Free Anastasia Again! by Lois Lowry

being surprised by stuff. So when someone brings you a goldfish, you don't even ask why.
    They put the goldfish bowl on a table in the living room next to a plastic vase of artificial flowers. Gertrustein leaned close to the bowl and watched intently as the fish swam in circles, flipping his tail. The little diver stood on the bottom of the bowl, tilted slightly, wearing his huge plastic helmet.
    Suddenly Gertrustein began to laugh. Anastasia thought that was rude, to begin to laugh at a gift before you had even said thank you.
    "What are you going to name your goldfish?" asked Anastasia politely, pretending not to notice that Gertrustein was laughing.
    But she just laughed harder.
    "My goldfish is named Frank," said Anastasia. "I don't know if yours is male or female, though."
    Gertrustein looked at her, still chuckling. "It's male, of course. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen. I'll name him Mr. Stein. He looks exactly like my husband. The same popeyes."
    Anastasia glanced around the room for signs of a husband. At her house, there were always pipes lying in ashtrays or size-twelve sneakers in a corner. But there was no indication of a Mr. Stein.
    "Where
is
your husband?" she asked.
    "Oh, goodness. I haven't any idea. He's been gone for
forty years. He ran off with a lady mandolin player who wore bright blue shoes."
    "Well," said Anastasia uneasily, "I'm very sorry he did that."
    But Gertrustein was laughing again. "Oh, don't be. He looked like a goldfish, although I never realized it until this afternoon. I was
glad
when he ran off. I never should have married him."
    "Why did you, then?"
    "I was a spinster. Do you know what a spinster is?"
    "Yeah. I think I'm going to be one, because I'm so tall, and everything. Boys don't like me, except one boy, and I don't like
him.
"
    "Nonsense. Give yourself time. How old are you?"
    "Twelve."
    "Well, I was over
thirty,
and not married. Lived right in this house, the same house where I had been born. Lived here all alone because my parents were both dead by then. And along came Mr. Stein one day, selling cookware door to door..."
    "Did you buy any?"
    "Bought the whole batch. Still have it. It outlasted Mr. Stein."
    "Excuse me, but why do you call him Mr. Stein? My mother calls my father Myron."
    Gertrustein began to laugh so hard that the sofa on which they were sitting wiggled.
    "His name was Lloyd," she sputtered. "Lloyd Stein. But I'll have to tell you what happened on our wedding night..."
    Good grief. Anastasia liked reading about people's wedding nights in
Cosmopolitan
magazine or in Gothic novels. But she certainly didn't want to hear about a
real persons
wedding night.
    Gertrustein took a deep breath so that she would stop laughing. Then she said, "The night that we were married, Mr. Stein said to me, 'Gertrude, are you familiar with the word which is spelled L-L-A-M-A?' I thought for a moment, and then I said, 'Of course. Llama. It's an animal with a sad, smiling sort of face.'"
    Anastasia nodded. It was the same way she would have described a llama.
    "Then he said, 'Gertrude, your description is correct, but your pronunciation is wrong. When a word begins with a double L, the double L is pronounced as Y. Therefore the correct way to say
llama
is, in fact
yama,
don't you see? Very few people know that,' he said. 'Well,' I told him, 'I certainly never knew that.'"
    "I didn't either," said Anastasia.
    "Then he told me, 'So you can see, of course, that the correct pronunciation of
Lloyd
is, actually,
Yoyd.
I would prefer that you pronounce my name correctly, now that we are man and wife. Please call me Yoyd from now on.'"
    "Good grief," said Anastasia, beginning to giggle.
    "Good grief indeed. How on earth can you call someone
Yoyd?
I wanted to hit him over his silly, pompous, popeyed head with one of the aluminum saucepans that he had sold me. I didn't, of course. But you can see that it was somewhat fortunate that the mandolin player came
along. In three years I had never