Cobwebs

by Karen Romano Young

  The minestrone heated up, and Rachel served it, with bread on the side. But Nancy knew the voice on the phone was the same voice that had come out of the doorbell speaker at the house on the sycamore street where Grandpa Joke had gone after he lost big at OTB. Granny Tina put down her soup spoon and crossed her arms. “Giacomo,” she said. “We have to talk.”

  At this Grandpa Joke looked more defeated than the loss of any amount of money could have made him. “There is nothing to say, Celestine,” he said.

  “She’s not going,” Rachel said. “You can go, but why should Mama? It’s asking too much.”

  “Granny wants to go,” said Nancy, wondering where it was all leading.

  “Nancy!” Rachel began to scold her daughter, then turned to her father instead. “I’ve had it with these house calls,” she complained. “It takes you an hour by the time you’ve driven down there, found the house, seen the patient, had a cup of coffee to be polite.”

  “What would you have us do?” Granny thundered. “Ignore the call? Send her to the emergency room?”

  “Well, what would happen if—”

  Grandpa Joke let out a big sad sigh, almost like crying. “Fact is, it’s taking too much out of her, Rachel.”

  “What is?” asked Nancy.

  Everyone shook their heads at her.

  “It is not,” said Granny.

  “I know,” Rachel answered Grandpa Joke.

  “If you could—” Grandpa leaned on the table, his eyes hard on Rachel.

  Rachel was pleading. “Papa—”

  “See, she won’t,” said Granny shortly.

  “She’s just not going to yet.” Ned’s hand pressed Rachel’s shoulder. Was he comforting her? Or holding her back?

  Nancy went and stood between her grandparents. She laid a hand on Grandpa Joke’s arm. “I’m coming,” she said. “I’m helping with Granny as usual. And if you want to tell me what’s going on, it’s up to you.”

  Silence. Nobody looked at anybody else. Nancy felt they were all avoiding looking at her.

  “Well, I’m going,” Granny announced.

  “Just this one more time,” said Grandpa darkly.

  Granny Tina took a deep breath. “Rachel,” she said, “get me my canes, will you, dear?”

  Rachel unhooked the canes from the kitchen towel rack. She and Nancy helped Granny descend the curving stairs to the stoop, one on each side of her.

  Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, with the baby Jesus on his shoulder, smiled from his niche beside the front door. He belonged to the landlady, who lived on the parlor floor. They were not Catholics, although Grandpa Joke used to be, the same way Granny Tina used to be Scots Presbyterian, back in West Virginia. Now they were none of them anything, really, unless you counted Arachnids, which was more of an ethnic thing. Nonetheless they each had their ritual sayings upon leaving the house.

  “Saints preserve us,” said Grandpa.

  “Amen,” said Nancy.

  Granny said a West Virginia “Forevermore.”

  Rachel, who wasn’t leaving, said nothing. She stood in her red socks, rubbing Saint Christopher’s toe with one finger as she saw them off.

  11

  In the car Grandpa Joke broke the silence to say, “Let’s get ice cream when this is over. Häagen-Dazs.”

  Nancy knew it was a peace offering.

  “I second the motion,” said Granny.

  “Chocolate chocolate chip,” Nancy said.

  “Make it two of ’em,” Grandpa Joke said.

  “Rum raisin for me,” said Granny.

  “You’re not telling me everything,” said Nancy. “Why not?”

  “Not now, Nancy,” said Grandpa Joke. The tilt of Granny’s head revealed nothing. Well, Nancy would soon get her alone.

  Grandpa Joke parked in front of the house on the curved street, slammed the car door, climbed the steps, and buzzed. A small light flickered on above the front door. He disappeared inside.

  Nancy knew that her role was to wait for a sign from him to bring Granny up to the door, but she didn’t want to. Impulsively she leaned forward from the back seat and hugged her grandmother, her cheek against Granny’s leathery-soft one.

  “Too bad I can’t drive yet,” she said. “Then I could drive us to Häagen-Dazs while we wait for Grandpa.”

  Had Granny been asleep up there in the front seat? She startled as though she had been, and her eyes darted wildly, taking in the trees and the house, dark except for one inside light. Nancy sensed Granny’s nervousness, so bright around her it almost glittered.

  “But he needs me inside, don’t you realize that, girl?”

  “Why?”

  Granny sat straight up, staring into Nancy’s eyes. “Nothing!” she snapped.

  It wasn’t even the right word, Nancy thought. Granny had definitely lost the thread. “Don’t worry,” she told her grandmother. She sat back, not wanting Granny to notice how her heart was thumping, glad for the dark that hid her face. Glad for her knitting, too, and for her nonesuch pattern that didn’t depend on light, because it didn’t matter which color she chose, or because whatever color she chose was right. At the moment she didn’t care which of those ideas was true; she was just glad to have work to do with her hands.

  She hoped Granny wouldn’t start telling her when-I-was-young experiences; lately whenever that happened Nancy felt like running, itchy and antsy and dark. It disturbed her to feel so cranky and closed in; she used to like hearing that stuff. Tell me what I need to know! she thought at her grandmother.

  “Where’s Giacomo, Nancy love?” Was she awake, or sleep talking, or what?

  “He only just went in, Granny. He’ll be a little while.”

  Once this winter when Nancy had spent the night, Annette had sleep talked about the lunch table at school. “He only likes Twinkies!” she said. “Yodels taste stale.” Nancy had made fun of her for the next week, asking her who the Twinkie liker was. This, now, Granny saying strange things, reminded her of Annette’s sleep talking.

  Granny said, “You want driving lessons?” What next? But then came Granny’s story-telling voice, all calm and warm. “Honey bear, we’ll sit here and rest and I’ll tell you about driving lessons.”

  Grrr. Nancy tucked one foot under her, to hold herself still, and tried to settle back, knitting her knots, her eyes on the dark face of the house where Grandpa was doctoring.

  I was sitting at the dinner table waiting for George to pass the potatoes, but he wouldn’t. Ever since Pa had let him drive home from church that morning, George had hardly spoken to me.

  “There is more than one way of being a spider, Nancy,” Granny interrupted herself to say.

  “Huh?”

  “Wake up back there. I’m trying to tell you something.”

  “I’m awake,” said Nancy tolerantly. “Tell me.”

  But Granny just went on with her story.

  I could see George meant to hog the mashed potatoes. I leaned my elbows on the edge of the table, and said, “Pass the potatoes, George.”

  Well, George was being rude, too, ignoring me!

  But it was me who got the cold stony stare from Mama, who had frozen in the doorway, the basket of biscuits in her hand.

  Pa, at the head of the table, stuck his tongue in his cheek and looked me over. “Pass the potatoes, George, what?”

  “Please,” I said, but it was too late.

  Pa slammed his fist on the table so hard the dishes hopped. “You can eat your potatoes and the rest of your supper in the barn, Celestine. Come back to this table when you learn some manners.”

  My sister Josie made a noise, but shut her mouth fast when Pa looked her way. I bolted from the room with my plate in two hands, the fork tucked underneath. I never did get any potatoes.

  I crossed the yard in the hot sun, kicked off my shoes. (Mama wouldn’t like that, but I didn’t care.) I climbed the loft ladder with my plate and ate my dinner. I sat staring out the high window at the blue mountains
, eating food that tasted like watery clay. I pictured my brothers and sisters eating inside, more polite than usual, with little halos, and my tears got all mixed up with my ham and carrots.

  It’s the way she tells it, thought Nancy. It’s almost as if she handed me down this memory along with high cheekbones and the knitting gene. Yeah, well, what if I don’t want it?

  Why shouldn’t she want it? It was just a picture, just words. She made herself breathe. She could see the West Virginia evening, see Granny’s green-and-white-checked dress. “And then Josie came with the pie,” she said.

  “That dear love Josie,” Granny said, sighing. Nancy was just a hair away from being in that loft herself. “But, oh, it was a day of reckoning in more ways than one.”

  The front door light of the house where Grandpa was doctoring switched on, and then abruptly off. Granny’s face was turned back toward Nancy, and she didn’t notice the light.

  “I spied on Papa when he was teaching George to drive,” said Josie. That was Josie, always so dramatic.

  “So what?” I said. “Anybody can drive a horse.”

  “But they were hiding up in the woods,” Josie said.

  “You can’t learn to drive in the woods,” I said through a mouthful of pie.

  Oy, thought Nancy, and sat on both her feet.

  The little fibber went right on with her crazy yarn. “George did, with no wagon. He ran along holding the reins.”

  George was a fast runner. For a second I almost believed in this cuckoo picture I had of him running along behind a horse, towed by the reins. “Which horse? Bunny or Bounce?”

  “Papa was the horse,” said Josie.

  “Now I know you’re lying,” I said.

  “Papa had the reins around him like this—” Josie used a hand to circle her chest and shoulders, the reins running back over the shoulders to George’s hands. “And he tied his hanky around his eyes and ran in and out of the trees. George had to run behind him with the reins. Papa made him use them to tell him which way to go.”

  “What, gee and haw?” I asked.

  “No. George wasn’t allowed to talk,” said Josie. “Papa said if George yanked his neck, he’d make him chop every tree he hit.”

  What a family, thought Nancy. How could he not hit trees?

  “How many did he hit?” I asked drily.

  Josie put up her thumb and finger and made an O.

  “Josephine. What actually did Papa tell George to do?”

  Josie’s eyes were big and dark. “To tell Papa what to do just by using his hands.”

  “Did he?”

  “That’s how it looked to me,” said Josie.

  That’s how it had looked to me, too, watching George drive Bump that morning. He was a natural.

  Granny stopped talking. Nancy thought, The End.

  “What about you?” Nancy asked Granny. “Didn’t you drive?”

  “Papa’d have let me drive earlier than sixteen if I could talk with my hands like George,” Granny said.

  “And did he?”

  She looked down at her hands, and closed them into soft fists. “I was gone by sixteen, came here to New York.”

  The sky behind the house had faded, and the front of the house stayed shadowed.

  “Granny?” Nancy asked. “Why’d you tell me that?”

  “To get you thinking, girl,” said Granny.

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Anything!” Granny sounded bleary again, as if she’d already forgotten the story, as if it had gone right out of her mind.

  Well, it has, thought Nancy. Now it’s in my mind, whether I like it or not: people running around blindfolded in the woods behind horses! She asked, “You don’t think I think?”

  “Don’t talk nonsense!” Granny sputtered.

  This was the night when Nancy started to feel as if Granny’s stories were unraveling and then raveling again, knitting themselves into a new shape, and that she, Nancy, was getting knitted right in. It was unsatisfying: she wanted to know why that man wanted the doctor, and instead she got driving lessons in the woods. Don’t talk nonsense.

  “What’s keeping Giacomo?” Granny asked indignantly. “I’ve been sitting too long. Go on up and tell him I’m ready.”

  Nancy and Granny usually waited in the car until Grandpa Joke came, but Nancy’s itchiness now increased so that she jumped out of her seat and through the car door, trailing knitting yarn. Why had the man turned the light off? Or had Grandpa done it? She wanted to get everything moving. She felt furious with Grandpa Joke for owing anyone enough money to get into this mess, but she was curious about him, too. What had Granny come to New York for? Just to marry Grandpa Joke? Nancy didn’t even think Granny had known Grandpa when she came to New York.

  She rolled her knitting around itself like a meatball and threw it through the open door onto the car seat. As if she were the grandmother and Granny were the grandchild, she said, “When you’re finished visiting, we’ll go get ice cream.” Granny didn’t say a word when Nancy slammed the door and walked to the house.

  Dion hid on the roof of his own house. His father, Niko, didn’t know he was up there, and his sister, Mina, didn’t know, and his mother, Rose, didn’t know, so they didn’t try to make him come inside. He slipped down the fire escape, though, got as near as he could to Rose’s window. There were people around his mother’s bed: his father’s back, broad shoulders in a blue shirt; the doctor’s back, his suit jacket over the chair nearby; and Mina’s eyes, at the window.

  He snapped back against the wall. Had Mina seen him? Someone was buzzing at the apartment door.

  Nancy hit the buzzer again. She stood in the dark and waited. When no one came, she tried knocking. After about twenty-five knocks the door opened a crack. No light came on.

  “Yes?” asked a polite voice, a man’s voice. Nancy saw no one in the darkness, but she recognized the voice—or the hair on the back of her neck did.

  She made her own voice strong and sure. “I need to talk to the doctor. Please tell him it’s Nancy.”

  The door banged shut. There were voices inside, whispering. She thumped the door with her fist. Furious. Curious. It opened. Grandpa Joke was there, nobody else. Nancy reached for his hand and he stepped out. The door shut behind him. “What’s taking so long?” she demanded. “Granny wants to come up.”

  “Hush, Nancy.” He gripped her shoulder. “I’m trying to guess if he saw your face. It’s bad enough he’ll know your voice.”

  Nancy didn’t ask who. She didn’t ask why. She said, “I’m bringing her.” Her voice shook now.

  “Stay hidden,” he said.

  She whirled and dashed down the steps to pull open Granny’s car door. Grandpa Joke came to walk on the other side of Granny and help her up the steps. The front door swung open onto a hallway with a dim light. Now there was another face in the doorway: a girl with long black hair. Josie, thought Nancy irrationally.

  “You come, too.” The girl took Nancy’s hand.

  Nancy stopped in the doorway and bent down. “What’s your name?”

  “Wilhemina,” the child said.

  “You have wings.” Red ones, made out of a clothes hanger or some other piece of wire, covered with sheer red material (maybe from a sexy nightie or ballet costume) and, on one wing, a sleek layer of red feathers. “How did you—”

  “Hot glue.” Wilhemina pulled Nancy into the hall and said, “You’ve got angels on your tights.”

  They were cupids, left over from Valentine’s Day. Rachel had sent Ned to buy them at Ricky’s. There was a commotion down the hall. “Where’s Mina?” called a woman’s voice. “I found the other bag of feathers—”

  “That’s my mom!” The girl seemed surprised. She turned and ran toward a door at the end of the hall.

  Just then a man came out. Nancy dropped back onto the stoop, eased the door almost shut. “Mina,” the man said, “Mama’s too sick to do more feathers now.”

  “It’s already taken a week to
do that one,” Mina said. Nancy thought she sounded sympathetic, not snotty.

  “Where’s your brother?”

  “How am I supposed to know? Nobody tells me anything.”

  Nancy could still feel Mina’s hand pulling her in. A warm hand. Good she wasn’t the sick one. Then who was? Her mother?

  Nancy stayed outside, hidden like a spider under a tree. There was not a soul on the sidewalk to see her. This is why we waited until dark. This is why they don’t tell me anything. So I won’t know.

  12

  The stories said it was hard to watch for the Angel if you didn’t know what you were looking for. It was easy to miss the Angel if you were looking somewhere else.

  Dion stood at the front edge of the roof of his house, watching Nancy go down the steps and disappear under the trees. Whether or not his father knew Nancy’s voice, Dion already knew it, recognized the girl from the Promenade in his bones and veins the instant he heard her on the front stoop.

  He sped down from the roof. From the shelter of an alley near the corner, he watched the doctor’s car drive away under the trees and around the curve, the old man and woman and the girl inside it. It was definitely the girl from the Promenade.

  Not that he hadn’t known she might be there. Hadn’t he seen her from this very roof, watching the doctor this afternoon? They had both heard the same intercom-to-stoop conversation. Dion wondered what it meant that the doctor hadn’t gone inside right then to see his mother. Money, that was it. The doctor hadn’t had enough money. Wasn’t that what his father had asked for on the intercom?

  Dion rubbed his sore hands together. Shouldn’t Dad be paying the doctor? Maybe there was some special medicine the doctor needed to buy; maybe he had come back this evening to bring it. But it had sounded like the doctor owed Niko money.

  Dion shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold wind on his hairless head. Why should there be a girl involved with the Wound Healer—and why should it be the girl he’d seen on the Promenade, the girl he’d been goofing on and flirting with from the playground dome? He had associated nothing so messy and scary with her. He’d thought she was more like the Angel of Brooklyn might be.