Anastasia at This Address (9 page)

"I'm a little bit nervous about this," Anastasia confessed to Daphne as they made their way through the crowds at the shopping mall. Her friend was accompanying her to the large department store where she was to have her ears pierced.

"It's no big deal. It only takes a second, and it doesn't hurt. They use a gun."

Anastasia stopped walking. She stood still in front of a video rental store.

"A
gun?
"

Daphne giggled. "Not a real gun. A special earlobe-gun."

"An earlobe-gun," Anastasia repeated to herself in a dubious voice. "
Great.
" But she started walking again.

"I'm thinking of getting more holes punched in my lobes so I can wear maybe three earrings in each ear. But my mom freaks out when I mention it. She's afraid I'd wear safety pins."

"Would you?" Anastasia asked. Nothing Daphne did would really surprise her.

Daphne shrugged. "I might," she admitted. "Anyway, I don't see why my mom is freaked out by that.
She
has a tattoo."

Anastasia stopped walking again, this time in front of Casual Male. "Daphne," she said. "Gimme a break. No way does your mom have a tattoo. Up until a few months ago she was a minister's wife."

Daphne grinned. "Yeah, she really does. Her dad—my grandfather—was a doctor. And when she was a baby, he thought it would be a really smart thing to have his kids' blood types tattooed on them, in case they were ever in an accident. She has this little teeny blue tattoo on her butt."

"
Gross.
"

"
She
thinks it's gross, too," Daphne went on, "but not because it's a tattoo. Because of her blood type—B negative. They write that like a B minus. And her sister was A plus! Mom says she wouldn't mind having A plus on her behind, but she hates being a B minus!"

"What if she was an F!" Anastasia said.

"You can't be. Blood types are only A, B, AB, and O. We learned that in Science, remember?"

"Yeah. I forgot."

"Come on, Anastasia. There's the store. Let's get your lobes done, and then we can go to the record store and look at albums."

"Okay." Anastasia headed toward the entrance of Jordan Marsh. She was still a little nervous. Her mother had been, too. She had agreed to the ear-piercing on the condition that Anastasia have it done by a doctor under absolutely sterile conditions. Her mother had read once about an earlobe that had gotten infected and fallen off, or something.

So Anastasia had agreed, and asked her mother to call the doctor for an appointment. Anastasia hated calling doctors. She had had to do it once when her mom was away on business and Sam got chicken pox.

She had sat in the kitchen stirring a marshmallow into a cup of cocoa while her mother called the doctor's office and explained to the receptionist what they wanted.

"What did she say?" she asked her mother after the receptionist replied.

"She's getting the doctor so I can talk to him. Yes? Hello?" She turned back to the telephone and Anastasia listened while her mother explained the whole thing again.

Her mother listened for a minute and then said, "Oh, I see. Well, that's what we'll do, then. Thank you."

She hung up, looked at Anastasia, and shrugged. "He said he doesn't have the slightest idea how to pierce ears and we should go to the jewelry department at Jordan Marsh. They have a special instru ment, and it's sterile, and quick, and painless, and inexpensive."

"Why do you look so miserable? Want a sip of my cocoa?"

Her mother nodded and took a sip, which left her with a marshmallow mustache. "I'm embarrassed," she said. "He made me feel dumb."

Anastasia sympathized. "People make me feel dumb all the time," she said. "Here. You can have my whole cup of cocoa. Cocoa always makes people feel better."

"Thank you. Promise me one thing, Anastasia."

"What?"

"You won't get big dangly earrings. Or rhinestones. I can't bear the thought of seeing you with rhinestone earrings."

"I promise," Anastasia had told her.

It turned out to be accurate, what the doctor had said. And what Daphne had said, too. It
was
like a little gun. It was quick, painless, and presumably sterile. ZAP. And: ZAP.

Anastasia looked at herself in the mirror, there at the store, and beamed. She had a little gold stud in each ear. She pictured herself on the following Saturday, when she would replace them with the tiny pearl earrings, put on the beautiful blue dress, and tie the narrow ribbon around her upswept hair.

She wondered for the fiftieth time whether she would qualify, next Saturday, as beautiful.

***

"They're lovely. They don't hurt, do they?" her mother asked.

"Nope. I can't even feel them." Anastasia dropped her hair back down around her ears and leaned over her mother's drawing table, looking at the nearly finished illustration of the farmer and his cows. "Why don't you put earrings on the female cows?"

Her mother studied the picture. The cows were carrying pocketbooks and shopping bags, and several were wearing high-heeled shoes.

"
All
cows are female," she reminded Anastasia. "A male cow is a bull. There's going to be a bull farther along in the book. I was thinking of making him look like Rambo."

Anastasia giggled.

"But I like the idea of earrings. It's not too late to add them. Maybe even rhinestones." She picked up a pen.

Anastasia glanced around the room. Suddenly she was reminded of something.

"Mom? You know that big leather case you use when you take your drawings to the publisher? That one there, against the wall."

Her mother glanced over to where Anastasia was pointing. "My portfolio. What about it?"

Anastasia frowned. "Well, I was just wondering. Do you ever have trouble managing it?"

"Yeah,
lots.
I don't dare check it with my luggage because I'm afraid it might get lost, or bashed around. So I have to carry it on the plane when I go to New York, and it never fits in the overhead compartment. So the stewardess always gets mad, and has to stick it in with the garment bags, and it holds everybody up. So I'm always apologizing for it. And once I left it in a taxi, and
that
was a big problem, getting it back. Yeah, I guess I'd say I do have a lot of trouble with it."

"But would you say that you have to spend all your time managing it?"

"Good grief, no. It's not that big a deal. Why?"

"Well, I know this person who says he has to spend all his time managing his portfolio. He can't even
work,
because it takes so much of his time, just managing his portfolio. Isn't that kind of weird?"

Mrs. Krupnik put down her pen and began to laugh. "Weird in a very interesting way. He's—did you say it was a he?"

Anastasia nodded.

"Well, he's talking about something different. What he means is that he owns a whole lot of stocks and bonds. That's called a portfolio, but it's a different thing. Someone who has to spend all his time managing that kind of portfolio is very, very rich. Goodness, where did you meet someone like that?"

Anastasia hesitated. "I didn't really meet him," she said. "I just heard about it."

"Well," said her mother, picking up her pen again, "there are a lot of women out there who would love to meet someone like that!"

"Yeah," Anastasia replied. "Like about four hundred and sixteen."

***

Back in her room, Anastasia reread her letter from Septimus Smith. She was awfully glad that her mother had explained the whole portfolio thing. Otherwise she might have written and suggested that he put his portfolio in with the garment bags on airplanes. Then she would have sounded like a jerk, and probably he would never have written to her again, right when their relationship was getting off to a pretty good start.

"Tell me more about your sloop," he had written.

She glanced at the little toy boat she had set on her windowsill. It was made of wood, and it was bright red. She figured she could tell him that. It was also about seven inches long, something she decided not to mention.

"I am guessing that you race," he had said. Anastasia wondered why he was interested in racing. Maybe, when he wasn't busy managing his portfolio, he jogged. She herself was not at all attracted to joggers, mainly because they smelled sweaty all the time. But probably he took showers after he raced.

Anastasia was not really into racing, but she always participated when they had races in gym class. Usually she did well, because she was tall and had long legs. So she could tell Septimus that she raced, and it wouldn't be a lie.

And he thought she was a doctor. She would have to confess to him that she was not. But maybe he wouldn't be disappointed. Doctors always had to wear beepers, and when their beepers went off in restaurants and theaters, people glared at them.

He was going to be in Boston next week. Anastasia had mixed feelings about that. She wanted to meet Septimus Smith sometime, but next week was too soon, so probably it was just as well that he knew her social calendar was full. She wanted to meet him after she was a little older, and had gotten contact lenses, and maybe finished college and all. The pierced ears were a good start—she glanced again in the mirror, thinking about them—but still, next week was too soon for their meeting.

She wondered about the sloop lady in California. California was full of movie stars, Anastasia knew. Still, probably Septimus would have mentioned it if the sloop lady was Debra Winger.

He had narrowed it down to 2, out of 416, and Anastasia was one of them. Much better odds than her seventh-grade class, where she felt fairly certain that Steve Harvey occasionally noticed that Emily Ewing had absolutely perfect hair and that the Wilcox twins had amazingly large bosoms for people thirteen years old.

She took a fresh piece of stationery out of her desk and began to write.

Dear Septimus,

Thank you for your letter!!! I was really thrilled to get it.

I
do
race occasionally. Just last week I raced, and came in second. I have to confess that I am not extremely interested in racing "not I am willing to do it now and then.

I always, of course, take a shower afterward.

About my sloop: it is made of wood, painted red. It has not been in the water for a while, but when it is in the water, the red paint, which is a little faded, looks really neat because it seems darker. I am thinking of putting a fresh coat on it one of these days.

Other people have sometimes commented on my interesting handwriting. Someone named Mr. Rafferty calls it indecipherable. But what does he know, right?

Ho, I am not a doctor, and therefore I do not ever have to wear a beeper or anything else which might be a nuisance in restaurants or, for that matter, during races.

My profession, which I forgot to mention, is that am sort of a scholar.

I was interested to hear about your profession. I have a very close relative who has an extremely large portfolio and she sometimes has trouble managing it.

I regret that circumstances make it impossible for us to meet when you are in Boston next week. But anyway, it would be better if our first meeting takes place sometime in the future. I need to complete some scholarly stuff first, and also to have some work done in the area of my eyes.

Perhaps you ready know from
People
magazine that Debra Winger has a young son. I have no children. I like them, of course, "but in my current "busy life, being childless is an advantage, I feel.

I am glad that you liked the photograph I sent.

Sincerely,
SWIFTY

(Scholar With Interesting Future: Tall, Young).

"Do I look okay?" Anastasia asked anxiously. She turned around, slowly, in the doorway of the living room, where her parents were sitting. They looked over at her and smiled.

Sam looked up from the complicated structure he was building from blocks on the floor. He smiled, too. He and Anastasia were pals again because she had agreed to loan him the sloop, free of charge, for his pre-wedding bath the next day.

"You look wonderful," her mother said. "You really do."

Her father gave her a thumbs-up sign. Sam watched his dad and tried to do the same thing, but he wasn't terribly good at it, and he went back to his skyscraper.

It was the night of the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. Anastasia was wearing a yellow dress and a gold necklace to match her new earrings.

They could hear the beep of a car horn in front of the house. Anastasia looked through the window.

"That's Sonya," she said. "Her brother's driving us over. I'll be back around ten."

"Have a wonderful time," her mom said. "And remember, when you practice walking down the aisle—"

"Woking," Sam corrected automatically.

Mrs. Krupnik laughed. "Yes. When you wok down the aisle, stand up straight. Pretend you're in the Miss America contest."

Anastasia made a face and waved goodbye as she went through the front door.

***

The rehearsal was sort of weird. Kristen kept giggling nervously while she stood beside Jeff at the front of the church. Daphne's father, the minister, didn't seem to mind. He told her that all brides were nervous.