streets were absolutely deserted as she walked home, and she imagined that she could hear the cheering junior high crowd back there at the gym. She imagined that Steve Harvey was making basket after basket and was wondering why she hadn't stayed to cheer for him.
Back home, there were three unmade beds—she had pulled the covers up hastily—and a sink full of dishes with congealed egg on them.
And Sam was bratty. He was tired after an unaccustomed day at school, and he whined. He wanted Anastasia to play trucks with him.
"I can't play trucks," Anastasia said. "I have to do these dishes."
"Mom always plays trucks," Sam whimpered.
Anastasia looked at him in exasperation. "Tell you what," she suggested finally. "Bring your trucks down here and you can transport the clean dishes to the cupboard."
He trotted off and returned with a large red dump truck. On his hands and knees he rrrrrrrred each clean dish to the pantry and put it away. Anastasia waited impatiently, holding cups and glasses after they were dry, for the trucking company to return for a pickup.
When the last one was done, she hung up the dish towel and wiped the sink with a sponge. She sat down wearily in a kitchen chair, and Sam climbed into her lap.
"Scratch my back," he said. "My back itches."
Automatically Anastasia scratched his little back through his shirt.
"More," Sam said when she stopped.
Anastasia sighed and scratched again. She was still scratching when the back door opened and her father appeared.
"Greetings," he said. "Your mom's in sunny California by now!"
"You're home early," Anastasia began, but then she looked at her watch. "How did it get to be five o'clock?" she asked.
Sam flopped himself around in her lap. "Scratch my front," he said. "My front itches, too."
Anastasia lifted him down to the floor. "I can't," she told him. "I have to start dinner. What vegetable do you guys want? Corn okay?"
"Sure," said her father. "Good thing I remembered to take some meat out of the freezer."
"Yeah," said Anastasia. "I was halfway down the back steps before I remembered to—what do you mean, you remembered?"
Her father went to the pantry and came back with a plate full of something, which he set on the table.
"Chicken breasts," he announced. "I remembered just before I went out to warm up the car this morning."
Anastasia looked at the chicken breasts in dismay. She took her own package of meat from the side of the sink. "But I thawed out hamburger!" she wailed.
Sam looked at both of them. Then he trotted off to the small counter beside the refrigerator, the one where the toaster stood. He reached up, pushed aside the toaster, and took down a package.
"Hot dogs," he announced. "I did hot dogs."
Anastasia stared at the hamburger. Then she stared at the chicken breasts. Then she stared at the hot dogs.
"Well," she said flatly, "make my day."
"Actually," her father replied, "I think what we have to make is a new schedule."
Sam sat down on the kitchen floor and began to cry. "Make me stop itching!" he howled. "I itch all over!"
4
Anastasia opened her eyes sleepily when her father called "Seven o'clock!" up the stairs to her third-floor bedroom. She groaned. Why was it so hard to get up in the morning?
Frank, her goldfish, was swimming in circles, chasing his own tail around his bowl. Frank was always wide-awake and cheerful in the mornings. He was the kind of guy who would go jogging at dawn, if he had legs.
Groggily, she reached over to the fish-food box and tapped some into Frank's bowl. If only she could do
all the household chores without getting out of bed.
"You and I have very little in common, Frank," Anastasia said, yawning, "except that we both like to eat."
Frank stared out at her with his bulging eyes through the side of the bowl. He flipped his tail.
Down on the second floor, she could hear sounds: the shower running, her father's feet squeaking in the bathtub, and Sam—Anastasia groaned and got out of bed. Sam was crying again. Ordinarily Sam never cried; once she had seen him fall right over the railing of the back porch, head over heels, into a prickly bush. Then he had climbed out of the bush, covered with scratches, brushed himself off, remarked, "Ouch," and gone scampering off to find his tricycle.
But last night he had cried and cried. He hadn't eaten any dinner—even though there were several choices—and he had complained about a hundred different things. His head hurt. His toes itched. His nose ached. His belly button felt too tight.
Finally he had fallen asleep on the hard linoleum floor of the kitchen while Anastasia and her father ate.
"What a hypochondriac," Anastasia had said, whispering, so that he wouldn't wake up and start wailing again.
"He just misses his mom," Dr. Krupnik had pointed out.
They had both looked at Sam curled into a sleeping ball on the floor. "Should we wake him up for his bath?" Dr. Krupnik had asked.
Anastasia had shaken her head. "He's not that dirty. And if we wake him up he'll just start missing Mom again, and crying. Let's just put him to bed with his clothes on."
Dr. Krupnik had frowned. "He'll wet the bed if we don't take him to the bathroom."
It was true. They had both thought about that. "Well," said Anastasia finally, "I think I'd rather change his sheets tomorrow than listen to him howl anymore tonight."
Her father had nodded. "Me too," he agreed. Carefully, he had scooped Sam up and carried him upstairs to his bed. "By morning, after a good night's sleep," he had said when he came back down, "he'll be fine. It's just a difficult adjustment."
But now it was morning, and Sam was howling again. Anastasia sighed and pulled on her clothes, noticing as she did that this was the last of her clean underwear. The jeans didn't matter—she had worn these for three days anyway—but she would have to wash underwear after school today. And socks.