Anastasia Has the Answers

by Lois Lowry

  "I'll do a journalistic evaluation," Anastasia suggested. "I'm going to ask you these questions: who, what, when, where, and why. First one is 'who,' and you say your parents' names. Ready? Who."

  Daphne smiled a little. "Reverend and Mrs. John Bellingham," she said.

  "What?" Anastasia asked next.

  "Filed for divorce—"

  "When?"

  "Last month—"

  "Where?"

  Daphne wasn't sure. "Boston, I suppose. Some courtroom."

  "Why? Be honest, now."

  Daphne took one more deep breath. "Well, because as time went along and they got older, their personalities didn't seem to match very well anymore. Like my mom didn't want to teach Sunday school or sing in the choir anymore, or go to all those meetings. But my dad really thought she ought to. He said it was her duty. But she wanted to get a job, because she had all this education and everything—she had applied to law school way back, before they got married, but then she never went—and my dad said it wasn't appropriate for the rector's wife to work, and they didn't need the money—" She stopped for a moment, took another breath, and went on. "—and he didn't understand that it wasn't the money; it was, well, my mom said it was the self-esteem. But he said it ought to be enough self-esteem to be the wife of the minister of the largest Congregational church in the whole county, and when he said that, my mom swore at him—I'm not going to say what she said—"

  Anastasia giggled. "Why not? I've heard you swear lots of times."

  "Yeah, but nobody ever heard my mom swear, and I'm not going to ruin her image. Anyway, then she said they ought to see a marriage counselor, and he said, 'By God, I am a marriage counselor! And you should respect that!' and that's when she called him a sanctimonious creep, and he said—"

  "Hey, wait, Daph, how do you know all this? They didn't say it in front of you, did they?"

  Daphne shook her head. "I eavesdropped," she said. "From my bedroom closet, if I pushed the winter stuff aside and got up close to the wall, I could hear everything they were saying in their bedroom. It was a rotten thing to do, I suppose."

  "But necessary," Anastasia said. "I can understand that."

  Daphne wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Anyway, that's about all of the 'why,' I guess."

  Anastasia looked at her in astonishment. "Well, that proves it! Don't you see, Daphne?"

  "See what?"

  "All those conversations you eavesdropped on—and they never knew you were listening, did they?"

  "No. I always shoved the clothes back where they belonged, so my mother wouldn't notice."

  "Well, they never mentioned you. Did they once say, 'And that rotten kid Daphne—which one of us gets stuck with her?'"

  Daphne giggled. "No," she said. "They mentioned me, of course. But it was always just how concerned they were about me."

  Anastasia stood up and looked down at her bare Fatal Apple toes. "Well," she said, "quit being a jerk. It wasn't your fault. How do your toes look?"

  Daphne stood up and looked down at her own feet. "Sexy," she decided. "Maybe I will get married someday, after all."

  ***

  Uncle George beeped the horn of the car after he pulled up to the curb. He didn't even come up and ring the doorbell of the apartment. And no wonder. When he came up before, Mrs. Bellingham said, "How do you do, you'll have to excuse me, I'm busy," very coolly; then she went to her bedroom, and Uncle George sat there on the living room couch, drinking a cup of coffee very awkwardly while Anastasia and Daphne tried to make conversation.

  "Hi, Uncle George," Anastasia said after she dashed through the rain and got into the car. "Thanks for coming to pick me up."

  "Forgive me for not ringing the bell," he said, "but I think that woman didn't like me."

  Anastasia rolled her eyes. "She was just acting weird, Uncle George. She just lost her husband and everything, and she's acting a little weird. I think she'll get over it."

  "Your friend Daphne is charming," Uncle George added. "And she has the most beautiful hair. It reminds me of Shirley Temple."

  Oh, gross. Anastasia could never tell Daphne that. Elderly people like Uncle George—and even Anastasia's parents—all liked those old Shirley Temple movies, where she danced around, smiling, showing her dimples—and sometimes her underpants, talk about gross—with her curls bouncing.

  Daphne, in fact—since she did happen to have the same sort of curls—had once, for a school talent assembly, mouthed the words of "On the Good Ship Lollipop" to a record, while she danced, wearing a short ruffled dress. But one of her front teeth was blacked out, and she was wearing a black lace garter belt, which showed every time she did a little Shirley Temple twirl.

  The entire junior high had thought it was hysterical, and Daphne had gotten a standing ovation. But everybody over the age of thirty-five—which included a lot of the teachers—thought it was sacrilegious or something. Daphne almost ended up in detention again.

  Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby, Anastasia remembered with satisfaction, had loved it.

  Thinking of Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby reminded Anastasia that she planned to spend the remainder of the Saturday afternoon out in the garage once again. She had decided to try wearing her mother's gardening gloves this time, since her hands were beginning to be sore from all the rope-climbing attempts.

  8

  "PHWEET!" Ms. Willoughby's whistle blasted through the gym on Monday afternoon, and the basketball game stopped. Everywhere there was the rubbery sound of sneakers coming to a speedy halt against the floor. Meredith Halberg bounced the basketball once, tossed it ineffectually toward the basket, and it rolled over into the corner where the gymnastics mats were piled.

  "The period's almost over," Ms. Willoughby called. "But gather round for a minute before you go to the locker room."

  The seventh-grade girls, still panting from the basketball game, clustered around Ms. Willoughby. Anastasia stood a little to the side. Somehow, in gym, she felt a little separate from her classmates. She watched them now, each in a bright blue gym suit, listening to the gym teacher.

  "Very shortly," Ms. Willoughby was saying, "the day after tomorrow, to be exact, there will be a team of educators from several other countries visiting our school. You probably know that already."

  Everybody burst out laughing. The entire school had been talking of nothing else for two weeks. There were posters everywhere, reminding the students about the coming visit from the team of educators. The principal had spoken about it in a special assembly. Every single teacher had devoted a long discussion to it.

  All the teachers and administrators, Anastasia realized, were terrified that somehow or other they were going to be disgraced and humiliated in front of the foreign educators. Eddie Fox might yell out something obscene, the way he did occasionally. Daphne Bellingham—although it had been months since she had done her Shirley Temple imitation in assembly—might suddenly be moved to do it again, in the middle of a history class. Eighth graders would all light up cigarettes in the halls, instead of sneaking them in the bathroom the way they usually did.

  All of it was highly unlikely. The junior high students were actually a nice bunch of kids, and they wanted to impress the foreign visitors favorably. But Anastasia could see that the entire faculty was very nervous. And now Ms. Willoughby (Anastasia had supposed that such a super-cool person was above that sort of nervousness, but apparently not) was going to give the "Let's be very impressive for our visitors" pep talk, too.

  "We'll be doing a demonstration for them," Ms. Willoughby was saying. "We won't have a lot of time because they'll just be coming in small groups through the gym briefly. But physical education is very important in Europe—you remember how the Germans and Rumanians always perform at the Summer Olympics—so they'll be particularly interested in what goes on in gym.

  "I want you all to take your gym suits home for laundering tonight. And iron them!"

  Everyone groaned.

  "White socks," Ms. Willoughby w
ent on. "No argyle knee socks, Jennifer Billings!"

  Everyone laughed at Jenny Billings's bright yellow, green, and red knee socks.

  "No pantyhose, Daphne Bellingham," Ms. Willoughby announced, and Daphne said, "Okay, okay."

  "White socks. No jewelry—that means you, too, Jill, even though you like to jangle—all three sets of earrings have to go. Be on time Wednesday, everyone. Let's see, what else?" Ms. Willoughby looked down at her clipboard.

  Jenny Billings raised her hand. "You said we'll be doing a demonstration. What are we going to demonstrate?"

  "Oh," Ms. Willoughby said, "you're what, second period?" She moved her finger down the paper on the clipboard. "First period, folk dancing; third period, precision marching. You guys are going to do rope-climbing. Now—we're running late. Class dismissed! Phweet!" Her whistle blew again.

  "Anastasia," Ms. Willoughby called, as the girls all ran toward the locker room door, "could I see you for a minute?"

  ***

  "The whistle!" Anastasia said, choking back sobs. "She said I could be in charge of blowing the whistle! Just as if I was a little kid, you know, like Sam, who could be conned into thinking that blowing the whistle was a real important job. And she was so nice about it, I couldn't argue or anything, and I know she—"

  "Shhh," her mother said soothingly. "Don't cry." She stroked Anastasia's hair. "Let me think. I'm sure we can work something out."

  "I could just be absent," Anastasia suggested, sniffling. "But I want to be there when those people from other countries come. I really want them to see what a neat school we have, and in English class I'm supposed to recite a poem when they're there, so I can't be absent, no one else knows that poem but me—"

  Sam looked up from the floor where he was playing. "I can do a poem," he announced. "Listen: I'm Popeye the sailor man, I live in a garbage can—'"

  "MOM! Make him stop!" Anastasia wailed.

  "Sam," Mrs. Krupnik said firmly, "shhhh. Anastasia's upset. You just play with your cars and be quiet. Have a nice, quiet funeral. You can bury Aunt Rose over there, under that stack of canvases."

  Sam nodded, eyed the stack of canvases against the far wall of his mother's studio, and loaded the blank-eyed GI Joe onto the back of his dump truck. "Rrrrr," he said, and began driving away slowly.

  Mrs. Krupnik turned back to Anastasia. "I wonder if he'll get tired of funerals by the time George goes back to California," she murmured. "Four more days."

  "Two more days till the rope-climbing demonstration," Anastasia said bitterly. "I suppose I should practice up on whistle-blowing."

  "No, wait," her mother said. She put down the pen she'd been holding and looked at the drawing on the table in front of her. "This job isn't due at the publisher until the tenth of the month. That gives me a couple of weeks, still, so I can set it aside for a little while without feeling too guilty. What time is it?"

  "Four o'clock," Anastasia said, looking at her watch.

  "Sam's busy with his macabre game, aren't you, Sam? Are you keeping busy over there?"

  Sam looked up from the canvases, where he had just disposed of Aunt Rose. "'I always go swimmin' with bare-naked women,'" he said. "That's the rest of my poem about Popeye."

  "Sam is busy. George is reading in the study, Dad's not home yet from work, and dinner preparations can wait for a little while. So, Anastasia, out we go to the garage," her mother concluded. "It's you and me, kid; we're going to beat that rope if it kills us."

  "Really?" Anastasia stood up and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

  "Really," her mother responded. "Ask me 'Who?'"

  "Who?"

  "Anastasia Krupnik—" said her mother.

  "What?"

  "Mastered the difficult art of rope-climbing—"

  "When?" Anastasia was grinning.

  "This very afternoon—"

  "Where?"

  "In the Krupnik garage—"

  "Why?"

  "Because she wasn't about to be the only kid in the seventh grade who was assigned to whistle-blowing, not in front of Ms. Wilhelmina Willoughby, the most glamorous gym teacher in town, and a whole band of visiting foreigners. And because her mother was determined that she would do it!"

  ***

  "My arms ache," Anastasia told her mother that night.

  "Of course they do," her mother replied. "You really gave them a workout."

  They were sitting together in the study, after Sam had gone to bed. From the kitchen they could hear the sound of dishes rattling and the laughter of Dr. Krupnik and his brother. It was Anastasia's father's night to do the dishes, and Uncle George was helping, even though Uncle George said that in thirty years of marriage, Aunt Rose had never once asked him to wash a single dish.

  "Not even one? Not even maybe an ashtray or something?" Anastasia had asked in disbelief.

  "Nope, not one." Uncle George shook his head.

  "Good grief. Dad has to do them two nights a week. It's part of our family rules. Of course," Anastasia added, "every family is different." But she had added that only to be polite. Secretly, she thought that any family in which the husband never washed a single dish in thirty years was extremely weird, even if he did look like Clark Gable.

  Anastasia wondered if the real Clark Gable had ever washed the dishes—before he died, of course. Did he come home from the movie studio, take off his Rhett Butler costume and make-up, eat supper with his wife, and then wash the dishes? Probably not. Probably his wife didn't either. They would have had a maid, Anastasia decided. Or else they ate takeout food: Kentucky Fried Chicken, or pizza, or Chinese food, every night. Anastasia sometimes wished that her family were rich enough to eat takeout food every single night.

  Maybe up in heaven, the real Clark Gable would run into Aunt Rose. She would notice how much he looked like Uncle George, of course, and she would introduce herself, and they could have dinner together or something.

  No, they'd go to a movie, Anastasia decided. Not dinner. Aunt Rose probably wasn't into going out to dinner, not after her recent experience with Sal Monella.

  "You look so much like my husband," Aunt Rose would say to Clark Gable.

  No, that wasn't right. My late husband? But "late" meant that the person had died. And Uncle George hadn't died—Aunt Rose had.

  "You look so much like my early husband," she might say. Maybe that was the way it worked.

  "Anastasia?"

  It was her mother's voice. Anastasia shook herself awake and was surprised to find that she was still sitting on the couch in the study.

  "Sweetie, you fell asleep. Maybe you ought to go on up to bed. You really wore yourself out this afternoon in the garage."

  Anastasia stood up groggily. "Yeah, I think I'll go to bed.

  "Mom?" she asked, as she turned to go upstairs. "I'm really doing a lot better, aren't I? On the rope, I mean. I got about hallway up that last time. Maybe even three-quarters of the way up. Didn't I?"

  Her mother nodded. "I'm sure you got halfway, Anastasia. And tomorrow, when you practice again, you'll go even farther."

  9

  "'O world,'" recited Anastasia dramatically, "'I cannot hold thee close enough!'"

  "Hold it," Mr. Rafferty said. "I wonder if a gesture would be appropriate there. If you sort of flung your arms out..."

  Anastasia cringed. "I don't think I'm the flinging sort, Mr. Rafferty," she said.

  "Well," he replied with a disappointed sigh, "all right. Go on."

  "'Thy winds! Thy wide gray skies!'" Anastasia went on.

  "Maybe if you flung your arms out there, on 'skies'..."

  Anastasia groaned inwardly. Mr. Rafferty really was into emoting. She didn't mind saying the poem in front of the visiting educators—she didn't even have stage fright anymore, practicing in front of the class. But she sure wasn't going to emote, and fling her arms around.

  It was, Anastasia thought, really a neat poem. Imagine actually writing that: "O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!" Anastasia had felt like that
a lot: happy, and in love with the whole world; but she never in a million years would have thought of the right words, the way the poet had.

  On the other hand, Anastasia's father—himself a pretty famous poet—had not reacted very well to her recitation when she had practiced at home. He had made a terrible face.

  "It's not you, sport," he said. "You're doing just fine. It's the poem. That poem is sentimental garbage. Why don't they assign you something great to memorize?"

  "Like what? It has to be something uplifting."

  He stared at her with a puzzled look. "Why uplifting?"

  Anastasia shrugged. "I don't know. Because these people from other countries are visiting, and we're supposed to be real patriotic and happy and enthusiastic and uplifting."

  "Like Nazi Youth?"

  "Dad! Cut it out!"

  Dr. Krupnik began to fill his pipe. "Sorry," he said. "I don't know why I said an obnoxious thing like that. Isn't it amazing how sometimes obnoxious remarks just appear out of your mouth without any warning? I'd better keep my mouth shut. But I do think it's one of the worst poems ever written. That's a matter of taste, of course."

  Anastasia had giggled. "Yeah. Like Sam's favorite poem is 'Popeye the Sailor Man.'

  Standing, now, in front of her English class, Anastasia wondered briefly what would happen if someone decided to recite "Popeye the Sailor Man" in front of the visiting educators. Well, it wouldn't be Anastasia Krupnik. She liked "O World—" and she would do her best with it tomorrow, even though she would cool it on the gestures.

  "All right, Anastasia," Mr. Rafferty said. "That's just fine. I wish you'd think about the arm-flinging, though. Maybe you'll change your mind. Or maybe, when you're actually reciting the poem for an audience, the emotions will overwhelm you, and the gestures will come naturally."

  She nodded politely and went back to her desk. No way was arm-flinging ever going to come naturally, not to Anastasia Krupnik.

  ***