by Lois Lowry
And now, at this very moment, Sam was sitting there at the table, boosted up by two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica underneath him, and he was dumping ketchup all over a mushroom omelet. Talk about disgusting.
I need help, thought Anastasia. Mom said give it time. But time is not going to cure this situation.
"Dad?" she asked, looking up from her plate. "Did Mom tell you about the conversation she and I had before dinner?"
"A little," he acknowledged. "Sounds like a normal sort of problem to me. I remember having it myself when I was your age. It isn't confined to females."
Typical, Anastasia thought. Typical, that they don't even see the seriousness of this. "Dad," she said, "I am having a serious emotional crisis."
Sam looked up from his dinner. His face lit up with interest. "Emotional?" he asked. "I know about that!"
"Sam," said Mrs. Krupnik gently, "I don't think—"
"Yes," said Sam, nodding his head vigorously. "Today in school we learned about emotions! Look! I'll show you the emotions I can do!"
He climbed down from his chair. Anastasia groaned. There was ketchup on Sam's bib. There was ketchup on his hands. There was even ketchup on one of Sam's ears.
Sam paused for a moment beside his own chair; then he dashed around the entire dining room table at full speed. Everyone cringed when he rounded the corner near the cabinet full of antique dishes, but he missed it by an inch.
Back at his own chair, Sam panted for a moment and then said, "That was my running emotion. Now look."
He leaped into the air and came down with a crash. The ice in Dr. Krupnik's glass of water clinked when Sam hit the floor.
"That was my jumping emotion," Sam announced. "Now watch this one."
He balanced on one sneaker and hopped halfway across the room. "Hopping emotion," he said happily.
His parents and sister were watching him in bewilderment. But suddenly Mrs. Krupnik smiled.
"Sam," she said, "you're talking about motions. That's not quite the same. Now come back and finish your dinner."
"Right," said Sam. He climbed back into his chair and reached for the ketchup bottle. "That was my climbing emotion," he explained. "And I can do more. When I have my bath I'll show you my swimming emotion."
Anastasia had propped both elbows on the table and put her head into her hands. I live in a family of lunatics, she thought. I may not survive.
She looked up and drew her shoulders back. "Dad," she said assertively, "and Mom, I think I ought to go to a psychiatrist."
"A what?" asked her father.
"A who?" asked her mother.
"A psychiatrist. You know: a shrink."
"Me too!" said Sam. "I want to go to a shrink, too! Look at me: I'm shrinking!" Giggling, he slipped off his encyclopedia volumes and slowly disappeared under the table.
"I'm the Incredible Shrinking Man!" he called from his invisible location. "I saw it on TV."
Anastasia slammed her napkin down on the table. "That was your shrinking emotion, right?" she said sarcastically to Sam, who was still invisible. "May I be excused? I've lost my appetite."
Her mother nodded, and Anastasia picked up her plate to take it to the kitchen.
"We'll talk about this later, sport," said her father. "After Sam's in bed."
"No," said her father firmly. "Absolutely not."
Anastasia glanced at her mother, who hadn't said anything. But her mother was shaking her head no, agreeing with her father. The traitor. Back in the old days, the good old days, her mother had very often taken her side. But now she was just sitting there agreeing with him: typical traitor behavior.
Sam was tucked away upstairs, cleaned of ketchup, reveling in the applause he'd received from his parents for his demonstration of swimming emotions in the tub. Now there was music playing softly on the stereo, and a fire was crackling in the fireplace. Anastasia's parents were sipping coffee. It was the kind of scene Anastasia used to like—when she was younger, before she became a seriously disturbed person—a cozy evening, with firelight reflecting on the leather books arranged in rows around the walls of the study. Now she just curled miserably in the corner of the couch, glaring at her mother and father. How could she have been born to these cruel, insensitive parents?
Probably, she thought, she had secretly been adopted. Probably her real parents were out there somewhere—kind, normal people: a woman who wore dresses and played bridge; a man who sold insurance and kept nothing but radishes and cucumbers in his crisper.
They had told her, when she asked once, what it was like when she was born. They had said that she looked repulsive at first, and screamed, and peed on the nurse's hand; but later, they said, she had begun to look pretty good, probably the prettiest baby in the nursery. They had also admitted that there were only two babies in the nursery; the other was a Chinese baby named Stanley Wong.
But they could have made all of that up. It suddenly seemed obvious that they had made it up. Chinese people wouldn't name a baby Stanley, for pete's sake.
Somewhere out there, a bridge player and an insurance salesman—kind, compassionate people—were wishing that they had never given such a sweet baby girl away.
Anastasia sighed and the daydream disappeared. There was this immediate problem to deal with.
"WHY NOT?" she asked, glowering.
"On a purely practical level," said her father, in his purely practical voice, which she hated, "it would be financially impossible. Psychiatrists cost a lot."
"Dad," Anastasia said, filling her voice with as much admiration as she could, considering the fact that he was an insensitive villain, "you're a very famous author. You were nominated for the American Book Award, right? And famous authors make lots of money. That woman who writes Gothic romances is a millionaire. Judith Krantz is probably a millionaire. Judy Blume is probably a millionaire."
"Maybe, Myron," said Mrs. Krupnik, "you should consider changing your name to Judith." She grinned at him and winked. Anastasia cringed. Her parents were so disgusting; they were always doing things like grinning and winking, for pete's sake.
"I'm a Harvard professor, Anastasia," Dr. Krupnik said. "And on the side, I'm a poet. I'm a pretty successful poet, true. But the fact is that nobody buys poetry. Nobody even reads poetry. All they do is give awards for poetry. And if I think about that too much I may fall into a serious depression, and then I'll need a psychiatrist."
"I remember, Myron," said her mother, "that when you asked me to marry you, you said, '{Catherine, I will never be a rich man.' And I said—" She hesitated. "Well, that's too personal, what I said."
Now he grinned and winked. GROSS.
Anastasia was glad that her mother hadn't gone on to tell what she had said. Probably it was something romantic. Her parents were always doing that, talking about romantic stuff; they were always hugging and kissing, too—even in front of other people. It embarrassed Anastasia just thinking about it. IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE: HUGGING AND KISSING. Talk about gross. Back in the old days, she hadn't even minded.
"Anyway," her father went on, "money isn't the essential thing. It's important, because we don't have the money. But even if we did, I'd say no, Anastasia."
"Why?"
"Because you don't need a psychiatrist. The people who need psychiatrists—and there are plenty who do—are people who are emotionally disturbed."
"I've been trying to tell you that I'm emotional—"
"You don't have the slightest symptom of even a minor neurosis. What you do have is an absolutely normal reaction to growing up. When people become thirteen or so, they suddenly realize that their parents are human. Naturally it comes as a shock." Dr. Krupnik began to pick up the evening paper.
"Human? HUMAN!" Anastasia emerged from her curled-up ball and sat up straight. "You call it human to ignore my suffering? How do you know I don't have symptoms of necrosis?"
He chuckled. "Neurosis. Necrosis means "death." It comes from the Greek."
"Okay, okay; so I'm
stupid; so I don't know Greek. And I'm not dead, I'll grant you that. Tell me some symptoms of neurosis. I bet I have all of them."
Dr. Krupnik put the paper down and stroked his beard. He stretched his long legs, in their corduroy pants, toward the fire. "Well," he said. "I'm no expert. I teach English, not Psychology. But here's an example: some very neurotic people have a lot of irrational fears. Some are afraid to be in a crowd. Or some are afraid of wideopen spaces. And of course there are your basic claustrophobias: people who can't even get into an elevator because they're afraid of confined places. Or—"
"That's definitely not you, Anastasia," said her mother. "Remember when I lost you at Jordan Marsh, when you were about six? And it turned out you were just riding up and down in the elevator? You hadn't bothered to get off at the fourth floor when I did, because you liked the elevator so much."
"Yeah, I remember," said Anastasia. "That was fun. You got mad, though."
"I really don't think you have any neurotic fears, Anastasia," her father continued.
"Well, I'm scared to death of that old French movie: Diabolique. But I don't suppose that would count. Any normal person would be scared of that movie."
"Even me," said her father. "Hey, it's on TV again, real late on Saturday night. You want to stay up and watch it with me?"
Anastasia shuddered. "No. Tell me more psychiatric symptoms."
"Difficulty sleeping?"
"Nope."
"Loss of appetite?"
Anastasia shook her head. "Nope. I said at dinner that I'd lost my appetite, but it was only because of Sam. Actually, after I took my plate to the kitchen, I ate the rest out there."
"Inability to concentrate? That's another symptom."
Anastasia brightened. "I may have that last one. I have a lot of trouble paying attention in Math class."
"That doesn't count," said her father. "I mean real inability to concentrate, like if you couldn't even follow this conversation."
Mrs. Krupnik yawned. "I can hardly follow this conversation, I'm so sleepy. I'm going to bed in about five minutes."
"Sexual problems," Dr. Krupnik continued. "Are you having sexual problems, Anastasia?"
"DAD. Quit being gross."
He chuckled. "Let's see. Delusions. Do you ever think you might be, oh, the Queen of England?"
Anastasia brightened. She made her Queen of England face, raising her eyebrows as high as she could, and drawing her mouth into a teeny, pinched position. "I am sometimes teddibly distressed by the conditions in this rawther lower-class home," she said, looking down her nose at her father.
Her mother yawned again. "Me too," she said. "Nobody ever did the dishes tonight. They're still in the sink. It was your turn, Myron; it's Thursday."
He made a face. "I'll do them in the morning," he said. "Anastasia, I'm running out of symptoms. How about: Do you ever think someone is trying to poison you?"
"That's it!" said Anastasia. "That's the one I have! Just today, Mom said she was going to make oatmeal for dinner! Talk about poison!"
"Come on, sport. Oatmeal for dinner is disgusting, I'll agree with you there. But did you seriously think that she was going to sneak some ground glass into it?"
"No," admitted Anastasia, grudgingly.
"Well, then. One last symptom. Do you ever hear voices?"
"Sure. I hear yours right now."
"No, I mean phantom voices, inside your head. Voices that aren't really there, but you hear them anyway."
That was an interesting thought. Anastasia never had. But then she had never really tried to. "Shhh," she said, "let me listen a minute."
Mrs. Krupnik yawned again, as silently as possible. The three of them sat there without speaking, each with their heads cocked to the side, listening.
"Myron," whispered Mrs. Krupnik, "I think I hear a voice!"
"Me too, Dad!" Anastasia said aloud. "I really did hear a voice! I couldn't tell what it was saying, though. It sounded far away."
Her father stood up and put his finger to his mouth. "Shhh," he said, "listen. What is that?"
The distant voice had stopped, but now they heard footsteps upstairs. Small footsteps.
"It's Sam," said Mrs. Krupnik. "What's he doing up at this hour?"
The footsteps came to the head of the stairs, and now they could hear the voice loud and clear.
"I threw up!" Sam called cheerfully. "All over my bed!"
"YUCK," said Anastasia.
"It's mostly ketchup!" called the voice. Mrs. Krupnik yawned, stretched, and leaned back in her chair. "Maybe I'll read for a while," she said, and picked up a magazine. "Myron, it's Thursday, remember?"
Dr. Krupnik sighed. "I know," he said. "My turn for clean-up."
"Here," he said, as he got up from his chair. He reached toward the bookcase, took out a book, and handed it to Anastasia. "Read Freud if you want to know about psychiatry."
After her father had gone upstairs to tend to Sam, Anastasia turned to her mother, who was absorbed in a magazine article.
"Dad forgot something important," Anastasia said.
"What's that?"
"Remember that movie we saw on TV? Sybil? And Sally Field was this girl who had all these different personalities?"
"Sure," said her mother, "Joanne Woodward was the psychiatrist who cured her. That was a good movie. I wonder why I let you watch it, though. You were much too young. You were only about eight."
"I was not too young," said Anastasia. "I loved that movie. I never forgot it. But it's only just now that I realized I'm like Sally Field. I mean Sybil."
Her mother sighed in exasperation. "Anastasia, you are not psychotic!"
"I have all these different personalities seething inside me! I mean really seething, Mom!"
Finally her mother slammed the magazine closed and tossed it onto the coffee table. "Anastasia, listen to me. You have lots of different parts to your personality. Everybody does. But basically you are a very nice, very bright thirteen-year-old who is experiencing normal difficulty adjusting to adolescence. Did you hear that word 'normal'?"
Anastasia glared at her.
"And part of your personality," her mother went on, "is obnoxious. Frankly, you have been obnoxious lately. And I'm tired, and I wish you would go to bed, because tomorrow's a school day."
Anastasia continued to glare at her. She didn't say anything. Steely eyes, she thought. I am looking at my mother with eyes of steel.
"You want me to be Joanne Woodward, right?" her mother asked. She was really angry now, Anastasia could tell. The steely-eyed look had done it. Sally Field had those same steely eyes when she was being Sybil. "You want me to say wise, comforting, curative things to you? Right? Like Joanne Woodward?"
"Yes," said Anastasia with steely dignity. "That would be nice, I think."
"Well, let me tell you something. Joanne Woodward had a script! Someone wrote all her dialogue! And that's the whole blasted trouble with motherhood—there isn't any script!" Mrs. Krupnik was furious. "Now go to bed!"
Anastasia stood up with perfect posture, and tilted her nose into the air, with her glasses balanced midway down. "Good night," she said coolly. She nodded haughtily to her mother, who was becoming pretty steely-eyed herself. She left the room, carrying the volume of Freud, and headed up the stairs.
On the second floor, as she headed toward the small staircase that led to her third floor bedroom, she could hear Sam splashing in the bathtub. Through the open door of Sam's bedroom, she could see her father bending over to change Sam's sheets. She caught a glimpse of ketchup and averted her eyes quickly.
Talk about a lower-class environment, Anastasia thought. Queen Elizabeth would hire someone to do that.
Anastasia unlaced her hiking boots, dropped them on the floor, and flopped down on her bed. She glanced over at the goldfish bowl, where Frank Goldfish was swimming in slow, lazy circles. Frank never seemed to be emotionally disturbed. Of course, Anastasia had never kept it a secret from Frank that he had been adopted at a v
ery young age.
She looked at the gerbil cage. Both gerbils were busy, rushing around in the shavings, pushing pieces into mounds to make nests. It sure is boring to observe gerbils, Anastasia thought.
She flipped idly through the pages of her father's book. Then she picked up the Science Project notebook, found her pencil, and began to write.
Science Project
Anastasia Krupnik
Mr. Sherman's Class
On October 13, I acquired two wonderful little gerbils, who are living in a cage in my bedroom. Their names are Romeo and Juliet, and they are very friendly. They seem to like each other a lot. Since they are living in the same cage as man and wife, I expect they will have gerbil babies. My gerbil book says that it takes twenty-five days to make gerbil babies. I think they are already mating, because they act very affectionate to each other, so I will count today as DAY ONE and then I will observe them for twenty-five days and I hope that on DAY 25 their babies will be born.
This will be my Science Project.
Day Three.
My gerbils haven't changed much. They lie in their cage and sleep a lot. They're both overweight, because they eat too much, and they resemble Sonya Isaacson's mother, at least in chubbiness.
In personality, they resemble my mother. They're very grouchy.
Day Three Continued.
People who have serious emotional problems sometimes have difficulty doing real good gerbil-observation because they suffer from inability to concentrate. I myself have serious emotional difficulties so I have this problem.
As part of my Science Project I will talk about serious emotional problems. I will tell you what someone named Freud says about this.
The division of the psychical into what is conscious and what is unconscious is the fundamental premise of psycho-analysis; and it alone makes it possible for psycho-analysis to understand the pathological processes in mental life, which are as common as they are important, and to find a place for them in the framework of science.