Anastasia on Her Own Read Free

up."
    "Hold it. I don't get up at seven A.M ."
    Anastasia's father looked at her in astonishment. "Every morning, at seven A.M ., just as I'm going into the bathroom to shave, I hear your mother stand at the foot of the stairs to the third floor and call, 'Time to get up, Anastasia!'"
    "What do you mean, shave? You don't shave—you have a beard."
    Her father stroked his beard. "People with beards shave. I shave my
neck.
What do you mean, you don't get up?"
    Anastasia squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, I sort of hear Mom at seven. But I don't
really
hear her till seven-thirty."
    "You mean she calls you again at seven-thirty?"
    "Yeah," Anastasia admitted. "At seven-thirty she yells, If you don't get your buns out of that bed this minute, you're going to be late for school!' Then I get up."
    "Should we put that on the schedule?"
    Anastasia frowned. "No," she said, finally. "I'll try to get up at seven."
    Her father wrote in the 7:00 A.M . activities. "Now we'll move ahead to eight, when you and Sam and I all leave."
    "Hold it."
    "What?"
    "Well, she has to help Sam get dressed, and she cooks breakfast. And when she remembers it, she gathers up the dirty clothes and takes them downstairs to the washing machine."
    "How does she have time to do all that?" asked Dr. Krupnik.
    Anastasia shrugged. "I don't know. I have enough trouble getting my buns out of the bed."
    "We should help more."
    "Yeah."
    Dr. Krupnik wrote some things down.
    "Okay," he said, "now it's eight o'clock and we're all gone and she's home alone. What does she do then?"
    "That's when she forgets to take something out of the freezer for dinner. She starts working, in the studio, and she loses track of everything else."
    "She won't," he said with satisfaction, "once she has this schedule in front of her."
    He wrote some more things down.
    "Hold it," said Anastasia. "You forgot the beds. She makes Sam's bed, and I guess she makes your bed, unless you do. Do you ever make your bed?"
    "No," Dr. Krupnik said guiltily. "I guess I should. Do you make your bed?"
    "Well, I'm supposed to. Sometimes I do."
    "I'll put that in," he said, and wrote it down. "Okay. Now she can go to work in the studio. She can work the rest of the morning. I'll write in a coffee break, too."
    "Hold it. What about the laundry?"
    "Can't she do that on her coffee break?" Dr. Krupnik asked.
    "That's a pretty crummy coffee break, if you ask me."
    "Yeah. Well, what if she does the laundry at noon?"
    "But that's when Sam comes home, and she fixes their lunch, and sometimes she and Sam go out then to do the shopping."
    Dr. Krupnik chewed on the end of the pen. "How about this? If she puts the clothes in the washing machine after lunch, then the clothes will wash while they're out shopping."
    "Okay. And then she can put them in the dryer when she gets home."
    He wrote that down. "Hey," he said, "we're up to two P.M . already."
    "Sam takes a nap then, and Mom works some more in the studio. After Sam wakes up, she plays with him."
    "This is great," said Dr. Krupnik. "This is so organized, it's fantastic. How do you like this idea? When Sam wakes up, he can help her take the clothes out of the dryer.
Then
they can play, and look—by then it's four P.M . By then you're coming home from school, right?"
    "Right," said Anastasia, "unless I stay late for something. Right about four P.M . is when she sinks into a depression."
    "Why does she do that?"
    "Because she realizes she forgot to defrost something for dinner."
    "Oh. Well, we took care of that, because we wrote it into the schedule in the morning. Now, she cooks dinner, and you and I come home, and we all eat—"
    "I set the table," Anastasia pointed out.
    "Right. And then we each take turns doing the dishes, and then at eight P.M . she gives Sam a bath, and—"
    "You do that sometimes."
    "Well, okay, somebody gives Sam a bath, and puts him to bed, and then we all just relax. The workday is over."
    "Hold it."
    "What did I forget?"
    "When does she vacuum? And wash