Cobwebs (6 page)

Were there any who had silk in their hands and dwelled on the rooftops at night? This was the thought
that pulled Nancy out from under her bedcovers to drag her reluctant self up and down the side of Ned’s new building:
Will I be the first completely silkless generation?

Grandpa Joke entered the front door, a box from the bakery in his hand, just as Nancy reached the first floor. Rachel and Ned, picking up the uncomfortable vibration from the elder quarters, soon followed up to Granny and Grandpa’s apartment to make coffee and share the cannoli. Nancy hadn’t had the chance to tell Granny about Grandpa’s losses; she didn’t need to.

“So black a sweater. Makes you look like a rat in the subway.” Was Granny scolding her instead of Grandpa? Nancy knew he’d get it later.

“It helps me blend in,” she said. It had been a long afternoon, and it was getting longer.

“Too true,” Granny said. “But well knit, Nancy.”

Nancy’s face went hot with surprise and pleasure. She had carefully knotted a strand of yarn through the hole she’d found. Did it matter, since she’d fixed it? Granny didn’t let her feel proud for two minutes before starting in on the color again. “A pretty face like yours…You’ve got a face like a flower, but you keep it all
boxed in. You ought to get that black hair off your face and wear some color.”

“I’ve got color!” Nancy flipped up her skirt to show off the purple tights.

“On your backside! Who needs color there, besides a baboon?”

“Show her, Nance,” said Rachel. “See what she’s putting together now, Mother.” She closed the cannoli box and pushed the little plates away. Ned turned his back on the room and stirred the big pot of sauce on the stove, but Nancy knew he was listening as closely as the others. Grandpa Joke nibbled at his cannoli, not close to finishing it, and watched Nancy.

She dumped her new project out of her backpack onto the table: balls of Mama’s scrap yarn in every jewel tone. Red and purple, pale blue, turquoise, all the dark blues, emerald green, and one black. All she would need to buy was gold.

Granny grabbed. She had to touch such colors, couldn’t resist. She rolled the balls into a row with her gnarled hands. “What pattern are you knitting?” she asked.

A stand-out sweater,
Nancy said to herself.

“No particular pattern,” she told Granny.

“Why, yes it is,” said Mama. “The stripes are all exactly two rows wide.”

Grandpa Joke raised his eyebrows. “Ah, a nonesuch sweater.”

Precisely. “Each time I start a new stripe I reach into the bag and pick whatever comes out.”

“Every time? Whatever comes out?” Grandpa’s eyebrows bent down.

“Yeah, unless it’s too much like the last color or it’s too ugly a combination.”

“Oh, so your taste
does
come into play?” Ned asked.

Triumphantly Nancy said, “No. Sometimes I use them anyway, because they’re so different from what I would normally choose.”

“Uh-huh,” said Granny. Except in her West Virginia accent it sounded like “aha.” Maybe that was what she really was saying. She leaned back in her wheelchair, looked out the window at the courtyard where Mama’s greenhouse hovered over her loom. Everyone waited to hear what else she would say. “In the country,” Granny said, “it is very dark at night.”

They all looked at her for a beat. Only Grandpa
didn’t look away. Rachel, Ned, and Nancy caught one another’s eyes.

“Yes, Tina?” Grandpa Joke said.

Granny Tina laughed. She didn’t finish her thought. She didn’t have to. What she meant was that Nancy’s nonesuch sweater could be knitted in the dark, if it was as random as all that.

Nancy was the only one who got it. “You think the pattern is choosing me,” she said quietly.

Then the others understood, too. They all nodded. Then they burst out in hoots and hollers of laughter.
What a family.

The phone rang. Ned scooped it up. “Hello?” A tremor came into his voice. “Giacomo Greene? That’s what you said? Yes, this
is
his number, but Green Medicine—” Pause. “No, that’s not our listing. You’ll have to try the operator.” He hung up.

Then three people said, “Nancy—” Her mother, her father, her grandmother. Not Grandpa Joke, but maybe he would have, too, if the others hadn’t been so quick.

“What?” she said, staring. Why were they all trying to cover up the fact that Ned had been lying on the phone?

Rachel pushed the sauce to the back of the stove and
said, “We’re not going to have time to wait for macaroni tonight. I’ve got that big thing of minestrone in the fridge downstairs. Go get it, will you?”

Nancy made a lot of noise jogging fast down the stairs, and then, just as quickly, she ran back up without making any. When the phone rang again, Grandpa Joke picked it up. Ned must have hit
Speaker,
which they had so Granny wouldn’t have to cross the room in her wheelchair to have a telephone conversation. On the landing, Nancy held her breath.

“Tell me you’ll see my wife,” said a man’s quiet, forceful voice. “Or I’ll put it all over the papers what you do.”

“What do you know about what I do?” There wasn’t any tremor in Grandpa Joke’s voice.

“What I’ve heard,” said the man. He made it sound like he’d heard plenty; he knew how to do that with his voice.

Nancy slipped into the kitchen with the pot of soup.

They all stared at her in horror.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Grandpa Joke said abruptly, and hung up the phone.

“Who?” asked Nancy. Everyone was silent.

“A patient,” said Grandpa Joke.

“Some old guy, right, Joke?” Ned said.

Rachel set the pot on the stove, turned on the gas, lit it with a match. Then she set about cutting the bread into thick slices, her back to her family.

“I’ll go with you,” Nancy said. “As usual?”

Nobody said anything. They weren’t about to tell her this visit wasn’t usual. They hadn’t ever admitted there was anything unusual about a doctor who still did house calls in these times, about his wife who went along with him. There wasn’t anything unusual, was there, about Granny Tina going in to say hello to the folks? She didn’t get out of the house much anymore, after all, and if Grandpa Joke was willing—with Nancy’s help, of course—to help Granny Tina up some steps, then why shouldn’t she go for a visit?

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.

I
n 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.