Anastasia at Your Service (2 page)

"Because I have a problem. You always seem to need your notebook when you help me solve my problems."

"True," said her father. "I'm a list-maker. Most problems can be solved by making lists." He uncapped his fountain pen.

"I have a problem too!" said Sam suddenly, in a stricken voice. "Make me a list,
quick!
"

Anastasia groaned. Sam was always interrupting her serious discussions.

"What's your problem, Sam?" she asked in a bored voice. If they didn't deal with his first, he would keep interrupting.

"A pea in my nose," he said, sounding frightened.

"You put a
pea
in your nose? Sam! Why on earth did you do
that?
"

"Sometimes it's not important to ask why, Anastasia," said her mother. She picked Sam up and carried him away to the bathroom. After a moment they were back.

"Operation Pea Removal successful," announced Mrs. Krupnik. "Sam, do not
ever
do that again. It is very dangerous to put anything into your nose."

"Also your ears," said Anastasia. "Don't ever put anything into your ears."

Sam sat there looking guilty. He didn't say anything. It was unusual for Sam not to say anything.

"Sam?" said Anastasia's father.

Sam didn't answer. He was looking down into his lap. A very guilty look.

"Sam? Do you have peas in your ears?"

Sam shook his head.

"What's wrong, then?"

"My bellybutton," Sam whispered.

His father leaned over and lifted Sam's little shirt. There was a pea, slightly squashed, stuck on Sam's bellybutton.

Sometimes it was very, very difficult to have a serious meal with Sam around.

"Now," said her father finally, with his pen poised over his notebook, "back to your problem, Anastasia.
Sam, you eat your dinner. No more fooling around."

Anastasia listed her problems once again, for her father, the way she had for her mother that afternoon. Boredom. Poverty. Depression.

Dr. Krupnik wrote Boredom, Poverty, Depression in his notebook. He drew a box around them. He drew arrows pointing to the box. He drew a small flower. He drew three squiggly lines in a row. Finally he wrote one word with a flourish, underlined it, and put an exclamation point at the end of the word.

"There you are," he said. "Easy solution."

Anastasia pushed her glass of milk to one side so that she could see what he had written.

"
Job!
" it said at the bottom of the page.

Anastasia groaned.

"That sounds easy to you, Dad," she pointed out patiently, "because you're forty-seven years old and you
have
a job. You have a job teaching English at Harvard. And Mom,
you
have a job doing illustrations for that textbook on photography..."

"It is
not
easy," said her mother. "I spent all morning trying to draw the inside of a diffusion enlarger. If you think that's
easy,
Anastasia..."

"I didn't mean that. Of course the work isn't easy. But it's easy for you to get a job because you went to art school and everything. You have qualifications. Twelve-year-old people don't have qualifications for anything. Nobody gives a job to a twelve-year-old person."

Her father turned to a fresh page in his notebook. "Now the list-making really starts," he said happily.

"What do you mean?"

"Start thinking of the kinds of things you'd like to do. Things you'd be good at. Things someone might need someone to do. Then you'll start your own business, providing those services."

"Not baby-sitting. I hate baby-sitting."

Sam gave her a dirty look.

"Well, maybe I wouldn't mind baby-sitting if it were with a really well-behaved baby. But don't put baby-sitting down. Not until the very end, in case I'm desperate."

"Okay. Baby-sitting goes last. What shall I put first?"

Anastasia thought for a minute. "Well," she said at last, "promise not to laugh?"

"Anastasia!" said her mother. "We
never
laugh at you."

That was true. It was one of the things she liked about her parents.

"Okay. Here goes. What I'd really like to do—and I'd be good at, too—is to be a companion to an old lady. A really rich old lady. Like in mystery books by Mary Roberts Rinehart. Those really rich old ladies hire young girls—maybe not twelve, but I could do it just as well as someone older—to hang around and help them out with stuff. Read their mail to them. Make tea for them. Maybe polish their diamond bracelets and stuff like that. Of course, in the books they have to help solve mysteries, and I don't suppose anyone in this town needs mysteries solved. But there are all sorts of things that I could do for a rich old lady."

"Does she have to be rich?" asked her mother. "There are certainly a lot of
poor
—or even just average—old ladies who could use someone to help them out."

"Yeah," Anastasia acknowledged. "I know. But Dad asked me what I really wanted to do. And I think I'd really like to work for a
rich
old lady. We can put poor ones and average ones down as a separate category."

Her father nodded. He was busily taking notes.

"Goodness," said her mother. "What if some wealthy old woman really hired you, Anastasia? Wouldn't you be nervous? What would you say when you knocked on the front door? What if a
butler
answered?"

"Well, I guess I'd just say, 'Here I am: Anastasia Krupnik, at your service!'"

Sam giggled. His mouth was full of peas. "Anastasia atcherservice!" he said.

Dr. Krupnik was still writing things down.

"Tell you what," he said after a minute as he tore the page with the notes out of his notebook. "Instead of making a whole list, let's concentrate on this one at first, since it's what you want to do most. You write up a sort of résumé..."

"What's a résumé?" asked Anastasia.

"All the reasons that you'd be good at the job. Your past experience that makes you qualified."

"But I don't have any past experience."

"Well, if you think about things you've done in the past, you'll think of things that have some relevance. You've made tea plenty of times, for example. Would you call Anastasia an expert at making tea, Katherine?"

"Sure," said Mrs. Krupnik. "When I had the flu last winter, she made me endless cups of tea. And there was only that one disastrous cup..."

"That was
Sam's
fault!" objected Anastasia. "I'm not going to take the blame for that! Sam put the goldfish in without my even knowing! He thought it would be funny. And it
wasn't.
Poor Frank Goldfish practically went into
shock,
for Pete's sake! It was lucky he didn't
die!
"

"It was lucky
I
didn't die from shock," said her mother. "I thought I was having some horrible kind of hallucination when I picked up the cup and Frank Goldfish was floating beside the lemon slice."

Sam scrambled down from his highchair and left the dining room with dignity. "Excuse me," he said, at the door. "I'm full."

"Anyway," muttered Anastasia, "that doesn't reflect on my tea-making. I'm not going to put that in my résumé. It still makes me mad to think about it. Someday I'm really going to clobber Sam."

"I know the feeling," said her mother. "Sometimes I want to myself. A pea in his nose, for heaven's sake. How in the world did I give birth to a child who puts a pea in his nose?"

"Or a goldfish in a cup of tea." Anastasia glowered. "
My
goldfish."

"And remember that awful time he..." began her mother.

"Come on, ladies," said Dr. Krupnik. "That's all beside the point. You put your qualifications down, Anastasia,
after you think of them. Then write a job description."

"What's that?"

"All the things you want to do in this job. You already listed some of them. Then put down your fees. And your phone number. Then I'll Xerox it for you at the office, and we'll figure out how to distribute the copies in places where rich old ladies might see them."

"That's easy," said Mrs. Krupnik. "There's a bulletin board at the library, and I've seen that one old lady, the one who lives in that huge mansion over on the river, at the library. Also, the Bon Appétit..."

"What's that?"

"The gourmet grocery store. I went in there the other day to buy saffron. There were chauffeurs there, picking up grocery orders. And there was an old woman at the meat counter, wearing three big strands of pearls and a silk dress, carrying a cane and complaining that her lamb chops weren't thick enough. Lamb chops, incidentally, cost $5.79 a pound at the Bon Appétit."

"That's just the kind of old lady I need," said Anastasia. "I'm going to go up to my room right now and write my résumé."

"What about the dishes?"

Anastasia groaned. "Mom, what's more important? The dishes? Or my entire future?"

"If I wash them, will you come down later and dry them?"

Anastasia bowed dramatically. "Anastasia Krupnik, at your service," she said.

"Anastasia atcherservice," said her father, laughing, imitating Sam with his mouth full of peas.

"Anastasia Atcher Service," said Anastasia. It sounded kind of good. Distinctive. Maybe someday it would be a worldwide corporation.

ANASTASIA ATCHER SERVICE

Available:
Companion to elderly, wealthy woman, like in mystery novels by Mary Roberts Rinehart (you can find these at the public library if you have never read one). This Companion is a young woman of good breeding, but her family has fallen on hard times so she needs to earn her living. Her duties are that she is always patient and kind to her employer even if the employer is sometimes grouchy. She pours tea a lot. She reads aloud to her employer, like Gothic novels and stuff, and after each chapter they can discuss romance and give each other advice about love if either one of them has an admirer. The Companion advises her employer about what jewelry to wear, like if three diamond necklaces at one time is tacky, the Companion would tell her so, in a kind and tactful way of course. The Companion pulls down the shades when the employer wants to take a nap in the afternoon, and then she wakes her up if necessary, like if the Vicar comes to call or something. And if the employer is in a wheelchair, the Companion pushes it.

Résumé:
This part is supposed to be about experience and qualifications. I don't have a lot of experience with wealthy women, but I do with elderly women because once I had a grandmother who lived to be ninety-two. I was always very patient and kind with her, and sometimes we talked about romance, even though at that time I was only ten and hadn't experienced any romance yet. Now I am twelve and have been through some things, so I know more about it. I am good at making and pouring tea if nobody messes around and louses it up. I have never pushed a wheelchair, but I know I would be good at it because I pushed my brother's baby carriage for about one million hours and never once dumped him out. And I come from a family of good breeding, although they have hard times because my father is an English professor and my mother is an artist, so they don't make much money and can't raise my allowance, which is why I desperately need a job.

I could ride to the employer's mansion on my bike, so the chauffeur wouldn't need to pick me up, unless maybe if it was raining really hard.

Anastasia Krupnik

Salary negotiable

797–8119

"I'm scared stiff," said Anastasia. "I'm so nervous, I might faint. What is that pill that people take to calm their nerves? Valium? Do you have any Valium?"

"Good heavens," said her mother. "Of course I don't. I've never taken Valium in my life. I never even take aspirin. Why are you so nervous? Just the other day you said you wouldn't be, if you got a job."

"Well, I misjudged. I never in my entire life had a job before, and now I do, and I'm scared stiff. What if she doesn't like me? Old ladies have to
like
their Companions, because they entrust them with their jewels and their personal mail and stuff."

"Anastasia. Of course she'll like you.
Everybody
likes you.

"Do I look all right? I haven't had a dress on in about two years. The last time I wore a dress was to Grandmother's funeral, I think. It's a good thing you bought me some dresses and skirts last spring."

"You didn't think so at the time. I practically had to bribe you to get you to try them on at the store. I
did
have to bribe you, come to think of it. I had to buy you that terrible tee shirt, the one with the fluorescent vampire on it."

"That was a good shirt. Too bad it shrank in the wash. Anyway, thank you for making me get the dresses. Seriously, do I look okay?"

"You look terrific, Anastasia. You really do. You're going to be a very beautiful woman someday."

Anastasia made a face. "I wish I could see without my glasses. Can I get contact lenses when I'm older?"

Her mother groaned. "Anastasia, we need a new refrigerator. The roof needs repairs. Don't talk to me about contact lenses."

"Well, now that I have a job, I can start saving money. Maybe I'll buy you a refrigerator. I'll buy myself some contacts. I'll get Sam an electric train. And I'll buy Dad that stereo he likes at the Radio Shack. And I'll buy ..."