Anastasia's Chosen Career

by Lois Lowry

  "But if I happen to fall in love with a very rich man along the way, I want to be prepared. I want to have poise and self-confidence and good posture and a sense of fashion, because a rich husband-to-be probably wouldn't get real turned on by these blue jeans and these dumb socks that don't match, right? But I'm already taking a course—I didn't tell you about this yet, but I'm taking a course in—oh, good grief, what time is it?" Anastasia pushed the sleeve of her sweat shirt back and looked at her watch. "It's almost one o'clock already! I have to go! Rats!"

  "Hey, this was fun, Anastasia. I'm glad your dad sent you over. It gets lonely in here sometimes. I'm sorry you can't stay longer."

  "But..." Anastasia looked at Barbara Page in dismay.

  "But what?"

  "I forgot to do the interview!" Anastasia wailed.

  "So come back."

  "Can I? I mean may I?"

  "Sure. Not tomorrow, because every Tuesday I have a senior citizens group in here for lunch and a book talk, and let's see, Thursday's no good because every Thursday I have the local nursery school kids come in for a story hour—"

  "Do they buy books? Do any of them buy books?"

  Barbara Page laughed. "Occasionally. And they do love books; that's what matters. Come Wednesday, okay?"

  "Okay. I'll come. And I'll do the interview for sure. And more than that—"

  "More than that what?"

  "I'll buy a book," Anastasia told her. "I really will. And in the meantime, I'll give a lot more thought to my project."

  Anastasia Krupnik

  My Chosen Career

  Even if you are a good-natured person who loves your chosen career, and even if you happen to have a husband and together you own the building that your chosen career is in, still it is important to be a hard-nosed businessperson sometimes.

  You cannot allow people to spill coffee on your stuff.

  6

  "You look tired," Mrs. Krupnik said as Anastasia came through the back door and flopped into a kitchen chair without removing her jacket.

  "I am," Anastasia said, "I'm totaled. Hi, Dad. What on earth are you doing?"

  Her father was at the kitchen table with a stack of magazines and a pair of scissors. He made a wry face. "I'm doing Sam's nursery school homework assignment. Why in the world do they tell a three-year-old kid to cut out pictures of trucks when he hasn't even mastered the use of scissors?" Dr. Krupnik turned a page, frowned at a picture of a moving van, and picked up the scissors. "How was your day? I hope they didn't give you any assignments that you can't handle."

  "My day was wei —" Anastasia stopped. She remembered how much her father hated the word "weird." "It was odd," she said. "No, I don't have homework. I'm just supposed to practice poise. I'm supposed to speak distinctly and look people in the eye when I talk to them."

  Her father, furrowing his eyebrows, was carefully cutting around the tires of the moving van. "Don't look me in the eye when I'm doing this," he said, "or I'll wreck it."

  "Don't look me in the eye while I'm beating these egg whites," her mother said, "or I'll let the mixer run too long and ruin the meringue." She turned on the electric mixer.

  Anastasia shrugged and began to take off her jacket. "Great," she said. "Where's Sam? I'll look Sam in the eye."

  "Here I am," called Sam from someplace invisible. "Under the table."

  "What are you doing under the table?" Anastasia asked. She picked up the corner of the tablecloth, peered in, and saw her brother huddled there.

  "Playing cave man," Sam said happily.

  Anastasia knelt and put her head under the tablecloth. "Look me in the eye, Sam," she commanded.

  Sam stared at his sister.

  Anastasia stared back at him. She looked him in the eye and spoke distinctly. "Cave man is a dumb game," she said. "It's boring to sit under a table."

  "Yeah, I know," Sam said. "I'm quitting now." He crawled out from his cave.

  "You know what else is boring?" Dr. Krupnik said, putting the scissors down and stroking his beard. "Cutting out trucks. Is this enough, Sam? I did eight."

  "Good," said his father. "Anastasia, look me in the eye, please, and practice poise."

  Anastasia looked her father in the eye. She straightened her shoulders.

  "Good," he said. "Now, I would love it if you would go to the refrigerator and get me out a nice cold beer. Then I want you to tell me about your day."

  "Coming right up," Anastasia said distinctly.

  "Well, one good thing," Anastasia said after her father had opened his beer and had a sip. "I made a new friend. A girl, but her name is Henry. It's really Henrietta, but if you call her that you die."

  "I once knew a girl with a boy's name: Stevie," her mother said. She had spread the meringue over a lemon pie and was putting it into the oven. "I think her real name was probably Stephanie, but she liked to be called Stevie."

  "I know a girl named Nicky at nursery school," said Sam, "but I hate her."

  "Don't say 'hate,' sweetie," Mrs. Krupnik told him. "It's okay to say that you don't care much for her, but 'hate' isn't a nice word."

  Sam scowled. "I know a girl named Nicky at nursery school," he repeated, "and I don't care for her so much that I would like to run over her with a very big truck."

  Mrs. Krupnik adjusted the temperature of the oven. "Well," she said, "that's a slightly better way of putting it, I guess."

  "Go on, Anastasia," said her father. "More about your day."

  Anastasia told them about Bambie and her monologue from Romeo and Juliet. Her parents laughed and laughed.

  "We always watch Bambi on the VCR at my school," Sam went on. "Bambi is my very favorite VCR thing, except maybe Dumbo."

  "Bambie with an 'e,'" Anastasia reminded him. "Not the deer Bambi."

  "Do you hate her?" Sam asked. "I mean, do you not care for her very much?"

  Anastasia frowned. "I guess that's right. I don't care very much for Bambie."

  Then she told them about Helen Margaret.

  "Do you not care for her very much?" Sam asked.

  "She's okay," Anastasia said. "I guess I'm worried about her. I think she's going to flunk poise. She can't do the looking-people-in-the-eye part. It's not easy to look people in the eye. But if you force yourself, you should be able to do it."

  "I can do it easy," Sam said. "Watch me." He came to stand beside Anastasia's chair and leaned forward until his forehead touched hers. He stared at her without blinking for a long moment. "See? I can do it."

  "Right," Anastasia told him. "But Helen Margaret can't. She tries, but then she always looks away, down at the floor."

  "It sounds as if she's terribly shy," Mrs. Krupnik said. "Maybe by the end of the week she'll relax a little."

  "I hope so," Anastasia said. Then she told them about Robert Giannini.

  "Robert Giannini?" Mrs. Krupnik said. "I can't believe that Robert Giannini actually enrolled in modeling school. He was such an odd little boy, though. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything he does."

  "Do you not care for him very much?" Sam asked.

  "You got it, Sam," Anastasia said, laughing. "I don't care for Robert Giannini so much that I wish his dumb growth spurt would work in reverse and make him grow smaller and smaller until he disappears."

  "I remember, Anastasia," said her mother, "that there was a time—it was when you were in sixth grade—that you kind of liked Robert Giannini. He was sort of your boyfriend."

  Anastasia groaned. "Mom," she said, "I was young then. And completely without poise."

  "Well," Anastasia's father said, "the whole modeling course experience is interesting, but I'd like to hear about your interview with Barbara Page."

  "Can we eat first? I'm starving. And also, it's complicated. Barbara Page is a terrific person, Dad. She's probably one of the nicest people I've ever met. She's ... well, what would you call someone who loves everybody and wants to make everybody happy and doesn't mind giving stuff away in order to do that?"

 
"Generous," suggested Mrs. Krupnik.

  "Looney Tunes," suggested Dr. Krupnik.

  "Nope," said Sam. "I know what you would call that person because we have a story at school about it. It's called 'The Person with the Heart of Gold.'"

  Anastasia stared at Sam. She nodded. "That," she said, "is what Barbara Page should have named her bookstore."

  "Tell me all about it. I want to know every detail. And also, what did your family have for dessert tonight?" Sonya Isaacson was on the telephone.

  Anastasia giggled. "Lemon meringue pie. Sam is into imaginary skiing, so he asked Mom to make a dessert that looked like snow. She considered baked Alaska, but that's too complicated to make, and so she made lemon meringue pie instead. Why?"

  Sonya sighed. "I'm going to Weight Loss Clinic this week. Great vacation, huh? Every day I have to stand on the scales, and I have to write down everything I eat, but that's no big deal, because I only get to eat teeny-weeny portions of everything, and you know what I had for dessert? Half an apple. Tell me all about it."

  "Well, let's see, I took the bus in, and I got there at nine-fifteen, and—"

  "No, wait. I didn't mean modeling school. Of course I want to know about modeling school. But I meant, first of all, tell me all about the lemon meringue pie, every single detail."

  Anastasia, in her pajamas, sat on her bed and brushed her hair. "Frank," she said to her goldfish, "tomorrow is Hair Restyling Day at my modeling course."

  Frank said "oh" silently.

  "If you were part of the singles scene, Frank, instead of a loner, would you prefer a female with long or short hair?"

  Frank stared at her.

  "Curly, or straight?" Anastasia asked, dragging the brush through her hair.

  He stared, and flipped his tail.

  "Punk style, maybe? But I wouldn't want it dyed weird colors. I saw this girl once with her hair dyed orange. That was sooooo gross."

  She looked at him, and he looked back at her mournfully. "I'm sorry, Frank," Anastasia said apologetically. "I forgot that you're orange. It really is an okay color for a goldfish."

  Frank wiggled his behind happily.

  "Also," Anastasia went on, "if you were a married goldfish, Frank, how would you feel about supporting your wife financially in her chosen career? My dad says that I would probably feel happier if I were independent and financially successful, and he said there's no reason why I couldn't be that way as a bookstore owner, and that maybe he sent me to the wrong bookstore owner for an interview, even though Barbara Page is a terrific lady—

  "Frank? You're not listening to me!"

  Frank formed a very large "Oooooh" with his mouth. If he could speak out loud, Anastasia thought, he would speak very distinctly. And he certainly did look you right in the eye. One thing about old Frank, for sure; he had poise.

  Anastasia Krupnik

  My Chosen Career

  A rich husband is not a necessity for a bookstore owner.

  But if you don't have a rich husband, it is probably not a good idea to have a Heart of Gold. It is necessary, according to one person I interviewed,* to have a Heart of Steel. You have to learn to say no to people who want to return books with coffee stains, and you have to sell books to people who have bad eyesight even if they would prefer records, and you can't serve lunch once a week to groups of senior citizens.

  It is all right, though, to serve wine and cheese to forty-seven people who come to meet a moderately well known poet.

  7

  "Don't even take your coats off, kids," Aunt Vera said to the five modeling-course students when they arrived at Studio Charmante on Tuesday morning. "For Hair Styling we go across the street."

  "Across the street," Henry Peabody muttered to Anastasia, "is a Chinese restaurant. They think they're making won ton soup outta my hair, they better think again."

  "I always put mousse on my hair," Bambie Browne announced loudly. "It gives body and highlights."

  "Bullwinkle Moose?" Henry asked in an innocent voice, and Bambie glared.

  Helen Margaret squinted through her shaggy bangs and didn't say anything.

  "I'll stay here and man the phone," Uncle Charley announced, and eased his enormous bulk into the chair at the front desk. During the entire day before, the phone had not rung once. But Anastasia could understand why Uncle Charley didn't want to participate in the hair styling. Uncle Charley had no hair. Not a single hair on his head.

  Aunt Vera, holding a scruffy-looking fake-fur coat around her, led the way down the stairs. She guided the four girls, with Robert Giannini and his briefcase bringing up the rear, across the street, through a door beside the Chinese restaurant, up a flight of stairs, and into a beauty parlor.

  It was not much different from Studio Charmante: the same fluorescent lights, the same crummy linoleum floor. But the walls were pink, and decorated with posters of hair styles. There was a row of sinks, each with its own vinyl beauty-parlor chair, and a row of hair dryers.

  And there were three old ladies wearing pink smocks. They looked like triplets: gray-haired triplets.

  Once, Anastasia remembered, she had read that there was a special place where all old elephants went to die. Elephants walked for hundreds of miles, across the plains of Africa, when they were old, in order to die in this special secret place.

  It had never occurred to her before that there might also be a special secret place, upstairs over a Chinese restaurant in Boston, for ancient beauticians. She pictured them in distant cities—Cleveland and Phoenix and Boise—realizing that the time had come, packing up their plastic curlers and their styling brushes, and starting across the country on their long, final journey to the place where beauticians went to die.

  Nervously Anastasia's hand went to her knitted cap. She was almost afraid to take it off.

  "Okay," Aunt Vera said cheerfully. "Hang your coats up. Helen Margaret, Bambie, and Robert—well have them do you first. Henry and Anastasia? You can sit down over there while you wait."

  Anastasia noticed with some satisfaction that Robert and Bambie both looked just as nervous as she was. Helen Margaret, of course, looked nervous all the time, so her look hadn't changed.

  She watched Robert sit down apprehensively in one of the pink vinyl chairs. His briefcase was in his lap, and one of the old ladies covered it—and most of Robert—with a plastic cloth which she tied behind his neck like a bib. She removed his glasses and set them carefully on the counter.

  "I suppose you'll want to shape my sideburns," Robert said in a loud, panicky voice, "but you'll find that my sideburns are not very well formed yet because my facial hair is still somewhat sparse and—"

  He was cut off in midsentence because the old lady, with a surprising show of manual dexterity, had released a lever that tilted the chair backward. Robert suddenly went from vertical to horizontal; his feet, in their old-man lace-up leather shoes, shot out straight, and his head disappeared backward into the sink. The old lady turned on the water and began to shoot him with a rubber hose.

  "Lookit that," announced Henry Peabody. "She drowned him. Him and his facial hair both."

  Helen Margaret had met a similar fate silently; she too was horizontal, under a hose.

  Bambie, however, was resisting her fate with a monologue and gestures. "Wait, please," Bambie was announcing. "I want to be certain that you realize my hair color is natural—this red" (she gestured with a wave of her hand to indicate her head) "has come down through generations of my family. But the curls are created with special rollers that I sent away for, from a place in Calif—"

  Then Bambie, still talking, was tilted backward, and her specially created curls disappeared into the sink.

  Anastasia and Henry watched as Aunt Vera strolled around, peering into the sinks where Robert and Bambie were having their hair washed. Then she went to stand beside the old lady who was doing Helen Margaret.

  "This is one with real potential," Anastasia heard Aunt Vera say in a low voice to the old lady who was rubbing s
hampoo into Helen Margaret's hair. "I want to supervise this one when you start the cut."

  "Real potential?" murmured Henry in a low, surprised voice. "Potential for what? Miss Nervous America?"

  "Shhhhh," Anastasia said, giggling. She poked Henry. "Look. Watch Robert."

  Robert Giannini had been tilted upright again, and a towel had been wrapped around his head like a turban. Without his glasses, wearing a turban, Robert had been transformed. He looked ... well, thought Anastasia, he looked almost romantic. She remembered an old movie, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole. Robert looked like that: Giannini of Arabia.

  But after she rubbed his head briskly, the old lady whipped off the towel turban and handed Robert his glasses. He put them on and looked around. His damp hair stood up in spikes. He didn't look romantic at all. He just looked Giannini-esque, only worse.

  Also, Anastasia realized, it was embarrassing to see a boy with his hair wet. At a swimming pool, okay. You expected it at a swimming pool. But in a room with pink walls, it was weird and embarrassing, as if he had just gotten out of the shower or something. She looked away as the old lady led Robert to a different chair.

  Henry had picked up an old issue of Vogue and was leafing through it. "Look," she said, and pointed to a picture of a tall, elegant black woman wearing a yellow chiffon evening gown. "You think I could ever be a model like that?"

  Anastasia examined the picture. Then she studied Henry Peabody. Henry's hair looked like the plastic Chore girl her mother used to scrub pots and pans, and she had skewered it into place with green barrettes shaped like butterflies. She was wearing an oversize sweat shirt, jeans, and grubby sneakers. But she had a slender face, huge eyes, and a beautiful smile. And she was very tall—taller than Anastasia, who was five foot seven.

  "Yes," Anastasia said. "I think you could."

  "What if I went home tonight looking like that?" Henry said, laughing. "My mother would have a heart attack. Boy, if I go home looking like that, you might as well start dialing 911 for the ambulance to cart my mother away."