Anastasia at Your Service (6 page)

The platter was filled with some of Anastasia's very favorite things. Deviled eggs. Artichoke leaves with little shrimp on them. Chicken wings. And Anastasia was starving. Her stomach rumbled. She hadn't eaten any breakfast at all because she'd been too busy planning her disguise.

Going through the dining room to the terrace doors,
she decided that she might faint if she didn't eat something. Not a chicken wing, because she would be left with the bone. Not an artichoke-and-shrimp, because she'd be left with the artichoke part that you didn't eat.

She set the platter on the table for a minute, stuffed a deviled egg into her mouth, rearranged the other things to cover the empty space, and headed for the terrace.

She held her mouth very carefully so that no one would notice there was half an egg inside it.

"There you are, dear!" said Mrs. Bellingham in a loud voice. "I want to introduce you to everyone! This is Anastasia ... What was your last name again?"

Anastasia swallowed the egg whole, and said, "Krupnik," in a strangling voice. Then she hiccuped.

"Excuse me," she said, miserably.

She could hear Daphne Bellingham giggle. Quickly she began passing the platter to the guests. She could hear Mrs. Bellingham rattling off everyone's names. My sister, Mrs. Aldrich Forbes. My daughter-in-law, Caroline Bellingham. My son, John Bellingham. Blah blah blah. Anastasia wasn't even listening. She was trying desperately to keep from hiccuping again. The deviled egg was lodged in her throat somewhere.

"I especially want you to meet the birthday girl. This is my granddaughter, Daphne. Daphne, Anastasia is—"

Anastasia knew exactly what she was going to say. Anastasia is going into the seventh grade. Couldn't Mrs. Bellingham
see
that it was all a mistake, that she was actually middle-aged?

She hurriedly interrupted Daphne's grandmother and said, in her forty-year-old voice, around the remains of the deviled egg and a whole batch of potential hiccups, "I'm glad to meet you, Miss Bellingham. Would you like some hors d'oeuvres?"

She leaned over to offer the platter to Daphne Bellingham. She could hear Daphne stifle a giggle. In a hideous, horrible instant of perception she knew what was happening, and it was too late to do anything about it.

Her whole pantyhose bosom—both sides—was leaning into the platter. It was resting right on the hors d'oeuvres. There were deviled eggs stuck to the bottom side of it.

The other people were talking. They hadn't noticed. But Daphne had. Daphne was almost choking on her Coke. Her shoulders were shaking.

"Whoops!" said Daphne suddenly. "I spilled some Coke on my dress. Anastasia, would you come help me wash it off?"

Mrs. Bellingham tsked-tsked. "Daphne, when will you outgrow that clumsiness? Give her a hand, Anastasia. There's cleaning fluid in the powder room if you need it."

Anastasia put the platter of hors d'oeuvres down in the dining room. The tops of the eggs were a little mashed, but not too badly. You couldn't tell they'd been mashed by a bosom. She followed Daphne through the house to a powder room off the huge front hall. If she walked stiffly, you couldn't see the egg yolk on her front; it was all kind of on the underneath side.

How on earth did Dolly Parton pass a plate of deviled eggs, she wondered grouchily.

"Now then, Miss Bellingham," said Anastasia briskly, in her middle-aged maid's voice, when the two girls were inside the pretty blue-and-green powder room, "let me take care of that stain for you."

Daphne Bellingham hooted with laughter. "Knock it off, Anastasia, whoever you are!" she said. "I didn't spill any Coke. I was just trying to rescue you. What on
earth
do you have stuffed inside your blouse: Kleenex? I did it once with Kleenex when I was trying to get some boy on the high school football team to notice me. But it didn't work. It looked really gross. All my friends laughed, and I ended up pulling it all out in the school library, back behind the reference shelves. I wadded it all up and left it hidden behind a volume of
World's Great Scientists.
What
is
that you have in there?"

"Pantyhose," Anastasia confessed. "I was trying to look forty years old because I didn't want you to know I was going to be in seventh grade. Because your grandmother forced me to be a maid, and it was so embarrassing. Actually, it's even more embarrassing to end up with egg yolk all over my blouse."

Daphne giggled. "Here, I can get the egg off. It's not as bad as you think. Take your blouse off a minute and I'll wash that part. Why on earth did my grandmother make you be a maid? She's such a creep."

Anastasia gave her the blouse, stood there in her mother's bra, and told Daphne the whole story. The
night before, it had made her cry. Now, it made her laugh.

"I still owe her thirty dollars," she explained, at the end of the story. "I'll have to be her maid forever." For some reason, the thought of being a maid forever seemed very funny now. Daphne was laughing as she washed the egg smears off the blouse. Anastasia couldn't stop laughing. She was still hiccuping from the deviled egg she had swallowed whole; now she was choking with laughter as well, and tears were running down her face.

"I could take the bosom off"—she giggled—"but what would I do with it? I'd have to carry it back in there. What if your grandmother saw me walking through the dining room with a bra full of pantyhose in my hand?"

"Maybe she'd think it was a new hors d'oeuvre Mrs. Fox had dreamed up," Daphne suggested. "She's so dumb. Hey—you could just stuff it in one of the drawers here, and leave it. Like my Kleenex I left in the library. You and I could be the only two people in town who hide fake bosoms everywhere!"

"No," Anastasia decided, even though she liked the idea of being Bosom Phantoms, "I can't, because it's my mother's bra. I have to sneak it back into her bureau. I guess I'll just leave it on for now." She took the damp blouse from Daphne and put it on.

"Anastasia, your face!"

"What's wrong with my face?" Anastasia looked in the
mirror and groaned. The tears from laughing had made the mascara run down her cheeks, and she was smudged with black.

"Here," said Daphne. "Take off your glasses and I'll wash your face. For heaven's sake, Anastasia, you need a nursemaid. Good thing I was here."

"If you hadn't been here," Anastasia pointed out, "none of this would have happened, because I wouldn't have worn a disguise."

She dried her face and put her glasses back on. "There. Now back to being a maid again."

"You want a cigarette before we go back?" asked Daphne. "I know where my grandmother keeps them."

"No," said Anastasia, startled. "I hate cigarettes."

"Me too." Now Daphne giggled. "But I smoke them because it drives my parents up a wall. I'm practically a juvenile delinquent."

"That's weird," said Anastasia. "I drive my parents up a wall all the time, but I do it accidentally. Why would you do it on purpose?"

"Because of who my parents are, I guess."

Anastasia had forgotten for a moment who Daphne was. Of course. She was Daphne Bellingham. "It must be really weird to be rich," she said. "My parents can't even afford a new refrigerator."

"We're not
rich,
" said Daphne.

"Liar. How many rooms in this house—twenty-five? How many servants? How many Cadillacs?"

"This is my grandmother's house," Daphne pointed
out patiently. "My grandmother's rich. Super-rich. But don't you know who my father is?"

"John Bellingham," said Anastasia. "Your grandmother introduced me. I was choking on an egg at the time, in case you didn't notice."

"The
Reverend
John Bellingham," said Daphne, in an ostentatiously solemn voice. "Rector of the Congregational Church. Ministers are never rich. They're poor. They're also
good.
They never do anything bad. It is so incredibly boring, being a minister's kid."

Anastasia thought about that for a minute. "My father doesn't do bad stuff either," she said. "But he's not boring."

"Doesn't he ever swear?"

"Well, he's not foul-mouthed or anything. But
occasionally
he swears. Like when I melted his Billie Holiday records."

"See what I mean? If I melted my father's Billie Holiday records, he wouldn't swear. He'd forgive me or something."

"Oh," said Anastasia. "My father has never forgiven me for that."

"Does your father smoke?"

"A pipe," said Anastasia.

"See? My father doesn't smoke anything, ever. He's too good. Does your father ever get mad?"

"Sure. So does my mom. They yell and stuff."

"My parents don't. Not ever. They're nice, absolutely all the time. Can you imagine how
boring
that is?"

Anastasia wasn't certain. Actually, it sounded sort of pleasant. But she nodded her head.

"So," said Daphne, as if it were all quite logical, "I specialize in being practically a juvenile delinquent."

"Oh," said Anastasia. "Is it fun?"

Daphne shrugged. "When I have a special project, it is," she said. "And now I do. Revenge on my grandmother."

That made Anastasia nervous. "Don't do anything to your grandmother because of
me,
Daphne. I did mash the silver thing, after all. I do owe her the money."

"But she's making you be a
maid,
for heaven's sake. Don't you hate her for that?"

"Well, yes, I guess I do."

"So. I happen to hate her for another reason, at the moment."

"What's that?"

For a moment Daphne didn't want to tell. She looked very angry. Then she whispered, "She gave me a
doll
for my birthday."

"Oh," said Anastasia, feeling sympathetic. "
Oh.
"

"You see? Revenge is definitely in order. Listen, we'd better get back. But I'll call you tonight. I'll get your phone number from Grandmother. And we'll plot something fiendish. Really sinister. I'm very good at that."

Anastasia had no doubt of that. But she liked Daphne. "Okay," she said, and grinned.

"Now," whispered Daphne, as she opened the door, "be careful when you pass stuff at lunch. Stand up
straight,
or your bosom will fall in again, and I don't know if I can rescue you a second time. You're on your own, kid."

"Thanks," said Anastasia, and she headed for the kitchen, where Mrs. Fox was waiting.

Daphne called that very evening. By then, Anastasia was back to her normal appearance. She had ridden home, put her bike into the garage very quietly, watched from the back yard until she was certain her mother wasn't in the kitchen, and then crept as stealthily as a spy through the back door and up the back stairs to her third-floor room.

"Hi!" she had called from her room, after she had taken off her mother's bra, thrown the pantyhose into her wastebasket, wiped off the eye make-up, and brushed the powder out of her hair. "I'm home!"

"Hi there!" Her mother's voice came from the second floor. "How did it go?"

"Better today," Anastasia called back. "And I worked five hours, so I'm twelve-fifty less in debt!"

"Can I come up?" asked Sam's little voice from the foot of Anastasia's stairs.

"Sure. How was your visit to nursery school?"

Thu-dump, thu-dump, thu-dump. Sam's sneakers came up the stairs carefully, and he appeared in Anastasia's room, grinning. He was still holding Volume One of the encyclopedia.

"I can read." Sam beamed.

"Liar," said Anastasia.

"Look," said Sam. He put the book on her bed and turned to the section that he loved, the section with the airplane pictures.

Meticulously he inched his chubby finger along the lines of print until he came to the word "airplane."

"Airplane," he said solemnly. "That says 'airplane.'"

"Right. It does."

"Now look." His finger went along the lines again until he found the same word a second time. "Airplane."

"Right," said Anastasia.

"Everyplace it says 'airplane,' I can read it." Sam turned the page and his finger searched the lines. "Airplane," he pointed out triumphantly. "The lady at the school showed me."

So he hadn't been humiliated. Anastasia was glad. Two and a half was too young to be humiliated, actually.

Sam closed the book happily. "When nursery school starts for real, I'll take Volume Two. Then I can learn to read 'boat.' Volume Two has boat pictures in it."

"Don't they have things to play with at the nursery school? Blocks? Swings? Toy trucks? Didn't they show you those things?"

Sam thought, with his thumb in his mouth. "Yeah," he said after removing his wet thumb. "But those are for the babies. I'm only going to do books."

Anastasia groaned. Sam was such a weird brother. Probably he would be admitted to Harvard when he was nine. Probably he would still be wearing Pampers.

Later, at dinner, he wanted to bring Volume One to the table. He wanted to read "airplane" while he ate.

"No," said his mother. "Absolutely not. You can't read the encyclopedia with food on your fingers. It's against the rules of this house."

Sam's face puckered up, and he began to whimper.