Fleabrain Loves Franny (3 page)

“That dumb note!”

“What the huckleberry are you talking about?”

Franny stared hard at her sister, answering with a silence she hoped seemed stony and forbidding. But, again, she couldn't keep it in.

“Here's a small hint for you:
Fleabrain
!”

Min blinked. Her cheeks turned red, and she pulled on her short brown ponytail. But then she smiled her kind, sympathetic, and
nurse-y smile, the too-old-for-a-fifteen-year-old smile she'd been smiling at Franny ever since Franny got sick.

“Are you having a hard time today?” Min asked. “I'm really sorry.”

Now, before she got sick, Franny had been the actress, the one with the imagination, the dreamer, the spinner of tales. Franny, for instance, was the one who had perfected that imitation of Queen Elizabeth, waving her hand from side to side in a regal way. She was the one who could sound like Jiminy Cricket, or their mom on the telephone with their aunt Pauline, or Alf describing his life as a dog.

But here was Min, doing a pretty good imitation of someone who had never disguised her handwriting and left a dumb note on someone else's bed.

“You know. The note!” Franny said.

Min wrinkled her brow. “What note?” she asked.

All of a sudden Franny knew that she
didn't
know. Min wouldn't have left that note on her bed, because she would never have teased her like that, using the word
pedestrian
. Min was kind. And that's why, strange to say, Franny sort of hated her. Also, she wouldn't even have known how to spell
pedestrian
. And she had terrible handwriting, no matter how hard she practiced her penmanship.

“Maybe you have a fever,” said Min, placing her cool hand on Franny's forehead.

“I probably do,” said Franny. That would explain everything.

“I'll go get help,” said Min with a frightened look, and she raced out of the room.

Fever was what had started everything in the first place, that
burning-up fever trying so hard to fight off the poliovirus, which it wasn't able to do. And then, when the fever had run its course, Franny hadn't been a
pedestrian
anymore.

It was Sunday, and her parents' store, Katzenback's Footwear, was closed. Now they stood nervously by Franny's bed, along with Nurse Olivegarten, who'd just arrived. Alf joyously sniffed everybody. Alf was always excited to have visitors, hoping for a party with crumbly cookies from the Waldorf Bakery. There hadn't been many celebrations in the Katzenback home lately.

“No fever,” Franny's mom said, laying her hand on Franny's forehead, using her Thermometer Powers.

Nurse Olivegarten frowned, obviously preferring medical science over Thermometer Powers.

The first time they'd met, Franny had thought Nurse Olivegarten had a face like a movie star. She was a real “looker,” her parents said, with her rosy cheeks and flashing white teeth and her big eyes as green as—yes—green olives. She sounded like an actress, too, because of her la-di-da Canadian accent. And you could tell she had a figure like a movie star's hiding under her nurse's uniform.

But it was hard to remember that Nurse Olivegarten was pretty. Compared to her, Sister Ed was the movie star, despite Sister Ed's eyebrows. That's because Nurse Olivegarten always looked as if she were sucking on—yes—the pit of an olive. And even though Nurse Olivegarten “came highly recommended,” Franny knew she had a meanness inside of her. That meanness seeped out and made her ugly, just like the humans transmogrified into aliens in those science-fiction movies she and Walter Walter enjoyed.

Nurse Olivegarten had pinched her once when nobody was looking. Maybe twice. Franny never told anybody, because Nurse Olivegarten came so highly recommended. She had been trained in a special, surefire method, using hot packs and stretching, developed by a famous Australian nurse named Sister Kenny. Nurse Olivegarten promised she was going to make Franny walk again, by hook or by crook. And as soon as Franny's pediatrician certified she was no longer contagious and had some mobility, Franny could return to Creswell School, Principal Woolcott had told her parents.

Now Nurse Olivegarten pulled a real thermometer from her medical bag, and Franny opened her mouth for it.

No one spoke during the long minutes before her mother leaned over Nurse Olivegarten's shoulder to read the results.

“No fever!” her mother pronounced again, with a relieved and triumphant smile.

And then it was time for Franny's morning treatment, as it always was at 9:00
A.M
. and again at 4:00
P.M.
She put her arms around her father's neck. He lifted her up and carried her into the kitchen, where he laid her down on the towel-draped kitchen table.

Her father went to stir something on the stove. Franny could smell the oil and herbs warming in their secret, magic, massage concoction. Nurse Olivegarten didn't approve of that concoction. She said it was “hocus-pocus.” But it was the best part of Franny's treatment. The worst part came first.

First Nurse Olivegarten used burning-hot, wet, woolen packs to loosen Franny's leg muscles. Then she supervised as Franny's parents took turns stretching and bending Franny's legs. “Stretch long
and stretch hard,” Nurse Olivegarten said, bending over Franny's body, her eyes narrowing critically.

“That hurts!” cried Franny.

“I can't stand to see her in pain,” her mother said.

“Pain never hurt anybody,” said Nurse Olivegarten. Under normal circumstances, that would have made Franny laugh. But now she clenched her teeth and her fists and counted the cracks in the ceiling.

“You
do
want your girl to walk again, eh?” asked Nurse Olivegarten.

Her mother nodded, lips trembling.

Often, so she herself wouldn't cry as she lay there, Franny tried to get angry instead. She would make up a list of all the things she hated in the world, in alphabetical order. When she reached
Z
, she would begin all over again. There were always things she'd left out the time before.

H
ills.
I
llness.
J
unk drawers.

K
nuckle-cracking.
L
ima beans.
L
amp fixture on the ceiling, shining into her eyes.
M
ice in the walls.

N
otes from
N
owhere.

People named
O
live. Real
o
lives, too, from now on.

P
edestrians.

Franny suddenly remembered something.
Pedestrian
had more than one meaning!

“Some note,” she said, to no one in particular.

“Which note, darling?” asked her mother. Franny received many Get Well cards in the mail. Walter Walter slipped one under their front door almost every week.

“Nothing, nothing,” Franny said.

Of course her mom or dad hadn't written the note, either. Her parents read many books and kept practically every book they'd ever owned, even their high school and college textbooks, in the lofty bookcase in the front hall. But Franny had never witnessed them reading any juvenile fiction, not since Franny herself became a wide and fast reader and no longer needed her parents to read to her. Franny had highly recommended
Charlotte's Web
, but her mother had a fear of bugs, especially spiders. Even saintly, fictional ones. She used much more bug spray than was necessary, in Franny's opinion.

Nurse Olivegarten had just arrived, so it couldn't have been her.

Franny realized she didn't actually hate the Note from Nowhere. She felt curious about its oddness, like when she'd tasted an oyster for the first time, immediately wanting another one. She could still taste the note in her mouth, although it didn't taste at all oysterish.

After her leg massage with her dad's secret, magic potion (and even if it wasn't really magic, the massage felt lovely), her father carried her to her bedroom, leaving her alone to rest.

As soon as he left the room, Franny leaned over and reached for her journal and a pencil. She licked the pencil so her writing would be nice and dark, and wrote

Charlotte is wonderful and interesting and unique! Not pedestrian at all!!!

“Répondez s'il vous plaît?” you ask
.

OK, I will
.

Who the HECK are you?

Waiting

F
ranny was getting used to waiting. She'd never waited so much in her whole entire life.

She waited for the sun to brighten her drawn curtains. The darkness frightened her.

She waited for her parents to carry her to the bathroom and help her dress and then bring breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed used to be a special treat. Not anymore.

She waited, her heart thumping, for Nurse Olivegarten to arrive. She waited, with clenched fists, for Nurse Olivegarten to leave.

B
listers.
C
hills.
D
irt.

E
ggs, rotten.

F
ish, spoiled.

G
arlic, lately. Franny knew that the kids in her neighborhood wore sacks of garlic around their necks so they wouldn't get polio.

She waited for the angels to come again, and then she waited to wake up and discover it was all a bad dream and there was no such thing as polio. She could walk and run like everyone else, and the only
wheels she needed were on her bike. Maybe she'd wake up to find that polio was a game everyone played, like Capture the Flag. Except it was Capture the Flag Pole-Ee-Oh. Or something.

And, of course, Franny waited for another Note from Nowhere. It had been over two weeks.

When Franny read a book, the waiting stopped. Pittsburgh time slipped away when she was reading, and only the hours of other worlds were true. Being a wide and fast reader, she could finish a book in two days. One, if the book was short.

Franny was rereading
Charlotte's Web
, even though she practically knew the whole book by heart and could answer any and all trivia questions about it. Not that anything concerning that book was trivial!
Charlotte's Web
was about everything important—for example, birth and death and love and the glory of everything.

But being a
Charlotte's Web
expert was not a useful talent, as talents go, unless she went on a radio quiz show.

“WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THE HUMAN PROTAGONIST IN THE STORY?”

“Easy-peasy. Her name begins with the letter
F
, like mine. Fern!”

“WHERE WAS FERN'S FATHER GOING WITH THAT AX?”

“To the hog house to kill the smallest pig.”

“PIG'S NAME?”

“Wilbur!”

“WHICH ONE WAS THE RODENT, CHARLOTTE OR TEMPLETON?”

“Templeton!”

“WHO WAS WILBUR'S TRUEST FRIEND?”

“Charlotte!”

“WHAT IS THE CAPITAL OF PENNSYLVANIA?”

“Harrisburg!”

“ALL CORRECT FOR ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO BE A CONTESTANT ON
QUIZ KIDS
AGAIN!”

If she went on a radio quiz show, nobody would see that she wasn't a pedestrian. When President Roosevelt had been president, ordinary, regular citizens hadn't known he had polio and had to get around in a wheelchair. Ordinary, regular citizens only saw him in newsreels at the movies, looking perfectly fine behind a desk, or they heard his comforting presidential voice crackling through the radio.

But she wasn't a winner on a quiz show, or Fern on that happy farm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She was Franny in Squirrel Hill, Pennsylvania, stuck in a wheelchair in her bedroom.

True, she did like her bedroom. She liked its pale yellow walls, the color of custard. She liked her bright new yellow afghan on the bed. The dancing ballerina on the face of her alarm clock. Her multicolored braided rug on the floor. Her matching oak headboard, bookcase, desk, and night table—seven scratches on the desktop, two water stains on the night table. All her new books in the bookcase (they'd burned her old ones because of possible polio germs). The funny-looking dracaena plant by the window, a Get Well gift from the staff at Katzenback's Footwear. Whenever Franny looked at it, the
plant seemed to wriggle its messy hairdo of leaves, as if to say, “Cheer up! Cheer up!”

She liked her bedroom; she really did. But she knew every inch of it much too well.

Franny gave a deep sigh. She pushed herself to her night table to get her baseball. She kept it in full view, to remind herself that even though her legs were bad, her right arm was still pretty good. She rolled her chair to the window, removed its screen, then held the ball in the cleft between the pointing and middle finger of her right hand. Then she aimed at the stretch of Shady Avenue where the hilly part of the street leveled out.

WHOOSH!

Franny's Whiz Ball.

The ball flew out the window, bounced across the street, hit the curb, then rolled under a parked car.

“Strike one!” she said.

Alf stirred at the foot of her wheelchair.

“WOOF!” he barked, eyes pleading.

“I know, I know,” Franny said. “You want to go out. You need a pedestrian for that, old pal, and that's not me. Hey, don't worry. You may not be Wilbur the pig, but I still love you.”

Franny reached over to tickle his nose. Alf whined, as if he had something very important to tell her.

Min had heard Alf's whine and came into the room. “Let's all go for a walk. Me, you, and Alf,” she said.

“No. You take Alf,” Franny said. “And please get my ball from under Mr. Avery's Dodge while you're out.”

Franny didn't know what she hated most—all those eyes staring at her in her wheelchair or all those eyes pretending not to see her at all. And it was such a humiliating, exhausting ordeal! First her chair had to be carted down the front stairs. Then she had to be carried like a baby by her mother or father and Saint Min, to be plunked into her wheelchair in front of the whole world. Pittsburgh itself was a city of hills and stairways, which Franny had never really thought about Before. Now each stair, each knoll, each bumpy sidewalk was a taunt, reminding her of all that had changed.