The Rising Star of Rusty Nail

by Lesley M. M. Blume

  Franny shook out the sheet. Sandy moaned when she saw it, and Runty guffawed, spraying them with spittle. Franny sighed and pulled the sheet over her head, tugging it this way and that until the holes were over her eyes. Struggling not to trip, she followed Sandy and Runty into the gym.

  The room was packed with teachers, parents, and dozens of kids in costumes: little witches, scarecrows, and, of course, farmers. Sandy, Runty, and Franny took their places with the other fifth graders and waited for their turn to parade around the gym. Franny could hear people snickering at her sheet.

  “This is what we’ll do,” whispered Sandy. “I’ll make sure that we’re in line right behind her. When we’re walking around, I’ll pretend to trip on Franny’s hem, and, Runty—you pretend to trip over me. Then we’ll send the ketchup flying! Got it?”

  “I don’t know if we should do this,” Franny said uneasily. “We’re going to get in a whole lot of trouble.”

  Sandy’s face grew red. “Look here, Franny,” she fumed. “We’re doing this for you. After all, Prancy is your number one enemy. Now—are you in or are you out?”

  Franny looked at Nancy Orilee prancing around at the head of the line, saying over and over again: “I’m the beautiful sugarplum fairy! The star of The Nutcracker!” and then, to an admiring first grader: “Don’t touch my wings, or else.” It would serve her right to be embarrassed in front of all these people, Franny reasoned.

  But then she saw her parents come into the gym and wave at her. Franny’s heart sank. Wes would be so disappointed in her if she got in trouble again. Who knew—he might even get mad enough to ground her from going to Olga’s house, and the Russian would never take her back if Franny abruptly stopped coming. Their deal already seemed tenuous enough. When she thought about it this way, Franny made up her mind. She turned back to Sandy.

  “You guys do it,” Franny said. “I can’t.”

  Sandy glared at her and Franny’s knees went weak. She opened her mouth to apologize—but before she could, Sandy reached out and snatched the bottle away from Franny. Then she grabbed Runty by the elbow, and the two of them marched up to the front of the line and stood right behind Nancy.

  Then Mr. Moody called out over the crowd: “Miss Hamm! Get your troops in order!”

  At that moment, the school band started playing a marching song. Amidst the blatting trombones and crashing cymbals, all of the parents and kids in the gym clapped. Even Mayor Reverend Jerry was there, standing next to Mr. Moody and waiting to give out a prize for the best costume.

  The fifth-grade mob lurched forward, marching in time to the music. Gretchen Beasley, appropriately dressed as a baby, shuffled along in front of Franny. It took all of Franny’s concentration just to keep the cut-out eyeholes in the right place. She had only gone about twenty feet when someone let out a bloodcurdling scream on the other side of the gym.

  “My costume!” shrieked Nancy Orilee. “Sandy and Runty ruined my beautiful costume!”

  She burst into angry sobs. Franny yanked the sheet over her head and saw Miss Hamm, Mr. Moody, and Mrs. Orilee running to the aid of the victim. A pulpy stream of ketchup dripped from her wings and leotard onto the floor. All of the kids in the gym shrieked with laughter. “Serves ya right!” yelled Harold Hrapp before his mother stepped in and shushed him.

  “It was an accident!” shouted Sandy. “I tripped on my cape and Runty fell right over me, and then the ketchup just went flyin’ everywhere!”

  Utterly unconvinced, Mr. Moody clapped his hand down on Sandy’s shoulder and pushed her toward the gym exit. “Get over here, Mr. Knutson,” he said to Runty.

  Runty grunted and spat out his fangs. “Aw, man,” he said as he galumphed out of the gym.

  A fleet of mothers gathered around Nancy, wiping her off and cooing. Mayor Reverend Jerry shouted: “Keep on movin’, fifth graders! ’Round the gym you go!” And all of the parents clapped and cheered. Franny put her sheet back on and scurried forward.

  After every grade had trucked around in a big circle, the kids ran outside to start their trick-or-treating. However, since Franny’s regular Halloween partner had been imprisoned in Mr. Moody’s office, she had no one to go with. She stood awkwardly with her parents at the gym exit.

  Lorraine was horrified by Sandy’s prank.

  “I just don’t understand what gets into that girl sometimes,” she said. “She gets wilder all the time.”

  “Maybe she feels outshone or something,” Wes said, and looked down at Franny. “Looks to me like she wants attention.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Franny.

  “Well, you’ve been getting a lot of attention yourself lately,” said Wes. “With your big concert and everything. Maybe Sandy Anne feels jealous that you stand out so much and she doesn’t—so she’s acting out.”

  This didn’t make a lot of sense to Franny. “But she doesn’t even play the piano,” she objected. “She told me herself that all she wants is to be a regular girl and fool around and stuff.”

  “People are funny that way,” Wes said. “They say one thing and feel another, sometimes without even knowing it. I’m proud of you for staying out of trouble tonight,” he added. “I’m willing to bet that you were real tempted to throw a little ketchup on Nancy yourself, Mozart.”

  Franny looked away, embarrassed. The three of them walked home past all of the brightly lit houses of Rusty Nail. Kids ran from front door to front door, tugging paper bags and pails of candy loot along with them. Franny wished she could join in as well, but the prospect of trick-or-treating alone—or worse, escorted by her parents—was too mortifying.

  They walked past Charlie and Olga’s house. The lights downstairs had all been turned off, and the house seemed vacant. Franny noticed that the Russian had thoughtfully left a basket of apples on the front porch for trick-ortreaters. But every time kids reached her lawn, their parents abruptly steered them away.

  When Franny walked past the house again the next morning, the basket still sat there, its contents untouched. To her shock, she saw that someone had scrawled, in red chalk, on the sidewalk in front of the house:

  Commie—Go home!

  Fortunately, however, it rained that morning, and the ugly words were washed away by lunchtime.

  For the next week, Franny kept a grueling schedule that went roughly like this:

  7 a.m.: Get up and get ready for school

  8 a.m.–2:45 p.m.: School

  3 p.m.–5:30 p.m.: Work at Olga’s house

  6 p.m.–7 p.m.: Dinner at home

  7 p.m.–8 p.m.: Homework

  8 p.m.–9:30 p.m.: Practice piano

  On Friday morning, Lorraine had to wake Franny up three times before the girl got out of bed. Franny sleepily ate a bowl of Lorraine’s gravelly oatmeal as her mother watched her with concern.

  “How much longer are you going to work for Mrs. Koenig after school?” Lorraine asked. All week, Franny had been shelving Olga’s music books and unpacking the other boxes.

  “She doesn’t like to be called ’Mrs. Koenig,’ ” said Franny.

  “What?” said Lorraine. “What does she like to be called, then?”

  Franny blearily shoved another spoonful of soggy cereal into her mouth. “Madame Malenkov,” she reported.

  “Oh,” said Lorraine. “That’s right. How long did she and your dad agree that you’d work for her?”

  “We didn’t say,” Franny said dully. “As long as I’m a good helper, she’ll give me a lesson at the end of every week.”

  “Oh,” said Lorraine again. “What are you working on in the lessons?”

  “She taught me how a piano works, and about my hands,” Franny said. “And she threw away my Bach books. She hates Bach, so we’re learning Beethoven this week.”

  “She threw away your books?” exclaimed Lorraine. “How presumptuous! Maybe we should ask Mrs. Staudt to take you back.”

  “I don’t want to go back to Mrs. Staudt!” cried Franny. “Then I’ll be right back where I star
ted.” Even as she said this, she thought about her skimpy first lesson with Olga and wondered how much progress she was actually making.

  “Hmph,” said Lorraine, unconvinced. “Well, at the very least, I think you should tell her that you need to come home earlier each day. I don’t think it’s healthy for a girl your age to work so hard.”

  “Hard work never hurt anyone,” grumbled Wes as he staggered into the kitchen, his hair sticking up everywhere. He was always terribly crabby in the morning.

  “I’ll tell her, okay?” Franny promised, feeling guilty since she had no intention of telling the Russian any such thing.

  Lorraine looked out the window. “I just hope these lessons are worth all of this trouble in the end,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

  “Of course they will be,” said Wes, fumbling with the coffeepot.

  Lorraine looked down at Franny. Picking up her daughter’s hand, she squeezed each slender finger protectively.

  “I hope so, sweetheart,” she said after a minute, and kissed Franny’s forehead.

  And thus reassured, Franny collected her backpack and music book and walked to school.

  Franny went to Olga’s that afternoon after school, as usual. The Russian opened the door right away.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “I have much for you to do today.” Although her back was still tender, she had stopped wearing her brace a few days earlier, and her movements were much more graceful.

  Franny walked into the foyer. “Madame Malenkov, it’s Friday,” she said. “Aren’t I supposed to get my lesson today? I worked all week on opening the boxes and stuff, and I’ve been practicing the Beethoven real hard.”

  “You mean ’I’ve been practicing very hard,’ ” Olga corrected her, walking into the parlor. “Try not to sound like a peasant, Dyevushka.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Franny. “So do I get my lesson?”

  “All right—I give up,” said Olga, throwing up her hands in mock surrender. “I will listen to your Beethoven, such as it is.”

  Franny ran into the parlor room, practically threw herself onto the piano bench, and propped her music book up in front of her. Olga nodded, and Franny began playing the pieces she’d been practicing all week.

  Instead of falling asleep like Mrs. Staudt, Olga stood over Franny and watched her every move, giving rapid-fire commands: “Stop! Do that phrase again! Bring your thumb under your hand like so, and yes! Much better fingering!” “This says forte, so play it louder!” “Now it is staccato—so pluck the keys! The sound must be crisp and fast—like a machine gun! Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!” “And now it’s legato—yes, very good! It must be smooth, like a stream of water!” And so on and so forth.

  As Franny scrambled to keep up, she thought about her first lesson and imagined the ligaments and muscles in her hands working hard and getting stronger, and the hammers striking the tensed strings inside the belly of the mighty piano. She could hardly believe that so much effort and machinery went into producing the ephemeral notes that shimmered in the air—and then disappeared forever.

  By the time they finished the lesson, exhaustion filled her arms. She looked at a clock on the shelves and realized with shock that the lesson had lasted nearly an hour! She could hardly believe that Olga had given her so much time. Clearly, she was rising in her teacher’s estimation.

  Olga picked out another music book from her collection and leafed through it to select Franny’s next piece.

  “This is the one I want you to learn for next week,” she said, handing the score over to Franny. “And practice the Beethoven some more too. And so you know: Charles is coming back tomorrow, but I would still like you to come. In other words, I am prepared to extend our arrangement.”

  Franny’s face flushed with pride. “Okay,” she said almost shyly.

  “Now can you please clean up the kitchen for me before you go?” Olga asked. “I’m going to lie down upstairs. My back feels like it has pins and needles in it.”

  Franny ran down the hallway, filled with the satisfaction that comes with getting a good grade or an award. Things were finally going her way. She washed dishes and dried them, humming bits of the Beethoven piece they’d just practiced and daydreaming about playing it in front of a big audience. When the phone on the wall rang, she picked it up automatically.

  “Hello?”

  There was a long pause, and then a deep voice on the other end said: “Charles Koenig, please.”

  “He’s not here,” said Franny, putting a dish into the cupboard.

  “Can you tell me if there is an Olga Malenkov there?” the man asked.

  “Sure, I’ll get her,” Franny said, and then her heart froze. Olga had told her to never, ever answer the phone, and in her reverie, Franny had completely forgotten her instructions.

  Her hands trembled as she tried to figure out what to do. Fetching Olga, or even telling her that she’d broken one of the cardinal rules, would clearly mean the end of the lessons. With a sense of dread, Franny realized that her only option was to tell another lie. She cupped her hand over the receiver for a minute, and then worked up her courage to talk again.

  “I was wrong; she’s not here either,” whispered Franny, praying that Olga hadn’t heard the phone ring.

  “Is that so,” said the man. “Yes,” managed Franny, her voice wavering. “She went out.”

  “Well, tell her that we’ll be in touch,” the caller said.

  “Who is this?” asked Franny.

  But the man hung up without another word.

  Not a sound came from upstairs. Olga must have fallen asleep. Thanking her lucky stars, Franny quickly put the dishes away and ran all the way home.

  On a Sunday afternoon several weeks later, Franny lay on the living-room couch listening to the radio when a loud crash came from the kitchen. She scurried in and found Lorraine kneeling over an enormous blob of mashed potatoes filled with ceramic shards from the broken casserole dish.

  “Ohhh,” wailed Lorraine. “I don’t have time to run out and get more potatoes, and Aunt Lillian and Uncle Gustave are coming over for supper. Franny, if I give you some money, can you run down to the store for me?”

  Franny ambled down to old Hans Zimmerman’s grocery store, where she promptly wasted a good chunk of time loitering around the meager newspaper and candy section. She pulled a few dusty copies of Life magazine from earlier that year out from the creaky magazine rack. Hans ordered in shipments of glossy magazines every month, but sometimes they turned up and sometimes they didn’t. This was just as well, for most of the folks around town didn’t read high-end literature like Life. The Old Farmer’s Almanack was usually as fancy as it got.

  Franny lazily leafed through a few of the magazines. In the middle of the third one, she saw an article titled:

  Russia after Stalin

  Ignoring the text, Franny instead looked at the pictures of buildings with roofs shaped like huge onions, soldier parades, and a man with a big mustache lying on a tomb. She was about to stuff the magazine back in the rack when a headline caught her attention:

  Genius, Glory, and Tragedy: The Saga of Pianist Olga Malenkov

  Franny almost dropped the magazine from surprise. She could hardly believe that Olga, Rusty Nail’s very own resident Commie, was splashed across the pages of an important magazine! A couple of pictures of her teacher accompanied the article. The first one showed the Russian dressed in a lavish gown, standing on a stage bowing to an audience of hundreds. The second was a disturbing, official-looking head shot in which Olga gave a penetrating stare into the camera.

  Franny sat down behind one of the fruit stands, where Hans wouldn’t see her, and scoured the article. At first, the magazine talked about what a great pianist Olga was (nothing she hadn’t heard over and over again from Olga herself)—and then it got interesting:

  Miss Malenkov was born an only child to an aristocratic family in 1924, the same year Lenin died and Stalin rose to power. As anti-Communists
and loyalists to the czar, her parents, Hertzog (Duke) Alexander Malenkov and his wife, Sofia, had been in hiding in the Russian countryside for five years. When Stalin began his infamous purges of his enemies in 1937, the duke and duchess sent the thirteen-year-old girl on a daring escape out of the country, carrying forged travel documents and money sealed in a violin.

  So Sandy had been right about Olga smuggling things around in her violin! The article continued:

  Following her terrifying journey, which took her through Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, Miss Malenkov boarded a series of ships that ultimately took her to New York City. There she was taken in by distant relatives who had defected from Russia in 1917. A talented pianist, she entered the prestigious Juilliard School and began performing publicly at the age of fourteen. She never saw her parents again.

  Just then, before Franny could read any further, the bell on the front door tinkled and a couple of pairs of heels clicked officiously in.

  “Hi there, Hans—d’you mind if we hang one of these flyers up in your window?”

  It was just that busybody Norma Smitty. Still keeping a low profile, Franny peered around the corner of the shelves to see what the woman was up to. Melba stood next to her with a sheath of handwritten notices in her arms.

  “What is it?” asked Hans, creakily leaning forward to examine the notices.

  “Oh, nothin’ really,” said Melba. “It’s just about a new club that we’re formin’ for the ladies in town. It’s called the W-O-R-N-A-T-C-T.”

  “That’s a real long name,” said Hans, impressed. “What’s it stand fer?”

  “Women of Rusty Nail Against the Commie Threat,” Norma announced proudly. “Or the Communist Threat, if you wanna be formal about things. Anyway, we’re gonna have a meetin’ every Sunday in the back room of the church. We all have to do our part, you know.”