"I've decided to give up men," Anastasia's friend Sonya Isaacson announced suddenly.
It was a startling statement. But Anastasia barely heard it, and she paid no attention. She was walking home from school with her three best friends, and she was thinking about SWM. She was wondering if his letter might be there today, on the hall table, when she got home. A week had passed since Anastasia had carefully stamped the envelope she had addressed to the New York box number and, after holding her breath to the count of ten, for good luck, slipped the letter into the mailbox on the corner near her house.
She had already thought through the obvious pitfalls connected to his response. What if SWM knew someone who lived in her town? What if he inquired casually of the friend, "Do you know someone named Anastasia Krupnik?" And what if the friend
did?
And what if the friend
laughed
and said, "That skinny seventh-grader? The one with the big glasses?"
Well,
that
could doom a potentially fulfilling relationship.
But she had cleverly prevented that possibility by using the code name.
And she had foreseen, also, the problem of her parents. She had visualized her mother, who usually picked up the day's mail from the hall floor after the mailman pushed it through the slot, puzzling over the frequent letters from New York. Her mother—who was much too inquisitive, no question—would surely say, "Anastasia, who is this person writing to you from New York every other day? Why does this person call you 'Swifty'? And what is this'S.W.A.K. this person puts on the back of the envelopes?" (Anastasia was quite certain that it wouldn't be very long before the correspondence reached the every-other-day, S.W.A.K. stage.)
So she had slyly prepared her parents.
"Funniest thing," she said casually at dinner one evening. "I have a nickname, at school.
Everyone
calls me by my nickname."
"Oh?" her mother replied. "What is it?"
"Ah, Swifty," Anastasia said. "Cute, huh?"
"
Swifty?
" her parents said in unison.
"Yeah. Swifty. I guess because I'm so swift at stuff. I'm very swift at, ah, diagramming sentences in English. Everybody notices how swift I am. And now they've just started calling me Swifty. May I have some more salad, please?"
Deftly she changed the subject. But she had planted the beginning of the necessary information.
The next night, she planted the rest.
"Did you guys ever have pen pals when you were kids?" she asked.
"Nope," her father said. "I hated writing letters when I was a kid. I still do."
"
I
had a pen pal," Mrs. Krupnik said. "Someone who lived in France. Her name was Yvonne. We wrote to each other for about a year, when I was in ninth grade. I wonder what ever happened to her."
"Can I have a pen pal?" Sam asked.
"Sure. When you're older," his mother replied.
"Why not now?" asked Sam, pouting.
"Because I can't trust you with a pen," Mrs. Krupnik said. "You write on things you're not supposed to."
Sam nodded. "Like your bedspread," he muttered.
"Right. Like my bedspread," Mrs. Krupnik said angrily.
They had
almost
veered away from the topic, but Anastasia interrupted.
"You might notice that I'll be getting letters soon," she said.
"Oh? From a pen pal?" her mother asked.
"Yes," Anastasia said. "May I have some more salad, please?"
"Sure. Pass your plate. You're becoming a real salad-lover, Anastasia."
"You may call me by my nickname if you like," Anastasia said. "You do remember my nickname, don't you?"
Her mother nodded and handed the plate back. "I think I'll stick with your given name, if you don't mind," she said. "I'm not real crazy about Swifty."
"Well," said Anastasia, poking the lettuce on her plate with her fork, "I only mentioned it because you might notice that my pen pal calls me that."
"I'm going to have a nickname, too," Sam announced. "Macho-man. That's my nickname."
Anastasia smiled slightly. She had done it. She had implanted all the necessary information without creating a big deal.
Maybe, in her future life, she could be a successful spy.
***
"I'm giving men up completely. Cold turkey," Sonya went on.
Anastasia blinked. She hadn't been paying any attention. But Daphne and Meredith had both stopped walking and turned to stare at Sonya, who had a determined look on her chubby freckled face. Anastasia stared at her, too.
"Sonya," she pointed out, "that's like giving up smoking when you've never even smoked. It doesn't
mean
anything."
"Right," Daphne Bellingham agreed, nodding her blond head in its bright blue knitted hat. "How can you give up men when you were never involved with them to begin with?"
Sonya frowned. "Well," she said, "I phrased it wrong. I meant that I've decided to give up the
pursuit
of men."
All four girls shifted their schoolbooks in their arms and began walking again.
"Why?" Anastasia asked after a moment. Secretly, she was remembering the letter she had mailed last week. She felt as if she had just
begun
a pursuit. And now one of her best friends was renouncing the same pursuit.
"It takes up too much time," Sonya explained. "I seem to spend all my time trying to figure out ways
—schemes,
actually—to get Norman Berkowitz to like me. I could be spending that time doing worthwhile things."
"Like what?" Meredith Halberg asked. "What could be more worthwhile than chasing boys?"
Sonya shrugged. "I could be working on a cure for cancer. Or knitting mittens for homeless people. Or—I don't know.
Anything.
Just about anything would be more worthwhile than chasing Norman Berkowitz all the time."
"Are you really
truly
going to give it up?" Anastasia asked. She was impressed. Sonya had been pursuing Norman Berkowitz for months now, throughout their seventh-grade year. It was a part of her life, the way pursuing Eddie Cox was part of Daphne's and pursuing Kirby McEvedy was part of Meredith's and—well, yes, she'd admit it—pursuing Steve Harvey had been part of Anastasia's life until she'd discovered this new man whose interests seemed to be more like her own.
She hadn't told her friends about the new man in her life.
"I don't know what I'd do with myself if I gave up the pursuit of Kirby McEvedy," Meredith said, wrinkling her forehead. "It's what I think about, starting when I get up every morning. My mom accuses me of thinking about nothing but clothes, but she doesn't realize it's really Kirby McEvedy."
"I have all these lists in my room," Daphne said, "of every place I've ever seen Eddie Cox, and when. McDonald's on Thursday afternoon, for example. The public library once, on a Saturday. Waiting for a bus on the corner of Central Street—that was also a Saturday, at 10:17
A.M.
"
"Do you follow him around?" Anastasia asked in amazement.
"Sort of. Just to keep track of where he goes and what he does so that I can start appearing at the same places as if by accident," Daphne admitted.
"Doesn't that take a lot of your time, sleuthing around like that?"
Daphne sighed. "Every waking minute. I miss a lot of good stuff on TV. And it's why I didn't have time to finish
Johnny Tremain
for English class. I couldn't explain that to Mr. Rafferty, of course, so I had to tell him that I lost the book."
"
See?
" Sonya said loudly. "Every one of us, we're sacrificing our lives for this stupid pursuit of men. Meredith, if you didn't spend all your time thinking about Kirby, you could think about clothes instead, or something else equally worthwhile. And Daphne—you could have gotten an A on the
Johnny Tremain
test if you hadn't been spying on Eddie Cox instead. And Anastasia—
"Forget it," Anastasia interrupted her. "I already figured it out for myself, Sonya. And I hadn't told you guys yet, but I've already given up the pursuit of Steve Har——? Harcourt? Hartley? See? I can't even remember his last name."
Her friends began to laugh. They had reached Sonya's house and stopped at the end of the long driveway.
"I'll see you guys in the morning," Sonya said. She looked at her watch. "Four o'clock. Great. I have time to do my homework, start reading a book for extra credit, wash my hair, make some brownies, iron my gymsuit. Maybe I'll paint my bedroom. In the old days, of course, I would just be holed up in my room, plotting and scheming, writing Norman Berkowitz's name all over my notebook. What a relief to be finished with such adolescent pursuits."
Anastasia, Meredith, and Daphne watched Sonya walk up the driveway toward her house.
"Look," Anastasia pointed out. "She has a new, ma ture look to her. A more self-confident walk. A self-assured way of holding her shoulders."
"What a woman," Daphne murmured in an awed voice. "I admire her."
"I'm going to do it, too," Meredith announced. "This is it, guys. I've given up men." She took a deep breath. "I'm trembling. It was tough. But I think I'm going to make it."
"Good for you, Mer," Anastasia said. "It
is
tough. I know, because I already gave up Steve What's-his-name."
"That leaves only me," Daphne said. "And I suppose I should join you. You know, my
mother's
given up men. Ever since she and my dad got divorced and she became a feminist. She quit curling her hair and everything. She doesn't even wear lipstick anymore. She says makeup is just a stupid ploy to attract men. She threw all her Revlon products away."
"I admire that," Anastasia said fervently.
"What about deodorant?" Meredith asked uncertainly. "Can you still use deodorant if you give up men?"
Daphne nodded. "Yeah. My mom does. Deodorant's okay. But no perfume."
They began to walk toward the apartment building where Daphne lived with her mother. Each afternoon, after school, the four girls took a circuitous route so that they could see each other home. Today was the day that Sonya Isaacson's house was first and Anastasia's was last.
Sometimes they arranged their route so that they would pass the houses of Eddie Cox, Steve Harvey, Kirby McEvedy, and Norman Berkowitz. On the days when they casually walked past all the boys' houses, they didn't reach their own homes until almost dark.
"Look at that," Daphne said, standing on the steps to her building. "See the clock on the front of the bank over there? Four-twenty. Look at the
time
we save if we don't prowl around looking for men! That does it. I'm joining up. No more pursuit of Eddie Cox."
"Your mom will be proud of you," Anastasia told her. "But, Daph—and Meredith—could we call them
boys?
I mean, instead of
men?
"
They pondered that.
"No more pursuit of boys," Daphne said. "Yeah, okay. I never pursued men, anyway."
"Okay," Meredith agreed. "We've given up boys. We can do our homework for a change."
"And watch
Wheel of Fortune,
" Daphne pointed out, grinning. She waved and went inside her building.
Anastasia and Meredith trudged on, talking about how their grades would improve, how they'd be more helpful around the house, how proud Mother Teresa would be if she only knew, how they could get involved in community projects now that every waking moment wouldn't be consumed by thoughts of boys.
At the Halbergs' house, Meredith's older sister, Kirsten, was just pulling away from the curb in her ancient red Volkswagen. She waved at the girls and beeped her horn in greeting.
Meredith shook her head in disgust, looking after the departing car. "She's probably going to go pick up Jeff at work and then they'll go out to dinner and discuss wedding plans. That's all they do, she and Jeff. Wedding plans, wedding plans.
Sick.
"
"I remember that your sister was once a fine young woman," Anastasia said sadly. "Intelligent and ambitious."
"A waste of a young life," Meredith acknowledged mournfully.
Anastasia said goodbye and walked the remaining two blocks to her own house alone. She realized that she felt a little guilty. No, actually, she felt more than a little; she felt
massively
guilty. It was true that she had given up her pursuit of Steve Harvey. It was true that she, like her friends, would become a better person: more scholarly, more family-oriented, better read, more civic-minded and politically aware, now that she would not be wasting her time trying to get an idiotic seventh-grade boy to pay attention to her.
But
men?
That was something else again. She had not given up on SWM.
Anastasia had been calculating very carefully: the number of days it might take for her letter to reach New York; the number of minutes, maybe even an hour or two, for SWM to compose his reply; the number of days for his reply to make its way from Manhattan to the Krupnik mail slot in a Boston suburb.
It might—just
might
—be today.
She hurried up the steps to her house, opened the front door, and called, "Hello! I'm home!" at the same time that she was scattering the stacked mail on the hall table, looking for a letter addressed to Swifty.
But it was not there. Not yet.
Dear SWM,
I know that it is just the tiniest hit rude to write a second time when I have not yet received your answer to my first letter.
But I saw on the TV news (I am very interested in current events and things of international interest. like for example rumors of marital trouble between Charles and Diana) that a postal vehicle in New York collided with a truck carrying live chickens. Peter Jennings on the news made it sound like a funny event, and they showed pictures of live chickens running around the street, with people chasing them.
But I didn't find it at all amusing. For one thing, the chickens looked very scared and the people chasing them didn't look too thrilled either.
And also: Peter Jennings didn't even mention the possibility of mail getting lost as a result of that accident.
I thought I had better write again just in case my first letter was on that truck and got mixed in with all those chicken feathers and was lost.
Or maybe you are sick. The news also said that there's a lot of flu around. I really am concerned for you.
I want to tell you. also, that I did have a relationship in my life. I concealed it from you before. But now it is completely over, so it need not come between us in any way. His name was Steve. He was also a SWM.
Take aspirin and drink lots of liquids, if you have flu. It is okay to write letters even if you have a slight fever. My brother had a slight fever when he had chicken pox but he was able to do a lot of coloring and follow-the-dots with no problem.
Sincerely,
SWIFTY(Single Waiting Impatient Female: Tall, Young)