Fleabrain Loves Franny (4 page)

“Please, Franny,” Min said. “It's a nice day. We won't have too many more before winter.”

It was more than a nice day. It was a Saturday morning that felt like the opening scene in a movie, an orchestra playing in the background, the sun blazing, the sky bright blue, sparrows chirping, autumn-bright leaves—all that, except it was real life. Even from the window, Franny could tell.

“Oh, fine,” Franny said.

And even in her wheelchair, being helped along by Saint Min (after Min had retrieved the baseball), with Alf running along beside them, for a few minutes Franny was glad she didn't live on Fern's farm. She was glad to be outside on such a lovely day in good old Squirrel Hill. Just like Before. For a few minutes, Franny forgot she wasn't a pedestrian.

But only for a few minutes. She could hear Min huffing and puffing as she pushed Franny's wheelchair toward Frick Park. Of course. Min wanted an excuse to bat her eyelashes at Milt, who was at the stables in the park every Saturday morning. Franny didn't really
mind, because she liked Milt. And she adored Lightning, the aging former racehorse in the second stall.

“Hi, you two,” Milt said when he saw them rounding the stony path. “Great wheels, Franny! Have you popped any wheelies yet?”

It felt so good when Milt teased her like a regular girl instead of an invalid to be treated like a delicate fern from a nursery.

“Not yet,” said Franny. “But maybe soon,
langer loksh
.”

Milt was tall and skinny. Franny's great-grandfather Zadie Ben called him a
langer loksh
, which meant a “long noodle” in Yiddish, and so everyone else in the family called him that, too.

Min and Milt made a handsome pair. Unlike Franny, who was short, Min was tall. Franny and Min looked very much alike, with their wavy brown hair, pale skin, and eyeglasses, but Min looked like the stretched-out gum-band version. At the moment, Milt and Min only had eyes for one another, although they weren't really batting them, Franny noticed. She decided to wheel herself over to the second stall to visit Lightning while Milt and Min sat under a tree.

“Hey, old Secret Keeper. Long time no see,” Franny said, reaching way up to pat the handsome bay's nose. “Too bad neither of us can sprint anymore.”

Lightning nuzzled Franny's neck, then looked right into her eyes. His own kind, dark eyes encouraged secrets, and Franny suspected that many kids had whispered private things into Lightning's warm, odorous ears, just as she did. They knew he'd keep their secrets safe, always and forever.

Voices drifted over a hill, and Franny turned to see the Pack strolling toward her. The Pack consisted of Walter Walter; his
brother, Seymour; Teresa Goodly; her little sister, Rose; the new girl, Quiet Katy Green; and the Solomon siblings, A (Albert), B (Bobby), and C (Carol). Franny herself used to be a bona fide member of the Pack, Before. All of them smiled at Franny as they approached the stables, but then, as if responding to a high-pitched signal only they could hear, they hurried past her toward Beechwood Boulevard.

“Whoa!” shouted Franny. “Where are you going? Fire? Parade? Circus in town?”

Or something.

Franny knew where they were going. Away from her, that's where.

“Hey, guess what?” she yelled. “I'm not contagious anymore!”

Accompanied by a pungent whiff of garlic, Walter Walter turned and walked toward her, but not too close. He was carrying his bat.

“Thanks for the six Get Well cards,” said Franny.

“Seven,” said Walter Walter with a small smile.

“Right. Seven. Hey, you still wearing that stupid thing around your neck?” Franny asked.

Walter Walter shrugged, glancing down at the little bag attached to a string.

“I guess,” he said. “They say it works.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

Walter Walter shrugged again. “People. I don't know.”

“Walter Walter, you tell me how a bulb of garlic can fight the poliovirus! Go on. Bet you can't!”

“Virus hates the smell?”

“That's stupid, and you know it.”

“Well, all the kids are wearing garlic. Nobody's caught polio yet.”

“So you're saying if I'd worn a stinky bag of garlic around my neck, then I wouldn't have gotten it?”

“Don't know,” said Walter Walter. He swung his bat at an imaginary pitch, then stopped swinging. “Why'd you get polio, anyway? Nobody else did. I heard they burned all your old books and toys and stuff because everything you touched was contagious.”

“That was then. But they say I'm not contagious now. I'll be going back to school once I'm more ‘independently mobile.' And nobody knows why I got it.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

His pleading eyes stared right into hers. Franny could tell Walter Walter wasn't being a smart aleck. He really wanted to know.

“Smart people. Doctors,” Franny said. “People who know how viruses operate. My pediatrician told us I'm definitely not contagious at this point. And neither is my mother or my father or Min. Viruses are like villains who ride into town, shoot like crazy, then gallop away, leaving death and destruction in their wake.”

Walter Walter was silent, leaning on his bat.

Franny held up her baseball. “Feel like hitting a few? I can still throw.”

“No time,” said Walter Walter, looking guilty. “We're getting a game together at the school yard in a few minutes.” He brightened suddenly, reaching into his pocket. “Hey, I've been meaning to give you these buckeyes, since you couldn't gather them yourself this year. They should be as hard as rocks by spring. You'll be OK by spring, right?”

“Of course,” Franny said.

In the autumn, round buckeye nuts, as big as half-dollars, fell from the horse chestnut trees growing in Homewood Cemetery. After the nuts had dried over the winter, they were cherished and traded by the Pack as if they were expensive marbles, or they were tied to spare shoelaces like mini-catapults for the Pack's buckeye-slinging contests.

“Here you go,” Walter Walter said. He dropped four round buckeyes into Franny's outstretched palm.

“Thank you,” said Franny. “I didn't think I'd have any this year.” Franny noticed that Walter Walter had been very, very careful not to touch her. She put the buckeyes into her pocket. “Hey, Mr. Double-Dose Pizzazz Walter Walter,” she said suddenly, leaning forward as if she had a secret to share. “Want to be a real superhero?”

“What?”

“You heard me. It's easy-peasy.” Franny held out her hand. “Here. Shake.”

Walter Walter looked at Franny's outstretched hand. He didn't move.

“No viruses on it anywhere. I promise. Come on, shake!” Franny wriggled her fingers. “And tell the others to come by, too.”

Franny waited.

The seconds ticked by.

One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six.

A second for every year they'd been friends.

Walter Walter gently tapped Franny's outstretched fingers with the tip of his bat.

“Hey!” cried Franny.

They stared at one another, eyes wide. Franny could tell Walter Walter was as surprised as she was at what he'd just done.

“I'm really sorry, Franny. I hope you get better. Maybe I'll come visit soon, OK? My parents …” Then Walter Walter turned and raced away to catch up with the others.

Franny shouted after him. “You'll never be a real superhero! You're a yellow-bellied, lily-livered milksop!”

That night Franny picked at her chicken leg during supper, brushed Alf while they both lay in her bed, threw a book across the room (
Little Women
, not
Charlotte's Web
), counted all the reasons she hated Walter Walter and other kids she knew, cried until she was too tired to cry anymore, and was just about to turn off her lamp, when she noticed the tiny chocolatey-brown writing in her journal.

Greetings, Franny!

Bonjour! At last

we connect!

“Who the HECK” am I?

Ich bin Fleabrain
.

Je m'appelle Fleabrain
.

Yo soy Fleabrain
.

Fleabrain
.

I am a proud representative of Ctenocephalides canis, flea of the dog
.

I am thrilled to share

my thoughts about books and culture

with

you
.

I am enjoying the plethora of books in the Katzenback bookshelves

and have completed the works of that Englishman William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564–April 23, 1616)
.

I have also recently read Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883–June 3, 1924), who was from Prague but wrote in German
.

Have you read it? Terribly overrated. It is a story about a man who turns into a bug overnight. I was rather offended by its silly, buggist plot. Can't wait to discuss!

Not to brag, but I complete

one great work by a preeminent thinker almost every day,

often two great works, depending upon how long they take to digest
.

Happily,

FB

P.S. Dare I add a bashful little postscript? Well, here it is: Would you be so kind as to meet me at the tip of Alf's tail, tomorrow after your evening treatment, around 5:30 p.m.?

Yours,

Fleabrain

Other Things Fleabrain Knew

F
leabrain knew—he knew with all his heart, with every cell of his minute, ugly body—that he and she were Kindred Spirits. Spirits in Kind.

(“Ugly” was a relative term. His mama, whom he resembled, would have found him handsome and dapper. But if he were human-size, he'd be a monster.)

In fact …

… he knew he loved Franny.

And, as the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born March 6, 1806, died June 29, 1861, once wrote in her moving poem “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways … ,” his own microscopic brain enjoyed counting the ways that he, Fleabrain, loved Franny:

1. Both were attached to the same dog.

2. Both of their names began with
F
.

3. Both felt small. Emphasis:
felt
.

4. Both felt invisible. Emphasis:
felt
.

5. Both were lonely.

6. Both had feelings about Charlotte. True, not the same feelings. (Yes, he was bitterly jealous of Franny's adoration of that storybook arachnid. Certainly not proud of that, he had to admit.)

7. But, oh, how they both loved books! He himself was more than halfway through the texts of that lofty hallway bookcase, having absorbed treatises on geometry, philosophy, first aid, calculus, European history, and more. He was now gobbling up the foreign-language shelves. Spanish conversation. The French essayists. The German poets and philosophers. How clever of humans to communicate in a variety of languages. Nonhumans had only the Language of Instinct. Reliable, yet often limiting.

Bug it! He, Fleabrain, with his ever-reliable instincts, his marvelous, brilliant brain, and his loving heart, knew that he and Franny could be the very, very best of friends. She didn't really need any others.

He could hardly wait to meet in person (so to speak)!

Believing

F
ranny believed.

She believed the Earth was wondrous, as was its plant-making Sun and tide-making Moon. She also believed there was life on other spinning planets, somewhere in the dark mystery of space. An infinity of wondrousness.

Teresa believed in God, who looked like a combination of Santa and her kindly great-uncle Donald, she said. But sometimes Teresa imagined God resembling Uncle Donald's wife, Marie, also kindly, who made heavenly snickerdoodles.

Min believed God looked like Rabbi Hailperin, in a stylish suit and tie under his prayer shawl. Of course, she was sophisticated enough to know otherwise, she said, but that's what she imagined during services.

Quiet Katy, the new girl, hardly ever said anything about anything. But one day she blurted out that she didn't really know for sure what she thought about God. Maybe God was just a good feeling and didn't look like anyone at all.

Walter Walter believed in aliens. Most of them had gigantic eyes and blinking spokes for ears. They always commanded magnificent flying machines. He was positive they were out there, but Franny wasn't so sure.

In
Charlotte's Web
, Fern had fervently believed in Charlotte. In
Peter Pan
, Wendy had believed in Tinker Bell and Never Never Land. True, those kids lived in books, but it had all seemed so real, Franny had believed, too! And wasn't
that
kind of wondrous?