Isabelle and Little Orphan Frannie: The Isabelle Series, Book Three Page 3

  “If you want,” Frannie said with the air of bestowing a great favor, “you can push ’em around the block. Five cents for once around.” She shoved the pram at Isabelle.

  “What would I want to do that for?” Isabelle asked, astonished at the idea. “That’s crazy.”

  “Lots of people want to push my guys around,” Frannie said smugly. “They like to pretend those cute little buggers are their children and they’re the mothers. I have special rates for steady customers. Half an hour for a dime. Plus”—Frannie fluttered her eyelashes—“we have weekly rates too, if you’re interested.”

  “I coulda pushed a dog named Elvis around today if I wanted,” Isabelle said, sucking on a piece of her hair. “He had on this baby’s bonnet, and he was cute as a bug. Cuter’n those bozos,” and she smiled sweetly at Three, who stared back at her, his eyes as hard and expressionless as two black olives in his wide face.

  “A dog named Elvis!” Frannie said. “What a dumb name for a dog. Why’d they call him that?”

  Isabelle leaped in the air and clicked her heels in imitation of Mary Eliza Shook showing off her ballet skills.

  “Because he ain’t nuthing but a hound dog, that’s why!” Isabelle cried, trying not to laugh out loud.

  SEVEN

  Halfway down, in her search for the great white shark, the idea hit. It was so perfect, so right, so excellent that Isabelle opened her mouth and hollered, “Yo!” and swallowed half the bath water.

  Choking, gasping, she came up, smiling at her own cleverness.

  She would take little orphan Frannie over to meet Mrs. Stern. She would put her arm protectively around Frannie’s thin shoulders and lead her up the walk and through Mrs. Stern’s tomato-red door.

  “And who is this?” Mrs. Stern would ask, silver eyes sparkling a welcome.

  “This is my friend little orphan Frannie,” Isabelle planned to reply. “I’m being kind to her.”

  No. That wouldn’t do. If she said, “I’m being kind to her,” that would be rude and crude. Better to show, not tell. In her every gesture Isabelle would show Mrs. Stern how kind she was being to little waif Frannie. Mrs. Stern would be impressed by Isabelle’s kindness. She would then know that Isabelle was a far kinder person than other people. Especially Guy Gibbs.

  “Yeah! Yeah!” Isabelle shouted, and in her excitement she sent a series of giant waves over the tub’s side and onto the bathroom floor.

  “Oh, boy!” Isabelle took a look.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she said aloud, as if her mother had been standing there, saying, “Not again! How many times have I warned you, Isabelle? Look what you’ve done.”

  “I’ll clean it all up,” she said, and hopped out of the tub. She’d mop up every drop with the already sodden bath mat as well as the unused towels. She’d clean it up before her mother and father got home. They’d gone to the movies with their friends the Bascombs. When her father learned the movie was rated PG, he said, “Does that stand for ‘pretty good’?” as her mother dragged him to the car.

  Isabelle put on her pajamas and robe and went into her room and wrote on her blackboard: “ISABELLE IS A GENUS.”

  She stood back to study her work. The spelling wasn’t perfect, but the thought was there. Then she tiptoed downstairs. Since Philip had taken up talking to girls on the telephone when he was in charge, Isabelle had much more freedom of movement. She could roam through the house, and as long as Philip was busy on the phone, she could do anything she felt like.

  “Far out!” she heard Philip yodel. “That blows my mind.” Then she heard him laugh and pound the couch cushions. Philip liked to stretch out on the couch and make himself comfortable while telephoning.

  Inside the refrigerator was a half-eaten bowl of Jello and a leg of lamb. The freezer was empty of ice cream. Lucky she wasn’t really hungry, Isabelle decided. Back upstairs, she took a pair of her mother’s panty hose from the drawer, slipped it over her face, and picked up the phone, very quietly so Philip wouldn’t hear. He had hung up. Good.

  Isabelle dialed a number. “Shook residence, Mary Eliza Shook speaking,” a voice said.

  “May I please speak to Mary Eliza Shook?” Isabelle said from behind the panty hose mask.

  “If it’s you again, Isabelle,” said Mary Eliza crossly, “you’re going to get it. My father said next time you called us up he was going to report you to the police. He said you’re a public nuisance.”

  Isabelle took several deep breaths, filling her lungs with air. Then she swallowed noisily, which always made her voice darker, and said, from behind her mother’s panty hose mask, “You have won the lottery. You, Mary Eliza Shook, have won the lottery.”

  There was a short silence, then the air was filled with the sound of Mary Eliza’s joyful scream. Isabelle covered her ear with her hand and let Mary Eliza scream.

  “I won, I won, I won!” screamed Mary Eliza.

  “Bring your winning ticket down to the office Monday morning,” Isabelle said in a gruff voice. “You have to have the winning ticket, else it’s all off.”

  “How much do I get?” Mary Eliza gasped.

  “Let me put it through the computer. Hang on,” and Isabelle put down the receiver and paced around the room for several minutes. She fancied she could hear Mary Eliza breathing through the phone. Then she went back and said, “After taxes, it comes to one hundred billion million. Dollars, that is.”

  “Who is this?” It was Mary Eliza’s father speaking. Softly, ever so gently, Isabelle hung up. When she went back to get the pail and mop, Philip was on the telephone again.

  “Just go with the flow,” Philip advised. “Just go for it. With the flow.” Isabelle trudged up and swabbed down the bathroom floor, pretending she was a sailor aboard ship, cleaning the decks. It was hard work. The more she swabbed, the more water there was. Or so it seemed. Finally, she stuffed all the wet towels and the bath mat into the pail and carried it back down to the washing machine.

  “Get caught in a typhoon?” Philip asked her. “You look waterlogged, babe.

  “I know.” He snapped his fingers. “You went skin diving again and flooded the floor, right? Right. Oh, boy, are you gonna get it. Are they ever gonna lash you to the mast,” Philip chortled.

  The telephone rang and Philip got to it first, as usual.

  “Yeah,” he said. Then his voice changed abruptly, deepened and aged. Philip was a good mimic. Isabelle stood and listened to him turn into his father.

  “Yes, it’s him. Sure. Oh, is that so?” He stared at Isabelle as he listened. “I’m sorry to hear that.… Yes, indeed, I’ll take care of it. I’ll see to it she doesn’t bother you again. Thanks for calling.” He hung up and a slow smile came over his face.

  “Guess who that was, rug rat,” Philip said. “Just take one guess.”

  Isabelle tossed the soaking towels and mat into the washing machine. “Who?” she said.

  “Mr. Shook, baby. Father of Mary Eliza. Wanted to talk to Dad. I pretended I was Dad and he bought it. I said I’d speak to you. He said you’d been making a nuisance of yourself calling up there all the time. He said he wants it to stop.”

  Philip put an experimental finger up his nose, withdrew it and frowned, as if trying to decide what it was he’d extracted. Then he threw it at Isabelle. He was always doing that, pulling big goobers from his nose and throwing them at her. Mostly they were nothing, only pretend goobers. But she could never be quite sure.

  To be safe, she ducked.

  “Are you going to tell?” Isabelle asked.

  Philip shrugged, nonchalant, enjoying himself. “Who knows? I think I’ll just hold it over your head for a while, like an ax. Blackmail, toots. Good, old-fashioned blackmail. One false step and it’s kneecap time, weirdo.”

  Isabelle went upstairs and got the nail scissors out of her mother’s drawer to cut her bangs. They turned out sort of ragged and spiky looking, better than she’d planned. Maybe she’d dye her hair pink and glue red feathers in it, like a punk ro
cker. And get herself a sleeveless T-shirt that lit up when you pressed a button, spelling out: “BLOOD.”

  Cool.

  Snip, snip, the hair over her ears fell without a whisper. Now she was ready for three earrings in her left ear—two stars and one gold safety pin.

  The effect was dazzling.

  Isabelle heard the garage door close. Her mother and father were home. She made it into bed just in time. In the dark she ran her hands over her head. It felt funny, sort of prickly and bald in spots. And in spite of the remnants of her hair that scurried around inside her pajamas like a gang of mice at a disco, Isabelle fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

  EIGHT

  “I can’t stay but a minute,” Aunt Maude said, teetering up the walk in her little high-heeled shoes. “My, but that sermon was boring. What on earth!” Aunt Maude pressed her little hand over her heart. “Your hair, child. What have you done to your hair?”

  Without waiting for Isabelle to answer, she settled herself in, wriggling her rear end until she was comfortable, and said, “I know. It’s one of those punk rock hairdos. Next thing is to dye your hair pink and put an arrow through your head or your nose or some such. I saw one of those punk people on TV, and he was wearing a frog mask and boxer shorts made of aluminum foil. Most extraordinary, I must say. The things that go on these days. Be good to your mother and father, Isabelle, because they have a lot to deal with.”

  Isabelle opened her mouth to reply, but Aunt Maude plunged on.

  “Don’t think I don’t keep up with things because I do,” she said. “What is that gorgeous smell?”

  They went through this every Sunday. Aunt Maude always said she couldn’t possibly stay to dinner. She always stayed.

  “Maude darling, how lovely to see you.” Isabelle admired the way her father seemed astonished at Aunt Maude’s presence. He hugged her against his white apron and said, “You must stay for dinner, Maude. I’m doing roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t! Forty cloves of garlic! Naughty boy.” Aunt Maude shook a playful finger. “We’ll all smell to high heaven.”

  “Does that mean you’re staying?” Isabelle asked.

  “That puts me in mind of my dear father,” Aunt Maude said, ignoring Isabelle’s question. “As he got on in years, his memory failed. The doctor put him on garlic pills as garlic is supposed to be good for the memory. My father took the pills for some time until one day he said to my mother, ‘What am I taking these pills for, Mary?’”

  Both Aunt Maude and Isabelle’s father seemed to find this story very funny. Isabelle laughed too, although she didn’t think it was that funny.

  “Nobody’s said a word about my new hat,” Aunt Maude said.

  “It’s a standout, all right,” Isabelle’s father said gallantly. “What exactly do you call it?”

  “Looks like a hard hat to me,” said Isabelle.

  Aunt Maude crowed, “The child’s right! It is a hard hat. How clever of you, dear. The young woman down the block had a garage sale. That’s a tag sale, only you have it in your garage, you see. I got there early, to catch the worm, so to speak, and there was this adorable yellow hat sitting on the card table. I knew in an instant I had to have it. The woman’s husband is a repair man for the telephone company. This was his old hat, which he wore to protect himself from falling objects, falling out of trees and so on. As you can see”—Aunt Maude turned slowly, showing them—“it has ‘Telephone Company’ written on it. So I solved that by putting tape over the letters and then this little veil around it to add the final touch. I tried it on and everyone agreed it was me, don’t you know. Plus, she took fifty percent off the price, and that decided me. Don’t you think it’s chic?”

  “Some chick,” Isabelle made a little joke, but she was cut off by a loud, ominous noise. She looked up in time to see a large piece of the living room ceiling descending slowly, ever so slowly, it seemed to her, almost like a balloon.

  Crash! Plunk! Boom! The ceiling landed dead center on Aunt Maude’s new hard hat.

  Aunt Maude opened and closed her mouth several times, like a fish, then closed her eyes. Isabelle’s mother came running to help her father drag Aunt Maude to safety. Plaster dust filled the air, filled Isabelle’s eyes and nose and throat until she could hardly breathe.

  “It’s a bomb!” Philip shouted. “Somebody planted a bomb! Call the cops! The terrorists have landed!”

  “Cool it, Philip,” Isabelle’s mother said. “Are you all right, Maude? Get a glass of water, Philip, hurry.”

  Presently Aunt Maude opened her eyes. Outside of looking a little woozier than usual, she seemed unharmed.

  “Anything broken?” Isabelle’s father brushed her off and set her upright.

  “It was fate,” said Aunt Maude, shaking her head, the hat still on it. “What a blessing this dear little hat is. It saved my life.”

  Everyone looked at the hard hat, which was scarcely dented, and agreed.

  “I can’t imagine what happened,” Aunt Maude sighed, smiling around at them.

  “I think I can,” said Isabelle’s father in a menacing tone. He turned to glare at Isabelle, who was seriously thinking of hitch-hiking to Australia.

  “The bathtub overflowed last night, is that right?” he asked her. “When you were skin diving again. Which you’ve been warned about repeatedly. Is that it?”

  All eyes were on Isabelle. Usually she found this pleasant, but not this time. It was her fault. They knew that; she knew that.

  “I guess so,” Isabelle whispered. “Unless maybe it was a bomb.” Nobody spoke.

  “There I was, sitting quietly, smelling the delicious chicken with sixty cloves of garlic,” Aunt Maude said, as if they hadn’t all been on the scene, “when suddenly this terrible crashing sound came and …”

  Isabelle decided this was the time to split. The time to put space between herself and home. Give them time to cool off.

  She slipped out quietly. The air was fresh and full of promise of all kinds of exciting things.

  “Hey,” she heard Philip whisper, “the weird chick’s back, hanging around the back door. I told her you were dead meat, but last time I looked, she was still there.”

  Dead meat is right, Isabelle thought, heading for the back door. Maybe she could lie low at Frannie’s house until the whole thing blew over.

  NINE

  “I’m outa here!” Isabelle cried, pouncing on Frannie, who was sitting on the stoop tossing pebbles in the air.

  “What smells so good?” Frannie asked.

  “Eighty cloves of garlic,” Isabelle replied. “Let’s go see Mrs. Stern.”

  “Normally, I don’t like garlic,” Frannie said, “but it smells good.”

  “Mrs. Stern always gives me cocoa and marshmallows,” Isabelle said.

  Reluctantly Frannie agreed to go to Mrs. Stern’s.

  “After, let’s go to your house,” Isabelle suggested. She was dying to see Frannie’s house.

  “Can’t,” Frannie said flatly. “Sunday’s a day of rest. Aunt Ruth likes to put her feet up and play cards. She likes her peace and quiet on Sundays.”

  “What about your creepy little brothers? I notice you’re not pushing ’em around today. Do you lock ’em up on Sundays?”

  “What brothers?” Frannie said.

  “The two little creeps, Zeus and Three. In the carriage.” Isabelle wondered if she’d made them up. “You said I could push ’em around the block for a nickel.”

  “Oh, them. They’re not brothers, they’re just kids. Their mother drops them off when she goes to work. They board at our house sometimes.”

  “I thought they were your brothers. How come I never see you at school? What grade are you in? Who’s your teacher? Mine’s Mrs. Esposito. She’s the best teacher in the whole school.”

  “I don’t go to school,” Frannie said airily. “My mother said I didn’t have to bother with school as long as we’re not sticking around here long. Maybe I’ll go when we get
to Michigan.”

  “Michigan? Way out there? How come?”

  “My mother called last night. She said she met this guy who has a Toyota agency in Michigan, and she thinks he might be the one. Her horoscope said she was due for a change in her life-style, and she figures Michigan might be it.”

  Isabelle chewed on the inside of her cheek, secretly envying Frannie her laid-back life-style, so different from her own.

  “How old are you anyway?” she asked Frannie.

  “How old are you?” Frannie replied.

  “I’m ten. How about you?”

  Frannie stopped walking and stared up at the sky. Isabelle looked up to see what she was staring at. A clump of clouds scudded across the sky, like little lost sheep trying to catch up with their shepherd.

  “I’m approximately eight,” Frannie said at last. “I’m not exactly sure. My mother was only a child when I was born.”

  “How big of a child?” Isabelle asked.

  “Oh, about fifteen or sixteen. She could’ve put me up for adoption, you see.” Frannie looked directly at Isabelle for the first time. “She had tons of offers from people who wanted me because I was so adorable. She could’ve got big bucks for me, about a thousand dollars, but she kept me instead. Only she doesn’t remember exactly when I was born. My father was away when I was born. He was serving his country, and the hospital lost the records, so we don’t know for sure when my birthday is.”

  “Then how do you know when to have your birthday party?” Isabelle demanded, standing stock-still in amazement. She’d never known anyone who didn’t know when their own birthday was.

  “Oh, we don’t bother with birthday parties,” Frannie said with a little smile on her face. Her eyes were as round as an owl’s and as wise. “Birthdays cost money, after all. And, what’s more, my mother’s allergic to ice cream. Plus, it makes you fat. Once we had a cake, though.”

  On they went. Isabelle walked slowly, sorting out all this information.

  “I never heard of anyone who was allergic to ice cream,” she said at last.

  “If you ask me,” Frannie said, “there’s lots of things you never heard of. How come your brother said you were dead meat? That’s not very nice.”