Isabelle and Little Orphan Frannie: The Isabelle Series, Book Three Read online

  “I probably got one too,” Isabelle said. “I forgot to check the mail. Sally said she was going to write me every day. Maybe she lost my address. I wrote it on a teeny little piece of paper.”

  She felt a sharp stab of pain. Maybe Sally Smith had written to everybody except her. Sally was her friend. Maybe she’d run out of stamps. Maybe she had writer’s cramp from writing postcards to everyone in town except Isabelle.

  “Hello there.” Quick as a wink, Mary Eliza shot her arm through Isabelle’s and held her in her iron grip.

  “Guess what?” Before Mary Eliza opened her big bazoo, Isabelle knew what she was going to say.

  “I got a postcard from Sally Smith.” Mary Eliza said it. “She has two cute boys on her new block. One of them’s in her class. She cried for two whole days, she was so homesick. But now she likes her new house and her new school and the two cute boys. Isn’t that too much?” Mary Eliza relaxed her grip for a second and Isabelle took off. If Chauncey told her that he got a postcard from Sally Smith, she thought she might throw up.

  “Hey, Isabelle! How ya doing?” Guy Gibbs yelled.

  “Hi, Guy,” Isabelle said. “How’s it going?” She could tell from looking at him that Guy was doing fine. His face was shiny with happiness, and he swung his arms when he walked, like a big shot. Anyone could see he was a new man.

  “Pretty good,” said Guy. “My friend Bernie and me are raising worms. We expect a bumper crop. We’re opening a stand in Bernie’s front yard this summer. Our worms are guaranteed first class. If you don’t catch anything with one of our worms, you get your money back,” Guy said, very serious. “Purchase one of our worms and you can’t go wrong.” Guy reeled off his sales pitch without a hitch.

  “What if all I catch with one of your worms is a beat-up tire or somebody’s underwear or something?” Isabelle said. “Do I get my money back then too?”

  “Bernie and me will have to talk it over then, I guess,” Guy said.

  “Fishing’s boring,” Isabelle said. “All you do is sit there and wait for a bite. My father took me once and never again! He said I was too itchy to be a fisherman and he’s right. Good luck, Guy, on your worms.”

  “Thanks,” Guy said. “Me and Bernie plan to clean up. See ya,” and he set off, arms swinging to beat the band.

  “I don’t care if it is spring,” Mrs. Esposito was saying as Isabelle skidded into her seat. “I want and expect to see a change in behavior in this class. There’s entirely too much horsing around. Drastic action will be taken if it continues. No recess, no free periods, extra homework.” People rustled in their seats and let out little groans. When Mrs. Esposito went on the war path, watch out.

  “Now please listen carefully to tomorrow’s English assignment. I want you to …”

  A sudden loud pop came from Herbie’s desk. He’d blown a super duper bubble and it had burst. All over his face. He was covered with bubble gum from his eyebrows to his chin. He looked so funny the class roared. Even the corners of Mrs. Esposito’s mouth turned up for an instant.

  “Go for it, Herb!” Isabelle yelled.

  “Herbie, go to the boys’ room and get rid of that stuff. Wash your face. Scrape it off it you have to. And if I catch you chewing gum in class one more time, you go straight to the principal’s office.”

  Isabelle ran her finger across her throat and said in a loud voice, “She means it’s curtains for you, Herb.”

  “That’s enough!” Mrs. Esposito snapped. “That’s yet another example of the kind of behavior I meant, the kind I will not tolerate. One more peep out of you, Isabelle, and you go the same route. Now sit down and be quiet.”

  Isabelle sat.

  Mrs. Esposito cleared her throat.

  “One more thing, class, before I give you the assignment.” Her voice was calmer now.

  “I want to read you a postcard I got from Sally Smith.”

  “Oh, no!” Isabelle cried, slapping herself on the forehead. “I can’t stand it! I positively, absolutely cannot stand it.”

  Mrs. Esposito waited.

  “Are you finished, Isabelle?” she said at last.

  “Yes, sir,” said Isabelle.

  FIVE

  “I’m painting my guest room pale blue,” said Mrs. Stern. “Did you know pale blue wards off evil spirits?” she asked, smiling so Isabelle would know she was only fooling around.

  “Have you got any evil spirits?” Isabelle asked excitedly. She had always longed to see some evil spirits, not necessarily up close, though.

  “It’s just an old superstition,” Mrs. Stern said. “Down South they paint the trim on doors and windows pale blue because it’s supposed to ward off evil spirits. Don’t ask me why, but I rather like the idea. I wouldn’t know an evil spirit if I fell over it.”

  “Me either,” Isabelle agreed. “Maybe it’d look like Mary Eliza Shook. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out Mary Eliza Shook was queen of the evil spirit club. Why not paint the guest room the same color as your front door? That’s a neat color, that bright red. It’s very peppy and sparkly. You can’t ignore that color even if you try.”

  “Well, it’s one thing to have a front door that color and quite another to paint a guest room bright red. It might give your guests jangly nerves, and that would never do.” Mrs. Stern gave Isabelle’s shoulder a friendly pat. Already Isabelle felt better. Mrs. Stern was a cheerer upper, and Isabelle felt in need of cheering up. It had been a bad day.

  “Are you having guests?” Isabelle asked.

  Mrs. Stern bustled about, getting down the marshmallows and the Oreos. Oreos always cheered her up, Isabelle thought, getting her teeth ready for that first bite.

  “Yes, I am,” Mrs. Stern said. “An old friend is coming to stay. I want the room to look nice. He’ll stay for a week, maybe longer.”

  “Oh, it’s a boy, then,” Isabelle said.

  “A man, yes,” Mrs. Stern said, blushing. Isabelle almost fell over in surprise. She didn’t know old people knew how to blush. She thought only kids blushed, mostly when they did something embarrassing.

  “I told you about him, Isabelle. His sister was my dear old friend, and she left me a ring when she died, and he brought it to me.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “One marshmallow or two?” Mrs. Stern dropped two marshmallows into Isabelle’s cup without waiting for an answer. “Yes, of course I like him.”

  “How much?” Isabelle narrowed her eyes, waiting for Mrs. Stern’s answer.

  “Isabelle!” Mrs. Stern laughed. “What a question. He’s a fine man, someone I’ve known since I was a girl. I knew his first wife too. He’s been very lonely since she died. We enjoy many of the same things. He and my husband were friends. We’re both over seventy, you see,” Mrs. Stern said, as if that explained it all. “My heavens”—and she put her paint-spattered hands up to her pink cheeks—“but that sounds old.”

  “It is, kinda.” Isabelle liked to call a spade a spade. “You’re like Guy’s grandmother. He says she’s young at heart, and so are you.”

  “Why, Isabelle, what a nice thing to say. I’m touched. How is Guy? Such a nice little fellow, so kind.”

  “Oh, he’s a regular hotshot now,” Isabelle said. “Him and Bernie are raising worms. Money back if you don’t catch anything.”

  Isabelle bit off a chunk of cuticle and chewed on it vigorously. “I helped Guy get out of being a goody-goody, you see,” she explained. “I helped him change his image. That’s what you call it, image. Nobody teases him anymore.”

  “Of course, dear,” said Mrs. Stern absentmindedly. “That was nice of you to help Guy. I see I’m out of cocoa. Perhaps you’d like a nice glass of milk.”

  “No, thanks.” Isabelle scooped the two marshmallows out of the cup. “I’ll just eat ’em plain if it’s all right with you.”

  “Oh, I have so much to do,” said Mrs. Stern happily. “I don’t know where to begin. Yes, of course, dear.”

  Isabelle saw that Mrs. Stern was too busy to t
alk. But before she split, Isabelle told Mrs. Stern about Sally Smith’s postcard.

  “Sally Smith wrote to everybody but me.” Isabelle did a slow soft shoe, arms dangling loosely at her sides, to show she didn’t really care. “She promised she’d write me. Maybe she lost my address. Or she forgot the zip. If she forgot the zip, that’s fatal. I’ll never get it. Too bad. Sally was my friend.”

  “Maybe I’ll have a party,” said Mrs. Stern, counting her knives and forks. “We could have my chicken pie. It’s been so long since I’ve had people in.”

  Mrs. Stern was a little spaced out today, Isabelle could see. She said good-bye and, halfway down the path, she realized she’d forgotten to take a handful of Oreos. They’d get stale sitting on that plate. Maybe she should go back. No. If she did that, Mrs. Stern would think she was greedy.

  Which she was.

  But she didn’t want Mrs. Stern to think she was.

  Across the street, the Brady kids were playing fairy princess. Isabelle went over to spy on them through the hedge.

  The littlest Brady, draped in some old lace curtains, was pushing Betty, the dog, in a beat-up old red wagon. Betty had aged, Isabelle thought, squinting through the hedge. Or maybe it was the pink woolen bonnet tied under Betty’s hairy chin that made her look so old.

  The second Brady kid, the bossy one, Isabelle knew from experience, waved her stick wand furiously and shouted orders.

  “Be home by midnight!” she bellowed. “Else you’ll turn into an old warty frog that’s so ugly the prince will throw you out of the carriage and you’ll get stomped on by a slimy, fire-breathing dragon who’ll eat you up in one gulp!”

  The littlest Brady let go of the wagon, raised her face to the sky, and howled like a banshee. Isabelle seized the moment and pounced from her hiding place to turn a series of really excellent cartwheels on the Bradys’ lawn. She managed to do an even dozen before collapsing in a heap. The littlest Brady, recovered from her fit, calmly pushed the wagon over to where Isabelle lay and said, “This is my baby, Elvis.”

  “I thought your dog’s name was Betty,” Isabelle said. The dog’s tail thumped rhythmically against the wagon’s side, and she rolled her big brown eyes at Isabelle, as if to say, “Help!”

  Isabelle jumped to her feet. “You let her out of there,” she said. “That’s mean. Look at her. She’s crying.”

  “Betty ran away,” the bossy Brady said. “Besides, dogs don’t cry.”

  “That’s what you think.” Isabelle poked a finger at the kid. “Let her out of there this minute. If you don’t, I’m reporting you to the ASPCA. No wonder Betty ran away. Who wouldn’t. How’d you like to be tied up with a stupid bonnet on?”

  The dog’s tail thumped harder, and it seemed to smile at Isabelle.

  “There, there, Elvis,” the bossy Brady said, and pushed the dog back down, where it lay, rolling its eyes, rapidly losing hope.

  “How come you call it Elvis?” Isabelle couldn’t help asking.

  The bossy one shouted joyfully, “Because he ain’t nuthing but a hound dog, that’s why!”

  “You’re some smart alec, know that?” Isabelle said in her sourest voice.

  The two Bradys, as if on signal, stuck out their tongues at Isabelle, who stuck hers out in return.

  Then the bossy one sang “You Ain’t Nuthin’ But a Hound Dog” and waggled her hips, à la Elvis Presley, and Isabelle, realizing she’d been had, turned and ran the fifty-yard dash for home.

  SIX

  “Your friend Frannie was here,” Isabelle’s mother said. “I asked her to come in and wait for you, but she said she had to go home. She’ll come back, she said. Where does she live?”

  “She’s not my friend,” Isabelle said. “I don’t even know her. I don’t know where she lives, either. Except with her aunt, who’s not really her aunt, she told me. She only wants her to call her her aunt.”

  “How old is she?” her mother wanted to know. “She looks about seven or eight, but she seems older than that, doesn’t she?”

  “She looks pretty young to me,” said Isabelle. “A lot younger ’n me. She’s small for her age, probably. And plenty fresh, too.”

  “Isabelle, don’t be so insensitive. How would you like to be all alone in the world?” her mother said.

  “Frannie’s not all alone. She’s got a mother,” Isabelle said. “She’s only a half orphan. Her mother’s out looking for a new daddy on account of her old daddy died.”

  “I know, you told me,” Isabelle’s mother said.

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t tell you the rest. Frannie’s mother got all doozied up and put a really fresh bumper sticker on her new car. That bumper sticker is so fresh, Mom, I wouldn’t dare tell you what it says.” And Isabelle let her eyes go all big and solemn so her mother would imagine all kinds of fresh stuff. Nothing she liked better than to fuel her mother’s already vivid imagination by telling her just so much, and no more.

  “What did the bumper sticker say?” Isabelle’s mother asked, as Isabelle had known she would.

  “I can’t tell you, Mom,” Isabelle said. “You’d freak.”

  “All right, then.” Her mother was miffed; Isabelle could see. “It takes quite a lot to make me freak, miss. But put yourself in Frannie’s shoes. Try to imagine how you’d feel if anything happened to me or Daddy. Or Philip.”

  Isabelle leaped up and hopped around the room like a kangaroo on a pogo stick. “That’s what I’d do if anything happened to Philip!” she shouted.

  “Watch it!” Isabelle’s mother rescued a teetering lamp in the nick of time.

  “That’s enough, Isabelle,” she said crossly. “Remember, he’s your brother and someday you and he will be good friends.”

  “Aaarrrgh,” Isabelle cried, grabbing herself by the throat and staggering in circles with her tongue hanging out, looking like a dog who’s been chasing a rabbit.

  “Isabelle, you are too much, you really are,” her mother said, laughing in spite of herself.

  “But when I get really sad is when I think about if you and Dad got knocked off by a flying saucer or something and Philip was in charge. Boy, that’s when I cry buckets,” Isabelle said. “On account of Philip would beat up on me even before breakfast. He’d beat up on me so much I’d be all black and blue and you could hardly see my real skin I’d be so black and blue and he’d tie me to a stake in the backyard and make me eat sour milk and turnips until I croaked.”

  Isabelle was so moved by the picture she’d drawn that she took a piece of paper towel and blew her nose noisily.

  “Turnips,” Herbie said in a hollow voice.

  “Come on in, Herb,” Isabelle said, opening the door. “You don’t have to stand out there eavesdropping.”

  “I hate turnips,” Herbie announced, coming in. “If I ate them every day, I’d just as soon vomit. That’s why I hate Thanksgiving, on account of turnips. My mother says it’s not Thanksgiving without turnips. She says the Pilgrims really loved turnips. How does she know? All I can say is, the Pilgrims must’ve been off their rockers if they loved turnips.”

  “You want to fight awhile?” Isabelle asked, trying to cheer Herbie up.

  “Yeah, okay, that’d be good,” Herbie said. “I was feeling fine until you mentioned turnips. They depress me. Maybe we better fight in your yard today, Iz. My mother’s expecting company, and she doesn’t want our yard messed up.”

  “How about my yard?” Isabelle’s mother said, but no one paid any attention.

  Herbie and Isabelle had just started to mix it up when an old-fashioned, oversized pram came up the street. Pushing it was Frannie, who stopped to watch as Herbie jumped up and down on Isabelle’s stomach as if she were a trampoline.

  “Ugh! Oooff! Help, he’s killing me!” Isabelle bellowed.

  Frannie just stood there as Herbie continued his assault.

  “Hey, Frannie, get this turnip offa me, will ya?” Isabelle cried.

  “No siree!” Herbie said quietly. Herbie was always quiet when
he was winning. “You’re not pulling that phony stuff on me again, Iz. I’m wise to your tricks.” Once bitten, twice shy, as Herbie’s grandmother said. He went back to his trampoline bounce.

  Then he heard a little tinny voice say, “But how?” and for one fatal second his attention was diverted. He turned to look and Isabelle, using her splendid big feet, tossed Herbie skyward, and by the time he hit the turf, she was upright again.

  “You can’t trust boys,” she told Frannie, brushing herself off. “They cheat.”

  Then she noticed that the pram Frannie was pushing was full of what looked like an oversized load of arms and legs. Grimy, scabby arms and legs which, on closer inspection, turned out to be two little boys.

  “Who are these bozos?” Isabelle asked.

  “They’re my guys,” Frannie said proudly. “Three’s four, and Zeus, he’s almost two. Say hi, guys.”

  “Why do you call him Three?” Isabelle wanted to know.

  Frannie lifted her shoulders and said, “And baby makes three,” as if that explained it. There was, apparently, no question Frannie didn’t have an answer to.

  “Aren’t they kind of old for those things?” Isabelle asked, pointing to the pacifiers that stuck out of each boy’s mouth. Three’s was a sickly pink color and Zeus’s a nasty shade of yellow.

  “I thought only babies sucked on those things,” Isabellé said.

  “What’s it to you, old dodo?” Three spoke around the pacifier, which bobbed up and down as he talked.

  “That Three,” Frannie said with a proud smile. “He can be real fresh at times. Aunt Ruth says if they suck on pacifiers, they won’t suck their thumbs. Plus it keeps ’em quiet. Right, guys?”

  Three made a horrible face, and his pacifier zoomed from one side of his mouth to the other.

  “See that? That’s a trick he learned. Smart, huh? Do it again,” Frannie commanded. But Three had performed once and that was that. Zeus waggled his fingers at Isabelle and said not a word.