by Susan Shreve
“Well, Zeke is a little boy who loves us and doesn’t need to hear the remarks you make about his parents.”
Her mother stood in the dark of the bedroom, backlit from the hall light, at a room’s distance from Franny’s bed looking very much like the outline of a tall scarecrow with her long legs and slender torso.
“I don’t like this attitude you’ve developed that your father and I are less than human. I hope you understand what I’m talking about?”
Franny didn’t reply.
“Of course you understand,” her mother said and shut the door.
That night Franny couldn’t sleep. She tried to read, turned out her light, and tried to fall asleep as she had always been able to do by staring at the church steeple outside her window until it faded to a pencil and disappeared. But finally she got up, took a shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and sat in bed with her writing notebook, filled with one and a half mystery novels written in longhand. She had an idea for a new book.
Astril and the Less-Than-Human Parents
Everyone in Granville where Astril Noggin lived considered Astril with her blonde curls and buck teeth and braces a perfectly normal twelve-year-old girl, a little smarter than the other girls in her class, except for the surprising fact that Astril’s parents, John and Ava Noggin, were donkeys. Regular-size thirty-five-year-old donkeys with gray hair and sticky-up ears and the stubborn bad temper of normal donkeys, except normal donkeys don’t usually give birth to little girls.
She fell asleep in the middle of the first page, waking early, the bedside lamp still on, the notebook with the beginning of her new story lying on her belly, her body still wrapped in a towel.
The problem, at least the present problem, was Aunt Estelle.
Estelle had decided to extend her stay in Easterbrook for all of March, including spring vacation, while her husband finished his business in India. Now afternoons when Franny came home from school — and she had not missed a day of school for weeks — Estelle and Margaret were in the kitchen, drinking chocolate or hot tea or coffee with foamy milk and giggling. Even Estelle, serious, cantankerous Aunt Estelle, would be giggling sometimes uncontrollably into her teacup.
“Come sit with us,” her mother would say when Franny walked into the kitchen after school.
But Franny didn’t want to sit with them.
She’d shrug, open the door to the fridge or the cookie jar or the cupboard where crackers and bread were kept, fill the pocket of her winter jacket with treats, and go upstairs to her room. Sometimes she called Boots from the telephone in her mother’s workroom and they would talk almost but not quite the way they used to talk before the Valentine’s Dance.
“I guess you don’t like Aunt Estelle either,” Zeke said one of the afternoons when he came in her room with his cars, zooming them across the carpet while she was trying to write.
“Not particularly.”
“Because she’s mean to you?”
“Because she’s stupid,” Franny said, happy with her choice of words. Stupid was not a word they were allowed to say in the Hall house and Zeke looked up at Franny with admiration.
“I don’t like her either,” Zeke added.
It was comforting that Zeke copied her feelings so she always had company in her sorrows.
“It’s not that I dislike Estelle exactly. After all, she is our aunt,” Franny said. “I just don’t want to see her every day when I come home from school.”
“Me neither,” Zeke said, crawling up on her bed with his cars.
It was hard for Franny to hear the happiness between her mother and Aunt Estelle rolling out of the kitchen on the dark, late winter afternoons when she came home — Estelle sitting in the same blue straight-back chair where Franny used to sit with her mother after school.
Just the sound of their cheerful, chattering voices washed a wave of sadness across her afternoon.
It had been almost three weeks since the letter to Signor Ferragamo left in the post for Italy and though Franny did not expect a letter back, she was restless for news.
In the afternoon, walking home from school alone since she and Eleanor — with whom she had usually walked — were no longer best friends, she imagined the scene of excitement at the letter’s arrival in the morning mail. She’d round the corner by the Episcopal Church and Margaret Hall would be waving from the front porch, a letter in her hand.
In Franny’s daydreams, Aunt Estelle had returned to New York City with no plans in the future to come back to Easterbrook. Franny had her mother to herself again. She would follow Margaret Hall to the kitchen and they’d sit at the table together, drinking hot chocolate and reading the letter from Ferragamo.
“Signor Ferragamo says COME so we’ll go,” her mother would say. “Think of it, Franny! You’ll be the only girl in Easterbrook EVER to go to Italy.”
“When will we go?” she’d ask.
“We’ll go immediately. Next week.”
And every time she replayed the scene in her busy mind, Italy seemed more possible, an imagined tomorrow taking over the tedium of her daily life.
On the last day of school before Easter vacation, Franny ran into Mikey Houston on his bike coming from the hospital where his sister was being treated for her accident. He came to a screeching stop.
“So I hear from Eleanor that you’re going to Italy for Easter break,” he said.
“I am,” Franny said, slinging her book bag over her shoulder.
“That’s really neat,” Mikey said. “You’ll probably be the first kid in Easterbrook to meet the Pope.”
“I’m not going to meet the Pope.”
“That’s all I know about Italy. My mom only thinks about the Pope,” Mikey said.
“I don’t know the Pope but in Florence there’s a man who makes shoes for crippled girls. So!” She shrugged. “That’s why I’m going to Italy.”
Mikey Houston flushed bright red and hopped back up on his bike.
“See you,” he called, standing up on the pedals, his head down. “I’m late getting home.” And his tires squeaked as he went around the corner.
Franny turned at College Street. Way down the block at the other end of Scioto Street where her uncle and aunt lived, she thought she saw her cousin Eleanor in a bright green coat. Probably Mikey Houston was going to screech up next to her, slip off his bike, and tell Eleanor Hall about Franny’s crippled feet. She hated Mikey Houston.
Don’t ever say hate, her mother had told her. It’s a dangerous word. Terrible things happen when we hate.
So! She hated Mikey Houston and Eleanor Hall too.
Estelle and Margaret were in the kitchen as usual when Franny walked through the back door, hanging up her coat, picking up Pickle who was lying in the sun.
“Hi, darling,” her mother said. “Aunt Estelle and I were talking about the letter to Signor Ferragamo.”
“Is that all you talk about?”
“We have a lot of things we talk about that don’t concern your feet, missy,” Aunt Estelle said.
Franny opened the cookie jar. She had been eating way too many cookies lately, a small belly full of cookies making her jeans too tight. But she wanted one now.
Empty.
“Mama!”
“I’m so sorry, darling. I’ll pick up some chocolate chips at the grocer later and make them tonight.”
“Stop pandering to her, Margaret,” Estelle said. “She doesn’t even speak to you half the time.”
She did speak to her mother, Franny thought. And she would talk to her all the time as she used to do if Estelle weren’t sitting in the kitchen all day and all night taking up the oxygen.
She took out a carton of milk and poured Hershey’s chocolate syrup into the bottom of a glass.
“If Francine wants to suffer, that’s her choice,” Estelle said. “She’ll suffer whether she has cookies or not.”
“I’m not suffering,” Franny said, taking a box of crackers out of the cupboard, spreading them with peanut
butter and marshmallow, making little sandwiches, thinking of suffering.
Was she suffering? Franny wondered. Was she feeling sorry for herself?
Don’t feel sorry for yourself, darling, her mother had said to her recently. It’s a waste of time.
“We were talking about Italy, darling,” her mother was saying in that way she had of ignoring her sister’s criticism as if she had not even heard it. “I have this bee in my bonnet.”
“You ought to get rid of it,” Estelle said.
“I have my fingers crossed that we’re going to hear from Signor Ferragamo soon, maybe in time to go to Italy for the week after Easter.”
“This isn’t useful, Margaret,” Estelle said. “Franny?”
But Franny was already out the kitchen door and headed up the wide oak stairway with carved banisters and a spread of light through the stained-glass window at the landing, striping the stairs yellow and blue.
She sat on her bed, her legs crossed, the crackers in her lap, thinking of Mikey Houston. Certainly he would go straight home to tell his mom what Franny had said about her crippled feet.
After the ten o’clock Mass, Mikey’s mom would report to everyone at coffee and donuts. The dreadful Aunt Gabbie would call Margaret Hall who would tell Dr. Henry Hall, and Franny would be required to apologize for being rude.
But it wasn’t rude what she had said to Mikey Houston. It was the truth and he had been embarrassed to hear it, the way even her friends in elementary school had been embarrassed to mention Franny’s crippled feet, sneaking a sideways glance at her, pretending as she had pretended, as her mother had insisted she pretend, that she was a perfectly normal, especially cheerful girl.
Besides, Franny thought, she certainly couldn’t depend on Salvatore Ferragamo’s letter inviting her to Florence. He probably wouldn’t write back. When the letter from Margaret Hall arrived in Florence, Signor Ferragamo would glance at the return address, see that it came from Easterbrook, Ohio, and toss it in the wastebasket with the rest of the trash.
She lay down on her bed, her feet on the wall, staring at the ceiling. Of course she was feeling sorry for herself.
Zeke came home from school with chicken pox in little red blotches on his belly and arms. Just like Mikey Houston’s pimples without the ooze.
“I don’t have to go to school for two weeks,” he said, walking into Franny’s bedroom, where she lay on her stomach writing her book about Astril.
“Lucky you!”
“That’s what Mama says. I’ll get to do puzzles and make cookies and play cars all day with Mama and Aunt Estelle.”
“The thing is, Zekey, it doesn’t make a lot of difference to have chicken pox now because it’s going to be spring vacation and we’ll be out of school anyway.” She sat up on her bed. “Maybe you can come to Italy with us.”
“But I didn’t think you wanted to go to Italy.” “I didn’t,” Franny said, moving over so Zeke and his cars could join her on the bed. “And I changed my mind.”
But nothing happened spring vacation. Dr. Henry Hall spent every day and late into the evening at the hospital. Zeke’s chicken pox got worse and then better and he stayed at home, mostly in the kitchen playing board games with his mother and Aunt Estelle. Estelle made no plans at all to go back to New York City.
“Is she moving in with us?” Franny asked her mother.
“No, but Uncle Douglas won’t be home until the middle of April and she’s having such a good time she’s decided to stay,” Margaret Hall said. “Why?”
“Because it doesn’t even feel like our house any longer.”
Most of spring vacation, Franny stayed in her room working on her new book. She made no plans to see her friends or go to the movies or hang out at the soda shop. Certainly she had no intention of going to the Sock Hop on the last Saturday of vacation.
No one, including her mother, even bothered to ask her if she was interested in going to the dance.
On the Saturday before Easter, a day Franny had dedicated to dyeing Easter eggs, drying them on towels on the kitchen table for the Easter Bunny in whom Zeke still had some faith, Mikey Houston’s mother called.
Franny was late waking up, late for blueberry pancakes and bacon and hot chocolate. By the time she padded barefoot into the kitchen with a copy of “Astril,” her mother was on the telephone speaking to Mikey Houston’s mom.
“Thank you for letting me know,” Margaret was saying as Franny came into the kitchen in her pajamas. “Of course Mikey was upset.”
“Franny!” She replaced the receiver and sat down, her hands folded on the kitchen table. “What did you tell Mikey about Italy?”
“I told him the truth.”
“But it upset him, darling,” she said. “It made him uncomfortable and you never used to make your friends uncomfortable.”
“So?”
“Aunt Gabbie called last night,” her mother went on.
“I don’t particularly like Aunt Gabbie so it doesn’t matter to me what she says,” Franny said.
She took a blueberry pancake from the plate and walked out the back door without a coat.
It was very cold, too cold to be walking around in flannel pajamas and slippers, but Franny sat down on the front step of the wraparound porch and hugged her knees to her chest against the bitter chill.
At St. James, choir practice for Easter Sunday was in full swing. Down the street, Mr. Goodly was sweeping the walk in front of his house and next door, Mr. Von Vleck, the mailman, was delivering mail to the Buckleys.
“What are you doing outside in your pajamas in this weather, Franny Hall?” Mr. Von Vleck asked, coming up the walk with a stack of mail held together in a rubber band in his hand. “Freezing to death is what you’re doing!”
He gave her the mail.
“Two letters with foreign stamps and some bills,” he said. “End of the month so the bills come.”
“Thank you,” Franny said pleasantly, putting the letters in her lap.
Her mother disliked the way the mailmen in Easterbrook checked the letters and let a person know what was in the mail before the person got to see for herself.
“Hope there’s good news and someone sent you a dollar,” Mr. Von Vleck said, coming down the steps.
Franny watched him walk down the path, past the Episcopal church, and across the street before she took off the rubber band and looked through the mail for herself.
There were bills as Mr. Von Vleck had said and a letter to her mother from her aunt Ele in Copenhagen and a postcard for Zeke from his friend Peter who had moved to Cleveland. Hi, Zeke. I got a new cocker spaniel called Woof. I have two friends at my new school. Love, Peter. There was a letter for Estelle from New York City and in the middle of all the bills, a thin letter postmarked Firenze, Italia.
The paper was crispy and so thin that Franny could fold it easily in fourths and stick it in the pocket of her pajama top, which she did. She put the rest of the mail in the mailbox on the front porch and walked around the house to the back door, through the door to the kitchen where her family, including Aunt Estelle who had come down to breakfast in her green terry-cloth robe and matching slippers, was finishing the blueberry pancakes.
“Ready for pancakes?” her mother asked brightly.
Franny picked up “Astril and the Less-than-Human Parents” and put the notebook under her arm.
“I’m not particularly hungry,” she said, walking through the kitchen and up the back stairs to her bedroom.
BECOMING
Franny locked the bedroom door and climbed on her bed next to Pickle who was sleeping on her pillow, stretched out on his back, his paws over his ears.
Outside it was as cold and gray and gloomy as winter. Tomorrow the usual Easter egg hunts in the houses of Easterbrook would take place in the living rooms and dining rooms, the thermostats pushed up to seventy-five degrees. The pastel dresses passing by the Halls’ house to St. James Episcopal Easter services would be covered by winter coats, some with v
elvet collars and leggings. The fathers would be wearing hats, the mothers gloves. Signs of spring were frozen mid-bloom on the yellow forsythia and the lavender crocuses, stunned and weepy in the front garden.
Just the day before, after school, while her mother was at the dentist with Zeke, the house empty, Franny had tried on a new pair of shoes, red leather with an open toe, which her mother had bought in Cleveland, shopping with Aunt Estelle. She sat at her mother’s dressing table, put on the shoes, crossed her legs, and opened the drawer where Margaret Hall kept her makeup, applying rouge and powder, black mascara, blue eye shadow. She had crossed her right leg over her left so the especially skinny left leg was concealed and her feet, even open-toed, looked almost normal. She put on one of her mother’s dresses with a circle skirt and tight waist. In the full-length mirror on the door, she had a sudden rush of pleasure.
There were two sheets of thin, crisp paper in the envelope from Italy, one handwritten in black ink in Italian, the second typed in English. She opened them on the quilt, pressing the paper flat.
Dear Margaret Hall,
It is my pleasure to offer to make your daughter’s shoes from a last which I will create, fitting it exactly to her feet. For this, of course, you will make the trip to Firenze to my shop. I cannot assist with the cost of travel but will make this last without a charge. The shoes of course will be at a price to be determined. If this is an agreeable solution, please write to me again.
Yours truly,
Salvatore Ferragamo
Franny refolded the letter and put it in the top dresser drawer at the bottom under her sweaters.
She had been wrong. Aunt Estelle had been wrong. Only her mother, her stubborn, determined, optimistic mother, had known that Signor Ferragamo would write back with a plan.
When Zeke came into Franny’s room with a basket of eggs to decorate for Easter, she was leaning against the quilted headboard of her bed, looking out the window at the heavy gray air, at the bare trees and the empty back porch of the Buckleys’ house next door, weighted with winter sadness.
“I have brought eggs,” Zeke said.