Fleabrain Loves Franny (2 page)

The evil virus lurked in pools and lakes, people said, so hardly anyone went swimming anymore, even when the air felt like a hot, wet towel. Franny hadn't swum once that summer.

Walter Walter had said the virus would never get him, because he had a strong constitution. Of course, when your parents give you a first name the same as your last name, and everyone calls you Walter Walter because it's funny, and you feel you have no choice but to go along with the joke, well, that makes you as tough as a tiger, as tough as nails, as tough as raw meat. Double-dose courage and pizzazz. That's what Walter Walter liked to tell everyone.

So how come her own constitution was so weak?

By the time autumn arrived, none of Franny's summer questions had been answered. When she turned her head toward the hospital window, she could see the leaves falling from a scrawny elm tree, disappearing like all the days she'd missed as she lay in her iron lung. An entire Pittsburgh Pirates baseball season, come and gone. Poof! The Pirates had stunk—the worst team of the bunch, people told her. Cellar dwellers! But now she knew that worse things could happen.

Other kids lay in other iron lungs, just their heads sticking out, all together in one big room with Franny, as if they were in a bunch of lifeboats bobbing about in the same rolling ocean. Sometimes the children talked to one another, but most of the time they didn't.

There was a lot of time to think.

There was also a lot of time to cry.

The only good part of Franny's day was when the tutors came, a group of nuns who brought them schoolbooks and storybooks. Franny's tutor was Sister Ed, short for Sister Mary Edberga.

Sister Ed was the first nun Franny had ever known personally. Franny loved her. She was positive Sister Ed was an angel in disguise, even though she smelled a bit like onions, had bushy eyebrows that
wriggled like mustaches, and wore a long, dark robe. Franny was sure there were angel wings squashed underneath Sister Ed's habit.

Sister Ed read books out loud like nobody's business. Franny had always imagined that nuns spoke with European accents, like the actress Ingrid Bergman in the movie
The Bells of St. Mary's
. But Sister Ed talked like everyone else in Pittsburgh, except when she was acting out all the parts in the books, using funny voices.

One day Sister Ed arrived, hugging a brand-new book to her chest. “This book is hot off the presses. Just published! You're going to love it! As soon as I read it, I knew it was written for an imaginative kid like you.”

The book was about a girl named Fern, who lived on a farm. Fern had a little scared pig named Wilbur. Wilbur's best friend was a kindly spider named Charlotte, who protected him and wrote compliments inside her web. For example,
SOME PIG
. Everyone on the farm was just knocked out and flabbergasted by Charlotte's talents! Other amazing things happened at that farm, with Charlotte's help.

Miracles.

“Read it again,” Franny said when Sister Ed came to the last page.

And Sister Ed did, as many times as Franny wanted, or a favorite chapter or two on request. When Franny wanted to sleep, she asked Sister Ed to sing the lullaby Charlotte sang to Wilbur. Sister Ed sang different tunes at different times, but the words were always the same.

Sleep, sleep, my love, my only,

Deep, deep, in the dung and the dark …

Sometimes Franny pretended she was Fern, living on a country farm with all those barnyard animals, instead of in busy, car-honking Pittsburgh. But she marveled that they both lived in Pennsylvania, she and Fern. Sometimes she pretended she was Wilbur the pig, who had a miraculous friend like Charlotte.

Soon the doctors decided it was time Franny practiced breathing on her own. But outside of the iron lung, like a fish thrashing on a riverbank, Franny couldn't get her lungs to work. She was suffocating! She decided it wasn't a bad thing to live forever inside an iron tube, waiting for Sister Ed to read stories to her.

One afternoon Sister Ed said, in her big jolly voice, “Hey, kid, take a look at this!”

She was pointing to a spiderweb on the wall. Who did Sister Ed think she was kidding? Even from the iron lung Franny could see that it was just a pencil drawing of a spiderweb. Inside the web, in tall, black script, somebody (Franny's guess: Sister Ed) had written

SOME GIRL

“Imagine this spiderweb is the real deal,” said Sister Ed. “Please, Franny. Imagine.”

Each day the nurses and orderlies pulled Franny from the iron lung so she could practice her breathing, and each day Sister Ed pointed to that web.

“Imagine! Imagine!” boomed Sister Ed.

And each day Franny could breathe a few more minutes on her own. Sister Ed said she wasn't surprised. She said she had faith all along that Franny could do it. So Franny tried to have faith, too, and
after a while she didn't need the iron lung at all. The doctors said it was time for Franny to go home to her family. Franny had been hoping to go home all along, deep down in her heart of hearts.

“Charlotte helped me like she helped Wilbur,” Franny said. She was going home in a wheelchair because she couldn't walk yet. But she was out of that green iron lung, and she could breathe.

Sister Ed wriggled her eyebrows and kissed her good-bye. “The story isn't over,” she said. Then she gave Franny the book,
Charlotte's Web
, for keeps.

Franny prayed that one day she would witness a miracle as real and fine as that spider, Charlotte.

And she did.

II
AUTUMN 1952: CORRESPONDENCE

The Note from Nowhere

F
ranny had been home from the hospital ten days before she found the note.

It was on her bed, which was strewn with schoolbooks, library books, Get Well cards, and that week's assignments delivered on Monday afternoons by her teacher, Mrs. Nelson. The note was half-hidden by a ball of dust and dog hair, underneath one of her books. In the Katzenback household, if there were any dust balls to be found, they were usually under beds, not on top of them. So, first Franny was surprised to notice the dust ball, and then she was even more surprised to see the scrap of paper folded inside it. The ink was a rich chocolatey-brown, the unfamiliar handwriting tiny yet elegant. Some letters leaned forward as if in a hurry to have their say; others stretched their long legs athletically. Every now and then the words themselves leaped about the page.

Franny held up the note to the window, squinting to read it.

Greetings, Franny,

Bonjour! Now that you've found my note, you can stop seeking messages

in spiderwebs. Only one bug we know

composed that way, and she's

unique
.

And need I remind you, also

fictional?

Besides which, her output was meager

and pedestrian and sentimental,

although

that's probably beside the

point …

I, Fleabrain, have much more to offer!

I offer you an invitation

to connect
.

So,

répondez s'il vous plaît, which I know I don't have to translate for

you, Franny
.

Cordially,

Fleabrain

Franny flopped down onto her pillow. Resting at the foot of her bed, Alf opened an eye, saw that Franny was OK, then went back to sleep.

How humiliating! Franny thought. Her private wishes revealed!

Yes, she'd been searching for spiderwebs lately, because of that book. That wonderful, wonderful book! Unfortunately, to her knowledge, there weren't any webs to be found inside the house, especially because an invalid lived there now and everything had to be kept extra scrupulously clean. And there were absolutely no bugs, either. Fly spray and ant hotels and Alf's flea powder took care of that.

Still, Min had guessed! Of course it was Min who had cleverly disguised her handwriting and put the dust ball and its note on her bed. Just to torment her.

Min must have guessed that time she'd been pushing Franny in her wheelchair down the block, when Franny had leaned way, way to the side to get a good look at the spiderweb draped on Mrs. Kramer's shrub rose. Franny had been absolutely positive she'd seen a Capital
T
for
Terrific
in that web.

“Franny!” Min had hollered. “What the huckleberry are you doing?”

Now Franny stared at the ceiling, thinking how much she hated her older sister. She really, really did. Sometimes it felt so good to hate her, like picking at a knee scab. When she used to have knee scabs.

“
Huckleberry
, my foot, Min,” said Franny. “You think you're so great, you can't even say
HECK
!”

And it felt so good to say
HECK
.

Alf sat up. “Hey, it's OK, Alf,” said Franny. The dog gave his neck a good scratch with his hind leg, then lay down again.

Heck
wasn't nearly as bad as that horrible word in the note.
PEDESTRIAN
. How mean of Min to bring up a certain topic in a sneaky way, while pretending to talk about spiders!

Pedestrian
.

A person who walks.

I'll show her
, thought Franny. She popped the tiny note into her mouth, chewed hard, then swallowed.
I never even saw your note, Min! So there
.

The note left an odd but familiar taste in her mouth.

What Fleabrain Knew

F
leabrain was composing a small poem in his microscopic head. He was usually inspired to do so when he thought about the catastrophe. Poetry helped soothe his terrible loneliness, not to mention the terrible guilt.

A tragedy of epic size
.

Oh, their cries!

Each and every one, a ghastly demise
.

Seventy-two thousand and ten

Women, children, men,

The eggs, as well (but one),

Pearly and translucent

And, oh! So innocent!

He supposed it was a miracle he alone had survived the deadly flea powder. Not to mention the miracle of his lofty intelligence
quotient! There was so much to know! So many wonderful books to read in this one house alone.

But, bug it! He didn't feel at all miraculous. He simply felt alone. Small, small, small, and so alone! Mutated and transmogrified from a pearly egg to a freak.

Great knowledge was useless unless shared with like minds.

Also, he wanted his mama.

And his dad, too.

He comforted himself, remembering the story of his parents' romantic meeting.

On that fateful day, Min Katzenback and the dog Alf had been strolling by the horse stables in Frick Park. In an instant, Min fell in love with Milt, the stable boy. And, in an instant, Fleabrain's dad had fallen in love with Fleabrain's mom. His dad had been a lone flea among the ticks on a horse named Lightning. Fleabrain's dad noticed Fleabrain's lovely mom clinging to the dog Alf's tail. His dad leaped from the horse to join her on Alf, smitten for the remainder of his life. The rest was history.

A short life and a short history, as it happened, because of the flea powder.

Fleabrain would have so enjoyed getting to know his twenty immediate siblings in his particular batch of eggs, not to mention his countless other siblings and cousins.

He would have loved them all, IQ or no IQ. He was no snob.

Then again, could his family have loved him back, without a smidgen of IQ? Ah, love! Intelligence brings its own rewards. But
what good was so much love in his heart—OK, his primitive pumping mechanism—with no one with whom to share it?

And, oh, how he longed for the simple pleasure of a sip of blood without the guilt! The guilt!

Knowledge brought guilt.

Bug it! He knew way too much.

Reading and writing poetry helped. He was proud of his own rhymes.
Cries
and
demise
, especially.

He hoped she'd write back.

Franny's Answer

A
tap on her bedroom door.

“Did you call me?”

It was Min.

“No,” said Franny.

Min poked her head into the room. “I thought you just did.”

“Well, I didn't,” said Franny. And then she couldn't hold back. “I know you wrote it!”

Min frowned. She came into the room and leaned down to kiss Alf's ear. “Wrote what?”